Chapter Twenty-Two

Grace

There was always something so primal, so savage about the way Cullen kissed. At first, he just licked at the seam of my lips, priming me for what was to come. He nibbled on my lips, just slightly, getting a taste.

And then he dove in to taste me, all-in. Wet. Hot. Hungrier than I’d ever seen him.

He explored my mouth with his tongue as he did everything, demanding, and sexy as hell. He tasted of Jack and cigarettes, but most of all, like him, a taste I couldn’t get enough of. He groaned, pushing deeper. The wet heat of his mouth was enough to unravel me completely.

And once we started, there was no turning back.

He ripped his lips from mine for a split second, pulling his shirt off his back and revealing his rock-hard chest, that effortlessly magnificent six-pack. He unbuttoned and unzipped his fly, reaching behind his back and pulling out a gun, which I thought he might have been trying to hide from me.

I didn’t care. I knew he had it. I’d seen the bulge behind his back before. I understood what had been on his mind, and the mind of all the Cobras, tonight. Revenge. I could see it in the way he moved, so tense and uptight, that he was planning for big things. Dangerous things.

It wasn’t that I was trying to keep him safe, to stop him from running into a war zone.

Okay, maybe it was part of it. I’d seen what the Fury could do, and it scared the hell out of me.

But a bigger part of it was that I just needed him here. I didn’t want to be alone.

Cullen usually had a grace, a smoothness, a cocky slowness to which he did everything. But this time, even he looked a little over-excited. He kicked off his big boots, then sat down and slipped out of his jeans. He shed the rest of his clothes in record timing, slipped into the water, and pulled me to him, his hot mouth finding mine again.

I ran my hands down the hard planes of his body, feeling hot and feverish as he scooped me up and sat me onto his lap, straddling his muscular thighs. He looked up at me in the misty air, pushing the wet ropes of hair from my face. His voice was breathy. “You can’t do that to me, baby. Don’t tease me like that.”

The way he acted sometimes, like a big cocky asshole, he begged to be teased. The problem was, he was mostly immune to that kind of magic.

But not now.

Oh, definitely not now.

His heavy-lidded eyes, moving from my nose, to my cheeks, to my chin, like a kid in a candy store deciding which part of me he wanted to have first, his breath coming in ragged bursts, his heavily beating heart . . . it all told me that without a doubt, he’d fallen under my spell.

He clenched his teeth and let out a roar of pure, raw masculinity as I spread my legs on his thighs and pressed my pubes against his cock. It pulsed in response, alive, eager. God, I loved his thick cock. “Like how?”

His hands dipped under the water, kneading my ass hard, digging his fingers into my flesh. I rubbed my pained nipples up and down on his chest, wanting more. “You know,” he growled.

I gave him an innocent bat of the eyelashes, and he dug in harder in response, pulling me to him, until his dick was sandwiched between us.

I leaned over and took his earlobe between my teeth, flicking it with my tongue. “You ever take a woman in a hot tub?”

I knew the answer to that. He had a hot tub in his backyard, so yes. Probably often, since this was the great Cullen McKnight. This was my first time ever even sitting in a hot tub, and I liked it. I liked the warmth of the water, flushing our skin, the gentle massaging of the bubbles . . . but most of all I liked him, naked and under my thighs, his hard, wet body pressed against mine.

And I intended to make my virgin experience in a hot tub one we’d both always remember.

I would’ve told him that, but he was now a man possessed, and the last thing he seemed interested in was talking. One hand roved up my back, tangled in the hair at the nape of my neck, and pulled. He positioned me right where he wanted me, trailing the hottest of kisses down my body. My collarbone, my chest, between my breasts.

Then, taking my breast in one hand, he fastened his mouth on the nipple and bit down so hard that I cried out. The bite became a fierce suck, and I let out a moan, the feeling firing straight to my clit, making me squirm against him.

“Easy, baby,” he murmured against my skin, lapping at both nipples with his tongue, one after the other. Sucking and tasting them so thoroughly I thought I’d go insane.

“I can’t,” I breathed out, my cunt aching, my blood pulsing through my body like thunder. “Please.”

