As soon as it was quite clear that Gunner wasn’t going to shut the door in her face, Lola stepped inside, put her arms around his neck, and sealed her mouth to his. If he had any resistance, it melted away in a moment. He wrapped one arm around her waist as the other tugged her further inside and then swung the door shut. As soon as it was closed, he rushed her back, pressing her tight against the door, his hands skating over her clothing. She was soaking wet, and her skin felt clammy and cold, even to her, so when his hands came up under the hem of her shirt and teased at the flesh of her stomach, she gasped at the sullen heat in his hands. His mouth left hers, leaving traces down her neck as he kissed her jawline, her pulse, and the base of her throat. It was all very nice and sweet and incredibly hot, but it wasn’t what she wanted.
She reached between them, cupping the growing hardness between them and hearing him groan.
“Give me this,” she said. “I want you to fuck me.”
“Lady’s choice,” he replied. “Bed’s further but more comfortable. Couch is right there. Tell me what you want.”
She gripped him harder, and he cursed, breathless, against her mouth. “I already told you. I want this, fucking me as hard as you can.”
He laughed, the sound bordering on cruel. “That’s pretty damn hard.”
“I can take it,” she said. “I’m not made of glass.” She heard her voice shaking, though, and much to her extreme irritation, Gunner seemed to hear it as well.
“Hey,” he said, all of the heat melting away as he stroked her jawline with one finger. Lola felt the tears welling again, and pointed her gaze up at the ceiling, trying to keep control of herself. “Hey, beautiful. What’s going on?”
The tone of his voice, careful and kind, made her think he knew but didn’t want to put words in her mouth. She took a few long, slow breaths, working to get control of herself again, and then eased gently past him to sit down on his couch. She took off the sweatshirt she’d thrown on before she left the house; it was damp on the bottom and soaked around the shoulders, and it felt uncomfortable and unpleasant now. He took it from her and draped it over a chair where it could dry. Once she sat down, he covered her knees with a light blanket. “Coffee or tea?”
“Just water,” she replied. “I’m too jittery for caffeine.”
“Sure.”
She waited until he handed her a glass filled with very cold water, and had sat down on the other side of the couch. It was close enough to be comfortable, but not close enough to make her feel pressured. Careful. A warmth swelled through her, chasing away at least some of the fear.
“I keep thinking,” she said, and even just those words slipping out made her body quiver in the most unpleasant way. She swallowed hard and focused on the feeling of cold emanating from the glass. “That — the man who took me. He didn’t hurt me. I’m sure he didn’t hurt me. But what if he had.”
Gunner nodded, his expression carefully neutral, and she liked that. He wasn’t horrified or upset by the idea that she might have been violated.
“What if he had?” he repeated, adding just a little bit of a spin to the statement, turning it into a question.
She shook her head at the darkness of it. “I don’t know. I thought I could let it go. Whatever he was doing, it wasn’t — I really don’t think he was trying to hurt me in any way, Gunner. But he’s been in my home, and I couldn’t stay there. I tried to lie down and sleep, and it was like the walls were staring.”
His face went very dark. “What do you mean he was in your home?”
Shit.
“He said that Grace’s breathing wasn’t very good. Before the Vipers pulled me out of the car. And he asked if she needed medicine. I told him yes, that it was in her backpack, which we’d left at my apartment. When you left me there, I looked, and it was gone. And I thought that was good. It is good! But someone being in my space like that?” She felt the shudder run through her again, and tears followed it, whether she wanted them or not. She put her hands over her eyes and just let them fall for a moment before she pressed them away. At least she’d cried off her makeup before she’d left in the first place; she didn’t look like a drunk raccoon, just someone who’d been crying on and off for too long.
“You shouldn’t have stayed there,” he said. “Why didn’t you call the police? Or call me?”
She looked at him, trying to find the words. When he’d dropped her off earlier, she had trailed her fingers down the back of his hand. She’d hoped against hope that he would turn his palm, meet her fingers, take her hand. Tell her that this wasn’t over, that he was dropping her off at home to keep her safe, but he would be back for her. That they’d talk. That they’d work together to understand some of the intensity that had evolved over the last few days.
