Risk (It's Complicated Book 2) (32 page)

“What’s for dinner?” Maya called.

Justus and Angela leapt apart as if someone had turned a fire hose on them, turning in time to see the little girl run back up the hall. Angela had the presence of mind to stand in front of him to block him from Maya’s view.

“I’m hungry,” Maya announced.

Angela tugged the bottom of her sweater down, took Maya’s hand, and led her to the kitchen.

“Barbequed chicken,” Angela said.

She grabbed the oven mitts and took a white casserole dish out of the oven. Only her swollen lips and shaky hands marked her as a woman who had been seconds away from making love.

Justus, who couldn’t pull himself together as easily, had to skulk into the bathroom and wait for several minutes until he became decent again.

F
our hours later
, Angela finally finished working for the night, got up from the kitchen table to stretch, and turned out the lights. She put her briefcase near her purse, where they’d all be ready to go first thing in the morning. Her hearing started at nine and, barring any further surprise appearances from the overzealous caseworker, she’d be on time.

So...time for bed.

If only she wasn’t so agitated.

Her evening with Justus had been very unsatisfying. With Maya’s constant chattering, and her curious little eyes watching them all evening, Angela had had no chance to share a complete sentence with Justus, much less to lure him into her bedroom. When he left, he gave Angela a perfectly respectable, G-rated kiss on the cheek and departed without protest, a fact she found horribly disquieting, especially after the hello kiss he’d given her.

Talk about
frustrating
.

So then she’d grumpily bundled Maya off to bed, taken a cold shower, and thrown on her soft cotton sheep pajamas, figuring if she couldn’t have sex, she may as well be comfortable.

Well, anyway. Time to call it a night—

Knock-knock-knock
.

Startled, she reversed course from the hallway and flew to the front door, fueled by her surging heartbeat and excitement. After a quick glance at the peephole, she swung the door open.

“
Justus
. What’re you doing here?”

Stupid question. The gleam in his eyes—hot and determined—gave her all the information she needed, and her belly tightened with a slow curl of anticipation.

“You didn’t think I was gone for the night, did you?”

“Maya—” she began halfheartedly, but he’d already sidled past her and gone to the living room, where he took off his leather jacket and tossed it on one of the chairs.

“Maya’s asleep,” he said flatly, his voice low. “And I’ll be gone before she wakes up.”

She barely heard him over the roar of her pulse. Couldn’t focus with her skin shivering to life. Could hardly breathe with the sweet ache between her thighs.

In short, her body was already waving the white flag of surrender even if her three remaining brain cells didn’t like it.

She was, and always had been, astonishingly weak where he was concerned. All he had to do was walk into the room—
exist
—and her resolve melted like an ice sculpture meeting a blowtorch. Still, she needed to set a few limits and do her due diligence to prevent him from digging his way any deeper into her heart and life.

She frowned.

He stared levelly and crossed his arms over his chest as he waited.

“I think the best thing,” she said in the no-nonsense courtroom voice she liked to think made judges and juries sit up and pay attention, “is to set up a few ground rules, and I—”

“Shut up, Angela.”

Angela blinked, her mouth hanging open. “
What
did you say to me?”

His eyes narrowed into dangerous slits that had her shrinking into her skin. He got up in her face and she took two hasty steps backward before she realized what she was doing and stood her ground.

And then, to her complete astonishment and dismay, he reached for the bottom of his fleece pullover. In one smooth motion, he swept it and his T-shirt off and revealed the sculpted perfection of his arms and torso. A dizzying wave of heat from his big body swept over her, flattening her outraged protest the way an atomic explosion flattens everything in its path.

All but choking with desire, she made a strangled sound.

He came even closer. “I’m not seventeen years old anymore. I’m a grown-ass man. I’m sick of your rules. ‘Don’t put your feet there, don’t get water on the floor, don’t touch me, don’t let Maya see,’” he mimicked while kicking off his shoes and socks. “I think even you’ll have to agree I’ve been pretty patient, but enough’s enough.”

