PrimalDesign (12 page)

“There you go, baby, just like that. Come all over my
fingers, Kitty-Cat. You feel so fucking good, like silk,” he panted against her
pussy before removing his fingers and pressing his face into her.

His tongue flickered along her slit, lapping at her juices,
just the way he’d promised to, the torment prolonging Kitty’s orgasm until she
was nothing but a puddle of skin and blood because there were no bones left in
her body. It was always this way with him and she’d spent countless hours
trying to figure out why. But now, pressed against the desk and looking out
over the crowd of party-goers below, Kitty understood.

He got something about her she hadn’t realized before coming
back to Maison Rouge. None of her other lovers had picked up on the need she
hadn’t even known she had for public sex. Who would have thought it? She’d
always been somewhat repressed until the last few years, but even when she’d
embraced her sexuality, she hadn’t experimented with what really turned her on.
But Monk knew and gave it to her without putting her at serious risk. It was
amazing and primal.
He
was amazing and sexy and—oh God, she was in love
with him. Again.

“Ah, baby, you taste so good,” he purred against her thigh,
his teeth nipping gently. “I could spend hours right here.”

Kitty let her head thump against the desk, her heart
clenching in time with the flutters of her sex as Monk made good on his promise
to lick her clean. She was in so much trouble.

Chapter Eight

Monk cuddled Kitty closer, the velvet pallet he’d made
providing some relief from the hard floor. He had no clue how long they’d been
up in the booth, but it was long enough to make her come four times, twice with
his mouth and hands, twice with his cock buried deep inside her. They’d
collapsed on the pallet, drinking champagne and devouring the food he’d carried
upstairs.

Now, replete from sex and food, they lounged together. “This
is nice,” he murmured into the quiet of the booth.

Music had started playing downstairs right as he brought
Kitty to climax the fourth time. And a good thing too, since she hadn’t been
able to hold back her scream of pleasure that time. Pride made Monk puff out
his chest. He’d made her lose all control.

“It is,” she answered without moving her head from his
chest.

He buried his nose in her hair, inhaling the wonderful,
sweet and spicy scent of his mate. “I did good, didn’t I?”

She pinched the skin over his ribs. “Don’t be cocky.”

“Don’t hate me because I make you scream like a banshee,” he
teased, tickling his fingers down the center of her back to reach for and
squeeze her ass.

They were quiet for a moment, the sounds from below
filtering to them. “We should probably go back downstairs,” Kitty said on a
long, drawn-out sigh.

Monk frowned at the ceiling above them, something niggling
at his mind. “What’s wrong, Kitty?”

She tensed. “Nothing’s wrong. I’m supposed to be downstairs,
mingling and stuff, you know, wedding stuff.”

“No, that’s not what I mean,” he said, shifting until he
could look at her face. “Something’s bothering you. What is it?”

Kitty pushed away from him and rolled to her feet in one
graceful movement. He didn’t bother trying to hold her down. It seemed she was
ready to get up. Rolling to his feet as well, Monk grabbed the pack of
towelettes he’d found in one of the storage closets.

“Here, I thought you might want to clean up,” he said
tossing them in her direction.

He was pissed at her for not opening up to him, but he said
nothing else about it. He pulled his clothes on and silently fumed. How many
times did he have to beg her for forgiveness for what he’d done as a stupid
teenager? But he knew it was more than that. He’d gained some of her trust, but
despite everything they’d done together for the past two weeks, she couldn’t,
or wouldn’t, give him more. It infuriated him since he practically wore his
fucking heart on his sleeve for her. Only for her and she couldn’t give him a
little assurance by opening up to him.

She finished cleaning herself and dressing before he did and
went to stand at the desk where they’d just enjoyed each other. The silence
between them was thick and edged with something big. Monk straightened his tie
and smoothed a hand over his hair before stepping up to join her in staring
down at the crowd below them.

“They look happy, don’t they?” she asked in a hushed voice.

He could see Daisy and Ram feeding each other, their gazes
locked. Kitty’s parents stood in line together, Hunter carefully choosing the
best pieces of food for his mate. Claudette and Thomas, Daisy’s parents, were
two-stepping in the middle of the room, their odd height differences barely
noticeable as they moved together as a single unit.

“They all look very happy,” he agreed. Maybe it was the
harsh way she’d ignored him, or maybe it was because he was tired of acting as
if the past never happened, but Monk breached a subject he and Kitty had been
careful to avoid in the last two weeks. “I was always jealous of you and
Daisy.”

She glanced at him over her shoulder, her eyes puzzled. “You
were? Why?”

