16
TUNNEL
“Okay, we’re mingling. Help me find Emmett.”
Wynn, Gina, and I roam the mazelike rooms inside the Tunnel with the smells of clay walls and sweat filling our nostrils along with perfume, cologne, and alcohol. Flashing lights and music hit us as we head toward the heart of the Tunnel, the “pit.” Wynn leads the pack while I trail behind, head turning as I look for him.
“Bet he’s there.” Gina points at a room to the right, which is filled to capacity, so I can’t even see past the wall of glittery dresses and skin at its fringes.
“Why there?”
“Hello? Where there’s smoke there’s fire? Where there’s Saint, there are GIRLS.”
Frowning at that, I wedge myself through to the busiest corner, and my heart stutters because there he is, the Guy Who Owns My Hormones. While Callan and Tahoe look good, Saint could be wearing a sign that says BRING EXTRA PANTIES.
Two women sit on each of his friends’ laps, and a pretty blonde socialite is talking to Malcolm, looking at him in complete rapture.
Music pulses through the speakers. Bodies bump and jostle as I steal this moment to watch him while he’s not watching me. Tan, his hair standing up a little bit, his shirt rolled to the elbows like it always is at the clubs, where it gets hot and crazy. God, butterflies.
He’s laughing as he turns, rather casually scanning the room, and then his shoulders tense. My heart stops, flips, because he’s noticed me. Then I’m subjected to the seriously uncomfortable pressure of his scrutiny.
He cocks a brow, and once again he gets that curl to his lip. You going to stay there all night? I can almost hear him say.
Saint sets his drink down on the side table and comes over. Every step makes my heart beat faster and faster. He looks at me, starting at my feet and working his way upward—his eyes miss no detail.
“Rachel.” He draws me into his strong arms and presses a kiss to my cheek, the brush of his lips so incredibly light I can’t believe such a minuscule gesture can do so many things to my body. I’m having a war inside myself as I try to steady my breathing as he takes my hand and tugs me to their table in the back. I was born a girl; I’ve got proof of that on my birth certificate. But I’ve never felt so much like a girl until this moment, when my hand feels tiny and fragile in his strong grip.
Callan and Tahoe greet me through the music. “Hey Rache!” “Hey Rache!”
I slide into the booth and Malcolm settles down beside me, his shirt stretching in so many places I can’t help feeling constrained in my own skin just by the sight.
He orders a drink for me, then sits back, looking as relaxed as I am tense. Something happened when he visited my apartment. The fact that it mattered to him if I was feeling well or not touched a chord, but also, he opened up to me in a way that surprised me, and, even more surprisingly, I opened up to him. We both shared things—real things. Now, the intimacy between us is so palpable right now that every inch of me aches to get closer, as close as we felt that night.
His arm outstretched behind me, his friends continue to banter and do wicked things to their whores with their drinks. “How was your week, Rachel?” At Saint’s question, a warm glow of excitement flows through my veins, because there’s real interest in his gaze.
“Good. My work is good. My mother’s good. I . . . well, I don’t want to bore you.” But I smile. I can’t remember when anyone’s looked so attentive listening to me describe what my week was like.
Then I ask him about his trip to London—because of course I read that he was there for forty-eight hours—and he says it was “good,” then shifts the subject back to me.
“What are you writing about now?” he whispers.
He’s always so focused on everything I say; people pass and slap his back or call his name, and never once does he lift his head to acknowledge anyone apart from me. Just as engrossed in him and having trouble steering away from dangerous topics, I hedge and say, “Researching for next week’s column.”
I notice one of his outstretched arms is farther down on the back of my seat, and think, My topic is you.
A painful yearning hits me dead center. Whoa. Where did that come from?
I glance down at my lap as I try to regroup. Why, oh why do these feelings of instability have to happen to me with you?
Is it because I want to draw you out when you get so serious and you’re not teasing me?
Or is it that you really want to know, for some inexplicable reason, the things that move me?
Or maybe it’s because you make me so nervous . . . or maybe, simply, because you asked?
