Secrets to Hide 2: Naughty Little Christmas (24 page)

Wanting to give the two some time together, Harley nodded. “I need a shower anyway.” She was usually getting ready for work around this time, but
someone
had rearranged her schedule to give her several nights off this week.

As she left the kitchen, she looked back, her heart aching at Damien’s antics with Klio. Hell, even baby babble made him look sexy. It just wasn’t fair. The nights were bad enough, knowing he was right down the hall from her warm bed and less than satisfying vibrator. But to just look at him with the baby and have her nipples peak and her core go wet? Yeah, so not fair.

Chapter Eleven

Damien cleaned up the kitchen while Klio bounced in her seat and played patty-cake with the cereal on her face. Damn, she was cute. He really needed to call his family and have a discussion about their new grandchild/niece, but he hadn’t. Something about this time was…important. Necessary. He wanted it to sink in that he had a daughter before his family descended in overwhelming numbers like the great Mongolian hordes.

This time had also turned out to be more confusing than he’d expected, he thought as he dried the wok and put it in the upper cabinet where Harley kept it. He’d been determined to keep her at arm’s length, but with every day that passed, they slipped closer and closer into that easy camaraderie from before. Which was dangerous, because the closer they became, the more his hunger for her rose, and he just wasn’t ready for that. Oh, his body was, but his heart, that was a different matter altogether.

Kitchen spotless, he turned to Klio. “Time to get you sparkling too, Squirt.” Without even lifting her from the chair, he stripped her down to her diaper, leaving the clothes on the table. Everything was gonna need some extra washing; no use moving it farther away from the washing machine. He took a washcloth to Klio’s hands and face, then lifted the mostly naked baby into his arms. “Let’s go get you some pj’s, huh?”

Klio clapped and cooed as they made their way to her room. Inside, Damien laid a blanket on the floor and laid the baby on the blanket. Rummaging in her dresser, he didn’t see any onesies like the ones she mostly wore. “Hang on a minute, kid. I’ll be right back.”

The hall only held three doors: one for Klio’s room, one for a closet, and one for Harley’s room, which stood open. Damien walked in, but when he looked around, Harley was nowhere to be found. The sound of the shower filtered into the bedroom from the adjoining bathroom, however. He stood for a long moment, debating. His head said they were adults, he needed some information, so just go on in. His heart beat like a bass drum about to explode right out of his ribs. When his dick joined the fray, spiking hard at the image of Harley under the water, creamy skin golden and dripping, he said to hell with it. Better to get this over with before his dick became president and started running things without Congress to keep it in check.

So he grasped the doorknob, gave it a twist, and kept his eyes averted as he cracked the door. “Harley?”

No answer.

“Harley?” he called, a little louder. As the word echoed in the tiny room, his gaze rose without permission and fixed on the mirror directly across from him. At this angle, it gave him a perfect view of Harley’s shower—and the clear plastic shower curtain that kept the water inside.

Shit.

For a minute he wasn’t certain if the curse was because he’d forgotten about the shower curtain’s transparency or because Harley’s back was to the room. While his brain wrestled with the idea, his tongue took the initiative and called her name again. Harley turned instinctively.

Shit. Damn. Fuck.

He almost swallowed his tongue. Surely she hadn’t been this sexy when he’d seen her naked the past few weeks? She couldn’t have been. Which was the stupidest thing to think, but true. Making love to a woman that sexy would’ve stopped his heart, surely. Or maybe it was just that he hadn’t taken the time to make love to her in the shower, where the water droplets magnified every tongue-tempting inch of skin until he knew his panting had nothing to do with the steam choking the air.

And those breasts. Tight pink buds capped creamy mounds he needed to get his hands on right…this…minute. Right—

“Damien!”

Busted.

“What the hell are you doing in here?”

Just act cool. And put your tongue back in your mouth, dickhead
. “I need a new onesie for Klio.”

“And you had to see me naked to find one?”

As outraged as she sounded, he noticed she didn’t cover herself…or turn her back. No, she stood, hands on hips, breasts jutting out in blatant challenge to his control. “I’ve seen you naked before, Harley. It’s not a big deal.”

Lightning didn’t strike, which kinda surprised him.

“You— Grr! Get out!” Harley actually stomped her foot, which did fantastic things to her already fantastic breasts. His zipper creaked in appreciation.

