Breathe Me In (8 page)

Are you afraid if you do you’ll end up liking him?

“Well, yes. Totally.” Honesty regarding my emotions wasn’t usually my strong suit, but for some reason, Chloe was so nonthreatening, it seemed downright insulting to lie any more to her. And hell, maybe I needed someone to talk to.

So what would be so bad about that?

“Um, everything.” I sighed and put my hands on my knees, leaning back against the couch. “I’m not exactly in a position to be in a relationship. Besides, why would Kane be interested in actually dating me? He just wants to hook up.”

Asher shifted a little on Chloe’s lap and made a mewling sound. I touched his head softly and made shushing noise. I dropped my voice to a whisper. “I can’t date, not right now. It’s not a good idea.”

Maybe just play it by ear? Just see what happens.

I sighed and pushed my hair back off my head. “That’s like the story of my life. See what happens. Because every day there is some new drama. How do I get myself into these messes?”

At least you’ve had a life. Until a few months ago I spent my whole life in one place. Well, after my adoption, I mean.

“I kind of envy that.” Then I felt like a shit for saying it out loud. “Not that I envy you, that sounds like such a jerk thing to say when it’s not like you’ve had it easy.” I met Chloe’s earnest stare. “You’ve been awesome to me. It’s crazy, isn’t it? Like who the fuck do people think they are, just splitting up twins? Playing God with people’s lives, it’s nuts.”

My mom left us, did I tell you that? I got left twice too, but I know it was harder for you. I’m sorry.

I knew she meant it. It was like Chloe had survivor’s guilt of sorts, that I had been returned by my adopted parents and she hadn’t. But she’d had her own shit to deal with, including a selfish adoptive mother. She and Ethan had told me more about her past than I had about my own. I just wasn’t ready to share and open up. Maybe I never would be. It felt unnecessary to put that on Chloe. She didn’t need to know how genuinely fucked up my life had been.

Slowly, I shook my head and gave her a smile. “I know you’re sorry and I appreciate it. But your life was hard too and basically it just sucks that people did what they did to us. But I’m glad you found me. I really am. I’m glad you’re my sister.” I meant that. It was as honest as I could get.

She swallowed and nodded rapidly, multiple times.

“You want to dye my hair for me next week?” I asked. “I need a change. I’d like to go blonde once I get a paycheck.” I’d have to apply for a job first, but that was tomorrow’s project.

Does that mean you’re staying for awhile? (

It seemed I was. “If you don’t mind.”

Chloe shook her head and gave me a thumb’s up.

“I suspect Ethan minds. He doesn’t like me.” With good reason. He was being protective of Chloe and I had been an asshole to both of them the first time we’d met. I’d also taken the ring he’d given me to hock, which hadn’t been the right thing to do. I felt guilty about it and I wanted to repay Ethan back as soon as I could.

She waved her hand, like it didn’t matter. Hell, maybe it didn’t. I’d seen the way Ethan looked at her. Like Chloe was everything precious in the world and he would shift planets for her to make her happy. I was glad she had someone that thought she was the shit. She deserved that. Maybe someday when Asher was grown up and I wasn’t on the run, I could settle down with someone and be happy. But I wasn’t sure that I could ever trust someone enough to truly do that. Or that anyone would actually want me. Who wanted the girl with the tattoos and the attitude?

“Should we dye your hair too?” I teased Chloe. “Give you a lip piercing?”

That brought such a look of horror to her face I laughed out loud. Asher briefly opened his eyes so I clapped my hand over my mouth, still amused. “Oh, crap, way to go, Anya. Wake the baby.”

You’re a great mother, by the way.

Instead of feeling like I needed to apologize for all the things I had screwed up, all the ways that Asher’s life was lacking and I wasn’t the best mother, I let it go. I just listened to her- well, her body language- and I trusted her. I believed in myself right in that moment, that love was enough to qualify me as a good mother. That someone else could see that Asher meant everything to me and I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if something happened to him. Or if he was taken away and he grew up thinking his mother abandoned him the way both of mine had. I never wanted that. Ever.

I might not be a lot of things, but I was a mother who loved her son with everything in me.

“Thanks,” I whispered. “He’s the best thing I’ve ever done.”

