Unbidden Desires (Den of Sin Book 12) Read online

  “More,” she murmured.

  Her belly button was next and then her inner thighs. There he stopped. Her legs were parted, but he spread his hands over the skin of her silky thighs. He glanced up. Her lids shielded her eyes but she watched him. Pleasure dug into him and he embraced the ache. Using his thumbs, he spread her pussy lips to expose her clit. Pink and perky.

  He dragged his fingers down. She squirmed under the caress. He was going to come, and she wouldn’t even have to touch him. He rubbed his cock against the mattress again. The cotton comforter wasn’t the right kind of friction, but the tip of his dick was so sensitive it didn’t matter. It was and wasn’t enough.

  “Before I didn’t give you a choice. What do you want, Zora? My mouth or my cock?” He tested her arousal with a thumb and found her soaking.

  Her legs relaxed, but her stomach muscles jumped. “Am I selfish to want both?”

  “No, love.” He sucked the lip into his mouth and groaned. She tasted of the musk that drove him crazy. He licked at the wetness and closed his eyes. “I want both, too. I want it all.”

  ***

  Zora’s fingers curled into her comforter. Alastair’s mouth…his mouth. For months after their blow up she’d only thought about him forming insults with his lips. She lacked imagination. But maybe that was a good thing since a scream was already building up from her stomach. If he’d used his mouth on her like this before, she might have forgotten gravity existed. Just as she glanced down, he laid his tongue flat and licked her. Seeing his tongue between the crease of her pussy almost undid her.

  She tilted her head back and shut her eyes. Her toes curled. Yeah. That was worse because now all she could do was feel. The soft but roughness of his tongue along the hood of her sex sent a shiver up her spine. A slow caress. Once, twice and then she lost her breath.

  He planned to make her forget her revenge and beg. She didn’t care. This was the last man she should want in her bed, and the only one she needed. Only he could give her this pleasure. Zora wouldn’t deny him or herself that.

  She looked down again. His nose was pressed against the top of her mound as his mouth and tongue worked her. She really had to stop looking down.

  He did something that made her heels drag up the comforter, bunching the material. All thoughts stopped. Sensations washed over her and drowned everything that screamed warnings of shoulda, coulda, woulda. It was only his tongue. His lips. The orgasm tightening her stomach. The scream that had been building leaked out in little mewls.

  He ramped up the intensity of his intimate kisses. Heat sluiced from her head to her toes. A short, high-pitched moan escaped her throat and she began to shake. Any hope that she wouldn’t embarrass herself and actually scream was lost as she came.

  Before she could recover, his mouth had latched onto her nipple and he slammed his cock into her. She grabbed at his back, not meaning to scratch him, but when he groaned against her breast, she dug in harder. His hands moved to the back of her knees and he spread her wide. She couldn’t see the way his hips moved but she shook and moaned with each deep thrust.

  And it was so much better than before. The undercurrent of anger and frustration was missing. All there was this time was need. She ran one hand down his back and curled the fingers of her other hand into his hair. If this is what sex felt like with him then she never wanted to give him up. Screw pride or the past. Sex didn’t feel like this with rivals. How could he be her enemy if he could strip away all anger with a touch?

  She turned her head, meeting her lips with his. He slowed his strokes while his thrusts hit home harder. The familiar tug in her gut began. His face contorted with pleasure but he didn’t break the stare. She didn’t know how long they just looked into each other’s eyes, but much too soon she started to cry out. The same heat as before burned through her every limb and she closed her eyes, letting the euphoria wash over her. Alastair let out a long, painful sounding groan and stopped moving. His arms shook and then she knew he hadn’t come.

  “More?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  He shook off her hands, placed his forearms against the back of her knees and changed the angle of his thrusts. Effortlessly, he made her come again. Before he could ask, she begged, “More, Alastair.”

  “Say my name again. Louder.”

