Demand (6 page)

It is dark outside when I reach the address the caller gave me—
a restaurant. I enter and walk to the hostess stand, and spot David with a beautiful blonde, who I believe is American. I quickly move out of his line of sight, and dash back outside to the busy sidewalk. I don't think they're lovers, but I don't know. I wait outside, the hood of my jacket covering much of my face, and he finally exits, and the woman is not with him, but he turns away from our hotel
, and I follow, sheltering myself in the crowded sidewalk, where shops line our path. For blocks we walk like this, him in front of me, me praying I find the truth about the man I foolishly planned to marry. Love wasn't in the equation. Normalcy was. I wanted to be normal. To be secure. To forget the dangerous past I don't want to exist.

Abruptly David turns down a side street and two women block my path. I cut around them just in time to see David disappear. I run after him, but pause at the corner. Peeking down the sidewalk, I find it dark, lined with brownstones, and no pedestrians, not even David to mark my path. Inhaling, I dare to turn down the path he'd taken, hurrying forward until I reach an open gate leading to a private garden. It's then that I see a man on the ground. . . . David on the ground.

I rush to him, and there is blood oozing from his chest. “I'll get help! Hold on. I'll get help.”

I start to get up and he grips my arm. “Wait,” he hisses. “Don't . . . give . . . him the necklace.”

“Him who?”

But the memory goes blank and my eyes pop open, my heart racing a million miles an hour. “Don't give him the necklace,” I whisper, repeating his words and then my own. “Him who?”

And I can come to only one conclusion. He didn't use a name because he believed I knew who he was talking about.

“E
lla.”

At the sound of my name, my lashes lift and I blink the gorgeous man leaning over me into view, my mind flickering back to the hospital room where I'd done the same. “Kayden?” I ask, rising up on my elbows to find him kneeling beside me.

“Why are you on the couch?” he asks, his voice a soft but evident demand.

“I must have fallen asleep. What time is it?”

“Two in the morning.”

“Two,” I repeat. “The last time I looked it was ten, and—” Everything comes crashing back to me. Raul. Enzo. Adriel. Gallo and Giada. The flashback of David dying on that cobblestone walkway. My fear that Kayden would also die. “Oh God.” I throw aside the heavy weight of Matteo's jacket, sit up, and fling my arms around Kayden's neck. “You're alive. You're okay. I'm so glad you're here.”

But he doesn't hug me; his hands settle at my waist. “But you didn't want to be in my bedroom, in
our
room, Ella.”

I lean back to look at him, shadows stroking his face that have nothing to do with the ones I see in his eyes. “I just . . . I needed to be right here while you were gone.”

“Because you don't trust me right now.”

“But I do,” I confess, no matter how right or wrong that decision may be. “Beyond reason, I do, which is why the idea of you betraying me guts me.”

“The truth is not as simple as a betrayal. And what guts me is the idea of losing you.”

“I don't know what the future holds, Kayden. I barely know how I got here. I can't promise how I'll react to what you tell me. But I know that we're here, and Enzo is gone, and I can't lose you tonight.”

His hand slides under my hair, folding around my neck. “I can't lose you
ever
.” His mouth slants over mine, his tongue stroking deep, and suddenly we are crazy, wildly kissing, touching each other like we will never touch again, two people who value control and have lost it, as if every emotion we've bottled up tonight has exploded right here and now, and become this moment that is all about need, passion, and hunger. My hand slides under his T-shirt, and only then do I realize his guns are gone. The hell is done and over, at least for now, and I press my palms to his warm, taut skin, reveling in this escape that I know will not last.

“Kayden,” I find myself whispering, his name a plea for some unknown something that only he can give me.

His answer is to kiss me again, and I feel the deep, seductive stroke of his tongue in every part of me. I moan and arch into him, and a frenzied rush of our hands on each other's bodies ends in our shirts disappearing and my bra falling to the floor. It's then that we slow down and his gaze rakes over my breasts, a hot inspection that tightens my nipples and my sex.

“You are beautiful,” he declares, flattening his hand between my shoulder blades, molding my naked chest to his, skin against skin. “If I can hold you like this every day for the rest of my life, I'll die a happy man.”

“
I
f
,” I repeat. “I hate that word. I hate all of the uncertainty between us.”

He stands and takes me with him, stroking the hair from my face and tilting my mouth to his. “
If
is a reminder to never take anything for granted. That every day, and every moment—”

“Could be our last,” I supply, the words reminding me of Enzo, of his loss, and our fight to save his life, which ended in his death.

“Which is exactly why we need to fuck like it is.” He kisses me then, a short, hot claiming that is all about demand, two parts fierce, one part a question I don't understand, before he tears his mouth from mine and walks me backward. “You have too many clothes on,” he declares, going down on one knee again and wasting no time removing my Keds.

My hands settle on his shoulders, his mouth finding my belly, his tongue flicking here and there, and my nipples ache to feel the same. And when he moves lower, exploring the bare expanse of skin just above my waistband, my fingers slide into his hair, tangling in the soft stands. But they do not stay.

Almost instantly, Kayden catches my wrist and presses my arms and hands behind me. “Lace your fingers together.”

“What?”

“I'm going to make sure you can think of nothing but us. That's what you want, isn't it?”

“Yes,” I say, my certainty that I want whatever he offers absolute. “That's what I want.”

“Then do as I say. Lace your fingers together and don't release them until I tell you to.”

