Turn Up the Heat (3 page)

He exhaled involuntarily, the sound too harsh to be a sigh, and the green of her eyes darkened.

She kissed him again. Her lips parted and her tongue found his before he knew he’d opened to her.

The one-two punch of it bowled him over. The innocence of that first kiss and the sensuality of the second.

Stop her.

His brain was fine-tuned to danger, expert at warning. It blared at him while his body gave in and he kissed her back. After that first assault on him, she subsided, but she wasn’t passive, not at all. She was live and striving, surging and retreating like the rhythm of the ocean. She outlined and defined, ordered, asked, pleaded. Something he could fall into and be lost in. Maybe it had been way too long since he’d been touched, longer since he’d been kissed. Maybe he’d simply forgotten how powerful it was. Or maybe she was something extraordinary, but either way, he couldn’t not kiss her.

Stop it.

But he wouldn’t. Not until he’d memorized the salt taste of her mouth, the breath mint she’d snuck, the smells of the kitchen, onion and garlic and grease, on her clothes and skin, the tremble of her under his fingers. He tried to keep his hands where they belonged, and for a brief time that worked. He held her arms, her shoulders, her back, but then his hands went off without his permission and he found them other places—clutching the curve of her head so hard it must hurt her, slipping down to cup her ass and pull her tight up against him, to ease the roaring of blood in his cock. One hand glided up her side, checking off her ribs one by one until the soft swell of her breast under his fingers brought him back to himself and he dropped his hand and began all over again the process of trying to keep from pawing her.

Her mouth was ten thousand kinds of soft. The dry silk of her lips when they’d first touched his, the wet satin of her tongue when it dove for him. The tender parts deep within slick and yielding, the way she’d be if he were inside her.

He had her nipple between his thumb and finger without realizing he’d taken it. She shook like a leaf and her breath came fast and uneven.

Let her go.

And he might have. He might have, except she sensed his hesitation and pulled her mouth away from his long enough to say, “Don’t stop.”

Nothing had prepared her for Kincaid.

She had stood on her tiptoes and reached up to kiss him, still telling herself that it was an innocent thing. Until the last moment, she told herself she would kiss him on the cheek, at the corner of the mouth. She would let good sense, her better self, her
new
self who protected her newborn life, prevail.

A series of things had undone her. The heat rising from him, so that when she stepped close she found herself in a different climate entirely. The Tropic of Kincaid, a warmth that soaked straight into her and melted all the things that were not already melted and set other parts to boiling.

The way he’d responded to that first kiss, the breath she’d forced out of him. The way his body had gone rigid, as if her kiss had been electric.

Heat flashing in his eyes. Color rising under the ink on his neck, like embarrassment flaring under a collar, only not.

Those things had spoken to the dark core of her. They’d reached past reason, sense, and restraint, straight into swirling
need,
and she’d responded the only way she could have, by kissing him again.

Then it was like she’d unleashed something. This beast, this towering giant of a man, who could put his arms around her and lean down over her and make her feel tiny, even though she was not, by any stretch, a small woman. She’d unchained that dark core in
him
and he’d kissed her back, his mouth demanding but gentle on hers. Without thinking she let herself touch him, let her hands wander over the unrestrained machinery of his body, muscle that flexed and tensed under her fingers, as if he were
still,
somehow, being held back, fighting against cuffs or cords. Muscle everywhere, that power she’d craved all around her, enveloping, surrounding, blotting out the world and all the frustrations she’d been wrestling for days and weeks—not being where she wanted to be, not being what she wanted to be, the powerlessness of having done everything she’d meant to do but not reaching the goal she’d set.

Nothing had prepared her for Kincaid. Not Fallon, certainly.

Whatever still held Kincaid back, it was a strong thing. And she wasn’t willing to let it keep him at bay. She wanted him, all of him, the pent-up part, too. She’d been thwarted and shamed too many times lately and
for nothing,
but her body screamed that this was not nothing. This was what she’d made all those mistakes
for.

You’re doing it again,
part of her said.
You have no idea who he is or whether you can trust him.

But none of the rest of her believed that, because
this
didn’t feel like how things had felt with Fallon. Not by miles. This felt like
both of them. In this together.

Even if she wasn’t sure what
this
was. Or where it was going.

That was why she had said, “Don’t stop.”

And to his credit, he didn’t. He began kissing her again, but it was different now, rougher, faster, harder. Less refined. If he’d been trying to impress, or coax, trying to be gentlemanly or just gentle, he was done with that now. This kiss spoke. It said,
I am all in.