“Sure.” He went to duck out, then popped his head back around the door, forcing his laughter back by sheer willpower. “Um, onesie?”

Harley turned her back then. Even from across the small room and with blurring plastic between them, he could see a red flush covering her neck and the tops of her shoulders. “In the laundry room, dumb-ass!”

His laughter broke free then; he just couldn’t help it. Harley threw him the look of death over her shoulder as he ducked back out of the bathroom, closing the door quietly behind him. He laughed all the way down the hall, into the laundry room, and as he went through the basket of Klio’s clothes to find a onesie. Chuckles were still escaping as he finally rejoined Klio in her room, where she’d managed to scooch herself around so her head was toward the door instead of her feet. “Mama’s not happy with me, Klio,” he said as he turned her back around and began a thorough cleaning. By the time they were both ready to return to the living room, he had his mirth under control, but when he stepped into the hall and saw Harley’s closed bedroom door and his pants grew uncomfortably snug in a millisecond, he decided the joke just might be on him. He was the one, after all, who had to spend the rest of the night with the image of a wet, smoking-hot Harley branded behind his eyelids.

Glancing down at his hips, he shook his head. Yep, the joke was definitely on him.

* * * *

Harley threw another surreptitious glance toward the lazily pacing figure behind the couch. Damien had refused to let her lay Klio down. For some reason he’d wanted to hold her tonight, so he’d spent the last half hour walking her up and down the room, carrying on a quiet baby-speak conversation with her until she drifted off against his shoulder. Now he just walked. She knew they’d have to discuss how this couldn’t become a habit, how Klio needed to be able to settle herself to sleep in her crib, alone, like she usually did, but right now Harley couldn’t bring herself to open her mouth. Damien looked…content, far more content than she’d ever guessed a high-rolling nightclub owner could look in a tiny bungalow-style house with a four-month-old baby on his shoulder.

Damien glanced her way, and rather than meet his gaze, she dropped hers to the e-reader in her hand. Not that she was really reading, but appearances were all important. She didn’t want him to know that, since the moment she’d felt his gaze in the bathroom, her skin had been sensitive, her slit had been wet, and her breasts had felt swollen and achy for his touch. She didn’t want him to see that she couldn’t stop thinking about how much she wanted his touch back. How much she didn’t want to sleep alone tonight. It was too dangerous. Giving herself to him would open her heart as well as her body; there was no avoiding it. And since she didn’t know where he stood on their differences, well, it was just a bad idea all around.

Damien’s footsteps swished across the carpet toward the hall. Taking Klio to the crib, finally. Harley should move. She should get up, go to bed, not give herself a chance to act like an idiot. And still she sat, listening to the soft movements of Damien putting Klio to bed. Listening to his footsteps coming back down the hall. Trying not to look as he entered the living room and rounded the couch.

His heat touched her before he did. One minute she was gazing unseeing at the e-reader screen, and the next the e-reader was gone and Damien knelt in front of her. His eyes blazed with intensity as he watched her, a look she recognized. A look her body recognized and immediately responded to: tingles in her core and nipples, even her lips; a flush up her neck; tension in her limbs. Oh yes, her body knew that look and wanted it, wanted more.

“Damien—”

He brushed rough fingers along the hot skin of her cheek, her neck. “What?”

Her eyes closed at the ragged, gravelly tone of his voice. Hell, he wasn’t going to make this easy on her, was he? “This… We shouldn’t do this.” She opened her eyes, staring into the face of the man she loved.

“Fuck shouldn’t,” he whispered roughly. And then his mouth was on hers, and the time for reason was past.

Damien growled against her lips, powering his way through, his tongue ravaging her. His taste, oh his taste was so familiar in her mouth, dark, exotic, with the added depth that only comes from knowing someone longer than a few hours or days. She didn’t just open to him; she pushed her way forward too, needing to meld with him now when she’d thought she would never have him again. It still didn’t seem true—or right—but fuck it. She needed him too much to argue.

Hard hands gripped her shoulders, pushing her back into the extrawide, plush armchair. Harley sprawled beneath Damien’s hard body, luxuriating in his heavy weight pressing her down into the chair’s soft cushions. She opened her legs, urging him closer until he knelt between them, as close as he could get without her on the floor, but when she tried to slide farther, he stopped her with a hand on her hip.

