Raw Deal

  Chapter Fourteen

  “You know, I’ve lived here all my life and I’ve never been here,” Mike remarked as they entered the Downtown Aquarium, and Savannah felt giddy as a kid at the sight of the aquarium exhibits . . . too giddy even to mind that she was way overdressed for a family attraction and amusement park.

  “Really? I would be here all the time.”

  “I don’t doubt that,” he remarked, taking her hand with what seemed to be a genuine smile on his face. Savannah grinned at him and marveled at the exhibits, laughing when they reached the one called the Louisiana Swamp, replete with alligators, turtles, and a roof made of leaves. There was even a ramshackle little cabin set amid the woodsy backdrop. “Hey, I’m home.”

  Mike burst out laughing. “You’re crazy.”

  “What? You don’t think I wrestle alligators in my spare time?”

  “I think you could wrestle anything you damn well please.”

  “I’ll wrestle you,” she murmured into his ear, earning herself a nice growl that sent a shiver all the way to her toes.

  “Hey, now. This is a family establishment. There are kids around.”

  She pouted and he dropped a chaste kiss on the top of her head. They strolled along, gazing at the various sea creatures. “Do you want kids someday?” she asked him, knowing it was probably a loaded question for a dude but still running on a little bit of that liquid courage.

  “Someday, maybe,” he said easily. “I like kids. I’ve done some mentoring at the gym. If I can help one of them the way my coach helped me, it’s awesome. He didn’t just teach me how to fight, you know, but how not to. Well . . . he tried, anyway,” he added, chuckling.

  “Oh, wow, I bet you’re great at that,” she said. “I can’t wait to be, like, the coolest aunt ever. I definitely want kids of my own someday.” There were so many around right now, squealing over the fish and various aquatic life, it was hard not to get caught up in their infectious enthusiasm.

  Mike put an arm around her shoulders, his fingers warm on her bare skin. She slid hers around his waist. They fit together so perfectly. Outside, the amusement park had carnival-themed games and rides—not the least of which was the towering Ferris wheel they’d observed from the restaurant. She couldn’t wait to get on. There was also a drop tower ride and a merry-go-round . . . but she figured she shouldn’t press her luck. Mike won her a teddy bear at one of the games; Savannah promptly named him Oscar.

  “Why Oscar?”

  “I don’t know. It’s a thing. I name everything Oscar. Dogs, cats, fish. If it gets confusing then I just add a suffix. He can be Oscar the Ninth. Fear my originality, Mike.”

  “Oh, I do. You gonna do the same thing with your kids?”

  “Maybe,” she said with mock defensiveness, hugging Oscar to her chest. “Even the girls.”

  “Like George Foreman.” Chuckling, Mike pulled her closer as they waited in line for an empty car on the Ferris wheel. She gazed up at it, feeling so light and carefree. It was a good feeling. She couldn’t wait to be up there with the wind in her hair with the cityscape all around them.

  And then it was their turn, and they slipped into the dangling circular car and snuggled together as it took them higher and higher into the sky. A busy freeway was their view on one side, but on the other was the Aquarium with its palm trees, and even farther, a panorama of the city. She was able to watch the blue and white–striped sky drop as it rose slowly and released its riders for a quick descent that had the kids squealing in delight.

  At the top of the wheel, Mike kissed her. She’d been so hoping he would, and she’d been hoping it would be exactly as it was: gentle, thorough, sensual enough to make her legs tremble with need. Oscar, stuck between their bodies, nearly had the stuffing squeezed out of him.

  “Oh, no! Aw, Oscar!” she cried once she realized, snatching him up and comically inspecting him for injury.

  “Is he okay?” Mike asked. “Do I need to return him? Jesus, what kind of a mother are you?”

  “I know, right? Maybe I shouldn’t have kids after all. Sorry, Oscar.”

  He grinned and pulled her back to her original position, cuddling against his side, Oscar hugged to her as the ground slowly rose to meet them again. “I think you’ll be all right, Savannah.”

