Takedown: A Tapped Out series standalone Read online

  As did Liam, I noted, as he clicked off the TV and shifted more fully my way. He wore a black, long-sleeved shirt that didn’t do a thing to hide the muscles in his arms and chest that rippled with every movement. The fabric barely seemed able to accommodate his torso. There was no doubt he’d bulked up since we were together, and he’d also added some ink. It swirled down under the cuffs of his shirt, climbing over the back of his right hand. I couldn’t tell what it was at first. I assumed it was some kind of flames done in black ink, but then I realized it was waves. The sea. He’d grown up beside it and still co-owned his parents’ beach home in Malibu.

  We’d made love on the sand beside that beach house. Made love and made a baby, though he didn’t know that and never would.

  I swallowed and tucked my hands into the back pockets of my jeans, the only way I could be sure they wouldn’t reach out for him without my volition. My palms tingled, and my fingers curled, desperate to feel his corded body once again. His weight on top of me was so freeing. That didn’t make any sense, but when it came to Liam Walsh, sense and I parted ways.

  I was about to prove that by not insisting he leave. By not pointing him toward the door we still hadn’t shut, as if neither of us could bear to be shut into a closed space together. It seemed too soon, but it had been so damn long.

  In a few days, I’d be moving out of Slater’s place, and I’d probably never see Liam again. So what did it hurt to take a few extra minutes with him now? It wouldn’t change anything.

  “What’s wrong with your eyes?” I asked again, softer now. I pressed against the back of the sofa, yearning so badly to get close enough to smell his soap and cigarette-smoke scent. He’d never worn aftershave, never splashed on cologne. All you ever smelled on Liam was pure soap and the smoke from the cigarettes he sneaked whenever he thought no one was looking. In his line of work, the habit was even more dangerous, but he’d never quite been able to kick it. Occasionally, he added the chaser of a little clean, healthy sweat.

  From this distance, I couldn’t smell him at all, and it only added to the surreality of the moment. How many times had I longed to be this close to him again? So many. Despite the fact that his hair was so much shorter and blonder from the sun, and his jaw sharper, his eyes harder, it didn’t matter. This was Liam, the boy I’d loved with all of me until I’d realized all of me wasn’t enough. So I’d gone looking for more.

  And I’d found his brother.

  He jerked to his feet, eyes ablaze. So green. Like staring into a kaleidoscope that only had shades of that one hue. “So you’ve decided to talk to me now, is that it? You put down your bottle long enough to interrogate me?”

  The words stung. He’d never been one to use them to hurt, but it shouldn’t have surprised me that he could. Every day he risked his life. He withstood bullets and shot plenty of his own. Why not substitute words when another weapon wasn’t available?

  “My bottle is wine. I had two glasses between midnight and an hour ago.”

  “It’s not even eight a.m.”

  “I know that, okay? I can tell time. I was up late, working.”

  “Working on what?” He gestured toward the other room. “Is that your so-called work? Tinkling the ivories? Christ, Abs, no wonder you hooked up with Slater. Two of a fucking kind.”

  I hated that my first instinct was to cry. The tears bubbled up, waiting at the ready behind my eyes. Clogged my throat to hold back the anger I’d never be able to fully expunge from my system. He’d taken what we had and ruined it, and all I could do was pretend not to be affected. Anything else would give him the upper hand—and the ability to hurt me all over again. Still, because it didn’t feel like we’d ever put a period on the pain from before.

  At least on my end. On his, all he seemed was pissed. And confused.

  “People change.” I swallowed over the ball of stress that had his name on it. “Slater has, I have. You have. You used to have perfect vision. I remember when you could thread a needle with—”

  “A needle?” His sneer made my skin run to ice. “Like you know anything about that kind of shit anymore. I don’t see any knitting around here, do you? I just see fight tapes. And surf boards. And your music all over your body and this apartment.” He stepped forward, his shoulders bulging with his aggression.

  I should’ve been scared. He’d never been rough with me before, not in words or deeds. He was right. I’d knitted, and I’d dreamed, and I’d fussed over hot meals and my man like a good little woman. We’d moved in together soon after we met. Why wait for the future when you have the power to make it happen now? When he was gone for those long, empty months in between way-too-infrequent reunions, I tried to keep from worrying by thinking about the family we’d have someday.

  Because that was all I wanted. Me and Liam and baby makes three.

