Unbreakable (City Lights, #2)(94)

His eyes widened slightly beneath the soft rainfall of the shower as my words sunk in. “You don’t have to.”

“Of course I don’t.” I laughed but it tapered away. “I want to. Tonight, I want to do everything.” I ran my hands over his shoulders and let them trail down to rest on his broad chest. I laid a kiss there, on that little white scar on his pectoral muscle where the EMT had stabbed him. “Do you want me to?”

A muscle in his jaw twitched. “It’s been a long time…”

I grinned, emboldened by his desire. “I’ll take that as a ‘yes.’”

I pushed him gently against the shower wall, taking him in, riveted, watching the water meander over the cut lines and planes of his body. God, that’s a man. His muscles were beautifully sculpted by years of lifting and hauling and building things with his own hands. And those hands…rough with callouses that chafed my skin pleasantly when he touched me. His tattoos were dark swirls and whorls, accessories that enhanced the masculine sexiness of him. Santa Muerta glared at me from the black depths of her rose-lined face.

He’s mine, I told her silently, and then knelt to make the thought a reality.

I did my best to pleasure him and my heart soared to hear Cory’s breath quicken, then come in harsh gasps. At the end, he hesitated but I let him know I wasn’t shy. I took him to the edge…and then over. He tensed and shuddered and I didn’t let go until he was spent.

Then I turned my face to the water, basking, as if I’d had my own release. In a way I had. It felt so good to hear the sounds of a man’s pleasure and to know that I had created them.

My satisfied smile turned to a surprised yelp as Cory hauled me to my feet, lifted me, and carried me out of the shower, pausing only long enough to shut off the water.

“What are you doing?” I laughed. He laid me down on my bed with a feral grunt. “What…?”

My words trailed into a moan as he pushed my knees apart and put his mouth between my legs, stealing my thoughts and replacing them with that shocking, intense pleasure that left room for nothing else.

“It’s later,” he growled and I gladly, eagerly, gave myself up to him in that moment and all the hours of the night.





Chapter Thirty-Four


Alex



Morning light fell across my face and I opened my eyes to an empty bed. Despite how we had spent the night bringing each other to ecstasy again and again, Cory had made good on his promise to never sleep in my bed. I slipped out in the earliest part of the morning, and I didn’t sleep a minute after he’d gone.

The pleasure that had wracked my body for every moment of the night lingered, like a fading heat, and I fought to hold onto it. Soon it would be gone and I’d be left as cold as the sheets, as cold as I was when it was Drew who shared my bed.

Drew…

Hot tears sprang to my eyes but I willed them back angrily. “You don’t get to cry,” I muttered. “Not now. It’s too late now.”

Then anger ripped through me that I should feel guilty for wanting—and getting—what should have been part of a normal, healthy relationship. But that, too, faded quickly.

You should have broken up with Drew first.

The thought made me queasy. I had spent six years building a life with him and now I was supposed to throw it away? Because I was too selfish to control myself?

I was about to bury my head under my pillow and wait until some semblance of composure found me, but I heard a voice. Voices. Men’s voices.

I threw off the covers and slipped, naked, to the bedroom door, to listen. Cory was talking to someone. I cracked the door and the voices became distinct.

Cory was talking to Drew.

Dread slipped down my spine. In a panic, I threw on some clothes. But before I tore out of the room, excuses at the ready, I stopped. There was no hiding it. It would be beneath me—beneath all of us—to try to pretend like it was something other than what it was.

“Face it like a grown woman,” I muttered and opened the door, feeling as though a firing squad awaited me.

I found Drew and Cory chatting about furniture refinishing with a terrible, forced enthusiasm. Cory looked like someone battling back a migraine, his face was so hard and drawn, and Drew was wearing his best Client Face. The mask he wore when he had to make nice with someone whom he disliked. Intensely. The tension in the air was like an unbearable fog and I stepped right into it.

“Drew,” I said and inwardly cringed at how much guilt could be infused in one syllable.

Both men turned to me, Cory muscular and light haired, and Drew slender and dark, as if they had been crafted from opposite molds. Cory’s eyes were filled with unspoken words, though if they were recriminations against me or gentle words of support, I couldn’t guess. His expression was inscrutable.

“Cory was just telling me about how you helped arrange for him to keep his daughter in the city,” Drew said, moving to me and giving me a peck on the cheek.

I stiffened, certain he could smell Cory all over me. “What are you doing here?”

“I dropped by to see if you wanted to get some brunch.”

Unlike Cory’s, I could read Drew’s thoughts as if they were as big and bold as the Hollywood sign.

He knows…Then I scoffed. Of course he knows. He’s not an idiot. He’s being polite, trying not to make a scene.