She nods, a tiny jerk of her head, her eyes filling up again. “That’s all I want. The agency, you sleeping with other women for money...I couldn’t care less compared to this. I love you, Riot, and I want to be with you.”
It’s a jolt to my system every time she says something like that—a jumpstart to my heart, to my resolve.
“Then I’ll make it.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Paxtyn
Fear is threatening to take over, to pull me under, and I can’t let it. But it’s hard when the man you love tells you he’s going off tomorrow to fight a killer, and that he may not come out of it alive.
But he says he will. He says he might win. And even though he can’t promise anything like that, not really, even if I want to run away screaming and hide…I have to believe it. That he’ll make it, that he can do it.
Have to believe in him.
No choice. He won’t let anything bad happen to the people—and pets—he loves, so he’s set on it. Wouldn’t I have done the same in his shoes?
“What can I do?” I straighten, my arms around his neck, and look into his pale eyes. “How can I help?”
“You already are.” He nuzzles my cheek. “You are the purpose, the reason I’m coming back.”
Then his mouth is on mine, demanding, harsh and salty and white hot, stealing my breath. His hands slip under my sweater, under my tank top, over my bare breasts.
“No bra?” he whispers against my lips, grinning.
“I got ready for a movie night, not—”
“Damn gorgeous,” he whispers. He grabs my hips and twists me around so that I’m straddling him, my knees on either side of his legs. “If Corey knocks, don’t open,” he orders, and I barely hear him because right then he pulls my sweater and tank top up and off me, throwing them over the side of the sofa. He bends his head to mouth my nipples, his hands sliding down to steady my hips.
“Oh God.” I tangle my fingers in his tousled hair, still cold from the wind outside, and rock against him as his tongue moves in wicked circles on the puckered tips of my breasts. Pleasure rips through me like a bullet. “Please—”
“Yes.” He rocks against me, his cock long and thick and rock hard inside his jeans, the piercings hard points. “Do you feel me? This is us,” he whispers. “This is how much I want you. Now and always.”
“I want—” One of his hands slides down the inside of my thigh, slipping under my panties, and I shudder when he parts my seam. “Holy crap.”
“I need you, Pax,” he says, his hot breath teasing my nipples. “Never needed anyone so much in my life. I’ll come back to you. I’d come back from hell itself to be with you.”
I pull his head to my breast and just hold him there, stroking his hair. “You’d better.” Speaking past the lump in my throat is difficult. “I’ve never loved anyone like I love you.”
He rubs his stubbled cheek on my breast and my breath catches. He draws back, looks up. His eyes are very bright with something that looks an awful lot like happiness.
Then his hand presses between my legs, one finger pushing into me, and I moan, spreading my legs wider. He pumps in and out of me, long, deep strokes, alternating with pressure on my clit, until I see stars and come, moaning his name.
No way to stop it. He owns my body.
Like my heart.
As I return to earth, my ears buzzing, he kisses me, softly, then more urgently. He draws out his fingers and I settle back in his lap, against the bulge of his erection.
Suddenly, the need to feel him inside me grips me like a fist. Need to feel his skin, his bare flesh. I break the kiss and smile at him.
“Off.” I tug at his jacket—Good God, he’s still in his jacket and I’m naked in his lap—and claw at the sweater he’s wearing underneath. “Take it off.”
“Okay, I—”
“Everything. I want to see you.” I gulp, not sure why this urgency to get him naked. “To feel you.”
He nods as if he understands something I don’t, and starts undressing. He shrugs off his jacket, then grabs the hem of his sweater and T-shirt and pulls both off. I run my hands over his bare chest, over his tattoos.