Up in Smoke Read online

  “We’ll make room.” His voice rang with intensity. He didn’t come to her, though, appearing rooted to the spot. “I’m in love with you, Erin. Get used to me looking at you like I mean it.”

  She swallowed the king-size knot in her throat. “Thank you for bringing me here.”

  He took a step in her direction, stopping at the very edge of the box. “Remember this if I ever do something to disappoint you. Remember that I’d give you everything you can see from this window if I could. Everything.”

  He didn’t mean buildings, cars, or rivers. No, he meant a place to soar. To get away if she needed to. He’d brought her here to show her he wouldn’t fence her in. He’d set aside his controlling nature to give her what he thought she still needed. Erin closed the distance between them, bringing them toe to toe. His Adam’s apple worked in his throat the closer she came, eyes sliding closed. She placed a hand over his heart, trailed it up his neck and into his hair. “I don’t need it anymore. I only need you.”

  “Christ, Erin. I need you, too.”

  Yes. He did. And somehow to her that meant more than “I love you.” It meant she finally had a place. Someone who not only found her worthy of love, but capable of holding his heart. She took his hand and led him back toward the elevator, leaving behind the most beautiful escape she’d ever encountered without a single glance. A group of French tourists entered the elevator at the same time, but when Connor pulled back, silently suggesting they wait for the next car, she shook her head.

  They boarded the elevator with the group, retreating to their own corner in the back. Instead of waiting for Connor to press her up against the wall again, she took control, feeling so empowered her blood heated and snapped in her veins. With a firm hand on his chest, she nudged him back and aligned their bodies. More people piled onto the elevator at the last minute, forcing them even closer together. Connor’s eyes fell to half mast, a complete contrast to what she could feel rising in his pants.

  After the words they had just exchanged, keeping her hands to herself felt like sacrilege. They should be kissing. More, their bodies should be connected. It was obvious from Connor’s muttered curses, he felt the same. Remembering the way he’d taken her to the brink with only a few touches on the way up, a hint of wickedness crept into her already-rushing blood and carried her away. Hoping none of the animated tourists were paying them any attention, she reached for the hem of her shirt and drew it up, revealing her braless breasts. Because of their position, Connor was the only one who could see what she’d exposed, but his reaction could make or break the situation. Apart from the accelerated rise and fall of his big chest, the subtle flare of his nostrils, he showed no reaction.

  She reached up and locked her wrists behind his neck, lifting her breasts. Her distended nipples glided over the soft material of his shirt, and she felt his erection grow stiffer against her belly. Muscles she didn’t even know she had tightened in response. This spontaneous plan to drive him crazy was backfiring. All she could think about was climbing his sturdy male body and riding his hardness until relief sent her spiraling.

  Connor dipped his head to growl against her ear. “What did I say about teasing?”

  “Not to do it,” she whispered into his hair, smiling when his whole body shuddered. “I’m not teasing, though. I’m showing you how bad I’d like you to fuck me.”

  “Christ.” He scanned the elevator with a glare before returning his eyes to her. Again, he spoke for her ears alone. “Put your hand on my cock and say that again.”

  A renewed dose of excitement assailed her. Without hesitation, she removed one of the hands locked behind his head and dragged it down his chest, over his belt buckle to cup his hard length. Breath hissed out from between his teeth. She stroked him once, twice, entranced by the way his hips rolled in perfect unison with her touch. “I’d like you to fuck me.”

  “You’d like or you’d love it?”

  “Love it.” She swallowed a gasp when he closed his teeth around her ear. “Please, baby.”

  As always, when she called him that, his eyes darkened like thunderheads. “Cover yourself, then. Because as soon as we get off this elevator, my only goal will be to find a dark place where I can get my cock beneath that skirt and fuck you blind.”

