Inescapable (Men of Mercy Novel, A) (6 page)

He put his hands on his hips, fingertips pushing into his skin, which flared with heat everywhere her eyes touched; his chest, his stomach, his thighs. Then she cocked her head and simply stared at his groin, the tip of her tongue touching her top lip as she looked at his jutting cock. Fighting the urge to take her immediately, he wrapped his hand around his erection, his thumb brushing the head.

“Does that feel good?” Flick demanded.

“Better if you were doing it,” he said, surprised that he could still string a sentence together.

Flick sat up, scooted to the edge of the bed, and used her right hand to push his away. Echoing his action, she encircled him with small, feminine fingers, her thumb sliding across his tip, rubbing the throbbing vein at the top of his shaft. She rested her other hand on his hip and dropped her head, opening her mouth as if to take him inside.

He wouldn’t last two seconds if she took him into her mouth. “Hell, no. When I come I want to be inside you, making you scream.”

Kai pushed her back onto the bed with both hands on her shoulders and closed his eyes, taking a calming breath. When he looked at her again, he could see the passion, the plea on her face. He placed both his hands on either side of her head and lowered his body to meet hers, his cock brushing her clit. Man, she felt so good.

She whimpered and then sighed, “Kai . . .”

He pulled away to jerk open the drawer of the side table. His hand found the box of condoms and he quickly tore one off the strip. With ruthless efficiency he rolled the latex down so that he was covered, and thought that this was it, this . . . this was what he’d been waiting a year for.

Then her fingers, smooth, soft, and smelling faintly of a lemon-scented hand cream, skimmed his cheekbones and his jaw. They drifted down his neck, into his hair, and across his shoulder blades, each new touch causing his balls to contract, his cock to harden even more.

Kai dropped his weight off his arms, pressing her soft, delicious body into the covers. He pushed his knee between her legs and the slickness and heat he felt coming from her made his head swim. And then he was where he was supposed to be, his cock at her entrance, insistent, demanding, desperate. Flick reached down, wrapped her fingers around him and guided him into her.

He crushed his mouth against hers as the world faded away, his entire concentration focused on where their bodies met. He held himself rigid, knowing that if he started to push he wouldn’t stop, and he wanted Flick to come again, with him this time. She lifted her hips urgently against his so that he slid deeper inside her and he heard her moan. Blood roared in his head as his last strand of willpower shattered. This was mating at its most basic, wild and primordial, he thought as he shoved his hand below her ass to lift her higher even as he slammed into her.

Harder, faster, higher. His breathing increased and his heart threatened to explode and—

Shit, he was going to come.
Not yet
, he screamed silently, grinding his teeth. He couldn’t find the ability to speak, so he silently willed Flick upward, pistoning himself into her, deep and demanding. Judging by what sounded like a whimper and a sob, and the clenching of her body around him, she was close, and as his orgasm rocketed from his balls, his cock, up his spine, he pulsed into her and she came too, her orgasm sweet against every inch of him.

Holy crap. As he laid there in the aftermath, coming down from that extreme high, sated and shocked at the intensity of what they had just shared, the thought that she was the best sex he’d ever had drifted through his admittedly fried brain. But maybe that was because he hadn’t had sex for so damn long, the rational part of his mind responded.

Because, he thought as he rolled off her, there couldn’t possibly be any other reason.

***

Flick lay with her head on Kai’s shoulder, thinking that her idea of an afternoon tryst had been a very good one, and that she was quite pleased with herself. There would be no walk of shame for her. She’d gotten exactly what she’d come for—mind-blowing sex—and she’d be damned if she’d feel guilty going to bed with a complete stranger. All she felt was contentment and satisfaction and, though it was probably a little weird, safe.

Kai was as close to a perfect lover as she’d ever encountered and she idly wondered whether it was the freedom from emotion that allowed her to be so fully satisfied. Not that their time together had been robotic. At times Kai had even been tender, something she certainly hadn’t expected. He’d stopped her thinking—about Gina and Pippa and the mess her aunt had dumped her into, about whether he was happy or satisfied or whether he thought she had a big ass—and she’d let go. She’d allowed herself to lose control, to touch, to explore, to taste. She had lost all her inhibitions in her quest to explore that hard, tough body. That had never happened to her before. With all of her previous lovers she’d been more concerned about making them happy than worrying about herself. With Kai, all she remembered thinking was that she hadn’t wanted it to end.

Flick felt Kai stir and bit her lip as he raised his wrist and squinted at the dial of his watch, the numbers just visible from the light spilling through the half-open door to the bathroom. Night had fallen and she knew that it was time for her to slide out of his bed and out of his life.

