Club Alpha (40 page)

~ 6 ~

Mick presses his fingers to my lips. “Faren, just say yes.”

I lift my cell phone and wag it. “Kiki's coming over.” Though I don't know when.

Mick seems to sense the cracks in my words and slides through.

He tucks a stray piece of hair behind my ear and brushes his lips over mine. Pulling away, he cradles my face, and my hands fall to my sides.

“I lied,” he says in a bland voice.

Oh no.

I can't take any more revelations.

His dark eyes search mine, his high cheekbones still splashed with color from being outside.

“You're not like the other women I've been with.”

I close my eyes and feel his fingertips against my lips, “Technically we haven't been together.”

My eyes open, meeting his.

He grins, his perfect white teeth blazing at me. “There's time.”

“Yeah, about that,” I say as I step away from Mick.

His smile fades, but he continues to regard me with that customary heat. A built-in incubator of desire.

I gulp. “I want to make sure that we keep our relationship without strings.”

Mick jams his hands in the pockets of his suit. “Yup.”

My stomach twists.

My brows rise, and I put my hands on my hips. His face is totally neutral. I'm looking for any bleep on the emotional screen. Nothing. I roll my bottom lip into my teeth, and his eyes shift to the movement.

The temperature rises instantly. “No strings,” I repeat.

“Nope.” He grins as he watches me gnaw on my bottom lip.

It's that
tell
again. I let my lip go. I wonder how many unconscious things I do that show Mick things I’d rather he didn’t know.

Mick strolls toward me. “I'm all about strings.” He kisses my forehead, his hands coming to my shoulders.

Oh god.

“Tight…” His kiss falls like butterfly wings against the sensitive spot beneath my ear. “Strings.”

My eyes snap open, and his are two inches from my face.

I take note of the ring of bright gold around his pupil and feel my control slip further... into his hands.

I manage to whisper, “Just until Kiki comes.” I don't address the permanency of what he implies.

He kisses me then, a crushing press that takes away my breath and curls my toes. That molten hard press breaks my lips open, and our tongues twine in an erotic collision of wet heat.

Mick breaks away, leaving us both gasping, our swollen mouths seeking more of the same passionate damage.

“Get your things, Faren.” His face is hard, his eyes soft with want.

I blink and look down at my work outfit. “Oh god, my stuff.”

I shake, thinking about all my clothes. My eyes move to my open bedroom door.

Mick searches my face, easily reading my expression. “We'll get more.”

My pride holds me at knifepoint. “I don't need you to buy my clothes.” I want his help, but the plea is a lodged wedge in my throat.

I turn away and walk over to my bed, covered with shimmering dresses that barely cover my female bits, and sigh.

I don't have two dimes to rub together. I've spent every penny on my mom's debt.

I roll my bottom lip into my mouth.

“Too late, babe,” he says so close behind me I jump.

How could he buy me anything that fast?
My apartment was just wrecked.

I whirl and see his hand on the first dress he ever saw me in. Mick lets the silver glass beads run through his fingers like water. I watch him like visual foreplay.

He says, “You can take all
this
.” Something ripples across the surface of his face that gives me pause.

“Thanks,” I mutter, and I smile when he's not looking.

I move to the closet, grab a duffle, and stuff all my outfits inside. My cell chimes. I grip it in my good hand and see the name rising from the blackness of my screen.

Thorn.

The lap address appears for tonight, and my breath catches.
I completely forgot.

Nothing like a visit from my deranged stepfather to blank my mental agenda.

Mick zips the duffle closed and I slip my cell into my smock pocket. My mind is so thick with my thoughts it's like a mudslide inside my skull.

“Important?” Mick inquires.

I shake my head, trying to clear it. “No.”
Yes.

My nose scrunches. “I need toiletries.”

I move to the bathroom and look at the forty million makeup bottles and brushes. When I look up, my fractured reflection stares back. The glass is shattered but intact inside the frame.

It makes me want to cry again, seeing all those images of my face in broken slices.

I can feel Mick staring at me. His gaze brings my emotions to the surface. My trembling lip and quick swallows to contain the new torrent of tears gives me away, and he gently moves me aside.

He pins the duffle to the rim of the vanity with his knee. He sweeps the entire top tier of items into my duffle.

Powder sprays up, and perfume bottles clink together. My hairbrush misses the rim of the duffle and clunks to the floor. Tampons fall like decapitated paper fingers.

I look at Mick, and he's grinning.

I laugh and can't stop.

He takes me in his arms when I begin to cry.

“Shhh, Faren.”

His big hands slide around my waist and cup my ass, hauling me up on the now-empty vanity. “Stay with me.”

