Too Much: A Loveswept Contemporary Erotic Romance (All or Nothing) (22 page)

She rested her forehead on his and said, “I got your note.”

He smiled and she tried to sink into him. “Be still, woman.”

“Or what? You gonna
squeeze
me again?” Daly wanted him. His heat sank into her bones and she melted against him.

“I’ve already told you I’m going to fuck you.”

“What are we waiting for?”

“You to tell me why you changed the locks and alarm code.”

She lowered her eyes and wanted to curse.
Be a little more obvious, why don’t you, Daly?
“I already told you.” Maybe she could distract him. A slow curl of her hips and a lick over his lips and she had him hissing. “And how’d you get past those state-of-the-art locks, anyway?”

He followed her tongue, wrapping his around it and suckling. Her eyes crossed and her legs tightened before he pulled away slightly. “No you didn’t, Daly.”

“Didn’t what?” she asked.

“Tell me why you’d changed the locks and the code.”

“I didn’t? Well, hell, considering I didn’t talk to you the entire day, I guess I missed that. Bottom line, though? You and Toby and whoever the hell else don’t get to just come into my house whenever the hell you want to,” she said harshly.

He stilled, lifted his head, and stared at her in the muted light of her living room. “What do you mean ‘whoever the hell else’?”

Shit.
She was not going to tell him about the roses or the pictures. She just wasn’t. She was going to believe in him and trust him. She hadn’t before. By God, she would now. Whatever was going on, he’d take care of her and she’d damn well take care of him too. “If you and Toby can get in, who’s to tell what other vagrants can get in too?”

He snorted. “Vagrants?”

“Yeah. Like I said, if
you
and
Toby
can get in …” She allowed her statement to trail off, hoping he’d just let it drop.

“I took your key. We didn’t break in,” he reminded her.

“You say po-tay-to, I say po-tah-to,” she said around a laugh of her own. “How’d you get in this time? You haven’t seen me to steal the new key.”

“Don’t you know when I’ve got thieving on my mind I can do anything …” he answered at her lips.

“Very resourceful. But I’ve got something you don’t have to steal, Jeremiah.”

He chuckled, then smacked her ass, and then she was the one hissing. Copeland didn’t ease the sting and her hips moved from side to side, rubbing her clit against the length of him. She shivered. Fear had long since drained away, leaving her an emotional time bomb. As usual, when she was with Jeremiah, everything else faded but her need for him.

“You always get out of bed with a Glock?” he asked against her lips.

She tasted his breath and her lips curved. “When my security alarm gets me up, I do.”

His eyes fairly glowed. He was hard but holding back for her. “You’re smiling.”

She affected shock. “No!”

He swatted her again and it startled a groan out of her. “Ah, so another thing that wrings groans from that beautiful throat. So let’s see, squeezing, fucking, and spanking do the trick.”

She nodded and rubbed herself over him again. “I have a mighty need, Jeremiah. I’ve been without you for oh, let’s see, about eighteen hours. I think you should make those missed hours up to me,” she whispered and suckled his bottom lip into her mouth, nibbling on the fullness and running her tongue along it to ease any sting.

“I should, huh?”

“Uh-huh,” she said solemnly.

“How?”

“Wall sex.”

It was his turn to affect shock. “I can’t believe you’d let me fuck you against a wall, Ms. Edwards.”

His hips pushed up and she laughed huskily. “It’s the truth, Jeremiah Copeland—I’d probably let you fuck me just about anywhere.”

He groaned and his hands clenched on her ass. “You aren’t wearing panties, Ms. Edwards. You’re making it very easy for me.”

She reached between them, secure that he held her and wouldn’t let her fall. Her back met the wall and she worked his belt and pants loose, freeing him, and delighting when his cheeks went ruddy. Daly stroked him and moaned. “I thought we’d established how easy I was.”

His hands pulled her ass cheeks apart and the cold air against her warm flesh had her body going molten. Then his fingers played along her pussy and she hissed in a breath. His lips were right at hers, so close but not touching. “Easy but not cheap, right?”

She smiled and pulled her head back. “If I didn’t know better I’d think you were delaying. Are you afraid of a little wall sex with me?”

