With Extreme Pleasure (9 page)

I
n a repeat of how yesterday’s bad evening began, King walked into the room to find Cady fast asleep in the bed they’d be sharing. He could only hope it wasn’t an omen that today would be just as bad.

Just like last night, she’d stripped the spare bed of its bedspread, unloaded their crap on the sheets, and wrapped herself up safely to avoid any meeting of body parts in the middle of the night—or in this case, the day.

After their earlier encounter, King had to side with Cady on the two of them needing their own space even if they were in the same bed.

She’d pissed him off in a very big way.

He still couldn’t believe he’d let her get to him, especially since it was what she hadn’t done, hadn’t said, rather than anything she had that infuriated him into nearly losing his temper.

Here he was trying to get her out of trouble and to where she wanted to go, and she couldn’t be bothered to give him a map. Oh, she’d pointed out a landmark or two, had told him where to turn when it was time.

But the big picture gaps she’d avoided had left him flying blind. And the fact that Fitzwilliam McKie had been the one to fill them in…

King had been itching to light into Cady since hearing the details from the government man, but they’d ridden from the hospital to the hotel in silence, not talking until they’d reached the room.

Since they were both beat, and he in no mood to be civil, he’d taken himself off to the shower before their sniping got out of hand.

He’d never expected her to follow, which served to prove how tired he was, because if anything in life, he knew to expect the unexpected.

All well and good to remind himself of that in hindsight, he grumbled under his breath, sitting in one of the room’s chairs to tug off his boots.

Even the midday beer he’d had in the hotel’s restaurant bar while Cady showered had done nothing to douse the spark the fire in her eyes had lit in his gut.

He’d tried to forget that moment in the bathroom, the one when she’d looked him over as if thinking of eating him alive. Really, he’d tried.

He’d downed his beer, and tried. He’d thought about calling Simon and sharing the latest, and tried. He’d focused on the things McKie had told him, and tried.

He’d failed every time.

He’d never been one to say no to a woman who wanted him. And Cady would’ve had to be blind not to see that he was up for whatever she wanted.

But goddamn they did not need that sort of tension between them. Here they were, making a detour into the unknown at the request of a man with a ridiculous name and an ID that didn’t prove much of anything.

Adding sex to the mix was about the worst idea ever.

So it figured that King couldn’t get sex off his mind.

“I’m awake,” Cady said out of the blue.

The room was dark, the heavy drapes drawn. He’d been able to see her form but not her eyes. Had she been watching him all this time? Listening to him mumble? Had she purposefully waited until his thoughts turned to sex to speak? And how had she known that they had?

“Sorry. I was trying to be quiet.”

“No, I mean, you didn’t wake me up. I wasn’t asleep.”

Did that mean she’d been waiting up? “I’d’ve brought you back a beer if I’d known.”

“I thought you didn’t want one.”

“I changed my mind.” And if they were going to start in again with the sniping, he was going back for another. He held onto his boot just in case.

“I thought that must be where you went.”

A note would’ve been nice, dickhead
. “Sorry. I should’ve told you.”

“It’s okay. Really. I’m hardly your keeper.”

“Yeah, but we’re rowing in the same crappy boat here, so…well…sorry.” He wasn’t big on apologies, but this one he meant.

Cady sat up, left the light off. “You can go home. Fitz said he’ll figure out another way to do this if you want to check out. You’re pretty much an innocent bystander.”

“And you’re not?” King dropped his boot to the floor. “Besides, how would it look to Malling at this point if you suddenly had wheels of your own? Not to mention he thinks we’re traveling together, and if tomorrow we’re not…”

He had an out. A way home. Sunshine and crawfish on the horizon. McKie had offered it. Cady was offering it. And King was arguing his way right back in.

He didn’t know if it was the beer or the pills or going on thirty-two hours without sleep, but he was obviously off his ever-lovin’ rocker.

“If you’re sure.”

“I am.” The most sobering thing of all is that he was. Completely sure. “Of course, after a good night’s sleep, I may not be, so if you want to bring out a Bible for me to swear on, now would be a good time.”

The sound she made was part laugh and part sigh, and had him feeling cozy all over. The fact that he let the word cozy enter his mind was almost as bad as imagining glass shards from the explosion embedded deep in his flesh.

