Dangerous Lovers (135 page)

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone as perfect as you.”

I sat up, my face directly in line with his hard abs, and I hooked my hands into his waistband and pulled.

He wasn’t wearing any boxers.

All the breath whooshed from my body and I was left with a dull buzzing sound in my head. He wanted me; that much was
very
clear.

I looked up, expecting to see the Charming I always saw, the Charming with the arrogant grin, the gleam in his eye… but that man was gone.

In his place was someone who was vulnerable, whose feelings were laid bare in his eyes and looked like he’d been alone far, far too long.

No, I wasn’t seeing Charming. I was seeing the real man beneath the carefully built exterior. I was seeing Olly.

“I want you,” I told him, reaching out my hand and grabbing the evidence of his want, wrapping my hand around it.

He closed his eyes and swallowed.

I leaned forward and placed my tongue at the base of his erection, licking upward like he was a giant lollipop that I couldn’t get enough of. He jerked and all his muscles went tense as I wrapped my lips around him, taking every ounce of him inside me that I could. His fingers dug into my shoulder and I smiled as I pulled back, using my teeth to gently rake upward, across the sensitive skin, before pulling away and looking up.

He groaned my name and pushed me back, coming over me, fitting his body along mine. I wiggled, trying to get him even closer. He chuckled in my ear and pressed a kiss on the side of my neck.

“Patience, love,” he murmured as his hand found the hem of my tank and traveled upward to cup the very sensitive flesh of my breast.

I groaned and leaned up to kiss his shoulder.

The next thing I knew, my tank was gone and the only thing between us was the lace panties I was starting to hate.

His mouth made me forget, though, and his tongue was like a magician who did things to my skin that I didn’t know were possible. It danced across my cheekbone, trailed down my arm, and then he picked up my hand, bringing it to his lips where he pressed single kisses to each one of my fingers.

When he was done with my hand, he placed it on my knee, lowering his lips to that sensitive skin just behind, and then nibbled all the way down. “Do you always wear panties that look like this?” he asked, glancing up from the inside of my thigh.

I nodded. It was all I could manage.

“Sexy,” he said and then licked right up my center, my swollen, damp flesh being teased by the snippets of his tongue that I felt through the lace.

My back arched up off the floor and I groaned. I wasn’t sure how much more of his sweet torture I could take. He did it again, his fingertips playing with the edges of my panties, slipping just inside and then pulling back out and trailing down my thigh.

Every part of my body began to tremble until I couldn’t even hold myself still. I lay there under his gaze, beneath his feather-light teasing touch, and did nothing but shake and thrust myself closer to him.

He pulled up, placing an open palm on each knee, and spread my legs as wide as they would go, holding them there before lowering himself between me, pressing his very hard erection right at my core.

I couldn’t take it anymore. I needed him.

“Olly,” I said, knowing it was exactly the right word to say to get what I wanted.

He didn’t even pause to remove the lace. Instead, he pushed it aside and entered me.

My mouth opened, but no sound came out. I’m pretty sure everything inside me splintered apart and then found its way back together again. All I could do was hold on. I wrapped my hands around his biceps and let sensation after sensation take me for a ride.

The contrast of the lace against the smoothness of his flesh was almost my undoing. But what truly pushed me over the edge was when he stopped. He pulled back slightly and looked down. Dark hair fell into his eyes and his arms trembled slightly.

I thought he might say something, but no words left his lips and then suddenly he pushed forward, filling me so deep that my eyes fluttered closed. He lowered himself so every inch of our bodies was in contact and he brought his lips to my ear.

It was then he whispered.

“I’ve been dead for so long that I forgot what it was like to live. I forgot what it was like to feel. Even still, I’m pretty sure nothing I had experienced was ever like this. You brought me back to life, Frankie. You make me want to live.”

I whispered his name again, gripped his butt, and pulled him closer, pushing him as far inside me as he could possibly go. And then I ground myself down on him, grinding so deep that not even air could come between us. A low groan ripped from his throat as he hunched down over me, his body going stiff and convulsing over mine. All at once I felt like a firecracker went off inside me. Bright white pleasure burst in my center and spread out until my limbs were completely boneless and I collapsed against the floor, unable to move. I felt the beads of sweat slipping over my skin and I heard the rasping breaths he sucked in as he leveraged himself over me on shaking limbs, but beyond that I was completely senseless.

I knew being with him would be incredible. My body never reacted to anyone like this ever before. But damn, I hadn’t known. I hadn’t known it was possible to get so completely lost in another person. For a moment there I wouldn’t have been able to tell where I ended and he began. It was amazing. And terrifying. Like it or not, Olly was now completely and utterly inside my heart.

Chapter Thirty-Three

“
Truth - a statement proven to be or accepted as true.”

Charming

My skin was tingling. My lungs expanded with air. I could feel the erratic beating of my heart against my ribs. I was lying on my back, collapsed on the mat, feeling things I hadn’t felt in so long, things I thought for sure I would never feel again.

I turned my head to the side, looking at the person who started it all. Looking at the girl who practically dared me to live. Her blond hair was wild, her skin flushed, and every inch of her dangerously soft curves was exposed.

Something inside me yawned.

Something stretched and moved…

I was waking up.

Over ninety years of being dead—of being consumed by death… I was waking up.

