Chapter 11

Jax

Silence on the other side of this door, and I clenched my fist. It’d been a long time since I’d been this fucking angry. Cherry had appeared at the most inopportune time. She’d legitimately cock-blocked me, and I didn’t buy the dropped phone bullshit she’d plied me with.

That phone had been in my pocket before she’d entered my office at Club Queen. How the fuck had it wound up in her hands?

I knocked a final time. “Riley, I’m not here to fuck with your head. I just want to talk.”

“Why?” Her voice was muted, distant. I hated that.

“Because of what happened today.”

“Don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t play dumb. Seeing Cherry pissed you off, I get that, and we need to discuss it before this goes further.”

Footsteps padded to the door. The lock clicked, and she appeared in a pair of cute PJ shorts, polka-dotted, and a plain white tee. It hinted at the body underneath. I focused on her face to keep my cock in line.

“Goes further?” she asked, her head cocked to one side. “What the hell do you mean by that? What are you referring to, exactly?”

I stepped closer to her. “You know exactly what I’m referring to. It’s been a week, and you’re all I can think about all day long. It’s the same for you.”

“How can you possibly know that?” Riley folded her tan arms across her breasts, moving them beneath the cotton.

My dick twitched. “Because it’s written all over your lips. It’s in your eyes. It’s in the way you smell when you’re around me. I can taste it on the fucking air, Riley. You want me. Constantly, you want me.”

She shuddered a breath. Her eyes were red—had she been crying?

“And it’s not just sexual, either.” That was the part I couldn’t come to terms with. I didn’t feel. Feeling was for men who wanted their bank accounts emptied or their squishy, pussy hearts trodden all over.

But with her, Christ, I just wanted to protect her. I wanted to hold her in my arms and keep her from feeling anything that might hurt her, emotionally or otherwise.

“Why?” she managed.

“Maybe it’s the way you taste,” I said. “No, it’s just you, Riley. You’re too strong. You’re too much like…”

“Like what?”

I didn’t want to say it. Admitting it meant I’d taken a step into some unknown territory and it had happened fast. Too fucking fast.

“Like what?” Riley asked, again.

“Like me. You’re too much like me,” I replied.

She pressed her lips together and shook her head, those long, dark locks swaying, loose around her shoulders. “No,” she said. “We’re nothing alike. You hang out with strippers and—”

“Fuck the strippers.”

Riley raised both eyebrows.

“Fine, not fuck the strippers. You know what I mean, goddammit. I have no interest in them. No interest in Cherry if that’s what’s bothering you, and damn if I won’t fire the woman if she does get on your nerves.”

“No. You can’t do that.”

“I can do whatever the hell I want,” I replied. Except for her. Or for buying her studio. “Cherry’s just an employee, and you’re—”

“Just your roommate. For the next three weeks. And then it’s over, and we can carry on with our lives.”

“If that’s what you’re imagining, you’re totally fucking wrong,” I replied. “I came here to apologize for what happened. Cherry shouldn’t have come to your place of work. It was out of line. She interrupted us, and I disciplined her accordingly for it.”

“I don’t care about the damn stripper, Jax. I care that I’m—you know what, never mind. This is ridiculous. We shouldn’t even be having this discussion because it doesn’t matter. In a couple weeks I’ll be out of your hair, and you can cart your strippers around to wherever you want—except my studio, of course. I’m still not selling it to you.”

I took her by the forearms and dragged her toward me. Pressed her right up against my chest. “You don’t get it, do you?”

“What?” she breathed, her throat working around emotion or unspoken words.

“It’s too late already. The minute I saw you, it was too late.”

“Too late for what?”

“For us. For turning back. For whatever the hell bullshit plan you’ve got streaming through your head right now.”

She railed against me, hissed under her breath. “You don’t know anything about my plans.”

“You want this as bad as I do. You hated that she walked in there, asking for me. You fucking hated it, and I did too.”

“What does that mean?” Riley asked, and stilled, staring up at me. “What does it mean, you hated it too? Those clubs are what you do for a living. How can you hate having strippers around?”

“If they upset you—if anything—” Shit, it was too soon to say it out loud. I shook her by the arms, just lightly, her chest still pressed to mine, her breasts so soft, nipples hard. Fuck! “Tell me to leave, and I’ll go. Tell me right now, and I’ll walk the hell away from you. Riley, I’ll get a hotel room until the month is up and let you stay here by yourself if that’s what has to happen to make you comfortable. Tell me to leave. Say it.”