  She thought he growled I like it in her ear, but her blood roared in her head. This didn’t feel just like great sex, but a conversation they should have had a long time ago.

  “Love,” he whispered and then took her lobe into his mouth.

  She sobbed out a moan and came again. “More.”

  His laugh was laced with something wicked. He let her legs drop and braced his forearms on both sides of her head. “I need to come, but I promise I’ll give you everything tonight.”

  She looked at his strained face and nodded. “What do you need?”

  “This.” He kissed her long and deep, matching the rhythm of his strokes. She melted at the tenderness and lifted her hips to get him there. His hands balled into her hair. He started to tremble beneath her hands. She held him close, ignoring her own pleasure for his. Tension rippled through him and then he bucked three times before going slack on top of her. A slow groan leaked out from his throat.

  He was a man with facets, a man she shouldn’t want in her bed. Her heart galloped, but all she could focus on was the way his breath feathered along her chin. Zora couldn’t help it, she drew circles down his back. She had to touch him, had to somehow convince herself this was real.

  Alastair left no doubt when he chuckled. “Love, we’re going to have to do that again.”

  A tremble continued to vibrate through her thighs. “God, yes. Plus, you promised.”

  “I did.” His tone turned somber. “And then maybe, do you think, we can have a normal conversation?”

  She pressed her thumb to the corner of his mouth as a smile spread into a grin. “Shit, I doubt it, but we should still give it a try.”

  Alastair laughed. She liked the way the skin around his eyes crinkled. “Yeah,” he said. “We should.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  At some point during the night Alastair had sprawled on Zora’s chest and fallen asleep. Sweat curled his locks. Zora decided it was a great look for him as she ran the strands through her fingers. She kind of hoped the absent-minded action would squash the conflict tightening her chest.

  She liked the weight of him on top of her and between her legs. She liked his laugh, his smile, and even his biting humor. And she didn’t mind he was still here with her. When the hell did this happen? They traded insults for months in emails. She despised the way he went after a story. So why did it feel right for him to be in her bed? Why would she want him to stay there?

  Zora glanced at the clock on her nightstand. They had to head to work in an hour. The sun had started to creep through her light curtains. The powder-blue paint always looked at its worse this time of day. She closed her hand and tugged his hair to wake him.

  He groaned, shifting his face to the valley of her breasts. The morning stubble scratched along her skin.

  She trembled. “Time to get up.”

  He lifted his head. One eye was still closed. “Don’t tell me you’re a morning person.”

  “I’m not for or against them, but I’ve been up for an hour.”

  He put his head back down. She tugged at his hair again until he braced himself on his hands. His brows furrowed as he looked at her. “Was it an hour of contemplation?”

  This is what happened. He’d looked at her in a way that she couldn’t hide, and when he had she could do the same. Was this a start of a relationship or scratching an itch? Did she want it to be? Fear spiked into her heart, but she tried to relax.

  “Lots of contemplation.” She licked her lips. “Tell me about the London Bombings.”

  He dropped his gaze from hers. “So you’re finally asking the right question. Of course, you do it when I have a stiffie.”

  The reply
was so unexpected and slightly crude, she laughed. “Of course.”

  He sighed and rolled away, keeping his back to her. “I was there.”

  “I know. You lived in London.”

  His back rippled from the onset of tension. “No. I was there.”

  The meaning slammed into her and her breath caught. Finally, he made sense. He went after stories with an intensity that scared and impressed her, because it mattered. The London Bombings was his 9/11, except he was the reporter who made it matter. He treated every story like it was personal and now she understood why. At one time, it had been, and reporting any other way seemed half-assed. It didn’t make his tactics any less unscrupulous but now she understood them and him.

  Instinctively Zora reached out to him, but he stiffened when her fingertips brushed his spine. She rested her palm on his back. It took several seconds for him to relax.

  “I thought about asking you last night,” she said. “Things distracted me.”

  “What a morning-after kind of question.” He turned his head to look back, and she could see a smile.