  On cue, the elevator doors pinged open behind her. The dark promise in Connor’s eyes was so distracting, she almost forgot to pull her shirt back into place before turning around, a fact that didn’t go unnoticed by Connor if his growl was any indication. She’d only taken two steps when her hand was swallowed by Connor’s and he started striding toward the building’s exit with her in tow. Only his profile was visible, but his rigid jaw didn’t welcome conversation. Thankfully, she didn’t have shit to say at the moment. She had just crossed the line from aroused to out-and-out desperate. How was it possible to need him this bad when he’d been inside her a matter of hours ago? She didn’t know. Didn’t care. She could only follow Connor and hope he found some way to make it better.

  When they exited the building, he headed in the direction of his car, but turned a corner when they were still a block from the parking garage. After half a block of walking at a fast clip, she saw his destination. An older-looking movie theater lit up a small section of the side street, boasting action flicks from the eighties and nineties. Die Hard and Death Warrant were missing letters up on the marquee.

  Connor stopped at the ticket counter and tossed a twenty through the slot. “Two for Death Warrant.”

  As soon as the tickets passed under the glass partition, Connor snatched them up and led her into the theater lobby. Apart from one senior citizen leaning against the concessions counter reading a newspaper, they appeared to be the only people with a pulse in the entire building. Connor nodded at the man and led her down a dim hallway, entering the last theater on their right.

  One man sat by himself in the front row of the theater, barely bothering to look up as Connor and Erin bypassed him on their way to the back row. The movie was already in full swing, loud grunts and punches connecting with flesh signaling the fact that they’d walked in on a fight scene. Connor sat down in a seat just off the aisle and pulled her down onto his lap. She tried to capture his mouth for a kiss, but he spun her around until she faced the screen. The movement was so quick, she had to grip the seat in front of her for balance. Big hands closed around the hem of her skirt and yanked it up, leaving it bunched at her hips, before he drew her back against him. With only a thong separating her from Connor’s jeans, she could feel his thickness, pressing up between the cheeks of her bottom.

  “Goddammit, Erin. It’s never enough.” He trailed his fingers up the inside of her thigh, stopping just short of her panties. “You tell me you’re in love with me, then beg me to fuck you. Are you testing me to see how much I can take?” His hand finished its ascent, cupping her womanhood like a precious work of art, kneading the flesh gently. “All of it, Erin. All of it. But when you make me feel so damn much, I only know how to channel it one way. I don’t know how to make love. You deserve that, dammit.”

  “I don’t know how, either.” She turned her head to meet his gaze. His serious expression tugged on the newly minted strings in her chest, but the gathering tension centered between her legs overrode everything. If he didn’t give her what she needed soon, she’d expire. Hoping to entice him, she took the hand that wasn’t occupied and slid it beneath her shirt, where it immediately clung to her breast. “Maybe fast and hard is just the way we make love, baby. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

  His breathing grew shorter as she started to work her hips on his lap. “I need to give you what you deserve. You’re not everyone else. You’re mine.”

  A thread of gravity in his tone told her to pay attention. He needed something here just as badly as she needed him. She had two people to think about now. Not just herself. “You want to try to go slow?”

  The only answer he gave was to reach between them and undo his pants. He pushed them low on his
hips and took out his erection with a gritted curse. Once again, he dragged her on top of his hardness and used a hand on her hip to circle her body. “Let me see how ready you are.” Rough fingers slipped beneath the waistband of her panties, two pushing inside her. Erin barely managed to hold back a sob as he held them deep. “Always wet, this delicious pussy. You were made to be filled up, weren’t you, sweetheart?”

  “Yes,” she moaned softly. “By you.”

  He bit down on her shoulder, just enough to make her whimper. “From now on, that’s a given. It will always be me, Erin. Every fucking time.”

  She could only live in her anticipation as he hooked both arms beneath her knees and lifted her off his lap. His erection prodded the inside of her thigh, hot and insistent. So close. He was so close to being inside her. “Oh God, please.”

  “Reach back and guide me in where I belong.”

  Erin was all but frantic to obey his firm command, trailing her hand down his ripped stomach to seize his huge erection. Physically incapable of waiting another second, she took his plump head inside her and slid down, impaling herself. Completion. Finally. Even though her body throbbed for relief in a hundred different places, demanding she move, it felt like she’d been reunited with her other half.

