Savage Ending (Savage Trilogy 4)

The elevator dings and his mouth parts from mine, but there is a reluctance there I so understand. “Come on,” he says, capturing my hand and guiding me out of the car and into the hallway.

Suddenly, that pay-for-play and a need for answers aren’t on my mind. My nipples are puckered. My skin is hot. Dampness clings to my thighs. We need each other right now. That’s what matters. Rick opens the door and urges me inside, but he’s right there behind me. He locks up, secures the entryway with the comprehensive security system he’d installed long before I moved in with him, and I don’t miss the fact that this isn’t a step that he misses. Not that he ever does, but I feel some sense of necessity in the action tonight.

I start to find a need for logic and information again. It pierces the haze of lust and love and I step further into the apartment, about to find distance from Rick to allow me to think. I can’t think when he’s touching me. But I’m too late with my escape. Rick catches my hand and pulls me around to him, folds me close, strokes the hair from my face, and tilts my gaze to his. “I just need you right now, okay?”

“What happened to talking first?”

“It was never going to happen. You know, Candy, baby, when I came off of a shit-show of a few days, and I didn’t have you, I drank. Now, I don’t drink. I want to fuck you and make love to you. In that order. Maybe all at once.”

I melt with that confession, words I needed to hear for so many years, when there was nothing but silence. I tremble inside with how much I love this man. How much I still feel the pain of losing him even when he’s standing right in front of me—some part of me always thinks I’ll lose him again. I push to my toes and press my lips to his. And he cups my head and slants his mouth over mine, and kisses me like I’m the only reason he can breathe.

“I do very little properly,” he says softly. “You know that, right?”

I laugh and stroke my fingers over his jaw, the rasp of multiple days of stubble teasing my fingers. “I like that about you. You know that, right?”

“I do, but let's make at least one thing proper about tonight. I haven’t been in our bed with you in way too fucking long.” He scoops me up and starts walking toward the stairs.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Candace

Rick enters the bedroom where moonlight spills into the room from the floor-to-ceiling windows, stars twinkling in the clear night sky. He sets me on my feet at the end of the bed. “Undress for me,” he says, rotating me as he sits on the bed, his hands on my hips.

In that moment, I flash back to the first time Rick ever said those words to me. Undress for me.

It’s been one month since we met. And we’ve been together every moment we weren’t working. I open the door to find Rick standing there, looking like sin and my satisfaction, in jeans that hug his powerful lower body and a snug T-shirt, that accents his defined biceps, his hand over his head on the doorframe, and one look at his face—his steely jaw, his dark eyes—I know something is wrong.

“Come in,” I say, and when I back-up to allow him to enter, he steps inside and shuts the door.

A moment later, he pulls me into his arms, and kisses me until my knees are weak, a dark kiss. A tormented kiss. I press my hand to his jaw. “I think you need a drink.”

“I need a lot of things right now,” he confesses, and for a man who’d thus far confessed very little to me, it feels like a breakthrough.

I catch his hand and lead him to the couch, and once he sits down, I head into the kitchen and pour him a drink, a specific whiskey I’ve come to know he enjoys. I don’t pour one for me. I’m just not a good enough drinker to drink and be a good listener.

I return to the living room to find his elbows on his knees, his head low. I sit next to him and when he offers me a dark stare, I offer him the glass. He accepts it, sips it, and sets it down, uninterested, it seems.

“What happened?” I ask.

“I’m trouble for you, Candace,” he says, holding that eye contact. “I’m trouble and I’m not a relationship guy.”

My heart thunders to a roar in my chest and my defense mechanisms kick in. My hands slide down my legs and I stand up. He’s on his feet in an instant and we face each other. My hand is trembling and I hate how obviously flustered I am. My heart is breaking, which is ridiculous. I’ve only known him for a month. But my voice is remarkably firm. “You didn’t have to come here to tell me you don’t want to see me again. I haven’t asked for a commitment.”