Cannon (Carolina Reapers 5)

“Holy shit,” she muttered as her head rolled toward mine. Her eyes were even bluer, the shade somehow clearer as she looked at me.

I lifted my fingers to my mouth and licked the taste of her clean, knowing her in the only way I’d let myself. Sweet and salty and decadent, just like the woman herself.

She whimpered. “That’s really…God, that’s hot.” She leaned up on her elbows. “Now you.”

“No.” I stood, somewhat surprised that my skates were still on. “Never me. I won’t go there with you.”

“What?” Hurt flashed in her eyes. “Why?”

“Because it would ruin us both.” I found my shirt and pulled it on, not caring that it was inside out.

“That’s not true. You want me. It’s pretty damned obvious.” She looked at my cock, then looked again, her eyes widening.

“It’s not about wanting. It’s about making sure we both survive this…marriage.” I ripped my hands over my hair. “Now, please, for both our sakes, walk away.”

“I don’t want to walk away. I want you.”

She sat up completely, her perfect breasts swaying with the motion.

I groaned but managed to back up farther toward the ice. “I have never asked you for anything, Persephone, but I’m asking you this. Don’t push me. Have mercy on us both and walk up those stairs.”

I turned abruptly and skated onto the ice, grabbing my stick as I went. I slammed at least twenty pucks into the net before I found the willpower to turn around.

Thank God, she was gone.

But I could still taste her.

8

Persephone

“And then I told the officer that I would be pressing charges.” Angela finished her tale by lifting her glass of white wine to the table and taking a sip.

I didn’t lift my glass—the only one at this miserable table who didn’t.

“You’d think you’d have a little more compassion,” I said, then blinked as every set of eyes landed on me. I shrugged. “You don’t know the woman’s backstory or situation. Perhaps she truly was asking for help.”

Michael patted my shoulder from where he sat on my right, and I subtly shifted away from under his touch. “That’s our Sephie,” he said to the luncheon. “Always using her heart instead of her head.”

I bit down on my response, exhaustion settling over me. These lunches had become more taxing in recent months. Since I returned from college and started my own career. Since my socialite friends had become colder and more crass and more…well, snobby. The tale Angela had recanted—a homeless woman approaching her on the street corner and asking for money to feed her child—had spurned a sadness in me. It most certainly wasn’t a story to laugh about, and the woman hadn’t deserved to have the cops called on her either.

“Not everyone is born with money,” I snapped, glaring at Michael in the special southern way I’d learned from my mother—the look was equal parts sugar and salt.

“How is Cannon?” Michael asked.

I swallowed hard. Flashes of our moments near his personal rink, on that bench, raced through my mind. The way his mouth had claimed mine. The way he’d touched me, stroked me into a wild mess of tangled tension. The way he’d effortlessly brought me to that edge and made me shatter for him. The man drove me crazy in the best of ways, and I wanted so much more. But I would never force him, never push him beyond his limits. He’d asked me to walk away, and I did. But it had been one of the hardest things to do in my life.

It’d been a week, and he hadn’t touched me in that way since. Sure, we spent our nights reading together in bed, our bodies almost touching but never quite. Sometimes he’d graze my hand as we lost ourselves in conversations—like the one where he admitted how badly he’d wanted a dog as a child, but out of all the foster homes he’d went into, they never had one. Or the time he’d told me about Lillian’s boy band phase and how he’d worked as a busboy after school to save up to buy her the new albums when they dropped. Or the small pieces he’d given me about his time with his mother—the way she’d been trapped in an abusive marriage and when she’d finally gotten the courage to leave, it had been too late. She’d had no resources, no money, no family, nothing to cling to. Nothing to help her take care of her children. Glimpses—he’d given me mere pieces of the life he’d lived.

The memories brought a sad smile to my lips. He’d let me in a little—his story inspiring my current charitable focus, one I would be discussing with Mr. Silas in a little over two hours.

“OMG,” Angela said, drawing my thoughts back to the luncheon. “Yes! How is that tall drink of badass?”