Twenty-One #6
“No, just—” I reached for him but he slipped into the dark apartment and down the short hall to my bedroom.
I leaned inside and flipped on the lights, illuminating the living room and kitchen as he came out, replacing the gun in the holster under his leather jacket.
Funny that it had taken him only seconds to check the entire apartment; there was no getting around the fact that it was small.
“It’s all clear,” he told me. “Whoever was here is long gone.”
I nodded, shivering hard.
He wrapped me up in his arms and pressed me against his big, hard body. “It’s okay, baby, you just won’t be staying here. Let’s get your stuff packed up, okay?”
“No, Sam, I can’t just let somebody scare me out of my—”
“Oh yes you can.” He tipped my chin up so he could look down into my eyes. “I won’t allow you to be here. It’s not an option. Besides, I would’ve been moving you in tomorrow anyway. I don’t plan to sleep without you again. Ever.”
“But, Sam, it’s too soon. We need time to—”
“No, we don’t, J. You aren’t gettin’ any time, so do whatever you hafta do in your head, ’cause you live with me starting now.”
I glared at him.
“Is that supposed to be doing something?”
“Samuel Thomas Kage,” I yelled at him.
“You middle-named me there, but you’re still coming with me.”
“But—”
“I’m gonna pack up your stuff, then I’m gonna call it in. Sit down while I do that.”
“Sam—”
“There.” He pointed at the love seat. “Sit down and look pretty.”
“Sam—”
“It’s a furnished apartment, J. What do you even have here that you’d need to move?”
“That’s not the point. I—”
“I can put you in the seat if you’d prefer.”
I went and sat down as he walked back to my bedroom. “Lucky you picked me up at the pier, huh?” I asked the empty room, raising my voice so he could hear me. “What if I’d been home?”
“Yeah, well, you weren’t,” he called from the other room.
“Yeah, but what if I was?” I yelled back.
“But you weren’t!” he shouted, and I could hear that he was verging on a roar. I understood where the anger came from. He was terrified of losing me.
I was content even as I sat in the middle of my gutted apartment. He loved me. I was good.
He took me to get a steak because he said I needed the iron. I looked pale, he told me, and so I was fed a filet and a loaded baked potato with a Greek salad on the side. I had key lime pie for dessert and a cappuccino and was promised all sorts of carnal pleasures when he got home later.
The “later” was due to the fact that he had to go back to my place to supervise the crime scene and explain to the techs why my clothes had been removed, along with my laptop and books.
When he left me at his place, I was tucked into bed with the remote for the TV and a hot cup of chamomile tea.
No amount of whining or cajoling or begging was going to keep him from being there while the crime scene unit techs went through my place.
I wanted him home with me and he wanted to know who had been in my apartment.
He changed the subject by telling me that he didn’t think I should put my bed in storage.
It was time to get rid of the mattress, and I could leave the frame with Dane.
I told him how much I loved the couch and he said his was better.
That was true. Sam’s leather couch was perfection.
I didn’t realize until I had all my things back at Sam’s that I’d never put any money into the apartment.
It was a place to live, and as much as I loved it, as happy as I had been to be there, it was still just a stop on the tour.
My place was with Sam and his apartment felt like going home. He was right—I belonged there.
Before he left, I got a long, hot kiss and he propped up my ankle and hooked me back up to the ice machine.
He showed me how to turn it off, and explained that I shouldn’t leave it on for more than an hour.
It was easy to unwrap, and he said he’d wrap my ankle back up in the Ace bandage when he got home.
I argued that he should stay with me and he ordered me not to open the door for anybody. Period.
“What about your mom?”
“What?” He stopped at the door to look at me, clearly annoyed.
“Can I open the door for your mom?”
“Yes,” he said quickly, turning to go.
“How about Dane?”
“Oh for crissakes, Jory, you know what the fuck I mean!”
I chuckled and he shot me a look before he stalked down the hall.
“Bye!” I called out to him.
He came charging back moments later, bent over and kissed me again, this time tenderly, slowly, breathing me in. When he pulled back, I leaned with him as far as I could.
“Just sit here and rest. Stop bein’ a brat.”
I scowled at him and he left. I heard the front door shut and then the clicking of several locks. He wasn’t taking any chances. My phone rang seconds later.
“Hi.” I sighed, nestling down into the bed.
“I’m gonna drive you to work in the morning and pick you up after. From now on you go nowhere without me. You understand?”