  “Slater is out,” I said, instead of everything else I wanted to say. I wanted to spew my fury at him for leaving me when I’d needed him most. For never guessing that maybe I wouldn’t always be his support. Maybe he’d have to give some back too. But if I ripped open those scars, I wouldn’t stop until I spilled the rest, and some secrets needed to stay buried.

  “I can very well see that, Abs.” He stalked around the sofa, backing me down the length of it toward the wall. My spine hit the plaster, and I cursed at my inability to stand up to him, to not let this affect me after all this time.

  Our past was dead. He’d gone on and done so many other things with so many other women. I’d made out with his brother and moved in with him because Slater was too sweet and kind to let a chick without a place to stay continue to suffer on her own.

  Liam was not sweet. The tic in his temple from his attempt to hold himself back told the story. I’d enraged him with a simple question and my presence. He wanted me gone.

  Then he flexed his jaw, and I saw the way his eyes didn’t quite focus correctly, how the right one veered slightly left. And I couldn’t help it. I gasped. I knew those eyes as well as my own. Even after all this time.

  “What happened?” I whispered. “You got hurt—”

  “No.” His hand shot out, curling around my throat to hold me against the wall. “Fuck, no.”

  I gripped his wrist, feeling the muscles shift and bunch under my touch. He wasn’t hurting me, just keeping me in place, and I saw the question in his eyes. Even in his rage, he was asking me if I truly wanted the distance between us.

  Did the sun ever not want to shine? The ocean ever not want to come in for high tide? Some days, I was sure I’d been made to love Liam because my body and my brain and my heart seemed incapable of doing anything else.

  But that didn’t mean I intended to do things his way. If this situation progressed, it would be on my terms, and he would understand that I wasn’t going to defer to him anymore. I had needs too, and I refused to swallow them any longer.

  Digging my fingers into his forearm, I reached down with my other hand to tug up his shirt. His stomach, right above the thick buckle of his belt, was one of the most sensitive spots on his body. I’d kissed and licked and bit him there until he’d begged me to suck him off. Not that he’d ever used the words. We’d always been careful with each other. The sex had been amazing, but it had been patient and so very polite. I wanted him to fuck me, to teach me what that meant in every sense of the word.

  I scraped my nails over taut abs and shut my eyes at his hiss. That sound haunted me in dreams. He’d just never sounded so tortured and needy before.

  Normally, I would’ve gone upward to stroke his chest, maybe toy with his nipples. That was what nice girls did, even when they were with their long-term boyfriend. A so-called nice girl probably wouldn’t reach down to cup his cock in greedy fingers, mapping his length to stamp the details on her mind so she could remember everything later while she touched herself.

  Maybe that fictitious nice girl didn’t, but I did.

  “Abs,” he breathed as I rubbed my thumb over the head of his shaft. He was thick and
long, built as big there as he was all over. “Don’t start something you don’t intend to finish.”

  His voice was so deliciously rough. So male. He’d honed his body into a dangerous weapon, and his tone and bearing complemented his physical skills. This wasn’t the boy I’d met years ago. He was now all man, with the desires to match.

  I blinked the Liam-haze out of my mind and struggled to think coherently. Letting him go would’ve been the smart, sane thing to do. I was living rent-free in his brother’s apartment, and, though we’d been strictly platonic roommates for the past three months, we’d had a couple weeks at the beginning where we weren’t. When we’d laughed and messed around and shared confidences that meant so much more than the casual tangling of bodies.

  Slater and I weren’t dating, weren’t anything other than good friends, but was I dishonoring him by even considering being with his brother? Even just for a quick, get-you-out-of-my-system-once-and-for-all screw that didn’t mean anything…except everything?

  My gaze shot over Liam’s shoulder to the still open door. If we shut it, if I took this step, I had to make it with my eyes open. It had to be about the present and what I knew we could bring to each other in the here and now rather than about what we hadn’t resolved in the past.

  “Thirty seconds, Abs. You either say no right now, or I’m—”

  “Shut the door,” I said, pleased by the quiet authority in my voice. He could bluster and he could insist, but this decision was all mine. I would no longer be passive in my own life. “Then come back to me, and make good on whatever threat you were about to make.”

  “Not a threat,” he rasped out. “A promise.” He released my throat and slapped a hand on the wall above my head, leaning close to speak against my hair. “You look so fucking sexy in that tie-dye and those jeans. I know you can’t wear a bra under this”—he slipped a finger between my breasts, bound up tightly in my bandeau top—“but what about those jeans? You got panties on, baby?”

