83

3
ADRIANNE
Callan was gone for a small eternity that all-in-all lasted less than five minutes. But those minutes stretched on endlessly for me. I kept touching my lips. He kissed me. I had to keep reminding myself that it wasn’t some fantasy that I’d dreamed up.
When the locks on the truck popped, I startled and had to bite down on a shriek. Then, Callan opened my door and offered me a hand to get down.
He wasn’t looking at me. Instead, he focused his gaze at the hedge on the far end of the driveway. “Does everything look okay?” I asked as I braced my hand in his and climbed out of the truck.
He nodded, but he still wouldn’t look at me directly. “All the rooms are clear,” he said, voice stiff and far too formal for someone who’d just had their mouth on my mouth.
I put my feet on the ground and smacked his arm, bringing his eyes down to mine. “You kissed me,” I said. “We kissed. Stop being weird about it.”
Callan’s mouth dropped open. “I’m not-”
“You are,” I said, cutting him off. “And stop it. It’s not a big deal.” It isn’t? The words coming out of my mouth did not match the fluttering in my chest at being this close to him.
It didn’t match the intensity of want that I felt this morning in Ethan’s office. It didn’t match the butterflies that I got from Foster’s smile. I hadn’t wanted any man-let alone three of them-like this, and so quickly in a very long time. If ever.
“It’s not?” Disappointment flickered across his face, leaving me confused. He was the one who got weird, not me.
“It doesn’t have to be,” I amended, although the words made my mouth fill with the taste of ashes. “If you don’t want it to be.”
Callan swallowed. He looked like he was going to say a million things, but that hint of uncertainty kept him from saying it. “Why don’t we get inside?” he asked instead.
I nodded, and after grabbing his duffel, we walked up the flagstones to the front door. “I could show you around,” I said, “but I’m pretty sure you went through every room just now.”
Callan smirked. “I did, but a personal tour would be appreciated.” He shook his bag. “You can tell me where you’re comfortable with my leaving this.”
We walked through my house, and I tried to explain the clutter. He reached out and ran his fingers over a pink glass jar with a picture of a kitten printed on it. “When I bought this place, I wanted to restore the vintage charm of it . . . but then, I just kept buying kitschy stuff.”
The house was built in the 1920s, refurbished at some point, and it was functional for now. I liked the warm woods and hominess of it, but most people only saw that I didn’t have granite countertops in the kitchen, and my house looked like I actually live in it, despite sometimes going months without actually doing so.
“I like it,” Callan said as I showed him up a flight of stairs and down a hall to the guest bedrooms. “I’ve been in plenty of homes that remind me of museums. This doesn’t.”
I flushed. “That’s what bothers me about modern architecture. It’s cold.” I opened one of the bedroom doors. It was the more “masculine” of my guest bedrooms, with a navy quilt stretched over the bed. The curtains were a gauzy material, and the furniture was a soft, honey wood. “Let me know if you need anything,” I said. “More pillows or whatever.”
“I promise you,” Callan said with a grin, “I’ve slept on a lot worse. This place looks like heaven.” He put the bag down and turned around. “Where’s your room?”
His words knocked the air out of my lungs. “What?”
Callan had the decency to look flustered, like he hadn’t meant his words the way they came out. “I need to know where you’ll be,” he explained, “so I know where to find you if something happens.”
“Oh.” If my cheeks got any hotter, I could cook an egg. “Technically, the master’s suite is downstairs.”
He raised an eyebrow at me. “Technically?”
“It’s nice having a room with its own bathroom and all, but I’ve never had a huge bedroom, so it was uncomfortable sleeping down there.” I motioned him further down the hall and opened a door to my room. It was roughly the same size as his, but the furniture was white and the quilt many different shades of yellow. I liked to think of it as my sunshine place, where I could go after being out on location for so long. “My mother told me that when I’m ready to grow up, I’ll move into the bedroom downstairs.” I shrugged. “I’ve lived here nearly a year, and I haven’t moved yet.”
Callan’s eyes were still on my bed. “It looks cozy,” he said, but his eyes were darker, almost smoldering in a way.
I cleared my throat. “Are you hungry? We can have dinner, and you can go over the contract with me. I was going to make dinner tonight instead of ordering out, but I can get anything you’d like.”