The idea of submitting to him, of willingly giving him control, is sexy in ways that defy what I know of my past. I am even wetter and hotter than moments before. But Kayden has declared my submission to be my choice, while the man of my past took it. I twine my fingers beneath his grip, and there's no mistaking the satisfaction that lights his eyes, a satisfaction that I know isn't about sex. It's about trust—something that I don't believe either of us have known much of in our lives.

His finger trails my waistband, his mouth following, his tongue flickering above the denim, a touch and a lick I feel in places he hasn't yet explored, but I have no question he will. My lashes lower, my breasts feel heavy, my sex is tight, slick, ready for the moment Kayden is inside me.

“Ella,” he says, softly, the rough timbre of his voice compelling me to look at him. “Tell me that the birth control you started has kicked in, and I can be inside you with nothing between us.”

“It has,” I say, and for several beats we stare at each other, a new level of intimacy between us that has nothing to do with our naked bodies, but everything to do with our newly formed, fragile commitment to each other.

He suddenly averts his gaze, resting his cheek on my belly, his energy shifting, darkening, several heavy beats passing. I want to touch him, to drive away the torment coming from him. “Kayden,” I whisper softly, and when he looks at me, those shadows of minutes before are thicker, more intense.

“I'm going to make you forget everything but us. I'm going to make
me
forget. I'm going to fuck you every possible way I can before this night is over.” He cups my sex. “I'm going to lick you here, over and over, until you cry out because you want to come so badly it hurts. I'm going to make you say please. Do you have a problem with that?”

“Maybe I should just say please now.”

“No. When it hurts so good that it's almost pain, you say please.”

He unsnaps my jeans and then unzips them, his hands slipping under the denim, and my panties, to my hips, sliding them down. They pool at my feet and I have a second at most to be self-conscious before he's standing. He wraps his arms around me, covering my hands with his behind me, and then he arches backward, lifting me as he kicks away my pants. But he doesn't put me down. He holds me there, cradling my body with his, and I can't move, but I don't want to. I just want
him.
This. Nothing else. The air around us crackles, stealing my breath. Stealing time and washing away everything else before this moment.

Slowly he lowers me, walking me backward, and then easing us down again so I'm sitting on the couch, and he is in front of me between my open legs. Leaning into me, he presses my hands into the cushion behind me, and then drags my hips forward, forcing me to support my weight on them. I've barely steadied myself when he twines rough, erotic fingers in my hair and kisses me, before ordering, “Shut your eyes.” I do it, no hesitation, wanting whatever unknown he intends, and when I do, he adds, “Don't move.”

And then he is gone, and I can hear the sounds of him undressing, an erotic thrill that promises soon he will be naked, inside me, touching me. Me touching him. But unbidden, an image of that necklace is in my mind and then me holding a gun on Kayden. I jolt upward. “Kayden,” I say, at the very moment he shoves his jeans and underwear down his legs, giving me a delicious view of his amazing backside and the circle of skulls tattooed on his back.

He faces me, tossing his jeans aside as he does, and I inhale at the sight of him, every delicious, long, muscular inch of him now exposed, his thick shaft jutting forward. And somehow we are frozen in place. He doesn't move. I don't move. Seconds tick by, and every moment we've ever shared, including the one in the shower with me holding the gun on him, is between us, but there is only one question that I have to have answered right now. Before I can ask, though, he's walking toward me, and in another few beats, he is sitting on the couch, pulling me over his lap to straddle him, his erection pressed to my belly between us.

“You want to know about the necklace now,” he says, his voice low, terse, his expression stark.

“No,” I whisper. “I want to know what really matters.”

“Which is what?”

“I want to know that we're real. Tell me we're—”

He kisses me, cupping the back of my head and dragging my mouth to his, the taste of him wickedly erotic, and almost angry, bleeding into my senses a moment before he demands, “Does that taste real?” And he gives me no time to reply as his mouth closes down on mine again, and this time it's a claiming, a possession that ends with another demand of, “Do we
taste
real?”

“Yes,” I whisper.

“You aren't saying it like you mean it.” He lifts me, pressing his shaft inside me, and pulling me down the hard length of his erection. “Let's try this again.” He shifts himself, burying his cock in the deepest part of me. “Does that
feel
real?”

My lashes lower, my breath lodged in my throat. “Yes.”

He cups my head again and rests his cheek against mine. “Do you know what I feel? Too much.”

“And yet I want more,” I whisper.

“Now,” he says. “You want more now.”

There is an odd ring of finality to that statement, as if there won't be more later, but he holds me to him, driving into me, and we are rocking and swaying, and everything else fades away. Wildness takes us again; we can't kiss each other enough or touch each other enough. Harder and faster, we move, we grind, he drives, and the edge of no return is threatening to steal the here and now. I'm not ready to let go of it, but it's too late. It's here, and I cry out, “Kayden!” a moment before my sex clenches onto his cock, and I bury my face in his neck to ride out the sensations.

His arm wraps my waist and he pulls me against him, a low guttural groan coming from his throat, and our bodies shake. Pleasure trembles through me, the world fading, time standing still until I finally return to the present, resting against Kayden, his arm holding on to me.

For a long time we sit like that, huddled together, refusing to accept whatever comes next, until dampness spreads on our legs and reality scrapes away at our escape. Kayden turns me and lays me on my back, leaning over me, staring down at me. “Ella,” he whispers, and I know he feels what I do. We can't just fuck away the night. Neither of us can take the unknowns between us.