I drag in a breath, aware of being watched through those thick lashes by those boundless, deep-set eyes, green like the forest, hiding all the secrets of somebody who’s never really reveals his cards until the game is won. Cunning eyes. Male eyes. Interested eyes. I want to shut myself up and not keep putting myself out there with him while he’s still giving me back hardly anything at all, but I can’t help wanting to answer him when he asks me questions. I glance at the dance floor and slowly rise to my feet, tugging his hand.
“Dance with me,” I tell him.
I’m sick and tired of wondering, stressing, wanting and fighting it. I’m tired of thinking, of trying not to feel. Suddenly all I want is to dance with him. An hour of fun, an hour of being just a girl with a guy.
He cocks a brow, says nothing . . . but he stands. He stands slowly, like a serpent uncoiling. I laugh and tug on his hand a little more to lead him to the connecting room, where the dance floor is. “Dance with me, Saint.”
His hand is large and long-fingered in mine as I tug him forward, and he lets me lead him, like a lazy wild animal indulging his prey before pouncing, and he steps onto the dance floor with me, his hands lifting to my hips. A fire churns inside me when I glance up to see the wicked tilt at the corners of his lips.
He watches me as I move sinuously under his hands, up and down and sideways, using him as a pole. A pole I want to kiss, just like any other girl, because it turns out I’m pretty human after all. He starts letting his hands roam up and down my sides, his eyes glinting like a devil’s. I take his hands and put them on my nape so he holds me close. My stupid head can’t think—my thoughts are all blanked. I want him naked, sweaty, out of his element, not smirking, not amused, definitely not in control.
“Is that the best you can do?” I taunt, surprised when he yanks me closer.
Then, with my hips in his hands, he moves me. Wow. He’s hard. All. Over. People jumping around us, bumping against us, Malcolm dances like his body is an extension of mine. He draws me against him with very little effort on his part, and the stubble of his jaw scrapes against my nape as he pulls my hair to the side and runs the silver rings on his hand up the column of my neck. I’m so shocked by the soft sensuality in his movements and touch, the stealth and ripple of his muscles against mine, how safe and excited I feel in his arms, I’m high on this feeling. On him. On this night. I’m stealing touches that might definitely be too close to the fire, but my hands have a mind of their own. Part of me is crazed. His lips were made to kiss, his hands to touch; that’s the sole purpose of his thick hair: for women to cling to while he pounds them hard. His eyes seem to offer peeks into heaven and into some kind of party in hell, and I’m maddened by it all.
I run my fingers up his shirt, around his square shoulders, savoring the rock-hard feel of his muscles. I couldn’t stop the way I want to touch him even if I tied myself up!
The song ends, and he takes my hand and leads the way back to the table. Beads of perspiration run down between my breasts. Dozens of stares come at us; nearly every woman in the room is surveying me, head to toe, most with expressions that tell me they want to claw my skin off.
I almost wince.
At the booth, Callan is relating Saint anecdotes to the socialite whores.
“Oh yeah, but Saint crushed those rumors.”
“Crushed!” Tahoe proudly echoes,
fist to palm.
Ignoring them, Malcolm pulls me into the booth with him and resumes his position with his arm on the backrest of my seat, his head lowered in my direction so I can feel his warm breath at the back of my ear. “Hey . . . look at me,” he coaxes as he slides his hand to my thigh and my thoughts scatter.
The touch sparks all my nerve receptors, all my yearning. I don’t know if it’s been building for minutes, hours, days, weeks, or my whole life, but I know I’m never aware of it unless he’s near. Ruled by impulse now, I turn around and lean a little against him. He shifts so that his arm is now loose around my shoulders, and shiver as his fingers wander under the fall of my hair. His friends are talking. Saint whispers in my ear, “You look very pretty.”
Suddenly my cheeks are burning and my stomach turns into a live thing.
The music stops and “Kiss You Slow” by Andy Grammer starts. He cups my face, his eyelids at half-mast. He kisses the corner of my lips.
The air feels like a lick of fire on my skin.
He gathers me tighter and flatter against his side, then drags all four of his silver-ringed fingers down the side of my face, his eyes following their path. “I’m with the hottest girl in the Tunnel tonight,” he murmurs as he rubs my lipstick off my mouth with the sexiest brush of his thumb I could imagine.