Instead, he’d turned away and left. For his own reasons, and she didn’t inherently doubt them, but she inherently doubted her own value.
He sighed, letting it go. “Lola, what can I do? Why are you here?”
“I want to feel safe again,” she said. That was easy.
“And you feel safe with me?” he asked.
She nodded.
“Come here, then,” he said, opening his arms.
She slid into them easily enough, but it wasn’t everything she wanted. His cock was still rigid in his pants, and as he stretched out on the couch, her weight shifted against him, and he let out a tiny little puff of air that made her own body heat in response.
“I want to play a game,” she said, still hating the way her voice shook but loving the fact that he paused, slowed, listened.
“What sort of game?” he asked. His cock twitched against her, and — oh yes, yes, he was on the same wavelength as her.
“I want you to tell me what you would have done if you had captured me.”
He went incredibly still, marble still. “Are you sure?”
She nodded against his chest. “I’ll tap out if I can’t handle it. I need to hear a story about how this could have been different.”
“Just a story?”
Her body was surging with need in slow, steady waves. “Not just a story.”
Another one of those almost silent breaths. Slow, steady, controlled.
“Okay,” he murmured, his lips brushing the top of her head. And then he moved, taking her hands from where they lay now, pressed lightly on his chest to keep her balance, to her sides, and then behind her back. He held her hands there with one hand while the other stroked the side of her body in long, possessive sweeps. Without a hand to balance, it was difficult to keep her head lifted; she lay it down on his chest, giving in to the adrenaline rush and letting it wash over her.
“If I had picked you up in that park,” he said, his voice quiet as he chose each word carefully. She gasped at what his voice did to her; it had more growl than normal, more heat and intensity, and that shot straight to the core of her, surging through her in a broad rush that made her pussy clench and her hips shift against him. “I would’ve taken you somewhere private. I would’ve stripped you down to your bra and panties. And you would’ve woken up in a chair, your hands and feet bound. The room would’ve been warm enough that your body was still comfortable, and you wouldn’t be tightly bound enough to hurt, but you wouldn’t have been able to free yourself. And I would’ve been there when you woke up. Watching you.”
How had she gotten so wet so fast? Her panties were soaked against her body, and her nipples felt hard enough to cut glass. She could feel every beat of her heart in the swelling of her clit, and she wanted so desperately for him to be touching her more than he was. She turned sideways, just a little so that her breast was available; he obliged by cupping the flesh through her shift, finding the nub of its peak, and teasing it with his thumb. She gasped and shifted against him.
“When you were awake, when I was sure you were with me and watching, I’d lean down over you. I’d ghost my breath over your body until I came to your thighs. I’d press a kiss against your inner thighs, and then I’d trace my fingers up that sensitive, ticklish flesh until I was pressing my touch against the seam of your panties. I’d push them aside, and I’d run my tongue over you.”
“Yes,” Lola heard herself murmuring. “Yes, please.”
He lifted her easily as if she weighed hardly anything, and sat her down on the couch again. He helped her wiggle out of her jeans, and when she lifted her hips again, her panties.
“Keep your hands back,” he said, using his shoulders to press her knees wide and scoot her ass close to the edge of the couch. And then his tongue opened up the seam of her, and she was arching up into his mouth in a wordless gasp of her entire body.
He didn’t waste time with gentleness. He circled her clit with his tongue as his fingers spread her open, fucking her mercilessly. She closed her eyes and imagined the room he’d given her, imagined being bound, and found that it pushed her harder towards the edge. She didn’t know why, and at this moment, she had no interest in analyzing it; she just wanted more. More than she had, more than she’d thought she could have. She wanted his fingers and his mouth, and him fucking her.
When one finger was so soaking wet that it could make a delicate, careful path inside her ass, she let it, groaning deeply at the feeling of incredible fullness that tore through her as he pumped into her more gently now. But the slower speed didn’t make it any less extraordinary as he slid another finger into her pussy, stretching her wide and pressing hard into the walls of her cunt, searching out the places that made her swear and buck for him.