Just five more minutes . . .

Flick stroked her hand across Kai’s chest, twisting her fingers in his light smattering of chest hair. She yawned and re-settled her head on his shoulder, mentally begging him not to move. She’d barely finished the thought when she felt his reluctant tap of his fingers against her backside and she pulled her head back to look at him.

To his credit, he looked regretful. “You need to go, Flick. Sawyer usually drops in on his way home and it would be”—he hesitated—“awkward to have to explain this.”

“It really would.” Flick sat up as he shoved the covers away and swung his legs around to sit on the edge of the bed. “So, I take it that we’re keeping this between us?”

“There’s nobody else in the room is there? Nobody else needs to know.” Kai lifted his shoulders in frustration. “There are lots of things I hate about Mercy but one of the major ones is that I feel like I’m living in fish tank whenever I’m here. So I’d prefer that the good residents of the town didn’t find out that I’ve just had sex with their favorite daughter.”

“I’m not their favorite daughter,” Flick protested, even though she knew that she and Pippa were, sort of.

“You hate Mercy?” Flick demanded, picking up on his earlier statement. “What’s wrong with Mercy?”

“What’s right with it? No fast food, no decent coffee—”

“Hey!”

“Okay, I’ve yet to try it but I’m sure your coffee is decent,” Kai admitted. He looked at a spot on the opposite wall before shrugging. “It’s just pretty and wholesome and I find that weird, that’s all.”

“How can you find pretty and wholesome weird?” Flick asked, genuinely perplexed.

Kai just shrugged again and didn’t reply and Flick soon realized that the subject was closed. Okay, then. “Well, then, it’s a good thing that you’re leaving soon.”

“Yep, tomorrow.” Kai tossed her a cynical smile. “So we’ll have lots of time to practice our pretend-we-didn’t-screw-each-other-sideways faces before we meet again.” He surprised her by reaching over and running his hand down her hair. “But I had a great time and I needed that. Thanks.”

Flick placed her hand on his shoulder and turned her intended caress into a quick pat. Dragging up her most insouciant voice, she spoke quickly. “Me too. I thought we’d spontaneously combust the first time.”

His deep, sexy chuckle danced across her still-bare skin. She looked around but couldn’t see her clothes. “We shouldn’t have started kissing in the hallway. We gave Rufus quite an eyeful,” Kai commented.

“My poor dog. He’ll probably be scarred for life.” Flick winced as she remembered Kai on his knees in front of her, her legs spread and her body completely naked. God, he’d been fabulous; that thing he did with his tongue and fingers was mind-blowing.

“I have no clothes. I think they’re still downstairs.”

Kai stood up and pulled on his boxers before walking across the room and picking up a pile of clothes on a chair in the far corner. They’d been folded so neatly that she didn’t recognize them at first. “I got them earlier, while you dozed.”

Flick took them from his hands. “Thanks.”

Placing his hands on his hips, he looked down at her, his mouth twisted into a wry smile. It was as if he knew exactly what she was thinking, because his eyes deepened and started smoking again. Then they filled with regret, and not a little frustration. “Can’t. No time and, even more important, I’m out of condoms.”

And wasn’t that the mental equivalent of having a large bucket of ice water tipped over her libido? The last thing she needed was a baby as a lifelong reminder of the best sex of her life.

Kai walked into the en-suite bathroom and Flick shook out her clothes, quickly pulling on her bra and panties, shirt, and faded jeans. She stood up and caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror above the large chest of drawers and grimaced at her tousled hair and raccoon eyes. There wasn’t much she could do about either and it was a bit too late to fuss over her appearance since she was heading out the door.

Out of his life. One afternoon of crazy sex. A one-afternoon stand. They were supposed to walk away—they had both agreed, Flick reminded herself. But it was crazy how much she wanted to stay.

She shouldn’t want to stay at all.

***

Kai stood in the bathroom, his hands gripping the edge of the counter. This was crazy, he thought. He should be eager for her to walk out that door, but instead he wanted to take her back to bed, make love to her again, fall asleep, and make breakfast for her in the morning. He wanted to know whether they could connect on some sort of intellectual level as well as they did in bed.

She intrigued him and he didn’t like it. Her laughter, heard when he’d inadvertently tickled the back of her knee with his tongue, had his breath catching in his throat. She’d shouted his name as she’d climaxed and she smelled of lemons. He couldn’t remember when, if ever, he’d smelled lemons on a woman’s skin.

Bottom line, he shouldn’t be thinking about her this way. He shouldn’t be thinking about her at all. Mentally, he should be a million miles away already.

She’d been a good lay, a fantastic way to spend an afternoon . . . End of story.