And there, in his beautiful eyes, is a wild desire mirroring the one inside me. Desire unlike anything I’ve ever known clogs my throat, drives me to gently nip his thumb. I shouldn’t be doing this, but I can’t stop. The song is talking about kissing slow . . .
My perspective zooms out for a little bit, and I become aware of his friends making out in their corner with their whores just like Saint is making out with me. Of my friends mingling out there, somewhere. Of people dancing, others glancing in our direction. And of my life, changing, right this moment, somehow, as he stares at my face, the colors in his eyes shifting like a kaleidoscope as he seems to battle with the same confusing emotions that I am.
He takes my hips and slowly guides me to his lap. I go all too willingly, loosening my body so he can sit me sideways while I clutch onto his neck for dear life.
“Do you want this?” he whispers as he reaches beneath my skirt and I feel the warmth of his hand caressing the inside of my thigh.
Heart violently fluttering in my chest, my fingertips slide up his neck as I try to press closer. His neck is hard and thick and I duck my head to smell him. Then I whisper recklessly in his ear, “I’m with the most handsome guy.”
“You fucking sly dog. You’re probably going to do some jousting later on with Rache, too!” Tahoe calls from his seat, lifting his wineglass at us while his floozy tries to readjust her dress.
Saint’s hand pulls out from my skirt, but he squeezes my thigh as he looks into my eyes regretfully. “Busy, T,” he growls. He levels Tahoe a look that could just about flay the skin off his bones.
I blow out a breath, remembering the images and the rumors already going around about me, only making my job so much more risky.
“Not here,” I tell him when I recover at least a little bit of my brain.
Making out in a club? Really, Rachel? With Saint?
Malcolm seizes my hips and helps me down off his lap.
“Hey, he really likes you,” Tahoe calls to me, wagging his eyebrows as Malcolm summons a waiter and asks for something that makes him rush away, only to come back and nod.
“Mr. Saint, follow me,” the waiter says.
Malcolm grabs his jacket from the bench and then takes me by the elbow, murmuring in my ear, “Come with me, Rachel.”
We’re led into a private room. There’s a table at the end with little electric candles. A wine bucket, two wineglasses, a vase with a single pink tulip, dimmed lights. The same song playing outside but far more intimate.
“Anything you need, Mr. Saint?” the waiter says, and when Malcolm pushes what looks like several bills into his hand, the waiter almost falls apart.
“Thank you,” Saint says. He guides me by the hand to the couch, and the waiter shuts the door with a soft, heart-dropping little click.
My legs can barely hold me but thank god, Saint sits me down. He shifts his toned, beautiful body so he can look at me. God. His eyes. I can’t even hold them with mine for more than a few seconds; my heart is pounding in my chest, my skull, between my aching legs.
“Malcolm . . .” I start.
He seems to have a one-track mind right now as we settle back on the couch, and he ducks his head and presses his lips to my neck. I moan and slip my fingers into his hair, feeling how thick and soft it is while a burning, boiling need circles around in my veins.
I shudder when his lips press to my pulse point. Then he’s tasting me with his tongue, slowly exploring the tender skin of my neck, and my toes are curling and my body’s trembling as he cups my breast in one hand and gently squeezes while he strokes his free fingers up my bare arm, up and down. “Are you okay with this?”
He leans back, lips curled as he looks at me, and when I nod, completely and totally breathless, he holds me by the back of the head and presses a slow kiss to the corner of my mouth. He’s gentle. Too gentle. Within a minute I’m too drunk, lust drunk, Malcolm drunk, to do anything but exist. Kisses. Touches. Kisses he sets on my ear. The corners of my mouth.
He slides his hand under my skirt again. “What are you wearing under there?” he husks out.
“Something.” My voice shakes with desire.
“Something you want to show me?” His lips curl again.
I’m helpless under his probing stare as he tugs my skirt up to reveal my panties. I don’t want to breathe, I don’t even want to live after this moment when he’s looking at me the way he is.
“Malcolm,” I plead, feeling all wanton and nervous.
