Shattered (Extreme Risk 2)

Crossing to him, I put my hand on his shoulder. Duck my head until he has no choice but to look me in the eye.

“I don’t know what I’m doing here,” he tells me, his voice harsh and aching.

“You’re doing just fine,” I say. “That’s what you’re doing.”

He laughs sadly, shakes his head. “Yeah, well, it doesn’t feel like that. It feels like I’m fucking everything up.”

“I’d say that’s pretty normal.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah,” I tell him with an encouraging smile. “If you didn’t care, you wouldn’t be worried—and that’s when you’d be”—I hesitate over the word “fucking up.”

“You know, I’ve never heard anyone sound quite so proper when using the word fucking before.” He grins at me then, and it’s so open, so clear, that a zing of electricity sizzles through me.

Which is so not what should be happening right now, especially since he pretty much just called me a prude. I fight to keep the smile on my face, fight the urge to look away. To hide. Instead, I force myself to brazen it out. To give as good as I’m getting. That’s what the punk-rock persona I put on this morning would do and I kind of feel like I haven’t given her much of a chance.

Determined to hold my own, I raise a brow at him and say, “Amazingly enough, I can sound all kinds of different ways when I say fuck.”

“Oh, yeah?” This time when Ash’s eyes darken, it has nothing to do with anger or sadness, at least not if the way he’s looking at me means anything. “So, am I going to get a chance to, uh, hear you say fuck in any other context? Because I would totally be up for that.”

“Yeah, from what I can tell, you’re always up for that.” Holy shit, did I really just say that?

I must have because Ash’s eyes widen and his grin goes just a shade or two darker when he answers, “Hard not to be with a mouth like yours around.”

My mouth? He likes my mouth? Does he mean my actual mouth—I fight the urge to bring my hand to my lips—or does he mean the words coming out of it? I’m confused, but it’s not in a bad way. In fact, I’m kind of liking this attitude I’m throwing around, and really liking the attitude Ash is giving back.

But there are other things going on here, other things that need to be taken care of, I remind myself. So, drawing a deep breath for courage, I tell him, “Yeah, well, if you like my mouth so much, maybe you won’t mind if I use it for more pressing things.”

Chapter 7

Ash

Her words hang in the air between us and there’s a part of me that wants to call her on them, right here, right now. God knows—even with all the shit going on—I’ve been hard since she started talking. Started giving me attitude. Something about the way her lush, pink lips look when she talks gets to me, big time.

Or maybe it’s the fact that she’s trying so hard to be a badass, which—for the record—she clearly isn’t. Oh, she’s talking tough—surprisingly tough, considering the fact that I’m pretty sure she’s a cream puff—but I can see the uncertainty in her eyes as the words tumble out. The glee and the disbelief mixing in a way that’s getting me all worked up.

Which is ridiculous. Tansy is a Goody Two-shoes if ever I’ve seen one and that is so not the kind of girl I go for. At least not anymore. Maybe, before my parents—before Logan—I might have been interested. Might have had something to offer her. But not here, not now. And sure as hell not when she’s trying to convince me to do something that will never, never happen.

With that in mind, I decide the best way to handle this is to force her hand. To lay things on so thick that she’ll run away and never come back. Maybe then I can get back to my less-than-peaceful existence.

“I thought that was the whole point of fucking.” I respond to her earlier comment, leaning forward just a little so that I can trail a finger down the inside of her wrist. Her pulse is beating triple-time here and I’d probably be more willing to celebrate my success if I wasn’t painfully aware of how soft her skin is. How delicate and sweet smelling. Like brown sugar and vanilla. “Pressing and—”

“Whoa there, snowboy.” She slams a hand on the center of my chest. “I think you’re getting ahead of yourself.”

Yeah, so do I. Which is a problem … and still I can’t stop myself from leaning forward and running a finger along her plump lower lip. Just to scare her away, I tell myself even as my dick fucking twitches like I’m a twelve-year-old with his first girl. Just to send her running.

I figure it’s working, too—her breathing is way too shallow and ragged for the badass she’s pretending to be—right up until the moment she opens her mouth. And catches my finger between her teeth.

She bites down, not hard enough to hurt but definitely hard enough to make sure I feel it. And shit, do I. All the way to my cock. Jesus Christ, what is it about this girl that gets to me like this? That makes me want to forget everything but what it would feel like to fuck her?

To shove my dick between those porn-star lips and watch as she sucks me off?

To bury my face in her pussy and hear her scream my name?

For a second the image is right there, so real I can almost taste her. Almost—shit. I need to stop thinking like this or I’m going to end up coming in my pants like a complete and total loser.

I tug on my finger, try to pull it back. She holds on for one, long second, her teeth digging into the soft pad at the bottom of my index finger. Then, just when I’ve decided to hell with it, I’ll make an exception to my good-girl rule, she lets go.