HAYDEN (Dragon Security Book 5) (5 page)

Dominic and I exchanged a look.

“Megan’s relationships are her business,” I said.

Vincent’s eyebrows rose, but he didn’t say anything.

“Maybe she’s just scared, Hayden,” Dominic suggested.

“She probably is. Quinn was like that when we first got together,” Vincent added.

I sat back and surveyed the small bar. It was the end of the business day, so most of the customers were men and women in business suits, enjoying a cocktail before they headed home for the evening. There were half a dozen women scattered through the room, their short skirts revealing their long, shapely legs. The expressions ranged from curiosity to desire to desperation on their attractive faces, all of them looking at us.

I could have any of these women, but the one woman I wanted was too afraid to get involved with me.

Go figure.

“Talk to her,” Vincent recommended. “I bet you can get her to change her mind.”

I swallowed the last of what was in my beer mug.

“I think I will.”

Megan

“We’ll be there Sunday night, so if he can get us in first thing in the morning, that would be great,” I said to the woman on the other end of the line.

“The doctor has an opening at seven.”

“That would be perfect.”

“Of course, Ms. Bradford.”

I set the phone down, going over the schedule in my head. I could hear Dante moving around in the kitchen, making us something for dinner. I kept telling him he didn’t have to spend so much time at my place. I even offered to go to his place once in a while. But he insisted that he liked my house. He liked me. And he liked spending as much time as possible with me.

I should be pleased with that information. I wasn’t. I was beginning to feel as though I was going down a road I didn’t want to go down.

We never went out in public together. I wouldn’t admit to being with him to anyone but Sam—only because I don’t lie to Sam—even though I knew that Hayden and the others at the office knew, and Cole probably knew. My parents might even know. But I couldn’t bring myself to that mental place where it was okay to start introducing him to my family and friends as my boyfriend.

He wasn’t. He was Dante. He shared my bed. End of story.

I ran my fingers through my hair, thinking about this trip Sam and I were taking. I wanted it to be fun. Just because we were visiting a couple of doctors and getting a few tests done, didn’t mean we couldn’t go shopping or do a little sightseeing. I was trying to iron out all the details, making sure there was time for everything. This was important.

“You want a glass of wine?”

I glanced at Dante. “No, I’m good.”

“You sure? You look like you could use some.”

I shook my head again as the phone rang. I picked it up, reading Dominic’s name off the display.

“I should take this.”

I got up, but Dante took my hand and slipped the phone out of it, pushing it into one of his back pockets, muffling the ring tone.

“What are you doing?”

“Enough work for tonight. You look like you’re about as tight as a rubber band holding Dolly Parton’s bra closed.”

I laughed. “Where did you get that?”

He shrugged. “A guy I worked with used to have all these stupid sayings.” He tugged me into his arms, his hand sliding over the side of my face. “Let me take a little of the stress off your shoulders.”

“How do you plan to do that?”

“Good food, good wine. Maybe a nice massage later?”

I let him pull me closer, my hand moving slowly over the front of his chest. “Why are you so good to me? I treat you like crap.”

“No, you don’t.”

“Sure I do. I’m always using you and then pushing you away.”

“Maybe that’s what gets me off about you.”

I shook my head because I didn’t believe him.

I brushed my fingers through his hair, tucking a piece of it behind his ear. “Don’t fall in love with me, Dante. I’m a hot mess. And I’m not ready to love anyone else.”

“I know.”

“I don’t know if I ever will be.”

“I know that, too.”

“And things are about to fall apart again.”

He buried his fingers in my hair, twisting my head so that he was looking right in my eyes. “Tell me what’s happening. Is it about Sam?”

Tears burned in my throat, but I’d made a promise.

“No.”

He knew I was lying. I could see it in his eyes. But he didn’t argue with me. He simply pulled me closer and kissed me. I melted as I always did, moving into his arms like my body was meant to be lost in his arms. He picked me up after a minute and carried me into the bedroom, his touch the only thing that kept me from quite literally falling apart.

Dinner burned, but we didn’t care.

I was lost in a dream, laying with Luke on the beach, whispering to each other about our future and the promises we once made to each other. But this little song—just three chords playing over and over again—drowned out his words. I rolled over and realized I wasn’t actually on the beach, but lying in my own bed in my own bedroom, dozens of miles from Galveston. And it was Dante’s phone that was playing that irritating little song.

