Dare To Love Series: Daring Ink (Kindle Worlds Novella) (6 page)

“Fuck me, Sawyer,” she cried. “Make me come all over that big dick.”

He’d never heard sweeter words in his whole life. “Whatever you want, honey.”

He pounded into her—forcefully, relentlessly—as she met his every thrust and groaned at his every withdrawal. He stayed with her, fucking her with the intensity of a man who’d just found someone he didn’t know he’d been looking for, but couldn’t live without.

Lifting his hand that had been holding her down, he pulled her up so her back was solid against his chest and then he reached around to strum her clit. Again and again he pushed into her until his balls tightened and he knew he was close, so fucking close.

He squeezed her clit between his fingers right as he buried himself as deep inside her as he could. She cried out, her pussy clamping down on his dick as she came. That was all it took. Sawyer went over the edge with Penny, sailing into an oblivion where only the two of them mattered.

Collapsing backward, he was careful to make sure her downward trip to the bed was gentle.

“Now I know.” She smiled and her eyelids fluttered shut.

But she didn’t. That had been different—that had been only with her—but if the fantasy turned her on, he’d keep playing along. “Next time, I’ll show you what else I did.” He brushed a kiss across her forehead and got up.

After a quick trip to the bathroom to dispose of the condom, he came back to find her curled up on her side under the covers. He lifted the blanket and snuggled up behind her. Tucking her closer so she fit perfectly against him as he spooned her, Sawyer took a deep whiff of her peach-scented hair and tried to figure out what in the hell had just happened, because everything seemed different.

Penny was beautiful, but it was more than just that. It was her sass, her determination, her persistence and her talent. If she ever found out about the bet he’d made with D’Andre, she’d walk away without a second look back. Just imagining that was like getting sucker punched in the kidneys. He’d call D’Andre tomorrow and tell him the whole thing was off. Then he had to do whatever it took to make sure she never found out and, if she did, pray she wouldn’t hate him for keeping it secret.

Ch
apter Seven

The
beeping wouldn’t stop. Sitting up in the darkness, Penny slapped around the bed trying to find the noise’s origin when she could barely open her eyes. Her palm smacked against something big and man smelling. She went hunted-rabbit-in-a-nature-documentary still, except for her jack-hammering pulse.

“Five more minutes,” Sawyer mumbled as he rolled over, taking most of the blankets with him.

The pent-up breath she’d been holding whooshed out. Okay, the hard thing was the man who’d rocked her world a few hours ago, but the beeping, she still had no—the portfolio!

“Wake up.” She threw back the covers, scrambled out of bed and flipped on the light. “It’s the GPS. The thief is on the move.”

Sawyer bolted out of bed and managed to get his clothes on before she’d even found her underwear.

“How did you do that?” she asked, pulling back the covers in search of her missing panties.

He grinned as he balled up her hot pink panties and tossed them at her. “Working undercover in vice trains you to be ready to scatter at a moment’s notice.”

After that it was a mad dash to get dressed, out the door and down to the parking garage.

“You navigate and I’ll drive.” Penny unlocked her black Lexus hardtop convertible. The car was her baby, no one was driving it.

“Yes, ma’am.” Sawyer gave her a teasing salute before getting in on the passenger side. “Okay, it looks like the perp just left Daring Ink and is on North Miami Avenue headed toward downtown.”

For the next twenty minutes they drove in silence, trying to catch up to the blinking red dot on Sawyer’s cellphone. Penny followed his directions to turn left or right or continue straight ahead all while she tried to work out the puzzle of what had just happened between them. They’d had sex. Duh. But they’d done it at her condo, a huge no-no in her book. Plus, he wasn’t a guy she’d be able to avoid on a permanent basis unless she moved, and that wasn’t happening.

So what was next? She had no frickin’ clue.

“Turn right at the next light,” he said. “So what’s the deal with your no boyfriends rule?”

The conversational changeup should have made her pause, but she was beginning to realize that the unexpected was his version of normal. “I don’t believe in commitments.”

“Sounds like the beginning of a story.” He kept his eyes on his phone or the road, but some of his attention zeroed in on her.

“Not really. I found out a year ago that the man I’d grown up thinking was my father, wasn’t.” Talking about her mother’s lies usually made her stomach twist and her palms sweat, but being in the car with Sawyer as they drove around Miami after midnight gave her emotional distance and made it easier to talk about. “My real dad is a rich dude named Paul Dare who, eons ago, decided to try the straight life so his snooty family wouldn’t hate him for being gay. It sucks that he had to do that. I feel bad for the guy.”