  Connor let loose a string of curses at the back of her neck before wrapping her hair in his fist and jerking her head back until it met his shoulder. “Feel my cock inside you?” He maneuvered his hips back and forth. “My heart beating at your back? It’s all yours, Erin. I fucking love you and it’s all yours.”

  “I love you, too,” she breathed against his bearded cheek. “So much.”

  “Show me.” His grip tightened in her hair. “Show me with your body.”

  When he released her hair, Erin shot forward and anchored her hand on the seat in front of her. She found herself wild with the need to follow his instructions. Before, she’d been curious about the pleasure obeying him seemed to give her. Now, in this moment, she’d embraced it. Decided to live for it. She swiveled her hips and gloried in his groan. That’s right, baby. I own you as much as you own me.

  His desire to go slow had her setting a deliberate pace, rocking her hips up and grinding back down. It was an X-rated lap dance that caused the inferno inside her to rage out of control. The fingers digging into her waist turned bruising. But she could feel him behind her, daring her to quicken her pace when he hadn’t given her permission. Clutching the seat for dear life, she tossed her hair over her shoulder and sent him a look that held nothing back. Maintaining the scorching eye contact, she danced on the tip of his arousal, lowering herself with painstaking slowness. A returned dare. At the very base, she jerked her hips forward and watching his jaw slacken.

  One masculine hand dipped between her thighs, the heel of his hand placing exquisite pressure over her clit. He leaned forward to chafe her sensitive neck with his bearded jaw. “I will kill for this pussy. Kill for the right to continue ownership of it. Nod if you understand how serious I am.” He made a satisfied noise when Erin nodded. He slapped her sensitive flesh, sending devastating vibrations through her core. “Now fuck me like you mean it.”

  She braced her hands on his knees and started to ride, rebounding off his hard thighs after each fulfilling descent. Oh God, it felt so damn perfect. The slide of hard flesh into delicate. Big into small. On the movie screen, she vaguely registered a shoot-out taking place, so loud that she gave in to the urge to moan. Her thighs slapping down on his rougher, more muscular legs joined the sound only to be drowned out by the movie’s volume. “Oh please, oh please, oh please,” she chanted under her breath as a quickening began in her middle, twisting with the promise of pleasure.

  Connor scooped his hands beneath her knees and jerked them against her chest, leaving her body folded in half, ankles in the air. Still, she didn’t stop writhing. She couldn’t. Relief was too close. So close she could already feel tremors beginning at the tops of her thighs. When Connor began to piston his hips, slamming her down on his thick erection with each upward thrust, her eyes rolled back into her head and she lost all sense of the present. “If you say please, you say it to me. Use my name.”

  “P-please.” Her voice shook. “Connor.”

  He licked Erin from neck to ear, making her feel dizzy. When he drew away to blow cool air on the damp trail he’d left, she turned with a shiver to find him watching her work his lap with an expression of ecstasy. “Jesus, that body doesn’t quit. Hips bucking, thighs spread wide. Working so hard for your orgasm, aren’t you?” His hand smoothed over her ass, gave it a stinging slap. “One stroke between your legs and I could take care of that, sweetheart. You’d come all over my lap.”

  Her head fell back and she stared blindly at the ceiling as she continued to ride, but couldn’t help casting the occasional heated look behind her. He’d sprawled out like a king, fists resting on his head as he watched her under hooded eyelids. He was so fucking hot it made her teeth clench with the need to bite him. Every time she wrung a groan from his throat, it felt like a victory. No one can please this man like I can.

  With release hanging so closely in the balance and him acting so sure of himself, she felt the need to remind him of that. Her lips tilting at one end, she swung her feet up and wedged them against the seat in front of her. That added leverage allowed her to take him deeper with each undulation of her hips. Connor’s hands flew to her thighs, punishing them with a white-knuckled grip as he groaned. But she wasn’t finished. She reclined against his chest and reached up to wrap both arms around his neck, drawing his attention to the straining nipples beneath her shirt. One scrape of her teeth against the underside of Connor’s jaw and his breath began to rasp in and out, encouraging her without words to work her hips faster.