I could hear the shower. And his phone was on the side table, ringing like it had every right to be there.

I reached over and snatched it up with the intention of just silencing it. But then I caught sight of the name and number on the screen.

Honeysuckle Nursing Home.

Honeysuckle…I knew that place. Luke’s mother lived there. He’d had to place her there five years ago when she was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. He was her only family and it was the safest place for her while he was off saving the world with the CIA. As far as I knew, she was still there.

Why would Honeysuckle Nursing Home be calling Dante?

They left a voicemail, and I so wanted to listen to it, but his phone was locked with a passcode I couldn’t figure out before he turned off the shower. I put the phone back and rolled over, curling up against my pillows before he came into the room, sitting on the far side of the bed with just a towel around his waist. He picked up his phone and looked at me for a long moment. Then he got up and stepped into the hallway. I could hear his voice, but I couldn’t hear what he was saying. Then he was back, dressing silently. He bent to kiss my temple, then he was gone, the closing of the front door vibrating through the entire house.

Whatever they’d called about must have been important. Did he have a family member there? Or was he moonlighting, doing some sort of security for them?

I suddenly realized I knew almost nothing about Dante. I didn’t know if he had family, and if they were old enough to be in a place like Honeysuckle. But the man was from New York. Wouldn’t his family be back there?

It was…odd.

Hayden

It was late when I knocked on Sam’s door. I’d stopped at home to change, feeling like a fool in the suit that I’d been wearing all day. And then I found myself sitting out in front of Sam’s condo, watching her shadow move over the windows, trying to get up the courage to do something I’d been dragging my feet on for much too long.

I wanted her. I’d wanted her for three years.

I don’t know why I waited so long, but I was regretting it. Last night made it clear to me that she was everything I’d been looking for. I was just too stupid to know it before now.

I sat there in my car far longer than I was proud to admit. But then I realized that I was just wasting more time. With a deep breath, I climbed out of the car and charged up her front steps, determined to do this, to force her to give me a clear answer.

“Do you want to be with me?”

She stared at me, her thin hair pulled back into a simple, childish ponytail, her glasses magnifying her gorgeous green eyes. She was clearly not expecting company. She was dressed in a pair of men’s sweat pants, a stained and dirty tee pulled over her full—but clearly braless—breasts.

“Hayden—”

“I just want to know. Last night was amazing, but then you leave me this cryptic note”—I took it out of my pocket where I’d kept it all day, even transferring it into my jeans when I stopped to change, tossing it onto the floor in front of her—“and tell me it can’t happen again because we work together? I don’t buy that, Sam. And I don’t think you do, either.”

“You shouldn’t be here, Hayden.”

“Why? You give me one good reason why I shouldn’t be here, and I’ll go. But, so far, you haven’t offered anything concrete.”

She shook her head, that pretty ponytail bouncing against her neck and shoulders. “Why do I have to give you a reason? Isn’t it enough for you to know I don’t want this?”

“But you’ve never said you don’t want it. And you surely didn’t act like you didn’t want it last night.”

She blushed, her cheeks so red she looked as though she’d been out in the sun too long. She stepped back and I took the advantage, slipping into her condo and slamming the door behind me. She looked up again as I engaged the deadbolt.

“What are you doing?”

“We need to talk this out.”

“You need to leave! I told you—”

“You’ve talked circles around this. Look me in the eye and tell me you don’t want me, and I’ll let it go.”

She tried to pull away, but I grabbed her arm, turned her, and forced her against the door I’d just slammed.

“Tell me, Sam.”

I leaned close to her, already able to taste her kiss just from the memory of last night. I brushed the back of my fingers against her jaw, and let my fingers slip over the curve of her throat. She groaned, but she didn’t try to pull away.

“You want me. Admit it.”

“I do,” she said softly, her eyes filled with tears as she looked up at me.

“Then what’s the problem.”

“I just…I don’t want to hurt you.”

Those words cut through me, through the walls I’d built around myself with humor and a million other things—sometimes inappropriate things—to keep words like that from getting to me. But this was Sam, this was a delicate, beautiful girl who someone managed to find the chinks in the wall and come through more often than anyone else had ever done. It killed my heart—a heart I’d assumed was broken irreparably—to hear those words fall from her lips.

