Iron & Bone (Lock & Key #3) (31 page)

He burrowed his way deeper into me. “Fuck, you’re like silk.”

We moved together, desperate to find one another, more of each other, to make a precious and hidden small dream come true. We wanted to touch it, touch the light it gave off with every hot breath, every grunt and gasp, every slide of our bodies.

“Tell me if I’m hurting you. Tell me. Damn it, Jill…”

He slowly thrust out of me, and a long cry escaped my throat.

I pushed my hands against the arm of the sofa behind me. “You’re not hurting me. Keep going. Don’t stop.”

He drove inside me once more, angling his hips a few degrees to the side. “You feel so good. Fuck, I missed you.”

His face looked pained as he finally buried himself deep. I felt the pounding of it through my heart, my lungs, my throat.

“You like my cock, Jillee? You want more of me?”

“I love your cock. So damn perfect. I need it.”

He pumped into me in steady strokes, and I relished the stinging sensation of his tight grip on my flesh, the burn of his thickness moving inside me, demanding its place. Yes, demanding, and I willingly surrendered.

All I wanted was to feel him, feel everything about him, the good and the bad, the dark and the shadowy, and feel it all over me.

I was blowing apart into little bits and never coming back the same.

My one hand went between us and stroked my clit and the other squeezed a breast. I was greedy.

He sucked in a hiss of air. “My fucking dirty girl.”

“That’s not so dirty.”

“Baby, on you, it fucking is. Trust me.”

My head fell back. “I want to be dirty for you.”

Boner’s jaw tightened as his beautiful lean body worked its glorious magic over me. His long dark hair hid part of his face from view, but I could see his brilliant eyes. They smoldered a hole through my heart, a hole that I knew only he could fill.

Only him.

His shoulders bunched with every intense movement. My insides surged as the drumming pulse of our shared pleasure overwhelmed me, echoing through every vein and every hollow in my soul.

“
YOU NEED HIGHLIGHTS, LAYERS, THE WORKS
. You’ve got such great color, Jill, but you haven’t touched it in a while, and it needs something. How about a dark red color along the bottom half?”

“No, I’m not into that ombré look. Anyway, Nina, when you’re pregnant, you can’t go dying your hair with the usual crap, you know.”

Nina had insisted on taking me to the beauty salon in Meager, and I’d let her because I really wanted some kind of makeover. I was gaining the inevitable baby weight, and now that Boner and I were together, I wanted to be the best I could be—and maybe surprise him in good ways, too.

He had this wicked smile that blew holes through my heart. Actually, Boner had two sorts of smiles—sweet wicked and bad wicked. Either one would do a dangerous number on my insides, like it had earlier at his house when I’d ripped his towel off him.

I’d gone over to see him to apologize for having made him uncomfortable by talking about his past. I had also planned on finally telling him about Catch’s threat, but amazing sex had gotten in the way of that conversation. It was stupid to keep it from him, plus it was eating me up inside. Catch would always be a part of my life, and I had to trust Boner to handle him wisely or there was no moving forward in this new relationship of ours.

“This is the salon where Alicia comes, right?” Nina asked.

“She only comes here. Grace, too. I got a mani-pedi here with Grace and Tania not too long ago. Very nice. It was called Danielle’s Beauty Shop, before. They just changed the name.”

“When Boner gets back from his little trip out of town, he’s gonna be thrilled,” Nina said as we walked through the door of the new Danielle’s Day Spa.

Sy, the prospect, leaned against his bike, drinking a soda, right outside the door.

“Why did Sy have to come with us today? What’s going on at the club? Boner didn’t say.”

“This gun got stolen from the club meeting room. It belonged to someone called Dig, Butler said. They’d kept it in a locked display case and everything.”

My stomach hardened. “It got stolen?”

That was Dig’s gun, the one he’d used when he rescued me.

“Yep, it’s gone.” Nina shrugged. “They were really upset about it.”

You have no idea.

“
The men might have a lead,” she continued. “That’s probably why they took off today.”

“Welcome, ladies,” said the receptionist at the front desk, interrupting the flow of ice through my system.

“We have an appointment for highlights and a cut and style for my friend. Also, a bikini wax for both of us,” said Nina.

“Okay.” She scanned her appointment book. “Right on time. Follow me.” The woman gestured toward the interior of the salon. “Waxing first. Sorry about the temporary rooms. Our renovation is taking longer than we expected.”

“No problem,” I said.

Nina leaned into me. “Remember, take it all off. All of it. Make him speechless. Works every time. Speechless is real good.”

Nina left me in the curtained off room.

The waxing technician washed her hands and then turned and smiled at me. “Hi, I’m Trina. Why don’t you get undressed and lie down and let me see what we have. Are we taking it all off today?”

“I’m not sure. My boyfriend likes my landing strip. A lot.”

“My boyfriend” sounded so lame coming out of my mouth. He was something more.

I got undressed, got on the therapy table, and she inspected me. My toes curled.

“Why don’t we give him a really pretty strip?” asked Trina.

“I’d like that.”

Trina carefully performed her torturous craft, and I held my breath and grimaced as she did so.

“What do you think?” she said as she patted baby powder over me.

A delicate and very thin strip of short blondish-red curls remained between my legs. The rest of me was perfectly clean and bare. “I love it. I really do.”

“Good.” Trina smiled as she cleaned up her tools.

Another waxing session was going on in the adjoining temporary room, separated from mine only by curtains.

“I’ll let you get dressed, so you can come back out and head to your haircut.”

