Chapter 6
six
I couldn’t have stopped myself from kissing Miranda for anything. The way she stood on her stoop, framed by the doorway of the house she was trying to make a home, dressed in those sexy shoes and tight pants, I had never wanted a woman as much as I did her.
The way she said my name—a plea—almost undid me. So I had kissed her and now she was obeying me by turning and retreating into the house. My cock was throbbing, my heart racing, and I felt the heightened anticipation of knowing I was going to get what I wanted—her.
I had always fantasized that I would take this slow, that I would be sweet and loving and tease her into full satisfaction.
But all these years of wanting her just caught ahold of me, gripped me in its fury, and I pushed her up against the bare wall in her entryway, kicking the door shut with my foot. Her eyes widened and she moistened her bottom lip.
Burying my head in her neck, I bit her earlobe, possessively, needing to get some of my feral energy out. She gasped in delight. Running my tongue over her sweet flesh, I found her pulse and sucked it for a second, closing my eyes to process that this was actually happening. I was tasting Miranda.
“What are you doing?” she asked, sounding scandalized.
Raising my head slightly, I slipped the front of her shirt down below her breasts. “Consuming you,” I told her, lifting her breasts so that her nipples were closer to me, an offering. A meal. “You taste delicious.”
With that I took her nipple into my mouth and sucked, teasing her with my tongue. Miranda gave a low moan that made my cock harden to steel. She was all juicy curves and soft skin. I wanted her naked. Now. But I’d settle for these bountiful breasts displayed for me with all their pink perfection. I bit her nipple, just a light nip, and that previous moan was nothing compared to what she gave me now. A rich cry of anxious desire, torn from deep inside her. Her hands gripped my shoulders, nails digging into the cotton of my shirt.
I wanted her to claw at my flesh. To rip my skin open and leave her mark on me. So I briefly stepped back while she gave a soft sob of disappointment. I raised my shirt over my head and tossed it on the tile floor.
Her hands reached out, eager to touch me. While her palms ran over my chest, my muscles, her eyes drifted half closed. “God, you’re so hot,” she said. “But I bet all the girls tell you that.”
“I’ve only ever wanted to hear it from you.” That wasn’t a line. I didn’t need the ego stroke of women telling me I was hot or had a great body. I worked out hard as hell. I knew what I looked like naked and it was pretty fucking good. But that I would hear those words roll off Miranda’s plump kissable lips meant more than a thousand girls saying the same.
As she explored my body, I teased at her nipples with the pads of my thumbs, back and forth, back and forth, rolling the buds into tight peaks. Goose bumps rose on her flesh, and her breathing changed, grew short and anxious. Her reactions were priceless. Easy to coax forward. For a split second I worried that she hadn’t been with anyone since Max, and how fucking weird that would be, but then I shoved that thought to the back of my head.
Max had given all this up.
She was mine now. All mine.
And if her lips tasted so damn good, her pussy would taste even better. I yanked on the waistband of her pants and the stretchy fabric gave in to me. After a few tugs I had them past her thighs, taking her panties down at the same time.
“What are you doing?” she asked, sounding both eager and frightened.
There were a million things I could say as I cupped her cheek and kissed her, not as dominating as before, my finger teasing across her clit, and finding her damp heat. I could tell her I was making her forget the past, or that I was making her mine. That I was giving her exactly what she wanted, whether she had realized it or not. I could tell her the hard and brutal truth.
Or I could just show her.
So after a few strokes, as she relaxed her grip slightly, I went down in a squat and I buried my tongue inside her core.
“Alejandro,” she said. “Holy… shit.”
The words were drawn out in an anguished ecstasy. “Yeah, baby?” I asked, before tasting her again, thoroughly. She tasted tangy and sweet and I couldn’t get enough of her. I teased open her folds and slid my tongue up and down. “What’s wrong?”
“Stop. Please. It’s too much.”
She was shoving me away from her so I paused, lifting my mouth from her tender moisture. “Stop?” I glanced up at her, nostrils flaring. “Is that what you want me to do?”