  Smiling, she turned her face into his solid chest, thinking that if she could sleep right here, just like this, all night, that would be fine with her. “I think you’re right.”

  His loft was as breathtaking as everything else about him, a sprawling expanse of brick, hardwood floors, exposed ductwork, and the fantastic view she had expected through the floor-to-ceiling windows. Like his beach house, the contemporary decor was minimal but effective, a few large art pieces and rugs with steel-gray furniture and blue accents, and she had to grin at the framed Bruce Lee Enter the Dragon posters on his living room wall. A metal spiral staircase went up to a second level, where he told her he’d set up a small home gym. The entire thing was simply mouthwateringly masculine, the very definition of a bachelor pad, but it fit him perfectly.

  “Wow. When you say ‘apartment,’ you don’t mean what I mean when I say ‘apartment.’”

  Chuckling, he moved toward the kitchen, hanging his keys on a hook along the way to the stainless steel refrigerator. She situated Oscar the Ninth on the bar next to her clutch. “Need anything? A drink? I’m more well stocked here than at the beach, promise.”

  “No thanks, I’m fine.” She walked over to the bank of windows, gazing up at the skyscrapers and high-rises beyond. “How long have you lived here?”

  “About five years.”

  “Um, do you mind me asking how old you are? I honestly don’t know.” Another detail she couldn’t remember from his stats.

  “Thirty-two.”

  Five years older than her. Tommy had been twenty-nine and already joking about getting old. He’d figured he had a good five to seven years left before he began to decline, and at that point, he’d insisted, he would bow out. With that kind of deadline looming, he’d pushed himself hard. Even if Mike didn’t want to retire just yet, she wondered if he was going to be much longer for the MMA world. She couldn’t imagine him wanting to take much more punishment.

  Then again, from all she knew, the man was a machine, and some of the fighters kept going well into their forties and beyond.

  He strolled casually over to join her, bringing a heavy glass with a scant amount of dark amber liquid in it. There was such a predatory element in the way he looked at her as he approached that her panties threatened to combust. She let her gaze slide down his body and knew precisely at that moment what she wanted to do to him. Something she’d never gotten around to last night.

  “Will you do something for me?” she asked, letting an impish smile curve her lips.

  Without taking his eyes from hers for a second, he threw back what was in his glass. Savannah watched his throat muscles work as he swallowed, licking her lips in anticipation. “Anything,” he said gruffly, the burn of the liquor evident in his voice. Unable to resist getting a taste for herself, she stood on tiptoe and pulled his head down to sample the flavor and heady scent that went straight to her head and lit up all her pleasure centers.

  “Sit on the sofa,” she murmured against his lips. He did so, only reluctantly leaving her kiss to skirt around the piece of furniture and settle onto it, putting his empty glass on the glass end table at his elbow. Savannah followed him, kicking her cursed shoes off before placing her hands on both his knees and easing herself down to her own. Luckily the rug beneath her was soft; she hoped to be here for a while. Mike never took his eyes from her, never moved, but his breathing quickened, his gaze darkened. The outline of his cock was already evident in his pants and her hands itched to go to it, but she contented herself with running her nails up his thighs and back to his knees, delighting in his heat, his involuntary responses, his firm muscles pressing against the fabric.

  She was only interested in one particular part
of him at the moment, though, edging ever closer to it with her fingertips and then skating them away until he was almost panting. Finally, she had mercy and let her hands go to his zipper, gently working to free him without taking his pants down. She wanted him this way, all in black, dark and dangerous but at her mercy while she sucked him off with the city lights twinkling behind him.

  He groaned when she finally pulled him from his pants, sprawling his legs wider and stretching his arms across the back of the couch. She had to admit, since losing her virginity to her high-school boyfriend on her eighteenth birthday, she hadn’t seen too many cocks she’d actually looked forward to putting in her mouth. Her enthusiasm for blowjobs with past loves had been lukewarm at best, but she’d still been generous with the act as long as her lover reciprocated.

