Strung Out (24 page)

And I love her.

He stood suddenly and nodded to the Coltons. “I’m sorry. I need to go. I have a flight to catch.”

* * *

“I think you should come back to Boston for Thanksgiving, Tallie. That way I can come to New York for Christmas.” Leslie sang out the last word, as though she were already anticipating a holiday-bedecked Times Square experience.

Talia drew her feet up into the window seat and sighed. Her breath fogged the cold glass, obscuring the view from her second-story window. The pavement was wet from the sheets of rain that had been pouring from the leaden gray sky all morning.

“Are you zoning out on me again?” Leslie sounded miffed.

“Maybe a little.” There was a brief pause. She knew Leslie was wondering whether or not she should open the sensitive subject that constantly seemed to hover at the back of Talia’s mind.

“If you don’t want to come back to Boston, I’ll understand.”

“It isn’t that. I’d love to come visit. And I know we’ve got a break from rehearsals for Thanksgiving. Not like Christmas.” Talia’s voice caught. “Charles posted the schedule two weeks ago, and I’m beginning to worry that my fingers will fall off by New Year’s.”

Leslie squealed into the phone. “I can’t wait to hear the holiday performance selections. You’re going to be center stage at the Philharmonic in no time.”

Talia had to laugh at her friend’s exuberance. But the sound was hollow. In a way, Les was right. Talia was living the dream. At least it was supposed to be the dream.

So why was she so damn miserable?

“Are you sure there’s enough room for me to stay with you while I’m there?”

“Don’t be silly. By New York standards this studio apartment is huge. Both of us lived in my place in Boston before you started rooming with Niles.”

Thoughts of her old studio loft flashed through Talia’s head. But memories of Leslie weren’t what came to mind. Erik did. Her most treasured memories were of watching him sleep as the sun rose outside and peeked through the blinds to love over every inch of his handsome form.

A knock at the door interrupted her accidental trip down memory lane. “Hey, Les, can I call you back later? Someone’s at the door.”

Leslie blew an air kiss into the phone. “No prob. Watch out for psychos.”

“That’s what the doorman downstairs is for, silly.”

“Unless he gets bribed.”

“You watch way too much television.” Talia pressed the button to end the call and opened her cheerful yellow front door.

“Hello, Talia.”

She stumbled backward, her breathing ragged and her senses instantly overloaded with the sight and scent of Erik. The air between them sizzled with electricity, and everything she’d been thinking and feeling since that last day in Boston came rushing back. Love mingled with anger until her hormones were screaming in confusion. She wanted him, but she wanted to kill him first. Her mouth opened to speak, and yet nothing managed to come out.

“Can I come in?”

She started to nod before her adrenaline kicked in and her head began shaking an emphatic no. “How did you get into the building?”

“I bribed the doorman.”

She would never in a million years admit Leslie had been right. “How did you find me?”

He lifted an elegant brow and sent a pointed look toward the cell phone hanging in her limp hand.

“My cell phone?” She’d told Leslie not half a second ago that she watched too much television. Apparently some things were possible in real life.

“Your cell phone, my wireless bill.” He looked apologetic. “I didn’t mean to invade your privacy, but there was no other way.”

The apology threw her for a moment. Since when did Erik apologize for high-handed behavior he considered to be for her benefit? Her curiosity was burning, and she wondered how much of a fool she’d be to ask him inside.

“Please invite me in, Talia?”

He sounded like a vampire, as if he needed her permission to enter. But he wasn’t. In fact he could’ve walked right in. The door was wide open, and she had no way to stop him. Intrigued by his almost painfully polite behavior, she relented. “Come on in, then.”

As he had before, he made a turn to check out her apartment. She wondered if he’d think it better or worse than the one she’d left in Boston.

“It’s a nice place, Talia.” He offered a tentative smile. “But I miss the old furniture.”

“The furniture?” The sagging couch, squeaky bed, and even the piano had stayed with the apartment when Talia had turned it over to another teacher who’d been searching for a new living situation.

“It’s amazing how quickly you become attached to a bed when you spend hours watching someone sleep in it.”