“It’s not really your choice, now is it?”

“Hayden—”

“I get to decide who I let in and who I don’t. I get to decide who has the power to hurt me.”

“But you don’t—”

“I want you, Sam. I don’t think there’s anything you could say right now that could change that.”

I kissed her roughly, forcing her back against the door with the length of my body. She made a soft mewling sound, but she didn’t try to force me away. In fact, she raised her hands and pressed her fingers into my hair, tugging me closer to her. And that was all the confirmation I needed.

I picked her up and carried her halfway through the room, not really sure where it was I’d intended to go. I’d been in this condo a few times, usually to pick up something or drop something off for Megan. I’d never been a guest and never gone upstairs. I had no idea where her bedroom was or what it looked like. For all I knew, she had a narrow little twin bed like a nun in her cell.

I tripped over an armchair and we fell in an awkward heap. She laughed as I twisted my body, trying to keep my weight from crushing her. In a minute we’d somehow managed to get into an interesting position with me sprawled on the expanded chair, and she in my lap, almost as if we’d planned it that way. I tugged at her shirt, watching her eyes for any weariness, any warning, pulling it up over her head to expose those beautiful breasts.

I sat up and kissed her neck before slowly moving down to her full, long nipples. They were like mini fingers, sticking up and pointing toward the ceiling. I drew one between my teeth as my hand covered the other, listening to the moan of pleasure she tried to keep between her teeth, but failed. Her fingers were in my hair again, raking through it like a comb through a kitten’s fur.

I had to admit, I’d never been a fan of women wearing sweats. But I loved the way the waistband was loose enough that my fingers could just slide underneath. And I liked the sensation of the soft lining against the back of my hands while my palms enjoyed the silkiness of her bare skin. She lifted her hips from my thighs when my fingers brushed against her inner thighs, drawing me up against her as I found the edge of her barely-there panties and slipped my finger along the outer edge of her pussy.

She leaned down to kiss me when I lay back to take a good look at her nearly naked body. There was shyness to her touch, but it was a thin veneer over a need that was overwhelming. She kissed me with a passion that even my most experienced lovers had never exhibited. Sam knew what she wanted, and she had a vague idea how to get it. And I was so beyond excited to teach her.

She pulled my shirt up over my head, her eyes greedy as they took in every inch. Then her hands were playing at the snap on my jeans, tugging and touching, forcing me to pull them away.

“Take off your pants,” I demanded.

She blushed, but she climbed off me, stepping back far enough that I couldn’t reach her unless I climbed off the chair myself. I sat up, lowering the chair’s footrest, leaning on my knees as I watched. She wasn’t going to make this easy. She turned her back to me, moving her hips in something that was a cross between a shimmy and a twerk—as close to a twerk as an innocent girl like Sam could get. She lifted the waist of her pants away from her skin, moving it around her hips like it was a towel she could just toss aside. And then she let them go, giggling when I made a half-assed move to grab her pants and remove them myself.

I couldn’t believe this was the same girl who wore clothing from her neck to her ankles, who hid her gorgeous figure under the most shapeless, inappropriate-for-her-age clothes of anyone I’d ever met. She did that shimmy thing again, exposing the length of one hip briefly before hiding it again.

“I want to see you…”

She glanced at me over her shoulder, the amusement in her eyes disappearing as she met my eye. She bit her bottom lip, a touch of fear—fear that was nearly completely crushed by the weight of her desire—filling her eyes.

She turned away again, her head rolling back for a long second as she stared at the ceiling. Then, slowly—painfully slow—she began to slide the sweats over her hips and down along her legs. I watched, my heart in my throat, as she stepped out of them, covered only in this tiny slip of a panty. That, too, she slowly removed, making me wait as she tugged them over her legs. She hesitated after stepping out of them, turning only after it seemed like hours had gone by, her arms crossed over her chest, pressing them together to make this incredible bit of cleavage as she tried to also cover the soft mound much lower.

My heart was in my throat. I could see how painful this was for her. But I wanted to worship her and I could see in her eyes that she needed me to worship her.

