I couldn’t help it, though, and I didn’t mind that I still wore my clothes. Her skin was like a flavor, one I swore had been specifically designed for me by Baskin Robbins, and her nipples were like the cherries on top. Deep red from my attention and perfectly delicious.
But the bleating of her phone threatened to pop my flawless pleasure bubble.
And I was in no way ready to stop.
“Wes,” she whispered as it continued to ring, and I shook my head, my lips skimming the skin of her throat as I did.
“No, sweetheart. Leave it,” I reiterated.
I was frantic—desperate to get inside, to go further, deeper, harder—and her skin felt electric in my hands.
“God, Win,” I breathed into the space between her breasts as her thighs clenched me even tighter at the hips and she started to shake. I wasn’t even inside her yet, but the friction of my body on hers and the danger of being found were enough to make anyone go crazy.
Her nails dug into the skin of my neck as she squeezed, needy and greedy and trying to figure out how to get my mouth to be everywhere at once.
That was a lot to glean from the hold of her hands on my neck, but trust me, it was all there and then some. The shift of her hips, the catch in her breath, the way her chest vibrated with the effort it was taking to control her breathing.
My ears roared the way they always did when I was trying to be quiet, so the harsh reminder of her cell phone as it rang a second time pierced painfully into my brain.
Goddammit.
I ached in other places too, but the pain was entirely different. Nagging, unsatisfied, and, if I had to assign a color to it, I’d have no other choice than a hue of very deep blue.
“Wes,” she whispered urgently. I dropped her feet to the floor obediently and pulled my body back, unmolding it from hers, but not before sinking my fingers more tightly into the flesh of her bare ass one more time.
“I know,” I told her. She had to answer it. She has a kid. “Go ahead.”
She practically dove for her purse, unzipping it and wildly brushing the contents out of the way until she came to the offending device.
“Hello?” she answered, reaching down to grab the tiny shorts of her Harley Quinn costume at the same time. She didn’t bother with the fishnets that lay discarded haphazardly on the floor, but the time to be naked had apparently passed.
I felt like crying.
“What?” she asked, the tone of her voice changing as she hopped on one foot, the phone between her shoulder and her cheek, and struggled to get the shorts on and pull the material of her shirt back down over her breasts at the same time.
I grabbed her hip to still her frantic movements and slid my hand down the outside of her thigh as I sank slowly to my knees and grabbed the fabric from her hands. She looked down at me, but the dark hall made it hard to see what was on her face.
All I knew was that I wanted her to feel better—to alleviate her frenzy.
Slowly, gently, I eased her shorts back into place, skimming the skin and breathing all that she was in before kissing the inside of her hip and settling the waistband there.
“How many?” she questioned sharply into the dark.
As much as I knew I should move, I couldn’t. It didn’t make any sense, but something about staying there in front of her, my hands at her hips and my thumbs soothing the exposed skin as she spoke, settled something inside of me.
Normally rushing from one activity to the next, I didn’t spend much time like this—with nothing on my mind other than the sensation of her skin under mine and my ability to slow her breathing and quell the shake in her voice with something as simple as helping her get dressed and a gentle caress.
I’d never in my life felt like I was missing anything. Not the absence of a mother figure or the lack of a real romantic relationship or the unconditional love of a child or a pet.
But this, right now, the peace and satisfaction I felt from a simple exchange with a woman I hardly knew, felt overwhelmingly, unmistakably, like something I’d very much been missing.
“Okay, okay. I’m not panicking,” she told the caller as I pushed to my feet. “Do I sound like I’m panicking?”
She was asking him, but when her eyes met mine, the distant light glowing off the brilliant blue of them now that I towered above her, I knew she was asking me too.
I shook my head softly.
“Exactly,” she said, and this time, with the backing of my confirmation, it was more confident.
“How is she?”
Lamely and dumbly, I cringed at the fact that I honestly hadn’t put anything together until that moment. Her daughter.
I grabbed her elbow to call her eyes back to mine and raised my brows in question. Her face melted into a small smile before she mouthed, “She’s okay. Stitches.”