At least that stopped him from thinking about sex.

“Did he tell you everything? McKie? Did he tell you about me getting Kevin killed?”

He started to tell her that she wasn’t responsible for Kevin’s death. That Combs had broken the window, that Tuzzi had pulled the trigger, that Felwouk had been there, as had Malling who’d driven them away.

Cady hadn’t been there that night. Yes, she’d stashed the mascot filled with heroine in her bedroom on the second floor of the family’s home. But that did not make her responsible for her brother’s death.

King got out of his chair, walked between the two beds, and turned on the lamp farthest from Cady. “You didn’t get Kevin killed. I understand you feeling that way—”

“Do you really? Or is that just one of those things that sound good when you say them?”

King braced his elbows on his knees, laced his hands, and hung his head. “I can’t feel the same emotion, the pain, or the anger or the wishing for a chance to go back and tell your friend to hide the mascot herself. But I can understand why those things haunt you.”

A sad smile teased the corners of her mouth. “Haunted. Yeah. That’s exactly how it feels. It never goes away. Like a specter that’s always hovering over me.”

He certainly hadn’t meant to make her put a name to her suffering. “Hopefully this plan of McKie’s will double as an exorcism, and you can get your life back.”

Cady pulled her knees to her chest, wrapped her arms around the bedspread that covered them, propped her chin on top. “I think starting fresh with a new one is a better plan. Even if I help Fitz plug Tuzzi’s pipeline, it’s not going to change the past. Kevin will still be dead. My parents will still blame me. Malling, now that he’s out, and Felwouk’s and Combs’s friends will still make my life a living hell.”

This was new. The fact that she was willing to put names and faces to her persecutors. She’d been vague, and reticent to do so thus far. “How’re they making your life hell exactly? Who’s doing it? Do you know?”

“Tyler, for one.” When that didn’t ring a bell and King frowned, she added, “Alice’s boyfriend. The one who crawled into my bed.”

It took several seconds for that to sink in, then…“Wait a minute.” King shot to his feet. “This bunch of drug-dealing thugs is responsible for you getting beat to a pulp? And you didn’t tell me?”

“I didn’t know until today. When I got out of the shower and you weren’t here, I tried the wireless again. It was working so I checked my bank balance, and there was a charge I’d forgotten about.”

King returned to where he’d been sitting. His jumping to conclusions wasn’t helping anything, and was going to cause Cady to clam up, leaving him scrambling for a flight plan again. “What was the charge?”

She cringed, as if embarrassed. “I’d ordered a bottle of piña colada massage oil from Renee, my other roommate, for her sorority’s fund-raiser.”

“Piña colada?”

This time she grinned. “It was either that, strawberry daiquiri, orange marmalade, or green apple martini.”

Uh, no. He’d stick to things that didn’t smell like a bar. “I’m more an unscented kinda guy myself.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” she said, and then fell silent, as if picturing the same thing he was, slick hands on bare bodies.

He cleared his throat and tried to get them back on track. “So the charge triggered a memory or something?”

“Not a memory, no. It just made a whole lot of things fall into place.”

Patience, patience, patience. “How so?”

“I gave Renee my debit Visa number for the form, but never paid attention to the receipt and who would be billing me. But it was there online. The name of the sorority.”

“The same one with the Persian cat mascot,” King said, the conclusion drawing his stomach into an angry knot.

Cady nodded.

“Were you already living there when Alice hooked up with this Tyler?”

She nodded again. “And I’m pretty sure she came looking for me yesterday afternoon because he’d put an end to their hooking. No need for him to stick around. He’d done what he’d come there to do.”

“Screw you over,” King said, then got up to pace the room at the foot of both beds. “This is the kind of thing Tuzzi’s bunch has been putting you through? For eight years?”

“This is the first time I’ve gone to the ER, but yeah.” She shrugged, pulled the bedspread up to her shoulders, held it beneath her chin. “I stopped caring about the gossip and rumors a long time ago. I’d given up all my friends, or I’d given up those who hadn’t already disappeared, so what strangers thought of me really didn’t matter.”

She closed her eyes, rubbed at them gingerly, looked at him again. “I take that back. It mattered when it came to having job interviews sabotaged. Or the few dates I had ruined by graffiti appearing mysteriously on the guys’ cars. I sold my own a long time ago. I couldn’t afford to keep buying new tires, having it painted, the windshield replaced.”

