Carter's Cuffs (10 page)

“But…”

Ah hell, he was still going to argue. She’d just poured her heart out to him completely, and he was still going to fight her.

“Are you saying your plan, for your whole life, is to never, ever get involved with anybody? To…always be alone?”

She cautiously lifted her gaze, trying for a smile, even though her voice came too small. “It’s not a death sentence. It’s just how I choose to live.”

“Aren’t you afraid…” His eyes narrowed, and she tried to ignore how lush and kissable his mouth looked in the shadowy light. “Aren’t you afraid of getting lonely? Maybe not now. But at some point, later? You really want to spend your whole life alone?”

Erin could have argued that she had friends and co-workers and a cat—but the ugly picture he’d just planted in her head, the thought that someday she might really feel alone in the world without a soul to turn to or a shoulder to lean on, sank down into her bones and made her defensive. “Why can’t you get it?” she snapped at him. “I don’t want to die! And I don’t want to leave behind someone who loves me to mourn! It’s selfish and I won’t do it!”

She sucked in her breath as soon as the words left her. Then dropped her gaze, shocked. “Oh God,” she murmured.

“It’s okay,” he said.

“No, it’s not.” She shook her head, staring at the ground, the grass between their bodies, Carter’s blue jeans, her own bared thighs.

“You’re mad at your dad, but that’s okay. It makes sense—it’s natural.”

She was still shaking her head, wanting to deny it, but at the same time, deeply buried emotions bubbled to the surface. “Why did he do it? Why did he keep going out there, night after night, risking his life, when he wasn’t up to the job? Why didn’t he just take a break, take a leave of absence or something?”

Carter’s free hand rose to cup her cheek, warm and strong. “Maybe he didn’t see it. Maybe he just wanted to keep on going, acting normal.”

She gazed into his eyes, trying not to let tears leak free. She never cried, never. And she could scarcely wrap her mind around all this. “I don’t want to be mad at my dad. I loved him. He was my world.” She shook her head, confused.

“It’s okay,” Carter said again. “It’s okay for you to be mad even though you loved him. And it’s okay for you to
feel
things, Erin. I mean, you’ve obviously been keeping a lot of shit bottled up inside—it’s probably good to get it out.”

She nodded, feeling numb, her heart beating too hard.

Was Carter right?

She could still hardly believe or understand it—but had she really been angry with her dad? All this time? She’d loved him so much.

And yet…maybe it was true. Maybe she was mad that he hadn’t been careful enough when he was under so much stress, in so much emotional pain.

Or hell—for all she knew, although she’d never wanted to admit this to herself, maybe his death had truly been unavoidable. No one had seen it—his partner had been approaching the house from the back while he’d been in the front. Maybe he’d made no mistake; maybe there was nothing he could have done, no way to be more careful. She’d never wanted to believe that because she liked to believe a person, even a cop, was in control of his or her own life—just like she needed to believe she was in control of hers.

She didn’t know the answers. She didn’t know anything right now.

Except that the man attached to her at the moment with furry handcuffs was too sweet. Too kind and understanding. And too, too hot for words.

And she wanted to run away—from all these memories, all these fears, everything bad. And from Carter, too, because she’d let him see
way
too much of her tonight—hell, he’d drawn things from her that she hadn’t even known were there. But she
couldn’t
run…because of those damn soft red cuffs that tickled her wrist each time one of them moved.

“Are you okay, baby?”

The work-roughened fingertips of his free hand gently caressed her cheek as their gazes connected. Then his palm skimmed down her arm, his wrist barely grazing her breast, until his hand closed high on her outer thigh, shifting her legs across his, gathering her to him closer. The sheer comfort the move delivered nearly immobilized her.
This is what it is to be held by a man who cares for you.
She’d nearly forgotten how good it felt. She’d
made
herself forget.

