ASHFORD (Gray Wolf Security #5) (7 page)

Ash

I sat in the window for a long time after everyone left, but for once I wasn’t thinking about Alexi. I was thinking about Mina.

It bothered me more than I wanted to admit when she made that comment the other day about leaving. It hadn’t occurred to me that she might be thinking about what came next. I mean, I set up the PayPal account and everything so that she could afford to get a place of her own someday, but I guess I thought that day would be sometime in the distant future. Not now.

I liked having Mina and the baby in the house, liked our middle of the night conversations—even though Ford was beginning to sleep through the night now. I liked looking up from my desk and seeing Mina cleaning in the kitchen or fussing over the baby or helping Rose with whatever tasks she had to give her. And I liked knowing that she was right across the hall when I couldn’t sleep and felt the crushing reality of loneliness.

But she wasn’t my girl. And that baby wasn’t mine.

Alexi was still out there somewhere, dead or alive. That was my reality. Not Mina.

I crawled into bed a little after one, listening for the baby, but not hearing a sound. I thought I’d lie awake for hours, just listening, unable to shut my brain off, but I slipped into sleep with almost no effort. That’d been happening a lot lately. Maybe having Mina near…

I was dreaming, and I knew I was dreaming. Alexi was in the shower, the weak stream of water barely strong enough to wet her hair all the way through. I came up behind her and slipped my arms around her, my hands splaying and sliding down her belly. I wanted her, needed her, even though we’d just satiated our need a few hours before. There was something in her eyes when I turned her around, tears on her cheeks. But I chose to ignore it, hoping it was just nervousness for the upcoming operation. I could feel her hands on my body, could feel the way her fingers felt as they danced over my skin. I was inside of her, and it was all so damn familiar! She was the woman I loved, the woman I wanted for always at my side.

But when I pulled back, it wasn’t Alexi’s face I saw.

I sat up, and the movement yanked me out of my dream. I was breathing hard, my chest constricting. I closed my eyes and tried to gain control again, but I felt a hand touch my bare shoulder with just the lightest touch.

Instinct kicked in. I grabbed wrists and jerked, pulling a body onto the bed in front of me, pinning the shoulders to the mattress. It was dark. I couldn’t tell who’d come into the sanctity of my bedroom without permission, but the soft, mewling sound she made slowly penetrated my mind.

“Mina?”

“You cried out in your sleep. I came to see if I could do something…”

“You shouldn’t have done that. I could have hurt you.”

“I’m sorry, I just…”

There were tears in her voice. I hated myself when I heard them. I knew her history; I knew she’d been hurt. Yet, here I was, hurting her again.

I took my hands from her and started to climb out of the bed, but she stopped me with the slightest pressure of her hand on my arm.

“Please,” she whispered softly, “let me help you.”

I opened my mouth to tell her I didn’t need help. I was the one who always took care of everyone else. I was the one who protected everyone else. No one needed to help me because I was in control. But even as those words formed in my mind and touched the tip of my tongue, I knew they weren’t true. Not completely.

I touched her face, my heart stuttering in my chest when she leaned into my touch. She was so beautiful, so full of life. And I felt like life had left me in the dust a long time ago. I needed her. It was as simple as that. Even my subconscious knew that.

She watched my eyes, watched my face, my body, waiting for some sign. But I couldn’t…I couldn’t move. But she could. She slid closer to me and slowly, cautiously, crawled into my lap. She ran her hands over my head, pushing it back so that she could look me in the eye.

“I want to make you feel good,” she whispered. “I want to give you just a little of what you’ve done for me.”

“I can’t,” I said, even as my eyes slid closed. “I can’t give you and Ford what you need.”

“What more could you possibly give us?”

I wrapped my arms around her waist, pulled her close to me, and grunted a little as her hips pressed against mine. I buried my face against her shoulder and breathed in the scent of her, loving the way she moved her hips again, pressing her body hard against mine. My cock…it’d been so long! My body screamed for release, every nerve screaming for more, for more of her touch.

I slid my hands under her t-shirt, her skin like silk against my palms. We had never kissed, yet I felt like this had been a long time coming, a moment built on all the little looks, the little touches. Maybe I’d wanted her from the beginning. Maybe somewhere in the back of my mind I’d known that this woman was exactly what I needed to break free of the limbo I’d been stuck inside of for so long.

