Unattainable (29 page)

“
You may have done bad
things,” she whispered tearfully. “But you’re not a bad man,
Michael. You saved my life, and you saved my life because you have
a good heart. Now I want to do the same for you.”

Dirty’s heart exploded.

He was done.

Motherfucking done for.

“
So, is it just your arms
or do you have other tattoos?”

I jerked my eyes away from the window
and back to the man across the table. “Hmm?”

He gestured at my arms with his
hummus-covered fork. “Your tattoos,” he said. “Do you have
more?”

“
Oh,” I said blandly.
“Yeah, I’m covered.”

“
That’s so hot,” he
replied, grinning. “I love women who don’t conform to society’s
ideals.”

Slumping back in my chair, I raised an
eyebrow. Why the fuck had I agreed to this? Oh, right, because
Hayley is a persistent bitch determined to marry me off to some
douchebag.

Last week it had been a personal
trainer named Todd who obviously frequented a tanning salon more
than most women did. He’d loved talking, but only about himself and
how crazy awesome he was. Halfway through dinner, unable to stomach
another second of Todd’s love affair with himself, I’d shoved my
chair back, got to my feet, and said, “Really, this was great, I
absolutely loved hearing all about your body mass index and how
sexy your abdominal muscles are, but I’m really late for an
important date with a screwdriver.”

Poor thing had looked so
confused.

“
A screwdriver,” I
repeated. “I need to jam one into my skull to try and erase this
last excruciatingly painful hour of my life.”

And this week it was David, the
computer analyst. He was decent-looking, I guessed. Another
hipster, like there weren’t enough in this fucking city already,
with shaggy hair and a love of skinny jeans. But he was boring and
had the personality of a rock. I’d almost prefer to be with Todd
the Tool; at least then I’d have something to mentally poke fun
at.

Sighing, I crossed my arms in front of
my chest. I’d promised Hayley I’d see this shit through but more
importantly, I’d promised myself that when I got back from Miles
City I wasn’t going to wallow in everything that could never
be.

I’d told myself, in no uncertain terms,
that I would give ZZ the boot in the kindest way possible and then
move on to giving another man a fighting chance. I told myself that
I would finally start working toward my goal of someday becoming a
novelist, but most importantly, that I would keep myself busy so as
not to resort to self-pity, self-loathing, and ultimately
self-destruction.

So far, nothing I did was working. ZZ
hadn’t come back yet, and I was a goddamn train wreck.

Fuck Deuce. Fuck that mean old
bastard.

Doin’ this for your own
good, Tegen. Cage ain’t never gonna change. Seen this shit before,
him thinkin’ he’s fallin’ for a bitch and then it all goes down the
same in the end. Him gettin’ bored and goin’ back to stickin’ his
shit in all sorts of filth.

Deuce had been right. Cage had played
the same game for years. I’d watched him, jumping from woman to
woman to woman to woman to woman.

Why should I be any different? Just
because I wanted it so badly?

Ha.

Three weeks ago, the moment my plane
had landed in San Francisco, self-pity had taken root and
self-loathing said hello the very second I’d walked into my empty
apartment. I had no doubt that self-destruction was waiting just
around the corner like a goddamn pickpocket bouncing on his heels,
just watching from the shadows, waiting to pounce, anticipating the
moment my guard would be down.

I couldn’t let it go. It was every inch
as painful the last time I’d had my heart broken. Only…no, this was
so much worse.

That stupid motherfucker had told me he
loved me. Positioned over top of me, easing himself slowly into my
body so that I felt everything, every stretch, every quiver, every
clench of my muscles, all the while staring down at me, into my
eyes.

I love you,
Teacup.

And suddenly I wanted to run straight
back to Miles City, to the clubhouse, to Cage.

You know exactly what
you’re gonna fuckin’ do here. You’re gonna put your skinny ass on
the back of my bike, you’re gonna move into my fuckin’ house,
you’re gonna cook and you’re gonna clean, and you’re gonna fuck me
whenever the fuck I want it.

I’d been so close to throwing away
everything. What about what I wanted from life? One weekend with
Cage and suddenly none of that mattered to me anymore?

Yeah, whatever. I was such a flake. I
didn’t even know what my own wishes were anymore. A fucking
wishy-washy bitch with a bad attitude. Flip-flopping like a dying
fish on the shore. I could get another million tattoos and
piercings, but it still wouldn’t cover up what I’d been trying to
hide all these years.

That I didn’t have a clue who I was. Or
what I wanted.

It was official. I was an asshole with
a permanently broken heart.

I stared vacantly across the
restaurant, feeling a million different things. Shame, lust, love,
pain, guilt, humiliation, anger, bitter acceptance…

And hate.

Yep, I hated myself for letting myself
feel anything, for letting that man inside of me again. For being
so completely and utterly weak when it came to him that if he
touched me, all was lost. Every brick in the wall I’d built up
around myself would instantly crumble and I’d immediately succumb
to the feelings I’d always had for him. Feelings that I was
terrified were never going to die out.

“
I don’t have any,
myself,” David said. “I’m not a fan of needles but I respect anyone
who has the pain threshold to withstand the amount of tattooing you
have.

“
It’s a proven fact,” he
continued, “that women have a higher tolerance for pain than men
do. I believe it stems from the fact that women are built to bear
children, whereas men—”

“
Do you want to go fuck?”
I interrupted, bored to tears yet filled with an anxiety-ridden
sense of longing that I couldn’t seem to shake.

David’s eyes widened.
“What?”

I snorted. “You heard me, fucker. Yes
or no?”

“
Uh…” Bewildered, David
shook his head. “Yes?”

“
Great,” I said curtly,
already getting to my feet. “Let’s go.”