Now, he was the one teasing me, lavishing attention on my boobs as I tried to squirm on him, getting his cock where I wanted it to go. I rubbed myself on him, nudging him where I wanted him to be, but he was fully intent on bringing me to the edge of insanity. This went on forever, and not long enough at the same time.

He stopped, lifted his head, staring deeply into my eyes. He pressed his forehead against mine, his powerful chest rising as those brilliant blue eyes penetrated right to my core. “You’re mine.”

“Yes,” I said, begging. Pleading. “Yes. All yours.”

His hand fell under the water again, between us, and he lifted his cock up. “All right, baby,” he said, motioning me with his chin. I lifted up on my knees and felt him there, where I needed him to be, at the entrance of my pussy. He pressed his hardness against me, letting me feel everything he could give me. “Ride me.”

He exhaled. I inhaled in anticipation, ready to feel every inch of him as I slid onto him.

Then he wound his hands around my waist and slammed me down, hard, onto his waiting cock, a defiant look in his eyes that made me gasp out all the air in my lungs.

The feeling of complete and perfect connection was too much. Nothing could compare to this. I needed to move on him, to feel more. But he kept his hands on my hips, holding me to him.

“That’s where you belong, Grace. Right here. You’re not getting away again,” he ground out, his eyes never leaving mine. “I’ll follow you to the ends of the earth if I have to.”

I touched his face, his jaw. “You let me go before.”

“Biggest mistake I ever made. I won’t make it again.”

“What changed? Ella?”

His large hands cupped my face, and he kissed me again, rasping against my mouth, “It’s you. It’s always been you. I was too stupid to realize it before. What you mean to me.”

I started to move up and down on him, now, and he helped me along, holding my hips, moving me in a slow, sweet rhythm. I rocked my hips in time with his, in that perfect synchronicity, trading breath as we panted together. His gaze locked on mine as he kissed my mouth, then he dipped his head and gently bit my neck, his warm, uneven breath making me arch my back to get closer to him. His hand trailed between my legs and his thumb found my clit.

I dragged my hands down the contours of his back, feeling each sinewy, perfect muscle as he strained against the back of the tub. My fingers raked through his hair, feeling the raised line of the ragged scar where he’d been sewn up. Where he’d been hurt, protecting me.

Protecting us.

The thought of that made me want to give him more, give him everything of me. All of it. I tilted my pelvis to get closer, sending fireworks of pleasure through my body as he plunged in deeper. I tilted my head to the sky and my eyes rolled back into my head.

“You feel so good, Grace. So fucking good,” he breathed out. “Come on, baby. Come for me.”

I started to move faster still, more erratically, until I felt myself breaking apart, into a thousand pieces, swallowing a scream as he joined me in release, gripping my hips harder and jerking in violent convulsions. I closed my eyes and saw stars in the back of my eyelids.

“God, you’re so fucking beautiful,” he murmured, his breath shuddery, coaxing me down for a kiss. Winding his hand through my hair again, he said, “You’re the only one who’s ever mattered. You know that?”

I did. In Cullen’s eyes, most of the world could just fuck off, but the people he cared about? It was impossible for them not to know. I could feel his love in everything, in the way he held me in his strong arms, in the way he kissed me, the way he gazed at me with a reverence he had for nothing and nobody else.

But he couldn’t say it. I didn’t know if he’d ever said those words to anyone. I’d had my mother, my grandmother long ago, and Ella, now. He’d never had a soul. I wasn’t afraid to say the words now, even if he wouldn’t return in kind, because I knew he felt it. And I’d rather have the actions than the words. I gazed into his eyes, and whispered, “I love you, too, Cullen.”

He let out a breath, laid his head on my shoulder, and held me tight against the wall of his chest. I could feel his heart beat in time with mine. We just stayed there, locked together, content.

When I finally pulled myself off him, I said, “Are you going to leave?”

He slipped down lower into the hot tub and looked up at the sky. “Hell, no. I’m right where I need to be.”

I smiled. “Good.”

“You know that day? The one on the beach?” he asked me suddenly, as he wrapped his strong arm around me.

