No Surrender (4 page)

“If I was going to do that on purpose, I’d give you a flash and then tell you that I’m wearing a lacy thong that matches.”

Sean’s grin faltered and was replaced with something hot and intense. Something that made his eyes burn right through her.

“Then I’d tell you I’m not wearing it. Or any other underwear. And I’d bend over the table and show you. But I think that would be something to save for a tiebreaker match. What do you think?”

Had she really just said that? So much for pretending that last night hadn’t happened.

She’d never have said anything with any serious intent to him before. Innuendo, sure. But this went so far beyond that.

His knee slid between hers and his grip squeezed her waist. “You’re playing with fire.”

Her heart slammed against her chest. “Am I? Do you think I’ll get burned?”

“You might.”

“I’m a big girl and I do like my matches.” It was true—she was a “leap first, think later” kind of girl. “Especially when the fire burns so hot.”

“But burn it does, and it reduces all the kindling to ash and memory.”

“I still love the blaze.”

“I suppose you would. Some of us aren’t used to the smell of kerosene.”

His knee crept higher, the friction of the denim with his heat causing frissons of awareness to thrill through her.

He knew what he was doing. He was the one who’d said this was a one-time thing. Now it felt as if he was taunting her.

She broke the connection. “Then maybe you should go take a cold shower.”

5

S
HE
WAS
RIGHT
. Sean should go take a cold shower, but he knew from experience that would do little to extinguish his lust.

After the lake, he’d gone back to the sparse extended-stay room he’d rented and showered in ice-cold water in the hopes it would wash away the pond, his guilt and his desire for Kentucky.

No such luck. Even after their encounter, he’d been hard and ready for her again. Sean wanted to lose himself in her over and over again. He wanted to drown in her hair, in the scent of her, the feel of her, in the softness of her body. How perfect the world was when he was buried between her thighs.

He’d acted as though it couldn’t happen again, as though he didn’t want it to happen again. But he did. He wanted it too much.

He wanted her too much.

Sean knew he’d made her into a kind of savior, an ideal on a pedestal. Which was strange in itself because he’d never known a woman less fey than Kentucky Lee. She was earthy, real. No marionette of spun glass and spiderwebs, but real. Whole.

Maybe she’d become his ideal somewhere along the way because she wasn’t the type of woman who broke. Or at least, that was what she showed the world.

Sean knew without a doubt this thing between them would break her.

He knew that she had feelings for him, always had. Knew that she was in love with him.

He loved her, but he wasn’t in love with her. Never would be. He didn’t know if he could be in love. Sean loved his job, but it required a certain disconnect to do what he did. A certain level of surrender and nonattachment.

It wasn’t fair to do this to her.

But Jesus Christ, when she said things like that, about not wearing any panties and showing him, he wanted to see it. He wanted to call her to the mat, then mount her on it.

Just as he would on this damn pool table.

Devil help them all if she actually had leaned over the pool table and shown him her bare cleft, all moist and slick for him, splayed for his view.

His cock was so rigid he probably didn’t need the cue to shoot.

Instead of releasing her, he only stepped closer. “You’re not wrong, Kentucky. I should go take a shower. I should submerge myself in ice, but it wouldn’t do any good. Not with your perfect ass in that skirt and your dirty little mouth telling me everything that’s not under it. That you’re bare.”

“Maybe I was just talking shit. Maybe there’s a thong under there. Maybe there are high-waisted granny panties.” She leaned back against him just a little bit, but in that action was submission.

Surrender to what he wanted from her.

He hadn’t thought he could get any harder.

“Maybe, but now you’re wondering what it would be like if I bent you over this pool table and I’m wondering what your hair looks like splayed on that green felt.”

She shivered delicately. “So what if I am? I wonder a lot of things.”

“Hey, Kentucky. If you’d told me you needed instruction on how to hold the cue, I’d have been happy to help,” a guy from across the bar said.

Sean had fantasies of punching him in the face for speaking to her that way but realized that he’d spoken to her the same way. Treated her like a disposable thing just because he wanted her. Wanted the solace she offered and, more than that, the pleasure.

“Yeah, you’re good at holding the cue. You do it every night by yourself,” Kentucky tossed back.

“You’re a mean woman, Kentucky Lee.”

“And don’t forget it, Billy Doniphan.”

The guy held up his beer like a salute to Sean and nodded.

“It’s like he wants to die,” Sean grumbled.