“How dare you—”

He slipped his hands under the waistband of his sweatpants and slid them down his long legs and off.

Leaving him naked and fully aroused.

Yeah, she looked.

Gasped.

Stared.

A thin trickle of sweat slid down her chest and into the valley between her breasts as she slowly raised her eyes and met his smug gaze.

Innate stubbornness combined with her control-freak gene to make her all the more intractable. Which was admittedly ridiculous, since the man had her teetering on the verge of orgasm and hadn’t even touched her yet, but there it was.

She couldn’t see a graceful way off this playing field.

“Do you think you’re just going to come in my house, tell me to shut up, and bulldoze me into doing what you want?” she asked quietly, frowning.

There was a flash of white as he smiled. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Unstoppable Force. I’m Immovable Object.”

She stiffened.

“And I’m wondering: what the fuck are you going to do about me?” he said, not bothering to disguise the amusement in his voice. “Are you going to bite your nose off to spite your face? Because we both know what we could be doing with each other in your bedroom right now, don’t we?”

He reached down, fisted his thick length, and began to stroke himself.

Angela couldn’t stifle a tiny whimper.

“This could be you touching me,” he said, his lids lowering to half-mast. “I could be touching you. Don’t you want that?”

She couldn’t answer.

He began to pump harder. “Or maybe you want to touch yourself while I watch,” he said, his voice growing huskier. “That could be fun, too, couldn’t it?”

Angela unstuck herself enough to shake her head in slow motion.

“Yeah,” he said, smiling crookedly. “I think I’d like that. Touch yourself for me. Right now.”

“
No
,” she managed.

“Take your clothes off and touch yourself for me.”

“No,” she said, but even to her own ears, it was beginning to sound like a
maybe
.

He paused.

Her beaded nipples began to throb.

“Angela.
Do it
.”

By the time he got to those two final words, she was hopelessly spellbound and languorous, as though he’d dipped her body in warm honey to make it as pliant as he wanted.

Without conscious thought, she swept her pajama top over her head, shimmied her way out of her bottoms, palmed her own breasts, and nearly wept with relief. She cried out, letting her head fall back, and suddenly he was there, nudging her hands aside and squeezing her breasts with his own.

“I need you,” she said, beyond opposition or shame.

“I know,” he said, biting the sensitive tendon between her neck and shoulder before ducking down to suck a nipple deep into his mouth and letting it pop out again. “Why do you make me jump through these hoops? Huh?
Why?
”

“I don’t know,” she said helplessly.

He stood to his full height and frowned down at her, his glittering eyes taking up her entire field of vision. “From now on? There’s only one rule between us. Want to hear it?”

Oh, God. She could only imagine.

“No,” she said, dropping her gaze.

She really didn’t. Too paralyzed to even shake her head, she waited.

With an impatient grunt, he tapped the bottom of her chin, forcing her to look at him again.

What did she see? An iron will. Unshakable determination that almost made it easy for her to surrender. Because she wanted control, yeah, but she didn’t want it like
that
. She couldn’t fight
that
.

“Here’s my rule: nothing comes between us. Not your fear. Not your rules. Not Maya. We’re together now. I don’t want to have to fight this fight every day with you. We’ve been wasting too much time.
Nothing comes between us
.”

He paused, giving her the chance to object even as his uncompromising expression told her there’d be hell to pay if she did.

“What’s the rule? Say it.”

She hesitated. By now he had his big hands clamped on her ass, and she had hers on his, and his heavy length lay between them, warming her belly with its insistent heat. Her breasts were pressed against his chest, and her rational thoughts were fogged behind an endless cloud of lust.

It was overwhelming. Terrifying not to know where he ended and she began.

And yet, when they were together like this, it was easy to let go. The most natural thing in the world because nothing else mattered. There
was
nothing else.

“Angela? Say the rule.”

When she opened her mouth this time, there was no hesitation.