I did. It was the day he’d told me he was so lucky to have me, the day I thought I’d have something different than my mother ever had. The day I’d started to believe in love. “Yeah.”

“I told you I was lucky because I had you,” he said. “I still believe that. Without you, my whole world turned to shit.”

“But you still became president.”

He scoffed. “Being president is nothing. When you left . . . yeah, I tried to fill my life with it. But something was always fucking missing. And now I’ve found it. That’s why I don’t want to let you go.”

I leaned my head against his shoulder as he kissed my forehead. “You don’t have to worry, Cullen. I said I left because I was afraid you’d tell me to get rid of the baby. But really, I left because I didn’t want to be like my mother.”

“Your . . . mother?” he asked, confusion in his voice. “You never told me about her.”

“I don’t talk about her. She wanted a man to love her so bad. I was only a kid and I knew how desperate she was. I remembered all the men she invited into the house, and every one of them was worse than the next. My mother was beautiful and had so many admirers. They all wanted her. But what they didn’t want? A kid. Some of them hit me, abused me emotionally. She didn’t know, because I kept it quiet. I just wanted her to be happy, and I saw how happy those men made her. But when I was fourteen, she found one of them in bed with me, raping me.”

He’s silent, but I could hear his jaw working, his teeth grinding.

“She was so beside herself, thinking she’d failed me, that she killed herself before I turned fifteen.”

He winced.

“I just didn’t want to be her. Trying to be with men who don’t want to be a father. I thought I’d rather do it alone. And I tried to, until it became too hard and I was faced with living out on the streets with Ella.”

He tucked a finger under my chin and lifted my head so he could stare into my eyes. “Baby, I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry I ever made you doubt me. I want you. I want Ella.”

He kissed me lightly on the lips, his hand skimming down my side. As the fingers of his other hand lightly stroked the side of my face, his eyes searched mine, brilliant in their intensity, blue as the hottest flame.

We sat in the tub for a while longer, mostly silent, until our skin was beyond pruned. After that, he got out, wrapped a fluffy hotel towel around his hips, and lifted me out. He sat me on the lounge and proceeded to wipe me down with a pile of towels . . . one for each body part, I think. Cullen wasn’t big on eco-friendliness.

“I feel like a pampered princess,” I told him, as he lifted each of my legs and wiped the water droplets off. He was extremely thorough, his callused hands finding their way over every inch of my skin, making me hot for him again. Then he wrapped me in a big, fluffy robe. “Maybe you should fan me and feed me grapes.”

“Don’t push your luck,” he said, but his lips were twisted up in a wry smile.

I could get used to this, I thought as he carried me inside and placed me in the center of the bed like a flower. But I had something to do first and pushed away from him.

I crept into the living room to peek into Ella’s crib. She was still sound asleep and hadn’t even budged from the position she’d been in before. I hurried back into the bedroom, resisting when he tried to lure me into joining him under the big, soft cloud of the comforter. “I should probably take a shower,” I whispered.

“You already did,” he said, pulling me to him and draping his arm over me. He drew me close to him and kissed my wet hair. His hand roamed under my robe, between my legs. “I can’t get enough of you.”

He pulled on the tie of my robe, exposing me to him, and his eyes roved over my body, glinting like it was a feast he couldn’t wait to devour. Whatever inhibitions I had disappeared I saw such lust-filled desire in his eyes.

He reached over and propped a pillow under my head. He spread my legs and knelt between them, then grabbed me by the ass, dragged my lower half up, to his waiting prick. I lifted up, grabbing for him, raking my hands down his back as he pulled me onto his cock. He started to fuck me, hard and fast, like an animal, and I lost everything. All sense of where we were, who I was, what we were running from . . . it all went out the window as he dipped his face down to mine, feeding me his tongue.

“Oh,” I murmured, wondering how it was that he could make me feel this good. Make me lose it, like no one else ever had. Every one of my nerve-endings was alive, singing. I tightened my arms around his neck. My nipples hardening, my belly swimming, I felt my body ratcheting up for another orgasm, even more unbelievable than the last one. His hands held my breasts, the pads of his thumbs flicking over the nipples, and all the while he kept a frantic rhythm, his hips meeting mine, claiming me, dragging moan after moan from my throat.

