Better when He's Bold

“Let me clean up first.”

I scowled and stalked after him as he went inside the garage. He didn’t bother to turn on the lights, and when he stumbled a little as we hit the narrow stairway leading to the loft, I reached out and put my hands on his back to steady him, and felt him shudder at the contact. This was a man of contradictions that I didn’t know what to do with. At the moment he didn’t look so handsome or regal. He looked as mad and as furious as I often felt.

“Come on, let me help you.”

He grunted a little bit but didn’t argue as I guided him the rest of the way up the stairs and into his empty home. I kept going straight into the bathroom, flicked on the light switch, and told him to sit down on the toilet so I could clean him up like he had done for me the other night. By the time I had returned with a clean washcloth, he had stripped to the waist, was probing at his face in the mirror, and his expression had turned remote and vacant. It was like he was shutting off his emotions.

“What happened?”

I didn’t know if he would tell me about it . . . I mean, not if it would pretty much implicate him in some kind of criminal activity. But as I reached up to rub the dried blood off his eyebrows, he sighed and slumped down so that he was leaning against the sink.

“I’ll never understand the urge people have to risk what they can’t afford to lose.”

“This was from one of your gamblers?”

“No. From someone that the guy who owes me money hired to try and get out of paying. Probably cost him more than he owed to farm out muscle, and the guy he sent was a joke, but still . . .”

I put my index finger on the cut in the center of his bottom lip and blinked up at him.

“Doesn’t look like a joke to me.”

He made a face and I bent to put my lips on a flowering bruise that was starting to take shape over his ribs.

“It could be worse. It could always be worse. The guy wanted to beat me down, not kill me. I can usually hold my own in a fight, but I wasn’t expecting it. Which makes me an idiot and I hate feeling like a fool. I don’t know why I keep thinking people will do things the easy and logical way. Nothing works like that here.”

“I don’t think things work like that anywhere.”

I moved from the side of his chest to his breastbone and kissed him there. The firm skin was warm and resilient under my mouth. I felt the way his body started to respond to the gentle caress. His fingers threaded through my hair as I ran the flat of my tongue over the disk of his nipple. His heart kicked in response.

I ran my hands over his ribs and rested them on his hips above where his jeans hung low and provocatively. Race was lean, carved out of hard lines and sharp planes. He had a hard, muscled ridge over each hip that delineated strong and supple flesh. I wanted to lick it, to trace every line and curve of his body with the tip of my tongue. I got my hands under the waistband of the stiff denim and grinned where I was kissing him when I felt the hard edge of his cock bump against the back of my fingers. I loved that even in a sour mood he was still so quick to respond to my touch. It made all of this wildness he inspired inside me feel less one-sided.

“My turn to take care of you,” I whispered just as I kissed him right over his heart before pulling back so I could wrestle with his belt buckle.

“Brysen . . .” His voice was husky and rough. “I don’t know how much I can take tonight.”

Good. I would take him to the edge like he had done to me, make everything better with a soothing touch and all-consuming desire. His belt gave way easily enough and he was so hard that the fabric of his jeans was practically pushed out of the way by his throbbing erection. He was long, hard, and looked so solid and right as he fell into my hands. I saw his stomach muscles hollow out, saw his chest rise and fall in a deep breath, and his eyes did that thing where they shifted from pretty green to intense and needy black.

I got on my knees in front of him, a position that should have made me nervous, should have made me question the lengths I was already going to in order to please this man, but it didn’t. It made me feel in control, in charge of what was happening between us, and I liked the way his hands got hard and insistent when they curled around the back of my head as I leaned forward to take the straining tip of his cock between my lips. He made a low noise in the back of his throat as I swirled my tongue around the ridges and lines of the powerfully jutting part of him.

He tasted like Race. Sort of mysterious and lux at the same time. He had a trail of fine golden hairs dusting his abdomen below his belly button that tickled my fingers when I circled the base of his erection with my hand because there was no way the whole thing was going to fit in my mouth. He made another noise and his fingers tangled tighter on my neck and in my hair. I sucked on him, licked him, worked him over to the point that his hips started to involuntarily move against the draw and pull of my mouth. I wanted to use my other hand, wanted to stroke him, fondle him, and push him over the edge so that all that tension, all the coiled tautness running through his body, could leach out, but Race was done with being on the receiving end and not giving in return.

I made a surprised noise when he hauled me back up, spun me around, and put me on the edge of the sink where he had been leaning. I licked my bottom lip, which made him swear at me, and curled my legs around his lean waist when he got his impatient hands under my skirt to strip my panties off under the fabric.

“I wasn’t done.” I wanted to sound sultry and sexy, but I was more like Minnie Mouse.

He grinned at me and that dimple was enough to make all the things between my legs go hot and damp.