Unfiltered & Unlawful (The Unfiltered Series) (16 page)

Then he dropped the phone and looked at me. “I’m not drunk anymore.”

I slid my hands up his bare chest and wrapped my arms around his neck. He grabbed my ass and lifted me so I was wrapped around him. I pressed my body closer to him. “Let’s continue this discussion in the shower… and then the bedroom… and maybe the kitchen.”

He growled and kissed me. The taste of toothpaste was much nicer than the whiskey I’d tasted at four in the morning. He still smelled vaguely like whiskey, but I wasn’t complaining. He tasted like heaven. He felt like everything I’d ever wanted.

There were a lot of words to describe the way I felt when I was hoisted in the air with my legs around Adam. Amazing. Free. Lucky.
Happy
. They all worked for me.

“Need to shower, and I need you. I have a plan…”

“Okay.” I would’ve agreed to anything. A shower with Adam was certainly no hardship.

“It wasn’t just drunk dreams, right?”

“I was sober and remember the same thing,” I assured him. “You and me. Admitting we have feelings.”

“More than
feelings
, Sash.” He walked us to the bathroom, carrying me with such ease that it was like I weighed nothing. I wasn’t particularly tall or heavy, but Adam moved like I was weightless… and I simply enjoyed being in his arms and against his bare chest. I’d enjoy it a lot more if I wasn’t wearing a shirt. So far we’d been together twice, but one or the other of us was still dressed both times.

“Let me down,” I said when he stepped inside the bathroom.

He frowned, but he lowered me so I could put my feet on the floor. “Is everything…”

His words faded as I peeled my shirt off and shoved my sleep shorts and panties down. They puddled at my feet, and I stepped out of them. I wasn’t ashamed of my body, and if I had been, the way he was looking at me as I stripped would’ve ended any doubts I had. I wasn’t built like a model, but it was obvious that I was beautiful to
him
.

“I want to be naked with you,” I told him. “Not you or me. I want both of us naked, skin-to-skin, so I can feel you against me.”

Adam had his jeans unbuttoned and pushed down instantly.

And I was unable to speak.

He was perfect—hard planes and tight muscles—and every perfect inch was mine for the taking. His shoulders and biceps were covered by beautiful tattoos, and his pecs had an older black and gray piece with script. I swallowed as I studied him.

When I lifted my gaze to look into his eyes, I thought I would incinerate.

He reached down to pull something out of his jeans pocket. He tore open the foil package. “I don’t always carry one there,” he told me. “I grabbed it before I came into the room.”

I nodded, my gaze transfixed by the sight of him rolling the condom over his perfect cock.

We both stepped forward, and then we were skin-to-skin. Finally. I’d spent over a year fantasizing about him, months trying to resist him, weeks trying to forget the taste of him, and hours fearing I’d never feel his touch again.

“And are you mine, Sasha?” His hands slid to my hips, and his fingers curled possessively around me. “Only mine?”

“I am.”

“It’s about time,” he whispered before his mouth crashed down on mine, and he made me forget everything but him.

By the time we made it into the shower, I was trembling from the first orgasm of the day. He smiled affectionately as I leaned against him while he adjusted the water temperature.

We stepped into the water, and he began washing my body with the sort of care he’d used when he’d gone down on me on the sofa.

“No one’s ever been like this,” I confessed.

He paused in his ministrations. “Like…?”

“Gentle, I guess.”

He kissed and licked his way across my collarbone, worshipped my breasts until I believed that I could come from that alone, and trailed his fingers over my hips and belly. “They were fools then,” he murmured.

I was torn between wanting to lean back on the wall for support and pressing closer to him. His teeth-tongue-hands-cock were all driving me towards euphoria. “If I die here, it’d be worth it.”

He laughed, a beautiful sound full of promise. Then he lifted me up in a sudden motion. Holding me with only one arm, he reached between us and guided himself into me. I felt like my eyes would roll back in sheer bliss.

I moaned as I twined my arms around his neck. The shower wall was cool and slick, and Adam was hard and hot. He barely moved at all for several moments, and there was nothing I could do.

He kissed his way up my throat and to my ear. “I need you,” he whispered.