I stood, my cock so hard that it almost hurt to move, but I denied myself the relief of a touch, a stroke. I just walked around her, taking in every inch of her beautiful body. Her skin was creamy, the color of peach silk. It was unmarred by scars, freckles, or other blemishes, just smooth and perfect from her scalp to her toes. Her breasts were high and round, more than three times a handful. Her waist was narrow, her hips wide, and her thighs slender and strong. Her bush was full, natural, and slightly darker than the hair on her head. And her ass…I’d known she had an erotic ass. That was one thing her long skirts couldn’t hide.

She watched me, that weariness I’d been looking out for finally in her eyes.

“You’re beautiful.”

She shook her head, her hands coming down to cover her mound again. I grabbed her wrist roughly and tugged her hand away.

“Do you know what you do to me, just standing there like that?”

She blushed, shaking her head again.

I pressed her hand to the front of my jeans; I let her feel the steel of my erection. Her blush deepened and she tried to pull her hand away, but I wouldn’t let her.

“You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever set eyes on,” I said against her ear, keeping my hands away from her with an iron will that was beginning to buckle. “I’ve never wanted anyone the way I want you right now.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Why not?”

She was quiet for a minute, tears in her beautiful eyes. I rubbed her hand against my cock and she groaned, her eyes closing as she tilted her head toward the ceiling again.

“Do you believe me now?”

She groaned, her eyes coming back to mine. “Why? Why would you want me? No one else ever has.”

The pain in those words ripped a hole in my soul. I slid my lips across her jaw, nibbled at the corner of her chin.

“That’s because you’ve never let anyone this close. You’re always pushing everyone away.”

She shook her head, but I knew she knew I was right. I grabbed her jaw with my free hand.

“But that’s okay, because you’re mine. Only mine.”

She moved into me, her free hand slipping over my chest. I stepped back, forcing her away from me.

“Do you believe you’re beautiful?”

Tears began to roll down her cheeks. “Why are you doing this?”

“Tell me you believe you’re beautiful.”

“I believe you are.”

I bit my lip as I walked around her again, drinking in every inch of her. She didn’t try to cover herself again. We were making progress.

“Tell me you’re beautiful.”

She shook her head. “Please, Hayden…”

The pleading in her voice spoke to something deep inside of me. I slipped up behind her, slid my arms around her waist, my fingers seeking the pleasures of her moist honeypot. She melted back against me, her thighs trembling as she parted them, giving me the access I needed.

“You’re beautiful, Sam,” I groaned against her ear. “So fucking beautiful!”

She nodded her head as she turned, her lips brushing against my jaw as she sought out my lips.

“I believe it when I’m with you.”

That was it. That was all I could stand.

I pushed her toward the couch. She stumbled when her shins hit the hard frame, forcing her knees down. I lifted her hips, pushed her back so that she was bent prone over the back of the couch. Then I tore at my jeans, relief bursting through me when I released my hard cock and quickly pressed it against her wet cunt.

I leaned forward, my cock rubbing against her lips.

“I’m going to fuck you now,” I whispered harshly against her ear. “Because you’re mine.”

“Please,” she whispered, leaning her head back against me. “Please, Hayden!”

I loved the sound of my name on her lips. Loved the slight southern accent that only slipped out when she said my name. And I loved the need that dripped from her lips, the need that only I had brought out in her.

I pulled back, positioning the head of my cock against her lips. She moved, too, taking me inside of her before I was ready. And then I was buried and my lungs just stopped, refusing to take in any more air. The pleasure that rushed through my body…there had to be laws against feeling this much all at once.

Sam pressed back against me, her hips grinding against mine. I thrust, taking hold of her hips and holding her tight as I pounded against her. I couldn’t…I reached my threshold. I couldn’t hold back anymore. I pounded against her, forgetting that twenty-four hours ago she had been a virgin, forgetting that just an hour ago I was sitting out in my car, thinking I’d never touch this luscious body again. I forgot everything but how good it felt to bury myself inside of her and listen to the voice of my pleasure slipping from between her lips.

She cried out and I cried out and…
fuck, it was so good!

When it was over, I collapsed against her and held her against me as I fell onto the couch’s cushions. She was a puddle of melted flesh as we lay there, both of us struggling to catch our breath. She didn’t try to cover herself now even though she was as exposed as she could possibly be. I found myself touching her, unable to resist the lure of her naked body even as her cunt still held my cock deep inside.