Chapter Twenty-One
TWENTY-ONE
Phoebe
“What the fuck was that?” I whisper in slight panic. Okay, maybe more than slight . I can’t catch my breath, and partly, it’s because we practically ran into the bathroom together.
A graffitied single-toilet bathroom.
Rocky locks the door. McIntire’s, the local Irish pub, was near dead when we entered, but it wouldn’t even matter if someone saw us slip in here together. He just publicly won me in an auction . Now we’re paired up for The Hunt, and this is the only source of privacy we could find in such a short amount of time.
“I don’t know,” Rocky growls out, a rough hand skating through his black hair.
“The job,” I whisper. “We just risked the job . It’s not what we do. We’re very, very good at this, Rocky.” We can set aside our emotions to do the hard thing.
So why did he win me?
He’s too quiet.
Concern flares. “Rocky?”
His eyes hit mine, and the emotion penetrating his gray irises takes my breath away. “I had to.”
My chest rises and falls.
“I wasn’t going to let him have you, Phoebe.”
I just collapse into him like a book closing its pages. His arms fit so snugly around me. His chin settles at the top of my head.
I grip him. He grips me.
Leather and pine smell stronger against the crook of his neck than Jake’s cedar-scented cologne on the overcoat. It’s not that often we can steal time together outside of the loft or the boathouse. I’m already craving to pause this moment. So I can sit inside of it for hours.
While we’re still holding each other, he tells me, “Varrick Wolfe wasn’t going to stop outbidding Jake. I thought there was a chance that if I bid on you, he might back out.”
“Which he did. So what does that mean?”
“Three guesses,” Rocky says. “One. He hates Jake and was just trying to bleed him of money.” The way he speaks, it seems like he believes this option less. “Two. He wanted to show the town that he holds more power than the Konings.”
“Probable,” I say. “And three?”
Rocky goes silent again, and I step away to see the apprehension warp his face. Especially as he says, “He was toying with me.”
“What?”
“He got off on it. On the game.”
“But he lost .”
“I don’t know, Phebs. Something isn’t right.” Rocky stares right at me, but there is a haunted tunnel inside his grays that pulls him farther away. “It’s almost like he sees me, like he knows what I am, and he…”
“He what?” I’m caging breath.
“He respects it.” He crawls through his thoughts. “That smile he gave me—before he lost. It was pride .”
I tug the Clue Girl sash away from my neck, feeling choked. “Hailey said we need to look deeper into the Wolfe family.”
“No shit.” He rests his ass on the silver bar that helps people lower onto and rise off the toilet. The bathroom is tiny, but I press my back to the graffitied door, letting a few feet of space separate us.
With the intimate way he’s looking at me, it still feels like he’s right up against my body.
“What now?” I ask him.
He removes his hands from his jacket, then flicks this stupid gold coin at me with his thumb.
I catch it. “Trying to pay me to go away?”
“Yeah. That’s what I’m doing when I just paid forty-two grand for you to stay.”
“Burning all your cash on me. I’m flattered.”
“Not all of it.”
“Cheapo depot.”
He begins to smile, and my heart rate elevates. As he glances at the coin in my hand, I inspect the foil.
My head snaps to him. “This is fake.” It’s obvious by the weight.
“It’s definitely not real.”
I peel at the foiled edge, and I tear the gold film off to find chocolate underneath. The center is pressed with a pink heart and arrow.
Valentine’s chocolate. Smoothing my lips together, I battle the surge of an overwhelming smile. He tilts his head, a little more than just satisfied at my reaction. He’s devouring every piece of me.
“How much did this cost you? Like fifty cents?”
“I bought a whole bag at the gift shop. More like three bucks.”
“Wowww,” I draw out. “You know how to woo a girl.”
“I know how to woo you,” he says. “Fake coins and strawberry things.” Is it strawberry flavored? I can’t even ask. My throat swells with more sentimental emotion.