I was pinned to the wall with the strongest man I’ve ever known pressed into my body. I might not be able to
move
, but I wasn’t going to let him have all of the control. I squeezed him, tightening my inner muscles.

He groaned and said, “Perfect. You’re perfect.”

Then he began to move, so slowly that I felt like every promise of forever that I’d dreamed of was worth giving up. If this was all he wanted of me, I’d take it. I’d take whatever terms he needed as long as we had this.

But Adam made my already blissed out mind shatter when he said, “I love you, Sasha. God, I love you so fucking much.”

Tears filled my eyes, and I admitted, “Need… you…”

My admission made him move a little faster, not rough or hurried but that little bit of extra speed that made me go over the edge. “Love you,” I gasped as I climaxed around him.

He came with a growl, and for a moment, we were still and shaking.

After several moments, when the only sounds were breathing and water crashing, Adam reached out and turned off the water. The sudden silence seemed intimidating.

I lowered my legs and stepped back slightly.

Adam lifted his head and met my eyes. “Did you mean it?”

“I did. I tried not to… I really tried. I tried to be with…” My words stalled. It felt wrong to say another man’s name right now.

“Tommy,” Adam finished quietly, handing me a towel that I wrapped half-heartedly around me.

I nodded. “I tried. I didn’t want to love you. I’m a mess and you—”

“Love you,” he interrupted. “I love you. I loved you when you were a mess, and I love you now that you’re changing the parts of you that were hurting. I love you either way, but I’m proud of you for the changes you’ve made.”

Carefully, he wrapped both arms around me and carried me from the shower to the bedroom. When he lowered me to he bed, I had a fleeting thought about the fact that we were soaking wet and about to crawl onto my dry sheets, but then Adam peeled my towel off.

He pulled me into his arms as we stretched out, still wet. I shivered slightly, and he pulled the sheet and blanket over us. “I don’t want you to think you have to pretend Tommy wasn’t in your life. I know he was. I know you cared about him.”

“Not like he wanted,” I admitted. “I tried. I really did. It wasn’t him I dreamed about though.”

“You don’t have to say anything you don’t mean,” Adam said in a very calm voice. “I’ll love you even if you aren’t ready—”

“I’m not saying anything but the truth.” I lifted my head and turned so I could look into his eyes. “I’ve been in denial for a while. Cass says that we both were.”

“Cass? From Rio Verde?”

“I called her,” I said in a small voice.

He groaned. “Sash!”

“And the shop—yours not the Cave,” I added meekly.

He squeezed me to him tightly. “Okay. It’s okay. You trust her, and it was just a couple people from there, right?”

I nodded. “I needed to talk about us… and someone from Sinners left a message… and I was scared and alone, and”—I lowered my head back to his chest—“it was stupid. I’m sorry.”

Adam didn’t tell me I was wrong or that it was a bad idea. All he said was, “We’ll sort it out.
Together
. Whatever comes next we’ll sort it out together, Sasha. From here on out, that’s the way it’s going to be. You and me. We’ll figure it out.”

“I love you,” I said with a happy sigh as I nestled into his arms.

“Say it again,” he asked.

I rolled over on top of him and said, “I love you.”

The sheet slid down my back, and he stared up at me with that same look of intense desire I’d already started to recognize. “You don’t know how long I’ve wanted to hear that.”

“I…”—I leaned down and kissed him—“love”—I stilled as he caught one of my nipples in his mouth—“you.”

His fingers were inside me, and he nudged my thighs further apart. I kneeled over his hips as he played with my already sensitive body, telling me over and over that he loved me, wanted me, needed me. I came again as he told me I was beautiful, brave, and smart. He slid inside me again as he promised we would start a future together.

And I rode him until we were both unable to say anything else.

Adam thought that everything was in order. For the first time in his life, he had everything he could want, everything he had wanted. He’d admitted to himself that he loved Sasha last year, but she was still with Tommy then. It made him feel like the worst kind of person, coveting his cousin’s girlfriend. He didn’t do anything to try to break them up, but he pointed out the truth to both of them when they were on the outs.

