Easy Little Lick (Copperline #3) (12 page)

Suddenly, she let out a raw, ragged cry as she tightened around me, almost a scream against my chest, before she went wild underneath me. Clawing and sobbing as she shook. The pulsing contractions of her pussy around me finished me off, and I exploded inside her with a hoarse groan.

My muscles felt liquid. My bones felt pliable. And for a split second, I felt almost numb.

She was like nothing I’d ever felt. The furious need and the wild way she made me lose control. I could still feel her pulsing around me, coaxing it all out of me. Releasing my energy into her body.

I wanted to stay there, just like that, forever.

I wanted more. More of this, but even more of her.

I wanted her bare, I wanted to feel the silky slide of her skin around me with nothing between us, not even a fine layer of latex.

Lying there on her and in her at the top of a mountain pass in the pale moonlight, I started yearning for more. A love like the ones depicted in old movies… like Ilsa and Rick in Casablanca.

Well, maybe not like Ilsa and Rick. They were torn apart by war and didn’t even get a happy ever after. She married some guy named Victor and flew off to America. He had to settle for a bromance with some French dude.

So, maybe more like what my parents had. The American dream with two-point-five kids, something that would last for the rest of my life.

Justin would kick my ass if he knew what all was going through my mind.

It was absolutely insane.

I’d known her for a couple months overall, and most of that had been without much interaction. Just glances and polite smiles. A few words here and there in the past few weeks. In reality, my own fascination with her hit me with an intensity that terrified me.

In spite of the trepidation, the uncertainty and desperation that whirled in my mind, I couldn’t pull away. I wanted to stay buried inside her forever.

I lifted my head, looking down at her and smoothing the hair back from her face. Her thick lashes opened, her fingertips lifted to trace my jaw as she studied my face.

But one thing about her made my chest ache, made my stomach feel hollow.

Even though she looked sated and, frankly, very well-fucked, her eyes looked sad.

But why?
Everything inside me wanted to fix her. To take her pain away. Yet she wouldn’t tell me
anything
. I needed more time with her, to get her to open up to me and trust me. To let me help her.

“Come home with me tonight,” I said, tracing my fingers down her cheek.

Her gaze instantly brimmed with unshed tears and her lip trembled. “I can’t.”

“Why?”

“Please,” she whispered, “Cody, please don’t ask me why. Please don’t ask me to explain. I can’t tell you.” She closed her eyes and swallowed hard as the tears crested and began to leak out. “I can’t… just… just hold me… for a little while.”

I wanted to push it. I wanted to know what she was hiding, why she was hurting. I had the most powerful urge to help her, somehow, even though she gave no clues as to what was wrong.

“Please,” she choked out, burying her face in my neck and pressing tight up against me. Her body trembled, shivering in the chill of the night air.

I folded her tighter in my arms and pulled her up with me, still joined so intimately, as I rose to a kneeling position. She barely moved on her own, only clutching me a little tighter, pressing her face a little more firmly against the pulse beating in my neck. I had pulled my jacket up with her and used it to cover her chilled skin, trapping in the heat of our bodies.

Still she held on to me. Still, tremors shook her, and I felt warm, wet tears seep against my skin, down to the neckline of my T-shirt.

So, as much as I wanted to know, to help her and heal her, to do
something
for her… I didn’t push her anymore. I held her as the last traces of daylight faded into night and the stars began to glimmer in the darkening sky. After a long while, her trembling ceased, and she kissed the damp shoulder of my shirt.

She lifted her head, studying me in the darkness, and reached up to kiss me gently. Sweet and full of emotion. Telling me with the touch of her lips what she couldn’t say out loud.

She was falling for me. Hard and fast. She didn’t want to and felt like she shouldn’t, but she was all the same.

And I responded with a wordless promise of my own.

I, having already fallen, would be there to catch her.

The ride back down the mountain felt different.
I
felt different.

Ilsa’s hands splayed out across my abs, as though she was trying to touch as much of me as possible. Her head rested against my back, her cheek pressed against my shirt. Instead of holding onto me, she was simply holding me. She was emotion itself, the entire spectrum wrapped around me. Peaceful and tumultuous, twisted together. Desolate, yet content, as impossible as that sounds.

We pulled into the back of the Copperline and stopped next to her car. The lot was calm with the unobtrusive Wednesday night crowd inside relaxing. Saving their energy for the next few days when the place would be hopping.