  But Michael’s dick was gorgeous and she wanted to go down on it like it was ambrosia. Long. Thick. Strong. God, whatever else was going on in her life, at this moment she was a lucky girl. The mere sight of it made her ache, made her wet, made her yearn to crawl over him and ride him to ecstasy, but no, this moment was for him alone. He would be a challenge, but she was up for it.

  Leaning over, she traced the ridge of his corona with her tongue, glancing up in time to see his head fall back, his chest heave at the first touch of her lips. She left no inch of him unexplored, licking, kissing, sucking, and when the time came to angle him toward her mouth and pull him as deep as she could, his hands flew to her head. Not pulling, not pushing, just there, clenching her windblown hair as his head came up and he watched himself disappear between her lips. “Fuck. Fuck. Savannah.”

  He made her fall in love with her own name when he said it like that.

  She scraped her nails down his chest, wishing now that his shirt was open but still able to delight in the tense muscles beneath. Watching him come undone was a thing of pure masculine beauty, and she couldn’t get enough of the sight. God, he was hard, and getting harder, and more difficult to take deep, but she did it, and loved every second of his responses: the groans and writhing movements and pleasure curses. Wrapping the base of him in her fist, where her fingers didn’t meet, she relaxed her jaw and took him until his tip hit the back of her throat. It surprised her when his fingers came up gently under her chin, lifting her off him.

  “I’m gonna come,” he said breathlessly.

  “Then come,” she urged. “Come for me, Michael, please.”

  “Goddamn,” he groaned, releasing her to go back to her task. And she couldn’t wait to watch him unravel, didn’t take her eyes off him a single time as his breath caught and his hips wrenched off the couch, his handsome face contorted in the anguish of pleasure as his taste flooded her mouth. She took every drop, staying with him until his grip on her hair softened and he began to relax all at once, sinking into the cushions and breathing as if he’d run a marathon. Beneath her hands, his raging heartbeat began to slow.

  “Jesus Christ,” he said at last, bringing a giggle from her. She gave his inner thigh a little nibble and then laid her head against his knee, gazing up at him. “Incredible. Fucking incredible.”

  “I’m glad you liked it,” she teased.

  “Liked doesn’t begin to cover it. Nearly blacked out.” Yeah, she knew all about that; he’d done the same to her just last night. Lifting his head, he frowned down at her and then reached for her elbow. “Come up here, beautiful. You can’t be comfortable down there on your knees.”

  For him, she thought troublingly, she could probably be comfortable anywhere. But curling up next to him on the couch in the dim silence of his home was pretty comfortable too, with his fingertips tracing lazy patterns up and down her bare arm. She could imagine spending every night this way.

  And thoughts like that were the reason she needed to get her ass back to New Orleans and stay there, no matter how much it would hurt to do so. Sighing, she turned her face into his chest, trying to escape from having any thoughts at all. All of them wounded her in some way or another. All of them.

  But he soothed her without even trying. Everything about him was a balm to her soul, from the feel of him next to her to the slow rise and fall of his breathing. The steady beat of his heart, the way he took care of her. It was so soon, too damn soon to feel this way. Yet she felt it nevertheless.

  “So . . . ,” she began tentatively, “I go home tomorrow.”

  “Trying not to think about that,” he murmured, sounding more than a little drowsy. “What time is your flight again? Close to two, isn’t it? I can’t quite remember.”

  “Yeah. Two-thirty-ish.”

  “Glad it’s not early. I was thinking ahead and didn’t even know it.”

  “I’m sorry you haven’t gotten your money’s worth for my hotel stay,” she teased. “I’ve barely been in the room at all.”

  “That’s the least of my worries, darlin’.”

  If she hadn’t had two-thirds of a bottle of Cristal tonight, she probably couldn’t have worked up the courage to ask her next question, no matter how important it was. “Where do we go from here?”

  All at once it seemed too presumptuous; maybe he had no intentions of seeing her ever again and she was putting him in an uncomfortable spot. Maybe his fling with the blonde from the concert would switch back to on after Savannah was safe in New Orleans. But if either of those were the case, she needed to know now.

