The Australian (Crime Royalty Romance Book 2) (22 page)

I glanced up, intending to protest, when he said to Jenny, who had just secured Miss Moneypenny in her backseat, “We’ll follow you.” Jenny came round the back end of her car. She saw the same thing in his face that I did, for the words of protest she was forming with her mouth never came out.

“Fine,” she snapped at him. “I’m in Surry Hills.”

I pulled up the map of Sydney in my mind, relieved that my new accommodations would not be too far from the Plaza; however; I might still need to take transit, unless of course I caught a ride into work with Jenny, although I would not ask. I was glad I had found the courage to take driving lessons, which started on Tuesday. Before moving here I had set a goal of owning my own vehicle—it was necessary to every independent woman—and of course there would be no point if I never got my driver’s license.

Jace was staring down at me—I could
feel
it—and I knew; I was just distracting myself. I could barely breathe. We just stood there. So . . . I glanced up, but before my eyelids had fully lifted, his mouth was on mine, quick, off-center and hard. Then he manhandled me over to his bike, and let go. I watched him straddle the sleek, aggressive black, silver and neon green machine.

It was poised not unlike a panther mid-strike.

“I’ve never been on a motorbike before.”

He laughed briskly. “Yeah, well, I’ve never been separated from my balls before. Make do.”

Sarcasm.

I swallowed. Jenny started her car.

“Do you have a helmet for me?” I asked, even though he clearly did not.

“Don’t need one.”

“I’m sure that’s what nearly five thousand Americans who are killed on a motorcycle every year say before—”

“Don’t take this the wrong way or nothing, but get on the fuckin’ Kwaka now, Charlie.”

He was bossing me.

He made a frowning face.

He was mocking me, again.

I took the challenge, stepped over and straddled the dangerous apparatus. He helped me over, and as soon as I was on, I slid myself forward right into his back on the slope of the seat. It was extremely awkward. He helped me position my feet on two short black projections. I wound my arms around his waist, instinctively, with deep trepidation.

“Do you have any instructions for me?” I yelled over the engine.

He took off after Jenny without a word.

Jenny’s apartment was on Bourke Street, on the top floor of a brown brick complex built in 1928, a short walking distance from the restaurant-lined Crown Street. It had an ample living room, a small “kit” (kitchen) off one end, two bedrooms off the hall opposite and a very narrow bathroom, where it hardly seemed possible to fit in a shower, bath, and sink.

The walls were white, and Jenny had decorated the place with low-lying all-white furnishings (highly impractical), accented with colorful carpets and pillows. There were knickknacks from her various travels, painted wooden animals, wicker baskets full of well-read newspapers, and black-and-white framed prints of various war zones decorated the living rooms walls.

“But this is your office,” I said, when she showed me to my room. It contained a desk and a single bed.

“I never use it,” she said, vehemently. “Guest bed was for my mum when she visited before she passed.”

“I’m sorry for your loss,” I offered, stiffening. Jenny had never divulged this about herself, even though she knew I had lost my mother. What did that mean? I would have to ask B.

“You sure you want to stay here?” asked Jace, who had brought up Miss Moneypenny, my suitcase, the garbage bags and a box, all in one trip. Jenny and I had managed two boxes each.

“She’ll get on fine,” said Jenny, sharply.

“Yes, I will,” I answered, wanting to put her mind at ease. It was the nicest thing anyone had ever done for me. I told her that again, and she turned red-faced while Jace rolled his eyes and walked over to the small window, arms crossed.

She showed me the rest of the place, the linen closet, how to work the oven (one burner was on the fritz) and gave me a spare key.

“I’ve got to head to my dad’s for Sunday dinner. You want to come?” she asked, standing near the front door.

“We’ve got plans,” interjected Jace, looming large in the doorway to my new bedroom. He entered the living room and stood somewhere behind me.

Jenny glanced at me, her eyebrows raised, and I felt she was demanding reassurance. Considering all she had done for me, I wished to ease her mind. “I will be fine, here. I would like to settle in.”

“Are you certain? It’s no bother. He’ll have extra on the barbie.”