That was how he made peace with his feelings. He only reminded them of the facts: the time Tommy was so high that he had his hands on another girl in front of Sasha, the time Sasha was so high she would’ve agreed to Tommy’s suggestion to put on a show in front of everyone in his apartment, the times they fought so loud and long that they were thrown out of bars. There were enough examples of how bad their relationship was for Sasha that it seemed insane that she ever took Tommy back.

But she had. For months, she gave him second chance after second chance. And Adam could only watch and try to be a friend.

There were months when he thought the girl he’d fallen for had been lost under the drugs she and Tommy snorted. Then, she stopped. She stopped being with Tommy, stopped snorting cocaine, stopped destroying her life.

He’d waited for her to take the next step, to
see
him. It didn’t happen. He pushed, waited, offered. He’d been on the verge of thinking that she simply wasn’t attracted to him. Then, he’d tattooed her. He couldn’t mistake the desire in her eyes, not the first time or the third time. He’d broken every ethical code he’d held himself to trying to get her to take that last step toward admitting that they had, at the very least, heat between them. She ran.

He liked to believe that they’d have still found their way to one another if they hadn’t been forced to flee Rio Verde. It didn’t actually matter though. Sasha was finally in his life, and he wasn’t going to let anything or anyone take her from him. He was going to protect her and do whatever it took to let her have the future she wanted. If that meant setting down permanent roots, he’d do it. He’d already proven to himself that he was capable of staying in one town for more than a couple of months. He’d done that for her. He’d do whatever else she needed too.

Adam walked into Mezcal Johnny’s feeling like the world was sitting in the palm of his hand. He should’ve known that feeling so good was like a lightning rod for trouble.

That trouble was sitting on one of the four chairs that served as a waiting area for customers. The man was dressed entirely wrong for the end of May in the desert. He had on a dark suit, shiny city shoes, and a lying smile. Adam had met dozens of him in the course of his life. They were the men that his Uncle Thomas, Tommy’s dad, had called “business associates.” The suit stood as the shop door closed behind Adam.

“Adam Bradbery?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m a friend of your cousin’s,” the suit said. “It’s a shame what happened to him, but I have some interests of his to pass on to his girlfriend.”

“Tommy didn’t have a girlfriend,” Adam said.

Drunk Dave lifted his head from the catalogue he was perusing. His gaze met Adam’s for a moment. In it was a question and an offer of help if necessary.

The suit didn’t even acknowledge the older man. That moved him from potential threat to idiotic potential threat in Adam’s book. Dave might not be as burly as he’d been in the photos on the shop wall, but he had visible muscles and the sort of hard eyes that said he’d seen things best not discussed.

Adam shook his head once. Dave had a business, a wife, and grandkids to think about. This wasn’t his trouble.

“Sasha Kovac,” the suit said. “She went by Sugar.”

“I knew her back in Rio Verde,” Adam allowed. “Maybe you should look there.”

“I did.” The suit stepped closer. “She left after Tommy’s accident.”

“He wasn’t in an accident. He was shot.” Adam tensed.

The man waved his hand dismissively. “Regardless of that, I need to see Sasha.”

“She worked at a coffee place there,” Adam said. “You could check with them.”

He knew he wasn’t saying anything the suit didn’t already know. This wasn’t a casual visit. The suit had assumed that Adam and Sasha had left together.

“I did,” the suit said, sliding his suit jacket off and revealing a holstered gun in the process. “I checked with your employer too. I explained that I needed to see you about Thomas’ death—”

“Tommy,” Adam corrected. “Thomas was my uncle.”

The suit nodded and said, “Of course. They said you were probably working at an old shop, and they kindly helped me with a list of shops where you had done ‘guest tattooing.’ It took a few days, but I thought it best to come see you as soon as I figured out where you were.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Adam could see Dave’s hand slip under the counter. There was an alarm there. Alarms meant cops. Cops meant paper trails.

“No,” Adam said, turning to Dave.

The distraction was enough to give the suit an opportunity. His fist came at Adam’s face, knocking him back slightly. It wasn’t the punch of a man unused to violence.

But Adam had grown up with violence back in Philadelphia, where he’d been in so many scrapes his mother signed him up for boxing, karate, and every other defense or “anger management” course at the community center—including yoga and guided meditation.