I look up at Rocky. It’s simple. The act of being remembered while you’re passing a store. For as complex and twisted as our lives are, the simplicity of love strikes me to the core. Love doesn’t have to always be pain.
“Fair warning,” he says, “I ate one, and the chocolate is fucking gross.”
“That’s probably because you’re a chocolate snob.”
He doesn’t deny it. Truth be told, Rocky just loves chocolate, so he can tell what’s bottom of the barrel.
He watches me peel off more foil so the entire heart comes into view. My eyes well over a basic thing.
Rocky knows I have an admiration for the counterfeit, and maybe that’s why the reality of what we are together is as compelling as the many layers we’ve created on top of it.
“Thanks for spending three bucks on me,” I say, meaning to be sarcastic, but my emotion softens my voice.
A smile reaches the darkness of his gaze. “You’re not going to thank me for the forty-two grand?”
“Oh no, that’s on you, buddy.”
His laughter causes mine to rise out of me, and I could bathe in the bright sound we create together.
Literal warm fuzzies—that’s what he just gave me. It’s so strangely comforting, I wish this feeling could be bottled and purchased through a vending machine.
He scrutinizes the door behind me. The idea of leaving isn’t as enticing as staying here.
We linger together. It’s what we’ve always done.
“How badly do you want to win this scavenger hunt thing?” I wonder after I wrap the coin carefully back in the foil and slip it into Jake’s coat pocket. I won’t forget it.
He raises his brows. “You really have to ask?”
I shrug, starting to smile. “I thought being dubbed the Huntsman might do it for you—it’s pretty in line with your MO.”
“My MO?” He nods to me. “Which is?”
“Hunting prey. Being the predator.”
“Maybe if we were hunting something worthy of being caught. Fake geese don’t do it for me. But for you…”
“Oh, I love a goose replica.”
“Knew it. Fake wife.” He holds my gaze for so long that we’re both smiling again.
“Fake ex -wife,” I correct. “Married only a year, remember?”
“Worst year of my life, apparently.”
“Worst year of mine, too.”
We can’t stop staring at each other. My heartbeat outpaces my thoughts.
Rocky pushes off the metal bar. Coming closer, he plucks the envelope from my fingers and spins the first clue to me. It sent us to this Irish pub.
Find me where the luck never runs dry.
He opens my coat with a slow seduction that feels too natural. My breath hitches as his knuckles brush along my collar, down my nipples, before he slips the envelope in the inside pocket.
Blazing, I try to collect my bearings by gathering my hair into a claw clip. “I give you a four point five.”
His lip quirks before a shadowy glare takes hold. “For what?”
“Seduction. Actually, four point three. You’re decreasing by the second.”
He doesn’t take his eyes off me. It’s unnerving, but I love how the intensity of him pumps adrenaline into my veins.
“You think you can do a better job?” he asks.
I place two hands on my chest. “Seductress.” I put the same palms on his. “Silver-tongue. One is light-years better at temptation . And that would be me—” My voice catches as he pushes me up against the graffitied door. Breath ejects, and he encases my cheek with one commanding hand while he slides his leg between mine.
Holy shit. My nerve endings light up. Shock waves ripple down my limbs. Instead of sweet, caressing eye-batting, we’re staking deep, penetrative glares into one another. Knives and ripping and cutting over featherlight caresses and soft little pats.
My thrumming body is screaming yes!
His breath is hot against my lips. “I give you a two.”
“Fuck you.” I try to move forward.
He pins me with his forearm to my breastbone. “One point five. Decreasing by the millisecond.”
I pulsate, aching for him between my legs, and I arch my hips against his muscular build, feeling him hardening. “You want me,” I rasp with desire soaking my eyes.
He stares down at me darkly. “You remember when you were twenty?”
I’m captivated by the unknown, dangerous path he’s suddenly leading me down. I hear my shortened breath in my ears. “Sure,” I try to say with heat.
“We were in Sedona.”
My face burns. “It’s barely ringing a bell.”
“Barely ringing a bell,” he repeats like I’m full of shit. “What about the hotel room we shared? Or the part where you watched me take a shower?”