Miranda was biting her bottom lip. Her cheeks were flushed pink, a stain blooming above her breasts, which were still bursting above her neckline. Even as she stood there making up her mind, her hips rocked toward me, offering herself. But I waited, despite the fact that it made me want to pull my dick out and shove it inside that hot offering. “Tell me what to do, baby,” I urged her. My breath caused goose bumps to rise on her inner thighs.
“Don’t stop,” she said.
Triumph burst over me. I had her. It was the best fucking feeling imaginable. “No? What should I do?” I flicked my tongue over her. “This? Is this what you want?”
She gave a soft moan. “Yes, that’s what I want. More. Please.”
“So polite. You don’t have to be polite with me. Tell me what you want. Make me do it.”
“Ple—"
She stopped herself. “Do it. Go down on me. Lick me.”
Her chest was rising up and down rapidly. Her eyes were glassy, her embarrassment warring with her desire.
I couldn’t ask for more. She had just given me the most she could give and I respected that. I loved it. “I would fucking love to,” I told her. Then I hauled her left leg up off the floor and hooked it over my shoulder so I could access her as deeply and thoroughly as I craved.
She gasped at the move but didn’t protest and when I lowered my mouth to her again, sucking on her clit briefly before plunging into the depths of her heat, it only took her a few seconds to shatter. She came apart, screaming out my name in a way that had me pulling back frantically after she settled back down. I was going to have her and it was a moment I didn’t want to lose.
So I undid my pants and instinctively went for a condom. Then I realized I didn’t have to. I knew I was clean and I trusted Miranda was. For the first time in my entire life I could enter a woman without anything between us and what better person for that than Miranda.
Her leg had slid back to the floor when I rose, but I hauled it back up around my hip, grateful that she was a dancer. Still in heels, it wasn’t a struggle for her. Briefly, I pulled back so I could drink in the sight of her, disheveled and glowing with the orgasm I gave her, firm thighs wrapped around me.
“You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen,” I told her and I meant it.
Then I directed my cock and pushed straight inside her.
It was like fucking coming home.
I had no ability to think, to speak, or to stop Alejandro. I didn’t want to. He had me wide open while I was still recovering from the intensity of my orgasm. It had been intimate and wet and amazing and now here he was—suddenly inside me. Big and demanding and perfect.
For the first time I saw his control slip. His eyes closed briefly and he swore under his breath. My feelings exactly. I was clinging to his arms, needing support, my legs shaking. My entire body felt liquid. Hot, dripping liquid.
“Miranda,” he growled.
I had never heard my name spoken like that. It was almost overwhelming, the intensity of what was happening between us. It was raw sex, spiraling without thought to consequence. Yet I had never wanted anything as much in my life. “Fuck me,” I said, a breathy, demanding whisper. “Now.”
His eyes darkened. Resting his hand on the wall, he gave me what I wanted. Slick, hard thrusts, the room quiet except for the sound of skin on skin, and our frantic breathing. It felt like it went on and on, our bodies in tune, the tightening in my core growing and growing until I felt like I would burst. But I wanted to stay there, forever, in this moment, my nails digging into his hard muscles, clawing at his skin. My head was slamming into the wall but I welcomed the beat of it, the distraction that kept me from going totally under and drowning.
“Don’t hold back,” he demanded. “Come for me.”
I squeezed my eyes shut. I couldn’t look at him. It was too much. All too much. He was shredding my emotions, stripping me down. He was stretching my inner walls, filling me with his huge cock, his invasive presence. I had gotten more than I knew how to handle and I held tightly against it, afraid.
“Don’t you dare fucking hide from me,” he said.
A light slap landed on the side of my ass where he was holding my leg up, startling me into opening my eyes. “What was that for?” I asked, though I knew. And I liked it.
His hand shifted further behind me until he was squeezing my ass, forcing a deeper collision between us. “That was for you holding out on me. I want it all.”
Then he kissed me and it was so hot and so much and he was so everywhere all over me that I couldn’t keep my wall in place anymore. It tumbled to the ground and I came with a fierce desperate cry that had him exclaiming in triumph. His thrusts were furious as my body clenched on to him, thoughts scattered to the wind.