“I’m not tracking,” he said. “How does that affect your opinion about commitments?”

“The woman Paul tried to go straight with was my mom She got knocked up with my brother and I. She was young and scared so she left Miami and went back to her small hometown in the Florida panhandle.” Responding to Sawyer’s pointing, Penny turned right. Her hands were steady on the steering wheel and her nerves were as calm as if she was telling the sad sack life of some other girl. “Mom told my brother and I that our dad was Paul Dare, a long-haul trucker who abandoned her. I don’t know why, it wasn’t like the truth was something to be ashamed of, at least for most people. For a girl from the sticks in conservative country? Maybe it was enough to lie to her children for their entire lives.”

The all too familiar bitterness of a wasted childhood spent thinking she was fatherless, when her father had been out there the whole time, welled up within her. It burned the back of her throat and turned her tongue to acid. The betrayal still hurt like a fresh wound.

“I ended up back in Miami on a fluke—or at least I thought it was,” she continued. “Turned out my mom had been collecting money from Paul for years to raise his darling secret babies. She took the money, but she’d never let him see us. She told him it would just confuse us. But after we graduated high school, Paul must have figured all bets were off. He managed to track my brother Copper and I down, but didn’t make a move to meet us. Instead, he worked some back channels to get me accepted to art school here. Copper ended up at a university with the best engineering program in the country. For me, getting that acceptance letter to art school with a full scholarship was like winning the lottery.”

She still had that letter in the back of a filing cabinet in her office at Daring Ink. The scholarship had been a lie, she’d found out later. Paul had paid for it all and arranged for her application to end up on the top of the pile. He may have gotten her in, but she’d been the one to earn her degree.

“I didn’t know a thing about Paul until after I graduated and started Daring Ink. He just showed up on my doorstep one day and told me who he was, and what he’d done. He said he didn’t want to pressure me into a relationship but he had hope I would someday. Then he said I had the Dare head for business and that if I ever needed anything, all I had to do was call. After he left, I confronted my mom on the phone. It wasn’t pretty.” Now that was the understatement of the year. Sawyer pointed right. She made the turn into a neighborhood of bungalows familiar enough to give her deja vu. “She admitted to everything and that’s how I learned the lesson that even the people you love the most—the ones you trust the most—will lie to you without flinching. Now if that can’t turn a girl into an untrusting commitment-phobe, I don’t know what will.”

“I’m sorry.” He laid his hand on her thigh and gave her a quick squeeze. “But maybe I can help change your mind about boyfriends.”

The underlying buzz of attraction was there, but it was the warm comfort of having someone beside her that flooded through her. She hadn’t realized how much she’d missed it until that moment. After finding out about her mom’s lies, she’d pushed everyone away and focused only on Daring Ink because work never betrayed her. But now, with Sawyer, things felt different…better…hopeful.

She put her hand on top of his. “Maybe you already have.”

“Best news I’ve heard all day.” His phone beeped and he looked down at the glowing screen. “We’re close.”

The windows in the bungalows lining the street were dark—except for one. Penny’s stomach sank. She knew that house. Knew its chipped paint on the front porch and the bucket of sand stuffed with cigarette butts near the front door. She’d only been here once, when Chase had needed a ride home late one night.

She slowed down and parked in front of his house. Anger, hurt and disappointment beat against her with hurricane-wind strength.

Sawyer looked up. “How did you know we were here?”

“Your gut was right.” She shoved back the emotions whirling around inside of her. None of it would help. The only way to get through this was not to care at all. She opened her door. “It’s Chase’s house. Come on, let’s get this over with.”

The short walk to the front door felt like a mile and each step up the front porch was a mountain. God she hated this. She hated herself for getting hurt, yet again, because she’d misplaced her trust. When would she learn?

Chase opened the door before she even had a chance to knock.

“Hey boss, what’s up?” His voice was cheerful but his gaze darted all over the place, never landing on her.

“Cut the crap. I know.” She crossed her arms. “Give me the portfolio.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” The jittery body language intensified as he rocked on his heels and he fidgeted with his hands.

“Yes, you do,” she snapped. “You’ve been inking my designs on other people. Sawyer’s cop instinct led him right to you but I never thought it would be true.”

A flush ate its way up Chase’s face and he puffed out his chest. “He’s full of shit.”

The lies, the denials, the bullshit, she’d had enough. In a heartbeat she was just done with it all. She wasn’t mad or sad or bitter. Those emotions would come flooding back no doubt, but for now she was just numb. “We put a GPS tracker in the portfolio. We know it’s here. Just go get it.”