Kentucky laughed, the sound melodic. “Oh, please. You don’t need to get into any fights over my honor. I’ve been turning him down since high school. He thinks you’re some kind of superman for getting this close to me.”

“He doesn’t respect you.”

“Do you?” She turned and faced him, placing her palms on his shoulders.

Her touch was like a brand. “Of course I do.” Sean leaned closer to her, brought her against him and danced with her to whatever sad, slow ballad was howling from the jukebox—the game of pool forgotten.

“That’s why I’m having such a hard time with last night.”

“I thought we weren’t going to let it change us,” she whispered.

“Me, too, but it did. Because I can’t stop thinking about touching you.”

“Then maybe you should touch me while you can.”

“Then what, Kentucky?”

“I don’t know.” She swayed against him in time to the music. “But if we’ve already changed, we can’t pretend like we haven’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because it hurts and right now nothing has to hurt.” She moved her palms from his shoulders to his back and pressed herself even more intimately against him. “It can just be about what feels good.”

“And then when I leave?”

“Then you leave. I know you’re not looking for love. You’re looking for comfort, solace, a surcease of sorrow.”

“And I’m looking to use you to do that. To fill myself up with all you want to give me until it doesn’t hurt anymore. Until the night isn’t so dark. But I have nothing to give you in return.”

“Did I ask you for anything?” She looked up at him, eyes wide and luminous in the half-light. “And before you tell me I don’t know what to ask for, believe me... I do. I also know that I’m a grown woman who doesn’t need you or Eric telling me what I deserve or what I want.” She leaned into him again, brushing her cheek against him, her breath a soft tease on his neck.

“Maybe I want something to lose myself in, too. Maybe I’m feeling how alone I am with a singular intensity and maybe I want to put a Band-Aid on it. Maybe I want to use you to do it.”

She described exactly what he was feeling, what he was afraid of.

“But you know what we do with Band-Aids, right? We throw them away.” Something dark twisted in his gut.

“Neither one of us are Band-Aids. We’re people. I’m not going to throw you away after you make the pain stop. You told me last night if I thought that about you, that I didn’t know you very well. What’s changed?”

“I guess what’s changed is that I see what you want from me, Kentucky. I see you. I’ve always seen you.” She stilled in his arms, stood motionless. “But I want something from you, too, and it’s only a pale imitation of what you deserve. You shouldn’t accept anything but everything, if you know what I’m saying.”

“Here I thought I kept my secrets well hidden.” She didn’t try to deny it. He loved that about her—she was so honest, so raw. He couldn’t imagine living that way, with his insides exposed to the world in that unapologetic manner.

“Not from me. Lynnie never saw that want in you. You did hide it well from everyone but me. I know you like I know myself.”

“Then you should also know that I wouldn’t offer you what I can’t handle.”

“Yes, you would. You’d give me the world because that’s who you are.”

“Don’t let that get out,” she half laughed, and pulled away from him to look up at him. “You’ve made me into some kind of martyr, and, Sean, I’m anything but. If I were a martyr, I’d have never taken you to Mossy Rock. I wouldn’t be here with you now hoping that your hands don’t stay on my waist. Or wondering if the stockroom in the back has a lock on the door.”

“It does.” He knew he shouldn’t have gone there, shouldn’t have focused on the part of that statement where he got exactly what he wanted. He wasn’t protecting her; he wasn’t being a good friend. He was being the worst kind of bastard, preying on her wants and needs to get what he wanted when he knew in the end it would hurt her.

She took his hand silently and guided him back to the storeroom and he followed her obediently as if he were the one being led down the path to his own demise.

Kentucky locked the door behind him.

He searched her eyes for a long moment looking for regret, for desire, for his own absolution.

The only thing he saw there was her offering him everything he wanted on a platter.

So he took it.

His lips crashed into hers, rough and demanding. Instead of meeting him head-to-head, she melted beneath him, became pliable in his arms with her mouth opening under his like the unfurling of tender rosebuds in a thunderstorm.

He could’ve laughed at his own description. Sean Dryden didn’t talk that way, didn’t think that way, but something about Kentucky made him want to find the pretty words. Made him dig through the darkness for the light, made him want to lay those pretty things at her feet.

Sean remembered what she’d said about touching her until he could stop thinking about her, basically until he stopped wanting her. He wondered if that would ever happen. It was almost as if her body were a drug and now that he’d had his first hit, he couldn’t stop.

Didn’t want to stop.

She felt better than anything had in so long.

Better than the last time he’d been with Lynnie.

