Hard Rules (Dirty Money #1)(24)

He moves back to my side, one hand squeezing my cheek while the other cups my sex. My lashes lower and I pant, only to gasp as he grips the lace and yanks. I am shocked, and somehow much more vulnerable without that tiny stitch of lace. “Shane, damn it, we’re outside.” I try to turn again, not sure why this moment sets me off.

He holds me, his hands bracing me front and back. “Easy, sweetheart.” His teeth scrape my shoulder, my eyes squeezing shut with the tightening of my nipples beneath the silk of my bra. “No one can see us and we’re on top of our city, the day we both reluctantly decided to call it home.”

“Home?” I rasp out, that word only one of the nerves he’s hit. And I say it. I don’t know why but I do. “I hate that word and I’m not like you. I had no choice.”

He turns me, pressing me against the railing, his big body in front of mine, his legs pinning my legs. “Why am I different? Because I have family? Because you don’t?”

“I do. I have an * brother just like you.”

“Then you know that having family that doesn’t give a shit about you is being alone.”

Damn it, my eyes prickle, and I look skyward. “Yes,” I whisper, turning my head, and wishing I’d kept my mouth shut.

He cups my face, forcing me to look at him, his thumb wiping away a stupid tear that makes me weak. “I don’t cry,” I say. “This is your fault. I don’t know how you made me feel this. I don’t even know what ‘this’ is and I don’t know you. We’re strangers.”

“Not anymore we aren’t.”

“Yes. We are.”

“You always have a choice,” he says, sideswiping me with the change of topic. I am shaking from yet more stupid adrenaline and whatever “this” is that I still don’t understand.

“No,” I all but hiss. “I don’t have a choice.”

“Why don’t you?”

“Everything or nothing, Shane. I said nothing. Stop trying to get into my head when I want out for just one night.”

His eyes glint, a mix of hard steel and more of that blue fire. “You want to forget everything else?”

“That was the whole point in this.”

He reaches down and grabs the top of my shirt and before I have any clue what he intends, he yanks, and the buttons fly here and there. I gasp, my hands flattening on his shoulders. “What are you doing?”

“Making you forget.” He reaches around me and unhooks my bra, dragging it from my shoulders, and tossing it aside. I am left all but naked, when he is not. This realization shakes me. He shakes me and exposes pieces of me I don’t want exposed. I try to hug myself but he gently catches my wrists.

“Emily,” he says softly, and again he’s made it sin and seduction.

“Shane,” I whisper, and somehow the rest of the world fades, and he’s grounded me in the moment. All of my old demons fade into the darkness of my past.

He seems to know when it happens. Maybe it shows in my face. Maybe he feels it in my energy, but then, and only then, does his gaze lower, raking over my breasts, a touch that isn’t a touch. My body reacts, nipples tightening, breasts heavy, and the dampness that was on my panties, is now slick on my thighs.

“You’re beautiful,” he murmurs, more gravel to his tone, and when he looks at me, I see the gray steel of demand and dominance, but there is also enough blue fire to burn me inside out. “And so damn sweet,” he adds. “It’s sexy as hell.”

“Sweet is not what I want to be,” I say, translating it to the pushover that got me into this mess I’m in. “It’s not what I am.”

He leans in close and inhales deeply. “You smell sweet.” He cups my face, and he caresses his lips over mine, once. Twice. His tongue flickers past my teeth, a quick tease that has me wanting more before he adds, “You taste sweet.” He presses my hands to the railing behind me, holding them there, his cheek settling against mine. “I want you, Emily. And I’m going to have you. On my lips. On my tongue.” He nips my earlobe, sending a shiver down my spine as he adds, “On my cock, riding me and thinking of nothing else but me.”

His words, his promises, ripple through me like a touch, my fingers curling under his touch, around the bar. I am wet. I am aching in every place he is not and I want him to be, and I reach for him, only to have him catch my hands and hold them over the railing.

“Don’t move your hands from that railing unless I tell you to or I will stop whatever I’m doing no matter how good it feels. Understand?”

“Yes,” I whisper, and just like that, I’ve given him what I swore I’d never give a man again: control. But it’s unexplainable when I have been conditioned to believe my control is what protects me, and my lack of control is responsible for every one of the many mistakes in my life. It’s not just what he wants. It’s what I want too.





There are three sides to every story. Mine, yours, and the truth.



—Joe Massino





CHAPTER SIX


SHANE


Emily’s agreement is all about one thing. Trust. Something I don’t give or take lightly. Nor am I a stranger to the need to escape, and I’m not sure Emily is either. I just don’t think she’s as good at it as I am. And normally for me, that escape is f*cking hard and fast, and getting it out of my system. But nothing about this night, or Emily, has hit the spots I know as familiar. They are simply the spots I need.