Or maybe I was just a man needing a woman. Any woman.

“I want you,” I whispered, dragging my lips against her throat to the edge of her earlobe. “I want you more than I have a right to. But I…”

“It’s okay,” she said, her hands moving, too, sliding down the back of my head and around my neck, her thumbs pressing against my lips. “It doesn’t have to mean more than what it is.”

“But you deserve so much more than that.”

She groaned, rolling her head back on her neck, my hand catching her, my fingers buried in those long, silky tresses.

“You’ve been too good to me already. Please, let me be good to you.”

I couldn’t…I wasn’t that strong.

I pressed my mouth to her throat, one hand sliding around to cup one full breast in my hand. She let go of me long enough to lift her shirt over her head, running her hands over my head again, tugging my mouth down over her collarbone to the valley between those perfect breasts. And then one nipple was in my mouth and the sound of her pleasure was dancing in my ears. There was a taste, a sweetness that I’d never known before. But then, everything about her was sweeter that it had a right to be.

I pushed her back, pressing her against the mattress as I kissed my way down to her thick hipbones, to where they stuck up on the bottom edge of her newly flat, life-giving belly. And then over the edge of that thick bone to the wide dimple of her ass. Her thighs, her knees…everything was perfection. She was perfection.

She watched me, as I tugged her panties away from her beautiful cunt. I’d done this once before, but this time was so different. Not better. But different. The memory of that night, of delivering Ford from her body, was one I would never forget. But this was also a moment I could not soon forget.

She was beautiful. Her skin a warm, creamy almond, softened by the lotion I could still smell clinging to her. Her muscles feminine, but strong, her curves deliciously erotic. There were marks here and there, a piece of her past that she would never be allowed to forget. She moved this way and that, as though trying to hide them from me, but I saw them. They simply didn’t matter to me. They simply showed me how strong she really was. I wanted to sit back and stare at her for a moment, but the need that I could no longer ignore was growing, threatening to reach uncontrollable proportions. I leaned over her and brushed the hair from her face as she watched me. The only things in her eyes were trust and a need that was nearly as desperate as my own.

“Are you sure?” I asked.

She cupped my jaw in her hand and reached up, brushing her lips against mine. I groaned, both relieved and scared out of my mind. I returned her kiss, encouraging her to open to me. She did. She opened without reservation, allowing me to invade her and touch her in all the places I’d dreamt of but never dared to believe I would one day possess.

She reached between our bodies and pushed her hand under the waistband of my shorts. She slid her hand inside, brushing her fingers against me, against the ache that so desperately needed this. As much as I wanted her touch, as much as I wanted to feel her tiny hand wrapped around my cock, I knew I would never survive if she gave that to me. I reached down and tugged at her wrist, making her wait for me.

She moaned against my mouth when I freed myself, when I pressed the moist head of my cock against her equally moist cunt. She opened her legs wide, nibbling on my bottom lip as I slowly pushed against her. When my head slipped inside, she lifted her hips and pressed herself against me. A moan like nothing I’d ever heard before slipped from between her lips, a mixture of pain and pleasure that was as primal as a human could possibly achieve. I pushed, and she lifted, and my head was spinning, my chest tight with the intensity of it all.

She wrapped her legs around me and pulled me hard against her. When I began to move, she stayed with me, joining my rhythm without hesitation. I rolled my hips, she rolled hers. I thrust and she thrust. When I had to sit still, she rocked her hips, grinding her body against me, small moans telling me how good it felt for her, how much she wanted it.

I’d never been with anyone who was so aware of her own body, so in possession of her own desires. It made it that much more difficult to control my own desire, knowing that she was getting so much out of what I was offering her.

She ground her hips against me, and I lost control. I thrust hard and deep against her, driven by the increasing volume of her moans. I was a silent lover, not the type to voice my passion, but the closer I came to the end, the harder it was to bite back the growl that was burning in my throat.

I didn’t lose control. But with her…

Mina

I watched him laugh, watched the lines appear at the corner of his eyes, the amusement that lit up his gorgeous green eyes.

“You honestly want me to believe that you lived in Austin all your life and you never went to the South by Southwest festival?”

“Never.”

“Oh, you’re missing out, my friend.”

“Friend?” He smeared a little whip cream on the tip of my nose. “I think we’ve moved beyond the whole friend-zone thing, don’t you?”

