“You can’t come in here,” she whispered, all of her bravado pretty much a distant memory at that point, with him looming over her, that look on his face and a kind of red hot mayhem in his gaze that she didn’t want to recognize.
But she did.
And even if she might have wanted to lie to herself about that, her body was doing its own thing. She felt herself flush, too hot and too bright, and the way he grinned at her then was far too knowing.
“You should be a little more afraid of me, Merritt,” he said, low and sure, like he was taking her lack of fear as a personal challenge. “It’s called respect. But don’t worry, I bet I can teach you the concept.”
And then he walked inside, and she had no choice but to step back or stand in his way—and she knew that he wouldn’t stop. The only thing standing right there and trying to block him would do was get them touching that much quicker, and she knew she needed to avoid that shit like the plague.
Because she could barely keep it together now and he hadn’t laid a finger on her.
Yet.
She hated herself for giving in and moving back, out of his way, which to a man like him was like handing out engraved invitations to come at her. The screen door slapped shut behind him and then he was…there. In her father’s old kitchen, which had always operated like a makeshift Devil’s Keepers emergency clinic. It was like history was tying itself into a big, loopy bow around her and Merritt didn’t know how to process it. And Greeley was big and too mean and so beautiful she was afraid to look at him directly, because she was terrified all the things she didn’t want to feel would be written all over her face.
Merritt jumped to put the kitchen table between them and didn’t care if that made him grin in that same hard, dangerous way.
“You think that’s gonna help?”
“I’m not having sex with you, if that’s what you think this is.”
“Yeah, that’s what you said the night you met me. Pretty sure it took me all of a half hour to get my hands in your pants.” His gaze was much too intent on hers, until she thought he could see the memories that poured through her now, like gas on an open fire. “And it was what? Ten minutes after that I was banging you up against the wall out back? So sure, darlin’. Whatever you say. No fucking.”
That was what he’d said that night five years ago, word for word. Sure, darlin’. Whatever you say. No fucking. With that grin on his face and all that lazy sex in his dark eyes. He’d made her do things she’d have said she’d die before doing, and worse, he’d made her love them. And here, now, all these years later, she was as mortified as she was turned on against her will at the memory of how easy she’d been with this man since the first moment she’d met him. She’d had sex with him within an hour of meeting him. Out behind Petit Joe’s in a dark corner of the parking lot, heedless and reckless and unable to care about anything but getting him inside of her. Then she had, of course, and it had only made her want him more.
And the craziest thing was that she’d never felt the slightest bit of shame about it. That was how it was with them, always. An uncontrollable explosion, every time, and it didn’t seem to ease no matter how many times she had him.
It was different now. It had to be. Because now she knew how it ended and how damned much it hurt.
“Is this how you plan to kill me?” she managed to force out. “With shitty, embarrassing memories of my drunken past?”
“You wish.” That hard curve in the corner of his mouth deepened. “And you weren’t drunk. Unless you mean on me.”
The house was still stuffy, despite the air-conditioning she’d been running at full blast since she’d arrived. Merritt told herself that was why she started to sweat. She watched as Greeley took a minute to look around, and not because he was admiring her father’s steadfast commitment to eighties décor. Something shifted inside of her as she remembered who he was. What he did. What that patch on his chest she’d mocked really meant. The fact that it was only part of who he was, that he was also a man who liked to challenge himself intellectually—with hard books, provocative conversations, and an attraction to a woman like her when she’d always thought of herself as the walking version of a brain in a jar and not likely to be appealing to a rough and ready man like him—had nothing to do with the way he cased her father’s house. This Greeley was the outlaw biker most people rightly found terrifying. He walked into the main room and looked around, very obviously checking his surroundings. In a way that suggested he had every intention of handling whatever he found, and in a manner designed to neutralize any potential threats.
Yet one more thing she should not have found hot.
“You alone?” he asked, his head tilted like he was waiting to hear a noise from upstairs that told him otherwise.
“Actually, no,” she said brightly. “I’m here with my two partners, Spike and Killer. We’re a committed ménage triad. They should be down any minute and I should warn you, they’re three times your size and jealous as hell.”
He laughed. And she wished she hadn’t said anything, because it was a real laugh and she wasn’t prepared for that. Greeley was a dark man. He was dangerous and he’d never tried to hide it. His laugh wasn’t some innocent, lilting beam of sunlight. It was like the mist out on the bayou, as mysterious as it was seductive. It showered over her. It ran through her like heat. Like longing.
And then he stopped laughing. He focused on her, hard and intent.
Her heart walloped her.
“Greeley—”
He didn’t say another word. He just came for her.
He stalked her, his mouth kicking up in one corner when she tried to keep the kitchen table between them. She knew that was a losing proposition at almost the same moment he just reached out, hooked his hand around the lip of the old wooden tabletop, and shoved the whole thing to one side.
So she ran. And she knew better than that. This man was a predator. He loved the hunt, the chase. He was good at both. Still, the urge to run was bubbling up from somewhere deep inside of her. Pure instinct, animal and basic. She hurled herself into the front hall and dove for the stairs—
But he caught her. Easily.
