Lisa Childs - Dark Nights

Someone who owed him an apology and, damn him, he was going to make her say it.

“I have something I need to tell you,” she admitted.

Taking off her clothes and crawling into his bed had been insurance so that he would accept her apology, and so that things could go back to the uncomplicated fun and games they’d been having. Well, as uncomplicated as anything could ever be between the two of them.

“You want to talk?” he asked, his voice deepening with surprise.

She sucked in a breath and confessed, “I owe you an apology.”

“Really?”

Damn him. He was going to force her to say all of it.

“You were right,” she admitted with a grimace she hoped he couldn’t see in the dark room, the only light spilling through the partially open bathroom door. “You had every reason to be worried about me, about my safety.”

He expelled a weary-sounding sigh. “I’m sorry…that I was…right.”

“Yeah, me, too. I just don’t understand…I don’t know why someone would come after me now. I’m not practicing law anymore.”

“Why?” he asked again. “Why did you quit now?”

“When I hadn’t when you asked me to?”

“I just wanted you to take it easy.”

Would it have made a difference? Now she’d never know, and she would never forgive herself for taking the risk. “I didn’t leave by choice,” she admitted, too tired and scared to worry about her pride.

“Turrell fired you? After all those years you worked your ass off for him?”

She could have argued the point about her ass, as she still had plenty of it left. But she shrugged instead. “He probably thinks I had something to do with his wife finally deciding to divorce him.”

“Did you?”

“I wouldn’t have been a good friend if I hadn’t.” If only she’d been as good a wife…

“You can still practice law,” Ben pointed out.

She shrugged again. “Maybe I finally took your advice. I thought owning the club would be easy.”

“You couldn’t have been more wrong,” he remarked with a ragged sigh. “After all that’s happened, do you see now that you need to stay away from Club Underground?”

Flashing back to the attack in the dark, she couldn’t argue with him. She had to concede, “I hate being scared.”

Ben rolled onto his side so that he faced her, his eyes aglow in the dark. “I want you to be scared, Paige.”

She tensed with her own shock. “Why?”

“Then you’ll be more aware and more careful,” he explained, “and this stalker won’t be able to hurt you. Again.”

But Ben would. She shouldn’t have come here. She should have left things between them as they were, with Ben thinking she wanted him to stay away from her. But then he touched her, sliding his hand over her bare shoulder, down her arm to her hip. Desire flooded her, heating her skin and hardening her nipples, and she remembered why she hadn’t been able to stay away.

“I don’t know what I’d do if something happened to you,” he said, his voice raspy as emotion choked him. His fingers clenched her hip, pulling her closer.

Paige’s heart contracted, and she fought for breath. “You don’t know me,” she said.

“God, isn’t that the truth?” he murmured against her shoulder as he nibbled her skin.

She shivered. “No, I’m a stranger who’s broken into your house.”

Amusement lifted his lips, against her skin. “Are you looking for the safe under my pillow?”

She shook her head, sending her hair cascading around her shoulders, across his face. “No, you caught me, so I’m trying to convince you to let me go.”

“Oh, Paige…”

“Shh,” she said, pressing her finger against his lips. “You don’t know me. I’m just a desperate thief, trying to change your mind about calling the cops on me.”

“So—” he flopped on his back and linked his hands behind his head “—convince me.”

Paige sat up and leaned over him, so that first her hair, then her nipples brushed his skin. His breath shuddered out, and the muscles in his arms flexed as he gripped the pillow beneath his head. She rubbed her breasts against his chest, where his heart beat as wildly as hers. Then she kissed him, making love to his mouth with her lips and her tongue. Soft, sipping kisses, then hot, slippery ones as their tongues mated.

Still he refused to touch her, keeping his hands behind his head. So she moved. Sliding her lips down his throat, then along his shoulder, nipping and laving the bitten areas with her tongue.

His chest rose and fell with harsh breaths as she continued her torture: kissing every inch of his chest, sliding her tongue over his hard, flat nipples. She moved lower, dipping her tongue into his navel, sliding her mouth over the rippling muscles of his stomach. Then she gave her attention to the part of him that begged for her touch, throbbing and pulsing. She licked and lapped at the hard, long length of his erection before closing her lips around his cock and taking him deep in her mouth.

His head thrashed on the pillows as groans tore from his throat. She teased him, bringing him to the brink again and again, until his control snapped.

His hands came out from beneath the pillow and tangled in her hair, first holding her against him, then pulling her away. He pushed her back on the bed. His mouth took hers, in a hot, possessive kiss before he pulled back, kissing his way across her cheek, down her neck and shoulder, until finally his lips closed over her nipples, one, then the other, pulling and sucking.

“Ben…”

“You don’t know my name,” he reminded her as he lifted one of her legs and slid his wet, throbbing cock inside her. He moved, driving in and out, while she rose up from the bed, lifting her hips to take him deeper, to keep him inside her.

An orgasm slammed into her as he did. She sobbed as the pleasure stole her mind and her control. She wrapped one leg around him, pulling him deeper, taking as much of him as she could hold.

Again and again, he pounded into her. And again and again, she came. Finally, his orgasm spilled from him and into her. He collapsed on top of her, into her arms, his breathing harsh and ragged in her ear, his chest slick and hot against her breasts.

“Oh, God…” She shuddered as little orgasms went off like firecrackers after the grand finale.

“You convinced me,” he said, groaning, as he pulled from her and flopped onto his back again.

Paige struggled for first her breath, then her voice. “You’re not going to call the cops on me and report the break-in?”

“You didn’t break in,” he reminded her. “You knew the code.”

“God, Paige,” he said as he turned toward her. “That was crazy.”

It was. She needed to stay away from him. Instead, she got closer every time, pulling him deeper and deeper inside her, until he became a part of her. She had thought she’d been strong to come here; she would have been stronger had she stayed away.

“I should go,” she said, trying to sit up, but her limp muscles protested.

And so did Ben, catching her around the shoulders and pulling her against his chest. He groaned, then murmured, “Not yet.”

“I don’t think you have enough energy for another round,” she teased. When she snuggled closer, he groaned again, so she pulled back. Her eyes having adjusted to the darkness and not clouded with her passion for him, she finally noticed the redness around his ribs. “What happened to you?”

“I’m fine.” He dismissed her concern.

She pressed on his chest, and his handsome face twisted with a grimace. “You’re not fine.”

“I don’t believe you when you claim it, either,” he said with a slight grin.

As usual, he was trying to get the focus off himself, but she was having none of it this time. “What happened to you?”