JOSS: A Standalone Romance (Gray Wolf Security) (7 page)

Carrington

I found myself looking over my shoulder all day. I don’t know if it was the confrontation with Joss’ friend this morning, or the knowledge that the Bazarov Cartel was after me again that left me so uneasy, but it was almost a relief to get home at the end of the day. McKelty was a little hyper, having spent most of the day eating cupcakes because of a friend’s birthday party. Joss seemed a little tired at the end of the day, too, but it was so hard to tell with her. She never talked, she rarely looked me in the eye, and she hid in her room all evening. I knew the last part was my fault because of my speech on the first day about how I preferred to spend my evenings with McKelty, but I wished she would realize that it was just the newness of the situation and not a hard and fast rule.

McKelty and I shared a quiet dinner in the kitchen, then I took her upstairs and made sure she had her bath before I got her settled for the night. My head was so full that lying in bed seemed like a bad idea. I went downstairs, poured myself a glass of brandy, and went to sit on the deck. It was a quiet night, and I thought a little quiet might be just what the doctor ordered.

I hadn’t been out there for more than ten minutes when I caught sight of Joss crossing in front of the sitting room doors. She was wearing those damn shorts again—those shorts that I’d been unable to stop thinking about all night—and a long t-shirt that covered that perfectly round ass of hers. I could remember the feel of that ass in my hands, and it made them itch to feel it again.

What the hell was wrong with me? Was I really looking to get my ass kicked or something?

The confrontation this morning was jolting. I was not a man who went looking for trouble. I avoided it. My brother was the one who liked confrontation, who got himself kicked out of more than one boarding school because of the fights he was always getting into. Therefore, it was a no-brainer when he joined the military and I went into the family business. What was surprising was that he came home in a body bag a week before our father suffered a fatal heart attack.

I took a long swallow of the brandy, trying not to remember the sound of my mother’s sobs. The only thing worse than that was the silence that followed.

She tried, my mother. But she’d never been a strong woman. Father always took care of things, always made sure she was never bothered with the realities of this world. She lived in a bubble where the worst thing that could happen was a stain on a favorite tie or the wrong color dress for a spring garden party. Father saw no point in telling her about the three-year stretch in which the company ran in the red, or the mortgage crisis that took out half the family investments. She never knew about the stresses he carried alone on his shoulders, the stresses I only knew about because I made it my business from the moment I was old enough to understand the ins and outs of Matthews Shipping.

Just like Andrea. She never handled reality well. At least my mother simply moved away. She didn’t allow things to grow and engulf her. She didn’t allow life to become overwhelming.

I should have seen it coming, should have…

I sighed and took another long swallow of my brandy. There was no point in regrets. It’s only possible to change what’s coming, not what’s past.

My glass was empty. I got up and went back into the sitting room for a refill. She was standing in the archway when I turned to return to my seat.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea for us to be alone together,” I said.

She nodded a little too quickly.

It drove me nuts that she wouldn’t speak. I so desperately wanted to hear the sound of her voice, to hear her thoughts as they rushed through her mind. I wanted her to tell me what she felt. I wanted her to tell me whatever happened to be on her mind—even if it was vulgar, even if it was that she would be glad when this job was over, that she wanted nothing more than to leave me behind.

What that man said this morning kept ringing over and over in my mind.

You are just a client. In a week or two, when she’s saved your ass from whoever’s harassing you, she’ll be gone from your life, but she’ll always be a part of my life.

He was right. I had no fucking clue who he was, but he was right.

I turned to leave the room, but then I spun on her again.

“Who the hell gave you the right to walk into my life and turn it upside down? I had everything down to a science. McKelty, the business. Nothing else mattered. And then you come into my life and three days later I’m drinking alone in the dark.”

She held up her hands in a gesture of surrender. Yet, there was something in her eyes that ate through the anger and the frustration. She was just as confused as I was. It was there…so plain that it was like reading the first sentence in a long, well-written book.

I took one more swallow from my glass, turning my body away from her. I was giving her a chance to walk away. Telling her with the same body language she expected me to read that I didn’t want anything from her that she wasn’t willing to give. But she didn’t leave. When I set my glass down, she was still there, still watching me with her hands raised.

It was more than my weak self-control could take.

