Down to Ash (#Dirtysexygeeks Book 2) (12 page)

She stiffened in her chair at the accusation. “I...”
Wasn't it the truth?

His jaw clenched and unclenched like he had to chew on his words to keep from spitting them out. “Might as well have, the way you looked at me.”

“How was I looking you? No. Forget that. I wasn't trying to goad you. Bottom line.” She meant the words.

“Then what were you doing? What did you hope would happen?”

“Vic, you're being paranoid. I was just thinking about you in my bed, despite the consequences. I doubt anyone thought I wanted to hump you in the living room after we played. I preened. You scowled. It's what we do. All was right in our world.”

“Maybe.” His gaze pinned on her. “Doesn't change the fact I don't think you've ever played with us. Why change now?”

“Why do you keep pushing? What does it matter?”

Victor didn't answer. Right. He wasn’t in her office to have sex, which meant Victor still had no plans to look her brother in the eye and confess. Period. As always, their feelings only trapped them between opposite longing—don't hurt Porter or succumb to lust and need. They wanted each other past the point of rationale. What had happened when they'd been alone and had too much liquor needed to be kept a secret. Why she’d challenged him seemed trivial in comparison.

“I haven't changed,” she said. He didn't flinch at her harsh tone, so she went on. “But
maybe
after what happened with us I realized that my role of being everyone's little sister doesn't sit so well with me. Maybe I think the way you guys act like I'm not one of you annoys me.”

Victor looked at her as though she'd grown another head.

Anger simmered in her blood. “Maybe you're just sour I beat the shit out of you. Take your pick.” And still, her sharp tone didn’t cut the almost palpable tension in the air.

He stood, his expression hard as granite. If she put her hand up to the air around him, it just might nip at her fingertips.

“What do you want, Ash?”

There was that question again.
Really look at me. Kiss me. Fuck me
. Those answers—Vic was only supposed to be a man she'd slept with. Fuck him and move on once the longing eating at her had been fed.

When would that hunger be fed?

Another question that didn't matter. He refused to tell her simple things as though she were too fragile to know them. Too delicate to be a member of the Goon Squad. Always Porter's little sister.

Ash lifted her chin and said, “Tell me about Iraq.”

He looked away. Still, she caught the shame rippling over his features, the shudder of disgust when guilt really settled in. He walked past her desk to the door, and she whirled in her chair to watch.

She had expected his silent reaction, but still, her anger boiled over into something she couldn't even name. Her vision narrowed to a Vic-sized tunnel so that his broad back was the only thing she could focus on.

“Why won't you just tell me?” she asked, her voice hard. “I know. I just want to hear it from your mouth. You were an EOD tech. During your last tour you lost half your crew in a matter of months.” She hesitated to say more. Pretending she didn't know most, if not all the details, had allowed her to maintain the status quo between them, but she'd already rocked the shit out of it. What harm could she do now?

“Porter was there for you when you got back, and when you came back, you weren't whole.”

He slammed her door. She knew no one would come to see why. Her office sat on the corner of the building, apart from much of the traffic. Still the sound of the lock clicking kicked her heart into overdrive.

She swallowed. “What are you doing, Vic?”

He pressed his hands against the door and leaned, his back to her. “I don't want any interruptions.”

Worry licked at her gut like flames. He was too calm.

“For what?”

He faced her.

Oh
.

Victor wore the kind of expression that needed no translation. He was done fighting what he felt for her. There was only need in the tight lines around his eyes and mouth, and that hunger ripped at Ash, too.

“What do you think you know?” His voice was even, but his eyes weren't unyielding steel anymore, only hunger.

She knew that desire. It was dangerous and could swallow her. A keen yearning to know what she would taste like to him clawed at her gut.

He prowled forward. “Answer the question.”

She swallowed again, her mouth dry. “You suffered from PTSD. It's not as bad now, but you still don't like big crowds.”

Vic took another step forward, and there was no room for her to push her chair back. “And?”

“That's the reason why Porter lived with you for six months after you came home.”

