Lift You Up (Rivers Brothers 1)

I wanted this.

I wanted connection, intimacy.

I wanted someone to slowly get to know the workings of my body while I got to know theirs.

This was what all those old love songs were made about. Back when sex wasn't a means to an end, but a journey to take with your partner, something that showed you about not only them, but yourself.

King's lips slanted over mine again, harder, nearly bruising.

But all I could do was demand more as his fingers slid up, sifted into my hair, fingertips gently massaging my scalp like I would often catch myself daydreaming about in stressful or lonely moments.

I was barely aware of the beeping until the barking started.

Kingston jolted away from me, hands pressing into my hips, shoving me back a foot as he got off the desk, reaching into the drawer, pulling out something long, shiny, lethal.

My body couldn't seem to process everything that was happening at once. It was too overwhelmed by the pulsating, aching desire flooding my system to put two and two together until Kingston was pushing me down.

"Get low. Don't come out," he demanded, all the hunger gone from his eyes, replaced instead with something I wasn't sure I had ever seen there.

A primal-ness.

A hunter stalking prey.

It was equally terrifying and completely intoxicating in a basic, cavewoman sort of way.

With that, not wanting to waste time to see if my brain was even able to convert his orders into actions, he moved toward the door, silently pulling it open, peeking his head out.

"Oh, good," a voice called, airy, flustered, but familiar. "I can never remember this code. Would it be so hard to use the same one as the one for your apartment?"

Scotti.

That was his sister Scotti.

That was the first real thought that seemed to break through the stupor my brain found itself in.

"Everyone's birth months in backward order," Kingston barked at her, impatient, a sound I wasn't sure I had ever heard from him. His body turned, coming back into the room, eyes roving over me, trying to bore in. Why, I wasn't sure. Because I didn't think I had ever felt more raw and open in my life.

His body prowled closer as the beeping finally let up, leaving my ears throbbing as we could hear Scotti greeting the dogs, apologizing for not bringing her dog over to play with them, promising she would remember to do it next time. He leaned down, nestling the gun back in the drawer he had left open, sliding it closed, eyes never leaving me.

"Savea..." he started, voice low, soft again, a sound I never wanted to get used to hearing. At least not when it said my name.

"So what is this I hear about Savea being in troub... oh, well, there she is," she declared as she stood in the doorway, her lips curved up, seemingly completely unaware of the charged air in the room. "I hear you got yourself into some trouble. And, for the life of me, I can't figure out why I am just hearing about this now," she added a bit pointedly as Kingston was finally forced to turn from me, face his little sister.

There was no denying the family resemblance. The Rivers genes were nothing if not strong. The same dark hair, dark eyes, great cheekbones, amazing lashes. Scotti - like her brothers - was somewhat tall and lean, though undeniably softer in the right places.

For some reason I - who was not used to tense situations - was the first to recover.

"Well, I can't be blamed. My cell was lost in the commotion that night. I know about four numbers by heart," I added, shaking my head at my inability even to remember a single one of the Mallicks' numbers.

"You're excused then. How about you?" she asked, turning her focus onto her brother. "What's your excuse?"

"Client privacy? Not wanting to have every member of the Mallicks at my door demanding to be in on every single little step of the process."

"Okay, they would totally do that," Scotti conceded. "But still. You're family. She's family. And they are family too. So they have a right to know when something this big is going on."

"Who told you anyway?" Kingston demanded.

"Well, our idiot brothers were getting out of a car in the lot while I was closing up the shop for the night. And they were arguing gibberish about spiders and romance novels. And Savea. And since Savea doesn't read romance novels and hates spiders and was supposed to be at work and neither of them has a pet, let's just say my curiosity got piqued. And you know that neither of them stands a chance against me when I start grilling them. It all tumbled out. Except the spider thing."

"Rush chased me around the store this morning with a tarantula," I informed her, still a little bitter about it, clearly.