I turned off my bike, and waited for her to do or say something. To climb off the back and leave or to change her mind and stay. The longer we sat, the more I thought she might come with me after all.

Cupping my hand over hers, I turned my head to speak quietly over my shoulder. “You should come home with me, Ils.”

Her breath caught as she drew it in, a choppy sound that displayed her uncertainty and her want. Turning her face slightly, I felt her press a kiss on the center of my back before her hands loosened and she climbed off my bike. She stood beside me, searching my eyes, like she was trying to tell me something without saying anything.

“Thank you for this,” she finally whispered, barely audible over the hum of the jukebox emanating from the bar. “Tonight was… beautiful.”

“It could be more,” I replied in a low tone. My hand swept along her cheek and she closed her eyes, almost in pain.

“No, it can’t, Cody.”

“Tell me why,” I tried again, but she only shook her head.

“Please don’t,” she whispered.

I curled my fingers into her hair and around the back of her head, pulling her closer for a tender kiss, then touched my forehead to hers. “I couldn’t help but ask.”

She lifted her eyes to mine, once again raw with torment. “You’re a good guy, Cody. You’ll make some girl very happy someday.” Tears glistened in her gaze. “I really wish it could be me.”

She pressed her lips to mine, not really kissing so much as absorbing me, breathing me in. Then she stepped back and slipped off my jacket, handed it to me, and turned to walk to her car.

With one last sad smile, she climbed in and drove away.

If Ilsa had avoided me before, it was nothing compared to what she was doing now. Not only staying away, but practically disappearing before my eyes. She refused to even look anywhere in my direction. Oddly, she even seemed to stay closer to the Copperline bar sluts, a behavior that mystified me at first.

Until I realized what she was doing with them.

It started with Pauline.

When I had eased my ache with her, Pauline had made it no secret that she wanted more. I’d been pretty successful in brushing her off, not wanting her to feel something for me that I didn’t feel back. She had all but given up in the past couple weeks.

Until one night when my eyes were searching for Ilsa across the bar room, and I caught sight of her handing Pauline a drink. Ilsa glanced up towards the stage to see my attention directed towards her, and a strange expression swept over her face.

Longing mixed with despondency, and then she quickly wiped it away with a false smile. She leaned down to say something to Pauline who immediately looked over at the stage. At me. Directly into my eyes.

And she smiled, a come-hither look, flirtatious and inviting.

Fuck me, what did Ilsa say to her?

Whatever it was, I’d played right into it, watching like I did. Unable to tear my eyes away from Pauline’s hopeful gaze.

Fuck.

Fuck.

Fuck.

She did it again the next night with Ruth. Then Laura. She even did it with Vivienne, a divorcee who was a couple years older than us guys, but totally cougared out now and then. She sorta freaked me out, to be honest, and I had always kinda avoided her.

But Ilsa had them all watching me, looking for the occasional glance in their direction that they obviously interpreted as encouragement. Before long, I was half scared to look out over the crowd at all, and tracking Ilsa’s movements became nearly impossible. At the end of each night, I spent time extricating myself from them instead of trying to get to her.

But even as she did this, night after night, she clearly didn’t want to. Lonely regret radiated from her eyes, from the set of her mouth…

…every single time.

I thought I was never going to catch a break with her. She did the whole avoidance thing spectacularly, and part of me wondered why I even cared. She didn’t want me. Or she didn’t want to want me, as she had said once.

Two Saturday nights later, though, after the bar had closed, we had packed up our shit and were heading out. The back lot was almost empty with the exception of the Mofos’ vehicles, Brannon’s Cougar, and Doug’s pickup… and Ilsa’s car.

I almost didn’t see it, the dark color blending in with the shadows. At first, I didn’t see her. I wondered where she’d gone and how she’d left without her car. Then I caught sight of her, resting her forehead against the wheel. Not moving.

I panicked and bolted over there, thinking she might be hurt. As I ripped open her car door, she jumped and glanced quickly up at me, then dropped her eyes and turned away.

She was crying.

“Ils? What is it? What’s wrong?”

“I’m fine, Cody,” she replied in a small voice.

“Bullshit. Are you hurt? Did someone do something to you?”

She shook her head, and I crouched down in the open door to get closer to her level. She still didn’t look back at me, just sniffed and took a deep, shaky breath.