So she kissed him back to tell him,
Me too.
She bit his lower lip, and he groaned and licked her, not a cajoling little
open for me
but with the flat of his tongue owning her tongue, her mouth, her whole goddamned self. She thought of a book she’d read once that described a spell that let magicians bind like to like, the way the liquid heat between her legs heard the wet click of their mouths and answered. The way the slide of his tongue against hers swept open a craving, for being filled.

Tension gathered itself, coiling in her belly, tightening in her core. It rose fast, drowning out quieter sensations and the voices of fear and doubt. Her breasts were tight, too, the nipples knotted and tender. He put a hand, big as a lion’s paw but far more nimble, to her waist and lifted her T-shirt where it clung above her skirt, pushing it up over her breasts. He dipped his head and took a nipple between his lips, and his tongue wiggled the tip as the twining heat in her groin grew fiercer. He bent his knees and tilted his hips to rub the thick bulge in his jeans against her, and she strained for more of him—more pressure, more friction, more speed. But her denim skirt was in the way, too tight around her thighs, and too thick to push easily out of the way. She clutched at him, scraping, grabbing, trying to get him where she wanted him, tugging his hair.

“What do you want?” Barely more than a murmur, in his dark, rough voice.

“I—want—to—rub—against—you.”

She was shameless now, like an animal. She grappled for purchase, and then his hands were there, pushing her skirt up, out of the way, around her waist. The cooling summer night air brushed over her bare, damp thighs, stirred her green silk panties. As light as the touch was, she felt it core-deep.

He eased his denim-clad erection against the scrap of fabric, and she gasped at the slip of the silk over her swollen clit. His cock was big, like the rest of him.
Nothing will have prepared me for that, either.

He shoved her toward the alley’s wall, a hand cupping her skull, and she gasped as brick abraded her butt and her shoulder blades. He made an answering sound, a growl, and pinned her with his hips. Catching her wrists, cuffing them in one huge, callused hand, he raised them over her head. She felt everything at once—the rough, solid wall, the squeeze of his fingers around her wrist, the hard press of his cock at the vee of her thighs, his breath, fast, on her cheek.

She struggled for a moment against the restraint, testing, but he was unrelenting, and she whimpered at the impossible pleasure of that knowledge.

He pulled back as if he’d been burned, dropped her hands.

He berated himself. For ignoring his gut. For thinking he was an ordinary citizen and not a parolee. For being rough when the whisper of violence could get him thrown back in jail. For forgetting that he had something important to do, that he owed the one person who’d ever been family to him justice, and that everything else was a distraction.

Most of all, for forgetting who he was and what he’d done.

He would apologize and leave. He would never come back to the diner. He would go do what had to be done.

“I’m sorry,” he said, already turning away, praying that she would let him walk. When she would be entirely within her rights calling the cops.

There was no margin for error. He’d told himself that, and yet she’d managed to make him forget.

“You didn’t hurt me. You
won’t
hurt me.”

Startled, he turned back, because her words said they weren’t done.
You won’t hurt me.
And his traitorous body, all id, roused at the thought that there would be more. But: “You made that sound—” That
whimper,
like something captive and wounded.

“Because I liked it.”

He’d been beside himself. Beyond. Eight years without real human touch, and suddenly there she’d been, mouth and hands, sighs and moans, willing and eager. Her body long and strong, curves his hands found without half trying.

And then that whimper.

Because he’d pressed her against the wall and trapped her with his body, because he’d done it roughly and because he’d roped her hands tight in the clutch of his.

She’d whimpered because she wanted it this way, crude and dark and unapologetic, caught and held.

Because I liked it.

As long as Kincaid could remember, he’d denied this.

He’d had fantasies of rough sex even when he was too young to
have
sex. He’d lain in his bed and pictured a woman, faceless, almost formless, her body jiggling under the force of his thrusts, and then he’d made himself
not
picture it, because it was wrong. He’d listened to imaginary moans that cleaved along that fine line between pleasure and pain, and then he’d made himself imagine different sounds, whimpers at delicate pleasure.

Someone who didn’t know him might blame pornographic images or hatred of women, but at that age, he’d never seen porn and didn’t hate. He’d just been born like that, wanting it that way.

It didn’t mean it was the only way he wanted it. Like any healthy man, he wanted it any way he could get it, and he’d had it, plenty, in high school and in the years before prison. Casual sex, booty calls, friends with benefits, real relationships with women, even some serious ones. Women he’d loved. Women he’d respected enough that even though he’d been fantasizing that they’d cry,
More, harder, deeper, I want to feel your balls slap my clit,
he reined himself in willingly when they asked, politely, “A little gentler?”

