CHERISH (10 page)

His fingertips trace up my sides so softly I can barely feel it, but my skin tingles and I begin to jerk and quiver.

His powerful hands cup my breasts, shooting new vibrations of lust through me. He is so distractingly gorgeous laying there under me, all hard and masculine. I nearly forget the burning pain between my legs.

He knows how to move. Even though parts of my brain want to be left alone, he shifts and takes control of my hips. Within thirty seconds I am liquid, following in his wake.

“Let me see you cum again. I love your sounds. How innocent you look. Show me, babe, show me that face. The face only I can give you.”

I catch a glimpse of myself in the enormous windows on the south wall of the loft. My belly is creased horizontally as I lean forward and for a split second I disconnect, creases lining my face. My eyes narrow, then squeeze shut as an unwelcome thought pierces the moment.

As soon as it happens I wish it hadn’t, because spidey doesn’t miss much.

“Did you just look at yourself and then make that face?” Beckett’s voice loses its lusty humor. Now it’s steel. Hard and sharp.

I consider lying, but that is Beckett’s hot button. The most grievous of sins. So I screw up my face, pull my lips to the side and give in to the little nod.

“Seriously?” He digs harsh fingertips into my hips until I make that puppy yelp. “Look again. Right fucking now. Look into that window.” His commanding voice sends a chill through my body even as his dick fattens inside of me.

I lift my eyes, taking a deep breath, then push gently up off his chest to sit tall. It seems strange to have him so far inside me with neither of us moving. Like some crazy tableau.

His hands let go of my hips, then tighten at my waist, squeezing, thumbs rubbing up and down under my belly button. He’s focused on the softest, squishiest part of my tummy and I look away from the reflection.

I barely feel his hand leave my waist before I feel the sting of his spank on the side of my ass.

“
Ow
!”

“Yeah, ‘Ow.’ Look at yourself, I said.”

“I’m looking!” I snap back, pouting, and another sharp smack lands on top of the last one.

I’ve learned that the smacks get exponentially more painful on top of each other.

I’ve also learned I like it.

A lot.

I have quit trying to understand it. Beckett brings me that little bit of pain and it does things to me. That's all I know. It's all I need to know. The pain does things.

Good things.

It sharpens my mind.

Right now, he’s trying to shut out the noise in my head. He's trying to get me to focus. And it’s working.

“Keep your eyes on that window,” his voice rumbles under me. The playful Beckett that was here a minute ago is long gone.

The side of my butt warms as he starts to move beneath me, both his hands covering my tits as they sway with my movement. Then his thumbs and forefingers roll my nipples, making me gasp, and his hips rock me back and forth. His cock is somewhere near my pancreas.

“Look at yourself and see yourself through my eyes. What I see is beauty beyond any measure. Straight out of a fairy tale where the townspeople tell folk stories about the goddess in the clouds. The mythical creature that drives me practically crazy every fucking morning when I wake up and see her next to me. But it’s more than how you look, it’s
you.
Magic lives inside of you. You are everything to me.”

Through my reflection, I can see my body moving, swaying, as his cock strokes into me and out of me. My lips fall open as our slick bodies find their rhythm and we become one. We are soaking each other and the sheets.

A low hum builds inside of me. He controls my hips, my body. He bends his knees to push himself up higher and the hum steadily grows into a warmth that moves and gathers in my core.

The friction between our bodies heats my skin. Beckett locks his grip on my ass now, shifting me forward and back. I feel the thickest part of him moving in and out, making me suck in a breath to steady myself. But I don’t take my eyes from the reflection. It’s riveting. And in one fleeting moment, I see it too and it brings me peace.

The same beauty that he sees. I'm not embarrassed to recognize it, not self-conscious nor modest. The beauty isn't mine, it's ours, and I'm fixated.

“That’s it. You are more spectacular than my highest high. Every time I look at you, every time you let me make love to you, you are more beautiful than the last time. And you are mine.” The timbre in his voice lowers to a growl. His body moves faster, jerking me to and fro over the hard plane of his lower abdominals.

My hair falls over my face. My hands cling to his forearms as they control our bodies, working them together, in time. I’m so full, his size beyond what I think I can take. And yet.

I do.

I choke on the gasp and the silent scream that rip through my lungs as the tingle races up from my toes. My hips take on a life of their own. Beckett lifts his head to watch me and I feel his cock turn to stone.

We are as together as two people can be, moving as one. He makes a deep, thundering noise as my body gushes and tightens around the base of his exploding cock. We cum in unison and it makes us both shudder. I can't control my hands as they turn to claws. My nails score the flesh of his hard muscle.

He pushes me down onto him as hard as he ever has, and that burning comes yet again as he seats himself into my core and fills me with his cum.

I am covered in a sheen of sweat. My hair clings to it, the hard peaks of my nipples pushing through the wild ivory strands. I puff out some air, trying to keep from sucking my hair down my throat, as I pant and breathe like I’ve just run for my life.

His grip is like iron on the round base of my ass. The sting from the belt is still a low throb and the mess between my legs runs down and over his hips.

We look at each other. The love in his eyes still startles me sometimes. It takes us a good minute or more to catch our breath.

“Shower?” he says on a raspy exhale.

