Chapter 6
CHAPTER
SIX
Cage
Her mouth woke me up.
Warm and wet and already wrapped around my cock like she'd made the decision while I was out cold and didn't need my permission. My hips jerked hard and my hand shot down on instinct, fingers tangling in her hair, fisting tight.
One hand braced flat on my thigh, the other wrapped around the base of my cock, her thumb working a slow circle that had my brain shorting out. She looked up at me through a mess of dark auburn hair and held my stare like she was daring me to say one goddamn word about it.
My fist tightened in her hair. Every instinct I had said pull her up, flip her under me, take this where I decide it goes.
I made myself let go. Dragged my fingers out of her hair and fisted the sheet with both hands instead, knuckles white, holding on like the mattress was the only thing keeping me from ending this my way.
"Jesus Christ." My voice sounded wrecked. She hadn't even been at it long.
She hummed around me, a vibration that ran straight up my spine, and then dragged her tongue flat up the underside. Slow. Base to tip. Like she had all goddamn day. My abs locked. My thighs started shaking.
Her cheeks hollowed. She took me deep, deeper than I expected, and the wet tight heat of her throat pulled a sound out of me I'd never heard from my own mouth. Pathetic. Completely goddamn pathetic and I didn't care.
Look at her. She chose this. You did nothing to earn it.
"Fuck, Addie." She tightened her fist, changed the angle, and my hips bucked up.
She pressed my thigh down with her free hand.
Held me there. Kept going at her pace, her rules, and I let her.
Her tongue worked the ridge at the base, a drag and a press, and everything in my body gathered tight. My back arched off the mattress.
"Gonna come." Warning and surrender in the same breath. "Addie. Fuck."
She didn't pull off. Took me deeper, swallowed around me, and I came so hard my teeth cracked together. Fists white in the sheets, her name ground between my molars, my whole body shaking while she swallowed every goddamn drop and looked proud of it.
She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. Climbed up my body and settled her cheek against my chest like she'd done something ordinary while my heart tried to hammer through my ribs. I pulled her in with one arm because my legs had quit.
"Shit." My mouth against her hair. "You're going to fucking kill me."
A huff of breath against my skin. Almost a laugh. "That's just one of my tricks."
The clubhouse woke up around us. Boots in the hallway.
Wrench swearing in the kitchen and Mercy through the wall telling him to keep it the fuck down.
Somebody's radio cranked too loud. Gun oil, wood smoke, thirty years of men who'd never heard of a mop, and she fit in the middle of it like she'd always been here.
Her weight on my chest. Her breath slowing against skin that still hadn't quit buzzing.
I traced the curve of her shoulder with my thumb. Thirty-five years old and nobody had ever put me on my back like that. She'd taken what she wanted and I'd held on and let her.
"We'll grab your stuff later." I said it into her hair like it was nothing. "Few changes of clothes."
She didn't answer. Her fingers stopped against my ribs.
"I need to shower." She was already moving.
Hips, waist, the soft curve of her ass disappearing around the bathroom doorframe. She didn't look back. She knew I was watching.
The water kicked on and I grabbed my phone off the nightstand.
Deliver the warning. Corbin Ellison stays off our territory—her shop, her street, this whole county. He ignores it, I hear about it before he parks, and the next warning won't come in words.
Reap replied inside a minute.
On it.
I dropped the phone on the mattress. Two decisions about her life before she'd rinsed the shampoo out of her hair. She was going to be pissed. I'd do it again tomorrow.
She came out in my T-shirt, toweling her hair, and sat on the mattress edge. She dialed, half my head still on how she looked in my shirt and what I planned to do about it later.
"Hi, I need to check on the secondary inspection fee for the upholstery shop on Ridge Road." Pause. Her shoulders hiked. "It's been paid already? Who?—"
She set the phone down like it might go off. Two seconds from putting it through the wall.
"You paid my inspection fee."
"Yeah, I handled it."
"You handled it." She turned, and everything warm in her face from ten minutes ago was gone. "The shop is mine, Cage. My fresh start. My grandmother left it to me and I have fought for it every day since I got here, and you went behind my back and paid for it like it was your right."
"The county was going to shut?—”
"That's what Corbin did." Once. Quiet, steady, no yelling. Worse than any scream. "He always had a good reason too."
"Don't." Rough. "Don't fucking compare me to him. I didn't take your car keys. I didn't cut you off from your friends. I'm not him."
I meant every word. Didn't matter. They landed and didn't make a dent, and the silence after was the loudest thing in the room.
My hands hung at my sides. Same moves. I'd just told myself mine were the good kind.
She was waiting for me to argue, to explain, to make it make sense, and I had nothing.
I'd told myself she'd understand—that keeping her protected was the whole point and she'd see that.
Standing in front of her with her eyes level and her mouth a line, I couldn't sell it to myself anymore.
She was already off the bed. Jeans on, lacing her boots, moving calm and quick, like she'd packed in a hurry before.
"Don't follow me. I need to not look at you right now."
"Addie—"
The door clicked shut behind her.
Go after her, asshole. Make her take it back. I got two steps toward the door before I stopped cold, because dragging her back to prove I'm safe is the whole goddamn problem.
After I put my fist through the doorframe, I called the prospect on the gate.
"The woman who just left. Stay with her. Stay out of sight."
Fuck. Best goddamn thing to happen to me in years and she was out my door.