Lay Me Down (8 page)

Steve was smiling when he paid the waiter and declined his offer to stay and serve. Maisie just couldn’t resist ordering up a little something extra for him. Had probably tried to find the most outrageous thing on the menu. Or had requested something special.

And for her mischief, he really wished he’d kissed her. He’d probably still be kissing her now, which was much better than waiting alone by a table set for two. He wasn’t going to eat without her. Didn’t want to. Strangely, the room seemed too big without her in it. Too quiet.

He stood in his mask, like an impostor in his own life.

He hadn’t kissed her because he was moving on, and because she was vulnerable and young and in trouble, and he’d been on his own so long that he felt ancient. She was light and energy and joy. He was…careful. Every move was deliberate. Had to be. Or he’d lose his mind, and take whoever was nearest with him.

In Vegas, people had reason to sleep in, many of them dreaming. All of them were uncomfortably close, no matter how large and removed the King Suite was.

Fluttering like moths at Steve’s consciousness were other people’s dreams. Ordinarily he could brush them away, but here, they just returned with friends, all steeped in that dreamwater dew that so easily transmitted the dreams to his unwilling mind.

A woman was falling, screaming. Another, also distressed, was trying on clothes too small for her. There was an odd lucid dream in the mix—a multiple-partner sex fantasy set amidst one of the impressive Cirque performances. And in another dream, a man couldn’t find his child—was frantically looking all over a dingy casino.

Steve hated Vegas dreams. They were always fraught with intensity. It wasn’t a peaceful place.

Where was Maisie to block all this?

She’d said she’d be quick, but the minutes ticked by interminably. He didn’t know how long the food would stay warm.

He made a quick call to Rook. They were still two hours out. Steve declined a call from Grimsly, his own superior. Steve wanted to work out the plan with Maisie before he reported it.

And still the dreams moved against his mind. He wished people would just wake up—in other cities, at other hotels, generally those that catered to businesspeople, sleepers would be stirring by now. Not in Vegas.

He shouldn’t have been so hard on her. He shouldn’t have tried to scare her. She’d known what he was doing anyway, and wasn’t budging from her course.

When a half hour had passed, he found himself in Maisie’s room, outside her bathroom door, debating whether to ask when she’d be coming out so he could warm up her food, and therefore his.

But the door opened, suddenly, and there was Maisie wrapped in towels, her eyes opening wide in surprise to see him standing there. It was a morning do-over, except he was at
her
bathroom door.

The fluttering at his mind disappeared, and with the relief came a rush of heat and that
bothersome
feeling. Why had she kept him waiting?

The light on her damp skin was not unlike the glow she’d had in her dark city, so forgetting breakfast altogether, he stepped inside, took her by the shoulders, and smashed his mouth to hers.

Do-over. How many of those were granted in a man’s life?

He felt a shudder go through her and sensed the towel wrapped like a turban on her head slipping, but he only fitted his mouth to hers even more harshly to take her in.

She’d hate him later, but that couldn’t be helped.

Her head tipped back slightly to accommodate him, the tension in her body easing, while her upper arms flexed under his grip to reach for him.

Yes, closer would be better. He adjusted his hold so that their bodies could come together. Damp spots soaked through his clothes here and there, but he didn’t mind. He wanted to light all the windows in all the dark buildings in her city, and he was sure the electricity between them was enough to do just that.

She had the nerve to giggle under his very intense assault. Seemed she wasn’t angry at him for before, after all.

He pulled back to find her fighting the smile overtaking her face. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I’ll be serious. Please continue.”

At least she was inviting him to continue, so his pride was somewhat saved. “What’s so funny?”

She winced, so he knew it was going to be bad. God help him.

“It was a very excellent kiss and I was trying to figure out how to move it to the bed—” Another good sign, so Steve took a deep breath to hear her out. “—but then I imagined calling out
Steve
at some climactic point, which I’m sure I would be compelled to do, except the idea of a breathless
Steeeve
just made me laugh. But I’ll get over it.” She beckoned him forward. “So kiss me again. I’m totally down for this.”

Not so fast.
“My name is what made you laugh?”

“It’s a perfectly good name, I know. Very common. It used to bug me, but it doesn’t anymore.” She smiled at him. “Suits you, actually.” Then she laughed again.

“What were you doing thinking while I was kissing you, anyway?”

She appeared to sober, but was faking. “My brain does that. It thinks. And it was thinking,
let’s move this over there
.” Her gaze roamed to the bed. She suddenly squinted at him. “Do you happen to have a nickname? You know—Ace, Tiger…Sport?”

His nickname growing up had been Devil. “Most people call me Coll.”

“I’m not calling out your last name. ‘Oh, Coll! Yes, Coll!’ It’s so impersonal.”

Enough. His blood was running hot. Time was running short.

With a quick reach and flick of his wrist, he had the towel that was wrapped around her body in his grasp.

“Steve!” she said, surprised and blushing.

“See,” he answered, “my name works. Say it just like that.”

***

Maisie wasn’t shy. She liked her body and liked sex.

But Steve Coll was very different from any guy—well, all two of them—that she’d been with before. The first had been Jared during her senior year in high school. The second was Dillon, who ran an illegal Rêve in the basement of his grandmother’s house near UCSD. They’d been a thing until he found out that she could get Darkside on her own, and then he’d gone weird on her. Dillon was about Steve’s age, but aside from their both being male, they were utterly different animals.

For Steve she ached with anticipation, ached deeply, hot and wet and ready so fast, that for the first time in her life she understood what her body had been designed for. She’d been made to have sex with Steve Coll. The understanding came in a flash of awareness sparked by his hands making first contact with the bare skin at her hips.