“Baby,” he said. “You’re so damn hot.”
When it all was done crashing, when our squeezing and gripping and crying out eased, we stood there, staring at each other, panting. I was shell-shocked. It was like Alejandro had tossed a land mine onto my life and I was staring at him through the rubble and settling dust. He had exploded my carefully planned future with his mouth, his fingers, his big thick cock.
Neither of us spoke. Words were too trite. I wanted a minute to pick up the shattered pieces of my soul. This hadn’t been just sex. This had been… something.
And it scared the living shit out of me.
Then he made it worse by drawing his thumb across my bottom lip, his dark eyes bright with emotion. First he lingered there, then he withdrew his finger and touched his lips to the corner of my mouth, followed by the other. Then he rested his forehead against mine, encapsulating me, absorbing my space, my air. It felt like it hung on and on and with each heartbeat he took more from me until I felt like I was disappearing, smothered by his body, his presence.
“I can’t breathe,” I murmured, pressing against the wall, my hands flying up to stave off his chest. It was too much.
“Sorry,” he said, instantly pulling back at the pressure of my push. He eased my leg off his hip until my foot settled on the floor. “Are you okay?” he asked. With his free hand he lifted my top back over my bare breasts.
I was still damp and throbbing and my legs were shaky but I nodded. I wasn’t sure I was okay, exactly, but I wasn’t hurt either, and I couldn’t articulate my feelings. I could just nod.
When he shifted, disengaging himself from my body, I was further confused because I felt the loss profoundly. When he was too close, I didn’t want it, then when he pulled back, I didn’t want that either. My cheeks flushed as I grew angry with myself. I was an adult. I had agreed to this. Hell, I had asked for it. Literally.
Time to pull it together. I was a strong woman. It was up to me to break this weird aura, to make it normal again. Casual. “It’s a good thing I’m in shape,” I said. “Or you might have crippled me.”
For a brief moment I thought he was disappointed in my words, but then he flashed me a grin. “You can always lean on me more. I’ve got you.”
That’s what I was afraid of. That he would want this again and so would I. “Thanks.” I shimmied my pants back up in place, peeling myself off the wall. “I’ll be right back.” I needed to go to the bathroom because there had been zero condom used here and I could feel the result of that making its way sluggishly down my thigh.
The timing was off, but stranger things had happened. The thought that we had just conceived a child made heat crawl up my neck and settle in my cheeks and my mouth to go dry. I was ready to be a mother, but this? All of this emotion and messiness wasn’t what I had pictured.
His eyes lingered on me and his hand slid down my arm. I half expected him to stop me or follow me but he did neither. In the bathroom I took care of business then stared at myself in the mirror. I looked feverish and well fucked. Splashing water on my face, I patted my cheeks dry with my shirt. I hadn’t unpacked the towels yet. Then I ditched my heels and went back in to the living room, weaving around boxes. Alejandro was where I had left him, in the entryway. But he was zipped back up, shirt on. His phone was in his hand.
I realized he was intending to leave.
Anger and disappointment and mortification all welled up in me. “You heading out?” I asked, impressed with how light and casual I sounded.
“I’m going to get some fried chicken.”
That made me blink. “What?”
“I’m starving. Sex makes me hungry. You want anything? I’ll be back in ten minutes.”
“No. I’m fine.” Then I thought about it. I didn’t have to watch my weight as carefully now that I wasn’t on tour. I could indulge just a little. “Sure. I’ll take whatever they have. I like thighs.”
“I’m a breast man myself.”
That made me laugh, despite my discomfort. “You’re a cheesy man, that’s what you are.”
“Come here.”
I wanted to protest. To tell him that if he wanted something he could come to me. But I found I wanted his touch, his comfort, more than I wanted to be defiant. “What?” I asked as I walked up to him. I felt tiny in front of him without the armor of my heels.
A wave of tenderness washed through me. I saw glimpses of the sweet boy I had known merged with the aggressive and sensual adult man. I tickled his beard with the tips of my fingers. “You need to shave.”
“You didn’t mind a few minutes ago.” He shifted out of my touch.
