“Yes. Please.” I was barely coherent. He pushed forward, stretching me open gradually until he was all the way inside. His body pushed on my clit.
“I wanted this from the minute I saw you,” he said, pulling out then driving back again. I clawed his chest, unable to respond. “Get inside you.” He pushed my bra out of the way and stroked my nipple with his thumb. “Take your body. Can you feel me?” He drove in hard, and I cried out. “Can you feel how much I want you?”
I could feel it. Every inch of it, but I wasn’t verbal. He drove against me slowly, then quickly, as if reading my body for what it wanted, then providing it.
“I . . .” He ripped through me, and I couldn’t finish. “Oh God.”
He got on his elbows and put his nose to mine, swaying his hips in a new rhythm.
“You ready?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Me too.”
Faster. Harder. Stretching until it hurt, until I couldn’t bear it another second, I clenched my fists and gave in to the pleasure of his cock. He let loose inside me with the same low groan I’d heard in the car.
That groan was my gift. I gave it to him. It was for me and no one else. I touched his face at the end of it as if grabbing his orgasm and putting it away for safekeeping.
We wrapped our bodies around each other for the night, and I felt safe. Maybe the feeling was fake. Maybe I was fooling myself. But his kisses were warm, and his body fit to mine as if they were made for each other. If there was ever a world-class security system, Carter Kincaid was it.
CHAPTER 38
EMILY
I woke to the sound of purring. Grey was just above my head, pushing her paws into my pillow. There was something nice about the attention but something uncomfortable about its intensity. I reached for Carter and found his warm body right there. He rolled over to face me.
“Good morning.”
“How did the cat get in?”
“She was at the door. Really persistent. And loud. You didn’t hear her?”
“Nope. Slept like a baby.”
“Babies don’t sleep like you slept.” He ran his fingertip along the ridge of my nose.
“Did Phin sleep well when he was a baby?”
His flash of uneasiness lasted a split second, but it couldn’t be denied.
“Sorry. Was I not supposed to ask?”
“It’s fine. I’m just not used to it. What do you want for breakfast?”
I sat up and rubbed my eyes. “I don’t know what I have in the fridge.”
“You shower first, and I’ll see what I can scare up.”
He kissed my cheek and got his naked body out of the bed.
My God. What had he created? What had he given me? Had the flawless man standing over me just given me that perfect body the night before? He was lean and rippled, his proportions even more golden without clothing. At half-mast, his dick was thicker than any other I’d seen fully erect. I was sore from him but not sore enough.
“Don’t look at me like that,” he said as he put his pants on.
“Why not?”
“Because I’ll take you again.”
I dropped the sheet, exposing my breasts.
“That would be terrible,” I said, putting my hands behind me so my back curved and my chest jutted forward.
He arched over me, hands leaning on the mattress on either side of my hips, and kissed each of my cheeks.
“I have to take Phin somewhere. So I have to get home and make sure he’s awake, because my mother sleeps in.”
He wasn’t specific about where he was taking his son, and I tried not to be insulted. The protective layer he’d put around the boy would either flake off for me or it wouldn’t. It wasn’t for me to say, even if it hurt.
“I think I have yogurt in the fridge. Fruit. Granola in the pantry.”
He pushed back on his hands to stand, then swooped his undershirt off the floor. I said good-bye to the sight of his body as he wrestled into it. When his head popped out of the neck, his hair was messed up, and his expression was loose and unselfconscious. He smiled at me, and it was gone.
“Coffee or tea?” he asked.
“Coffee.”
“Great.” He kissed my cheek and took off for the kitchen. I sighed. Too good. All of him. His body. The way we’d fucked the first time and made love the second. I stretched the sleep out of my muscles, extending my fingers to the headboard and pointing my toes.
Grey was on the night table. She’d pushed aside a picture of me and my parents in Disneyland and wedged herself between a stack of hardcovers and Carter’s gun.
She looked at me with stoic green eyes. They said, This? You know you want to take a look at this.
I took the holster off the night table, the shoulder straps dragging behind. I unsnapped it with some effort. The metal fastener had obviously been built for a man’s strength, or to make sure he was positive he wanted to take out his gun.
I expected a wooden handle and silver metal. I thought his gun would be Old West, but it was black and modern. It looked like a worn and well-loved toy. A little screw in the grip had a chip in the black paint. It smelled like Carter. Gunpowder and hot metal. Fifth of July.
How long had he had it? Since he was in the LAPD? How much of his life had that gun seen?
“Emily?” he said from the door.
It was too late to put the gun down. I felt as if I’d been caught peeking at his diary.
“Sorry.” I held it out for him. He took it and snapped the flap closed.
“How do you take your coffee?”
“Black, two sugars.”
He kissed me quickly and looped his arms through the holster.
“Go shower or the coffee’s going to be cold.”
CHAPTER 39
EMILY
He stayed at my house when our work schedules dovetailed with Phin and Brenda’s. He and Fabian quietly worked out scheduling with Carlos so that when Carter was around, Fabian wasn’t. I was still Fabian’s principal. Even though Carter insisted he was useless as my bodyguard as long as we were sleeping together, doubling up seemed ridiculous as well as uncomfortable.
“Are you in trouble?” I asked one morning after he hung up with Fabian. “For sleeping with a client?”
“Only a little.”
I didn’t want to hear that, but I needed to.
“What does ‘a little’ mean?” I bent over to get my heel into my shoe.
“It means he fired me—”
“What?” I almost fell over.
He caught me and pulled me up, holding me steady until my foot slipped into my sneaker. Was I supposed to give him up so he could work? Was that the ethical thing to do? I wouldn’t. Couldn’t.
“I talked him off a ledge,” he said.
“How?”
“I told him how incredible you are.” He shrugged as if it was nothing and my incredibleness was a blue sky or wet rain.
“Why would that make a difference?”
“It means you’re not a fling. We should go or we’re going to be late.”