“Why don’t you come down and join me, Tesoro?” he asked, his voice coming out with a seductive rasp and barely sounding breathless. Definitely a showoff.
“I’m not exactly dressed for death defying workout stunts today, thanks,” I shot back. He grinned at me before climbing the stairs that curled around the edge of the balcony and nabbing me off the steps to haul me down into the gym. “I just showered! You’re all icky,” I screeched. He ignored me, carrying me over to the bar he’d been climbing like a spider monkey and wiping it down with a rag. I laughed in his face.
“You’re stronger than you think,” he grunted, and he touched his arms to the biceps where my sleeveless dress left them bare. “Start with the low one.” Those hands of his drifted from my arms to my waist, grasping me there tightly. “I won’t ever let you fall, Sunshine,” he murmured. He stayed an arm’s length away from me, undoubtedly giving my body the space it needed to maneuver in my misguided attempt to somehow move a fucking pole, but I reached up to grasp it regardless of how foolish it would be. He lifted me until my fingers brushed the pole, and then I wrapped my palms around it. Once I’d gripped it, he released me, stepping around to the back, and I hoped to all that was holy that my dress wasn’t up around my waist.
If it was, he’d have a faceful of ass, and that was the last thing I needed.
I could feel his hands hovering just underneath me, and something in me realized that he truly meant it when he said he wouldn’t let me fall. It didn’t matter that his hands weren’t on me, or that he didn’t support me physically.
He’d catch me when I inevitably fell.
I wondered if I was losing my mind. I had to be, but I took a deep breath and swung my body in on itself in a crunch. I felt the moment the pole left the groove, felt the scrape of metal on metal and fought back the instinct to drop my grip.
There was another clash as the pole slid into the second groove, and I nearly lost my grip anyway. “I told you,” Ryker’s deep voice inserted behind me with a chuckle.
I laughed in response, unable to believe that I’d done something that seemed so superhuman. It didn’t matter that the first and second grooves were the closest of them all, that the gaps got bigger and bigger gradually as you climbed.
It was a victory either way.
Swinging my body for the next groove, I winced when I felt the pole leave the groove too soon. I hadn’t put enough effort in, hadn’t gotten the momentum I needed to make the next gap. The pole clattered against the side posts, slipping from my hands as the clang vibrated through me. I screamed softly as I fell, but like he promised, Ryker snatched me out of the air.
He caught me in a single arm, cradling me so I never touched the ground as he curled his upper body over mine protectively and grabbed the pole with his other hand when it nearly hit him in the head.
I clung to his shoulder desperately until he set me to my feet.
“You’re okay,” he murmured, and the pole dropped to the floor with a clang. “I should go shower. I have to go out for a while again today.” He made no move to pull away from me, no move to separate our faces in the slightest even though I could feel his breath on my face.
The minty freshness of it tickled my nose and something about it penetrated the haze of the day before. Something was familiar. “Thank you,” I said awkwardly. “For catching me, and for taking care of me last night. I shouldn’t have been drinking. It was stupid.”
“I meant it when I said you were safe with me. You will always be safe with me, Sunshine. You can drink and not worry that I’ll violate you. Even when you want me to,” he said, and his voice tapered off into a husky chuckle. “Though maybe you should worry now that you’re sober.” I was fairly confident he was joking, but when one of his hands drifted down to where my dress had ridden up my thigh and he trailed his calloused hands over the sensitive skin there, I knew he wasn’t joking at all. It pebbled with goosebumps in the wake of his touch, and I shivered as temptation slid through me. I’d never felt muscles like Ryker’s, never touched such flawless skin. My hand slid around his collarbone, touching the space over his heart on the side of his chest free from tattoos.
There was very little hair on him, and I couldn’t blame him for that decision. What was the point in such beautiful artwork inked on your skin if you couldn’t see it?
“Will you take us to Matteo’s again?” I asked, and the thought of my kids going to the prison of that house just felt too soon. Like they could never understand why we went places where armed guards patrolled the property. We were so far out of our comfort zone; I didn’t know how to make them understand that our lives had changed irrevocably.
“No. Your security should be here soon,” he told me, and that hand left my thigh. I fought the urge to put it back, to shove it up under my dress so he could touch me where I shouldn’t want him, where I couldn’t crave him. I didn’t want to think of what I’d done the day before to make him think I wanted him, but the fuzzy remnants of that desire pooled in my body.
His fingers touched my chin, tilting my head to look at him as he leaned in and dragged his nose against the side of mine. “My security?” I whispered, and anger had filled my veins. More like my babysitter.
“Yes,” Ryker mumbled, and any response I might have had died in my throat when his eyes blazed on mine and then darted down to glance at my lips. Leaning forward, he touched mine with his soft, full pillow lips that felt remarkably gentle against my own.
A man so hard everywhere else shouldn’t have lips as plush as the ones that pressed against mine more firmly. He groaned in his chest, the sound vibrating through me so I could feel it in the depths of my soul. It felt like an imprint, like a brand rippled across my skin, tying me to him so permanently that I would never get his touch off of me.
His lips parted, his tongue teasing the seam of mine until I caved and gave him what he wanted. The moment he surged inside, the moment we crashed together, drew a whimper from me. It only seemed to spur him on, only seemed to make him go mad as he lifted me higher in his arms and brought me over to a bench where he laid me flat on my back. His mouth never left mine, never stopped devouring me as I wrapped him up in my arms and legs and distractedly noted that I could barely touch my toes together when they wrapped around his hips.
His hand reached up, rubbing against my nipple through the fabric of my dress and making a shock of memory spin through my mind. I’d made him touch me. His body pressed against mine, and the minute I felt the heat of his hard length touch my core, I pulled my mouth back from his.
“Stop, Ryker. We have to stop. The kids could see us,” I panted, and he groaned against me, dropping his face to the crook of my neck and breathing deep.
“Fuck,” he whispered. He stayed on top of me, and he looked down at me with eyes full of regret when he pulled his head back just enough to study me. I trembled. I couldn’t believe I’d let him touch me, that I’d let him kiss me, like everything was fine and he hadn’t ripped me out of my life. “The first time I get inside you will not be when you’re drunk or on a workout bench.” He seemed to scold himself more than me, and as he shoved himself up and off me, he helped to tug my dress down to cover everything that he had no business seeing. That I had no business letting him anywhere near.
I hadn’t been with anyone but Chad. My husband had been the only man to ever see me naked or touch me, and now I threw myself at the first ma
n to get anywhere near me and show me attention.
A man who had known him, but didn’t seem to respect him.
“I’ll meet you downstairs,” Ryker said with a nod as he turned and climbed the stairs to go back to the main house. He seemed to realize that I needed a minute to wrap my head around my stupidity and desperation. I didn’t understand what it was about Ryker that tempted me to do things I never would have even considered with anyone else. Even when Chad had been alive, I’d felt this irresistible pull to Ryker.