So he liked to tease but not be teased in return. Interesting. I smiled, enjoying some semblance of power. “Go get your chicken.”
He bent down and kissed me. It felt strange and inevitable all at the same time. “I’ll be right back.”
“I like honey mustard sauce.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He sauntered to the front door and left, a sexually satisfied man.
I breathed a sigh of relief. I was glad he was coming back but at the same time I was glad to have a minute to myself. I needed to find the stupid bath towels and take a shower and find my equilibrium again.
After he exited the house, I stood there in the doorway and watched him head down the walk. It was dark outside now, and after a moment of staring at his back, I shook off my reverie and went back into the house. My house. All nine hundred adorable retro square feet of it. Tomorrow I was going to go out and buy a pink lawn flamingo. The house was screaming for it.
But all of that seemed dimmed now by the enormity of what Alejandro and I had just done. My thighs rubbed together, sticky and warm, and I had both a seed of hope and a tremor of fear that we might have made a baby.
I took a deep breath and started for the shower when there was a knock on my door. Thinking it was Alejandro I opened it without thought. “Hi, did you forget something? Chicken doesn’t fry that fast.” The smile fell off my face when I realized it wasn’t him.
It was a man in his late thirties to forties, dark hair, a dark beard. He was holding a cat. But not like an animal lover. His hand was twisted in the cat’s scruff and he had him dangled in front of his body far enough to cause me instant alarm.
“Is this your fucking cat?” he asked.
The little guy was orange and looked healthy, not like a stray. “No,” I said. “It’s not. Why?” I wanted to reach out and snatch the cat away from the guy. Then I realized there was no reason why I couldn’t if the cat wasn’t his. So I wrapped my hands around his furry middle and told the guy, “I’ve got him, you can let go.”
“Good.” He wiped his hand on his shirt like he was offended by the feel of the fur. “This asshole cat gets in my trash all the time and makes a fucking mess.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. You can just leave him with me and I’ll find the owner and let them know.”
He gave a nod. Then he glanced behind me. “Did you just move in?”
His interest made me uncomfortable. My gut instinct was telling me this was not a guy who was totally right in the head. I wondered if I smelled like sex. Or if anyone had heard the wall banging, our mutual cries of pleasure. Heat bloomed in my cheeks and I nodded, easily letting a lie fall off my lips. “Yes, my boyfriend and I.”
Briefly he locked eyes with me and I fought the urge to shiver. Listen to your gut, everyone always says. Well mine was saying this guy was trouble. A pervert. Dangerous. I gave him a bland smile, holding the cat closer to my chest.
“I live next door. I’m Conrad.”
“Lola.” I didn’t really want to give my name but I didn’t want to piss this guy off. So I just tossed out another lie, plucking the first name that popped into my head. It rolled off the tongue before I could consider the implications of being dishonest with the person who shared a wall with me. But years of touring had given me a sense of who was just annoying and who was actually creepy. This guy was off, which sucked. This rental was where I wanted to have a baby.
Maybe he would move.
Maybe he had a wife who was nice and I was just paranoid.
He just nodded and turned to leave. I shut the door as quickly as I could without arousing suspicion and locked it. I buried my head into the cat’s neck. He smelled clean. Not like he had been digging through the trash. That was a red flag. Interesting. I dug around and checked for a tag.
There was a collar and a little silver tag.
Max.
I started, my throat tightening. “Hey, buddy,” I said to him. “Now that’s a weird coincidence, huh?”
The orange cat meowed loudly, nudging his head into my hand. He was purring.
“The man next door is a prick, huh?” I murmured. “Let’s call your owner.”
When I called the number on the tag, it started ringing. Then I heard an actual phone ringing, faintly, on the other side of the shared wall with my grumpy neighbor. That struck me as yet another odd coincidence. I quickly ended the call. The phone next door went silent. I called a second time and there it was again. A ringing.
I ended the second call and stood there, heart pounding quickly. “What is going on?” I asked Max. If his name really was Max. Why would the guy next door claim it wasn’t his cat but the phone was ringing in his apartment? Was he trying to rid himself of his girlfriend’s cat? Did he have a sick sense of humor? Was he trying to case my apartment, check me out?