  “I don’t know,” he said after a long silence she could barely force herself to breathe through. “I know what I want, and I know what I keep telling myself is the right thing to do.”

  “Let’s start with what you want.”

  “I want to keep seeing you. I want to see you as often as I can, any way I can. I don’t care if you come to me or I go to you.”

  She couldn’t deny the warm glow that spread in her belly at his words. “And what’s right?”

  He sighed, picking up her hand and sliding his fingers between hers. “Letting you go. Letting you heal and get on with your life, not complicating things for you, not causing any strife between you and your family because you need each other right now more than you need me.” He lifted his head a little so he could see her face. “What about you?”

  “I couldn’t have said it better,” she admitted. “Except that . . . I’m finding myself needing you too.”

  Mike scoffed at that. “You don’t need me. Sounds to me like you have your shit thoroughly together.”

  “Michael, what if part of my healing is you?”

  “Then I’m here, darlin’, and I don’t plan on going anywhere. We can give it time,” he suggested as she played absently with one of the buttons on his shirt. “No reason to do anything rash.”

  “That’s just the thing,” she said, now unfastening the button and sliding her hand through the gap she created to feel his skin, warm and firm beneath her stroking fingers. “Part of me wants to be rational. But most of me wants to be rash.”

  Oh, Jesus. The husky need in her voice when she said that . . . there was nothing to do but kiss her. She melted against him like his mouth on hers was a relief, the answer to everything, to all their problems. If only.

  He could fall for this girl. So hard. So easily. Hell, he was fooling himself to think he hadn’t already begun that particular descent. Like sitting on the Ferris wheel with her tonight, they were getting higher and higher, and the only way to go from here was down a dizzying drop.

  Her flavor went to his head, sweet and seductive; his hand slid up her smooth thigh as she shifted her weight until she was straddling him. Mike urged her up on her knees so he could push both hands under her dress, raising it to her waist so that her lace-covered mound was inches from his face, his lips. Savannah’s breath caught on a little moan as he pressed kisses above the waistline of her black panties. Here, she smelled like heaven, pure feminine arousal mingling with sweet floral notes.

  “Did you get these today, too?” he asked, giving her panties a tug with his teeth.

  “Yes,” she whispered.

&n
bsp; “All for me?”

  “All for you.”

  With a groan, he buried his face between her legs, breathing her in, hooking his fingers into the black lace to pull it down, to get the taste of her on his tongue to go with the scent of her swirling in his head. Her hands came down hard on the back of his couch, on either side of his head, as he gave her one long lick between her folds. So wet, so delectable. Her thighs trembled at his sides. Glancing up her body, he saw her mouth open, her eyes closed, lashes fluttering against her pale cheeks. When she looked down and met his stare, city lights caught in her eyes, his reality reflected there. Sexiest fucking thing he’d ever seen. Funny how often he thought that when he was with her.

  In their position, he could only get her panties partway down her thighs, but he liked the degree of difficulty, liked the way she arched sexily to help him reach her. He kissed, licked, delved, even managed to get his hand between her legs and slip a finger inside, then another, where she was so fucking hot and wet and tight. Despite coming like a freight train earlier, he was throbbing to get inside, but contented himself with massaging her sweet swollen clit with his tongue, slowly thrusting his fingers.

  “Michael,” she sobbed, grinding against him, clenching at the cushions before letting her hands go to his head.

  “That’s it, baby,” he murmured against her, drinking her like the fine wine she was. “Let me taste you come.”

  “Oh, God!” The cry echoed through his loft, and he would remember it until his dying day. Her pussy pulsed erratically around his fingers as her climax swept her away, as she gasped and sobbed over him, her knees giving so that he had to hold her up with his free hand at her back. When she was slack and done and shivering in his arms, he stood with her still wrapped around him and walked back to his bed. He laid her gently down and stripped off his clothes, feeling her weary gaze on his every movement. Then he moved to her, pulling her panties the rest of the way off, rolling her over to unzip her dress and slide it down her body. In the light coming through the window, her skin practically glowed. Her bra was the last to go, flung carelessly aside so that she was gloriously naked.