“I don’t think whatever this is counts as knowing someone.”
“You’ve seen my cock, babe. Not sure how many more surprises I got left.”
And then Uptown had the distinct satisfaction of watching her blush, deep and red.
Maybe he could have stopped himself if he tried, but he didn’t. He slid his hand over her cheek, fascinated, so he could feel all that heat while she turned bright and embarrassed.
“I’ve never seen anyone blush like you,” he muttered, without meaning to speak. “I didn’t think anyone could.”
She swallowed, and his gaze dropped to the line of her throat. For some reason it made him think of the big-ass mansion where she lived, so clean and tidy and bright it had always felt like a big fuck you to the rest of the town. Holly was a little more inviting, if just as elegant.
“Is this what you do?” she asked softly. He took his time looking her in the eye again, and he didn’t think he’d get over the feel of her flushed cheek beneath his palm any time soon. Soft and smooth and so damned hot, he could feel it like a hand wrapped tight around his cock. “There’s some weird, tense moment and then you disappear?”
He felt his mouth curve and he moved a little closer to her. She shifted as if to pull away from him without actually stepping back, and it felt like a victory when she reached out to steady herself by grabbing onto his cut.
“Not exactly,” he said. He got even more in her space and she only gripped his cut harder. That meant he could get his hands on her.
Careful, dickhead, he growled at himself as he slid his free hand to her other cheek, so he could bury his fingers in all that hair of hers and still have her skin against his. And oh yeah, her head tipped back like she was offering her mouth to him the way he really, really wanted her to do.
He was so hard he was pretty sure his cock was about to climb out of his jeans. Especially since he hadn’t gotten any in days. Careful, he told himself again, when he wanted to just slam his mouth to hers and get his hands beneath her clothes. You want her to beg, not bail.
“What, then?” she breathed. “Exactly?”
“If anyone else had spied on me like that back at the church, it wouldn’t have ended like that,” he told her. “I won’t lie: I imagined a different ending a few times over the years.” A few thousand, if he was being honest. Her breath came faster, as if she had, too. There was nothing but tangled heat in the tiny little space between their mouths. “Sometimes I had you joining me and that groupie.”
“Joining you?”
“Walking over, climbing up on that tomb, making yourself useful.” He gave in to the lure of her then and bent to taste her. Not her mouth, but that impossibly soft, hot cheek of hers. It was like sticking his fingers in a light socket. He had to grit his teeth to keep from exploding into all that sensation. “Your mouth was open, catching flies. I thought of a few ways to fill it.”
“Oh.”
She sounded dazed, which he liked a little too much. Her soft brown eyes were glazed and a glance down showed him that her little nipples were stiff against her peach-colored tank top and her knuckles were showing hints of white as she held on tight to his cut.
“But mostly I thought about lifting you up where you stood against the church, wrapping your legs around my waist, and making you come all over my cock,” he said in a low voice. “At least two or three times before I came, too.”
Holly’s breath was loud then, and Uptown grinned.
“And that night in Bart’s office, I would have tested you out.”
He caught her around the waist with one arm, hauling her against his body at last. And Christ, it was better than he’d imagined. She was all tight curves and long legs. She smelled sweet. Her hair, sure, but her fucking skin. She was expensive. Out of his league in all the ways that mattered. He knew that. Holly was a poor little rich girl who had no idea what she was doing at this bar. With him. He should have banged her when she was sixteen and promptly forgotten her name. If she’d been anyone else’s daughter, he probably would have.
Instead, he was lost in the way she moved to accommodate him, as if listening to her body and instincts he doubted she could name. She widened her legs so he could press that much harder between them, against her. The high shoes she wore made it easy to rub himself right where he wanted to go. He slid his hand up beneath her shirt where it brushed her ass, so he could splay his hand over the small of her back. He knew without looking she wouldn’t have a tramp stamp. Not this squeaky clean girl.
And he’d deny to the death the notion he had just then, of stamping his own name on her sweet, unmarked skin.
Uptown had been white trash since the day he was born. He’d never aspired to be anything else, he’d just wanted to kick some ass and ride free. The cut on his back meant rich men and powerful men treated him like he was one of them because they feared what the club would do if they didn’t. But it wasn’t until right this minute that he really understood how a man could ransom his life for a little taste of the really good shit.
“Tested me?” she was asking. “What do you mean, you would have tested me in Bart’s office?”
“What do you think that couch is for?” He moved his thumb over the indentation of her spine, a slow drag, and watched her break out in goosebumps. “But we would have worked up to that. You know how to suck a cock, baby?”
She paled, then flushed again. Hotter than before. Redder, if possible.
“What?” It was little more than a whisper.
“Even if you think you do, I’m gonna guess you don’t do it the way I like it. I’m picky. So I would have taught you.” Every time he dragged his thumb over her skin, she shuddered again. It was addictive. It was almost as good as imagining what it would have been like to teach her exactly how he liked his dick sucked. “I would have put you on your knees right there in front of the desk and taught you how to worship my cock properly.”
Her lips moved before any sound came out.
“Properly,” she echoed.
Oh yeah. He was fucked. But he kept going.