“Great. Thanks, Trina.”

“You’re welcome. I hope he likes it!” She left the room.

I slowly pushed up from the table and reached for my yoga pants. The thin fabric felt cool and smooth against my skin. No underwear necessary until the irritation eased. I slid my flip-flops on.

“That is some hickey! And bite marks right up your thighs. Tell me you came like a freight train? Please! Who was this animal?”

My head turned toward the shrill female voice rising from behind the curtain to the next therapy room.

“A very
hungry
animal!” said another female.

A burst of loud laughter.

“His mouth was just awesome.”

“Lucky!”

“And he was an old guy, too. I know it sounds crazy, but he had this freaking gleam in his eyes from the get-go. I’m telling you, the man knew how to appreciate the female body.”

More giggles.

I rolled my eyes as I glanced at the mirror and smoothed my hair back.

“He laid me out on this huge wooden table. He’s the president, after all. He can do whatever he wants, you know?”

“Yeah, and he did you!”

“Oh my gosh, he was sucking on me. I mean,
really
sucking on me. Mindy was giving him head.”

At the sound of that name, my ears pricked up like a jungle animal’s listening for prey.

“I keep telling you, Stace, you gotta try a threesome,” the girl continued. “It’s so freaking hot. With me and Mindy, there’s this trust and it’s just fun. You should come with me next time there’s a party. You need to get out more anyway.”

“Yeah, I need to get a life. Maybe a party at the One-Eyed Jacks would be just the ticket.”

Spikes of ice raced over my skin. This was Mindy’s new dancer friend whom Nina had mentioned when she’d told me about the doings at the Full Moon Howl earlier in the car.

They had fucked Jump in the club meeting room?

“You guys are wild. I don’t know if I could do that, Shell.”

“Never know until you try it. That’s it. Next time, I’m bringing you with us.”

“I’m not a dancer like you and Mindy. My body—”

“Oh, they just want good pussy that can give as good as it gets. Wear something super hot, and they’ll be all over you in no time, like bees to honey. You’re having a dry spell, Stace, and this is how to end it.”

The curtain on the other side of my room flew open.

“Hey, how’d it go?” Nina’s lips curled into a grin. “Let me see.”

I touched my fingers to my lips, my head tilting toward the next curtain. The women’s voices rose again, and Nina’s face clouded.

“There are lots of hot guys at that club, Stace. A few of them are taken, but for the most part, that’s not an issue. Mindy was sleeping with this other older one. Now, he’s hot! You should see this guy—long, long dark hair, big green eyes. Too thin for me, but he had some hot tats on his arms.”

My pulse ratcheted up a couple of hundred notches. Nina held my gaze, her eyebrows springing up her forehead.

“At this other party we’d gone to at the club, me and Mindy were gonna do him together, but he didn’t want to. Weird, huh?”

Something snapped inside me.
They were talking about my man, his body, like he was a piece of fucking meat. He was meat to them. Some sort of prize to be seized and devoured, then the carcass tossed away.

My man.
My beautiful, sweet, savage—

“Anyway, she said he was just okay, so I guess I didn’t miss much. Whatever.”

Nina charged across the small room. She ripped open the curtain to the other room.

“Hey, orgasm queen, that’s my friend’s old man you’re talking about,” Nina spit out.

The color drained from both Stacey’s and Shelley Anne’s faces.

“Uh…oh,” managed Shelley Anne from her lying down position where she was having her legs waxed. She quickly sat up. “Sorry, sorry! It was meant as a compliment. I didn’t mean nothing by it. Just that—”

“Just that, what?” I asked.

“He’s really good-looking and you’re a super lucky lady.” She smiled, as if she’d just gotten caught eating the last cookie in the jar and was denying it with crumbs all over her face.

“She is super lucky, and so am I,” said Nina. “My old man is a member of the Jacks, too. And I’m gonna make sure that you and your little friends don’t come around the club anymore. That kind of kiss-and-tell bullshit is a serious no-no where I come from.”

Stacey’s gaze bounced from Nina to me and back to Nina again.

Shelley Anne raised her hands in the air. “I’m sorry. You’re right. That wasn’t cool.”

“You want to have girl talk about great sex you had? Terrific,” I said. “But you don’t talk about the club or its members or what goes on behind closed doors. Ever.”

“You’re right. Totally,” said Shelley Anne. “I’m sorry. Um, listen, I just got a job dancing at the Tingle. I like my job a lot, and I really, really need it. Please, please don’t tell them. I promise, it won’t happen again. I won’t ever come over and party or sleep with any of—”

Nina let out a dark laugh. “Aw, you promise, huh?”

Shelley Anne and Mindy doing Jump.

“You”—I pointed at Stacey—“out. And not a word.”

Stacey nodded and ran out of the room.

“Now”—I faced Shelley Anne, who was visibly shrinking inch by inch every second that passed under my glare—“here’s the deal.” I softened my voice. “If you’re helpful to me, I’ll be helpful to you. Tell me what I need to know, and I’ll help you keep your job. If not…”

She pressed her bare legs together. “Anything, please. Anything. What is it?”

“You were with Mindy at the clubhouse at the Full Moon Howl party last night?”

“Right.”

“And you and Mindy had sex with Jump?”

“Yeah.”

“Where did you have sex?”

“It started in his office, but then Mindy had this idea for all of us to get on that big, long table so that he could—”

“So, it was Mindy’s idea to move your private party into the meeting room?” I asked and glanced at Nina. Her eyes widened at me.