Greeley’s big hand hooked the back waistband of her shorts and he hauled her to him, his other arm coming around her belly like an iron brand.
Then she was slammed back against the hot wall of his stone-hard torso, and she couldn’t breathe.
Everything was fire. Need. That insistent, slamming beat of her heart and the hot, wet ache between her legs that running had only exacerbated.
She felt the slide of his laughter against her neck and then his mouth, too, like he was tasting her skin. He bit her, right there in the crook of her neck, not hard but not exactly gentle, either, and her whole body shuddered as the white hot hit of that burned through her. Chin to clit and back again.
He held her against him, that implacable arm of his holding her so there was no mistaking his hard, heavy cock where it pressed against the small of her back. His other hand reached around to the slice of her belly bared between the waist of her shorts and the hem of her long-sleeved T-shirt. He reached up under her shirt and covered the lower slope of her belly with his hard, faintly rough palm, and then he just…held it there.
A threat. A promise.
And that was all he did, the bastard.
Because that was all he needed to do. Merritt was doing the rest all by herself. Shivers chased each other, one after the next, and she knew he could feel every one of them. His mouth was hovering right there at the crook of her neck, and she knew he could likely taste the red, betraying flush that rolled over her.
She lifted her hands to push his arms off her—or that was what she told herself. The reality was that there was no budging him if he didn’t want to move, and she didn’t try that hard anyway. All she seemed to do was hold on to him while she melted against him, one obvious shudder at a time.
“Why don’t you use your smart mouth for something tha
t won’t piss me off,” he said, a low, hot command, nine or ten million years later when she was sure she was a lustful puddle at his feet even as she was wound tighter than she could remember ever being before.
She didn’t want to do anything as dumb as kiss him, particularly when he’d reminded her how that always, always turned out. There was no just kissing Greeley. Just kissing Greeley was how she’d ended up half-naked with her legs wrapped around his waist out behind Petit Joe’s, clinging to his impossibly hard shoulders while he’d pounded into her, and she wasn’t the kind of girl who did things like that. Not ever, before him. She turned her head away from his and he laughed again, and it made her shudder even harder that time. Her skin prickled, goosebumps shivering everywhere that laugh rolled over her. Her pussy was a bright, hot ache and his laughter seemed to pool there, making it worse. So much worse.
“Darlin’.” She could hear his laughter in his voice then and that, too, was worse. This was all worse. Or maybe the truth was there was no better. There was only Greeley and this insane fire that hadn’t dimmed the slightest bit all these years later. “You’re only making this more fun.”
How was she letting this happen? Merritt didn’t know, but she also didn’t try to push him away. She told herself it would be futile, yet she didn’t test that theory—and she knew they were both sharply aware of that and all its implications.
The same way she was aware of a dizzying, overpowering sense of homecoming. Far more intense than the one that had gripped her outside in the bayou dark. It was like her body remembered the press of him against her no matter how many times she’d told herself he was nothing but a dim, humiliating memory. He smelled like leather and bourbon and that other thing, a kind of distinct spice that was only ever him. It made her mouth water. It made her vision blur. It made her breath scrape in her throat as she tried to get a little oxygen and it made her whole body tight and needy and completely out of her control.
“Your mouth,” he growled, his mouth against the tender line of her neck again. “Now.”
She knew what he was doing. He wanted her complicit in whatever happened here, the way he had back in the beginning at that strip club where he’d made her say it no matter how she’d blushed. Yes, touch me. Yes, fuck me. Merritt could hear the echo of her own hungry voice across the years. He was doing the same thing now. He wanted to rub her face in the fact that she couldn’t resist him no matter how much she’d said she wanted to. She understood all that and hated both of them for it.
And still, when he moved his mouth along her neck, a slick, lazy tasting that she could feel like his blunt fingers working deep in her pussy, she didn’t push him away. She whimpered.
It made him laugh again, low and dark and very, very male.
“Or don’t,” he murmured. “This is fine. It’s all going to end the same way, Merritt. But you knew that when you decided to come on home, didn’t you?”
“My coming home has nothing to do with you.”
“I bet you told yourself that all the way here. I bet you made up some big, complicated story to convince yourself. But here you are, greedy for me the same as always.”
“I didn’t invite you over and I didn’t invite you in, asshole.”
He leaned in closer. His arms tightened around her, pulling her even harder against his rock hard cock. “And when I get my hands in that juicy little cunt of yours in about three seconds, how wet are you going to be? Or, wait. Let me guess. That’s just random. And your tits are poking at me because you’re really, really cold down here in the bayou on a warm ass night.”
And she told herself it was self-defense. Anything to shut him up. Anything to keep him from saying these rude, deliberate things that he must know were tearing her apart in all the places she’d been certain she was solid. Anything.
She told herself she had no choice.
Merritt turned her head, pushed up on her toes to reach him, and then she slammed her mouth to his.
Chapter 4
He tasted dark and hot. Exactly as she’d remembered him and yet better, somehow.