Except that this felt more like an opening chapter than an ending, and he didn’t remotely understand why. Kai splashed water on his face and rubbed his jaw.

He didn’t want her to leave, not really, not yet. But he knew she had to because he suspected that the longer he hung around her, the more he might want her. And tomorrow would roll around regardless and he’d just be postponing the inevitable. It was better this way.

And they’d only agreed to an afternoon, nothing more.

Nothing. More.

Flick had left the bed and dressed and Kai was thankful for the small mercy that she wasn’t still naked; that would remove some of the temptation to take her back to bed, condoms or not. He sent her a quick look. She stood by the door, leaning her shoulder into the wall, her face deliberately blank. He walked toward her and dropped his head to kiss her temple, knowing that if he touched her mouth with his he wouldn’t let her leave the house anytime soon. “Thanks, Flick. I might see you in a couple of months.”

Flick sent him a naughty smile. “My pretend-I-haven’t-slept-with-you expression will be perfect by then, I promise. Take care of yourself.”

“Yeah, you too. I’ll walk you out.”

“Don’t bother. I’m good.”

Kai heard her light footsteps on his stairs, then his front door opening and closing, and shook his head, confused.

It still didn’t feel like an ending.

Chapter Five

DocMolly: Flick is in a happy mood. You can taste it in her chocolate croissants.

BoredWife: Good sex will do that for you. And I have to say, girlfriend, you have spectacular taste in men. He’s wicked hot! Mmm, maybe I should have an affair.

***

The next morning Flick bounced out of bed at four a.m., ran down the stairs, and walked the mile to the bakery in the early-morning chill with a huge smile on her face. Great sex, she decided, made her feel like a million dollars.

Mmm, if she had a million dollars she’d spend it on feeling like this again; all loose and tingly and bubbling with endorphins. She felt amazing and creative and buzzed. Thank God that Manning was out of town or on his way out of town—because she might just be tempted to run—walk, crawl—to him and beg him for a repeat performance.

Hours later, she was still feeling giddy when she ran—okay, half-jogged—up the stairs to Pippa’s office and flopped into the broken chair to the side of her organized desk. She lovingly sniffed the red velvet cupcake she held in her hand and reverently peeled the paper back, prolonging the anticipation.

Pippa, she noticed, didn’t bother to lift her head at her arrival and kept her attention on her screen. Flick cocked her head and wrinkled her nose when she saw the columns that indicated that Pippa was working on one of her beloved spreadsheets. She’d rather eat a cupcake.

Or trim her nails with a chainsaw.

“The way you’re acting, anyone would think that you got lucky last night,” Pippa said just as Flick took the first bite of her cupcake.

Flick coughed and a morsel of cake slid down her windpipe, causing her to gag. She coughed violently and pounded her chest while tears ran down her face. She was going to die, she was quite sure of it.

Leaning forward, she snagged Pippa’s bottle of water and took a long sip. After another bout of coughing she thought that she might just live. More water and more coughing and she was certain. Not that Pippa cared—all her concentration was still directed at her screen.

“Jeez, thanks for the concern,” Flick sputtered when she could speak again. “For a moment there I thought that I was going down the tunnel.”

Pippa rolled her eyes. “Stop being melodramatic and stop evading the question. So, did you have sex last night? And with whom?”

Sex
was such a prosaic word for what she and Kai had done, Flick thought. It was too rough, too unsexy, too pedestrian a word. But she couldn’t call it making love because there was absolutely no love involved.

But there was passion and lust and boatloads of attraction . . .

“Felicity!”

Pippa snapped her fingers in front of Flick’s face and she jumped an inch off the chair. “Yes? What?”

“You and sex. Who, where, and how?”

Flick stared at her cupcake, her expression troubled. She usually told Pippa everything but she’d told Kai that that their tryst would stay between them, and she wanted to honor that agreement. “Uh, do you mind if I don’t tell you who? But yes, I hooked up with someone.”

Pippa didn’t press her for the identity of the man, which was very out of character, but Flick had too much on her mind to dwell on that.

“Someone local?”

“Sort of.” Flick broke off a piece of cupcake and popped it into her mouth. After she swallowed she spoke again. “It was purely a one-night stand, nothing serious. At all.”

“Like I haven’t heard that from you before,” Pippa said.

“It was!” Flick protested. She leaned forward and looked serious. “Look, I know that you think that I don’t understand the concept of one-night stands and, given my history, I don’t blame you. I admit that I may have manipulated men into relationships before but—”

Pippa pulled a face. “Manipulated? That’s a harsh word.”

