Unleashed: Volume 2 (Unleashed #2) (12 page)

No, Harlan was right to
want something more for her. He’d been wrong about Bruce, that guy
was a dumbass, but there’d be some man out there. Some strong and
solid type I’d want to sock in the jaw, but he’d be her rock. He
wouldn’t wake up with nightmares, panting and sweaty, the past
threatening to strangle him in the dark. He’d take Kara home for
the holidays with his family, decorate the Christmas tree, teach
their boy how to hit a baseball and all that shit. My gut twisted,
sick at the thought of her with someone else, no matter that it was
some imaginary guy.

But that didn’t
matter. Sometimes in life you simply couldn’t have what you most
wanted. Sometimes you just had to be a man and suck it up. Most of
the time, it seemed to me.

§

On the fourth night she
brought me an apple pie.

“For you.” Shy and
sweet, she brought it out from behind her back.

“Kara.” I shook my
head. She was a freaking Betty Crocker. The kind you wanted to take,
hard, over the kitchen counter.

I was leaving in a
couple of weeks. It was weighing on the both of us, I knew. I thought
about it all the time.

“Declan.” The way
she breathed out my name, like she couldn’t get enough of saying
it. She drove me wild. Fingers twined in her hair, apple pie
forgotten on a bale of hay, we kissed and touched and licked and
loved each other for some time. I was finding it harder and harder to
slow things down.

She was making it hard.
It was one thing to put the brakes on myself and tell myself to cool
it. But she was heating up, getting more and more bold. She writhed
against me, bringing her hands down to my hips to hold me close. She
snuck a few fingers along the front of my jeans and under my shirt,
touching my lower stomach, light, curious, killing me.

Kissing my throat, her
tongue worked its way along, licking me, showing me how much she
wanted. Pressing the full length of her body against mine, she
whispered in my ear, “I want to go down to your cabin.”

“No, Kara.” I
grasped her wrists in my hands. Ignoring how good it felt to trap her
like that, instead I brought her hands down to my chest. There, we
rested, our heartbeats steadying into one, relentless, restless
rhythm. We never cooled down so much as brought the boiling down to a
simmer.

My shirt had ridden up
slightly, exposing a patch of skin along my abs. It wasn’t that
noticeable anymore, but the scar I’d gotten years ago looked pale
in the moonlight. She brought a finger down to it, tracing its
length.

“How did you get it?”
she murmured.

I shrugged. It wasn’t
for her to know the details, how I’d been jumped at 13 for nothing
more than the twenty-dollar bill I had in my pocket. My foster mother
had sent me to buy her a couple of packs of cigarettes. Even after
I’d been robbed and knifed in the gut, I still made it to the
store. I stole the packs for her, not wanting to get in trouble
returning back empty-handed. I’d nearly kept my injury a secret,
too, until I’d passed out with a loud-enough thump on the bathroom
floor it had caught the attention of my foster mother. Ten stitches
in the ER. The following week she’d called the social worker and
sent me back because I was too much trouble.

“Kids being kids,”
was the version I told Kara with a kiss to her soft hair.

She shuddered against
me. “I have a feeling the kids you grew up with were nothing like
the ones I did.”

I nodded in agreement.

“Did it happen in
juvie?” she whispered. My hand froze in her hair. What did she want
to know about and why? “I’m not trying to pry,” she added,
hands against my chest, her face up to look into mine. “I’d never
try to make you tell me things you don’t want to.”

“How did you know I
spent time locked up?”

“Um.” She looked
down, getting uncomfortable. “My friend, Mandy.”

“Warning you off of
me?” I guessed. I was right, I could tell, by the way she still
wouldn’t meet my gaze. “She’s right, you know.”

“No,” Kara
protested, looking at me with those adoring eyes.

“Yes, she is.
Whatever she told you, I’ve done worse. I’ve lied and cheated and
stolen from people.”

“I’m sure you had
to, Declan.” So eager to soothe me, to make everything better. Some
things couldn’t be washed away. Kara didn’t know that yet.

“No one has to steal,
Kara.” I brushed the hair away from her face, amazed by the trust
in her eyes. “I’m not a good man.”