“She’s fine,” said Jace.

I smiled, and nodded at Jenny’s glare.

Jenny left.

I glanced around the living room, shaky, barely able to absorb all that had happened. I felt . . . good about this change. Yes, I would strive to be a good roommate.

Suddenly, I realized how much I had wanted to move in with B when she had asked me five years ago. I should have told her that! My eyes flashed wide. Why had I never told her that? She would have liked to have known.

“You still giving me the cold shoulder?” asked Jace behind me, bringing me back into the moment with gravity-sucking force.

“No,” I said quietly, picking up Miss Moneypenny and taking her into my new bedroom. “Can you close the door behind you?” He did and I let Miss Moneypenny out after I filled her litter box. “She will feel better getting used to one room first.”

She ran straight for Jace’s legs and my face flushed. I sighed, frustrated, but was pleased she was not traumatized by yet another move. Apparently, we were born gypsies, and her a seductress, at that. Jace was smiling, squatting down to pet her.

After a moment, when he rose up and shifted a few boxes onto the desk, he said, in a tone I had not heard before, “You didn’t have to move here, you know. If you want me to fuck off, I will, if that’s what this is all about. You can have your job, you can stay at the Pyrmont and I’ll leave you alone. I don’t know how. But I will. You just have to . . .” he trailed off, turning around to face me. “You have to actually communicate what you want, Charlie.”

Staring at his chest, I felt how small the room really was. And how terrible indeed it must have been for him thinking that I didn’t want him. I had only hoped he regretted our agreement.

“And you need to look me in the eye when you do it.”

I glanced up and my heart skipped a beat. I have no idea why. Physical appearance never meant anything to me before.

“I want . . .”

He stared down at me from under this brow, his raven eyes matching his hair. I searched for that place in them, where I felt . . . sure.

There.

“I want everything,” I answered boldly.

He smiled.

“But . . .”

His smile slid.

“How can we maintain a professional relationship if we mate, too? Everything I have heard or read has said that once professional boundaries are removed, it is impossible to function in an effective manner. I really like this job, and it did come first. Is that not why you have avoided engaging in sex with prior offsiders?”

He smiled again, picking up the suitcase and moving it out of the way, into the closet. Now there was a clear path between us and enough space to move around without tripping. “Don’t think about that, and we’ll have no worries, Charlie. We’ll just maintain that boundary between nine and five. I can do it. And . . . you should have no probs given how you turn off feelings.” The last part was delivered with a strange tone.

I inhaled sharply. “I don’t turn off feelings.”

He turned around. “Like ’ell. How else could you think I was the kind of bloke who would use you like that and then toss you aside like rubbish?”

His eyes bore down on me.

Oh.

He still had the wrong idea. Or perhaps it was the wound our misunderstanding had created.

“I wasn’t . . . I didn’t think less of you.”

His brow furrowed. He required further explanation.

“I respected the logic, which I thought we had both agreed to.”

How could I have got this so wrong? “I thought, given the intensity of the attraction we experience, we could not be effective in a professional capacity. We were simply acting on our base desires. And I thought we had chosen that mutually.”

He watched me closely. “You have a strange way of thinking, Charlie.”

I felt my face flush. I did not agree with him, but decided not to protest.

“Guess I’m going to have to be careful, no, explicit, and absolutely clear, about what I say in the future.”

“Yes, that is always helpful.”

“Like right now.”

I eyed him, expectant.

“You denied me,
again
.”

Denied him?

Wait, his face . . . Was he . . . cross? No. But he felt something deeply. I could not be sure what. There was a peculiar look on his face.

“I’ve never been denied anything. Ever. And I don’t like the feeling.”

My eyes opened wide as he pulled his shirt up and off over his head.

“So now I am going to have you . . . the way I wanted to have you the first time you denied me.” He loosened his motorcycle boot with his heel and bent over to tug it off, and then the other. “Do you understand what I am saying clear enough?”