She worked her lips around words. They didn’t come.

“Say it!”

“No,” she managed.

“And why is that?”

“Because I can’t breathe when you’re this close to me,” she said. “I can’t think.”

“Why?”

“Because I want you so bad. I want to believe you’re real.”

She didn’t have to explain that last part to me. I got it. I got that I wasn’t what she wanted, but I was what she needed. Deep down beneath it all. Beneath the defenses and the hurt.

Christ, I didn’t get emotionally attached to anyone either, yet I couldn’t feel anything but her heart beat right now.

Riley bowed her head.

I let go of her arms and pressed one finger under her chin, tilted it upward. “I’m real,” I said. “And I’ll make you feel real. Is that what you want?”

She twitched her head from side to side. A no.

“Is that what you need?”

“Yes,” she breathed.

My lips crashed down on hers, and she let out a feral, tight moan. “You want me to be yours, don’t you?” I grunted, against her lips. “You don’t want other women near me.”

“Yes,” she repeated, and I fucking loved it.

Riley who’d resisted, who’d insisted that this would never happen again, crumbling because she couldn’t handle the connection between us. The fucking sparks or whatever they called it in sappy romance movies.

I kissed her again, and she melted into me, clung to the lapels of my coat, tore at them.

We walked backward until her legs hit the bed. She sat down heavily, and I fell down on top of her, braced myself with my left arm to keep from crushing her sweet, tight little body.

I trailed my tongue over her lips, and she opened them for me, gave me a taste of the goodness within. Christ, she tasted right. She tasted like everything I’d ever wanted rolled into one, and I couldn’t fucking bear another minute of being outside of her.

I ripped my pants button open with one hand, using the other to tear down her cotton shorts. She was bare underneath, waxed smooth. I growled against her lips and unzipped my pants, brought my dick out and pressed it against the top of her mound.

Riley sucked on my lips, then my cheek, my neck. She whimpered and dug her fingers into my shirt, ripped at the fabric. “Please,” she whined. “Please.”

“What do you want? Name it. It’s yours.” I bit down on her neck, nibbled and licked.

“I want to suck you,” she whispered.

Holy shit in a bucket. How could I possibly say no to that?

“Suck me where?” I asked.

Riley exhaled.

I caught her mouth again, kissed her until she squirmed against me, then rose from the bed, panting. I held the base of my dick and waited for her.

Riley’s eyes were fire. They were alive. Her gaze fixed on my dick, and she scrambled onto her knees in front of me, as if this was exactly what she’d wanted all along. As if I’d denied her my cock between those succulent lips.

She spat on her palm, and I nearly creamed on the damn spot. She was so damn sexy, her tits bouncing but trapped beneath the cotton each time she moved. Her hair fell to the side, exposing her slender neck, the expanse of flesh still wet from my lips.

“Look at me,” I said.

She licked the tip of my cock, lapped up the precum there, and raised her gaze to mine.

We locked in on each other, and I focused on her pink tongue as it swirled across my head. Riley took it into her mouth and smoothed her hand over my dick, moaning, the vibrations traveling back through my abdomen.

She cupped my balls and played with them, tugging gently, teasing.

“Christ, woman, you’re going to make me lose it.”

Riley slurped and pushed me further back into her mouth, as far as she could go. I hit the back of her throat, and she hadn’t even taken half of me yet, but it was pure fucking bliss. She gagged and pulled back, spat on my cock and dove in again.

“That’s it.” I tangled my fingers in my hair and guided her, back and forth, the sucks and smacks driving me closer to oblivion. I’d come on her face, her tits, on her fucking toes. Every inch of this woman was mine, and it would stay that way.

She gobbled my cock like it had a delicious center.

“Riley, stop,” I said. I was too close to the edge.

“But I love it,” she replied, lips grazing my tip. “I want to make you come. I want to taste you, Jax.”

She swallowed me again, gagged and drew back, sliding those lips, red now from the friction, over my skin, the ridges and veins. She massaged my balls, played with the skin, then pressed two fingers to the expanse of flesh just past them.

“Fuck!” I lurched forward, pleasure shrieking through me. Too close. Too fucking close. I dragged her off my dick, grabbed the back of her neck and forced her to turn, turn, turn until she was on all fours in front of me, her ass in the air.

“You’re next,” I said.