“Make whatever you were planning,” he insisted. “Whatever it is, I promise I’ll love it.”
I giggled. “You sound like someone who dreads making their own meals.”
He shrugged, obviously trying to play it cool, which made me giggle all the more. “It’s not like I burn the kitchen down,” he protested even as I laughed. “It’s just not a fun experience for me.”
Leading him back down to the kitchen, I dug out the chicken breasts and vegetables from my fridge. “Chicken fried rice okay?”
“You are a goddess,” he moaned exaggeratedly and sat on the stool at the peninsula. His eyes were trained on me. I could feel them as I cut up chicken and chopped vegetables.
Normally, having someone staring at me would be unnerving, but with Callan, that ache between my thighs was back, and as I moved around the kitchen, I squeezed my thighs together as subtly as I could to get some kind of relief.
I tossed the chicken chunks into a hot pan, but instead of the normal sizzle, I heard a pop, and then the world shifted. Something large and warm slammed into me, and I landed on the kitchen floor with a hard thud.
I tried to push against the thing on top of me, uncomprehending and unseeing, but it wouldn’t budge. Did the roof cave in!? The weight crushing me into the tiled floor was unyielding, and I panicked and flailed.
“Adrianne! Stay down!” Callan practically shouted in my face, and that’s when I realized that he was the thing on top of me. I stopped fighting and stared up into his face, breathing hard.
“What the hell is going on?” I wheezed.
“I’m not sure,” he said. “Could have been gunfire. Stay down until I tell you differently.”
His weight began to shift off me, and fear gripped me anew, and I clutched at him. “Where are you going? You can’t leave me!”
Callan hushed her gently. “I have to go and check out whatever it was,” he said, “but I’ll be back. I promise.” I shook my head, even as he explained himself. “I’ll be right back.”
His weight disappeared, and I curled in around myself, fear gnawing at my gut and my heart pounding in my chest. Every part of my body was screaming to get up and do something. I felt useless, and it was the most infuriating feeling in the entire world. A few moments later, Callan reappeared. He reached down to help me off the floor.
“False alarm?”
But Callan’s frown squashed any hope that we had just overreacted. “The good news is that what we heard wasn’t a gunshot.”
Well, I don’t like that phrasing at all, I thought. “What’s the bad news?”
Callan brought me into the foyer, though he stopped me before going too far. Glass from the front door littered the floor, and in the middle of it all was a brick with something tied around it. “Did you read it?” I asked.
He shook his head. “I didn’t want to touch anything,” he told her. “I want to talk to Ethan and Foster first. Whoever is stalking you is escalating even faster than we imagined, and I don’t want to take any chances.”
I understood where he was coming from, but I hated the idea of leaving a hole in my front door and glass all over the floor. Turning on my heel, I went back to the kitchen. If I continued to stand there, I would have picked up that brick.
Callan followed after me. I could feel him like a shadow at my back. “Dammit,” I yelped, rushing to take the burnt chicken from the stovetop. I threw the pan in the sink.
“Are you okay?”
I whirled on him. “No, I am not okay,” I snapped. My skin felt itchy and tight, like it didn’t quite fit anymore. I couldn’t pull enough air into my lungs.
“Adrianne.” I could feel Callan coming closer, and I held up my hand, though to ward him off or to beckon him closer, I didn’t know. He held up his hands. “I think you’re having a panic attack,” he said, but I could barely hear him over the sound of my own labored breathing. “Let me help you. Please.”
There was no way he could help through this. Something was squeezing me from the inside out. How could he possibly help with that?
Callan crossed the kitchen and wrapped his arms around me from behind, pulling me back against his chest. “Feel how I breathe,” he instructed. “Feel my inhales and exhales.” He sucked in a deep breath, and I tried my best to focus on it. When he breathed out, I followed him instinctively.
For the next few minutes, we breathed together, and all the while, he murmured encouragement in my ear. “You’re doing so good, look at you. That’s it, one more deep breath, and it’s all over.”
I came back to myself and felt him like a weighted blanket around me. I had melted back against him, and he was the only thing keeping me on my feet. “Thank you,” I said, reaching up to touch the arms banded around me. His skin was hot under my palms.
He felt good against me, and all the confusion that I’d felt since meeting my new security team just . . . didn’t matter anymore.