“What else?” Vic pushed for that answer as he leaned down, bracing his hands on the arms of her chair. His attention tracked downward. She wore another low-cut blouse—so low that he could probably see her belly button. A look, a single look from him, had her ready to claw her clothes off.

“What is this?” she asked, forcing her voice to remain steady. “Random facts about Victor Yang?”

“No.” His tone had no give. “Shit you think you know about me.”

She may not have known all the details, but Ash knew the man in front of her. “So you didn't suffer from PTSD?”

He grabbed her wrists. She jolted, not just at the shock of him touching her, but at how hard he gripped her. He used that hold to yank her out of the seat. It didn't hurt. And maybe she was as broken as him—sans the war trauma—because her panties dampened at the rough handling.

“Knowing that, what do you think of me?” Victor asked. He continued to crowd her space as they stood face to face in front of her desk. “What do you think I'm capable of?”

“I don't know,” she answered honestly. “You won't tell me.”

“I'm just a fuck.” He flexed his fingers, but didn't release her wrists. “Why do you need to know?”

Her throat felt tight and her tongue was clumsy. “I should know who I am sleeping with.”

“I'm someone you just want to fuck.” His cold tone only sharpened the sting of his words. Definitely didn't change the truth that was her M.O. “Shouldn't matter who I am. But you want what you want, right?”

He nodded, not even waiting for her answer. “You want to get into my space, fuck with my head. I'm starting to think you won't be happy until you've burned my life down to cinders.” His laugh was bitter. “Burn my life down to ash.”

His words were stripping her bare, and he still had his wall of protection. Worse, she couldn't say he was wrong. The clawing ache in her gut had everything to do with lust. Ash had looked inside the baggage she carried around for him, and nothing—not a single memory—stood out and screamed love.

God, how much she wished for that. If her brother found out about their relationship, she could face him and say, “I love Victor. I love him so much I can't see, much less think straight. That's why I broke your heart. I couldn't take mine breaking anymore.”

So Ash had sat in Grady's living room, perched on a chair next to Porter, unable to pull her gaze away from Victor. She'd beaten him, and she’d waited for something other than lust to sink its teeth in. Something other than
I've known him forever
to settle in and make the guilt go away.

Nothing had, and the lust had continued to throb in her head and make her bones hurt. She tried to jerk her hands away, but he didn't loosen the hold on her wrists.

“Yesterday, all I did was play a game with you,” she said. “I won. Get over it. There's nothing more to say, Victor.”

“Games,” he practically spit out. “Isn't that all you ever play when it comes to me?”

The heat of his anger surrounded her, making it hard for her to breathe in a slow and steady rhythm. She opened her mouth to reply and the words dried in her throat.

Could she say he was dead wrong?

She'd poked at him for years and he’d barely showed a reaction. With one weekend filled with sex, she'd decided to ignore the rules: Don't get too friendly with Porter's friends. Unless she made the sudden discovery that she'd been born with an extra dangling appendage, she wasn't invited into their all-male circle.

Porter didn't wedge his way into her friendships, and her repaying the favor was only fair. Hell, none of her friends had dated any of his friends. That's how separate their lives were.

But the unspoken rule was harder to obey: Act like the lust she felt burning her inside out whenever she so much as looked at Vic didn't exist.

God. It was a small miracle she wasn't rocking in a corner, drooling. And, yes, she'd wanted to know the story behind every scar, every tattoo—everything about him he'd denied her for years.

Maybe Victor could see that truth in her eyes, because his fingers pressed deeper into her skin. The pain turned her on. She wanted to pour gasoline over them and light a match—to ignite the fire, if he wouldn’t.

And that impulse to provoke until she had a reaction, any reaction, would make him right. That meant he could see straight through her while his taut jawline and dark, serious gaze hid his every emotion.

Again, she jerked her hands to break free. This time though, he stepped into her and restrained her arms behind her back. Her breasts flattened against his chest. She was too stubborn to drop her gaze, so she met his head-on.

His nostrils flared. “I bet you're wet right now, hoping I do what you want. I'm not your puppet, Ash.”