I went to her, took her face between both my hands, my fingers biting into the silky flesh over her cheekbones. I pushed her backward and pressed her up against the wall, one hand sliding up into her hair, those silky tresses still wet from a shower I wished I’d been able to witness. My other hand moved slowly down her throat, my finger catching the top of her t-shirt and tugging it down just a little, offering me a peek of the top edge of a black sports bra.

She was watching me, fear and grief and need all circulating in her eyes at once.

“I don’t want you to love me,” I said roughly against her ear. “But I need you. I need this. I need to remember what it was like to be a man.”

She hesitated, her fingers caught in the space between the buttons on the front of my shirt. And then her hand moved slowly up, her fingertips coming to rest on my bottom lip. I opened my mouth just slightly, and she slipped one finger inside, her eyes closing as I closed my lips around it and offered just the slightest suction. When she opened her eyes again, the need had increased tenfold, filling her eyes until that was almost all I could see.

“It doesn’t have to be more than this, more than the physical,” I whispered, as I pressed my lips against her earlobe, as I drew a section of her sweet flesh into my mouth. She sighed, her body relaxing, molding against mine. As my lips brushed against her throat—she smelled like vanilla and jasmine, like all the sweet things a woman should smell of!—she tugged at my shirt, pulling it free of my slacks, her hands sliding underneath to touch my bare chest. That touch broke the dam that had been holding back my need.

I kissed her. But it was more than a kiss. It was an invasion, a taking of everything that I’d imagined but hadn’t had the nerve to claim as my own until this moment. I touched her in places I’d longed to touch, running my tongue along the roof of her mouth, around her perfect teeth to touch sensitive spots that made her sigh, that made her respond with gentle, hesitant touches of her own. And my hands—I wanted to touch everything all at once! I wanted to feel her full breasts against my palm, wanted to feel each and every one of her ribs, wanted to slide my hand over her hip, to hold that perfect ass in my hands again. And that’s where my hands went, to her ass, to lift her so that her body could offer just the tinniest bit of relief to my straining cock. I wanted her so desperately that I don’t think a gunman charging into the room with guns blazing at that moment could have stopped what was about to happen.

I slid a hand between our bodies, slipped it down the front of her shorts, into her panties, and touched the moistness of her cunt. My finger slipped inside easily, causing her to pull back, her head rolling back against the wall until her closed eyes were facing the ceiling. A sigh that expressed the most intense pleasure slipped from between her perfect lips. I pushed a second finger inside of her, loving the show that unraveled on her face, loving the sighs and the soft purring sound that slipped through. She moved her hips, encouraging me, placing me in just the right position. She wanted this almost as desperately as I did, I think.

She pressed her fingers into my hair, pulling my face close to her. I kissed her throat, creating a trail over her chest. The t-shirt was in my way, but it wasn’t hard to find her nipples. They were straining against the material still covering them, sticking up like little mushrooms seeking the sunlight. I drew one between my lips as I continued to slide my fingers around in a simple little circle inside of her, making her hips undulate in a steadily increasing rhythm. And the other nipple, leaving a ring of wetness on her shirt around each.

“I want you,” I whispered, as I made my way back up the curve of her throat, my lips playing with the soft edge of her earlobe.

He hands moved immediately to the front of my pants. She looked me in the eye as she worked the zipper…her need still radiating from the sapphire depths of her eyes. But there was still that fear, that touch of grief that spoke to something deep inside of me. We were two of a kind, two peas in a pod. We were the same, two people with experiences that were so similar it was almost eerie. I knew her pain and she knew mine, even if she didn’t realize it just yet.

She wrapped her small hand around my shaft, her hand stroking me for a moment before she drew my cock out of my pants. Her shorts were still an obstacle, my fingers still buried deep inside of her even though they’d stilled. I slipped my hand away, and she tugged the material out of the way, creating a window only she’d known would be possible to find. She closed her eyes as she guided me to her.

I didn’t want that. I wanted to look into her eyes as our bodies became one.

“Look at me, Joss.”

She shook her head, her grip on my cock loosening.

“Please,” I whispered. “Just for a second.”

She opened her eyes and tears flooded them almost immediately, but she still drew me to her; she still guided my cock to her sweet, heaven-made cunt. I slid inside of her and the pleasure was almost too much. My vision darkened, my knees grew weak. She wrapped her arms around my neck, her tears wetting the collar of my shirt. We stood there that way for a long moment. Our bodies connected; our need overwhelming. And then she moved her hips, and I rolled mine, and we were finding our own tempo, our own cadence. It was beautiful, like the best-written music, the perfect symphony.