I bake alive. “I didn’t watch you.” I push forward.
He shoves me back again. More breath jettisons from my lungs, and huskily, he says, “You didn’t watch me jack off?” He bears too much of his weight on me, to where I can’t budge, and I love the feeling of Rocky shielding my whole body with his. I love how his right hand clutches my face and his left unbuttons my jeans.
“You jacked off?” I try to play dumb—which is dumb , honestly.
His breath is hot as he whispers, “I saw you. I saw you watching me grip my cock.”
Oh…fuck. The vivid memory of seeing Rocky masturbate in a hotel shower—it floods me. So does the hot wave of guilt for not turning away sooner. We’ve never verbally acknowledged that moment… ever .
“You watched me stroke myself up and down.” He slides his hand down the front of my jeans, beneath my panties. Oh God, yes, yes. “You watched my muscles contract.” Yes. “You watched my dick jerk forward.” My lips break apart with a sharp breath. “You saw me spill my cum down the drain.” He thumbs my clit in perfect circles. I shudder and clutch his wrist, feeling the strength in his hand between my legs.
“You left the door wide open,” I rasp with not enough bite.
“Maybe I wanted you to see me.” He drills his gaze into me. My body blazes with arousal, especially as he says, “Maybe I wanted to see what you’d do.”
I didn’t join him in the shower, that’s for damn sure. “I had so much fun without you,” I taunt, aching for him, but I push forward with the same sensual, devilish needling. “The whole bed to myself.” I nearly grin when he pins me back to the door with hotter force, his cock pressing hard against me.
I lift my chin like I’m the victor, but we’re both suffering under our own carnal spells. “Then I took off my panties,” I say off my tongue, the sound oozing like sex. “And I slipped my fingers in—” My voice catches on a slight moan when his finger fills me. The fullness, the sensitivity. Holy…
He’s not slow.
He pumps his finger in me with a dizzying aggression. The sexy pace is annihilating me. My knees tremble, my breath trapped, and he’s whispering exactly what he pictured when he was jacking off years ago.
Me.
He was picturing taking me in the shower. “My cock, ramming inside your pussy,” he breathes against my ear, “until you couldn’t stand up without me holding you.”
I’m so wet. He knows how wet.
He slips another finger into me. I swallow a moan and shut my eyes, then open them while the sensations ride me way too hard. He’s pumping two fingers in my pussy, and I never want this closeness with Rocky to end.
I clench around his fingers in the start of a climax, but it’s not enough. It’s never really enough.
We both want more.
And we detonate together. Colliding into lethal, fiery kisses that steal thoughts and imprison breath. The headiness makes me lose sense of place and time, but instinct is brutal.
We know to be quiet.
Very, very quiet, and I find out in these sweltering seconds, where he has me in his arms, where his cock is deep inside me, what it’s like to make diabolical, furious love in silence.
My ears are ringing as we shelter breath. Heat licks us. Tears seep from the corners of my eyes and his eyes. His muscles flex. Veins protrude in his neck, and my body torches to a million degrees as we resist and succumb all at once.
It feels like being ripped alive.
Don’t stop , I want to rasp against his lips as he holds me, as he arches into me. We’re consuming each other. Gorging from the inside out.
When we come together, spots dance in my vision, and I black out for a second. “Breathe, breathe ,” Rocky says against my ear.
Okay, it might’ve been more than a second. He has me propped against the wall, his hands on my hips, and I grab on to the metal rod for balance.
I blink a few times, seeing the ripped foil wrapper to the condom on the tile. At least in the heat of the moment, we’re still careful.
Rocky isn’t happy. “You need water?” he’s asking while he lowers me to my feet and helps me step into my panties and jeans.
“No.” I intake big gulps of air. “I’m fine.” I pull my waistband higher on my hips. He tucks his black button-down back into his slacks, zips his pants, and I fix my hair in the claw clip, trying to decipher his expression. “What’s that look?”