Her heart kicked at her once, so hard she thought it might tip her over, but his arms were hard steel bands around her and the only way to fall was deeper into him. His mouth. His taste. So that was what Merritt did.
And then Greeley took control.
He tore his mouth from hers and muttered a curse that seemed to dance over her skin like poetry. He spun her in his arms so she was facing him and then he dragged her back against his chest, angling his head to take her mouth again.
Deeper. Wetter. Hotter than hell.
Merritt arched against him, no longer giving a shit that she shouldn’t be letting this happen. That she’d promised herself this would never, ever happen again. Because she wanted her breasts against his chest. She wanted to make that wet ache between her legs worse—or was it better? She couldn’t tell the difference.
And she wanted everything. More. Now.
She slid her hands over his pectoral muscles, feeling the leather of his cut and rough edge of his patches, then she shoved her hands beneath it, running them down the sculpted perfection of his torso and his soft T-shirt. The flat, hard planes gave way to the steel hard ridges sawed into his abdomen, and she exulted in the feel of him, so tough and solid. Then, when she reached his jeans, she backtracked, tucking her hands beneath his shirt so she could get her palms against his skin.
He burned hot, the way he always had. He was sculpted like a dream and hot like a furnace and then there was that dusting of coarse, dark hair that made it that much better, like he was more decidedly male, somehow, than all the other men she’d ever met in her life put together. Merritt couldn’t stop shivering. And she could feel each and every ripple of sensation that wound through like a bright, new ache in her pussy.
Greeley groaned against her mouth, and then he was kissing her again, harder and deeper and filthy and hot, somewhere far beyond finesse or talent. It was all urgency and demand. The scrape of his beard, the temptation of his demanding mouth, the sheer insanity of his taste. It was pure, wild need. It was greedy, slick, delirious hunger.
It was the way it always was.
Merritt felt a few tugs and then her hair was toppling down between them and around them, thick and slippery and smelling faintly of the shampoo she’d used in the shower that morning. She had a dizzy moment when he pulled back, but there was nothing but his gray eyes burning into her, lit up with the same wildfire madness she could feel coursing through her—and yet somehow that was steadying.
Then he was burying a hand in her hair and making a fist, tugging her head back so he could feast on her mouth some more.
Too hot. Too deep. Too much—but she wanted more.
She always wanted more.
The wall of the front hall came up hard behind her, but she didn’t care when they slammed into it and she was only vaguely aware they’d moved in the first place. Greeley wrenched his mouth from hers and then his hands were on her shirt, yanking it up. She didn’t want to lose his mouth for any longer than necessary, so she lifted her arms obediently and then he was tossing the shirt aside, leaving her naked except for the shorts that hung low on her hips.
“Fuck me,” he muttered, his gaze on all the skin he’d just bared, his face drawn and focused and nearly furious, he looked so intent.
He shifted to get his hands on her, sliding one into her shorts to grip her ass cheek, the other moving to cover one of her breasts.
Merritt felt that like an extended explosion, rocking through her and throwing her back against the wall.
She arched into both his hands, pressing her breast harder against his rough palm and pushing against that ruthless grip on her ass. Then she had to throw her head back as sensation shot through her, lighting her up, making her rock against him like he was already deep inside of her.
God, she wanted him deep inside her.
He muttered something else and then he was bending down to get his mouth on her
other breast. He wasn’t gentle, and Merritt loved it. He sucked her nipple in deep, not afraid to graze her a little with his teeth and send that fire streaking through her, and he kept going until she moaned. Then he really got into it. His hand slid around to her back and he yanked her higher on her toes and got her even closer to his ravenous mouth, and then he took his sweet ass time moving from one breast to the other. Torturing her. Terrorizing her.
Making her think it was entirely possible she might come from that alone. She was writhing against him. She was making that strange little keening noise, high in the back of her throat, that she hadn’t heard herself make for half a decade.
“Greeley…”
And there was no hiding from the way she said his name, needy and broken and desperate. There was no pretending it wasn’t…exactly what it sounded like.
He lifted his head and his gaze slammed into hers, dark gray shot through with that lethal silver gleam. A hard accusation she could do nothing to refute and he didn’t have to voice it. You think you’re going to do better than this? he’d demanded that last night. Five years and still, nothing between them was different. Nothing had dimmed at all. Nothing had changed. Merritt shuddered.
But right then, half naked and in his arms, she didn’t care about that the way she should have. The way she was sure she would later.
One of Greeley’s hands moved to her jaw, holding her where he wanted her as his mouth took hers again. And again. This time it was a brutal possession that scalded her and set her alight, as if he’d only been playing before. It rocked through her, slamming wild sensation from their fused mouths to her bright hot and insanely wet pussy, so soaked she felt like she was wet straight through.
And he knew it.
He always knew it.
His other hand tugged at her fly, yanking at the buttons, and then he was sliding his way in with all that focused confidence that made her ache, his hard, brutal fingers with those heavy rings stroking through her folds and playing with all the wetness he found there.