When I went off, he was right there with me, in perfect sync. I came in a way I never had before, so hard and exquisitely. The warmth that filled me was so satisfying and sweet that I couldn’t imagine anything better.

Because for the first time, I felt really, truly wanted.

He tilted his head up, listening for Ella in the next room as he pulled out of me. “Still asleep. Despite your noise.”

I scrunched my nose. “My noise? What about you?”

He grinned and fell back onto the mattress, blinking. Then said, “Wow. I am beat.”

The next thing I knew, his breathing had slowed. I rolled over and put my chin on his chest, watching his eyelids twitching.

The bastard had fallen asleep. Who knew, getting into a turf war with another motorcycle club and nearly dying would’ve tuckered the poor baby out?

I let out a little laugh. Despite all the hard muscles, his pectorals rippling with tattoos, he looked so uncharacteristically boyish, sleeping there with nothing but that towel slung across his waist. Looking at him like this, with his thick half-moon of eyelashes, his pink lips, he just looked so pretty, it was hard to believe he was the head of a motorcycle gang. I leaned over and set a hand on his big bare shoulder, the warmth of which seeped into me and I kissed his forehead. He smelled like chlorine and Jack, a heady mixture that had me wanting him all over again.

God, he’d turned me into a sex addict, one of those people who’d happily lie in bed all day, waiting for it.

I slipped off the bed, pulling off the robe, and went to take another quick shower to get the chlorine out of my hair.

Five minutes later, I returned, and peeked at the bed to see him completely still, sleeping. God, he was sexy, his nakedness and the way his cock slightly tented the towel making me wet again. I wanted to strip off the towel and lie beside him, run my hands over his muscled legs, his narrow hips, his thick, long cock, up his washboard abs to the most perfect chest I’d ever seen. Even now, it was hard to believe the things we’d done, and all that beautiful work of art had been inside me.

I changed into a tank and boxers, and watched him sleep for a little while, watched his smooth, chest rising and falling in the moonlight coming through the sliding glass door. I thought of what he’d have been doing, otherwise, tonight. Cullen took risks, he always had. Would tonight have been the risk that could’ve ended his life?

Thinking of that, I remembered the gun, which was still lying outside by the hot tub. I went out and picked up his dirty clothes, his boots, all the while staring at the gun.

I swallowed. I’d held it before, once, while we’d been playing around in bed. I’d joked around, asking if it made me look badass and sexy. He hadn’t thought it was funny, but it took me some time to figure out why. He wasn’t trying to look like a badass.

He was a badass and with his lifestyle, he needed that gun to survive.

I carefully lifted it up, holding it like some infected thing, and then grabbed for his heavy boots. They were super-heavy, and when I peeked inside, I figured out why. He had another gun in one of them.

Jesus. He hadn’t just wanted revenge. He was going for another wild west shootout, just like the one that he’d said had been at his house.

This was the life that I could expect with Cullen.

But I hoped to God Ella would forgive me if anything ever happened. Because I’d never be able to leave him now.

When I set his things on the dresser, I stared at the guns. I thought about locking it in the closet safe, but decided against it, so I just put it in the top drawer.

I realized how dry my throat was. I crept over to the mini-bar to check it out, but all I could find were sodas and a few remaining bottles of alcohol, since Cullen had cleaned out almost everything else. What I really wanted was some plain old water. I’d seen a vending machine on our way to the bungalow, so I figured I could get something, then be back in a few minutes. Reaching into my purse, I found a couple of dollar bills.

I opened the door to the suite and walked along the secluded jungle pathway and soon caught sight of the glowing display of the vending machine.

Suddenly, the roar of motorcycles startled me. More than just one. It sounded like several, maybe a whole army. And it also sounded like they were close, maybe right in the parking lot.

I didn’t know much about Cullen’s club, but I did know that the Vanderbilt probably wasn’t a place for bikers. In fact, I was pretty sure that was why Cullen had chosen this place for me. To keep me away from the Fury.

I froze. My heart jammed itself in my throat.

Crumpling the dollar bills into my hand, I whirled around and ran as fast as I could, back to the bungalow.