No Limits (21 page)

He didn’t owe her anything. She had no right to expect him to confide in her, though she wished he would. Theirs wasn’t an emotional relationship. Or it wasn’t as far as King was concerned, and her wanting it to be was why she’d made the decision to tell him good-bye.

Drying her hands on a red-and-white gingham towel, she pushed open the kitchen’s screen door and walked outside onto the porch, leaned against one of the column supports, and wrapped her arms around her middle, holding herself tight. She wouldn’t be the first to speak, not this time.

He’d come to her house. Now he had to come all the way to her. Her pride was ragged, her willpower weak, but she’d given in to him for the final time. If there was anything here to salvage, King would have to be the one to dredge.

“I know you’re there,” he finally said, slurred, then lifted the bottle of beer she hadn’t seen him holding and drained it dry. “I can smell you. On the wind. Your shampoo smells like honey. Your soap smells like peaches and almonds. It’s all over you, that sweetness. It’s in your skin, your hair, fresh, like an orchard.”

He turned, looked up at her. Even from across the yard she could see that his eyes were red from emotion more than from the alcohol he’d consumed. She wanted to know what had happened, to ask him what was wrong. But she kept her promise to herself and didn’t say a word, not a single one, though her heart, breaking, was filled with poems and sonnets and odes. There was so much she wanted to say.

“I’ve always liked that about you,
Chelle
, did you know?” He began walking toward her, not quite steady on his feet, his jeans and T-shirt dirty, though he couldn’t have worked a whole day. The sun hadn’t yet left the sky.

“Did I know what?” she asked, breaking her vow of silence. She really was incredibly weak.

“You have never smelled like you came out of a bottle, or like you bought the same scent dozens of other women pour on like they’re watering grass, hoping it will grow.”

He was talking about fragrances. Did his dejection have something to do with Michelina Ferrer? Had he finally met her, been snubbed, and come here to settle for the easy second best he was used to?

Uh-uh. She wasn’t going to be anything but his first—if even that. She pushed off the porch column and turned back to the house.

“Hey, wait. Where you goin’,
chère
?”

“I’m in the middle of making dinner. I don’t have time to listen to you ramble—

oomph.”

He’d snuck up to the edge of the porch, reached out and grabbed her wrist, and spun her around. She slammed into him, his face at her waist. “What’re you cookin’?

Something hot and spicy? The way I like it?”

Weak, weak, weak. She was tingling between her legs when she should be pushing him away, keeping him at a safe distance; was there such a thing? At times she wondered if living on the moon would be far enough away for safety.

She held his head to her waist, his hair so thick, so soft, ignored his hands where they played so deftly with her ankles just beneath the hem of her skirt. “Crab balls and hush puppies and rice.”

“Enough for two?”

For two, yes. Not for three, but for some reason she hesitated mentioning Terrill.

“What are you doing here, King? Shouldn’t you be working?”

“I could ask you the same thing,” he said, tickling the backs of her knees with the mouth of his beer bottle.

She should have stepped away. She’d never been able to step away. That’s why she had to tell him to go. “Lorna closed the office early.”

And then she realized the import of what he’d just said. He hadn’t known she’d be home when he’d come here. Obviously he’d seen her car when he’d arrived, but he’d come here without expecting to find her home.

He’d come because…why? For what reason? Was he looking for something intangible?

That thing she gave him? That he got nowhere else? Had he come to wait for her to get home from work because he was in the mood for sex?

If so, why had he wandered deep into the yard instead of coming into the house? And what in the world was he doing with that longneck beneath her skirt? “King? Why aren’t you working?”

“I am working,” he said, lifting the hem of her tunic to blow on her belly. She needed to get back to dinner, to get away from him. “That’s not what I meant.”

“You’re not nagging me now, are you,
chère
?” He brought the bottle higher between her legs, rubbed it back and forth at her crotch. “Why would you be doing such a thing?”

She braced one hand on the porch column, found herself widening her stance, damn him. Damn him. “I’m not nagging. Just asking why you’re here and not at work.”

“I don’t know why you’d be asking me that question when you’re the one who had Red relay news that threw off my whole day.” Taking hold of the fabric from inside, he tugged the waistband of her skirt down to her hips, kissed, nipped, and licked his way across her stomach.

He’d said something about news she’d relayed. Had she? She couldn’t remember. What day was today? And was that his thumb toying with her clit? It couldn’t be. It was too smooth, too hard and cold.

“You don’t remember, do you? Or at least you can’t remember just now. You can’t think of anything but this,” he said, sucking at her pussy through her skirt and her panties both, releasing her only long enough to pul the garments down to the tops of her thighs. She was bare-assed on her back porch, letting the man she didn’t want to see again slide his tongue, his fingers, the hard mouth of a longneck bottle through the folds of her sex. She threaded her fingers into his hair and pulled.

“What are you doing?” God, that squeak. Was that her voice?

“Making love to you with my mouth,
chère
. Making you forget.”

She hadn’t forgotten a thing. There was nothing she needed to forge
t. He, on the other hand…“I call
ed Red and told him if he saw you to tell you about Simon coming by the office. He fired Lorna.”

“Ah, you remember. Seems I’m not working hard enough here,” he said, then shoved his tongue inside her, wetting her, readying her, pulling out to circle her clit while twisting the longneck into her sex and using it like a thick glass dildo to fuck her. She knew dildos. She knew vibrators. She’d played with clamps and rings and plugs. She’d been with two men at once. She’d been with women. Her life in New Orleans had been work and sex, clubbing and sex, drinking and drugging and sex. Coming here had been in large part about getting her act together, and what had she done but hook up with a man who was all the men she’d been trying to escape?