The knot in my stomach unfurled slightly at her silent words, but another, different one formed just as quickly. One that had more to do with the insecurities of a commitment-phobic man than worry over the health and safety of a child.
“Thanks, Rem. Just tell her I’ll be there as soon as I can. And get her a donut; she loves donuts. Not cake. A donut.” She let her head fall back and sank into the wall, covering her eyes with the hand free of the burden of her phone. “I know you know.”
Reaching out, I gathered her into my embrace, hugging tightly until I felt her relax in my hold. It took a few seconds for the tension to melt from each muscle, but when she finally did, everything felt right.
Her voice muffled in my chest, she spoke again. “I’ll be there soon.” She nodded there, the movement scraping the fabric of my shirt across the nerves, and I squeezed her tighter on reflex.
“Thanks, Remy.” She paused. “I love you, too.”
She pushed against my chest lightly, and reluctantly, I let her go and looked down into her upset-but-handling-it eyes.
“Where are we headed?” I asked. The skin of her jaw felt like butter under my thumbs.
“What?” she asked softly, and then, realizing my intention, shook her head. “You don’t have to leave, Wes. She’s fine. On her way home from St. Luke’s now. She saw a doctor I know and trust, and my brother is with her.”
“But you’re leaving, right?”
She paused, confusion influencing the features of her face to pull tighter. “Well, yeah.”
“Then I am too.”
“Wes…” she started, but I didn’t let her finish.
“I’ll take you. I have my car, and it’ll get you there a lot faster than the subway.”
That sealed it—without even a moment of question.
“Okay.”
Apparently, I wasn’t above using a mother’s love for her child to get my way.
The real surprise, though, was the way I was fighting so hard to get it.
By my own doing, I, Wes Lancaster, self-proclaimed kid-phobic and anti-family man, was about to meet her daughter.
Fuck.
Winnie had only been surprised briefly that “my car” was, in fact, a car service. I did, after all, drive myself to the stadium daily, and our timing had been such on a couple of days that she’d witnessed this for herself.
But driving around the city was a nightmare I didn’t particularly like having—especially not in a recurring capacity.
Because of that, I only used my personal vehicles when I was driving outside of the city or somewhere I knew would have easily accommodated parking.
Winnie lived in a nice brownstone uptown, and thankfully, the traffic had been sparse as we’d catapulted our way there from The Metro in Midtown.
But she hadn’t paused to take in the scenery upon our arrival, so I hadn’t either, following her into the house and signaling my driver to wait for my call with a gesture over my shoulder. There wasn’t time for anything else.
Winnie didn’t even notice I’d followed her, so intent on laying eyes on her daughter that nothing else mattered in a consequential capacity. I didn’t blame her for it, and more than that, I made absolutely no attempt to call attention to myself. I had the distinct feeling the only reason I was actually gaining entry into her home was because she didn’t realize I’d done it.
Down a long, molding-lined hallway, we made our way to the kitchen, the bright lights of it shining like a beacon the entire way. Winnie didn’t pause or falter in her quest to touch her daughter and reassure herself of her safety, moving across the room swiftly and with purpose, but she did it in a way that wouldn’t rekindle the flame of her daughter’s own anxiety. A soft kiss to her cheek, a sweep of her blond hair from her tiny shoulder, and a look into her daughter’s eyes were all Winnie needed to know she was all right. One brief perusal of the six or so stitches on Lex’s chin, and Winnie’s shoulders visibly relaxed like a deflating balloon.
So entranced by the interaction, I didn’t even notice there was anyone else in the room.
“Who the fuck are you?”
I couldn’t say the same for the man stalking in my direction with steel in his gray eyes and menace in his posture—a man who, I presumed, was Winnie’s brother Remy—because, boy, he had noticed me.
His features mirrored Winnie’s, and his authoritarian presence reminded me of the drive I saw in her every day. But he was dark to her light, his nearly jet black hair and olive skin at complete odds with the blond and fair nature of everything Winnie.