“Why?” My hands come to his face, and the rasp of his five o'clock shadow feels good against my fingers. “Why do I have to stay with you?”

Mick's face goes serious, his brown eyes darkening to glittering ebony marbles. “Because I leave town for two days and someone eviscerates your apartment.”

His hands move to my waist, his fingers touching at my back. My head tips back, and my breath slides out in surrender as his thumbs stroke my ribcage.

Mick's grip tightens with my response. He dips his head, pressing a soft kiss at my throat, and my fingers sink into his hair.

The deep bass of his voice continues. “Hacks your clothes to pieces... and you escape a mugging by the skin of your pretty teeth.”

I don't have any words for the evil he recites.

Instead, I switch gears. “You called me your girlfriend.”

Mick steps away, and I become cold without him, my fingers falling from his thick hair.

“Am I?” I ask.
I want to be
. And I don't.

“You're something.”

“What?”
What am I to him? What are we really doing?

Mick looks down, a lock of his dark auburn hair defeats the widow's peak that centers above his forehead. When his gaze rises to mine, those dark eyes cover every nuance of emotion on my face, missing nothing. Every hill, every valley. As if weighing me.

“Special.”

He holds out his hand, and I slip mine inside.

Mick scoops the duffle from the floor and throws it over his shoulder, hauling me behind him.

I begin to turn around and look at the carnage that Ronnie made.

He squeezes my hand. “Don't look.”

I take a deep breath and follow him out my ruined door.

*

My stomach drops when I see where we park.

Henry has slowed the limo to a gentle stop in front of the Millennium Tower, and a literal red carpet runs out to the floorboards of the limo.

To my left is Puget Sound, and to my right is one of the most expensive high-rise condominium palaces in Seattle.

This is also where Kiki lives.

Holy smokes, how much more convoluted can my life become?

“Do you know all your neighbors?” I ask, trying for casual.

Mick stops his more or less constant drumming on his knee. “Not really.”

His other hand rests on my thigh like a brand of fire.

“I thought you said you live here.”

Henry opens the door and I place my hand into his gloved one, that sense of the surreal slipping over me as he helps me out.

I feel so conspicuous standing in front of the Tower wearing my cartoon scrubs.

Of course, I've been to Kiki's many times.

Her studio condo put her back a million dollars. In my ignorance, I'd thought it was a penthouse at first. There is no point of reference when you've never had money.

It's all just more. More than what I have.

I know Mick McKenna will have a large bachelor pad.

“I do, in a manner of speaking... but I am waiting for a new space to be renovated while I live in a smaller condo.”

I look at his profile as Henry walks behind me, swinging the door shut.

“Excuse me, will that be all, sir?” Henry asks.

Mick shoots me a glance.

“Yes,” he answers, giving me a wink. “I'll take care of Miss Mitchell.”

“Indeed you will,” Henry replies, already moving around the front of the gleaming black limo.

“Oh, you will, will you?” I ask in the coolest voice I can manage. Inside, a dozen butterflies beg for escape.

Freedom.

~ 7 ~

It's impossible to not look around in awe. I can't hide it, so I don't even try.

His is the finest home I've ever been in.

There are no walls, only floor-to-ceiling glass that looks out over Puget Sound. The challenge of catching the state ferry for a day trip to the hippie-filled Bainbridge Island is only a casual walk away.

The reclaimed walnut floors gleam as the tall ceilings rise to open ductwork in brushed stainless. A beautiful wide staircase appears to grow out of the floor. A harvest of antiquated brick walls close in around us, lending a warm intimacy to the space.

Mick watches me with a wary expression as I walk through his elegantly appointed
smaller holding
.

As though I'll bolt.

He knows me better than I think.

Mick trails behind me and sets my duffle on a low-slung, soft black leather couch that narrowly hugs the rough wall.

I stroll to the kitchen, where an island of black granite flows like sleek, sparkling oil. It runs underneath cabinets with a soap stone under- countertop sink, the deep bluish-slate perfectly picks up the midnight flecks within the dark sea of granite that surrounds it.

“You like it?” Mick asks, studying my face with tender intensity.

I nod and back away from the kitchen. My eyes sweep the high-end stainless appliances, and I spot a tea kettle. Pain cuts me as I recall the one that lies shattered on the floor of my apartment.

“Yes,” I answer, my finger running along his living room couch.

The couch is perfectly angled to see both the fireplace that bisects the large great room and the water of Puget Sound that appears like an ebony canvas through the acres of windows.

I face Mick, and there's a stillness in his body—as there is in mine. As though time has taken leave of the moment.

Then it breaks, and Mick strides to me.