My alarm was set to go off at 7:30 but I woke up at five and couldn’t fall back asleep, thoughts of Anya and the night before running around and around in my head. I felt like I’d been run over by a bus. She had showed up, thrown angry words and a glass, then had nearly destroyed me in a fast and furious bout of kitchen counter sex. That was a first for me. While I’d had my fair share of hot sex, I’d never done anything like that. A hair pulling, lip biting, ass grabbing smackdown, both of us fighting to be the one in charge, both of us a little out of control despite the battle to be in control.

It had been intense and as I lay in bed in the dark with a raging boner I wondered about her and what her story was. She hadn’t told me anything about herself at all really. Just that she was from New York and sang in a band, but I didn’t know where she was born and raised. She had a sister. A kid. No mention of the baby’s father. It bothered me that I worried and wondered. That I cared. She clearly didn’t care. She had just wanted to get off. So why shouldn’t I just be thankful for my good luck and fuck her as many times as I could before she disappeared never to be seen again?

Because I was an idiot. A sucker. A bleeding fucking heart.

If I were like every other dickhead out there scoring with women, I would just view her as a piece of ass.

But I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t. It didn’t mean that I wasn’t totally nasty, down and dirty hot for her, because I was. But I couldn’t do her without being a little bit curious what was going on in her life and without wanting to get to know her. So while I seriously doubted my ability to stay platonic if she showed up, I knew I was going to make an effort to find out more about Anya.

Like maybe at least her last name.

Mentally giving myself an eye roll I decided I needed to give up on sleep and get up and work out. There was no point in lying there acting like a fourteen year girl wondering if Anya would show or not and if I should text her. I carried a firearm, for chrissake. I needed to be a little less freaking tender.

When the knock on the door came at seven minutes to eight, I was sweaty and breathing hard, having gone for a run then zipped through some strength training in my apartment. My shirt was off and I grabbed it to both wipe my forehead with it and pull it on before answering the door.

“Oh. Hello,” Anya said, eyeing me with naked interest. “Sweaty already?”

“I was working out. Good morning.” She had actually showed up. I wasn’t sure if she would or not and I tried not to smile. Yeah, I was glad to see her. “Do you want some coffee while I jump in the shower?”

Anya looked mischievous and it was a look I both found sexy as hell and scary. She was wearing a plain white shirt and leggings, the kind that showed every inch of her from the waist down. I could see where the cotton hugged her crotch and displayed that slight indentation between her lips and I wanted to taste her, determined she wouldn’t deny me again. What girl didn’t like oral? Though Anya wasn’t like other girls. She was a different animal altogether.

“Do you need your back washed?” she asked, stepping inside and dropping a pair of keys on the table I had by the door, which I found interesting because I could have sworn she had said she didn’t have a driver’s license.

Being washed by her was tempting. But not what I had in mind. “I can think of other things you can rub besides my back.” I moved towards Anya. She backed up, expression wary.

“What are you doing?” she asked when I reached for her and pulled her into my arms.

“I’m giving you a good morning kiss.”

“That’s weird,” was her opinion on that. Her body was stiff in my arms and she didn’t embrace me in return.

I hadn’t been expecting her to be cuddly so it didn’t necessarily bother me. I would get her to let go eventually, to put down her guard with me. I shouldn’t care and I shouldn’t bother but I did and I would. I was just drawn that way and Anya had gotten under my skin hardcore. It might take time, but I was determined. Whether we had a relationship or not, if we were getting naked together, I had the right to be affectionate. “Deal with it,” I told her.

When I kissed her, she stayed stiff for a brief second, then she tried to skip straight from nothing to rough kissing, her hand skimming over my cock, but I wove my fingers through hers to hold her hand instead and kept my kiss light, seductive. She made a sound of irritation in the back of her throat and pulled away. There was fear in her eyes. She was afraid of me. Afraid to be anything other than angry. It was important to know that about her, to respect it.

I shouldn’t care about coaxing her to trust me, but I did. I kissed her lightly again, squeezing her hand. “I’ll be out of the shower in three minutes.”

“Take your time,” she said breezily. “I have some cleaning to do.”

I hadn’t actually left the broken glass for her. That would make me a total douche. But if she wanted to putter around in my kitchen pretending to scrub surfaces, she could go for it.