I turned in his grip, glad when he didn’t automatically let go. “Where did you learn all that?”
Callan’s smile could compete with the sun for warmth. “My mother has a lot of anxiety, and she hates taking medication for it. I’ve watched my father do this for her more times than I can count.”
I reached up and cupped his cheek. His jaw clenched beneath my palm, but he didn’t pull away from the touch “That’s sweet.” I pushed up on my toes and pressed my mouth against his, much like he did out in his truck.
Callan startled, but he didn’t back away. Instead, one of his hands came up to cup the back of my head. My mouth parted on a sigh, and his tongue dipped into my mouth. Fire roared through me, and I whimpered into our kiss, curling my fingers into the hair at the back of his neck.
“This goes only as far as you want it to. Tell me what you want,” he said when the kiss broke.
His voice was low and ragged, and it tightened things low in my stomach to hear how wrecked he already sounded. “Be specific,” he said
before I could respond.
He began kissing his way down my neck, sweet, tickling touches that made my whole body shake. “I want,” I gasped when he nipped me, just a hint of teeth scraping against my pulse point, “I want your hands on me.”
Callan hummed against my throat. “Where?”
Instead of answering, I grabbed his hand and put it on my breast. “Start here?”
He groaned. “I was hoping you’d say that.” He reached behind me and found the zipper on my dress. “Can I take this off?” He punctuated the question with another soft nip of his teeth, and I gasped out loud.
“Please!”
Callan unzipped my dress, and together, we pushed it to the floor. “Fuck,” he breathed, eyes traveling down my body. “You’re the most perfect woman I’ve ever seen.”
I wanted to laugh it off, but the heat in his eyes sent a throb of need through me. I needed him to touch me. Now. I reached behind myself and unclasped my bra and dropped it to the ground.
Callan looked at me like I was the only glass of water in a desert. He cupped my breast again, seeming to weigh its heaviness in his hand, before he bent and took my nipple into his mouth. “Oh,” I sighed, back arching toward the attention. He switched sides after a moment, lathing my other nipple with the same attention. “Callan,” I gasped.
He stood back up and claimed my mouth again. This kiss wasn’t soft and exploratory. It was aggressive, all tongue and teeth, and he pressed me into the counter, putting as much of his body against mine as he could get. He was hard against my stomach, and I ground myself against him, frustrated that he was so clothed while I was mostly naked.
“I’m feeling a little vulnerable here,” I said against his mouth. My fingers found the buttons on his shirt. “Take this off?”
Together, we undid the buttons, and I pushed his shirt down his shoulders. I couldn’t stop staring at his chest. He was covered in tattoos. An eagle wrapped around his bicep. There was script flowing around his ribs, and the tattoo that I saw back in Ethan’s office, the one that just peeked from the collar of his shirt, was the beginning of a dragon that swooped down across his chest.
Intermixed in the tattoos were scars. I reached out and touched the pale, jagged edge of one that slashed across his abs. I looked back into his eyes
and then leaned down and put my mouth against that same scar.
A choked sound came from his throat, and then he was lifting me onto the counter, pushing me onto my back. “Lie back, Princess,” he said and dropped to his knees. Princess. I should be offended, but something about the way he said it made me ache.
He wrapped his hands around my thighs and tugged me to the edge of the counter so that he could snug his shoulders between my legs. His lips danced over my skin, starting at my knee and then up my thigh, and each tiny, teasing touch sent shivers directly to my source.
He practically purred as he buried his face against me. “I can see how wet you are,” he murmured as if he were telling me a secret. “You’ve been so turned on since Merc’s office, haven’t you?”
His finger brushed over my panties, against the dampness there, and he chuckled when I squeaked. That finger pulled my panties to the side, exposing my pussy to his gaze. “I’ll take care of you.”
I held my breath, but after a beat . . . nothing happened. I propped myself up on my elbow. “Callan?”
“Shh. Let me take care of you,” he repeated.
I sat up further. “What are you do-” Callan buried his face against me.
He sucked my clit into his mouth, and pleasure flared up my spine.
He used the point of his tongue on my clit, circling and toying with it, chuckling darkly when I called out his name to the ceiling. He reached up and hooked fingers into the sides of my panties and pulled them down my legs. “You should always be naked,” he told me.