“After I came down your throat, I’d have tossed you on the couch and explored you a little bit,” he murmured, dropping his mouth to the place where her neck met her shoulder. “I like to eat pussy, Holly. The hotter and juicier the better. I would have eaten you up like candy.”
She jolted against him, but he only laughed and held her still, one hand on her back against her hot skin while the other was still gripping her hair, his mouth on her neck, and his cock pressed hard between her legs. Just enough to make her dripping wet and a little bit wild for him, the way he wanted her. Not enough to help her out.
“I like when a woman comes on my face,” he continued in that same low, urgent way. “Sometimes I get my hands in her asshole while she slips and slides on my mouth, for a little kick. You like fingers in your ass, Holly?” Her breath hitched. “What about a cock? Are you one of those sweet little good girls who saves her pussy for her wedding night but takes the football team up her ass?”
“Oh my god,” Holly whispered.
“Is that a yes or a no?”
She sucked in a breath and her hands moved to grip his T-shirt in tight little fists. He wanted them on his skin so badly he almost put them there himself. But that would mean letting go of her, so he didn’t.
“I don’t really like football,” she said, and he let her feel his grin against her skin even as she flushed again. He felt the heat of her, scalding and sweet, and that was her neck. Her shoulder. He thought her cunt might incinerate him.
“I’d make you come enough times to wring you out and make you pliable,” he murmured, tasting her as he spoke. Her collarbone. The hollow at the base of her neck, where her pulse was a wildness against his tongue. “Then I’d fuck you. Hard to say how. Maybe your ankles on my shoulders. Maybe on your hands and knees with your face in the cushion so I could grab your hair like a leash. Maybe I’d let you ride me so I could get my mouth on your tits. So many wa
ys to fuck you, Holly, I probably would have done it a few times.”
She was shivering. Panting. Shifting from foot to foot as if her pussy ached as much as his cock did.
“That’s what I do,” he told her. “Usually.” Then he pulled back so he could look at her, flushed hot and her eyes too bright and hectic. He set her back from him, holding her at arm’s length, and for a moment thought she might cry. He bit back a grin and sounded harsher than he meant to. “But you’re not into that kind of shit, are you? Being such a good girl.”
Chapter 4
Holly had never wanted to be a good girl less in all her life than she did in that moment.
Uptown’s hands were big and callused and wrapped around her upper arms tight enough so she could feel the press of the heavy rings he wore. He was leaning down to keep his face near hers, making his tempting mouth pretty much all she could see.
She could still feel it. The way he’d tasted her cheek, her neck, the hollow above her collarbone. He might as well have thrown gas all over her and then lit her on fire.
Maybe he had.
She’d had reasonable second thoughts when she’d followed him outside, and not only because there had been no pretending she didn’t see the unnecessarily evil glares coming her way from Katelyn and one of the other girls who worked behind the bar some nights and hung out on the customer side the rest of the time. That had given her pause. But also…he was Uptown. He was one of the Devil’s Keepers and she’d been raised to show all the bikers in Lagrange a healthy respect—from a very healthy distance. No matter how absurdly, lethally beautiful they might be. The entire way out of the bar she’d told herself that she was just going to talk to him. Maybe ride on his motorcycle, because that sounded like the sort of fun she’d never allowed herself before. That just because the patrons of Dumb Gator’s liked to fling caution to the winds along with their clothes and morals, that didn’t mean she had to follow suit simply because she was working there.
But she had no defense against him touching her. She wouldn’t have known where to start.
“I’m not that good,” she heard herself say, her voice a sad little croak that announced to the whole of the bayou how overwhelmed she was. She was lucky it was May and the tree frogs were making their usual racket, sounding like an orchestra of sour cowbells. The only thing louder was the hollering owls.
And her heart.
No one could hear how desperate and thrown she was unless they, like Uptown, were standing close enough to her that they could feel the heat of his body like a radiator in the dense night air. And he already knew.
“Then let’s go for a ride,” he dared her, his voice a low sort of drawl.
He stepped back, releasing her, and it took more work than it should have to stay upright. On her own two feet. As if he’d been holding her up all this time. Holly felt drunk. Dizzy and silly, buoyed by something merry and silvery that wound around inside of her and made her think all of this was a good idea.
All those wicked things he’d said to her, as if he knew every last one of the naughty dreams she’d had about him over the years. That lazy way he’d moved his mouth over her skin, as if he was only playing. She could still feel him, a deep wet ache between her legs, as if he really had licked her there instead of only talked about it.
But god, the way he’d talked about it.
When Uptown handed her a soft helmet to buckle under her chin, Holly didn’t argue. She settled it on her head and fastened it tight while he swung onto the motorcycle. And then she jumped when he started it, that guttural roar taking over even the noisy bayou night.
She could see his teeth flash in that smile of his that was rapidly becoming entirely too necessary to Holly. A lot like her mama’s pills were necessary to her, something Holly didn’t care to investigate too closely. An addict was an addict. It was in the blood, she’d read. And if so, she was screwed.
“Climb on,” he told her, pitching his voice to be heard over the engine’s roar. He jutted his chin toward the back part of his seat.
