Chapter Five #2
I run a hand through my hair, jaw tight, scrambling for something, anything, that might change her mind.
Nothing comes.
“Sophia, don’t do anything drastic just yet. Give me a couple of days, okay? Let me talk to Quill and Jasmine, see what we can work out. Just sit tight and let me make a few calls. I’ll get back to you.”
“Really?” The surprise in her voice is instant, and underneath it something else, the faintest trace of hope creeping back in. “You’re actually going to help me?”
“Yes, darlin’. I’m going to help you.”
What she doesn’t know is that what I’m actually going to do is figure out how the hell to talk her out of it. I need time to think, time to work out an angle, but something tells me that no matter what I come up with, Sophia already knows exactly what she wants.
And she’s not going to settle for anything less.
I toss my phone onto the bed and sit there for a moment in the quiet of my room, staring at nothing in particular.
The call with Sophia sits in my chest, heavy in the way conversations about Tracker always are, leaving behind that particular hollow feeling that no amount of whiskey, noise, or company ever quite reaches.
She’s struggling. I’d heard it underneath every word, the sound of a woman holding herself together through sheer force of will and starting to run out of reasons to keep doing it.
And I’d made her a promise I didn’t have a plan to keep yet.
A knock at the door.
“Yeah.”
The door opens, and Raven slips inside, closing it quietly behind her.
She’s wearing next to nothing, a small dark dress that leaves very little to the imagination, her long black hair loose around her shoulders, dark eyes finding mine immediately across the room.
She’s stunning in that way she always is, effortless and confident, like she’s been put together specifically to make a man forget whatever was on his mind.
Right now, I could use exactly that.
“Heard you got back,” she says, her voice low and smooth as she crosses the room toward me.
“Word travels fast.”
“Always does in this clubhouse.” She stops in front of me, close enough that I can smell her perfume, something dark and warm, and tilts her head slightly, reading me the way she always does. “You okay?”
“I’m fine.”
She looks at me for a moment with that particular look she has, the one that sees more than I usually let people see, and I exhale slowly.
“Raven.” Keeping my voice low, easy, giving her the honesty she deserves. “You know I’m not going to be able to give you more than this. That’s not where my head is, and it’s not going to be. I need you to know that.”
She holds my gaze. “I know,” she says.
And the flicker of something underneath it, something she’s already made her peace with, or is doing a very good job of pretending she has, is brief, quiet, and gone before either of us can make anything of it.
“Good,” I say.
“Are you done?” she asks.
The corner of my mouth moves. “Yeah,” I say. “I’m done.”
She reaches up, pulls the dress over her head in one movement, drops it on the floor, and that’s the last thought I give to anything that isn’t the woman in front of me.
She’s wearing nothing underneath it.
Her dark hair against olive skin and those dark eyes on mine, she’s completely comfortable in her own body, the way only certain women are, aware of exactly what she is and entirely uninterested in pretending otherwise.
Her body is extraordinary, with full breasts, the curve of her waist pulling into her hips, legs that go on considerably longer than is fair.
She stands there, letting me look because she knows what looking does to a man, and she’s never once been shy about using it.
Standing from the bed, I cross to her and take her face in both hands and kiss her, not slow, not gentle, nothing careful about it.
She makes a sound against my mouth, and her hands go immediately to my shirt, fingers working the buttons fast, pushing it off my shoulders and running her palms flat across my chest and down over my stomach.
Her fingers find my belt.
She works it open with the particular efficiency of a woman who has done this before and has no patience for anything that stands between her and what she wants—the buckle, the button, and the zip.
When she pushes my jeans down over my hips and wraps her hand around me, I’m already hard, my cock thick and heavy against her palm, and she lets out a low, satisfied breath against my jaw.
“There he is,” she says.
“Told you I missed you.”
She laughs, low and warm, and I walk her backward until the backs of her knees catch the edge of the bed, and she goes down onto it, pulling me with her.
I settle my weight over her and take a moment to look at her, dark hair spread across the pillow, chest rising fast, and lips parted before my mouth finds her throat and starts moving south.
Her fingers are threaded into my hair by the time I reach her chest, her back arching into me, a low sound escaping before she can decide whether to let it.
I take my time there, my hands moving over the curve of her waist and the flare of her hips while she shifts beneath me with a particular impatience that I have absolutely no intention of rewarding.
Moving lower, I drag my mouth across her ribs and her flat stomach, and when I press her hips firmly back to the mattress, she lets out a frustrated grunt.
“Please,” she says, direct and low. Raven has never been a woman who has any interest in making a man work for what she can ask for.
My mouth finds the inside of her thigh, and I feel the full body shiver that moves through her, and when I finally give her what she’s been asking for, she’s already slick against my tongue, warm and wet.
As I circle her clit slowly, the moan that escapes her lips travels right down to my cock, making it harder than it already is.
Keeping her still while I suck her clit into my mouth, she’s so wet that the sounds of it fill the quiet room. Her thighs press against my shoulders, and her fingers tighten almost painfully in my hair. She’s close.
“Tate,” she breathes out, her whole body pulling tight.
I don’t stop.
She breaks hard, her back arching clean off the mattress, a sharp cry that she doesn’t bother to swallow, and her thighs lock against me as the orgasm moves through her in long, shuddering waves.
I keep going until every last tremor has worked its way out of her, and she goes loose and heavy against the mattress.
Giving her exactly two seconds, I don’t waste time and move back up her body, pull her hips toward me, and when I push inside her, she gasps, sharp and immediate. Her body stretches to take me, tight, slick, and perfect, her nails dragging down my back hard enough to sting.
There’s no tenderness in it, no whispered words or gentle hands, nothing emotionally complicated about any of it. It’s just heat, friction, and the particular urgency of two people who want the same uncomplicated thing and are taking it without apology.
Moving with her in the dark, her legs lock around me, and her mouth at my shoulder, I feel the last weeks finally start to dissolve—New York, the drive-by, Sophia’s voice breaking at the other end of the line.
All of it goes quiet, pushed back by the sound of her, the warmth of her skin, and the particular mercy of not having to think.
She comes a second time with her face pressed hard into my neck, her whole body shaking through it. I follow her over with my jaw set and my forehead against her shoulder, every last muscle in me finally letting go.
Afterward, she lies on her back beside me, her breathing evening out, staring at the ceiling, not reaching for me or looking for something in my expression.
She knows better than that, which is the thing about Raven.
She understands exactly what this is, and she has never once asked it to be anything else.
At least not out loud.
She sits up after a while, reaches for her dress, then places her hand flat against my chest, feeling the tension there without saying a word about it, before leaning in and pressing her lips to mine, slowly and certainly, like she has all the time in the world.
And at least for tonight, I let myself stop thinking.