I brace myself like a beach when a tidal wave threatens. I watch the water suck away until the only thing left is the wave that is Mick crashing against my body.

He moves in a rush of water as he flings his coat to the floor, his cufflinks scattering like platinum pebbles on the sand.

My hand grips the couch as he hits me at full speed. Both of his hands find my ass, his lips slam into mine, and we fall backward over the arm of the couch.

I cry out.

Not in fear, but terror.

Terror that what I want might finally happen.

That I'm not ready, not in control.

It's not on my terms.

Somehow, through a coincidence of circumstance, Mick has me where he wants me. My heart beats with lust for what he can do, with fear from how I feel.

Though I try to deny, deny, deny.

“Faren,” Mick says as we fall into the couch.

One of his feet hit the floor, stopping him from landing on top of me. His left hand hooks the back of my neck.

He presses himself into my center, and I groan, deepening the ache that he started with his touch and the desperate way he says my name. He jerks his pants down, a button flying off and skating across the floor.

His ownership of my safety sinks my caution like lead weights and I latch onto his penis with a grip that should hurt.

I've lost my mind. My emotions are a tornado of uncontrollable lust and acute desperation as I squeeze him.

He's impossibly hard, big.

Mick hisses, and my hold loosens.

“No.” His eyes go dark and he covers my hand that grips him. “I've been waiting for that... for what I know is really there.”

Can't lose my nerve.

He releases my hand, and I fumble with his belt. It jerks loose of the loops in a slithering hiss of cloth against leather. I fling the belt aside, and it clatters to the floor as he presses his knee between my legs.

Edgy pressure grinds against my core. Heat floods me in preparation for what's to come, and I whimper. I’m so close to having what I want that I writhe underneath him.

“Oh god, Faren.” Mick jerks his pants down further with one hand, freeing himself.

I get a good look at him and gasp. I've seen a hundred bare cocks, but never one I wanted.

Until his.

Mick yanks off my shirt, my arms flinging backward to help him, and his hands latch onto my breasts with my smock still tangling my wrists.

He squeezes them as his thumbs pivot to my nipples, his knee splits me further, and I cry out. A great throbbing pulse between my legs is connected to those thumbs. I abandon my will to Mick, my control.

His eyes move to mine as I speak his name.

I feel as though every lap dance I've ever done is coming back to haunt me. The sexuality that's been robbed from me because of obligation has been returned to me like a gift.

“More,” I ask without knowing what it means.

I hear my panties tear, and my eyes spring open as he maneuvers his head lower.

Mick's eyes meet mine from between my legs, and I'm overcome with nervous embarrassment.

Mick's hands leave my breasts and hold my thighs open. His eyes flick to mine. “I've wanted to do this since the first time I laid eyes on you.”

I blink at him as he dips his head.

I have a moment of hysterical realization that he just ruined my last pair of panties when I feel his hot wet tongue on my clit and my mind slides in a languid push of bucking hips and near loss of consciousness.

My lungs burn as they beg to breathe, but I can't think of anything but Mick's mouth on me.

It is the best feeling I've ever had, slick, hot, and so blindingly real. My body stills under the press of his mouth.

He holds my hips down with his forearm and spreads my legs wider. He slides deeper into the cradle of my body, his hands going to my thighs and squeezing.

His eyes flick to mine again, his tongue working the sides of my lips. As Mick sucks from the top to the bottom, my head falls back. A hushed whisper that's half his name and half-moan eases out of me. He continues to stare into my face.

I latch onto his hands, my eyes wide, my breath coming in bursts that are harsh and needy.

Our gazes lock.

When his tongue spears me, my fingers dive into his hair and I scream, the echo striking us like an erotic slap of unsullied sound.

Mick's thumb swirls the wetness from my entrance up to my clit as his tongue is buried in a deep pump.

My eyes slam shut, and I release his hair as I break apart. The orgasm is so crushing, so vital, I cry helpless whimpers as he works between my legs.

The pulses of my ecstasy are enhanced by his tongue in me, his hand on the swollen bundle of nerves.

His face where no one has ever been.

I lie naked beneath him, my wrists above my head in a rope of my uniform. One foot dangles off the couch, one bent leg is plastered against the back.

Mick rises on his knees, and I watch my juices glisten on his jaw. His powerful hips flex as he walks closer to me on his knees.

I watch him bob, so rigid... so perfect.

I haven't told him my state of innocence, but he'll soon find out.

His hands come to my hipbones as he steers me toward his engorged penis. I shiver in anticipation, wanting every inch that stands at stiff attention.

My cell phone shatters the silence.

As does the doorbell.