“I only had my dad.” He shrugged. “I loved him, you know?
But we weren’t close like you and Daisy are with your parents. And then to find
out he lied to me my entire life…things just weren’t the same between us.”

Kitty didn’t speak for a long moment, but she didn’t move
away either, something that gave Monk hope. “Do you see him much anymore?”

He turned to look at her, resting his hips on the edge of
the desk. She kept her eyes on the gym, leaving him with a clear view of her
profile. “Dad left Maison Rouge not long after graduation. He gave me the house
and moved to Houston. He’d lost his job when the economy went in the tank. He
wanted me to go with him, but I couldn’t leave Maison Rouge.” He stuffed his
hands in his pockets, trying not to sound like an orphan or something equally
pathetic. “It was better for our relationship that he left. Every time I saw
him, all I could think was how he fucked up the best thing that ever happened
to me.”

Kitty’s face paled, but she still didn’t say anything.

Monk bit back a sigh of frustration, his cougar cautioning
him to take this slow. “He’s married to someone else now, someone who didn’t
try to kill her kids. Last time I talked to him, he seemed happy.”

Her head turned to pin him in place with her sharp eyes.
“What made you decide you could finally tell me the truth?”

Rubbing the back of his neck with a grimace, Monk tried to
think of a way it wouldn’t sound as if he’d trusted Daisy Lynn before Kitty, but
nothing he came up with made it seem any better. “Daisy Lynn tortured me for
years after you left,” he finally sighed. His lips quirked. “She was beyond
pissed off at me for what I did to you, what I did to her.” He shrugged. “Then
Ram came along and he made us actually talk to each other. It sort of came out
then. She chewed my ass out for that as well because she pointed out, rightly I
might add, that you wouldn’t have let anything like I feared happen to our
kids.”

She still stared at him, her thoughts closed off. He ran a
hand through his hair. “God, Kitty, I was seventeen, okay? All I could see was
the way Dad looked when he told me and imagined putting you in his position.
Did you know he had to hurt my mother to make her let go of me? Now tell me you
would have been able to hurt me, possibly damn near kill me if we had mated and
married so young, Kitty.” His voice was harsher than he meant it to be and it
made her flinch. “If I would have told you about it, would you have accepted it
and gone on? No, because you’re stubborn.” He let out a laugh that wasn’t very
humorous. “God, you’re stubborn, Kitty. You would’ve stayed. We probably would
have had three or four kids by now, maybe more considering I can’t keep my
hands off you, but one day I would’ve snapped. You know it and I damn well know
it. When that happened, what would you have done?”

Her face was stark white by the time he stopped speaking,
even her lush lips were devoid of color. “We’ll never know the answers to your
questions, will we, Monk?” she asked in a low tone. “If you’ll excuse me, I’m
needed downstairs.”

She skirted around him, heading for the door. Monk wasn’t
letting her go yet. He sprang at her, his hands catching her shoulders and
pinning her to the wall. “No, you don’t get to run away again, Kitty. This time
we’re going to deal with this.”

“Let me go, Monk,” she said in that careful voice that told
him she was barely holding on to her temper. “I don’t want to destroy things by
arguing with you.”

He got in her face. “You mean you don’t want to destroy our
fuck-buddy relationship? That’s all I am to you, isn’t it, Kitty? I’m just a
convenient cock for you to enjoy.” He pushed away from her, his stomach roiling
with pain. “I miss the old Kitty. She was a lot braver than you are. She put
her heart and soul into anything she did. She would’ve never spread her legs
for someone she didn’t love.”

Her hand flashed out, catching him across the face, not in a
slap, but in a full-blown right cross. Monk saw stars and stumbled back, his
hand over his eye.

“You motherfucker,” she seethed through her teeth. “You miss
the old Kitty? Well I miss the old Monk who believed in me. He had faith in me,
in how strong I was. He cared about my feelings.” She slammed her hand against
her chest. “Now you think you can just turn back time and I’ll be the same girl
you betrayed? Think again, Monk. I deserve someone who loves me. This me, not
the one who was too weak for you to trust.”

“I do trust you, dammit! I trust you to be strong enough to
kill me if you need to.”

Her face went slack. “What?”

He stepped up close to her, his face still throbbing from
her punch, and bared his soul. “You’re strong, Kitty. So damn strong and I
should have realized it then, but I was scared to tell you about my fucked-up
genetics. You’ve proven to everyone that you don’t need me, but
I
need
you
,
Kitty Marie. I never stopped loving you and spending this time with you since
you’ve been back only made me love you more.” He saw a flash of hopeful
pleasure in her eyes at his words and rushed on. “Please give me another
chance, baby,” he whispered, sliding closer to her, his hands almost touching
her. “Please just let me have another shot at making you happy and giving you
the babies you’ve always wanted.”

