“It feels like goodbye.”
“No, and one day you’ll trust me enough to know that a dark night doesn’t take us there again. I promise you, you will. Soon.”
“How soon?”
“New York. It’s going to change everything.”
“Can we go now?” she asks hopefully, but we both know we can’t. We both know we have to see tomorrow out.
“I wish we could, baby. I wish we could.”
My mouth slants over hers, my tongue licking deeply, possessively and I make sure every answer she wants is right there in this kiss. I make sure she knows that I’m not fucking living another day without her. She moans into my mouth and when my hands settle on her spine, she arches into me. I rotate her toward the couch, pressing her against the back, my hands finding that soft smooth skin under her T-shirt.
Goosebumps lift on her skin and I tear my mouth from hers. “You have always been exactly what I need.”
“Am I?”
“Oh yes, baby. You are. I felt you even when you weren’t with me. Every day I was away, I felt you. I missed you. I needed the hell out of you.” I catch the hem of her shirt and toss it, my gaze lowering to her breasts, my fingers tracing the swell above the black lace of her bra, then finding her nipple through that lace.
She sucks in a breath and catches my hand. “Rick, I—”
“God, I love when you say my damn name.” My hand goes to her head, my finger catches the clasp of her bra, unhooking it as I lean in close, her nipples puckered between us, our lips a breath apart. “‘Rick, I’ what?”
Her fucking cellphone rings.
I grimace and snatch it from the floor by my foot, where it’s somehow landed. I grimace all over again with the caller ID that reads “Gabriel.” I toss the piece of crap onto the couch.
“Rick,” she hisses urgently. “What if—”
“No,” I snap. “Not now.” I cup her head again and step into her. “Not now.”
“But he—”
I kiss her again but she’s stiff now, unyielding because she’s thinking of him and it pisses me off. That asshole has interfered, yet again. He’s between us, he’s too fucking in between us.
My hand covers her naked breast, teases her nipple. She moans, and her tongue touches mine, and when I should be thinking about that nipple in my mouth, somehow her words come back to me: He wanted me to get pregnant. Or whatever the fuck she said. Close enough. The entire concept of her wearing his ring, her having his baby, drives me wild. That dark edgy feeling I know all too intimately is back, and it’s back with a punch of lust and desire. I’m hot. I’m hard, my cock is pressing against my zipper and her belly.
I reach down and stroke the seam of her jeans, and that’s all the patience I have. I have her zipper down in an instant, and I turn her, pressing her hands to the couch and dragging her pants down her legs. She’s naked in all of a minute and my shirt is on the floor with her clothes. I run my hand over her perfect, perky backside and give it a present, but careful, smack. She arches into the surprise touch, sticks that pretty ass in the air for me, and I suspect that is what she wants. She expects it and I give myself a long moment to imagine the way she’d arch in anticipation when I warmed her cheeks. I imagine how wet her sex would be when I slide my fingers and tongue intimately between her thighs. How hot she would be when I buried myself inside her after that spanking. How easily she’d forget Gabriel and all the fear. How emotionally exposed she’d be, how willingly mine. But that means me taking her fears, taking her doubts, from her. That means me leaving her nothing but me, here, now. I want to take her, to own her body and heart, but I’m just not sure that kind of dominance is what she needs from me tonight. She might offer herself to me freely, but it’s not right tonight, not with Gabriel trying to control her, in an entirely different way.
No. Dominance comes with a price when used unwisely. And I will not be unwise with Candace ever again.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Savage
Candace grips the couch in front of her and I step to the side of her, one hand between her shoulder blades, the other sliding between her thighs, into the slick heat there. My lips beside her ear. “I want you this wet every day for the rest of our lives. Every day. For the rest of our lives.”
A soft sound escapes her throat, and she twists around to face me and my gaze rakes over her beautiful, perfect body. Just that easily I’ve completely forgotten all the dirty, nasty, dark sex we could have, we will have, to escape this hell, just not now. Suddenly, I’m dragging her against me all over again, kissing the hell out of her and I need, abso-fucking-lutely need, to be inside her.