A laugh bubbled from my throat, even as I squirmed under his touch. “I’m pretty sure I’d get arrested,” I said.
Callan tsk-ed. “Shame,” he breathed. He spread me with his fingers, opening me up, and groaned at the sight. “Your pussy is so fucking pretty.” His finger slipped inside me. My thighs tried to clamp shut, but he held me open with his shoulders. “Hold still,” he said. “I want to see.”
I was hot all over. Encounters like this in the past were usually short, and mostly, disappointing. Even past boyfriends hadn’t made me feel this way. Every touch drove me higher and higher, and it made me wonder whether I could come just from this.
Just from his teasing touches and wrecked voice.
He crooked his finger and pressed against a spot that made stars burst in front of my eyes. I bucked into the touch, trying to get him to touch it again.
“There,” I begged. “Right there!”
He pressed a little harder into that spot and circled my clit with his thumb at the same time, and I cried out.
“Like that, Princess?” he asked, setting a rhythm that made my stomach go tight. “You like me playing with your pussy like this?”
“Yes!” It came out a sob and a plea. He stood and kissed me, and I looped my arms around his neck, keeping him close as I rode his fingers. “I want . . .” I panted.
“What do you want?”
“To come with you inside me,” I gasped out, even as I spiraled toward the edge of orgasm.
He grinned wolfishly. “After I make you come like this first.” Callan kept that steady, heady rhythm, and from one breath to the next, my back arched as pleasure broke over me. My muscles clenched around his fingers, and Callan kept right on until I was squirming away, overstimulated.
Callan eased away from me, and he bent down and pressed a soft kiss to the corner of my mouth. I sat up, wrapping him between my arms and legs and keeping him close. The hard line of his cock pressed against where I was wet, and I wriggled against him helplessly. “Adrianne,” he groaned.
I reached between us for the button on his jeans. I popped the button and lowered the zip to find him hot and hard, curving gently toward his navel. I started pushing his pants down his hips, but he stopped me with his hands.
His face was twisted into a pained expression, like he remembered something that he didn’t want to. “I don’t have any condoms, and as much as I want to be inside you, it’s not a risk we can take.”
I grinned and raised my left arm. There was a small lump under the skin of my upper arm. “Implant,” I said.
“Oh, thank fuck,” Callan groaned. He pushed his pants down and angled himself so that the crown of his cock was pressed against my opening. Our eyes met, and he pushed inside me, not stopping until he had gone as far as my body would allow. My breath caught in my throat, and I clung to his shoulders.
Callan stopped, his muscles locked in place. That’s not going to work, I thought. “Please,” I breathed, wriggling against him, trying to entice him to move. “Please, fuck me.”
He grabbed my hips to still my tentative movements. “I’m trying not to explode,” he grunted, voice thick. He reached down between us and circled my clit with his thumb again, and I moaned, tipping my head back. His lips found my throat, and then he began to move, driving his hips against mine.
“Oh,” I groaned, meeting the thrust of his hips. With the angle, his thrusts sent him over that spot he’d discovered so thoroughly before, and it didn’t take long for everything to feel heavy and tight and hot all at once.
Callan’s mouth kissed down my shoulder and up my throat. He sipped at my lips. Between the drugging feeling of his lips on my skin and the steady, unyielding thrust of his hips, I was losing my mind.
“You’re the best thing I’ve ever felt around my dick,” Callan panted out. “You’ve got me so fucking hard.” His hips picked up speed. “I need you to come again, okay? Can you do that for me?”
I couldn’t get enough air to tell him how close I was. Instead, I locked my legs around his waist and held on as I spiraled. “Callan, I-”
He moaned. “Me too, Princess. Let go for me.” As if I had been waiting for his command, I flew over the edge, nearly screaming as Callan rode me through his own orgasm.
I fell back against the counter, and he slumped against me. We were still for a moment, coming back to earth. When he pulled back enough to look at me, I reached out and cupped his face, tugging him back in for a kiss.
“I need to clean myself up,” I said when the kiss broke. “And I think you probably have a phone call to make, right?”
Callan sighed and rested his forehead against mine. “Yeah, Foster needs to see the foyer before we can clean up the glass.” He kissed me again, and then he helped me off the counter.