Knife & Flesh (The Night Horde SoCal Book 4) (11 page)

Her hands went to his head, snagging into his hair as she pressed him close. While he sucked and tasted, he shifted his hips and took himself in hand, pushing his tip, and the topmost ball of his piercing, over her clit. She had a dark, close-cropped wedge of hair, and the feel of it brushing against him, over his glans, forced a groan from him as he moved back and forth.

“Trick!” she gasped. “Please! I want to feel you in me!”

He released her breast and straightened his arm, looming high over her again. She was flushed and breathless. Without saying a word, he pushed back to his knees and opened the condom, watching her watch him as he rolled it on.

She lifted her hips at him, rocking in invitation. With his eyes on hers, he came back down. Her outside leg, the one not trapped against the sofa, came up and hooked over his back, and he pushed into her, watching the flare in her eyes as the feel of him happened to her.

“Holy shit,” she breathed. “Oh, holy shit.”

She was tense, however; he could feel stress everywhere in her, especially in the leg around him. “Relax, honey. Relax.”

She swallowed and took a long, shaky breath. “It’s…it’s been a while. And that piercing—I’ve never…it feels…”

“How long’s a while, Jules?” He hadn’t intended to shorten her name that way, it had just happened, but she smiled a little at it, and he felt the tension in her ease somewhat.

“Almost a year.” Pink blossomed over her face as she said it. “It’s dumb, but I’m scared.”

“I’m not going to hurt you. The piercing is nothing to worry about. And you’re plenty wet. God, so wet.”

“It’s not that. I’m scared of this. What’s between us.”

“I won’t hurt you.” He let that statement cover everything, because he meant it in any way she might need him to mean it.

She stared at him so long without speaking that he’d almost decided to pull out. But then she hooked her hands over his shoulders, using him as leverage to pull her upper body off the sofa. Pressing her face against his chest, she whispered, “Help me not be afraid.”

Beset by so much need in so many forms that the room seemed to close in around him, Trick gathered her close and spun them, resettling so that he was seated on the sofa and she straddled him. The force of the move pushed him all the way into her, sealing their bodies. He shouted a groan, and she arched back so far that he clenched his arm to keep hold of her. Her juices flowed, and he could feel her muscles twitching around him as her body accommodated him.

When she met his eyes again, he cupped her face with his hand, rubbing his thumb over that little dark spot. “Stop thinking, Jules. Do what you want.”

It took her a few seconds to respond, but when she did, she nodded and closed her eyes. Her hips began to rock on him. She moved gently, experimentally, and he remained still and observed her discovery as it moved over her face.

When she found the position and rhythm she liked, she smiled and opened her eyes. “It’s so intense,” she gasped.

He’d gotten that piercing—all of his piercings, and most of his ink, too—for a host of reasons, and the least of them was sexual pleasure. He hadn’t lied; it did feel good to him. The movement of the curved bar during intercourse created a different sensation, intensely pleasurable without compromising his endurance. And some women—like Juliana, seemingly—did love it. Others did not.

But his reasons for ink and metal were more complicated. More than sex, it was about the way it all set him apart, made him distant from the soldier he’d been, and marked that difference in every aspect of his life. His dreadlocks had been that, too. All of it had helped him exorcize the demons he’d brought home with him.

It was about the pain, too, though ink was better than piercings for that. Pain cleared his head. Never was he calmer, inside as well as out, than when he spent a few hours in a tattoo chair.

Juliana reached a tentative hand out and took hold of the ring through his right nipple, breaking him away from his thoughts and back to the moment. She pulled, bucking sharply on him at the same time. A sound like a growl blasted from his throat, and he grabbed her face and pulled her to him so that he could claim her mouth. He kissed her savagely, funneling all of his need, all of his confused feelings, into her through that kiss.