“Yes, you are,
Declan. I don’t care about the past. I know you. And you are…”
She left off, her eyes glistening, her emotions brimming up. “I see
how hard you work. How much you take care of here. How you are with
me.” Her voice wavered and I wrapped my arms around her, bringing
her mouth down to my own. I held her there on the blanket in the hay,
showing her with my lips, my tongue, my hands everything I felt and
wouldn’t say.

The more we clung to
each other, the more the fever inside me burned. I’d thought it
couldn’t get worse, the fire I felt for Kara. Typically, about the
time I tasted a girl I started losing interest. With Kara, each taste
made me crave her more. The past few nights together were almost
worse torture than before, so close but still not having her, not the
way I wanted.

Kara ground against me.
Her thighs parted, her skirt riding up, nothing but a thin slip of
panties covering her sex as she pressed against me, full into my
steel length. I had to force us apart. I was going to lose it. She
didn’t know what she was doing to me.

I couldn’t think
straight. She was like a drug and I was so high off of her. I just
watched her lazily as she sat up and pulled her shirt clean off of
her head. She kneeled there in the moonlight, three a.m. in the barn,
in nothing but a short skirt and a bra. She was breathing fast, her
ribcage moving in and out with her pale, soft skin. Her breasts stood
out, two perfect globes round and lush and beckoning me. And then she
took off her bra.

I groaned, watching her
in the moonlight. Her breasts jiggled, set free from their
entrapment. Her nipples stood out large and dark pink against the
strawberry cream of her breasts.

“Declan, I want…”
she began, shy. I lay there, my hands by my sides, unmoving in shock.
“I need you to touch me.”

Christ, there was
nothing I could do to resist that. I crushed her against me, then
brought her down where I could explore and touch, taste and pleasure
at my leisure. So soft, I’d never felt anything so pliant, so
giving and warm. I could bury myself in her breasts forever. My mouth
left a trail, licking between them, around them, my fingers up to
caress and knead, gentle and worshipping. Her breathing came faster
and faster, her hands up at my shoulders grabbing me, digging her
fingers into my skin, making fists against my muscles.

“You’re so
beautiful, Kara.” I gazed at her in the moonlight, worshipping her.
I couldn’t believe I got to do more than look. She’d been up on a
shelf for so long, it was a challenge sometimes to flip the switch in
my brain. Especially since she wasn’t mine, not really. We were
stealing a few nights together away from the watchful eye of her
father. But this wouldn’t last. It couldn’t. Which was why I had
to take full advantage of my one and only opportunity.

I took my time,
mesmerizing every inch of her delicious curves, slowly kissing and
stroking. She was so sensitive. Each lick, each touch coaxed out
whispered sighs and moans, her fingers fisting in the hay, at my
shoulder, in my hair.

“Declan,” she
moaned as I licked along the sides of her breast, palming it and
bringing it up to my lips. Her nipples pebbled hard, two aching
points throbbing, needing my attentions. But I kept it gentle with
her. The beast within me wanted more, wanted to suck and mark, to see
how she’d respond to that. I remembered the night a few weeks ago
when she’d sought shelter in the barn during the sudden storm. I’d
bit her then, bringing my teeth to her swollen nipples. She’d liked
it. She’d pressed her breast into my mouth, moaning, wanting more.

But I promised myself
I’d hold back. I’d stay controlled and sweet. I needed to go slow
with Kara. She deserved it. And once we got started down that path,
getting nasty and wild, I didn’t know if I could stop. I doubted I
could.

So instead, with a
light tongue, I lapped and licked my way to her nipples. Then I
brought my mouth down lightly to lick. She gasped, arching up into my
hand. “Yes, oh, Declan!”

“Do you like that?”
I asked, hot and thick, as I did it again.

“Oh my God, yes!”
she cried out. I knew I should put a hand over her mouth to keep
things quiet, but I couldn’t, not now, not when I loved every sound
that escaped her lips.