It went quick. I hadn’t been with a woman since a year or two after my wife left. And Joss…I suspected no one had shared her bed in the four and half years since her husband died. Not even the jealous fool who confronted her this morning. If he had, she wouldn’t be holding onto me as tight as she was; she wouldn’t be soaking my shirt with her grief.

I felt her thighs tremble and her muscles begin a milking sort of action just as I fell over that edge, as the pain and the pleasure rushed over me. I cried out, as I pressed her as hard against that wall as I could get her. I needed to be as deep inside her as I could get; I needed to feel every inch of her surrounding every inch of me. It was the most intense orgasm I’d ever experienced, and that was saying a lot. I was, after all, a man.

Joss pressed her face against my shoulder in the aftermath, her breathing hard and fast. As it slowly began to return to normal, she turned her face away from me, brushing tears away with one hand.

“It’s okay,” I said. “I understand.”

She didn’t attempt to respond. But when I pulled away from the wall, she didn’t let go of me. We stood there, off to one side of the sitting room, our bodies still connected, for a long time.

Joss

My legs trembled as I climbed the stairs, my eyes automatically moving to each of the cameras that David’s team had installed in Carrington’s house. It was dumb luck that Carrington had chosen the one wall that was in the center of a blind spot between the cameras in the sitting room and the entryway downstairs. However, I was still sporting a deep blush, still wondering who was watching and what they thought about what they’d seen. The thought that Ash might be aware of what I’d just done was mortifying.

I started to turn into my room when we reached the top of the stairs, but Carrington grabbed my hand.

“I’m not ready to be alone,” he said quietly near my ear.

I turned into him and realized I wasn’t ready either. I knew that the moment I was alone with my thoughts there would be a lot of things I wasn’t quite ready to face. Already there was a lump in my throat, a memory that wanted to destroy me with guilt. I wasn’t ready for that.

I followed Carrington across the wide hallway and into his bedroom. I pulled away from him and dragged a chair across the room to a far corner. I climbed up and grabbed the camera that was partially hidden against the pale ceiling, flipping the switch on the back of it that would stop the wireless feed to David’s computer back at the compound.

“There was a camera in here, too?”

I nodded.

“And McKelty’s room?”

I nodded again.

He turned, but I rushed across the room and grabbed his arm. The camera was a necessity, a way to watch McKelty when everyone else was asleep. There was no gesture to relay that to him, but I think he understood without a gesture. He studied my face, the anger and fatherly concern slowly turning into something else.

My phone vibrated in the back pocket of my skimpy shorts. I was surprised it hadn’t fallen out downstairs after everything…I pulled it out and read the text I’d been expecting.

Camera 21 just went dark. Is everything okay?

It was David, our ever-vigilant watchdog.

It was intentional. No worries.

I waited for the questions, the jokes. Kirkland had done this same thing a dozen times over the past two years and the jokes were always the same. But David didn’t do that tonight.

Ok. Keep me updated.

I think it might have been better if he had made a joke.

“Everything okay?” Carrington asked.

I nodded.

I stepped back and set the phone on the bedside table as I took a seat on the edge of the bed. I grasped the ends of my t-shirt and lifted it over my head, tossing it onto the floor before taking the zipper tab of my sports bra between my thumb and forefinger.

“No,” Carrington said, making me look up in surprise.

He hesitated a second, his eyes moving slowly over the length of me. He glanced over his shoulder, as though concerned that McKelty might suddenly burst through the door. Then he came to me, taking my hand to pull me to my feet.

“I want to do it.”

He kissed my neck gently before stepping back enough so that he could see the length of me. He grasped the zipper on my sports bra and tugged gently, pulling it down so slowly that we could hear each and every tooth letting go. There was almost childlike anticipation in his eyes, like a child on Christmas trying to figure out what might be inside a carefully wrapped gift. I was almost afraid he’d be disappointed with the reality.

When the zipper fell open, I crossed my arms over my chest even as he took one end and tugged it away from my body. I dropped one arm, then the other, as he pulled the bra from my body, his eyes never leaving my covered chest. Then he gently encouraged me to drop both arms so that he could see what he had so excitedly anticipated.

I shook my head.

