We locked eyes for a second, and she licked her lip. I knew what this was. This gorgeous, brave, damaged woman was making a move on me. A seduction, maybe. She wanted to get me on the bed, then pull that towel off. The inevitable happening. Her and me.
I could say no.
I could say yes.
Did I have a choice, really? She was standing there in her panties. They were pale and lacy, and I could see the dark patch through the fabric that was the hair between her legs. I felt a slow pulse of surprise and pleasure, because it was fashionable with the women in the club to shave or wax themselves bare. Dani hadn’t.
There had never been a choice. Inevitable, like I say. I had nothing to count on except Dani, and me, and the next hour. Right now, that was all I knew.
“All right,” I said. “Come here.”
Thirteen
Dani
He was sitting in the corner of the room, half lost in the shadows, but I could still see him. His shoulder in its dark t-shirt, the smooth line of his bicep, his forearm where it rested on his knee. I could see his eyes on me.
As always, Cavan Wilder gave nothing away. Anyone who didn’t know him would think he was untouched, perfectly calm. But I had spent a lot of time in his company, and I’d told him a lot of things, and I could read him now. I could see the thoughts moving swiftly behind his eyes. I could see the tension flexing the muscles in his arm. I could see the ridge of his knuckles as he slowly squeezed his hand into a fist. I could see the way his gaze devoured me without a flicker to distract its attention.
He wanted me.
I was no stranger to men wanting me. I knew I had a body and a face that men liked. There had been times, like when McMurphy had first pursued me, that I had enjoyed the attention. There had been other times when my face and body had seemed separate from my true self, which didn’t feel pretty at all. In those times my looks—and the approval they gave me from men—had seemed random, almost absurd. I hadn’t earned my beauty; it didn’t reflect anything inside me, certainly not anything angelic or superior to other women. I was as lost and flawed and fucked up as any other woman, but everyone assumed I wasn’t. It was disconnected, like my face belonged to someone else.
Cavan didn’t make me feel that way. He didn’t look at me like other men looked at me. I was sure he saw the same things that other men did—I was wearing nothing but panties on purpose—but Cavan didn’t see an angel, or a whore, or a conquest, or a trophy, or even just a pair of tits and a pussy. Somehow, he saw me.
It made me high, that look. It made me crazy. It made me want to crack him open and possess every part of him. I thought I might never get enough.
It made me wet, too. It had from the first minute I’d seen it. There had been a brief moment in time, seven months ago, when I’d been sexually adventurous enough to say yes to McMurphy. Since then I’d gone progressively numb, my defenses up, my systems shutting down. Sex had become a transaction I needed to make to buy another day, another few hours, that was all. But the look Cavan gave me—it woke everything up again, and at the same time it wasn’t as simple as a turn-on. It made everything inside me tangle together, and the confusion came out as need and a hot, sweaty desire for him so deep it almost made me shake with it.
I walked to the bed and lay down. I still had the towel over my breasts. He rose from his chair and turned on the bedside lamp. The dim, cheap bulb barely gave off any light, but he didn’t seem to care. I felt the mattress sag as he sat on the edge of the bed, and I caught the familiar scent of him as he bent close.
“Show me,” he said.
I lifted my arm over my head, and he moved the towel. He left it still covering my nipples, as if that was some kind of decorum when I was already laid out on the bed for him wearing nothing but underwear and a piece of terry. Then he bent down in the lamplight and looked at my inked skin. I felt his fingers touch the edges of the tattoo, pressing carefully.
“It looks okay,” he said. “Not red or infected. You have the cream I gave you?”
I nodded. In my rush to get away, that was one thing I’d remembered. “In my bag.”
“Make sure you use it regularly for a while.” He touched my skin again, making my blood sing. “I never asked you. What do the birds mean?”
Even as turned on as I was, I smiled to myself. My birds made me happy; the tattoo was one of the best things I’d ever done. “They’re flying away,” I said. “They’re free. I put them where I did because they’re coming from in here.” I used my free hand to point to the soft flesh just beneath my breastbone. “Inside me. Like if you have birds in a box, and you open it, and they fly out.” I dropped my hand. “Maybe that sounds stupid, but I like it and I don’t really care.”
“It isn’t stupid,” he said. “Not at all.” He put his hand where mine had just been, below my breastbone, and I watched my own stomach move as I inhaled a breath.
He moved his hand gently down over the skin of my belly, and I closed my eyes. It felt so good. My body remembered the feel of those fingers rubbing me, moving inside me. I was throbbing between my legs, but my skin was sparking everywhere else as well. I felt like a patient with a fever, every touch rubbing me raw.
Cavan dragged his thumb across my stomach, then slid his palm over to my hip, curling his fingers over it. “You’re very fucking beautiful, you know that?” he said softly.
In response, I pulled the towel from my breasts and threw it away.
I didn’t have much up top. It didn’t matter. I knew he liked it. He kept one hand on my hip and touched my breast with the other, brushing his thumb slowly, lightly over the tip of my hard nipple. Sensation shot down through my belly, into my pussy, and I felt my body tense. “I want to see you,” I told him.
He tore his gaze from my breasts and looked in my eyes, a quietly amused look. “Not very interesting,” he warned me.
“Trust me, I disagree.”
He shrugged—for God’s sake, as if I didn’t want to see him naked—and reached to the back of his neck to pull his shirt off over his head. It was a smooth, graceful motion that gave me that jolt of sensation again, and then the shirt was gone and there was just him. Cavan. His lean, strong chest, lightly dusted with hair that arrowed down his stomach. His flawless collarbones