All Chained Up (Devil's Rock #1)(48)

Nodding dumbly, she climbed into the driver’s seat of her car. Her gaze flicked several times to the rearview mirror, watching as he followed her to her condo and doing her best to ignore the fluttering in her stomach. She sucked in a calming breath, convincing herself that this was just pizza. If that’s all she wanted, then that’s all it would be. It didn’t have to be like last time. No one had to get naked.

She parked and got out as he pulled in beside her, shutting off the bike’s loud engine and swinging off his bike. They walked up the steps to her condo, his steps a heavy thud that matched her pulse. This was just dinner. This was just dinner. Maybe she should establish that once they got inside.

Unlocking the door to her apartment, she stepped into the welcoming blast of air-conditioning and dropped her keys on the counter. She moved into the kitchen, plucked her favorite pizza place menu off the refrigerator and called in, staring conveniently at the menu in her hand, not looking up at the man who seemed to make everything inside the apartment smaller. The air felt thicker as she ordered. When she hung up, she turned and gasped to find him right in front of her. She inhaled and smelled the damp heat of his skin. “They said thirty minutes.”

He nodded, still staring at her in that devouring way of his. She swallowed and stepped around him, escaping the narrow space of her kitchen. Walking backward, he still followed, looking all at once leisurely and predatory.

She gestured toward her bedroom. “I—I’m going to take a quick shower before the food gets here.”

She’d backed away as much as she could, finally stopping when she came in contact with the wall and could go no farther. He stopped a few inches in front of her and her hand shot out, flattening against his chest. She resisted the instinct to curl her fingers against the shirt perfectly molded to him. To feel his skin. The thud of his heart.

He glanced down at her hand and back up to her face, one dark eyebrow arched.

“We can’t,” she breathed.

“We already have,” he countered, his tone even and reasonable and so deeply tempting it sent a shiver down her spine. “Several times.”

“It doesn’t mean we should. Again.” Was that strangled voice her own? It sounded pathetic even to her ears. Hardly convincing.

He angled his head, something glinting in his eyes. He stepped forward until his chest pushed against her breasts and all the air left her in a rush.

“And why shouldn’t we? Again?”

His question rattled around in her mind like a marble flying through a pinball machine. Why? Why? She was having trouble coming up with a coherent answer. She’d possessed reasons enough earlier, but she just couldn’t think of a single one anymore. And that’s pretty much how it was around him. Briar ceased to think.

“It just complicates things, blurs l-lines . . . boundaries.” Sweet Jesus. She was rambling.

A dark shutter fell over the blue of his eyes. “Suddenly so concerned with slumming it? No one has to know, Nurse Davis. I promise I’ll keep your dirty little secret between us.”

“It’s not like that at all,” she hotly denied.

“Isn’t it?” He shrugged. “I’m okay with that. It’s actually not complicated. It’s called f*cking. That’s what we’re doing here.”

She gasped and she didn’t know why. She should expect bold language from him by now. She knew he was all rough edges. Nothing soft or malleable to him.

His mouth grazed her ear. “So I say let’s get this out of our systems.” The back of his hand trailed down her front, brushing over her aching breast. She whimpered as his hand continued its descent.

His voice continued, too, languid and deep as warm honey rolling through her. “We can keep scratching that itch of yours.” His blunt-tipped fingers slid under the elastic waistband of her wind shorts, under the thin fabric of her panties and straight between her legs.

Knox palmed her, flexing his hand over her sex like he owned it. And she supposed he did. One touch and she was putty, completely at his mercy.

He bit down on her ear, and her knees threatened to buckle. They would have if not for his grip between her legs. “You know the itch I’m talking about. Back at the Rock, you wanted it from me then, too.” He stroked the wet seam between her legs, back and forth, back and forth, exerting a little more pressure with each sweeping pass of his fingers. “Every time you opened your mouth, every time you looked at me, this was between us. It was only a matter of time.”

Embarrassing little sounds escaped her. Noisy pants and choked gasps. She sealed her lips into a tight line and brought her hands up to his shoulders.

“Even though you couldn’t admit it, not even to yourself, you wanted me to give you this then.” He brushed her clit with the pad of his thumb and she cried out like someone lit fire to her flesh. “And you want it now.”

He followed the statement by easing his finger deep inside her. He curled inward, hitting that happy spot that she had thought nonexistent before him. She came apart, shaking all around him as a keening hum built in the back of her throat.

She bit her lip until she tasted the copper of blood. The slight pain didn’t even bother her. She welcomed it. Just another layer to the sensations overrunning her, waking her up all over again.

Her head fell back against the wall, lolling from side to side. She blinked, trying to clear the cloudy haze from her eyes. A swift breeze slid over her legs and she was vaguely aware that her shorts and underwear were at her ankles. A faint crinkle of a condom wrapper followed and then her feet lifted off the floor, her back sliding against the wall.