Perfect Gravity (Wanted and Wired #2)(43)
“Maybe what we need, actually, is a bit more chitchat. And a bit less fucking.” He shifted his weight, lowering her slightly, like he was about to disconnect them. She flicked the pad of her thumb over the head of his cock, and he damn near came on her hand. Shitfuckgoddamn. But he inhaled, slammed his eyes shut, and worked the hell through it. Took a few seconds, but he got steady.
Disbelief froze her mouth into an O, then she snapped, “Impossible to do less of a thing you aren’t doing. Or not yet doing. Who are you, and what have you done with my Kellen?”
“That’s kind of what I’ve been telling you, sweetheart. I ain’t that guy.” You sent him away, or did you forget? He’d been disposable. Fuck-boy. Convenient. Nothing more than a rung for her pretty foot on her epic climb to the top. It did occur to him that he was being cruel, but goddamn it, so had she been. “You want my dick in your drawers and my mouth on your sweet spot, princess, I will require some wooing.”
“I distinctly heard you tell all those people at the table—the people you call family—that you were taking me to bed.” She stroked. Jesus. “I believe this is what you would call lying like a rug.”
“I said I was takin’ you to your bedroom.” Temptation shaved pieces off his will.
“That’s exactly what you said, and your intentions could not have been clearer,” Angela argued, getting her debate on.
“Well, but after that, Yoink and your husband decided to come along to watch. Gotta say that damped my want-to some.”
She huffed a breath against his throat. “Look. I kicked them into the corridor. Pressed the emergency stop. Problem solved.”
“It ain’t that easy.”
“Yes, it is.”
“I ain’t that easy.”
She tested her tongue against her upper lip then drew it back inside. “Are you saying you don’t want me?”
No, you insufferable woman. I will want you as long as there’s breath in this body, blood in these veins. And then I will love you longer still. “I’m saying we need to slow this down. Let me get to know you again. You said you wanted time. Well, let’s take some.”
“I could slide down your body right now, lick you into my mouth, and make you come.”
And every cell in his body knew what that would be like. “Could you? Could you really do that to me, sweetheart?”
She went downright pale. He’d hit a raw nerve, apparently. Not the possibility that she wasn’t alluring enough but the threat that if she kept on, she’d hurt him, maybe break him. She hadn’t worried about such nuances, back when. The Angela in his arms right now was different, older. Kinder.
Shit, he might have just fallen more in love with her. Not a good thing.
Her ankles unhooked themselves, and her legs slid down the outsides of his thighs. She tucked him back into his jeans, resealed the seam. He eased her down the wall until her feet touched the floor. When he stepped back, still breathing too hard, still aching until he wanted to howl, he watched her smooth her skirt, check her cuffs. She pressed a palm to one cheek. Testing for blushes?
What had he just done? What had she? His mind was spinning too fast, out of control, knocking against the edges of his heart, and every collision hurt like hell.
This. This was why he hadn’t wanted her to come here. Not because of a grudge or bad memories. Not because he didn’t want her safe. Sure as hell not because he didn’t want her.
But rather because he so very much…did.
Chapter 8
That was the last time she was going to let herself be alone with him. Swears. She had some discipline, damn it. She could control herself. Most of all, she could control how others saw her. She was a master of that bullshittery. In the days that followed the incident in the elevator, she polished her persona till it fucking shone.
Data from Kellen’s biomechanical critter spies—most of which, she was disgusted to learn, were in fact rats—showed a singular lack of anything interesting. The air quality in the ruined Riu was pretty good. No radiation or odd chemical profiles. Somebody vaguely government-like was attempting to clean up the mess of the building site, but in a haphazard and desultory sort of way. At first she was pissed about that—shouldn’t they be trying to get in there and look for survivors?
But then mech-Daniel got firewall clearance for her gossip feeds—finally—and she understood why. Nobody had survived. That was the official word, parroted by news services and professional gossips alike. Comprehensive destruction, including the unconfirmed but almost certain death of Continental Senator Angela Neko and her husband, Daniel Neko, the classic film and emote-vid star.
On the steps of the Colina Capitolina, the new unified-state house in Denver, somebody had set up a shrine of ratty machine-printed teddy bears and plastic roses. Disaster-porn channels flooded with gruesome retrieval of body parts, some of which, presumably, were meant to be hers.
For the first couple of days, she expected Zeke to issue a statement denying the rumors. But he didn’t. She also sort of expected him to respond to her own communiqués. Again, silence. True, he was at the ass end of a very contentious election, but it wasn’t like he couldn’t spare five fucking seconds to message her. If he was spinning her fake death story to score votes, she was all right with that. She was even willing to help plan the postparty, when, after the victory speeches, a rescue was staged to miraculously “find” her, maybe trapped in the hotel garbage chute and surviving on leftover sugar skulls from Dia de los Muertos.