Knife & Flesh (The Night Horde SoCal Book 4) Read online

  He nodded. “Yeah. I was.”

  “You’re not now?”

  He shrugged; he didn’t know. “I want you.”

  There was a pencil in the knot of hair at the top of her head, and he reached up and pulled it out. The knot came loose, and she shook her head, letting her long, dark tresses fall over her shoulders.

  God. He felt paralyzed by his need.

  She took the pencil out of his hand and turned, stepping over to set it on the white plastic table between the sofas. The style of the room was strange: aggressively old-fashioned but somehow fresh and cheerful. He’d noticed the furniture when Lucie had led him in the week before—the curved, 1950s-era mated sofas, upholstered in a gold damask shot with pastel threads. Each sofa had only one arm. He’d spent a night on one of them, and he’d seen that they were the components of a sectional and would make a semicircle if pushed together.

  Since he’d last been here, Juliana had unpacked and made the bland apartment into a vibrant home.

  She had arranged the sofas facing each other with that white, rectangular, 1970s plastic coffee table between them and a sheepskin rug under that. On one wall was a set of white IKEA bookcases, the shelves made of individual squares. Books filled most of the squares, but there were framed photos, too, and a few brightly-colored knickknacks. One square was taken up with a red “J” and another a blue “L.”

  Framed on the wall were sketches—watercolor or pastels, it was difficult from where he was to tell which—of girls in pretty clothes. Like fashion design sketches. She sewed, she’d said. Made clothes. He wondered if the sketches were hers.

  Was she an artist, too? Jesus. He turned back to her and found her looking up at him, her hair now framing her face.

  “I’m sorry I hurt you,” she said.

  Trick shook his head; he didn’t want to open that Pandora’s box right now. He knew he was wrong for her. But she was right for him, and he needed something right. To close off further discussion, he slid his hands around her face, into that thick, glorious dark hair, and kissed her.

  She filled his senses: the flower of her shampoo, the velvet of her lips, the sweet of her tongue, the airy lilt of her whimpers. He felt her yielding to him, and to herself, and he pulled her closer, delved more deeply into her mouth.

  Her hands moved to his waist, and she lifted his t-shirt. He released her mouth and leaned back, reaching over his shoulders to grab the cotton over his back and pull the shirt off. He cast it away without noticing where it landed.

  She smiled and put her hands on his bare chest, scratching her fingers through the hair across his pecs. He closed his eyes and surrendered to the feel of it.

  Then her mouth was on him, over his pierced nipple. She sucked, and he felt her tongue working the ring, pushing and pulling at it. Groaning, he dropped his hands onto her shoulders and clung to her as electric bursts of desire shot from her mouth to his cock. Fuck, that was good. He flexed and arched backward.

  Then that miraculous touch went away. “I’ve been wanting to do that since I first saw the piercing. It feels good?”

  He opened his eyes and smiled at her. “God, yeah.”

  With a pleased lift at the corners of her mouth, she leaned in and did it again. He closed his eyes again and let the pleasure roll through his body.

  While her mouth worked at his nipple, her hands went to his belt and flipped open its big silver buckle. He grinned and widened his stance, shifting his hips toward her. As she opened his jeans, her mouth left his pierced nipple, and she kissed and licked her way to his unadorned one.

  “God,” she murmured against his chest as her hands sought and found what she was after. One hand circled his cock, and the other delved deeper to cup his balls. “God, you’re big.”

  She freed him from his jeans, and Trick shifted his stance again so that the denim wouldn’t just drop to his ankles. He still had his boots on. And she was still dressed.

  Before he could reclaim some sense from the flood of sensation, she gasped, and her mouth left his chest. Her thumb had passed over the head of his cock. It retraced its steps. He opened his eyes and found her staring down at what she had in her hand.

  “It’s called a Prince Albert,” he said.

  “I know what it’s called. I’ve just never known anybody who actually had one.” She looked up. “You pierced your cock.”

  He grinned. “Well, I didn’t do it. I had a professional do it.”

  “Didn’t it hurt?”

  Her hand still moved over him, exploring even as she watched his face. Trick had trouble focusing on the conversation she wanted to have. “Sure. I’m not afraid of pain.”

  “Why?”

  The best answer to that question was a demonstration. Undoing the space between them, Trick kissed her, hooking an arm around her waist and lifting her up so that he could push his cock between her legs. Guiding himself with his free hand, he brushed over her mound. Though she was still wearing those pink knit shorts, a shockwave of pleasure blasted through him.

  And through her. Juliana jerked in his hold and gasped, dropping her head backward, away from his mouth. “Oh, my God.” She lifted her head again and met his eyes. “You did that because of how it would feel for women?”

  “Feels good for me, too. Feels better inside.”

  “Oh, my God,” she whispered again, her eyes round.

  He was holding her up, her feet barely skimming the ground, so he turned and laid her down on the sofa. Stepping back, he toed off his boots and then dropped his jeans and underwear, catching his socks and pulling everything off in a heap. Before he stood, he rooted in his pocket for a condom.

  When he looked back up, Juliana was as naked as he. And God, she was beautiful.

  She was long and lean, her body smooth, with no sign that he could detect that she’d given birth. Her skin was olive, a shade or two darker than his, and seemed unblemished, that beauty spot on her face the only mark anywhere. Her breasts were small, and her nipples were dark, tightened now into hard knots as she writhed under his regard.

  “Trick. Please.” Her voice had the high pitch of a plea.

  He put his knee on the sofa and loomed over her, propped on one hand, the condom gripped in his fist. With his free hand, he smoothed her soft skin, over her shoulder, down her arm, to her waist, up her side, and finally around her breast. As he brushed his thumb over her nipple, she sucked in a breath, her chest jerking with it, and he bent down to take that aroused tip into his mouth.

  He’d been wrong, he saw before he closed his eyes. Her body did show signs that Lucie had been there. A few faint lines radiated along the side of her breast. Then he stopped his visual consideration of her and focused on how she felt, and on how he felt to her.

  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.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  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.