When she came, it was fast and blinding, stars and explosions all through her body, leaving her biting back the grunting screams that threatened to escape. He pressed the flat of his tongue against her clit, gently easing her through the waves of pleasure until oversensitivity roared in and she had to gently swat him away. She caught her fists in the shoulders of his shirt and hauled him up beside her, moving easily into his lap and kissing him. He tasted like her, and like him, and like them. The combination made her feel dizzy with something more tangible than delight.
“Fuck me,” she murmured.
He shook his head. “It’s okay.”
“I know it is,” she said, kissing him again. “I know you’re fine, and you’re good with it, and you did this for me, and whatever else is in your head, but I’m asking you, unless you really and truly do not want to, do this for me as well.”
There was a moment where something delicate hung in the balance, and then he let go of his restraint, and his hands were hot on her body again. He lifted her again, swinging her into his arms and moving quickly through the small hallway to his bedroom. Her bare ass felt odd hanging down, but she could hardly care; she wrapped her arms around his neck and pressed her lips to his pulse until he growled and tossed her on the bed. She yanked her shirt off over her head, hearing a seam make an ugly sound that she’d have to investigate later — but right now, the only thing she cared about was getting him as close as possible.
Gunner stripped off his own shirt and pants in record time, and the way he plunged onto the bed with her made her think that he would take her almost viciously, but instead, everything slowed down to a glacial pace. His mouth moved over her body, stopping at her nipples, her neck, her earlobes. He kissed her while he teased the head of his cock over her still sensitive pussy. He nestling himself in the cleft of her lips and dragged himself over her flesh, slick and almost painful, and she begged him to move faster, to bury himself in her. He wouldn’t give her — or him — the satisfaction, it seemed, and he moved against her as slowly as he wanted to.
“Is this what you want?” he asked after an eternity.
“Yes,” she whispered. Her voice was gone, too shaken to be loud, too full of pleasure and desire to be anything other than needy.
He slid into her, tip to hilt, in one smooth motion that left them both shuddering. He slipped his hand under her hips, pulling her just a little closer to him so that she could take just a little bit more of him.
“Like this?” he asked.
“Faster,” she replied, trying to move her hips to urge him on. His grip was too tight, keeping her too still, pierced into place by the length of him, the delicious press of him.
He leaned down, locking her mouth against his in a searing kiss that twisted up her belly and made her buck against him, but still, he kept up the same steady, rocking rhythm.
“No,” he said. “You told me to do this, you don’t get to choose how it happens. I can stop, or I can keep going, but this is how I want to be inside of you, Lola. I want to be delicate. I want to be dependable.” She could see the moment where his breath caught in his throat, and he had to close his eyes tightly before he could open them and proceed. “I want to be yours.”
Something flared through her, not lust or an orgasm, something more emotionally intense and deeply powerful. She matched her movements to his, trusting him as he dragged his cock over the places deep inside of her that needed a release. When it was close, she slipped a hand between them, idly flicking at her clit a few more times. That, more than anything else, seemed to finally break his reserve. He didn’t speed up so much as each thrust became more urgent, more demanding. He slapped into her harder, pulled out more deliberately, and slid home again with the incredible power of gravity. Her orgasm broke over her just a moment after his started, and their cries twisted up together as he finally, delightfully, collapsed over her, pinning her to the bed with the solidity of his weight.
***
She dozed for a little while. When her eyes opened again, Gunner was actually next to her, his head pillowed on his arm, his gaze focused firmly on her face.
“Hi,” she said quietly, stretching carefully. Her thigh brushed against his hip, and she wanted him all over again, even as tired and sore as she was. When her hands smoothed over his belly, though, he caught them gently, bringing them up to his mouth and pressing a light kiss against her knuckles.
“We need to talk some more,” he said.
“Okay,” she replied. It was interesting, being naked in someone else’s bed. That hadn’t happened in a while. Plenty of dalliances; not so many cuddles. She tried to relax into and wrap herself up in the sensation, enjoying the flow of it over her skin. It was nice. Comfortable. Safe.