But then she looked deeper into his eyes, her whole body sensitized as his hand slid slowly onto her ass—bare beneath the silky dress. And as another soft night breeze wafted over them, her pussy rippled, and a glance down revealed that the fabric had risen past it now, putting her on display.

She never answered his question. Just leaned closer to him. She never decided to—it just happened, her body led her there.

He leaned closer, too, until the warmth of his skin seeped into her. His mouth hovered not an inch away, and her whole body hungered. And when finally he kissed her, slowly, thoroughly, in a way she felt between her thighs, she melted deeper against him, and his hand eased farther around, over her ass, his fingertips teasing the tiny fissure in back before sinking down into her cunt.

“Ohhh…” she moaned, her chest swelling with arousal. This man did things to her she couldn’t understand—or fight.

And then came the sweet, hot intrusion—two fingers, at least, thrusting up into her wetness. “God,” she breathed. “Oh God.” She let her eyes fall shut.

He kissed her again, beginning to move his fingers in and out, and she heard her breathing match his rhythm, and her pleasure.

“Stand up,” he rasped against her lips.

She should argue. Stop this. Somehow.

But instead she eased slowly up onto her heels, those fingers inside her guiding the way, pushing her where he wanted her to go. Her whole body pulsed with need, and at the moment she was too weak to resist.

Still cuffed together, her left wrist to his right, she found herself dragging his hand with her, the soft weight of it pulling on her furred bracelet and sending a gentle frisson of passion up her arm and down through her breasts.

And then she was facing the fence, leaning toward it, locking her fingers through the chain-link squares. And his tongue was slicing up into her pussy, making her willingly spread her legs farther as she met his mouth with her mound.

“Oh Lord,” she breathed. “So good.”

She gripped the fence tighter, pressed her breasts to it and shut her eyes as Carter licked deep into her folds, his fingers still fucking her from behind.

“Yeah,” she murmured throatily. “God, yeah.”

She quit thinking, just letting her body absorb every sensation. She moved harder against his mouth. She cried out when his tongue traveled higher, raking over her clit—again, again.

Despite herself, she loved that their hands were locked together—the feeling of being confined, even just slightly, was weirdly arousing. She’d felt it when he’d chained her to the fence earlier, too. The friction at her wrists when she’d pulled at the cuffs, the way it spread through her whole body.

She met his skilled tongue, practically felt her clit swelling with blood beneath his ministrations, and slowly sank a bit lower, lower, bending her knees against the hard fence to better fuck his mouth.

“Yes, yes,” she prodded through clenched teeth as the pleasure rose inside her, growing, blooming, getting bigger and bigger until the orgasm tore through her like a storm. She sobbed as the pulses thrust her pussy hard against his face and her body against the fence. “Oh! Oh!” she cried, until it waned, and she sank down into his lap, straddling him.

Like in the hotel room, he kissed her, tasting of her own juices, and she kissed him back just as feverishly, drowning in the rank intimacy of it. At the same time, they both struggled to undo his jeans, the furry cuffs not hindering them since they both worked at the same task.

When his enormous cock burst free, Erin sighed with pleasure, wrapped her loose hand around it and impaled herself without a second’s delay. They both groaned at the impact, and she said, “Oh God—big,” her voice rife with pleasure.

In one smooth, strong move, Carter anchored his free arm around her and laid her back on the soft, cool grass without his shaft ever leaving her. The moon shone behind his head as she looked into those intense eyes and, despite herself, relished having him on top of her. She loved her control, craved it, needed it, thrived on it—but being under this man was undeniably good. Feeling his strength, how much larger he was than her. Feeling the power of his erection as it drove into her so deep.

His cuffed hand rose to her breast, dragging hers with it as he yanked down her dress and bra to reveal one stiffened pink peak beneath the streetlight’s glow. He licked it hungrily, leaving it to glisten, then tingle with pleasure as the soft breeze cooled her skin.