“Okay, maneuvered men into having a relationship with me. Is that better?” Flick placed her cupcake on the corner of the desk. This was the first time in a long time that she was seeing herself clearly. She really wasn’t liking the picture.

“But I’m not doing that anymore, Pips. Yesterday was pure attraction, lust, sex in its most basic form. And he’s leaving Mercy.” There were lots of visitors to Mercy—he could be any of the many tourists who were visiting the area. At least, that was what Flick was hoping Pippa would think.

Flick stood and picked up her now-mangled cupcake. She sent Pippa a reassuring smile. “You don’t have to worry about me, Pips. I’m not going to be stupid about men. Not again. I’m not going to confuse sex with love.”

Pippa lifted her eyebrows. “Glad to hear it. But do you know what is stupid?”

Flick frowned at her still-tart tone. “What?”

“Leaving your car parked outside Kai Manning’s house, spending the afternoon there, and only switching on the bedroom light when it got dark. Miss Greenwood, who, as you know, lives opposite Kai and has never had sex—”

“As far as we know,” Flick interjected.

“—was terribly worried about you and Rufus being in that stranger’s house. She told Aunt Mable who told my mom. She called me last night, from the hospital, and lectured me because your phone was off, because you were having an afternoon quickie!” Pippa shook her head. “A banner stating that you were having sex wouldn’t have gotten the point across clearer.”

Flick slapped her hand across her eyes.

“And for kicks and giggles, Miss Greenwood took her concerns about your safety to the World Wide Web and mentioned that you spent the afternoon at his house on the forum.”

Well, shit
, Flick thought. This news would spread like wildfire. So much for keeping their tryst a secret. Thank God Kai was leaving town later today. He already thought that Mercy was a gossipy, small-minded little town. He didn’t need to know that the town’s busybodies—which would, by now, be pretty much everyone—were speculating about them.

“There are a couple of crude follow-up comments to Miss G’s comment on the forum.” Pippa shook her head as Flick hauled her phone out of her pocket to log onto the forum. “Don’t bother reading them; they aren’t worth the aggravation.”

Flick decided to take Pippa’s advice and shoved her phone away.

Pippa leaned back in her chair, her expression disgusted. “I’m already hating that forum. It’s so small town and it’s getting way too personal already. We’re going to have people slandering each other, getting really nasty.”

Flick bit her bottom lip. “Do you think so?”

“I know Mercy, and I know that everybody knows everybody’s business, and if they don’t, they feel free to guess about it. That’s one thing . . .” Pippa bit her lip. “But commenting on the fact that you spent the afternoon with Kai is a step too far. Soon someone is going to comment on an extramarital affair, on bad business dealings or an old feud, all behind a cloak of anonymity. It might be fun and funny now, but it’ll turn nasty—just watch.”

“I hope not.”

“Me too,” Pippa replied.

Flick thought about secrets and gossip and knew that a tsunami of talk would be generated when the town found out that their doyenne was a borderline hoarder and a shopping addict. The cupcake turned to dust in her throat and Flick had to swallow a couple of times to get the crumbs to move down her throat.

“Uh, Pips?” She was trying to sound nonchalant but suspected that she sounded like she was being strangled instead. “Did you ever find out why Gina had that receipt for that storage locker?”

God, she hoped she had. Then they could get this situation out into the open and she could stop feeling so damn guilty. And split in two.

“Haven’t had a sec,” Pippa replied. “I’m crazy busy at the moment and, really, I’m pretty sure it’s a clerical error. It’s way down on my list of things to do.”

Well, hell.

“Why are you asking?”

Flick lifted a shoulder. “Just curious.”

“If you want to give them a call, feel free,” Pippa said, pulling the receipt out from under a folder on the right-hand side of the desk. “You’d be doing me a favor.”

Flick stared down at the paper, wishing that she didn’t have to take it, knowing that if she did it was just another small deceit. Like her aunt’s piles of shoes and clothes, she was building her own heap of trouble . . . except that hers wasn’t tangible and, it had to be said, was a great deal less colorful.

“Are you okay?” Pippa demanded, waving the paper to get her attention.

Flick took the receipt and shoved it into her pocket. “Sure, why?”

“You’re acting weird.”

“Weird how?”

“Like there’s something you want to tell me but you don’t know how to.” Pippa leaned back in her chair and tapped the top of her pen against the edge of her desk. “The last time I saw you this edgy you were trying to tell me that you’d kissed Tommy Grant a couple of weeks after we broke up.”

Her cousin knew her too well. That was the problem with lying to someone who’d known you since you were in diapers together. Flick forced a smile to her lips. “I haven’t kissed any of your castoffs, Pips.”

Pippa sent her another searching look. “Good to know.”