If not for his current hate of all things glass, King would’ve put his fist into the room’s mirror.

He wasn’t a saint, and had left a long trail of people he’d treated like shit, but he was pretty damn sure he’d never been this type of asshole cruel.

If he hadn’t agreed to go along with Cady and McKie and the plan to end Tuzzi’s reign of terror, he’d be out securing his boarding pass now.

Cady deserved better than the life she’d been forced to live. He was going to see that it happened, even if it meant putting his sunshine and crawfish on the back burner until next year’s crop was ready to boil.

“I
’m going to go to sleep now,” Cady said, dousing the light. The mattress squeaked as she settled deeper into the bed. “Or I’m going to give it a shot anyway. Knowing Malling’s out there somewhere, I don’t think sleep’s going to come easy.”

“McKie’s out there, too,” King reminded her. “Don’t forget that.”

She could see his silhouette as he tugged off his jeans and T-shirt. He was coming to bed in nothing but his boxers. She hadn’t counted on that. “I know. If he wasn’t, I wouldn’t be sleeping at all.”

King pulled back the sheet, blanket, and bedspread. The bed dipped as he sat on the edge, evened out as he pivoted and laid down. “You sure you don’t want that beer? Or a pain pill? I’ve got enough to go around.”

“And if you run out, you can step outside and have Malling put you in touch with Tuzzi for a refill,” she said with no small amount of sarcasm, wanting to take the words back almost immediately because King didn’t deserve to be connected to drug-dealing scum. “I’m sorry. That wasn’t nice.”

“It’s called black humor, Cady,” King said softly, crossing his arms beneath his head. “It’s okay. If we can’t laugh at ourselves or this fucked-up world, making it through in one piece is a crap shoot.”

She smiled to herself. “Such a cynic. I never would’ve guessed.”

“Ah, but a hopeful one. Which is a big improvement over the total dick I was for a lot of years.”

Now that wouldn’t surprise her at all. He had a very dick-like vibe, and he hadn’t been the nicest man to stow away with. At the same time, he had done more for her—a veritable stranger—than anyone she’d ever called friend had done for her since the trial.

Part of that was her fault. She’d turned away when anyone had reached out, not wanting to answer questions about how she was doing, feeling, was there anything she might need.

She hadn’t known how she was doing, feeling, and the only thing she needed—Kevin to come back—no one could give. Eventually the questions stopped, as did the hands in offering.

But once she was in a better place, she found herself alone. By then she wore the scarlet letter of blame for ruining so many young promising lives, and her parents’ lives as well.

She supposed her accusers didn’t consider hers ruined, or thought whatever she suffered, she deserved. It hadn’t taken much to convince herself of the same.

At her side, King murmured, “You asleep?”

“No,” she answered, barely a whisper.

“The thought of sleeping next to a dick keeping you awake?”

“I’ve slept next to dicks before. One just a couple of nights ago. Didn’t even know he was there.”

It took several seconds, as if he was deciding whether or not to move, but finally King rolled to his side, propped up on his elbow, and faced her. “I know we can’t nail this guy for the shit he’s put you through, but we can take away something that gives him power and makes him money, and it’s going to hurt. Trust me on that. I know his type. I served time with his type. He loses this, he’ll be nothing.”

Cady was glad it was dark. It was only midafternoon, but the room’s heavy drapes were drawn tight and blocked the light from outside. She was afraid she was going to cry. She did not want him to see her cry.

She was tired, and he was being so nice, and she’d been an emotional glacier for years. To have this bit of warmth was painful. Her chest ached, and she fought his attempt to thaw her with a strategy she knew well. Deflection.

“When were you in prison? How old were you?”

He didn’t answer right away, and she didn’t know if she’d crossed a line she should’ve honored, or if he was wise to her deflecting ways.

But finally she heard him breathe in, as if he’d only paused to corner his thoughts. When he spoke, it wasn’t what she’d thought she’d hear.

“It was a long time ago. I went in at eighteen, came out at twenty-two.”

She waited for more. When nothing came, she said, “You were so young.”