All pretense melted from his face, revealing the insecure, desperate boy behind it. “Let me explain, Penny.”

She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. You lied. You stole. You pretended to be something you’re not.”

His shoulders drooped and he sighed. “Hold on.” He disappeared from the doorway.

Sawyer put his hand on the butt of the gun holstered to his thigh.

But when Chase reappeared all he had was her portfolio. He handed it over without a word.

Penny took it and turned, needing to get to the safe darkness of her car’s interior before the numbness melted, exposing her raw emotions. Dozer, she would have expected. Even Savannah had her days, but Chase? He just wanted to learn, he swept the floors after closing and calmed down nervous first timers. She’d never expected it to be him, not in a million years.

Sawyer’s hand on the small of her back as they walked to her car comforted, but the betrayal stung too deep for his touch to ease it completely.

“Penny,” Chase called from the porch. “I’m sorry.”

Her fingers paused on the door handle. “Sorry doesn’t always cut it. You’re banished from the studio, don’t let me see you there again.”

She got into the car and started it up, needing more than anything to get home and crawl back into her bed and fall asleep with Sawyer’s arms around her.

*****

Sawyer
couldn’t think of anything to say on the way home that didn’t sound like it came out of some stupid soup for the soul book. Before he knew it, they were in the condo elevator headed back up to their floor.

“Hold the elevator,” someone shouted.

Sawyer stepped forward and slid his hand between the closing doors, triggering them to open back up. It wasn’t until he saw D’Andre sprinting across the lobby that he’d wished, he’d pretended not to hear. His gut twisted. This wasn’t going to end well. He loved his friend like a brother, but he was about as subtle off the field as he was when he was sacking quarterbacks on it.

“Hey man,” D’Andre hustled into the elevator. “How’s it going with the hot redhead?”

Penny stiffened behind him.

Shit. This was going to be an epic disaster.
Sawyer shot his friend a death glare that said shut-the-fuck-up in screaming silence.

“What’s your deal?” D’Andre looked over and must have noticed Penny because his eyes grew wide.

Sawyer could practically see the wheels turning in his friend’s head. It was after midnight. He and Penny were in the elevator. The smell of sex still clung to them both. It had been years since he’d executed a perfect tackle, but he was ready to revisit old times if it would shut up D’Andre.

“Damn, man.” His friend whistled. “Looks like I’ll be paying up on that bet, I never thought you’d win because she totally out classes your sorry ass.”

Penny zipped around him, anger pouring off her in waves. “What bet?”

The elevator dinged and the doors opened. Hand on the small of her back, Sawyer practically pushed her out of the elevator before D’Andre could enlighten her. Brain going ninety miles an hour, he tried to come up with an explanation that wouldn’t piss her off more as they quick-stepped it down the hall. He had to tell her something—anything—or he’d lose her for good. She’d banish him from her life just as quickly as she’d dismissed Chase.

They made it about three doors down the hallway before she dug in her heels and jerked to a stop. “What bet was he talking about?”

The rims around her eyes had gone red, along with the tip of her nose, but he couldn’t blame this on her betraying employee. No. This was all his fault. He should have told her everything before he’d slept with her—hell, before she’d given him a tattoo. Really, he should have never taken that bet.

“It was just a dumb bet.” Wanting more than anything to reach out to her and draw her closer, but knowing she’d probably knee him in the nuts if he did, he shoved his fingers through his hair. “It doesn’t mean anything.”

“What, that you’d sleep with me?” She laughed in his face. It was a cold, brittle sound, so unlike her laughter in the tattoo studio earlier today. “Was that what this was all about? Is this why you volunteered out of the blue to help me?” She paused and smacked her palm to her forehead. “It was! I should have known but I was blinded by charm and abs. What a fucking idiot am I.”

Shame. Pure, burning cold shame rushed through his veins infecting every part of his body until he dripped in it. “It wasn’t that I’d sleep with you, only that we’d go out on a date.”

She glared at him and then turned on her heel and stormed down the corridor to her front door. Not knowing what to say but knowing he had to stop her, he ran after her.

“Please, you’ve got to listen. You’ve got to know how sorry I am.” He was begging and he didn’t care. This thing, this connection, between them was new and fragile. He didn’t know where it was leading but he had to protect it, and the only way to do that was with the truth. “That stupid bet was the reason why I initially offered to help, but after we talked and I saw how much catching the thief meant to you, there was no way I could walk away.”