“Maybe,” I said, tilting my head as if I was thinking about it.

He groaned, nearly knocking over the tray of strawberries and peach slices that we’d been sharing as he reached for me. I hadn’t needed to lunge. I was more than willing to climb onto his lap…the way I’d done earlier. I was more than happy to feel those huge, muscular arms wrapped around me. He kissed me, the acid of the strawberries and the sweet of the whip cream mixed on his tongue. I wrapped my legs around his hips, pressing myself against his semi-erect cock, loving the way it felt pressed against my clit. In a second, his breathing changed and his hands began to slide down the length of my back.

“You need to get out more,” I said, as I pulled back, running my hands over his face. “You have to go to South by Southwest at least once in your life.”

He pressed his mouth to my throat. “I have other things on my mind.”

“When we’re done here, then.”

“We’ll talk about it then.”

I sighed, pressing my hands against his shoulders as he worked his way down my chest. His mouth was warm and sticky, his tongue an expert at seduction. And he couldn’t seem to get enough of me, of my body.

I lifted his face to mine again, stealing another kiss. I could live right there, right in that moment. The feel of his lips on mine, the strength of his arms tightening around me. I wanted to be here, like this, for the rest of my life.

Was it possible to feel so secure and so wanted all at once? Was it possible to need something so much that I craved the next touch even as I was enjoying the current one?

“I can’t believe you’re from Texas,” he suddenly said, breaking the kiss.

I laughed. “Why? Don’t I look like a Texan?”

“No. Not really. But what does a Texan look like?”

“Good question.”

He studied my face. “And from Fredericksburg. You were like my next door neighbor.”

“Maybe it was fate.”

His eyebrows rose, and tension swarmed to his shoulders. He pressed his face against my shoulder, but he didn’t say anything else. I didn’t need him to tell me what he was thinking. He was thinking about the girl whose picture was in his drawer, the girl he loved. He was thinking about the betrayal he was committing on her by being here with me.

It broke my heart.

I kissed the top of his head, sliding my hips against his again.

He lifted me off his lap and set me beside him, as if I was an annoying child getting in his way.

“Can I ask about her?”

He shook his head without looking at me.

“I’m sorry. I guess that would be a little weird.”

He didn’t answer again.

I began gathering the food we’d been sharing, loading up the tray and lifting it as I uncurled my legs, intent on taking it away. He touched my back, and then he was pulling the tray from my hands, setting it on the nightstand before pulling me onto the bed with him again. He was so strong, so much bigger than I was, that it didn’t take much for him to tuck my body along the length of his. He studied my face, his lips parted as if he wanted to say something. But then he was kissing me, and I was responding, curling into him, because it was all I wanted.

I didn’t care what he had to give me. All I cared about was the fact that he was willing to give me this little bit. It was enough to have any part of him, no matter how small.

We kissed again, the kisses hotter this time. And then he was inside of me, moving gently against me, touching me in places I’d never been touched before. I was not an innocent girl. I’d done what I’d had to do to make my way in life. But I’d never known a man like Ash. The way he looked at me…I’d never had a man actually see me when he looked at me. Most men saw what they wanted to see. The pleasure my body could provide for them. But Ash…he saw more than that.

And the way he touched me…was this what it was like to really feel connected to another human being? Was this what love felt like?

I wasn’t stupid enough to believe Ash was in love with me. But maybe I was just stupid enough to believe that I was in love with him.

I wrapped my legs around him and pressed my hands against the small of his back, watching his face as pleasure danced where laughter had been just a few moments ago. I watched, as he closed his eyes and tilted his head back, as his movements grew a little more fevered, as his hands clung to me, tugging my hips up higher even though they were already as close as I could get them. And then he opened his eyes, his gaze sliding over my face just before…I couldn’t sit still, couldn’t stop the explosion that rocked through my lower belly. I cried out, my nails digging into the flesh of his back. He cried out, too, his cock swelling just slightly inside of me as he lost control of his body, as he filled me again with the potential promise of a life.

When it was done, he lay back against the pillows, pulling me along with him. I curled up, my head against his chest. I closed my eyes, physically and emotionally exhausted. He, too, seemed to settle into something close to sleep. But then he ran his hand slowly down the length of my back.

“Would you be okay here if I went out of town for a few days?”

I nodded my head, as the ache of reality settled on my shoulders.

I was stupid. So very stupid.