  “This is my try at having a normal conversation. For us, at least.” She pulled her cover up to her neck and sat up against the headboard.

  “Don’t cover up now.”

  Even with his face in profile, she could see the promise of something unbidden in his eyes. Her grip loosened on the cover for a moment. “I should get ready for work. You should go or you’ll be late.”

  “Just ask, love.”

  She sighed, a little irritated that he could pluck the one thought she refused to think about. “I’ll see you after work?”

  He stood, giving her a fantastic view of his ass. There was a dark red mark right where his Adonis line met that nice ass. Had she bitten him last night? She couldn’t remember. They’d done a lot. Her face heated.

  He followed her line of sight and then winked at her. “I’ll pick you up. Maybe even charm your secretary. Someone has to be nice to her.”

  “I am nice.”

  He started toward her bedroom door. “Doubt it. Also…” he turned around.

  Her eyes widened. He hadn’t lied about the stiffie. “What?” she croaked.

  “The paint in here makes your room look like a Kotex box. Screams single.”

  By the time her pillow hit his back, he was halfway out the bedroom door. She laughed and fell back into her bed. Oh, God. She liked him. A lot. A niggle dug in her gut, but she ignored it and rolled out of bed.

  Thirty minutes later, ready for work and almost out of the front door, she saw a note on the sideboard table. Had it fallen out of his jacket? No. He’d thrown his on the couch last night. So he left the note there on his way out. Interesting, to say the least so she picked it up. It took her a minute to decipher his chicken-scratch.

  Grayson Billings. He’s a private detective who likes to talk about his former clients.

  Her jaw clenched as her mind immediately latched onto all the possible reasons Alastair would have left the note. He had told her there was no story at the Den. No, she hadn’t believed him, and maybe she’d been right not to. He didn’t have problems being underhanded. But had he lied? Why should she believe he hadn’t?

  Instead of letting that thought, that doubt hurt, she embraced the anger simmering beneath the emotion. She stuffed the note into her purse and let herself feel the same sting of betrayal that she had all those months ago. Just because she hadn’t believed him didn’t mean she hadn’t wanted to. And that was the problem. She didn’t know. This time, after all they’d done the past few days, his betrayal would be more than just a sting.

  She started to take the note out and throw it away, forget him and the storm gripping her stomach, but Zora needed to be rational. She needed to find out what this source knew, and if Alastair was in fact an ambitious lying asshole.

  ***

  Alastair dropped the newspaper on Zora’s desk. He had to give her credit. She’d ignored him when he closed and locked her office door. Now she held up a finger as she typed on her computer.

  He inhaled and her scent sunk into his bones. Amazing how he could be aroused and annoyed at the same time. She did that to him and he was daft enough to like it. He scoffed and took in her workspace.

  Her office had the same warmth and comfort of her home though it felt much more hectic. She had her by-lines framed, and they sat alongside pictures of her family. Her office left no question as to who she was: a workaholic who still made time for her family.

  He faced her and held the shock from his face when he realized she’d been watching him. Although her expression held a hint of a smirk, she’d crossed her arms tightly around her middle. And that’s what he’d been looking for. A sign, any sign, that she wasn’t entirely pissed at him. He’d taken a risk leaving her that source. Crossing her arms meant she was nervous and conflicted, as much as he was.

  Her brow rose as the silence stretched. “Sorry about standing you up last night.” She motioned to the paper. “Got wind of a story.”

  He shook his head and collapsed into the chair opposite hers across the desk. “And what a story. I only gave you a hint.”

  She sucked her teeth. “Just say it and then we can have a normal conversation.”

  He fought the smile, because he was proud of her. “I gave you a source to see what you would do with it. I’m disappointed.”

  She stammered, stopped and then glared at him. “I could have scooped you. I know you’ve been sniffing around the next mayoral candidate. The private eye had information on him.” She paused. “I think you hate mayors.”