“Shh,” he says softly as he takes a good look at my tiny, see-through lace panties, “I won’t hurt you. All I want is to look at you.”
“Only look?” I don’t know if I want him to say yes, no, I don’t know . . . what.
“And touch,” he coaxes. He draws my leg up to his hip and pulls me closer so that I half straddle him as his fingers skim the back of my knee. Suddenly a thousand nerve receptors awaken, so sensitive to the lightest pressure of his fingertips, I moan against his throat. When he pulls my hair up and ducks his head and uses his tongue on the side of my neck, I moan deeper . . .
Usually I’d expect him to head straight for my hottest, wettest spot, but this is one knowledgeable guy and he doesn’t do anything I expect him to. His lips press to my temple as he teases with his fingers up the back of my leg and then he grazes my inner thighs with his thumbs. My breath hitches, my nipples poking into my silk top and into his chest.
I arch my neck, pulling in deeper, faster breaths that smell of his cologne and intoxicate me. I think I just moaned his name. Using one hand, he slides a few fingers along the crotch of my panties.
“Tell me you want my fingers here,” he whispers. Against my temple, he’s smiling in obvious male delight because I’m absolutely wet already. I close my eyes and wrap my arms around his neck, and I imagine us naked, moving together.
He keeps one hand caressing my inner thigh and the back of my leg while he slides his other hand under my top. A restrained squeeze on my thigh and I can tell he’s getting serious. I can already feel an earth-shattering orgasm building, and I’m starting to get more than my little share of fear.
“Sain . . . um, Malcolm . . . don’t stop touching me, I just . . . need to slow down. . . .”
He eases back, and we separate for a moment, our breathing audible. My pupils can’t focus, he’s a blur. A blur I’m supposed to write about, not to have.
“Give me your hand,” he whispers. Lightly he reaches out and holds my hand in his strong grip, and I can feel his eyes, liquid and green, watching my reaction as he dips his finger to my palm. Suddenly I’m reminded of each of the forty thousand nerve endings in this very palm. He strokes between the base of m
y fingers and knuckles, the caress stimulating like electricity.
I watch, transfixed, as he interlocks our fingers and uses his thumb to massage my palm up to the base of my fingers in slow little circles. My blood vessels feel too close to my skin. A fire builds in my body as he holds my hand and slowly straightens out my arm. Gently, he kisses along the inside of my elbow, fluttering his tongue across my skin and bathing the warm spot with his breath. What he’s doing feels like a drug, a drug I never want to him to stop shooting into me.
Slowly, he tugs my top upward and tucks it into my bra strap so it stays up.
I’ve read the solar plexus is a powerful nerve cluster, but I’ve never experienced it before. He starts below my breasts, caressing upward, spreading me out on the couch so that he’s kissing me softly around my belly button. When I moan, he soothes and whispers, relaxing my body, my abs uncontracting so that all the blood heads to the part between my legs that’s on absolute fire. It burns and tingles at the prospect of being touched. He’s so close and at the same time so far away. He caresses up my ribs and down. Ducking his head, he uses his tongue around my navel, then dips it, hot and wet, into the tiny nook. A dozen erogenous zones awaken to him. Nerve endings never before stimulated like this tingle and scream, my hot zones alive. All of me. Alive. I’m excited mentally, physically, emotionally.
“You have no idea how much you excite me,” I hear myself admit as I caress his hair and he lifts his head, tugs my bra down off one swollen globe, curls his fingers around my breast, and gently suctions the tip of my nipple with a hungry sucking sound.
“I want you beneath me tonight, Rachel.” His lashes sweep upward and he looks up at me, the gold rim around the green of his eyes gleaming with intent. Every breath, every undulating move of my body under his as he suckles me, everything undoes me from the very core outward. “Writhing,” he says. “Panting. Wet.”
He takes the hardened, already sensitized nipple back into his mouth. I slide down the seat, part my legs, and try to pull him above me. Instead he lets his hand slip in between my legs. My arms wind around his shoulders tight enough that I can feel the muscles flexed and taut under my fingertips as he slowly tugs my panties aside with his thumb and slides one finger inside me.