He yielded. He listened. He held himself back. He did it more gently, and it was still good. Sex was
good.

Even if there was something missing for him. Even if after a span of time—months at most—the thing that was missing was too big to ignore, and he carefully explained why he needed some time off, some space to find himself, some room to think.

Before prison
,
he’d been a nice man, and nice men were gentle. Nice men didn’t foist rough sex on their lovers.

But when you’d gone to jail for nearly killing a man, when you’d held his life in your hands, poised at the edge of your knife blade—when you’d corralled violence, made it yours, and unleashed it on someone—

That changed everything. That changed who you were.

You weren’t a nice man, because clearly nice men didn’t go to prison for assault. No one spent seven years, seven months, and eleven days
doing time
for being nice.

He was
not
a nice man.

The thought was liberating.

If he was not a nice man, then maybe he was the kind of man who would have sex with a woman he barely knew. Maybe he would have sex with her in an alley behind the diner where she worked, her skirt rucked up around her waist, her green silk panties twisted to one side. Maybe he would pin her against the brick wall, hold her wrists fast with one hand, and maybe he would thrust roughly up into her so her back scraped the brick.

Maybe she would whimper when he pinned her, then yield under the pressure of him, melting but not disappearing. Fierce in his arms, kissing back, held captive and unrestrained.

Maybe she already had. Already was.

Bad idea,
called his gut. Like a whisper at the bottom of a canyon. But he heard it, and he started to prepare himself to go. To walk away from this. From sweet and tough, from this fantasy come to life, even though his hand fisted convulsively, it wanted so badly to be around her wrists. He wasn’t a nice man anymore, but neither was he a free man, and doing what he wanted to do to Lily was a free man’s privilege.

“Kincaid?”

“Uh-huh.”

She put her hands up over her head. Against the brick. Wrists together. An unmistakable sign of surrender. Need kicked in his chest, desire clenching his gut.

“I’ll tell you,” she said. “I’ll say ‘uncle’ if I need you to stop.”

The warnings screamed,
Don’t do it. Walk away.
And Kincaid heard himself ask, “Promise?”

“Promise.”

He watched, as if from a distance, as if out of his body, as he put his hand up and caught her wrists in the vee between his thumb and fingers. Closed the cuff tight. She struggled against the restraint and then, as he edged toward her, against his body.

There was so much power in her, like a whip unleashed in the space between him and the wall. She thrashed and fought, then yielded suddenly and let him kiss her, limp against him while she whimpered again, the sound muffled this time by his mouth. She struggled to press her breasts against his chest, and he crowded her closer to the wall, using his free hand to cup her through her underpants. She worked herself against his hand, grinding and rubbing, and the sounds she made got shorter and higher pitched until she was squeaking into his mouth, which just about did him in. He could feel the strain in all her muscles, that she was locked up tight, coiled to spring—and so was he.

He broke the kiss, fumbled with his jeans, and managed one-handed to get the button undone and the zipper down. He freed his cock from its confines and glided his fist once over the head and down the shaft. It felt good—too good, and better when Lily strained against his grasp over her head. He had a moment of self-doubt—was she genuinely trying to free herself?—before she said, “Gimme that,” and took another stab at getting a hand loose. Then she tried to drop to her knees, so he had to hold almost all her weight in his hand and deny her—and himself—the wet clasp of her mouth on his cock.

Instead, he held her tighter and wedged his thigh between hers, turning slightly to the side and locking himself in the grip of his fist again. “Like this?” he demanded. “You want to do this?”

They both watched the thick, dark head emerge from the cocoon of his fingers, watched the skin stretch and a bead of moisture appear. Lily groaned and tried to buck against his thigh. He pinned her more firmly with his hip, and she thrashed. “What? What do you want?”

“Bastard,” she hissed.

He could do it in another three strokes, good, hard, bearing-down strokes that squeezed the base and twisted the head. He showed her one, a perfect jerk that dredged a long, gripping sensation up from the bottom of his spine. And counted. “One,” he said.

“How many?” she demanded, teeth gritted, and wrenched her wrists again.

“Three, maybe,” he said. “But you first.”

“How am I—?”

He let go of his cock and slid a hand into her panties. She was swollen and drenched, and without effort his fingers found her opening and spread her wetness over her equally swollen clit. He experimented—a light touch made her jerk away, a firmer one made her rock against his hand. Firm it was, then, and he got one finger inside her (“One,” he said, making her buck), then two (“Two,” he said, and she moaned), with his thumb circling her clit.

“I wish I had another hand,” he said conversationally, and then, “Three,” as he inserted a third finger and she began to come, thrusting herself down on his hand and calling out hoarsely.