  “I have. I do, but I couldn’t find anything concrete on him,” he readily admitted.

  “I could have used your own dirty tactics, because I do have something concrete. But I didn’t.” Anger flashed in her eyes. “But you’re disappointed?”

  “He knew about the baseball players. He even knows the owner’s secret.”

  Something flickered in her gaze—sympathy. She said, “You didn’t run with Henry Beaudelaire’s secret?” She shook her head. “You wouldn’t. I have to stop being surprised that you’re not completely scuzzy.”

  He looked at the woman he had started to fall for and laughed. “Not completely? That’s one hell of a compliment, love.”

  She picked up the newspaper. Pride slipped in deeper. For months she’d been chomping at the bit for any details about the Camden family. For the past five years their family-owned company had been hit with lawsuits. All very hush-hush and settled out of court. The source Alastair had given her knew all their secrets too. It was a career-making story.

  Their eyes met and they both knew what his actions meant.

  Her fingers trembled and the paper dropped back down to her desk. “Can I be honest?”

  He leaned forward and made sure she met his eyes. “It’s what I want.” He let those words sink in. “It’s why I gave you that source and we both know it.”

  She slapped her hand over the paper. “You’re going to take credit for my article?”

  Since he knew it would put color in her cheeks, he said, “Yes. I gave you the source. You would have had no story without him. That means you would have no story without me.”

  Her mouth dropped down and then she laughed. “It’s amazing that your ego can even fit in my office. And I know you’re just messing with me.”

  “I am.” He balled his hands. His fingers itched to touch her, but he wouldn’t until he knew for sure that she wanted to be with him. That the ache he felt when he saw her had a name, a future. “I gave you the means to scoop me, to usurp me and you didn’t.” Her sharp intake of breath only encouraged him. “So I must ask why.”

  “It’s not because I don’t have the stones. It’s because I realized you were telling the truth. You didn’t go to the Den for a story. You didn’t scoop me because you had some ulterior motive.” She smirked. “But I did have a moment where I thought you had.”

  Something in his chest loosened. The risk was wo
rth it. “I don’t want you to turn into me.”

  She stilled. “What?”

  “I know what I do sometimes is…scuzzy, and I love that you aren’t. I hated seeing you at the Den. I was there because I’ve pushed everyone away, and had no one else who would want to spend five minutes with me.”

  “That’s not true. It usually takes eight minutes for people to get disgusted with you.”

  He laughed. “Maybe.”

  She sighed. “I was mad at you. I was. And, yesterday, I—I let my guard down and the next thing I know there’s that name you left me. It reminded me how it felt to see my story in your newspaper.” She paused. “It made me realize how much you could hurt me now.”

  He placed a hand over his stomach and realized the emotion that dug in—guilt. “I’m sorry for that. Scooping you that second time…” He scoffed at himself and his behavior. “By then you weren’t just a peer. The right thing to do was warn you of what was coming down.” He decided to take another risk. “If I could take it back, I would, because I want us to try to have a normal relationship.”

  For a fleeting moment, Zora’s heart stopped. From the second she set foot in the Beaudelaire, she’d had one goal: to take Alastair down. She hadn’t cared what it took. She definitely hadn’t given a damn about rational reasons for why a man would want to have sex and just sex. How ridiculous. But it had been Alastair and that meant common sense had flown out the window. She rubbed two fingers between her brows. They had to start over, and he wanted that too.

  “There’s so much between us,” she said with a sigh. “I do want to date you.” She swallowed. “I want more, Alastair.”

  “I want the same. I want more.”

  She nodded, her heart racing now. “But we will have sex on our first date.”

  “No complaints there.” A wicked glint shone in his eye. “What do you have in mind?”

  Her face colored. “I can’t believe I’m going to do this.”

  He frowned. “What?”

  At some point she had to trust him again. “Hi, my name is Ruby Zora Riley. I’m a journalist.”