I played with her that
night until the sun threatened once again to rise. In the ghostly
pale of early dawn, she shivered and quaked in my arms, gasping and
panting and grinding against my thigh. I could tell she was wet,
though I forced myself not to touch. It almost made me lose my mind,
the sounds she made, the abandon with which she bucked against me. At
first, she’d been shy, but as I kissed and sucked her breasts she
grew more wanton. She snuck a leg up and around my thigh. Our hips up
against each other, she ground her pussy into my hard, driving
length, all through our clothes. Lots of barriers, but I could still
feel her heat. I could tell how slippery wet she grew, the sensual
smell of her, her molten core, begging me to draw near.

Instead, I kept my
hands above the waist. There, I touched and stroked, palmed and
licked. The feel of her, crazy and wild with desire beneath my hands.
The sounds she made, moaning, panting out my name. I’d live on it,
playing it back, remembering her exactly as she was at that moment. I
knew Kara would stay with me long after she was nothing more than a
memory. After it all ended, her ghost would haunt me even after my
arms and hands were empty.

Now

I heard a strange noise
when I walked into my penthouse. It was a noise I didn’t think I’d
ever heard in there before, a noise that rarely made its way into my
day-to-day life: humming. Cheerful, feminine humming.

It was coming from my
office, definitely a first for that room. For a second I wondered if
a new cleaning crew was at work that day, but they always came on
weekday mornings when they knew I’d be out. Sunday afternoon, not a
chance.

Then I noticed the
flowers. They burst out on several surfaces throughout my apartment,
in the kitchen, the living room, on top of the bar for God’s sake.
And these weren’t elegant white calla lilies in a sleek black vase.
These were a riot of color, a wildflower explosion with every hue in
the rainbow represented and then some. I walked over to the nearest
one on my kitchen island. The base looked old with unfinished wood
and the thing had a handle and six compartments. In those
compartments stood six vintage glass milk bottles. And out of those
bottles sprung daises, dozens of daises, poking up and around in
every direction.

Then the doorbell rang.

Kara came rushing out
with a giddy laugh. “Oh, I didn’t even know you were here!” She
brushed right past me to open the door and welcome in a delivery guy
holding a large shopping bag. She thanked him profusely, taking the
bag from him and sent him off with a tip.

I watched as she took
her bag back to the bedroom. My bedroom. The flowers on the table
next to the couch could not be pinker. Light pink, dark pink, bright
pink, pale pink. What was happening here?

I hadn’t even put my
briefcase down yet, or the black shopping bag I held. I’d stopped
in a store myself that afternoon, taking an uncharacteristic break
from work to make a few personal selections. It was a crime to have a
body like Kara’s and not lace, strap and showcase it in scorchingly
sexy lingerie. I was doing nothing more than being a law-abiding
citizen when I picked up a few things for her, lacy bits I couldn’t
wait to have her model for me, ideally in some stacked heels.

“Do you like it?”
she asked, rushing at me with exuberance. She threw her arms around
me and kissed me swiftly on the cheek. Then seeming to remember that
wasn’t our routine, we really had no routine at all, she quickly
pulled back. I instantly missed her warmth, her soft curves, her
smell like vanilla and honey.

“What exactly have
you been up to?” I asked, undoing the top button of my shirt and
finally putting down my things.

“It was such a fun
day, thank you so much. You’re going to love the baby gift.” She
ran off to the bedroom, ostensibly to retrieve something to show me.
I felt the tug of a smile pull at my mouth. I’d been in meetings
most of the afternoon, phone calls and in-persons, getting
information, calculating risks, making decisions. Typically, I’d
come back to my place and do more of the same—an empire didn’t
build itself, after all. But apparently today was going to be a
little different.

“Feel how soft this
is.” Kara pulled something out of a bag and held it to my cheek.

“What is this?” I
looked at the blue thing she’d touched me with.

“A baby blanket. And
wait ‘til you see this.” She held up some other sort of blue
thing. Her eyes flashed with joy and I could instantly picture her at
18 again, filled with such energy and exuberance, like a colt
galloping fast as it could just for the hell of it. She still had
that light in her now, at 24, but this was the first time I’d seen
it shine full on.

“Look!” She laughed
with delight, holding up what seemed to be something else for a baby.
“Can you imagine?” The smile at the edge of my mouth broke free.
I honestly didn’t know what she was talking about, but her
happiness was infectious.

“Thanks. Brett’s a
good guy. I’m glad you got something nice for him and his wife.”