Scrambling to his feet, David yanked
his wallet out of his pocket and quickly tossed several bills on
the table. Then we headed toward the exit and were on our way back
to my place.

As soon as my apartment door closed
behind us, David’s greedy hands were all over me. Closing my eyes,
mentally detaching my soul from my body, I let him do whatever he
wanted. I didn’t care; I just wanted the pain to stop.

Self-destruction, I thought bitterly.
Party of one, please.

• • •

Positioned behind her, Cage gripped the
woman’s thigh, raising her leg, and pushed inside her
body.

Several strokes passed and he
whispered, “Feel good, babe?”

He stopped moving. Every time. He said
the same damn thing to every bitch he fucked, every fucking
time.

“
Oh yeah, baby,” she
whispered back while grinding her backside against his hips. “Sooo
good, baby, sooo big and so good.”

Already bored with her, he reached for
her chin, gripped it, and turned her head to the side, giving him
better access to her lips. Crushing his mouth to hers, he shut her
right the fuck up and resumed fucking her, faster this time, not
too fast but rhythmic. The slap of bodies, the sound of messy
kissing, her breathy moans escaping when he allowed her small
glimpses of air.

It was all the same.

He was on autopilot. He wasn’t even
attracted to her.

Average body, average face, only
attractive because she was still young.

Why was he even hard?

Of course he was hard.
Of-fucking-course. Why wouldn’t he be? This was what he did. It
seemed like he did it for a living. He should be getting paid for
his motherfucking services, he did it so damn much.

And all he could think about was not
this stupid bitch, but another woman. One who’d played the fucking
game as good as he did.

But he kept at it, kept at fucking the
bitch until she was soaking wet and whimpering against his mouth.
Reaching between her legs to where they were joined, he found her.
He worked her skillfully, doing the same damn thing he’d done a
million times before to a shit ton of different women.

“
Cage,” she gasped,
sucking in a sharp quick breath as her body locked up. He stopped
kissing her and watched as her eyes rolled back, her eyelids
fluttering wildly, feeling the usual sort of detachment he usually
felt watching a woman orgasm. From his position behind her, he saw
her toes curl and the tendons in her feet bulge.

“
One more,” he said
blandly, still using his fingers on her. “Gimme one more,
babe.”

She came again and that’s when he
decided enough was enough. Pulling out of her, he pushed her onto
her stomach and took her again from behind, this time with her ass
in the air. He fucked her. Hard. And came within a few short
minutes, feeling like he’d just emptied out nothing but air,
leaving him feeling even emptier than when he’d started
out.

“
You can go,” he muttered,
flopping onto his back and reaching to his nightstand for his
smokes.

“
Sorry?” she asked as she
got to her knees, pushing her shoulder-length brown hair out of her
eyes.

A cigarette pressed between his lips,
he glanced her way. There was nothing remotely interesting about
her. She was just tits and a pussy, neither of which were all that
remarkable.

Not one damn thing. Once she left his
house, he probably wouldn’t even recognize her if he ran into her
two days later.

“
You,” he repeated
harshly, “can go. Now.”

Her eyes widened and just as he knew
she was about to start sputtering nonsense at him, he pulled his
smoke from his mouth and pointed the cigarette at her. “Just go,
bitch. Don’t bitch or whine or start fuckin’ cryin’. You knew what
this was from the get-go and don’t be pretendin’ somethin’
different.”

In an angry rush, muttering curses, the
girl scrambled for her clothes while Cage turned away from her and
faced the wall. That had been the fourth bitch he’d fucked since
Tegen had disappeared on him.

One was a club whore he’d fucked a
million times, two were local waitresses, and now this bitch. He
had no idea what any of their names were. And to be honest, he
didn’t give a fuck either.

He heard the pitter-patter of angry
footsteps running down his stairs and—

He cringed as his front door slammed
shut.

Whatever.

Sighing, he sat up, swung his legs over
the side of the bed, and crushed his cigarette out in a nearby
ashtray. Running his hands through his unbound hair, he looked
around the room.

Dresser. Mirror. Closet
door.

He’d told that fucking psychopath that
he’d loved her and what did she do? Snuck out in the middle of the
night. She hadn’t said it back either.

That resolve he’d seen in her eyes
while he’d been sliding inside of her…it hadn’t been for him. It
had been to leave him.

Yeah, Tegen had shaken his shit up. How
fucking unexpected and random had that shit been? Christ. The woman
fucked liked she talked. Dirty. Hard-core. Even when they’d
reversed positions and he was the one doing the fucking, it was
still her taking him for a fucking ride, taking it all.

The more he thought about it, about
her, about the two of them together, the more he felt his body
responding.

Fuck.

He found himself fully erect, leaning
back on his bed and wrapping his hand around his cock. Closing his
eyes, he pictured her, Tegen, straddling him in the woods, her hard
green eyes staring directly into his, her lips parted, her small
hands gripping his pectoral muscles as she lifted her hips, slammed
her hips down, lifted, slammed, lifted, slammed. Then she was
grinding, back and forth, faster and faster, quick circular motions
before lifting her hips and slamming them down.

And then later, in his bed, their limbs
entangled while he took her from behind…slow, smooth,
thrusts…harder and harder but never faster.

And then when she’d come…just from
kissing him.

Just
from…fucking…kissing…him.

“
Fuuuck,” he groaned,
still pumping his hand as he released all over his
stomach.

He lay there for a moment, letting his
breathing return to normal, then blinking back the last lingering
haze of orgasm, he slowly sat up.

When was the last time he’d jerked off?
He couldn’t even remember. Why use your own hand when you had
mouths and pussies at your immediate disposal? And after just
fucking some bitch, too?