“Not that you’ve had any castoffs lately,” Flick goaded her, trying to change the subject.

Pippa pointed at the door. “I have too much to do to sit here discussing my sex life . . . Get out.”

“You have to have a sex life to be able to have a discussion about it,” Flick teased, walking to the door.

“Who says I don’t?” Pippa called as Flick pulled the door closed behind her.

Well, damn. Did she? Unlike her, Pippa wasn’t a blabbermouth and rarely, if ever, spoke about her relationships. So a sentence like that was just mean, because she knew that not knowing would drive Flick crazy. She was tempted to go back in and demand some answers, but she reminded herself that she’d already dodged one bullet this morning.

There was only so much luck she could count on in a day.

***

On the other side of Mercy, Kai sat in his office, working his way through the pile of reports, audit statements, and correspondence that Sawyer thought he needed to see as part owner of Caswallawn. His butt had been plastered to the chair for a couple of hours and his brain was turning to mush.

He glanced at his watch. Five more hours and another ten piles of paper to work through and then he’d be on the road. Three hundred minutes to fight the temptation to call up that sexy baker to ask her to meet him at his house, or her house, or anywhere, for last-minute sex.

Flick had been generous and sexy and giving and, God, he really wanted a repeat performance. He wanted to taste that spectacular mouth again, feel those lips tickling his stomach, drifting down farther and taking him into that warm, wet mouth.

A sharp rap on his door kept that fantasy from developing and he looked across the room as Sawyer sauntered in. His friend dropped into the chair opposite him and rested his hands on the arms of the office chair, his fingers drumming the varnished wood. Since Sawyer was normally too laid-back to get worked up about anything, Kai frowned and leaned back in his chair.

“What’s up?” he asked.

“Problem,” Sawyer said.

“Okay. What?”

“I need some time off.”

An opportunity to needle Sawyer should never be wasted, Kai decided. “An irate husband? Cops on your trail? A pregnancy scare?”

Kai winced at the searing look Sawyer sent him. Sawyer was obviously not in the mood to joke. “Nothing like that. Doug’s landed his ass in jail again and I need to go and bail him out.”

Sawyer’s brother had been in and out of jail since his late teens and every year or two he’d do something stupid that would land him a short stint behind bars. “Where is he this time?”

“In Cincinnati. On the plus side, at least he isn’t shitting in my backyard this time,” Sawyer replied. Sawyer would never admit to it, but Kai knew that he’d been incredibly relieved that his family left Mercy a few months after they established Cas. From the little Sawyer had spoken about his past, Kai knew he had always been the voice of reason, the responsible one in the dysfunctional family.

“What was it this time? Possession? Petty theft?”

Sawyer rubbed his hand over his face and when he dropped his hands his eyes were bleak. “Rape.”

No way. Doug’s brain was scrambled from prolonged abuse of weed and coke but the guy was a more laid-back version of Sawyer, if that was possible. Women loved the Lawson brothers—a lot. Like Sawyer, Doug just needed to crook his finger and they hopped into his bed.

“Doug and rape? Impossible.”

“I spoke to some snotty detective who reminded me that rape is about power, not sex.” Sawyer stood up and walked over to his window. “He’s been accused, he admits to knowing her; apparently he can’t remember whether they fucked or not. There’s evidence that he did.”

“DNA?”

Sawyer nodded. “They did a rape kit. He also has two long scratches on his face where she scratched him. It doesn’t look good. How the hell do I tell my mom?”

Kai knew that Sawyer and Doug’s mom was bipolar, and that the stresses of day-to-day life were frequently more than she could handle. Hearing that her favorite son was in jail facing serious felony charges would put her right over the edge. His dad would deal with the situation by taking his bottle of Jack to his woodshed and drinking himself into a coma.

At times like these Kai thought it a blessing to be an orphan with no family ties.

“I thought that he was getting his shit together, that he was sober,” Sawyer said. “He’d been going to meetings, was trying to stay clean, but he said that he was high that night and doesn’t remember a damn thing.” He rolled his shoulders. “So, I need to take care of this.”

That was a given. “Of course. Go. Oz will hold down the fort while you’re gone.”

Oz, an ex-Marine, was Sawyer’s right-hand man in Mercy.

A small flicker of amusement lightened Sawyer’s eyes. “Except that he can’t. He’s leaving this afternoon for his annual vacation. He’s doing a eighteen-day tour of the great houses of Europe.”

Kai’s mind boggled at the thought of one of their most experienced trainers, a man tougher than Chuck Norris, six foot tall and nearly as wide, tiptoeing his way past fragile furniture and priceless objets d’art. He hoped he had insurance to cover any accidents.