Nothing had done it before. Not money, not power, not killing or having no consequences for anything I did or took. Up until now, I was asleep; I was completely dead.

But then Frankie came along. This woman who never shut up, annoyed the hell out of me, and ate way too much candy.

I loved her.

I loved her completely.

And it was because of her I wanted more. I was tired of death. I wanted to live.

“You told me your name,” she said from beside me, her voice slipping into my thoughts and wrapping around my mind.

I’m not quite sure what possessed me to tell her the one thing I guarded so close. I had many names over the years, more than I could count, more than I cared to remember. But only one had meant anything. The one I was born with. The one that my mother gave me, the one that someone truly wanted me to have. My name was the only connection I had left of my past, of my life. It was the only part of me that I thought I had left.

I turned my head, looking over at her once more. She was watching me tentatively, almost warily… like she wasn’t sure what to expect. She probably wondered if I’d even told her the truth and now that we’d slept together, if I was going to morph back into the man I’d always been with her.

I walked my fingers between the space between us, and her laugh was throaty as my fingers neared hers. Instead of linking them together, I wrapped my hand around her wrist and tugged, pulling her closer.

She came willingly, fitting herself against my side and resting her cheek on my shoulder. The toes on her right foot found their way between my calves and I smiled up at the ceiling.

“You’re the first person I’ve ever told my real name since I’ve been dead.”

“How did you die?” she asked quietly.

This was something I’d never told anyone either.

“I was a boxer. I died in a dirty fight.”

“Did it hurt?” she asked, sorrow lacing her voice.

“I don’t really remember,” I lied, but I was tired of lying so I told her the truth. “Yeah, for a moment, but it didn’t hurt very long.”

“And then what happened?
He
came for you?”

He
being the Grim Reaper.

I nodded. The movement of my head caused a couple strands of her blond hair to stick in my stubble and tickle my chin. I reached up to untangle the silky strands and smooth my palm over them. “Next thing I knew I was in his office. Nothing but a cloud of red—basically just a soul—and he was offering me a job as an Escort.”

“Did you know what an Escort was when you took the job?”

I knew eventually she would ask me this. It was a natural question—
did you know you were going to be a killer? Did you actually choose it?

“Yes,” I answered. “He told me what I would be doing.”

We both lay there for long moments, quiet. I wasn’t sure what she was thinking, if the realization—the knowledge that I actually chose this life—would be something she could ever accept.

And if she didn’t?
my brain asked me.

But I think the real question was
What if she did?

Because if she didn’t, I would understand. I could go on exactly as I had been before. Okay, not exactly as before because this had changed me—
she
had changed me. But I would go on, and I would continue to do exactly what I’d been doing for over ninety years.

But if she did… if she somehow found a way to accept me, I knew things—
life
—as it was now would have to change. Irrevocably and forever.

She lifted her head off my shoulder and propped her arm and chin on top my chest. Her blue eyes studied me and her wild hair was tangled around her chin. “So how come you agreed? Why do any of you agree?”

“I can’t say for sure about the others, but I do know that when you’ve just suffered some kind of violent or sudden death, you’re in shock. You find yourself basically a cloud of color standing in a room with a man and his closets full of bodies.” At this she lifted both her eyebrows and stared at me in disbelief, but she said nothing else as I continued.

“It isn’t really much of a choice. You can stay dead and be tossed into some kind of void that is a fate worse than hell for all of eternity, or you can take his offer, get a new body, a new life, and a shit-ton of money. Considering most people are still shocked that they’re actually dead, choosing to live isn’t that hard.”

“But it’s not living,” she said softly.

“No. It’s not.” I took a minute to brush some of the wayward hair out her face. “But usually by the time you realize that, it’s much too late. Once you make the deal, once you take on the title of Death Escort, there is no getting out.”

“Like Dex,” she whispered.

“Yeah, like Dex. You do the job or get Recalled, sent off to a place worse than hell.”

“When did you realize you weren’t really living?”

I brushed my thumb along the bare skin of her collarbone, back and forth, back and forth. Goosebumps broke out along her skin and I smiled. “Today.”

I caught the skepticism in her eyes. “Don’t try that charm on me,” she warned.

“Are you saying you’re immune to my charm?” I lifted a single brow.

“Oh yes,” she said, her lips curving secretly. “It’s your other, shall I say, gifts that I’m partial too.” As she spoke her finger trailed across my chest and down my stomach.

I laughed. But then I sobered up. I wanted her to know this stuff. “For several months now I’ve been feeling restless. I always completed the jobs I was assigned, but sometimes things fell through the cracks.”

“Money, you mean,” she replied.

“Mostly,” I rasped and rubbed a hand over my face. “It gets old… working for a man who can be as ruthless and cunning as he wants. He can play with your life, make threats, and withhold things that are rightfully yours.” I paused and glanced at her. She nodded and so I went on. “And then Dex came along… He figured out a way to get around G.R.’s game. I did nothing to stop him.”

“You
helped
Dex?” she said, her eyes going wide and her shoulders straightening.

“I didn’t save your friend.” I could see in her eyes that she was trying to make me into the hero. I wasn’t a hero. I never would be. I was the bad guy. The killer. “All I did was look the other way and maybe keep G.R. busy while Dex did his thing.”

She shivered.

“Are you cold?”

“A little.”

“Come on,” I said, starting to rise, but she made a sound deep in her throat.