She lifted her chin higher, but he had to feel her trembling. “Never asked you to be.”

“So fucking clueless. You have no idea what I can do to you.”

Ash those craved those secrets. Lust and curiosity wasn't mutually exclusive.

She pressed against him and his dick pressed back. Her stomach jumped at the clear evidence that he wanted her, too.
She wasn't alone
. The hard length of his cock rubbed against her belly when she shifted to get in closer to his warmth.

He groaned, his gaze narrowing on her face. In that suspended moment between them, right or wrong didn't exist. Just heat. The longing for his mouth on hers.

“Show me the truth,” she whispered, her voice husky. “Don't give me vague warnings about why I should leave you alone.
Show
me.”

The words left her mouth without her giving any thought to what they could do.

Ash needed to see Vic after he had torn down the walls he'd erected. Didn't matter if his knuckles were bloody and she ended up emotionally bruised. Pushing him was dangerous. Probably all kinds of stupid. She was too far gone to care anymore.

He dropped her hands and nudged her away. Before she could protest, he had her bent over the desk—her arms imprisoned behind her back once again.

A rush of arousal soaked her panties. She had wanted to drive him over into the abyss. Now she needed him to drag her there too.

“I shouldn't be doing this to you.” His fingernails dug into her forearms as though holding her tighter could rein him in.

Blood roared in her ears. That was the Vic she needed. Not the one who put her in a gilded cage to keep her safe, but the one who would leave marks without an apology.

He cursed at himself—at
her.
She didn't care. He was touching her.

“I know better,” he said. The coarse caress of denims against her thighs was nothing compared to the gruff way he spoke.

She shivered and her shoulder muscles burned. He'd wrapped his hands around her wrists and pushed up, pressing her face into the hard wood of her desk.

“I want this, Vic. I want you just like this. You and me. Just us.”

It was a lie. She knew that as soon as the words had spilled from her mouth. It was never just them. They were at work. And they'd have to face her brother and the Goon Squad if the truth came out. Victor had sworn to never have her again, and she knew he was fighting that inner conflict.

If her head hadn’t been spinning with need, she might have let her own doubts settle in. But how in the hell could she think while he rubbed his cock against her? His jeans and her skirt couldn't dampen the delicious friction that made her insides quake and her pussy clench.

“Please, Vic.”

His soft growl was all the warning he gave. He tugged at her skirt and panties until cool air kissed her ass cheeks. From the rough way he handled her, she anticipated a hard smack. Instead, he only groaned. She was bare and bent over, his for the taking.

“Vic.” She moaned, on the brink of begging for him to spank her. Ash just wanted his touch on her bare skin. Anything to ease the ache of anticipation knotting her gut. She'd never invited pain into sex but something had to give.

Within her next shuddering breath, the tip of his cock swept over her clit. She wanted to crawl out of her damn skin.

He eased back, spreading her legs apart with his own. Again, he teased her with just his cock’s tip, soaking himself with her arousal. Finally, Vic was a hard, thick heat pressing into her. Her moan sounded pained, even to her.

“This is what you wanted, Ash. Stop whimpering and take it.” The angry words rasped over her sensitive skin.

“Take me hard.”

“I shouldn't...” He slammed deep into her, a jagged moan ripping from his throat.

The second and third thrusts were harder, deeper. She could only dig her nails into her palms and arch her ass up to take more.

His groan rumbled through her, tightening her nipples. “Don't fucking move.”

Her body was trembling too much to completely obey the harsh command. They didn't need to exchange words to make it clear—they were fucking, feeding that insatiable mouth called lust. Embarrassment should have heated her face for her to have needed something so base and primal from him, but she was wet enough to hear the slurp of his thrusts as he kept going deep and hard.

They were at work. They shouldn't do this. He'd made that vow.

“Don't stop, Vic. Please.”

“Beg louder.”

She replied with something, likely louder as he had demanded, but she couldn't hear over the roar in her ears. Her sex was quickening, tightening around his cock. So close. Almost there. Right fucking there. His groan bordered on animalistic and then she felt empty.