He still didn’t say anything, just flipped onto his back. She stared at the dark ceiling, thinking out loud, unable to drop a subject in which he obviously had no wish to participate.

“Those are the same years I was in college. I mean, not the same years, since you’re older, but I moved onto campus when I was eighteen.”

After another deep breath, King asked, “Did you ever finish? Get your degree?”

She nodded her head on her pillow. “Yeah, though my last year took two since I was paying my own way by then. I did most of it online.”

“Your parents cut you off?”

“I thought I told you that.”

“You did. The college funding thing just never registered.”

“It was a complete break, King. All the way down to the emotional ties made at birth,” she said, unable to hold back a snort.

“My folks were killed in a car wreck when I was a kid. My cousin and I had grown up as best friends, brothers really, so I lived with him and his folks after that.”

She wondered if he thought telling her that would lessen her pain, or make her feel less alone in the ugliness she’d gone through. Then she wondered if the confession had sprung from a need to purge himself of the abandonment he’d suffered.

She did feel less alone, but that was because he was beside her and talking to her, and she’d been her only companion for so long. “I’m so sorry. That had to be hard.”

She felt him shrug. “I got through it. Can’t said I’m proud of every decision I made after that, where I went with my life, but it’s been an interesting one for sure.”

“Why did you go to prison?”

“To serve time for a fire I didn’t set.”

Her breath caught. “What?”

“Yep. Simon, my cousin, and I both, though Simon chose the military instead.”

“What happened? The fire, I mean.”

“We were celebrating the end of high school. Celebrating with more booze and dope than was good for us. And sharing an older woman to complete the trifecta of teenage male stupidity. Investigators ruled the fire that swept through my family’s house arson. Since we were the only ones there…”

But they weren’t. “What about the woman?”

“Lorna Savoy. She was sleeping with the judge. The Honorable Terrill Landry Sr.”

Wow. Just wow. “I thought things like that only went on in fiction.”

King gave a sharply bitter laugh. “This was twenty years ago in rural Louisiana, chère. And fiction doesn’t hold a candle to the truth.”

Cady turned to her side, rested her face on her stacked hands, and studied King’s silhouette in the dark. He was a hard man. A crude man. A cynical man, and damaged just as she was.

Here they were, sharing the same bed, involving themselves willingly in more danger than she, for one, had ever known.

If they were successful in helping McKie take down Tuzzi’s prison drug empire, she’d at least have the satisfaction of inflicting a great deal of misery on the man who’d stolen her brother’s life and hers.

But King…“Why are you here?”

“In this city? Because this was where my ride was blown all to hell? In this hotel? Because McKie is paying. In this bed? Because you tossed all your crap on the other one and stole the bedspread to boot.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

“Then you need to be a little more clear on what you do mean, Miss Kowalski, or I might come up with a reason I don’t think you’ll care for.”

He was back to being the ass who’d challenged her naked in the bathroom. The one who thought he could scare her away with his cock.

“Why are you helping me, and don’t say it’s because McKie promised to upgrade your ride.”

King huffed, then lowered his voice to a growl. “If you really want to know, come a little closer.”

He didn’t intimidate her at all. Yes, earlier he’d unnerved her, and she’d made a hasty escape. She hadn’t been prepared for the threat of his words or his body.

Since then, she’d had time to think, to shore up her flagging self-confidence, to listen to him talk about the things that made him who he was. He was just a man, and if he hurt her, she would wisely blame only herself.

She moved closer, scooting toward him until she could feel his body heat, could touch his bare ankle with her bare toes.

He flinched. “What happened to your nice safe cocoon?”

She wanted to laugh, but settled for a private smile. “If you’d paid more attention, you would’ve seen the other bed’s spread was on top of this one, not wrapped around me.”

“How the hell am I supposed to see anything in the dark?” he grumbled back.

“Night vision?”

“You having a good time? Goading me?”

“I’m just answering your questions, and doing what I’m told to do.”

“And since when has compliant been your middle name?”

“Since I decided it would be fun to try it on.”

“Fun you say? You want fun?”

“Depends what you have in mind,” she shot back, hearing his rising frustration in his voice.

“Well, chère. If you really want to find out, you’re going to have to come a whole lot closer than that.”