That didn’t mean she was going to stop him. In fact, she slid her hands down to cup her pussy and open herself further, playing there while he tongued her and fucked her until it became too much.

He pulled gently on the bottle to free it from her body, tossed it over his shoulder to the ground, and vaulted onto the porch. His hands were at his fly before she could get to him, and he was lifting his cock free at the same time she was stripping out of her skirt. She wanted to taste him, to fil
l
her mouth, to take him to the back of her throat, but she wanted him inside her even more. She braced herself against the porch column, wrapped her hands around his neck, and jumped when he palmed her ass and lifted her. He was buried deep inside before she’d even locked her legs at his back. He dropped his forehead to her shoulder and thrust like a piston, driving in and out with a stroke that was clean and deep and sure. She was strung so tight that she knew she’d be done in seconds, knew he would be as wel
l
. And she didn’t care what he’d said the last time about keeping their sex about sex. She wanted him to know all of who she was, all of what she wanted.

She dug her fingers through his hair to his scalp and lifted his head, looking into his eyes as she came, bringing her mouth down to cover his before she had finished, before he had begun. She kissed him with her lips and her tongue and her tears. She’d been prepared for him to fight her. Not for him to slow down, to pul
l
back and stare at her, his eyes glassy and wet, to admit to so much pain.

“I went to see Simon.”

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, stroking his hair from his face, knowing he wasn’t talking about the land but about the rift with his only flesh and blood.

“There’s nothing good in my life.”

“Shh,” she soothed. “I know.”

“This is the only thing I can give you.”

“It’s enough,” she lied, burying her face against the side of his neck and holding him until he came.

Thirty

M icky would have been happy to stay in the shower the rest of the day, but Simon wouldn’t let her. They had stayed quite a while; she was a real prune when she finally left the small fenced enclosure.

Before the water had gone cold, however, she’d discovered more of his scars, found a ticklish spot on the back of one thigh, learned that her mouth, as big as it was, was no match for his erection. She’d suspected as much the first time he’d pushed into her and hit bottom.

She honestly didn’t remember sex being this good. She’d had fun, she’d had orgasms, but she’d had as much pleasure giving them to herself as she had receiving them at the hands, mouths, and dicks of men. The feel of Simon’s body, his warmth, his fingers, the way he seemed to surround her, consume her…none of those sensations were in her experience.

What they’d done in the shower over and over had gone beyond fun and games. Their connection had reached a place so deep inside she knew it was her soul. Even when he’d hurt her—never on purpose—but when easing into her to do things she’d never known she wanted to do, even then the pleasure had been worth every sting of pain. Of course, now she wasn’t walking so wel
l
, and sitting wasn’t as simple as it had been before he’d taken over her body. She yelped when the truck hit a bump in the road, grimaced as she searched for a comfortable position on the seat. He glanced over briefly. “If the pharmacy’s still open, we’ll pick up more tape and gauze and do a better job covering up your arm. I never stopped to think about you not getting your stitches wet.”

She hadn’t thought about it, either. “It’s not my arm that’s hurting.”

“Oh,” was all he said.

She leaned forward and toward him to get a better look at his face. “Simon Baptiste. Are you blushing?”

“I’m sunburned.”

Liar. And a funny one at that. “You are not. We weren’t out long enough to burn.”

“We were out almost two hours,” he reminded her. “You’re just lucky the hot water tank’s the size that it is, and the shower is built to conserve the flow.”

That had been nice, but not so much of a concern. She would have stayed with him had the water been cold; he had heated her up plenty. “If anything, I’m lucky that no one else dropped by to visit. And that I didn’t need a wheelchair to get back to the house.”

He cleared his throat, coughed. “I didn’t know I was that rough.”

“I’m not complaining. A girl needs a good horse fu—”

His hand came up to cut her off. “Don’t even say it.”

She had to laugh. “Surely all your preconceived notions about me have long been shot to hell.”

He chuckled at that. “You have definitely made this the most personally interesting two days I’ve lived through in a while.”

“What? After all those bill
board conversations, there was a doubt in your mind?”

“There’s always a doubt in my mind,” he said, checking his rearview mirror. “That’s why I never take a single day for granted.”

Micky pushed her hair away from her face. “Well, you carpe diem quite nicely. More than nicely, if you want to know the truth. And I’ll have to agree with you on two days that stand out more than any other lately.”

Simon didn’t respond right away, as if weighing how well he could control this particular topic, if he could keep the intensity, the potency that had had him hauling her into the shower, in check. “I’d think with the life you lead most of yours would.”

“It’s a lot less glamorous than it looks, I promise.” Still shivering at the memory of seeing him give in, she didn’t mind the segue. “All you have to go on is what you see from your patio.”

“I’ve enjoyed the view and the conversations.” He hesitated, cleared his throat. “But nothing beats live and in person.”

“That’s good to know. I’d hate to think you found guarding my body a waste of time.”

He was quiet for a long moment, and she wasn’t sure what she’d said wrong—if anything—but then he glanced toward her and said, “I’m not in the bodyguard business anymore. Not exactly.”

Full disclosure? She blinked, uncertain why he was telling her this now, if it should set off any alarms, or if it even mattered. “What do you do”

“I work for a private firm. We take on cases that fal
l
through the cracks of law enforcement jurisdiction.”

“Is what you do legal?”

“Depends on whom you ask,” he said with complete seriousness. She wondered why he suddenly felt compelled to admit the truth, to reveal something that she couldn’t imagine him making public knowledge on a whim. Was that job what had brought him to Louisiana? Was he here to do more than check on his house and his cousin?