The idea of being safe with this brute of a man seemed so counter-intuitive that it almost made her afraid. How could she possibly be willing to daydream about such a thing? Yet here she was. Feeling safe. She wasn’t yet ready to say that she was throwing away all the respectability and privilege she’d worked for, but whether the moment was fleeting or not, it felt like something deep and powerful for now. She wasn’t ready to walk away from that feeling either.
“What did you find when you got back to your house?” he asked.
It was the question she’d been dreading.
“He’d been there,” she said, thinking that if she just said it, all at once, maybe it would be easier. “The man who kidnapped me. He had been there. He took Grace’s backpack. I guess because I told him her medicine was in there.”
“Did he touch anything else?”
“Not that I could see,” Lola said. “I thought it was okay, and I tried to go to sleep, but I just couldn’t do it. So, I came here.” His face was still and quiet, and she didn’t like that. Shouldn’t he be comforting her or reassuring her that she had been safe? Wasn’t there something he was supposed to be doing?
“You shouldn’t have stayed there,” he said. “What if something had happened to you? What if he’d been waiting for you? You should’ve called me. I would’ve come and gotten you.”
She shook her head firmly. “Are you kidding? You were asleep on your feet when you left here. I didn’t think there was a chance of you making it back to my place without hurting yourself. And honestly? You were so quick to leave, I wasn’t sure you’d pick up your phone if I did call.”
He winced visibly, and she tried not to be frustrated. It was the truth, she reminded herself. There hadn’t seemed to be any point at all in letting him know what was going on. She’d only left the house and driven to his when she hadn’t been able to get a hold of Cassidy.
He seemed to brush away the conversation with a move of his hand. “We’ll argue about that later,” he said, and it was adorable how he assumed there would be a later. She didn’t correct him, however. “Tell me everything you can think of about the car. The man. All of it.”
Lola tried not to sigh. He’d done this twice before he’d been willing to leave her as well. She turned all the details over in her mind — and at the very end, something finally sparked. It had been so strange at the time, but then so much had happened, so she hadn’t thought to mention it. “He had a bullet, hanging from his rearview mirror. Just the casing, and on the butt end, there was a star scratched into it. Like snipers do in movies. To mark their kills or whatever.”
Gunner nodded. “Okay. That doesn’t mean anything to me, but it gives me some ideas about who we should call, and where we should be asking questions.” And then he went completely still. “No, wait,” he said, and she did. Because his silence, after all, didn’t give her much of a choice. “On Billy’s chest,” he said, his voice a low and terrified rumble, a combination that Lola did not enjoy at all. Horse said there was a carving there. Of a star. I—do you think?”
“Yeah,” Lola said, torn between running from the room and snuggling into him closer and asking for protection. “Yeah. I think the same man killed Billy and kidnapped me.”
“But why? You don’t know anything about Billy Calhoun, and if someone were trying to get me, grabbing Billy would be a terrible play. What the hell is even happening here?”
Lola opened her mouth to say something else, but Gunner shook his head. “No,” he said. “No. Here’s the thing. We’re both fucking exhausted. Too much is happening, and way too fast. We need more information, but we need it to be good, reliable information. So, I’m going to text this to Horse, and then you and I are going to get some sleep. Because we need to be able to help my little girl when we know what we’re doing, but us standing around with our thumbs up our asses isn’t going to help her, it isn’t going to help us, and it’s not going to help Horse find her.”
It hurt so much to do it, but Lola nodded. “Yeah. Okay.”
“Good,” he said. He picked his phone off the table and tapped in a message, then set it down on the bureau again. He laid back on the pillow, opening his arms wide to her. “C’mere.”
“Are you sure you trust me near that power tool of yours?” she asked, but she settled into his arms without any objection. He was semi-erect against her belly, but not insistently hard. It was both a relief and a shame, all at the same time. She was exhausted, but her body craved him in a way that continued to surprise her.
“If you behave yourself, I’ll behave myself,” he said, but his hips shifted against her stomach, and she felt him tense just a little bit more.
“One more for the road?”
“Your wish is my command,” he said, and she honestly thought he might just slide right inside of her; she was honestly wet enough, and he was coming to attention at a shocking pace. But instead, he put a hand on her hip and turned her over, pressing her down into the mattress as he slid behind her. “Tell me what you want.”