I soaked in his rounded shoulders and his broad naked chest, long, lean, full of muscular dunes. His nipples were perfectly proportionate circles. He was undoing his pants, and I felt my vagina was moist, already, upon his simple words. No. If I was honest with myself, it had started earlier, on the back of his bike, my breasts pressed into his back, my eyes squeezed tight, terrified and exhilarated, dependent on his skill.

My God! I had thrown caution to the wind and climbed on the back of a motorbike, a vehicular menace, for him! I was completely addicted. I could not control myself even if I wanted to, and I did want to, a little, in that moment, as I was intimidated.

He slid down his jeans and his underwear, yanking them off. His penis, nearly erect, flapped against his stomach as he stood back up, naked, rubbing his cock with his hand.

Astounded, feeling numb, out of body, I watched him put on a condom, my vagina tingling, aching.

“You understand?” he said more forcefully, when he was done.

I nodded, even as I stepped back, watching his member draw nearer. I did not get far before his face was on mine, sucking my mouth, inhaling harshly, stabbing his tongue in, rough, and he rammed me up against the door, my hands pressing against his chest to no use. He pulled up my shirt and bra in a rabid move, and my hands fell to his chest again as he squeezed my bare breasts with both hands, hard. I made a strange noise, lust and fear, not from what he was doing to me physically, but what he had already done, emotionally. He bit my bottom lip and pulled back just far enough for me to make out his wild, dilated pupils.

I felt . . . as though he needed me to know how terrible and desperate and needy the longing was, and that is what he was showing me . . . but . . . but I already knew! I had felt it all last night. And today. I already knew!

He picked me up off the ground and put me down on my back hard on the bed, so fast and effortlessly I lost my stomach from the fall. Still I watched him watching my eyes . . . like he was an
animal
. He scrambled to undo my jeans, and yanked them down. Only, he left them mid-thigh, trapping my legs together. He twisted my bent knees to the side, roughly, to gain entry. I kept my shoulders flat on the bed so I could see him. He pushed the tip of his penis inside me, and I moaned.

He loomed over me for a moment before ramming into me fully, hard, grunting, then pulling out and sliding back in with equal force, his sack slapping against me, and I felt a new sensation, deeper, than I had felt yet, as he pumped me hard and furious, over and over, silent, deep emotion cut on his face, watching mine the whole time.

My boobs were jiggling back and forth with each movement and I felt my body bound, motioning back and forth into a frenzied pleasure, the source of which was wholly his need, not mine, his, to show me how he felt—a weapon of lust, need . . . pleasure and pain.

I moaned along with him, the sounds of slapping and explosions of pleasure coming quicker, and this seemed to increase his fever as he leaned over, closer to my face, staring at me, breathing heavy, his hand cupping the back of my neck, kissing my mouth, sucking my chin. I could barely respond, him pounding into me, all sense of time lost, and finally, finally, finally, his mouth opened, but no noise came out as every vein in his face throbbed and his eyes bulged—and still he held my eyes as he finally moaned out—shuddering violently above me.

As soon as he was done, he pulled out and slid his way down my body, holding my knees, still bound, bent, twisted. I gasped as he sucked my clitoris hard and moved his tongue over it with a rapid flickering, between gasping breaths through his nose, and I felt the pressure in my pelvis spread and grow, and I whispered, “lighter,” “quicker,” and he complied, hitting the right note—

I exploded into fireworks of white, spectacular explosions, sprinkling down in starry arches until they faded into nothing, and I pressed his head away as I could not bear any more. I couldn’t believe how quickly I had come.

He wiped his face and shifted back up over me, finally letting my legs stretch out. He rested directly on top of me, arms cradling my head.

His eyes asked me if I was okay with what he had done.

I kissed him, tasting myself on his mouth, salty and elemental.

He rolled onto his side, and we barely fit on the tiny mattress, me half-propped against his sweaty body, jeans half-off.

I listened to the sounds of the new apartment and the traffic outside, him regaining his breath, and my heart beat on fast and furious, making me dizzy.

His face was nestled in my hair, and I felt him press kisses on the top of my head.

The world . . . it felt different.

There was a new perspective.

I could not quite describe it or get a handle on it.

Jace jumped when Miss Moneypenny joined us on the mattress.