She moaned and gasped and struggled, but he didn’t let her go. Deep inside her, he felt a fluttering spasm around the head of his cock, and then she was coming, her hands clamped over his shoulders, fingernails digging deeply into his flesh. She gave up her rocking rhythm and began to buck and bounce until she ripped her mouth free of his and flailed backward. He sat up and followed her, keeping her close, flexing his hips upward as she drove down onto him, harder and harder.

Trick roared, his finish clawing through his gut. In the midst of it, knowing she wasn’t done, he tried to flip them again, but he missed his aim, and they landed on the floor instead of the sofa. The impact of their fall drove him as deep as he could go—and finished her.

“Now! God! Now, it’s now! It’s—” Her cries cut off and she arched up into him, her body a perfectly rigid bow. He felt his skin give under her fingernails as her hands tried to clench into fists around his shoulders.

He slammed into her again and again, grunting to the beat of their bodies until the metallic rigidity of her body eased and she relaxed in his arms. Still mostly hard, he slowed his strokes but didn’t stop, moving gently now, bringing her softly back to Earth.

“Stop,” she gasped, “stop. I can’t…God.” He stilled, and she hooked her arms tightly around his head and buried her face against his neck. Her hair covered his face, and he breathed deeply.

When the movements of her body told him that she was calming, her breath settling, Trick pulled slowly out and rested on his hip at her side. He brushed her hair from her face and searched her eyes, trying to see what would happen next. Was she hurt? Still afraid? Would she send him away, now that the feral physical need between them had abated?

Her lips trembled, and he thought she would cry, but instead she smiled and took hold of his beard. “It’s like I never had sex in my life until right now.”

Not sure if she was saying that he’d hurt her, he asked, “Is that good?”

“Yes. Yes, I think so.”

“Think?”

At his echo of their earlier argument—if that was what it was—she gave him an ironic twist of a smile—he loved that expression of hers, showing sharp good humor and insight. Then the smile left, and she grew serious. “Yes,
think
. Right now, with you, I feel good. It all feels so good, and I don’t mean just the sex. I like being with you. I feel…better…when I am. But Trick, this does scare me. I don’t have casual things, and this doesn’t feel casual, anyway—not to me, at least. I have a little girl. She is everything to me. Everything I want, I want for her—what she needs, what makes her life good. I don’t know how you fit with us. I don’t know if you can.”

He wasn’t even fully soft yet; he did not want to confront his failings right this second. “Do you have to know right now, while I’ve still got the condom on?”

“I’m sorry. But—”

“Please, honey. I’m asking. Give me a minute.” He tried to sit up, so he could discard the condom and sturdy his psyche, but she grabbed his arms, resisting his movement. So he stayed where he was.

“What I was going to say is that I don’t want you to go. Not tonight, at all. And I don’t know what that’ll mean, if you stay.”

He sighed. Okay, it looked like they had to talk about this right now. Leaning down, he pressed his lips to her forehead. “Come on, let’s sit up and talk. Honestly, though, I need to get rid of the condom first.” Now that its purpose had been fulfilled, and his erection was gone, it was like a white flag of surrender hanging off his dick.

He stood and pulled that limp thing off. On his way to her bathroom, he bent down and grabbed his jeans from the floor. If they were going to have that talk, he needed at least some kind of armor.

While Trick was in the bathroom, Juliana, still breathless, pulled on her shorts and top. She picked up the empty packet from the coffee table and took it to the kitchen, throwing it away in the can under the sink.

Then she leaned against the counter, closed her eyes, and tried to make sense of the past…however long since she’d opened the door.

Opened the door. Yes, she’d definitely done that. To what, though? What had Trick brought into her home? Did she want it?

She wanted him, that she knew.

“You okay?”

Opening her eyes, she turned to find him standing at the entrance to her little kitchen. He looked wild and unbearably hot. He was shirtless—he always seemed to be shirtless when she felt most confused and vulnerable to him—and his hair was tousled around his head. She’d done that, grabbing at him, clutching him. Sweet Mother Mary, that sex had been fantastic. Maybe even life-changing.

