All Chained Up

  A restless anger prowled loose inside him. He felt close to exploding.

  Uncle Mac called out to him from his chair, where he was watching Wheel of Fortune, “Everything go okay with the visit?”

  “Everything’s great,” he lied.

  His mood was dangerous. He wasn’t fit company. He should go for a run and work off some energy. Except he didn’t feel like running. He had another activity in mind. Activity that involved losing himself in soft eyes and wild caramel hair.

  He’d left Briar’s apartment two mornings ago and hadn’t seen her since. He knew he’d hear from her eventually. She’d have to let him know if she was pregnant. She would do that. She wouldn’t keep him in the dark. She was too honest, too good, not to let him know one way or another.

  In the meantime, until the matter was resolved he could see her. Be with her. As long as she was willing, he wasn’t going to deny himself.

  Oh, he knew she had her doubts. When she had opened the door for him last time, he read the wariness in her eyes, but he’d sent those reservations running. Kissing her and sinking his fingers into her heat, giving her the orgasm she so badly needed.

  And that was the truth of it. She needed what he could give her just as much as he needed to give it. And he planned on giving it to her until he had his fill.

  AFTER WORK, BRIAR parked her car and stared at her building in the early evening sunlight. She could see her balcony from where she sat. The aloe vera plant on the balcony looked a little wilted. She made a mental note to give it water. Tapping the steering wheel anxiously, she debated whether to go inside or keep driving. She didn’t have a destination in mine, but she could come up with something else to do.

  Going inside, where she would only have silent walls for company, didn’t appeal to her. Even with the TV on that was a lot of time alone with her thoughts.

  Knox hadn’t come over since two nights ago, and she told herself she didn’t want him to. She stopped herself from texting him or calling him. That would send out the wrong message. The only time she intended to text him was when she knew for a fact that she wasn’t pregnant. She’d be strong until then. She’d start listening to the alarm bells in her head and not give in to the urge to reach out to him.

  Deciding she couldn’t hide from her own home—­she wasn’t that pathetic—­she stepped out of her car, slamming the door after her. She winced at the sight of her dirt-­coated hood. It needed a good washing.

  Seized with sudden inspiration, she hurried inside and changed out of her scrubs into a pair of wind shorts and a T-­shirt. She collected a sponge, soap, and some old towels and headed back outside.

  Hopping back inside her car, she drove past the gas station where she had run into Knox. She shook off the memory of him and Cherry Garcia ice cream. She’d never be able to eat it again without thinking of him. Unfortunate. She’d have to find a new flavor.

  A few blocks past the gas station she pulled into an old outdoor do-­it-­yourself car wash. Growing up, Dad had bought both her and Laurel cars when they turned sixteen. It was part of his image. Giving so generously to his family. His daughters were an extension of himself, and they had to appear better than the average teenage girl rolling into the parking lot of Polk High School.

  In reality, the cars were just one more thing he would shout at them about. They didn’t drive them properly. Didn’t park in the driveway correctly. He insisted, of course, that she and Laurel keep their cars spotless. God forbid if the inside was a mess. She knew how to wash a car so that it passed her father’s eagle-­eyed inspection.

  She fished out enough spare change for ten minutes of water—­just for starters. Water was a precious commodity out here in the badlands. She tried to preserve when she could.

  Once the car was soaked, she began soaping it with the sponge, humming under her breath. She didn’t mind getting wet. It kept her cool. Even at five o’clock it was still warm.

  She paused and tried to shove several strands that had fallen loose back into the bun on the top of her head. Then she bent back over her car, standing on her tiptoes in her flip-­flops so she could reach as much of the roof as possible.

  A car honked driving past, the guys inside catcalling her. She sent a glance over her shoulder, satisfying herself that they weren’t stopping.

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  She yelped and whirled around, her back slamming into her wet car as she gawked at a very pissed-­looking Knox in front of her. She forgot that she held the hose in her hand. Water sprayed down the front of his big body. His hands came up to ward off the water.

  She lowered the hose. “What are you doing here?”

  He looked down at himself, his dark eyebrows drawing tight. “Getting soaked, apparently.”

  Her gaze followed his stare to his soaking wet shirt. It was plastered to his chest. She swallowed a suddenly dry throat, tracking the outline of every delicious muscled ridge and indentation.

  “You startled me,” she accused just as her water slowed to a weak drizzle and shut off, her ten minutes at an end.

  “I was driving by and spotted you. Hard not to when you’re sticking your ass out for every passing car to ogle.” His gaze dropped to her chest and his eyes darkened to slate.

  Her gaze dipped and heat scalded her face at the sight of her breasts. Her nipples poked through her bra and T-­shirt. She hunched her shoulders self-­consciously. Pointless, she supposed. He’d seen, tasted, and touched all of her.

  “I—­I’m washing my car.” She glanced out at the road. “Were you just driving by or . . .” She couldn’t finish the question. Was he coming to see her? presumed too much.

  “Something like that,” he murmured, dragging a hand down his dripping face. He turned and dug into his pocket. Pulling out more change, he turned and fed it to the ancient machine, adding more time.

  He faced her. A muscle worked in his cheek, feathering his bristly skin there. “The sooner we finish, the sooner every jackhole that drives past won’t drool over you like some piece of meat.” He picked up the soapy sponge and easily reached the roof of the car, covering all the areas that she could not reach. She watched, frozen for a moment as he washed her car. He cared that jackholes drooled over her? Even though she thought that an exaggeration, pleasure suffused her chest.