Her mouth went dry, and she tried in vain to swallow. In the moments when she’d allowed herself to imagine having just one more conversation with Erik, she’d never once dreamed it might go like this.

“You look amazing, Talia, more beautiful than I remembered.”

He didn’t. Not that he wasn’t handsome or perfect in his own way, but he was tired. Dark smudges marred the skin beneath his eyes, and he had the scruffy look of a man who’d been skipping meals and neglecting himself.

Could he miss her that much?

She hadn’t dared to hope there might ever be another chance for a relationship with Erik, not a real one anyway. But the old Erik hadn’t been this open or honest. And he sure as hell hadn’t ever exposed a side that seemed almost insecure. It was as if he’d somehow become the man she’d always known he could be.

The idea was terrifying.

Talia dangled on the edge of a precipice. She’d already walked away. She’d made her choice and managed to stick with it. But how was she supposed to stand firm when it was starting to seem as if everything else had changed?

“I should tell you that I’m glad you’re doing well for yourself here in New York.” He fidgeted with something in his hands before lifting his gaze to hers. “But I’m not.”

She thought of all the nights she’d spent staring at the ceiling and regretting her choice to leave Boston. Now her regrets stared her in the face with a pair of green eyes and a body she’d been trying so hard to forget.

“I need you.”

His words tore at the wall she’d tried so hard to build, and her emotions broke free in a wave she couldn’t hold back. She fisted her hands at her sides to stop their shaking and began to slowly back away. Her nails bit into her palms, reminding her of the pain he’d already caused. Yet it hadn’t all been pain. There had been pleasure, the kind she wanted desperately to experience again. But she couldn’t admit she felt the same, not to him and not to herself.

It was as though he knew she was fighting it. He closed the distance between them in three steps and pulled her tight against him. She opened her mouth to protest, desperate to keep him at a distance. But his mouth descended, capturing her lips in a searing kiss that sparked with the natural energy that had been dead inside her until he’d come back into her life. He was warm and hard and familiar, and he felt exactly as she remembered and yet better still.

He pulled back. “I want you, Talia.”

The sense of euphoric pleasure lifted, and she pushed him away. “I don’t want to be another one of your assets, Erik.”

A flash of anger hardened his expression, and he grabbed her forearms, forcing her to meet his gaze. “What I feel for you can’t be bought or sold. It doesn’t fit on a balance sheet. And believe me, I’ve tried.”

Something in his voice ripped away the last of her reservations. She’d wanted the man behind the corporate image, the one whose touch made her skin catch fire. Now she began to believe it possible. She felt alive for the first time in a month and desperate to feel his hands and mouth on her body.

Reaching between them, Talia released the erection already straining against his fly while he made quick work of his shirt buttons. Her hands slipped into his waistband, sliding across the soft skin of his thighs. She pressed a teasing kiss to the crown of his cock on her way down, letting her hands linger in the sensitive areas near his waist where his belly shrank reflexively from her fingertips.

Loving the sensation of his hungry gaze watching her every move, Talia stood up and unsnapped her jeans before wiggling them over her hips and kicking them to the floor. Pulling her T-shirt over her head, she tossed it aside and stood before him in panties and bra.

He pulled her close for a thorough kissing, his tongue delving deeply into her mouth and staking an unshakable claim. She moaned against his mouth, pushing her hips against his erection, trying to get the friction she desperately needed.

His lips traveled down the line of her jaw to her neck. Nipping lightly, he cupped her ass and pulled her against his body. “We belong together. You’ll never find this with someone else.”

Her temper flared. It didn’t matter if he was right. The choice was still hers. “I told you, if I want to fuck Seth and Josh, I will.”

“If that’s the way you want it.” He held her arms above her head with one hand and slid the other down her belly, beneath the waist of her panties and into her wet slit. “That’s the way you’ll get it.”

Confusion warred with arousal as he forced her back onto her bed. She didn’t want Seth or Josh. Erik was the one who made her pussy wet and her nerves catch fire. Yet his words had doubled the electricity snapping in the air, and apprehension knotted the muscles in her spine.

