Tentatively touching his tongue to the seam of my lips, he waited for me to open to him. We shared a sweet tangling of tongues as I learned his taste and committed it to memory.
In all my life, I’d never experienced this kind of kiss. Any flings I had were quick and dirty pickups from whatever local bar I’d stopped into, and that was only when I needed that human connection. When he pulled back, leaving me with one more soft press of lips, something became glaringly obvious.
Rick Drew, for good or bad, had the power to destroy me.
14
Vienna
Running away seemed an ideal plan. I'd courted fire when I'd taken Merrick with me from the alleyway. I'd jumped into the flames when I invited him into my bed. Even before Fletcher erased the digital footprint of the man he'd been and helped build the scaffolding for the man he'd become, I'd already failed one of Daddy's most crucial life lessons.
Trust no one.
We could only trust each other.
Of course, that had been when Daddy was still with me. This past year without him had been—challenging. While becoming lovers seemed almost inevitable at this point, Rick hadn't pushed. In fact, that evening after we returned from Fletcher's, I'd left my bedroom door open so he could join me.
Instead of sex, though, he'd come in following his shower and changing into a pair of briefs to cuddle me. When he would have wrapped around me, he shifted until I was facing the door to my room and then he settled behind me. I always got the side closest to the door. I could have kissed him. The next morning, I woke to the smell of coffee brewing and Rick humming to himself.
Aside from a sweet kiss hello, and offering me coffee before we headed next door to the gym to workout and train, he'd made no further moves. The ball, it seemed, had lodged firmly in my court. The fact my nipples were peaked through the whole training session and that my hips would almost involuntarily arch each time he managed to pin me…
"You don't have to make it easy for me," Rick teased at one point, his big hands shackling my wrists and his expression alight with mischief. "I like it when you kick my ass."
"Well, if you insist," I answered his joking with a playful comment, rather than admit the fact I let him pin me so I can rub up against him. Maybe being blunt was the way to go, but I'd never felt so out of my depth before, and I needed some measure of control before I gave him any more ammunition. Twisting free, I used my legs to get a close arm hold on him and flipped him over.
The press of my bare foot to the side of his head sent a tingling sensation up my leg, where his hair brushed the sole of my foot.
"How?" Breathless wonder filled his voice, breathless wonder and a hint of pain. I loosened my grip immediately, not wanting to hurt him. "How did you do that?"
Rolling free of him, I curled my hand in invitation. "Pin me again and I'll show you."
The gleam of sweat on his brow, coupled with the sparkle in his cobalt eyes, and I swore my pussy clenched in anticipation. Yes, this was absolutely not giving him more ammunition.
Three hours and a very cold shower later—one he could have joined me in, but he'd just brushed my cheek with a kiss before turning to his own bedroom—I debated my next invitation with care. The icy spray had at least cooled my rampaging libido and the ping of a news article letting me know that an old target had resurfaced.
Again.
Dad and I had looked for ways to get at the Director of Children Services many, many times. The woman, Noel Warrick, was extremely well connected. More, she had a very public schedule and fronted a so-called charity organization. One we were damn certain was a front for a far less savory organization, and one the network had been known to protect.
It was one of the first times Dad admitted to me that he chose to be very selective in what he shared with the network. They were not angels of mercy, nor were they good guys working in the shadows. Most of them were simply businessmen and women, dealing with the seedier side of life for transactional purposes.
Weapons.
Identification.
Vehicles.
Body disposal.
Parts.
Corpses.
There were many parts of the network and I doubted any one person knew every single arm of it.
Still...
"Rick," I said, snagging his attention from where he worked on reviewing the folder of information Fletcher had put together for him. "Are you busy tonight?"