Dirty Ties

She stirred, her breath hitching and her eyes blinking away sleep. I held her face as she straightened her head and stared at my visor, her hands lifting to wrap around my wrists.

There was no surprise or fear in her gaze, her silence passing long and deep with the whisper of the vent in the ceiling. Finally, she licked her lips and released a heavy breath. “I’m not dreaming?”

I shook my head.

Her eyes widened. “You said my name.”

I nodded.

She moved her hands from mine to hook a finger beneath the collar of my leather jacket. “I love the ties, but this—” Her other hand slid over the side of my helmet as her face transformed into a breathtaking smile. “This is you.”

24

Kaci

“You knew.”

His synthesized voice hummed over my skin, caressing every nerve-ending in my body. Not even shock or the dregs of sleep could dull his effect on me.

Logan. A man who didn’t have hairy moles, a unibrow, or bucked teeth. Maybe I was shallow, but God, I wanted him to be the man under that helmet so damned badly.

How many times had I imagined his thick, low timbre beneath the distortion, his golden-green eyes behind the black visor, and the sculptured body I knew so intimately stretching the seams of those leathers?

I slid to the edge of the couch, my knees bracketing his hard thighs, and gripped the sides of his helmet. “I hoped.”

With his huge hands cupping my face and all his imposing strength kneeling between my legs, I couldn’t stop the shiver of hopeful excitement. He was here. Damn all the consequences that would follow. He’d come for me, and Trenchant didn’t seem to be on the agenda. At least not at that moment.

I only wore a t-shirt and panties. Yet the surrounding air rose in temperature, fleeing the space between us as an invisible line pulled us together. His hips rolled into the V of my thighs, grinding in a slow circle. He pressed me into the couch, and his jacket creaked with the movement. A tremor quaked over his body, all that leather rubbing against my t-shirt and hardening my nipples beneath the thin fabric.

My breath quickened, and his followed, faster, louder. That sound, his need, surged a tingling up my legs as my brain dizzily grabbed hold of reality. The commanding suit and tie, the powerfully-built muscles, the aggression exuded on a bike and in a boardroom, every masculine tool that held me captive was all wrapped-up in one destructively-sexy, badass package. And all of it was right here, vibrating between my legs, burning for me.

A spasm convulsed through my inner walls, and my thighs opened wantonly. I slid my thumbs along the seal of his visor, trying and failing to unlock it from its closed position. “I need to see you.”

Bathed in the glimmer from the lights beyond the windows, he released my face and unbuckled the chin strap. His hips shifted with the movement, whispering cool air over the damp crotch of my panties. I wanted him there, and the thought produced a torrent of clenching inside me. “Hurry.”

My lungs filled with air as the slow lift of his helmet revealed the cords of his neck, his strong whiskered jawline and, my God, those lips.

I launched at him before the chin guard cleared his eyes. Grabbing his wide shoulders, I captured his mouth and stole his surprised exhale. The helmet thumped somewhere behind him as his fingers shoved through my hair and his tongue curled through my mouth, claiming and fighting and claiming again.

His stubble scratched a trail of fire around my lips. Zaps of electricity ricocheted through my body. My mouth closed over his, pulled back, and attacked again, over and over, filling the room with the wet smacking sounds of our hunger.

The aggressive press of his jaw controlled the movement of mine, and the toe-curling stroke of his tongue spiraled more wet heat between my legs.

He broke the kiss, and his gaze lifted, searching my eyes. The dark blond strands of his hair stood up every which way, a delicious contrast to the clean-cut, gelled look in the office. Pale flickers of light danced over his perfectly straight nose, the etched planes of his chiseled cheekbones, and the moisture glistening on his parted lips.

I couldn’t look away from those lips, and as they tilted into a gentle smile, months of anxiety and loneliness tumbled off my shoulders and scattered into the dark. Why did that smile have such an effect on me? I loved his broody, lopsided brow, but his smile? It held conviction and healing, a promise that this beaten-down connection between us would survive, despite the lies and betrayal.

He unzipped his jacket and shrugged it off. As he yanked off his shirt, his bare shoulders and biceps played and flexed beneath his smooth skin, his eyes never leaving mine. “We have shit to hash out, and we will. I’m not going anywhere.” He glanced at the door and back to me. “I locked the door. I know what’s going on down the hall.”