He massaged the mound in his hand as his shaft filled her with deep, hard strokes that echoed to her core. She wrapped her legs around his waist to pull him deeper and somehow felt even more hedonistic than she had during their three-way with Melanie. In that moment, she didn’t care if anyone came upon them—she didn’t care if the whole condo complex gathered around to watch them fuck.

That’s when he found her hand, the one chained to his, and placed it full on her breast beneath his palm, and began to squeeze. She looked into his eyes and let him, let him make her touch herself. The chain connecting their cuffs scraped coolly across her soft flesh, adding to her excitement as he pummeled her with hard thrusts that pressed her ass into the ground.

“Harder,” she said through clenched teeth. “
Harder
.” Needing to feel him more and more, needing to take every ounce of what he had to give.

His rough drives soon came with deep groans and she knew he was getting closer and closer to exploding in her. “Come, baby, deep inside me,” she urged him, remembering how, despite herself, his demands for
her
to come had helped push her to climax.

“Oh fuck, yeah,” he said, voice deep, filled with a hard, masculine pleasure, and then he pounded into her still more roughly, brutal and hot and good, and she knew he was spilling his come inside her, and she’d never felt so physically satisfied.

He kissed her again, his mouth still flavored by her cunt, and they lay quiet for a long moment, recovering.

Finally, he rolled off her, lying beside her in the grass, their wrists still connected. “Damn,” he said. “You get me so hot, baby.” Then he turned his head to look at her and caught her already peering at him. “And I like you, Erin. So much.”

His earnest tone made her feel the words in her gut. Shit. She hadn’t expected him to come right out with it. She thought it was pretty clear that they were strongly drawn to each other, and that, yes—like it or not—there were emotions involved, a lot of them. But having a guy as hot and handsome as Carter come right out and simply say that he
liked
her hit her hard.

She turned her gaze back toward the sky and decided not to respond.

Because as good as this had been—as unbelievably intense and pleasurable—she had to get back to business here, the business of making him understand this had to end.

“I fucked up by letting myself be attracted to you,” she said frankly. “And I fucked up worse by trying to…to stop it with sex. And I apologize for that.”

She looked back to him, but couldn’t read his expression until he said, “All right. Apology accepted. And thank you. For telling me everything you told me tonight.”

She gave a short, precise nod, and realized it was her “cop nod”, something she used on the job. And that was good—because she had to close the emotional floodgates now. Once and for all. “And I wish I could have something more with you, Carter, because…well, it’s clear you’re an amazing lover and also…a really nice guy.” She blinked. “What I’m saying is…I like you, too. A lot.”

Oh hell, stop it. You’re supposed to be closing the floodgates, not opening them wider.

So she again withdrew her gaze, focused on the moon. “But like I told you, I can’t allow myself to feel the things you make me feel. If I’d had to go to work the other night after we had sex at Caesars, I’d have been toast. I felt too much. I was thinking too hard. And I can’t do that, Carter. It literally puts my life at risk.”

“You’re soft underneath,” he said gently, simply.

“What?” When she looked at him this time, those green eyes were enough to bury her.

“You’re soft underneath your sturdy cop exterior, and I love that, Erin.”

She sucked in her breath, again felt his words in her chest.

Then forced out the ones
she
had to say, to make him finally grasp the situation. “But the two don’t mix—soft girl, hard cop. So I have to choose. I have to be the hard cop all the time.” And the further truth, although she didn’t tell him, was that the contrasts between her true personality and her profession
did
make her do a lot of pretending—she’d realized that when he’d accused her of it earlier. Only maybe a lot of it was to herself—pretending it was easy to be so tough all the time, pretending she never needed anyone to lean on or a guy to love. And she talked herself into
believing
it most of the time, too, but Carter was wearing down her defenses.

“So,” she went on, “I answered your questions. Honestly. I’ve told you things I’ve told no one else. That’s what you wanted—an explanation for my behavior, and now you’ve got it.”