“Nothing comes between us,” she said, scraping her nails across his shoulders and pulling his face down for her demanding kiss.

* * *

J
ustus greedily took
her mouth and tried to savor the win. To do what he’d come here to do and lose himself in Angela.

If only all his niggling little fears would stop their whisper campaign inside his head.

The thing was, he belonged to her now. His thoughts belonged to
her
. His body answered to
her
. The sun only shone on his face when it entered the room with
her
smile.

And he was so far gone, he volunteered for this torture every chance he got. He couldn’t sign up for it fast enough.

It was a good way to go, though.

He could almost laugh at himself if his mouth wasn’t so busy reclaiming hers. Maybe he’d smack himself upside his hard head if his hands weren’t so full of her hair...her tits...her ass.

“Yeah,” he said, hiking her up so she could wrap her legs around his waist as he carried her to the bedroom, ricocheting off a couple walls as he went. “Shit
yeah
.”

She held him tighter around the neck, kissing his eyes and cheeks before nipping his earlobe with her sharp little teeth. When he shuddered helplessly, she laughed that husky, skin-tingling laugh of hers, circled her hips, and rubbed those hard little nipples against his chest. All of this action caused her fragrant hair to shift against his face and tickle his nose, and he lurched into her room, slammed the door shut, and stumbled to the bed just before his control snapped in two.

“Maya better not be on my side of the bed,” he warned, even though it was way past too late to do anything about it if she was.

“She’s not.”

He yanked the covers back, knocking a couple of Angela’s precious pillows to the floor in the process, and laid her down as gently as he could.

Then he knelt between her bent legs and studied his prize by the light of a corner lamp.

Tousled hair. Bright eyes. Swollen lips, above and below. Dark-tipped breasts that were perfectly round and rose and fell with the uneven rhythm of her breath. Taut belly. Wide hips. Sexy-ass legs with juicy thighs. And in between those thighs?

He stroked her experimentally, trying not to notice the way his hand shook. She writhed and pumped her hips in response.

Yeah, she was soaking wet. He sucked his fingers into his mouth and savored the taste of her—fresh oysters and clean woman.

All for
him
.

Yeah, but you know she’s not
really
yours, don’t you?

And there was his fear again, as welcome to this little party as a pile of elephant shit in the corner of a four-star restaurant.

Hesitating, he trailed his fingertips low over her belly and across her thighs just for the thrill of watching her shiver.

She’s not really yours.

His throat tightened. His mouth twisted and his nostrils flared in response.

That was the thing that wouldn’t let him rest: the nagging certainty that she thought of him as just a visitor in her life—a welcome visitor, but a visitor nonetheless—to whom she refused to become meaningfully attached. Oh, sure, there were compensations. With a little duress, she gave him the use of her body, and for that he was profoundly, everlastingly grateful. But she refused to let him
in
.

True, she’d needed and relied on him after the accident, back when they were just friends and their relationship had no explicit sexual dimension, and that was all well and good. But did she
need
him as the man in her life? Did she
trust
him?

Hell no
, said that fucking voice, gleeful now.

Justus knew the voice was right. Which made the constricting pain in his chest and throat that much worse.

So what did they have here? A situation where he was all in and she kept one foot out the door at all times, no matter what he said or did. He was poised to present her his heart and soul on a silver platter, and she was poised to run away when he did.

“Justus?”

He looked up to see her watching him with a heavy-lidded gaze, her dewy skin and shining eyes the instruments of his destruction.

And she didn’t even know it.

In that moment, he hated her for doing this to him. He loved her more, but the hate was there, too.

As was the desire to punish her for keeping him like some twisted pet, a knot-filled and fearful creature straining at the end of her leash.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“What could be wrong?”

Leaning down, he dipped his tongue into her navel.
Candy from a baby,
he thought as she raised her arms over her head and arched into the pillows. He gripped her hips. Her breath sped up. He slid lower, pressing his mouth to the meaty part of her inner thigh for a wet kiss.