I nod, unable to figure out how to form the simple words I need at that moment.

“You feel better, babe?” He gathers me against him. By now I instinctively know not to even think about dismounting. That's not his way.

He intends to carry me to the bathroom while he is still inside me. So I wrap my arms around his neck as he settles his warm lips onto mine. He shifts to the edge of the bed, and I wrap my legs around him, locking them behind his back so that when he stands I cling to him like a baby.

“Yes. I feel better, Daddy.” I throw in the playful title when it feels right. And right now it does, because he takes care of me in ways I didn’t know someone could.

“Good girl.”

As he takes a few steps from the bed, his phone dings with a text. Then another ding. Then two more all right in succession. All of a sudden, everything that's going on is right at the forefront of my mind again.

But he doesn’t stop walking.

“Beck, your phone—it could be news about Jordan or something.”

“Could be,” he agrees. “But right now, we’ll finish what we started. Shower first, then phone. Whatever it is, it will wait.”

But what if it won’t?

Beckett

We kiss and let the water fall over us until our fingers prune and my ever present hard on doesn't give up, ready for another round. But I can see the tension in Promise's face. She's done here.

I nod. “Okay, babe, let's see what the message is all about.”

The shower became a place where we connected in a different way.

Sure, we connect in lots of ways, but besides the sex, it’s intimate.

I love soaping her, the slick texture of her skin like silk under my rough hands. Gliding down her belly, over her back, working my fingers through her hair. But this time, we need to get moving.

I shut down the jets of hot water, grab the white towel from the bar at the far end of the shower, step toward her and start my ritual of patting down every glorious curve. She'll be warm and dry before she steps out of the glass enclosure.

“You said you talked to your friends? You mean your brothers right?”

“Yep. Called Jax. He’s still connected up the chain with security clearances. He’s searching for family details as well as anything else in Louis’s past which may help. Brendan is ready to hop on a plane when I say the word. Brendan opted out like me, but he and Jax live close to each other, so they are on top of stuff I can’t do from here.” I pause, distracted when she unwraps herself and towels her hair, leaving me in silent admiration of what’s mine.

“Beck!”

I’m staring and her lips are moving but my ears aren’t clicked on.

“What?”

Crap, she’s giving me the look.

“You’re not listening.” She takes a step forward and I notice her legs are still a little wobbly.

Mission accomplished. That last little pussy feast in the shower tipped her over the edge.

“Okay, babe. Yes? I’m listening.” I step forward and kiss her cheek, wanting more but restraining myself.

She trembles and I pull her to my chest, feeling the softness of her against me. I’m immersed in just how gone I am over this woman

“Promise me you’ll bring him back. Whatever you have to do. I don’t care what it is. Just do it. Okay?” She twists away and her words are hard. Determined. We both know there are things I can do that we won’t say out loud.

I set the phone back on the kitchen counter next to the pile of mail I still need to deal with.

Promise sits next to me on the counter as I perch on a stool. I remember the day when I sat her in this exact spot and kissed her. Felt feelings I thought were bullshit concocted in some romance novel laboratory just to drive chicks crazy and make dudes look pathetic.

It’s real.

Love and leprechauns and unicorns.

All the crazy stars in your eyes, bursting pain in the chest, tingling in parts you didn’t know could tingle, where you didn’t know you had parts; it’s all fucking real when you find the right one. Fuck if I can explain it, but if it happens to you, you are one of the lucky few.

I fold my hands in my lap and stare at the phone. The silence fills every square inch of the massive space inside the loft. Five thousand square feet times twenty foot ceilings equals a big ass space. And I feel each silent inch resting on my shoulders.

“So?” She’s annoyed because I wouldn’t put Brendan on speaker phone. Some things aren’t meant for her ears.

“So, okay.” I take a deep breath and gooseflesh covers my arms. “Right now, they found out Louis has a sister. She lives in Ontario.” Each word feels like a hundred-pound lead weight.

The questions shoot out of her mouth like rapid fire.

“Okay. So? What about her? Should we go see her? Did you know he had a sister? What does that mean? What else did he say? How can we—”

She’s firing questions as fast as my brain can keep up and my single focus processes each piece of information from Brendan as a unit. Then, I’ll put them together into something more tangible.

“Babe.” It comes out harder than I intend and she releases a puff of air through her nose and curls her arms around her waist. “Just give me a second okay? I have to fucking process.”

I put a hand on her knee watching her eyes fall to where I’m touching her, and her shoulders drop along with her chin.

From what Brendan told me, until he was twenty-five, Louis Spicer was known as Bakari Raz. The first clue of his living in America came when he was nineteen. He gained his citizenship two years later. He’s a dual citizen. Pays taxes in the US. No criminal background. The only way they found his sister is because she immigrated to the US originally before moving to Canada and put down Bakari Raz as family.

There’s probably more, but my boys are going to do some more digging and get back to me in the morning. It’s pushing nine o’clock now.

Just as I’m trying to figure out how to make the intel that my boys provided work into a strategy, my phone rings and I don’t miss the eye roll from Promise as I pick it up and take the call.

“Hello?” I narrow my eyes at her, but I can’t help but get a second wind of blood heading south as she pouts at me.