“Yeah,” her voice cracked, and she coughed her throat clear. “I’m good. You want a drink?”

“Got whiskey? Or beer?”

“No, sorry. I’ve got wine, though. A couple bottles of red, and a white in the fridge.”

“That’s okay,” he chuckled. “I’ll just take water.”

Embarrassed that she didn’t have a more, she guessed, ‘manly’ drink to offer him, she nodded and got out two glasses, then opened the freezer for ice. “Oh! Vodka! I have vodka!” When she turned to wave the bottle of Absolut at him, he was right behind her, so close that she brushed his chest.

“Vodka will do.”

He stepped back to make room for her, and she poured them each a glass of Absolut. She handed him his and watched as he drank the whole glass down at one go. The muscles of his throat flexed as he swallowed, and she reached out a finger and traced a line from his jaw, through his beard to the notch at his collarbones, and then over his shoulder. His body was a wonder: lean and sharply defined, the skin taut over perfect contours of every muscle she could name and several she couldn’t. And covered with art, like a living gallery. “You have so many tattoos. Do they all mean something?”

He reached past her, leaning close, and set his empty glass on the counter. She hadn’t even had a sip of hers yet. “Yeah, they all mean something.”

“Like what?” She opened her hand and eased it over his chest, down to his ribs. “What does this one mean?”

On his left side, taking up most of the real estate there from just below his nipple to his waistband and wrapping around to his back, was a black horse—black because it seemed to be made of iron, with fittings of brass. Like a literal iron horse, caught at full gallop. Its mane was a series of chimneys, each one shooting fire. Its fierce eyes were fire, too, and steam billowed from its nose and mouth. It was darker than most of his others, the colors brilliant and the lines pristine. The detail was minute. All of his tattoos were beautiful in some way, but that piece was legitimately a work of art.

“That’s a new one. The patch of the Horde is the Flaming Mane. It’s a take on that.”

Down his ribs on his right side, he had the word HORDE inked in a line, in a font Juliana thought of as ‘tattoo type.’ The horse was much more interesting. “It’s like steampunk.” She looked up and saw a pleased grin grow across his handsome face.

“Yeah. Exactly.”

Encouraged and interested, she took a sip of her drink and let her free hand roam over his art. On the outside of his left bicep was the first she’d ever taken note of:
Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt
. He had several text tattoos over both arms; this piece was nearly bald in its simplicity. A font like Courier New or something, the words arranged evenly in a square and unadorned. It made her feel wistful and a little sad. “And this?”

“It’s from a book I like. It’s a reminder.”

“
Slaughterhouse-Five
, I know. I read it for a class. What does it remind you of?”

He gave her that pleased grin again and put his hands on her hips. “To remember the good.”

“You need a reminder for that?”

He didn’t answer, but his smile faded away. Understanding that she’d gotten too close to something, she moved her hand again, this time over the arm band directly below it. Another text tattoo, in Greek; she could tell by the letters. “What’s this?”

“It’s Greek. Archimedes. It reads ‘Give me the place to stand, and I shall move the earth.’”

“That’s beautiful.” She smoothed her hand over a tattoo of intricate geometric patterns that seemed to be the mate to the one that took up most of his left leg, and then she put her hand over his wrist. He had the same tattoo around each wrist: a solid black band, about two inches wide, showing a join on the top of the wrist. The left, though, continued onto his hand. On the back of his hand was a padlock, hooked through the join but unlocked.

“These are shackles.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

He picked up her hand and laced his fingers with hers. “Is this what you want to talk about? My ink?”

She lifted her eyes to his face. “Who are you, Trick? I don’t even know your last name. Or your real name, for that matter.”

“I don’t know your last name, either. And Trick
is
my real name. I’m Patrick Stavros.”

“Juliana Dominguez.” She squeezed her fingers with his. “Nice to meet you.”