Then he used her moisture to ease the slide of his hand over his cock.

“Two,” he said, making sure she had enough leverage to rub herself on his thigh, unable to take his eyes off her face. She couldn’t seem to stop staring at his cock, popping out of the tight clutch of his fist, and her lower lip was full and quivering with pleasure, her tongue peeking unconsciously out.

On three he watched her watching him—the squeeze at the base, the twist of the head, the sight of her slipping her tongue across her bottom lip, her pupils huge and dark, her dampness leaving a wet spot on his jeans, and then, surprising her, surprising him, a flush rose fast and hard up her chest and into her face and she came again, flailing and bucking and rubbing herself as hard as she could against him, while his orgasm boiled over, the familiar feel of held-back pleasure ripping up his spine, of his cum spilling over his hand, a hundred times more potent while he had her trapped.

Her arms hurt. She knew her wrists would be bruised where his hand had cuffed her, suspended her above the ground when all she wanted was to drop to her knees and take him in her mouth. Her crotch was sore where she’d ground it against him, much harder than she’d needed to in order to come—but she’d done it because they both seemed to be getting off on it. Like they’d both gotten off on the scrape of the brick against her bare behind, like they’d both gotten off on her trying to get free, on his refusals, on the rough thrust of too many fingers in her.

She hadn’t come that hard since—

Well, ever.

He released her hands and they sort of—dropped out of the sky. Her arms weren’t really holding them up anymore. In fact, she wasn’t sure how much of her body still worked. She was pretty sure she would have slumped to the ground if it hadn’t been for his leg between hers.

He stepped back, taking the heat of his body, his support, away.

He wouldn’t meet her gaze.

She had a shame flashback, to the way Fallon had shrunk from her, literally and figuratively. In a way this was almost more disappointing. Because she’d sensed from the beginning with Fallon that he wasn’t really there. When he’d pulled away, it had been only his body—his mind had already left the scene.

Kincaid had been there.
All in.

So she’d thought, anyway.

He was cleaning himself up as best he could, wiping his hands on the brick, on his jeans. Wetness was cooling, on her thighs, between her legs. So sordid. So unromantic.

She lowered her top. Covered her panties with her skirt, but couldn’t do anything about the dampness. Two minutes ago it had been the sexiest thing she could imagine—like Kincaid’s hand clamped around her wrists—and now it was just same old, same old. When she should have learned.

Kincaid zipped his jeans, the sound loud in the alley. She wondered how loud
they’d
been, and whether there was anyone around who might have heard. It was quite late, Tierney Bay was generally deserted at night, and there were no residences near the diner, but that didn’t mean that there couldn’t have been someone close enough to overhear. Yet another potential mistake.

“Your car,” Kincaid said.

For a moment she couldn’t catch up—it seemed so nonsensical.

“I was supposed to be walking you to your car.”

Part of her was stunned. So he wasn’t even going to acknowledge what had happened. He wasn’t even going to pretend he was going to call her.

And the other part of her knew it was how these things worked. She’d had a choice—stick to the program, or follow the easy impulse—and she’d let her lust and her anger at Fallon point the way. She couldn’t be mad about the outcome now.

She pointed. “It’s that way.”

“That—” He gestured to encompass what had just passed between them.

Oh, so he
was
going to acknowledge it.

“That was good,” he finished.

Damn,
that made her breathless.

He still wouldn’t meet her eyes, though, and she knew it wasn’t enough.
Good
didn’t mean he wanted more, didn’t mean he’d do it again.
Good
didn’t mean he was interested in her.

And she didn’t want or need him to be. She wanted and needed to do her work, earn her money, get the heck out of Dodge. She wanted and needed to move to Chicago, get a kitchen job, climb the rickety ladder of chef success.

Still, it meant something, if only a little something, that it had been good for him, too. That was a first for her, after all. So she said, “Yeah. It was.” And their eyes met then. A flash of understanding. Him telling her with those icy-warm eyes—

What? What was he telling her?

She wasn’t sure, because he looked away then, and started walking in the direction of her car.

They reached it and she sprang the driver’s door with the key remote.

“Hey—” he said suddenly.

This was where he asked for her phone number and pretended he’d be in touch.

What he said instead surprised her. “Thanks.”

It was so perfect, and so inadequate, that she could only laugh. He laughed, too, then, all the hard lines of his chiseled face softening.

He opened the driver’s side door and held it for her.

She climbed in.

“Hands safe?” he asked. She put them on the wheel, and he slammed the door and gave her a short wave. Patted the car’s top above her door, a farewell, and then walked away, down the alley they’d come from, and disappeared.