He pulled her flesh apart again and then his cock was there. She closed her eyes and concentrated as its broad head nudged her pussy open before he sank deep.

“Oh, baby, it ain’t little. And does that feel like fear?”

Her hands dug into his shoulders. The cloth of his shirt was between them and she hated it, but the feel of him so deep had her not caring about anything but fulfillment. “No. But to make sure, perhaps you should pull out and sink back in. I’d like to test it out a few times before I make a final decision.”

He laughed, and it tied her stomach in beautiful, hot knots. But in the end he did as she requested—over and over and over. And by the time he was finished, she’d not only made her final decision, she’d screamed it.

Jeremiah Copeland wasn’t afraid of anything. Least of all wall sex.

They faced each other in her bed, only inches separating their bodies. Daly traced the delineation of the muscles along Jeremiah’s arm and shoulder. Those muscles twitched under his tawny skin, responding to her touch and making her heart leap. He’d taken her again after their wall sex and she was convinced that every time they came together, it was better than the last.

“I feel like all I’ve known the last three years is pain. To lie here with you like this is … wonderful,” she whispered into the candlelit darkness of her room.

“Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.”
His eyes opened and speared her heart.

“Westley,
The Princess Bride.
” She wanted to smile but didn’t. There was comfort in the quote game they played, but too much lay in the space between them.

He grabbed her hand and curled it into his own, pulling it close, then resting it against his heart. “There wasn’t a minute of any day that you weren’t in my thoughts. You knew pain, but for me it was sheer hell. Pain is too mild a word for what I felt.”

A tear fell from her eye. “Tell me what the last few years have brought you, Jeremiah, besides pain.”

He searched her face as if trying to memorize every plane and freckle. “I would rather talk about the future,” he said on a heavy sigh.

She nodded. “But we must reconcile the past before we move into the future.”

He released her hand and turned on his back, staring at the ceiling. “What do you want from me, Daly? Haven’t you had your pound of flesh?”

That’s what she’d done by not trusting him. It helped to have all the pieces of a puzzle before you believed the picture but she’d grown up, matured these years without him. She’d hurt this larger-than-life man who had stolen her dreams and given her promises of forever in return. And maybe he hadn’t so much stolen them as she’d left them lying on the ground to follow him. When she’d left him, she’d thought herself the veriest of fools. The truth was she had been, but not for the reason she’d suspected.

“I guess I have, Jeremiah, but I find myself wanting more than a pound,” she whispered as she moved to blanket his body with her own, grabbing his face in her hands and forcing him to meet her gaze.

She almost snorted. She’d never be able to make Jeremiah Copeland do anything other than what he wanted.

“How much?” he asked.

His intensity brought chills to her skin, but he didn’t move to hold her closer. He simply stared at her.

“I want it all.”

His cold gray eyes were heated now. “You should make sure you know what all of me entails.”

“Toby told me, Jeremiah, and I have to wonder why you never did.” Daly wanted to hold her breath, afraid of his response, dreading it like a coiled snake.

“Maybe you should have trusted me, Daly.”

It was worse than she thought, then. Indeed the pain was brutal, but no more so than what she’d inflicted on him. “I knew what I saw, Jeremiah. Had to believe what my eyes told me. You were never the best communicator, and when I asked, you told me you wouldn’t leave whatever you were doing alone. I thought—”

Her eyes closed and his hands rose to hold her face. “You thought what?”

“I thought I wasn’t enough to hold you. That loving me wasn’t enough,” she said in a low voice.

He turned them so suddenly she squeaked. He sat up and she straddled his lap. The blankets were tangled between them, but the heat of his cock was a brand against her pussy.

“You were my everything, Daly. Nothing came before you. Every step I’ve taken since I kissed you the first time was for
you.
Every breath I’ve taken was for
you.
Every action was to ensure
your
safety.” His voice was raw, as if he held in a yell, and his hand tightened and released on her back.

“That’s what Toby said,” she said quietly.

“Fuck what Toby told you three years later, Daly. Why didn’t you trust me? Trust what I had shown you?”