What I didn’t expect was that I would come out of the bedroom in sweats and find her in my kitchen washing dishes, totally one hundred percent naked. Holy shit. She had left her hair loose today and it was swinging over the pale milky flesh of her back, a rainbow of colors. There was a pink streak in there, a blue stripe, and something that might have been red at one point. The top was dark brown, the sides mostly blonde. It was a disaster from a hairstylist’s point of view, but somehow the chaos of her hair suited Anya, and I wanted to run my fingers through her hair again. Then tug. Hard.

Why did she create that response in me? I wasn’t sure.

But I stood in the doorway and studied her without her aware I was watching. Her back was long, graceful, ending in a perfect and tiny heart-shaped ass. I would have liked to see another ten pounds on her, but I wasn’t going to complain. She was beautiful and deliciously, naughtily naked. This view made me aware of the length of her legs, the dip of her waist, the swan-like quality of her neck. I pulled myself off the doorframe and moved. She briefly glanced over her shoulder, clearly aware I was in the room, but she didn’t say anything. She had tattoos on her shoulder, her lower back, her calf. Some pretty, some random to me, all bold, yet delicate. Like her.

She jumped when instead of rubbing against her or spinning her around, I reached out and stroked her hair, shifting it off her shoulder, letting the silken strands fall off my fingers. Then I drew my finger down her smooth skin, over the rigid point of her collarbone, and down her spine. Goosebumps rose on her flesh and she had stilled. There was a catch in her breath when I reached the curve of her ass and veered off to the right, to trace the outline of her hip and on down on her thigh. Then I lifted my finger and repeated the touch on the other side.

There were bruises on her hips that I suspected were from my grabbing her the night before. It was appalling and yet satisfying. I didn’t want to hurt her, but I liked that I’d been the one to have my hands on her. To mark her. Not someone else. A warning bell went off somewhere in the back of my brain but I ignored that annoying little fuck and kept doing what I was doing.

“Back up just a little and I’ll bend over,” she murmured, her voice rough.

There was nothing she could say to persuade me to do that. That’s what she wanted, to keep it totally about nothing but getting off, and I got that she didn’t want to have a relationship or get to know me or whatever. I didn’t want a relationship either. This was supposed to be my time to be selfish, to be a bachelor and not worry about taking care of other people. Yet that didn’t mean I wanted to come up behind her and go all Animal Planet on her ass without a word. I wanted her from behind, sure, but not this time. First, I wanted to look into her eyes when she came again for me. Then I wanted to shatter her with my tongue. After which she would ride me, all flushed cheeks and falling hair. Then finally, I would bend her over and take her and it wouldn’t be a back alley bang.

It wouldn’t mean anything but it wouldn’t mean nothing either.

“Not this time,” I murmured into her ear, shifting her hair so I could kiss her neck. “It’s too early for that. I’m taking you to bed.”

“I have work to do.”

“So you were planning to keep washing the dishes while I drove into you?” I asked. “I call bullshit.”

Turning her head slightly towards me, she made a face. “Maybe I was. You don’t know.”

That made me chuckle softly. “Whatever, Anya. Get in the bedroom. Now.”

“Is that where you keep the handcuffs?”

That made my nostrils flare and cock harden. “Yes.” But I didn’t believe for one minute that a woman like Anya would agree to be handcuffed to my bed. In fact, it made me suspicious that she’d brought it up. Was she planning to catch me off guard and cuff me? So she could rob me? Not happening.

That should kill my erection, but it didn’t. What the hell did that say about me? I wasn’t as Boy Scout as I liked to think, apparently, if I was turned on by the thought of a woman conning me. I tugged Anya’s hand, to pull her away from the sink, but she didn’t budge. So I did the next best thing and just picked her up.

She gave a squawk. “Put me down, asshole.”

I had her in my arms and she was completely stiff, probably debating whether to go limp and make it impossible for me to carry her, or if she should fight and flail. I kissed the tip of her nose. “Don’t be so cranky.”

That seemed to actually shock her into silence. She glared at me but she let me carry her to my room. I set her down on the bed. Then I just dropped my shorts to the floor and stepped in front of her. The plan was to push her down onto her back and go from there. But it was Anya’s turn to make a move. Before I could stop her, she had one hand cupping my balls and the other on my cock, followed a split second later by her mouth.