“You’re beautiful,” he said. “Why are you hiding?”

I shook my head because I didn’t know how else to express my thoughts.

He moved close and kissed my neck. Then he dropped to his knees, pressing his lips to my bare belly even as his fingers slid down my sides, hooking themselves just under the waistband of my shorts. I watched as he slid them down my thighs, letting them fall in a circle at my ankles. He kissed my bare belly again, just below my navel, then he kissed me again—right against the center of my panties. I closed my eyes, as I felt his hands slide under the back of my panties, encouraging them to move, to expose the rest of my body.

I’d never been shy about my body. A recruit can’t be shy during boot camp. Deployment is even worse. There were no boy’s rooms and girl’s rooms in Afghanistan. And giving birth is hardly an experience that lends itself well to modesty. But there was something about the hungry look in Carrington’s eyes that made me wish I was wearing more, that it would take him longer to get to the truth of my nudity.

The man was on his knees in front of me, and I was worried what he’d think about my naked body. No man had ever gotten on his knees for me. Not Ash. Not Kirkland. Not even Esteban.

He kissed my lower belly again, sending jolts of pleasure bouncing around my frazzled nerve endings. Then he turned me, as he tugged my panties off my body. I stood there, my naked back to him, my arms still crossed over my breasts. And then his hot breath was against my ass, his lips barely brushing my flesh as he created a heated trail slowly down the back of my thigh all the way to the sensitive place behind my knee. I bit my lip, bending my knee a little as the tickle confused my nerves, making my muscles tighten deep in my lower belly. Then his lips were against my ass again, his mouth moving slowly down the back of that thigh until, again, my knee moved and my belly tightened.

His mouth worked its way back to my ass, his heated breath hot against me. Then he pulled himself to his feet, kissing every inch of my back, from my hips upward. When he reached the back of my neck, I thought I would fall over; my knees were so weak, my need so desperate. He slid his arms around my waist, and it took me a second to realize that his shirt was gone. I could feel the full length of his bare chest against my back. I turned, forgetting about modesty in my need to see him, to see the beauty of his bare flesh.

Apparently, my hypocrisy knew no boundaries.

I ran my hand slowly over his chest, watching my fingers move over the peaks and valleys of his pecs. His hands rested lightly on my hips as he watched me, his breathing growing a little harder as he did. And then his palms moved over my ribs, sliding slowly upward until he was holding my breasts in his hands, my nipples hard pebbles that were painfully in need of his touch, of the pressure of his movements. I looked up at him and our eyes met. I’d been afraid earlier to look at him, afraid that it would be Esteban’s face my mind would expect to see there. But that wasn’t what happened. I saw Carrington’s clear, emerald-like green eyes, and my heart was happy for that. But then came the guilt that it should have been harder, that I should have felt more loyalty to my husband, that I should have been overwhelmed with guilt and grief in that moment. And then I was. With guilt, anyway.

But now…I wanted to stare into his eyes forever. There was something so reassuring in the way he looked at me. I knew I would have regrets later, that I would be overwhelmed with more emotion than I could even begin to fathom at this moment when I was alone and left to my own thoughts. But right now, I just wanted to stand there with this man I hardly knew and lose myself in his eyes.

He kissed me, a different sort of kiss than the ones he’d offered me downstairs. He was gentler now, his touch less desperate and more savoring. I returned that kiss with the same sort of patience, wanting to remember the way this felt, the way he smelled and tasted and…I just wanted to remember everything about him.

He picked me up, his hands cupping my ass now. We fell back onto the bed and kissed for a long time, our hands exploring places they’d already met, places they had yet to meet properly. He stretched out beside me offering me access to every inch of his incredibly fit body. I nibbled at his throat, the space just above his collarbones. There was a very fine layer of hair between his pecs that I wetted with my tongue, then realigned with my fingers. His tiny nipples were sensitive, pulling a deep groan from his throat. Then the muscles in his abs tightened, as I made my way further down, peppering his lower belly with kisses.

“Joss,” he moaned, his hand resting on the back of my head. I peeked up at him, a devilish smile on my lips. He groaned, his head falling back against the pillows.