There was his anger. It sank its talons deep into her heart, trying to rip the organ from her chest. She couldn’t answer him because she still didn’t have a grasp on the why of it all. She hadn’t trusted him, and the truth of it continued to hurt them both.

“And now you can’t even answer me. Is it because you don’t know, or are you still the same Daly as before?”

She pulled back as if he’d struck her. “What the hell does that mean?”

“You acted like a child. My brother’s life was on the line and instead of trusting me, you ran when all of my time and attention weren’t on you,” he bit out.

It was her turn to feel the prick of anger. “Wait a damn second. I loved you. Gave up my family for you and spent most of my time at your beck and call. And now you want to act like I was selfish?”

“A spade is a spade, Daly,” he said in a horrible voice. “And giving up Heyward Edwards was no great loss.”

She pushed his hands away and stood. He let her. She was crazy as hell, but his reluctance to pull her back actually hurt.

“Whether losing my family was a great loss in your eyes is irrelevant. I left everything I knew to be with you. I dealt with stares from people, people talking about me behind my back so I could be with you!”

His face went blank and she drew in a rough breath. Daly rubbed her arms to chase away the sudden chill.

Jeremiah stood and began to stalk her. “Stares? People talking about you? Oh, yes, Daly, you gave up so much to be with poor Jeremiah Copeland, the bad-boy criminal. Tell me, did I soil your lily-white reputation so badly? Is that why you left?”

This entire conversation was spiraling out of control. “I never said that! Stop putting words in my mouth,” she said in a nasty voice.

He backed her against her door, his big body a furnace blasting away the chill of hers. “You never said anything—that’s the fucking problem. You walked out and didn’t look back.”

“Don’t make this something it isn’t, Jeremiah. You know damn good and well that isn’t what I meant. I loved you, damn it. I loved you with everything in me and you turned toward something I couldn’t compete with.” She pointed a finger in his chest, and then it was him backing up and her advancing. “I used to lie in bed and wish it was another woman, because then I could have moved on. But no! It was your brother and a life of crime that stole you from me!”

She turned away, and the only thing she heard was the sound of her heart breaking. Again.

“I did what I had to do to protect my family, Daly.” His voice was at her ear and she shivered.

“I still love you and I don’t know why I can’t stop,” she practically wailed.

His arms came around her and she shook with her pain, sobs rolling out of her chest. She was both appalled and relieved.

“Your tears rip me up, Daly. Please stop,” he whispered.

He turned her then and sipped at her cheeks, drinking those bitter drops of salty water and kissing her lips, stealing more pieces of the heart he’d cracked wide open.

“I don’t want to love you, Jeremiah.” He winced, but it didn’t stop the flow of her words. “But I do. My body needs yours. My heart craves you. And my soul flies when you’re with me. But I hate you for hurting me.”

“You weren’t the only one hurt, Day,” he reminded her, pulling her into his body and holding her next to his heat.

“You know you never once said the words to me, Jeremiah,” Daly said bitterly.

He lifted her face. “What words?”

“If I have to tell you, it’s a moot point.”

“Between us words aren’t the most important thing. My body tells you everything, Daly.” He flattened her hand over his heart. “Do you feel that? It beats faster for you.” He lowered her hand to his cock. “And this? It gets hard only for you.” He tilted her head back, forcing her to meet his gaze.

The pieces of her broken heart, the ones he hadn’t already stolen, melted under his gaze.

“You can’t see my soul but it’s wrapped around yours. You carried it with you when you left.”

Her knees buckled and he grabbed her up, laying her back on the bed and coming over her gently to lie beside her. She turned in to him. His words undid her and if he didn’t pull her close, she’d likely scatter and never be found again.

“I need the words, Jeremiah. I will always need the words,” she said at his neck. “Like you need the words when we play, I need them when we don’t.”

He didn’t say anything else, just stroked her back and hair and held her close. Daly had no idea what tomorrow would bring, but she knew she couldn’t handle anymore tonight. The day had been a bitch, then she’d been woken up in fear. They had so much unresolved between them, but she needed to sleep.

Maybe there she could find peace. As her eyes drifted shut and her mind started to wing away to darkness, she thought she heard him whisper, “I love you.”