He dragged her to him, and she, being equally focused on attaching her mouth to his, lost her balance. Stepping in for the save, he held her up against the doorjamb with his hard body, mouth rasping hers, tongue deep enough to touch her soul. Could be oxygen deprivation, but she saw stars behind her closed lids. Her hands roaming his abs, she decided she loved his chiseled body. Loved the secret that only she knew what hid under his benign suit jackets and ties. She’d been wasting time hating him. The long, thick, steel-hard rod of his erection against her admittedly quivering belly was almost enough for her to ignore the corner of the doorway digging into her back.

Bed. Now.

Foot bracing against the doorjamb, she pushed them both out of the bathroom doorway. He double-stepped back, taking her with him and knocking into a hall table with a vase of fresh flowers scenting the passage to the bedroom. She was peeling his T-shirt up when the teetering vase smashed to the floor, glass and water flying.
Whoops.

Knight that he was, his hands rounded the outside of her thighs to lift her off the floor away from danger. The added benefit of the position was that she now straddled his waist, open and willing for invasion. Except—and this was a tragedy worth tears—he was still dressed.

She tried to remedy the situation, dragging his shirt up, but it caught on his arms, which held her. He was in the midst of carrying her inside the bedroom when they collided with a fainting couch that would’ve been a half-decent compromise for ravaging each other, if it hadn’t turned on its side, hotel-purchased clothing and shoes falling on the floor. Steve, stumbling, went down on one knee, still carrying her. Not that he could let go—her legs were locked around his waist, her mouth wet on his neck.

The path to the bed was an obstacle course that they were failing.

She’d failed at things many times before, enough to know to keep trying, which meant tackling him backward. Again—miracle—they were of the same mind, because he turned her in midair so that she was on the bottom, back to the floor. He stripped off his shirt and she grinned, punchdrunk at the sight of such masculine perfection—Steve-o was beautiful and he was hers, too—not noticing that the rest of his clothes had disappeared as well.

When he finally settled on top of her, the sensation of his heated skin against hers had a charged intensity beyond anything she’d experienced in the waking world or Darkside. She’d had sex before, but
this
heat, weight, and sensual bliss were what all the fuss was about. His chest on her breasts, his breath in her hair, and that rocket between her thighs made her tingle and shudder, almost scared. He was huge, no missing that, but she was determined to have him regardless. She was pretty sure she’d die without him. Lifting her legs around his waist again, she welcomed him.

When finally he thrust home, her mind blanked with a rush of dark pleasure, and she did, in spite of everything, call out his name.

***

Sliding into Maisie was so tight and true that it stripped him of control. She had her eyes closed, which was good, because he was having trouble keeping up his façade while reaching deep for heaven. But he couldn’t help pulling back and then reseating himself even deeper. And again. His mind and body were at war, and his mind was losing—had lost—had conceded victory to sex without a fight.

He’d wanted her too long, from the first minute when he’d introduced himself and she’d flipped him the bird. She set his teeth on edge, but the frustration was for want of tasting. And so it was with his teeth that he grazed down her neck to her collarbone. And lower, to suck at a breast. She protested, grabbing his hair, when he pulled out of her, but released her grip when he made to go lower, raking his mouth down her belly. He laughed aloud against her heat when she weakly patted his head in acquiescence, raw affection for her washing over him.

She was pink everywhere. Pink and tight and soft all at once. He cupped her ass cheeks in his hands and drank her in. She’d put a foot on his shoulder. Her other knee fell open. One of her hands beat the floor at her side as if she were admitting her own defeat in their wrestling challenge. When she pulled tight, he sucked hard, and dragged a prolonged, full-body shudder from her.

He ranged above her again, and if she saw his true face, her bliss-glazed eyes didn’t register it. Her arms came up to take his shoulders and bring him down. Her body, now looser and languid, curled around him again, and she quaked as he drove within her until he too shuddered, his face buried at her nape, her cries in his ear.

CHAPTER SIX

Repercussions, they followed all her most impulsive acts. Maisie had long experience in dealing with aftermaths. Of course, there was the obvious. They hadn’t used protection, which would now require a morning-after kind of solution, regardless of the fact that it was already morning and they’d done it a couple of times more, albeit in the bed and in several different positions. She knew sex without a condom was stupid, but it was really hard to regret anything while floating on this feeling of absolute contentment.

Her body, her mistake…though if anything came of it, she was sure Steve would be both difficult and responsible. Nevertheless, as her sister Jordan had warned her about a million times, this was not the time in her life for major complications.
Be careful.

Fine. She moaned at having to move. “I need to run down to the hotel pharmacy.” Or eventually she’d start freaking out about it.

He stroked her hair away from her face. “You’re not going anywhere alone until we have a plan.”

Seemed Steve wasn’t quite thinking yet.

“Going to the pharmacy is actually part of a plan. A belated one.” Hint.

Comprehension dawned in his eyes. He sat up. “Right. God, I’m sorry.”

She raised a finger, the only muscle she was willing to flex at the moment. “Equally culpable.”

Steve moved off the bed and stood in all his naked glory, sunlight spilling down his body. “I’ll call down and have something sent up. I can’t believe I didn’t think. They have things for the day after, right?”

“Yep.” Though her only personal experience came from an ex-roommate using them. “Maybe you should get some condoms, too. Like a case of them.”

She stretched, arching her back, not caring that she was on full display. He’d seen everything anyway. And really, aside from the small kernel of worry in her gut, she felt great. Never in her life had she felt like this. Never had she come so hard that she’d been left a noodle. Al dente, she thought.