  He glanced back at her. “Come on. Water is running. Wash off the soap.”

  She blinked out of her daze and proceeded to rinse the soap off the gleaming hood. She followed in his wake, spraying off all the suds, her gaze repeatedly straying to him. She couldn’t help herself. She tracked the way his muscled body stretched and worked, walking purposefully around her car. The water finally stopped and she hooked the hose back into place. Opening her car door, she reached inside and tossed him one of the towels she’d brought. Grabbing the other one, she started rubbing her car dry.

  “You know there are car washes where ­people do this for you?” he asked.

  She grinned at him over the hood of the car. “I didn’t think you were the kind of guy to pay someone else to wash your car.”

  “I’m not. But I thought you were.”

  Briar worked her towel in fierce circles, fighting a grin. “You don’t know everything about me.”

  “So I’m learning.”

  Something warm unfurled in her chest at his deep voice. Did that mean he wanted to? No, no, no, no. She killed that thought and her budding smile. She couldn’t get her hopes up about this guy. Not him. He wasn’t anyone she could bring to Thanksgiving dinner. She couldn’t forget that fact.

  “For example,” he added, “are you a pepperoni kind of girl? Or do you like the works?”

  She paused and blinked at him over the car. He didn’t even look up as he worked to dry the rear window. “What do you mean?”

  “Pizza,” he elaborated, flicking her a glance that was faintly amused.


  “Oh.” Was he leading up to asking her out to dinner? “Who said I like pizza at all?” she hedged, her mind working feverishly. Did she want to go out with him? When she was so desperately fighting for distance?

  “It’s un-­American not to like pizza. Of course you do.” He crouched to dry her front fender without even looking up at her. Her breath caught as she watched the way the back of his T-­shirt hugged his flexing shoulders and back.

  “I like everything on my pizza,” she admitted. “The works.”

  He straightened. “Good. Me, too.” He stepped back and surveyed the car, making sure it was dry before looking at her again. “Think it’s all dry now.”

  She spared a cursory glance for the car, nodding. “Yeah. Thanks for the help.”

  “So how about that pizza?” Knox scanned her, his eyes stopping on her breasts. Her nipples reacted, hardening beneath his perusal. She pulled at her damp shirt self-­consciously and pressed her legs together against the sudden clenching ache. “Maybe we should order in,” he suggested.

  As in order pizza at her place? Where they would be alone? This had BAD IDEA written all over it. Would they actually eat? They only ever seemed to do one thing when they were alone together, and for the life of her she couldn’t think very clearly on why that wasn’t what she wanted.

  She cleared her throat. “Uh—­”

  “Have you eaten yet?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “Well, you gotta eat. Let’s go.” Decision made, he turned and strode to a motorcycle parked a few yards away that she hadn’t noticed before. He straddled the big machine. His big body on top of that beast of shiny chrome and metal made her girl parts melt and quiver. She watched him for a moment, her resistance dissolving to dust.

  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 fucking. 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.

  She looked down, met his dark-­rimmed blue eyes just as he shoved up inside her, his hardness filling her so completely her lips broke apart on a moan.

  He held himself still inside her, hands cupping her ass. Pinned between his big body and the wall, she inhaled deeply, her chest lifting as she tried to catch her breath. An impossibility. She felt swallowed up. Surrounded and invaded by every part of him. There was no separating her from him. Him from her. His gaze fixed on her, holding her hostage.

  She swallowed, searching for her voice, desperate
for him to move, to sweep her back to that place where she flew out of her body. Left her flesh and skin and bones behind. He pulsed inside her, his cock buried deep. She gulped for air, swallowing hard, fighting against the impulse to pant and make more embarrassing sounds.

  She stretched high against him, her hands clutching the taut curve of his shoulders as she tried to move her hips, but it was useless. He had her trapped between him and the wall.

  “Still say we can’t do this?” he challenged, holding himself agonizingly motionless.

  She writhed, desperate to move. To fuck. And the glint in his eyes told her he knew that. He was playing with her, using her desire against her.

  She whimpered, hating how easily her body turned on her. Hating herself for being so weak. Her face flushed hot. She nodded drunkenly. “Yes! We can, okay!”

  “Can what?” His voice flayed like a whip. The laser focus of his eyes cut deep into her, striking bone. “Say it, Briar.”

  “We can . . . we can fuck.”

  He cocked his head to the side as if to say not good enough. He gave the barest pump of his hips, but that drag of their skin together shot sensation to every nerve in her body. “You sure?”

  “Damn it, yes,” she hissed, her nails digging into him as she strained to lift up and ride him.

  It was what he had been waiting for. Her unflinching consent. Her total surrender.

  “Remember that,” he growled, his fingers flexing on her ass. “Then we won’t have to have this conversation again.”

  She nodded, even knowing some of her should bristle at the command in his voice, at his total domination of her, but in that moment she didn’t care. She wanted to be dominated by him.

  He pulled out and thrust back inside her, finally unleashing himself, giving her what she wanted. What she needed. And he didn’t stop. Filling her, pushing and pulling, rocking against her. She slid up and down the wall from the force of his thrusts.

  “OhGodOhGodOhGod,” she sobbed, wrapping her arms around his shoulders, clutching him tightly and burying her face in his neck.