She wondered if he meant it. If he wanted to have sex with her. Or if he was baiting her because he didn’t expect her to accept his offer. Because he thought he was safe. That she would say no.

Because he didn’t think she’d do what she did, scrunch her way closer, roll onto her belly, raise up on her elbows, her face above his. “Close enough?”

She could see his eyes go wide, then narrow, but all he did was clear his throat.

“Do you need me closer? Like this?” She straddled her upper body over his, her hands on the mattress above his shoulders. “Can you answer my question now?”

“What question? I thought you were here to have fun.” The words sounded like gravel beneath the heels of his boots.

“Is that why you’re here?”

“Can you think of another reason?” he asked, his chest heaving beneath hers.

She felt his chest hair crackle against the thin fabric of her top. “I don’t know. You tell me.”

“Take off your shirt and I might.”

It was going to be a battle all the way. He wasn’t going to tell her why he was sticking around. Now she was more curious to find out why he wouldn’t answer than she was to learn the truth.

But most of all she wanted to know what his hands would feel like, skimming down her back, how rough the pads of his fingers would be tiptoeing from her nape to the base of her spine.

She lifted one arm, ducked her head and her shoulders out of the shirt, then resumed her position above him. “Answer, please.”

He sucked back a breath, moved his hands to her sides, and pulled her down so that her nipples teased his. “Can’t. Not enough blood left in my brain.”

“That so?” she asked, and he nodded, and she didn’t object when he urged her with his hands to check his blood flow for herself.

Sliding the length of his body as he was helping her to do, it didn’t take long to find the problem. His boxers were tented very nicely, and warm where they strained against her belly like a wildcat in a cage.

She tossed back the blankets and sheets and climbed on top, clamping his knees between hers. “I see what you mean.”

“If you can fix that, I’ll do what I can to answer your question.”

Sure you will, she thought, searching for the opening in his shorts. “All of my questions?”

He groaned when she wrapped her fingers around his shaft. “Every last one.”

“I’m going to hold you to that,” she said, pulling him free.

“As long as you don’t stop holding me now,” he told her, just before she leaned down, breathed deeply of his scent, and took him into her mouth.

The head of his cock was already sticky with anticipation, and she licked the moisture away, ringing her fingers around the top of his shaft, slicking her thumb across his plum-ripe glans.

She sucked him there, drawing just that plump bulb between her lips, toying the slit in the tip with her tongue, then letting go and taking him in until he hit the back of her throat.

He reached for the elastic band of his boxers with a hurried desperation. She pulled away and slapped at his hands. “My fun, my way. The shorts stay on.”

He spit out a string of words she wasn’t sure she’d ever heard used as profanities. He was nothing if not creative with his epithets, but as quick as he was with most comebacks, that didn’t surprise her at all. She liked smart men…though this one seemed to have some trouble playing by her rules.

“And stop trying to spread your legs,” she said, bending over again and running her tongue along the seam on the underside of his cock’s head. “Be still, or I’m moving to the other bed. Alone.”

More grumbling, then, “If you come up a little farther, I can get to your tits.”

“I don’t want you to get to my tits.”

“Well at least turn around here and let me get my fingers wet.”

She couldn’t help but grin. The man was persistent. But she was hardly cotton candy herself. “What makes you think I’m wet?”

“Christ, woman, I can smell you.”

“Hmm,” was her only verbal response because her mouth was too full for her to say more.

She slid down his shaft until her lips kissed his boxers, then began to ease away, keeping her tongue pressed to the thick ridge of veins running the length of the underside, finishing with nothing but his cock’s head in her mouth.

And then she let him go. King was right. She was wet, and she wanted him. “Do you have a condom?”

More curses, these more creative than before and involving llamas. “I can’t give you a baby. And I won’t give you a disease. But it’s your call on how we play this out.”

She was curious why he couldn’t give her a baby, but would ask him that question later. Right now all she cared about was having him inside of her, and while she peeled off her pants, he shucked away his boxers like the husk from corn.

When neither one of them was wearing more than their skin, she climbed up to his hips, lifted up to her knees, let him position himself there between her legs that were open, then slid down until she had no choice but to stop.

There was no more of him to put inside of her, and no more room inside of her even so. She shivered, shuddered, braced her hands behind her on his knees, and leaned back to catch her breath.