“No,” he said, breath harsh, eyes veiled behind heavy lids. He grasped the hem of her tee and lifted. The smooth skin of her lower belly, the dip of her navel, the wide expanse of her ribs—each were revealed as the material climbed upward. And then her breasts, heavy, full, swollen, bounced free. Damien pushed the material over her head and stopped, tucking the shirt behind her nape, effectively pinning her arms out of the way so he could ravage her with his gaze as thoroughly as he’d done with his mouth.

His gaze alone had her moaning. She arched, arms up, legs out, displaying her body for him, begging without words for him to take her. Damien licked his lips, and her crotch got wet. Currents of chilled air played with her nipples, brushed her lips. “Damien, please.” She shook with need. “Please.”

And then his mouth met one hard tip. Harley sucked in a harsh breath as his tongue tapped the distended nipple. Swirled. Licked. He traced every bump, every crinkle, traced the sensitive fullness beneath and above, but he didn’t suck. Oh no. He made her wait, repeating the teasing torture on her other breast. Her pulse pounded in her ears. Cramps clenched her pelvis, her body needy, hungry, and still he didn’t suck. She wanted him to, needed the pressure like she needed her next breath, and he just wouldn’t—

“Ahhgh!” There, right there. Damien’s teeth caught one turgid nipple, his fingers clamped another, and he began an alternating rhythm of sucking and pulling that rolled Harley’s eyes back in her head and arched her body until the only thing holding her down was Damien. “More. More!” She moaned, needing harder, faster… God, she didn’t care as long as his mouth never stopped. She seriously considered violence when he released one nipple, but then he switched, his fingertips taking up the pinching pull on her wet tip as his mouth took over the dry one. Unable to grab his hair and force him against her, she looped her legs instead, dragging his pelvis toward her and grinding down in a desperate attempt to ease the desire riding her like cowboy on a bucking bronco.

Damien’s shaft felt enormous against her slit—and far too covered. But when she lowered her arms from the back of the chair, he nipped her swollen nipple hard. The punishment had her hands back up immediately but also dragged a whine from her open lips. “Goddamn it, fuck me, Damien!”

Damien’s big hands gripped her ribs on either side of her breasts, pulling her into him. He buried his face between the trembling mounds, burrowing as if he never wanted to leave. And he didn’t; his face stayed, and his fingers took up the torture of each hard, pouty tip. Harley circled her pelvis against him, catching the underside of his cockhead with every upward stroke, feeling the building pressure in her flattened clit. She wouldn’t last, couldn’t—

“Uh-uh-uh,” Damien whispered into her skin, and then he was gone. He ripped her soft cotton pants away and gripped her naked ass, dragging her to the edge of the chair until everything was bare, completely on display for him. She could feel the trickle of desire as it left her body, and didn’t care. Let him see. If Damien rejected her now, she’d have lost nothing she hadn’t believed she was going to lose thirty minutes ago, and if he didn’t, she’d have gained a whole helluva lot more. Pushing her legs out even farther, she hooked them on the wide, flat arms of the chair and begged, “Please.”

Hunger rode Damien hard; she could see it in the harsh lines of his face, the tightness of his lips, the almost black depths of his eyes. His rough hands returned to her breasts, cupping, kneading, tweaking, but his gaze was on her pussy, so blatant before him. He leaned in, and Harley had to close her eyes—the desire shadowing his face was too devastating and too beautiful to witness. His hard lips parted—she could feel his breath—and then the moist heat of his tongue bathed her nether lips in sweet ecstasy. One side. The other. He grasped an inner lip between his and sucked, laved. Repeated the action on the opposite one. He savored her sex in a way she’d never dreamed a man could savor a woman, and still he came back for more. More licking. Light nibbles and bites. His teeth gripped her clit, and his tongue swirled along the edges. He tapped the very top, just under the hood, then sucked her in. When two fingers pushed straight up into her sheath, she shot right over the edge.

Damien milked her orgasm for what seemed like forever. His fingers pumped inside her, rubbing her G-spot, bumping her cervix, circling the convulsing walls. His mouth mimicked the rhythm on her clit, massaging the bundle of nerves right through
too much
and back into
oh God, please!
Harley slitted her eyes, staring at him, pumping her hips to ride his hand and lips and tongue, the jostling of her breasts only adding to the pleasure of the moment.