“You would pass out before getting caught.” He’s not surprised I’d go to great lengths for the job, but I detect notes of concern.
“Wouldn’t you?” I shoot back.
“No.” He throws the ripped wrapper in the trash by the sink, then washes and dries his hands. “Because then I couldn’t take care of you.”
My brows crinkle. “You don’t trust I can take care of you?”
“That’s not it.” He scrapes his hands through his hair, taming the messy strands. “I don’t like being out of control—not with my body, not like that, not with anyone.”
“I get it,” I breathe. “Mostly when it comes to being drugged.” It’s happened to me before. My worst nightmare growing up was getting roofied, and I crossed that one off the list of fears during a short con in Nashville.
I was twenty-one.
I’ve been so careful never to let it happen again, and due to determination and savvy, it hasn’t.
Rocky pulls me into his arms. Right when we embrace, a fist bangs on the bathroom door.
I freeze. He’s just as motionless.
“I gotta piss, man! How long are you gonna be in there?!”
Shit. Only the bartender was at the pub when we first arrived.
Rocky stares at me while he yells, “I’m busy! Fuck off!”
The guy grumbles from outside the door, but Rocky isn’t concerned. He kisses me, and my uneven breathing levels again. I kiss him back with more certainty.
Until he presses his forehead to mine and says in an aching, rough whisper, “You need to yell at me.”
I don’t ask why. It’s obvious if we walk out together, it’ll look like we just had raunchy bathroom sex.
Which…we did.
I cling tighter to him. We’ve been in this situation before—okay, not this exact situation. But one where we needed to improvise on the fly.
With his arms around me, I yell, “You’re such a jackass, you know that?!”
“Yeah?!” He raises his voice to the same octave as mine. He’s staring at my lips. “Say it a little fucking louder! I couldn’t hear you the first time!”
“YOU’RE A FUCKING JACKASS!!”
He kisses me deeper, rougher. I love him. My heart hammers into those syllables.
I.
Love.
Him.
I feel the heavy thump of his pulse as we meld together. As my arms weave up around his neck. He’s snapped the claw clip out of my hair again. Just to clutch a fistful of the dark blue strands.
I almost moan. “Screw you,” I grit out.
The heat of his body, the strength of his hands—it murders me into a blissful death I want. I crave. Forever with him.
“Screw me?!” He shoves me hard against the wall again, and the bang should be audible to whoever’s on the other side. Our lips ache over each other. Toying, possessing with the need to capture and keep. “Jake didn’t have the money for you! You ever think of that?!”
“UGHHH!” I growl out while fisting his leather jacket. I love you. I love you. Our foreheads touch again, our bodies searing against each other.
“Keep fucking complaining!” he yells. “Or how about you appreciate what I just fucking did for you?!”
I do.
I always do.
I cup the back of his neck. This is too deep. Too much. I’m being figuratively slammed into him in visceral, tightly wound ways. “I fucking hate you!” I scream.
“Then hate me!!”
I’ve never loved someone more in my whole life.
He holds my face. “Slap me.”
My stomach drops. “ No ,” I whisper-hiss.
“It wouldn’t be the first time,” he says like it’s nothing. Like it’d mean nothing to do it again.
I have had to slap him before. For the job. But this is different. “I’m not getting the reputation of being physically abusive toward an ex—so don’t you dare slap yourself either.”
“Yeah, I’m not your brother.”
Oliver has one hundred percent gone the extra mile by giving himself a bloodied lip, a bruised cheekbone—and not with makeup.
“I didn’t say you were,” I snap back. If this was his plan to deplete the sexual tension, it’s working.
Our limbs unravel from each other. The last thing he does is kiss the outside of my lips. It’s a hot kiss, meant to stoke, and it singes my emotions in the best way.
Rocky has a hand on the doorknob. He turns back to me. “You first. Ready?”
And I just think, It’s me and Rocky .
It’s always been me and Rocky. From the beginning. Until the end. No one else could ever take his place. I’ve told Rocky this so many times, it might as well be a nightly prayer.