  “Oh, fuck. Fuck. You’re killing me.”

  “But I only want to please you,” she rasped, licking the perspiring skin of his throat. “Fill me up, baby. Mark me as yours. Give me everything.”

  Her words hit their mark. Less than a second later, she found herself pushed forward and bent over the theater seat as Connor’s length pummeled her wet flesh. His coarse fingers found the sensitive bud between her thighs and flicked it once, twice, before he gave her what she needed and rubbed it with tight circles. Finally, the climax crested over her and bathed her in mind-numbing sensation, drawing every ounce of energy to her surface and depleting it in degrees, leaving her shaken. Connor wasn’t far behind, burying his teeth in her shoulder as he rammed home and came with a growl of her name.

  She had no idea how long they stayed like that, his heaving chest pressed to her back, but she loved every moment of it. It felt like they’d been through a battle and come out stronger than before. When the air conditioner began to cool the sweat on her skin and she shivered, Connor fixed her clothing and drew her down onto his lap, both of her legs slung over one of his thighs. He tucked her head under his chin and massaged the back of her neck with his thumb.

  “This is my first movie in a theater.”

  His thumb stilled on a curse. “No. Please don’t tell me that. It’s fucking Death Warrant.”

  She yawned, noting the bullets once again flying across the screen. “I don’t know. I think it kind of suits us.”

  He sighed and closed his arms around her. “I’ll do better next time. A comedy or something. Popcorn, too. All right?”

  Erin fell asleep smiling.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Connor swiped a hand over his jaw and checked the urge to call Erin’s cell phone. She’d left the surveillance van ten minutes ago to get coffee for the team. How long did it take? It had only been one day since he bought her the phone, but she still assumed it was someone else’s phone every time it rang. They were working on it. He’d offered to go in her stead, but suspected she needed the breathing room. With six of them crammed into the back of the van, he could tell she’d felt claustrophobic. Not to mention, he’d needed the opportunity to catch Derek’s ear. This shit with Erin�
�s stepfather would be straightened out immediately. Tonight. But if the unexpected happened and something went wrong, he needed to make sure Erin would be okay.

  His plan had been to pay a visit to Luther last night, but she’d distracted him. If he’d suspected she was doing it on purpose, he would have called her on it. But no, she’d been…glowing. Walking around the apartment in one of his old Yankees T-shirts, feeling her way through mundane tasks like they were new experiences. Cooking dinner, taking a shower. All things she had done before, but there was a noticeable difference. Her edginess had fled, to be replaced with wonder and optimism. Jesus Christ, he couldn’t have pried himself away if he wanted to. He’d appeased himself with the reasoning that nothing could happen to her as long as he was there to protect her.

  After they’d showered off the day and changed, he’d lain down on the couch. He’d pretended not to see her watching him thoughtfully from her perch on the kitchen counter. After a minute, she’d hopped down and prowled toward him quietly, so light on her feet he wouldn’t have heard her approaching if every cell in his body wasn’t acutely attuned to her. She’d looked so young and fresh with her damp hair and bare legs, his throat had hurt. Very slowly, she’d climbed over him on the couch and settled in against him, tucking her feet between his calves. He swore he’d held his breath as she relaxed little by little, sighing into his chest.

  Yeah, they might have slept in the same bed before, but there had been a note of tension. Worry over how she would cope. Anxiety that he’d wake up and find her having a panic attack. This had been different. Simple human contact that would have been anything but simple weeks ago. She not only trusted him, she trusted herself, and it was extraordinary to watch. Of course, he’d only managed about twenty minutes of her mouthwatering curves nestled against his before reversing their positions and tonguing her pussy through three sobbing climaxes. Hearing her cry out that she loved him had made it a thousand times sweeter, because he knew she meant it.