His lips trailed a line of damp kisses down her body. He paused between her breasts, nipping each full mound before taking first one nipple and then the other inside his mouth. His teeth rasped against their puckered surfaces before he gave each a teasing suckle that did nothing to satisfy the ache burning between her legs.

Leaving her breasts, he used his tongue to trace the edge of her navel before dipping lower. She arched her back, the anticipation of having his mouth so close to her cunt almost too much to bear.

A desperate cry slipped from her lips, and he looked up, anticipation on his face. One big hand urged her hips upward while the other slipped the panties over her legs. Once free, he tossed them over his shoulder.

Finally rid of the last barrier between them, Erik spread her labia wide. The air teased the hot folds within, and she undulated against him, begging for his touch. He watched her face, his expression intense as he slid two fingers through her wet pussy, straddling her clit and driving her insane with the need to have him stroke her. Just when she thought her body would shatter, he leaned forward and flicked the tip of his tongue over the sensitive nerve bundle. Her ragged cry echoed off the walls, fading only when he took the entire nub in his mouth and laved it with his tongue before slipping lower and teasing across her slick opening.

She wanted it to end, and she wanted it to go on forever. Desire strung her muscles tight, and she struggled for each breath. He knew her intimately, using her reactions to master her arousal and send her catapulting over the edge. Every sensation was a double-edged sword, but it was time to make the blade cut both ways.

He left her pussy, and his body slid the length of hers until he could once again stare into her eyes. Between them, his cock bobbed against his belly. A drop of precum glistened at the tip. Talia reached out, wrapped her hand around the firm shaft, and slid her thumb through the slick liquid seeping from the hole.

His body went rigid, and he braced his weight on one hand. “You’re undoing me, Talia.”

She ran her tongue across her lips. “Not yet, but I will.”

He rolled to his side to give her better access to his body, but instead of continuing the hands-on torment, Talia crouched on her knees and slowly pushed the head of his cock between her lips until she could suckle the crown.

She hadn’t realized until that moment how much she’d missed the taste of him, the clean male musk of his skin and the salty sweetness of his precum. Letting herself go, she took as much of him into her mouth as she could until she felt the first tremors of his climax beginning to build at the base of his shaft.

Drawing back, she gave him the words. “I need you, Erik.” She sought his eyes. “Please fuck me.”

It didn’t take a second request. Pushing her to her back, he ran his palms up the insides of her thighs to gain access to her body. The crown of his cock pressed against her entrance and slid in deep. The satisfaction of their joining dragged a moan from her throat.

“I’ve waited so long to feel you like this again,” he ground out from between his clenched teeth. “I’m not going to last. Not this time.”

She wanted him wild, slamming his cock deep until he pushed her over the edge, but he paused instead. Rolling her hips, she tried to entice him, but he remained still, their bodies locked together. Confusion nipped at her eagerness, and she opened her eyes to find him watching her.

“What’s wrong?” Her voice wobbled with uncertainty.

His soft smile eased her doubts. “I never thought I’d get this chance again. I want it to be perfect.”

She reached up and placed a hand against his cheek, her heart swelling with emotion. “It’s already perfect.”

The corner of his mouth tilted upward, and he moved deeply within her, building into a slow, steady rhythm. Every inch of him stroked every inch of her, creating a subtle friction that made her wrap her legs tightly around his waist to get more. The wet sound of his cock in her pussy filled the room, and the scent of their mingled juices filled the air.

She gripped his shoulders in her hands, feeling as though her soul would break free from her body. She returned his intense gaze, lifting her fingers to trace the features of his face. He looked the same and yet different. His mask had slipped, the man she’d fallen for blending with the corporate image to form someone whose formidable prowess had as much to do with compassion as predatory instinct.

“You give me so much, Talia.” His cock slid free of her slick sheath, and he pushed her over onto her belly. “I want to do something for you.”

She wanted to protest, to argue that his cock in her pussy was all she needed. But he rested his hands on her backside and slid the pad of one index finger over the tightly puckered entrance to her ass. Her whole body came to instant awareness.