There was no explanation that was anything short of fucked up.
So carrying the cat into the kitchen, I got him a bowl of water, and myself a weapon. I had a .22 packed away in the boxes in my bedroom but for now a knife would do. I knew how to use it. Max had taught me, just in case I ever needed to get out of a tough situation.
I had only had to use that skill once.
Fortunately, I was awesome at labeling boxes and it only took two minutes to find the one with the knives. As soon as I had it in my hand, I called Alejandro. He was a bodyguard after all.
Aware of how thin the walls clearly were I went into the bathroom, closed the door, turned on the faucet.
“Hey, what’s up?” he asked. “Do you want to add biscuits to your order? I just walked in the restaurant.”
“Yeah, that would be great.” My stomach rumbled. Apparently sex made me hungry too. “But I’m calling because my neighbor stopped by with a cat.”
“What?”
I explained what had just happened. “Don’t you think that’s weird?”
“Was he hitting on you? Because I would hit on you if you moved in next door.”
That made me roll my eyes even though no one could see me. “No. His manner was not flirtatious. It was more like he wanted to skin me alive and wear me like a woman suit.”
“Wow. Okay. I didn’t expect you to say that. Are you scared? Should I skip the chicken and come back now?”
I hesitated. I was a little freaked out but ten minutes wouldn’t matter. “No, it’s fine, you can get the chicken. I told him you were my boyfriend.” Saying it out loud to Alejandro embarrassed me. It sounded… presumptuous. Like I wanted that now that we had had sex.
He cleared his throat. “Smart thinking.” His tone was neutral, not possessive the way it had been earlier.
I felt oddly deflated. He sounded like he had in Lola’s hotel. Friendly and familiar, but nothing more. Not like he had buried his cock in me ten minutes earlier and destroyed everything I thought I knew about him. About us.
It seemed like he was asking a silent question. What do you want from me?
Or maybe that was just me projecting. What did I want? I had no idea. But I did know I wanted him to make sure my neighbor didn’t hassle me. “So maybe you come back over in the next day or two and help me sort out who this cat actually belongs to?” I immediately realized that sounded like I was just angling to spend more time with Alejandro. It sounded lame.
I quickly added, “And give Conrad next door a friendly hint that you carry a gun?” Conrad didn’t need to know I was carrying. He might just see that as a sexy challenge.
Men were fucked up.
Men also thought women were weak and I knew my greatest weapon was catching any assailant off guard. No one expected me to be able to defend myself.
“I can do that. I would be really good at making sure this guy knows you have someone looking out for you.” His voice lowered. “I’m spending the night tonight. That was already my plan, you know.”
My body instantly responded to his tone and I was annoyed with myself for the tightness in my core, the instant ache I felt. “You really should wait for an invitation.”
He gave a low laugh. “My invitation was you coming for me twice.”
My nipples tightened instantly. “Aren’t you in a chicken joint? Can’t people hear you?”
“I don’t care. And I’m staying over tonight. I won’t be able to sleep if I think you’re in danger.”
“I don’t think I’m in danger, exactly, but I would like to send the right message right off the bat.” That I may look pretty but I was no sitting duck, and I had some muscle to back me up.
“Does that mean you’ll make out with me on the front step?”
That shouldn’t sound as appealing to me as it did. To want to declare publicly that we were something more than old friends. “That’s negotiable.”
“I don’t negotiate.” Alejandro sounded cocksure of himself. “Hold on.” He shifted the phone and I could hear him ordering food.
I hung up. It’s a personal pet peeve to be put on hold on the phone and he had pushed all my buttons, intentionally. While I still hadn’t been able to jump in the shower and wash him off of me yet.
He called right back. “Did you do that on purpose?”
“Yes. You don’t negotiate? I don’t get put on hold.”
Alejandro gave a low whistle. “Damn. Then I guess I better get back to you immediately if not sooner. And give you whatever you want.”
That I would be willing to wait for. Except I had no idea what I wanted.
All I knew for certain was that I was eager for Alejandro to get back.
And put his tongue all over me again.