“I understand.” I sighed. I loved it when he was possessive and told me what to do. Nobody else had ever cared, besides Dane. They were the two men in my life who—“Oh shit.”
“Oh shit what?”
“I gotta tell Dane about you.”
“And that’s bad?”
“It’s kinda bad.”
“Why?”
“He thinks I’m wasting my time with you.”
“I’ll talk to him. Gimme his number.”
“Are you high?”
He laughed softly. “Baby, I know you’re afraid of Dane Harcourt, but believe me, I’m not.”
I wasn’t convinced of his sanity. Not afraid of Dane? “Okay.”
I gave him the number and he repeated it back to me, then told me to watch TV or start my novel.
“You’re hysterical,” I grumbled. “Just come back soon.”
“I will, baby. I love you.”
Words so casually spoken that tore right through me. “I love you too.”
And when he hung up, I closed my eyes and grabbed his pillow. It smelled like him and I was content to lie there in the warm apartment and wait for my man to come home.
I woke up and realized the room was dark.
I was under the covers, my ankle was wrapped, and when I shifted, I hit a mass of solid heat.
Sam was beside me, sleeping soundly on his stomach.
I rolled over, draping my good leg over the backs of his thighs, and read the digital display on his nightstand.
It was just after four in the morning. I had no idea how long he’d been in bed, but from the chilled skin on his legs I couldn’t imagine long.
He had to be exhausted. He usually slept in pajama bottoms, but he was naked. I couldn’t keep my hands off him.
“I’m glad you’re home,” I whispered before I kissed the spot between his shoulder blades.
He grunted but didn’t move.
I rolled off him, onto my back, and stared at the ceiling in the darkness, trying to make my body calm down.
I wanted him, but he was tired and I had to kill my motor.
When he shifted, turning toward me, his hand going to my abdomen, I froze under his touch.
I had butterflies in my stomach along with the familiar tension as heat raced through me. It was his fault. I craved him.
“Why are you awake?” he asked softly, his hand sliding over my bare skin, slipping under the waistband of my sweats, inside my briefs to touch me, wrap his fingers around me.
I groaned, arching up into his hand.
“Your skin is so hot, J.”
“Please,” I begged him, moving, sliding in and out of his fist. “Please, baby.”
He rolled off the bed and I heard him fumbling around as I pulled off my clothes, stripping naked as fast as I could.
A drawer opened, there was the pop of a cap and then his hand on my thigh, dragging me forward, my bent legs resting on his arms, his lubed fingers slipping inside me gently as his other hand closed around my cock.
“You missed me.”
“Yes,” I said hoarsely. “Please.”
When his hot mouth engulfed me, I moaned his name, trying to push in deeper, even as I bore down on his fingers.
After long moments of licking and sucking, which very quickly had me moaning and begging, he added a third finger in my ass.
“Sam!”
No answer, simply the worship of my body.
“I’m ready. I want you now,” I demanded. “Right now!”
His rakish grin when he lifted up, letting my cock slip from between his lips, nearly killed me.
“Oh please,” I choked out.
Moving over me, he shoved a pillow under my ass, lifting me to him, and took tight hold of my hips. I reached for his shoulders as he folded me in half and sank deep inside my body.
My breath caught sharply.
He felt so good, and I was lost in the stretch and the fullness and was then utterly stunned by the laughter that came rolling out of him.
“Why are you—”
“You just feel so good. I’m so fuckin’ stupid.”
“Sam?”
He pushed in again, burying himself in me, and I cried out, clutching at him, wanting him closer, deeper, the sensations exquisite and wanted.
“God, J, why would I ever be so insane as to let you go when I love you so goddamn much, and it feels like this being in bed with you? Is there anyone who’s a bigger fool than me?”
I pulled him down for a kiss as my orgasm built.
“You’re in love with the village idiot,” he breathed against my mouth.
“You’re not an idiot anymore,” I assured him, panting as I quaked and bucked under him.
I felt his hands slide down the backs of my thighs, reverently, like I was a work of art.
“No, I’m not,” he agreed, setting a pounding pace that brought gasps from me instead of words. “Everybody’s gonna know you’re mine.”
Which was all I’d ever wanted.
“I missed you bad. So very bad.”
When I moaned, he clutched me tight and I thought, just for a second, that I’d died. Surely it wasn’t possible to feel so good and still be alive. He told me I needed to get used to it—he wasn’t going anywhere and making love to him was going to be exhausting.
I was ready for the challenge.