I felt like a teenager again, as I tugged at his zipper for the second time tonight. I wanted to offer him pleasure like he’d never known before; I wanted to make him remember me the way I wanted to remember him. He lifted his hips to help me pull his slacks and his boxer briefs out of the way, exposing his rigid cock. He groaned again when I blew against it, the heat of my breath mixing with the cooling pre-cum on his head. It tingled against my tongue…that little bit of fluid. And then I pulled him into my mouth, offering him the one thing I always swore I’d never do, but the one thing I really wanted to give to him.

He brought something inside of me back to life. I wanted to do the same for him.

Moan after moan slipped from between his lips. He pressed his fingers into my hair, guiding me to the places that felt the best. I was happy for his guidance, happy for every indication that I wasn’t failing badly at this first attempt. And then he was leaning up, tugging at my arm.

“Enough,” he said, his voice roughened by desire. “I want you.”

I let him pull me up, throwing a leg over his hips and reaching down to guide him to me. He was slick with my saliva, sliding into me with all the lubrication he could possibly need. I braced myself with my hands on his chest, watching his eyes as I rolled my hips, grinding my clit hard against his pelvic bone. He watched for a moment, his hands on my hips. But then he pulled himself up, tugging me tighter against him as he wrapped his arms around me, stealing a deeply satisfying kiss. And then we were both rocking, moving quickly toward that cliff’s edge. His body stiffened as he cried out, his cock swelling deep inside of me as he delivered a second gush of pleasure. And then my thighs quivered and my lower belly tightened, my own orgasm rushing through me, making my body tingle from head to toe.

We fell back against the pillows, our limbs still tangled. We were quiet for a while, just the sound of our breathing filling the large, mostly empty room. Then he brushed the hair away from my face and kissed my jaw lightly.

“Can I ask you a highly inappropriate personal question?” he asked.

I nodded. He could ask, but that didn’t mean I’d have to answer.

“Did you love him? Your husband?”

The man knew how to go straight for the jugular. If words could kill, he’d be a highly skilled assassin.

I nodded. I loved him. Ash was the first person I felt I could trust after everything that happened with my dad and with my mom. I could tell him things I’d never told anyone else. But Esteban was the first person I felt I could trust with my heart. And for the all-too-short three years we’d had together, he was my whole world. We would have been happy together. I had no doubt about that. But—maybe—I was a different person now.

I touched Carrington’s chest. Did he love his wife?

He took my hand in his and kissed my palm. “I did,” he said softly. “Still do, in a way.”

He held my hand and studied my fingers for a long time. Then, slowly, he began to speak.

“We met in high school. She was the head cheerleader, I was—surprisingly enough—the president of the chess club.”

I pointed at him again, an incredulous look on my face. He laughed.

“My brother was the captain of the football team. She should have been with him even though he was a year older, but she always said there was more substance to me. Aiden was all hot air.” He smiled a little nostalgically. “She was probably right about that.”

He kissed the palm of my hand again before moving closer, kissing my shoulder with a heartbreaking gentleness.

“We applied to all the same colleges. When I got in and she didn’t, we sort of panicked. Her parents wanted her to stay home, attend a local community college, but she couldn’t stand the idea of being without me nine months out of the year. So we got married. We figured her parents couldn’t keep us apart then. And it worked, for a while. We rented a little apartment not far from Stanford. I attended my business classes at Stanford, and she went to a local community college for a semester. Then she dropped out and went to work as a waitress even though we really didn’t need the money. She said she simply needed something to do. She made friends, spent a lot of time going to movies and coffee bars. Someone arranged for her to audit an art class and she fell in love with portrait painting.”

He grew quiet for a few minutes. I snuggled close to him—my cheek pressed against his chest—and felt his arms come around me. I thought he was done, that he didn’t feel the need to tell me anymore of the story. But then he began to speak again, his voice a deep rumble against my cheek.

“We started fighting a lot. She resented the time I spent in class. I resented the time she spent with her friends. We barely spoke most days. But then, just weeks before my graduation, we found out she was pregnant. It was an accident, a night of drinking that led to a forgotten diaphragm. We both saw it as a saving grace, a way of bringing us back together. After graduation, we moved back to Los Angeles. We stayed with my parents until I found and bought this house. I surprised her by having the third floor converted into an art studio. But the pregnancy was hard on her and getting up and down the stairs was too much. Then McKelty’s birth was complicated when she presented in a breach position. Andrea felt like everything was going wrong because she just wasn’t meant to be a mother. That feeling was underscored by a serious bout of postpartum depression.