He’d been so afraid of soiling her, of breaking her, of tarnishing her with all of the dark things he had to see and do. He’d just wanted to protect her.

With Kentucky, the only pain he could cause her wasn’t the kind he could protect her from. Even if he walked away from her now, he’d already crossed that line.

They’d
both
already crossed the line.

He slid his hand up between her legs, satisfying his curiosity as to what was beneath that tight little skirt. His fingers came into contact with soft silk—so not bare, and not a lacy thong at all.

Demure but sexy little silk panties. He wanted—no, needed—to know if they were pink just like her bra. Pink like the inside of her pretty pussy. Sean stroked his finger back and forth over the material until it was damp and she was breathless.

He lifted her and sat her on top of the metal storage rack whose shelves were full of bottles of hard cider and imported beer. She leaned back and anchored herself, gripping the edges of the sturdy shelf.

Sean pulled her panties down her long legs and stuffed them in his pocket. He angled her legs open and pressed his mouth to the inside of her knee. It was tender and sensitive. She shivered with each caress as he moved up her thigh, his fingers holding her knees wide.

He wanted to taste her again, her essence on his tongue. He wanted to drive her wild so she was as addicted to him as he was to her.

He loved the taste of her, the way she squirmed to get closer to him, the way her thighs tensed when she was close to her orgasm.

He licked and laved, his cock swollen and thick, seemingly more so with every caress, every slide of his tongue over her engorged pink flesh.

This angle was amazing. He was going to have to invest in metal shelves everywhere he ever lived. It gave him an unfettered view and easy access.

Sean grabbed her ass and pulled her forward toward his mouth. He did all the things to her with his tongue he wanted to do with other parts of his body—thrusting his tongue inside her the same as he would his cock or his fingers.

She loved every second of it, her smothered, breathy cries fueling him onward.

“Please,” she begged.

“Please more? Yeah,” he said, ghosting his breath over her slit.

He continued the campaign until she was shuddering against him and he could taste the evidence of her pleasure on his lips.

Sean was good at this, at reading her body and giving her exactly what she needed. He took pride in that and loved the little sounds she made as she surrendered to ecstasy.

He dropped his jeans, cock hard and at the ready. Sean used the condom he’d pulled from his wallet and worked it down his erection before lifting her easily from the metal shelves and sliding her down his body until he’d impaled her on his cock.

For Sean, it was like the dawn. The feeling of her around him, pulling him deeper, banished all the darkness in his head. The loneliness, the fear and, for a moment, even the guilt.

She clung to him, her forehead resting against his, her breath sweet on his lips. He wanted to taste her mouth, wanted her to taste her own pleasure on their lips.

Kentucky gasped when their lips met and he lost himself in her, let himself drown in her pleasure.

He pressed her against the wall, hips thrusting up to bury himself deep inside her and she leaned her head back, seeming to be completely oblivious to everything but him. She obviously trusted him to hold her up, to take her higher, to make her come again.

Her interior walls tensed around him again as her pleasure reached its pinnacle and he spilled inside her.

Even with his knees weak and his body still frenetic from his release, he didn’t want to put her down.

When he put her down, when they broke apart, he’d have to face the world again. The pain. The shame.

He’d have to examine what he’d done.

What he’d do again if she let him.

It was as if she knew. “Stay here with me a moment longer,” she said.

So Sean did, because he didn’t want the intrusion of the outside world any more than she did.

Would Eric and Rachel know what had happened?

Not that he cared, not really. Eric would warn him off, but not because of Lynnie. He’d confided in Eric about his feelings, or lack of feelings, for Lynnie before he’d spoken to her about it. No, Eric would want him to consider Kentucky, to consider what the consequences of their choices were more than what was a healing balm in the moment.

He’d be right.

But neither of them could seem to stop.

She wrapped her arms around him tight, clung to him, and he held her there. As if that could hold the moment with them.

“The way this feels right now, I wish we could stay here.” Her voice was quiet and low.

“Me, too. But the world didn’t stop spinning. We should get back out there.”

“Okay. You go first. I’ll follow.”

He kissed her again, tasting their passion on her mouth. “Kentucky—” he began.

“No, we’re not doing regrets.”

“I have to see you again,” he blurted.

“Okay. You can come to the garage tomorrow. I live upstairs.”

“Are you sure?” he asked. “I’m still not offering anything.”

“I’m still not asking.” She shoved him toward the door. “This can be good. At least until you leave. Don’t screw it up by overanalyzing it.”