And Holly found she didn’t care too much about addiction issues, after all.
Holly had seen people ride motorcycles before, of course. Theoretically she knew that she had to climb on the thing the same way he had and then hold on to him. It was the doing of it that worried her. He turned his head to watch her as she stood there, psyching herself up, and she thought whatever else happened that image would be burned into her head forever. Killian Chenier, Uptown, in leather and a smile while he straddled a gleaming beast of a machine that he wanted her to ride with him.
She had to get on then or risk her knees giving out beneath her where she stood.
It was freaking her out to think too much about the logistics, so she stopped. She moved closer to the huge motorcycle and the not inconsiderably large man controlling it. She reached out and put her hand on his shoulder, which was a revelation all its own. He was hard and hot and muscled in ways that made her mouth water. But there was no time to really sink into the many levels of her appreciation for that, because she was throwing her leg out and hoping for the best as she pretty much hurled herself onto the seat behind him.
“Easy,” he said over his shoulder, and she could hear that he was laughing. At her, no doubt, the way it seemed he always was. Holly was thankful that he couldn’t see the way she flushed at that.
She settled her feet in the appropriate position where they wouldn’t light on fire from the engine or drag on the ground—anxieties that were probably only in her head, because he certainly didn’t mention either. He just nodded at the places she should put her feet to keep them out of danger and she obeyed.
“Hold on to me,” he ordered her, and did something to make the bike roar even louder. Or maybe that was just the noise in her ears, because she was already closer to him than she’d ever imagined she would be. There was only the slightest, scantest little sliver of space between their bodies on the seat, and that was because she was leaning back to make sure of it. She reached out and very gingerly placed her hands on his waist. “Like you mean it, princess.”
When she only sat there, frozen, he laughed again. He reached down and grabbed her wrists, then hauled her against him so there was no scant sliver of anything. She was plastered to him, slammed up tight against his broad, hard back covered in that black leather with the huge DKMC insignia like a flag. He tugged her arms all the way around his steel-cut abdomen so her breasts were flattened against him and she had no choice but to rest her chin on his wide, firm shoulder.
Well, murmured a dry, little voice deep inside of her, curling around the flames that danced there and fanning them higher, if you must wrap yourself around him, for safety, then you must.
“Don’t let go,” he told her in that low voice of his that seemed to war with the motorcycle between her legs. It all tumbled around inside of her until she couldn’t tell if she was shivering and shuddering or if that was just the bike’s vibrations.
Then she didn’t care which it was, because he took off.
As the bike leaped forward there was an initial jerk that made her clutch him hard, but in the next instant she really didn’t care if he knew he’d startled her. Because then they were flying. Just as he’d promised. Hurtling down an old bayou road she’d known her whole life but had never seen before, not like this.
Not ever like this.
Tonight she could feel it. The wind in her face, salty and sweet, the bayou and spring flowers all jumbled together like a prayer. The road beneath them, packed hard and stretching out before them. The wild jumble of the night sky beyond the thick, low trees. It all felt like another touch. Like it was connected somehow to the bike, the man, her.
The night was warm as they raced through it, and gradually, Holly melted into him. She didn’t think about it. She felt her breath slow as she held him, curled into his back with her arms locked tight over his firm abdomen as he steered them out into the thick, green countryside. He took the turns so fast it
seemed as if they should have spun out into the red dirt, but they never did. It was like a powerful dance, the man and the bike and the night rushing hard and wild against her face.
And Holly thought it was possible she’d never been alive, not really, until tonight. Until now. Until she found herself a part of all that speed and fury and delirious noise, wrapped tight around a man she’d been dreaming of for years.
When he stopped at last, it took her a moment to realize he was waiting for her to climb off. And so she did, not entirely able to hide her sigh of disappointment, and then not really sure she’d be able to stay upright. She staggered a few feet from the bike, breathing as hard as if she’d been running, and tried to blink away the spinning sense of dislocation she felt when he cut the engine and the headlight went out, to the great dismay of the giddy insect population dancing in its glow.
She tugged off the soft helmet he’d given her and ran her fingers through the mess of her hair, not caring that she must have looked rough and untamed. Because for the first time in her life, that was how she felt and more, she kind of liked it. As if she’d only been waiting, all this time, for the opportunity to step outside of her careful little life. She slowed her breathing—some kind of panic, she told herself, though she knew it wasn’t that. Not quite that. The stars reasserted themselves in the soft night, and her eyes adjusted. She realized she knew where they were. Outside of town near the old railway bridge where, rumor had it, loose girls went with dangerous boys in high school and came back without their reputations. Not that she’d know firsthand. The railroad hadn’t come through this part of the parish in decades, but that only added to the place’s lure. Though as far as she could tell, they had it to themselves tonight. Every looming, decrepit inch.
The rational part of her brain, unable to deal with what was happening, launched into an explanation of why no one else was out here tonight as if she required that information to continue breathing. It was too late, of course, for high school kids who likely had curfews. There was nothing between Holly and Uptown but a bayou chorus with the usual mysterious splashes and unnerving loon calls. And the faint starlight, making them both shine.