For a moment, he thought she would melt right into his arms.
Her eyelashes fluttered and her mouth softened, but then as though someone had
cut off the power, her face closed down, her lips quivering slightly at the
edges. “I can’t.” She sucked in a shuddering breath. “I don’t know if I can
trust you again. Not like you seem to want me to.”

This time, Monk knew the blood had drained from his face
because he felt it actually pool somewhere. Probably on the floor where his
fucking heart lay after she ripped it out of his chest. Deep in his soul, his
cougar screamed in rage and pain, but Monk didn’t let it out. He’d given her
fucking everything. The truth about what he’d done, why he’d done it, and bared
his soul to her, but it wasn’t enough. He had a feeling it would never be
enough for her.

His hands froze next to her waist, hovering close enough he
could feel her body heat. His arms fell to his sides. “You’re a cold bitch,
Kitty Chambers,” Monk whispered harshly. Her eyelashes flickered at his words,
but she didn’t say anything, her face a cool, distant mask. He sucked in a deep
breath and took a step back. “Get the fuck out of here. And consider our
friendship
,”
he sneered, “over.”

Monk turned his back on her, not wanting to watch her leave,
not again, and turned to face the gym. His superior hearing tracked Kitty’s
footsteps as she walked out of the booth and down the stairs. The distant sound
of the door closing was a death knell for any hopes he’d had for a future with
the woman he loved.

Cold and numb, Monk eyed the bottle of champagne they hadn’t
finished. It was the perfect night to get shitfaced.

* * * * *

Kitty moved through the crowd on automatic pilot, every step
forcing her to relive the pleasure Monk had given her, but even that did little
to dispel the strange buzz in her head. When people smiled at her, she returned
the expression, although her face felt frozen. She needed to get out of here.
The sounds of people talking and laughing just added to the agony crushing her.

She refused to look back at the booth. If Monk happened to
be watching her, she didn’t want him to see the pain she felt. She’d hidden it
from him, probably a little too well considering how he’d looked at her, but
she wouldn’t be able to hold on to it much longer.

A hand snagged her wrist. “Hey, where’ve you been, you kinky
bear?” Daisy asked in a playful tone as she stopped Kitty’s progress to the
door.

Swallowing hard, she looked at her cousin with another one
of her plastic smiles. “I’ve been mingling. I’m sorry, I thought I could stay,
but I want to finish your dress tonight.” She tugged out of Daisy’s hold. “The
rehearsal supper is only in a couple of days.”

“What’s wrong?” This time Daisy’s voice was low and hard.
She stepped in front of Kitty, forced her to look up to meet her eyes. “What
happened to you? Where’s Monk?”

Hearing his name sent another spike of pain shooting
straight at her heart. What could she say?
He’s upstairs where I left him
looking like I’d just stabbed him.
She shrugged. “I don’t know and this has
nothing to do with him. I’m ready to get back to work on your dress.”

Daisy’s brown eyes narrowed on Kitty’s face, her lips
pressed flat. “We’ve never lied to each other and I don’t want to start now.
What the fuck happened?”

Some of the people nearby looked over at Daisy’s hard voice,
curiosity on their faces. Smiling, Kitty said through her teeth, “We’re not
talking about it here. Drop it.”

Daisy reached out and slapped the back of Kitty’s head.
“You’re so
tête dur
! You’ve done something stupid, haven’t you?” Daisy
demanded with a glare.

Kitty’s head smarted where her cousin had hit her. She
didn’t argue with Daisy though because she was hardheaded. But then so was
Daisy. “I did what I had to,” she said through clenched teeth. “And we’re not
talking about it here.”

Her cousin’s nostrils flared, but she didn’t say anything
else on the subject. “Fine, but I’m going to kick your ass once I’m not wearing
these damn shoes.”

Daisy flounced away, or teetered more like it.

Left alone in the middle of the crowd, Kitty forced a
carefree grin on her face and looked at the people staring between her and
Daisy. “She’s anxious to see her dress,” she told them with a stilted laugh.
Understanding dawned on their faces and people went back to their
conversations, smiling.

Still holding that wide, false grin, Kitty made her way
outside, ducking her mama and
Tante
Claudette who both seemed to feel
the vibes of anger between their daughters. She couldn’t deal with anyone who
actually loved her at the moment. Not after she’d so coldly thrown Monk’s love
away. She needed space and silence.

Stepping through the doors of the gym, she found neither. A
crowd had formed outside the building, a mingling of reporters and tourists and
the minute the doors closed behind her, she was mobbed.