  I wanted to say no, to fulfill whatever image of me that caused his eyes to burn so brightly with lust. But I wasn’t going to lie, not again. “Yes.”

  Rather than dimming the flare, my words increased it.

  “Yeah? Tell me what they look like.” His lips skimmed my temple, one illicit contact. “They got little bows on them? Are they pink or white or some chaste color to hide—”

  “They’re black,” I said quickly, hating the flush that was already searing my cheeks. “With white polka dots.”

  “Lemme see.”

  I squeezed the hand still lightly cupping his cock. “Shut the door.”

  “You really wanna give me orders? That how we going to play this?”

  Inclining my chin, I met his gaze steadily, despite the insistent tremor shaking my internal organs. “Maybe we are. Can you handle that, Liam? Or do you have to always be in charge to get off?”

  The war that took place on his face surprised me. I hadn’t really expected it to be an issue. I knew the answer. Liam had been the dominant partner, always. He had to be the sexual pursuer, the one who managed most of the finances and approved our social schedule. Not because he was a jerk, but because he needed control to feel safe. Too much that had happened in his life had been out of his scope, and giving him my acquiescence had been another act of love.

  But things were different now. And maybe I wanted to see how it felt to be on top.

  Saying nothing, he stalked away to close the front door. Then he stood there, one hand braced on the wood, his head bowed. Some emotion moved through him, causing a visible kink in his spine, and, as much as I wanted to soothe, that was no longer my place.

  All I could offer him was my body, and our mutual pleasure.

  When he didn’t return to me, I crossed the room to my bedroom. It was dwarfed by my piano, but I didn’t need much beyond my twin bed, the small nightstand, and the clothes I’d stuffed into the closet. My new place was a little bigger than this one because I’d gone outside of the city. Even so, my piano would always eat up most of my real estate. It didn’t matter, though. I’d give up food before I gave up my music again.

  I didn’t turn at the sound of his heavy footsteps behind me. Nerves skittered under my skin, making me both hot and shivery at once. But I didn’t whirl around to face him until the fallboard of my piano snapped closed and my sheet music hit the floor. Meeting my gaze, he sniffed my wine glass and set it aside.

  “Want a taste?” I couldn’t stifle the snarky comeback any more than I could squelch the residual hurt from his comments in the living room.

  Liam scooped me up so fast I didn’t have time to do more than squeak.

  “I want a taste of you,” he murmured, and I knew he didn’t mean my mouth. The shivers intensified, turning me from hot to burning up in an instant. “Take off your jeans.”

  “Put me down.”

  “Not on your life.”

  For one insane second, I wanted to toss back my head and laugh. This was vintage Liam. In the old days, he’d pick me up and run toward the water, enjoying my shrieks. He’d go out into the deepest part and grin at me, droplets glistening on his skin like diamonds, and ask me if I was ready to get wet.

  I was always ready to get wet when it came to him. Always. Now was no different.

  When he would’ve set me down atop the piano, I frantically shook my head. “I don’t want to damage it.”

  “With the way I intend to fuck you? Smart move.” Eyes ablaze, he set me down on the bench. He knelt on the floor and undid the button and zipper of my jeans, licking his way over the skin revealed. He whipped my jeans off, boosting me up and drawing them down before I had a chance to process.

  His intent gaze met mine. “Take your panties off for me.”

  I couldn’t comply quickly enough. With a few yanks and a wiggle, they were off. He grabbed them and held them to his nose while heat scorched my face. Inside my top, my nipples beaded, already desperate for his mouth.

  He didn’t make me wait.

  Stuffing the panties in his pocket, he bent to roll his tongue down my slit. No warning, no preamble, nothing but his wet flesh exploring mine. I stifled a cry and shoved my hands in my hair to keep from scratching the bench. The piano was all I owned of any worth and not even his incredible oral skills would cause me to damage it.

  Then he used his teeth on my clit, giving it a quick, wicked graze, and I started to rethink my stance. Could refinish the wood. Could buy a new bench. Could do anything but not moan out my pleasure while he spread my lips and went to work on me.

  A noise of appreciation sounded in his throat as he got his fingers in on the action, spearing me with one while he sucked greedily on my clit. The noises he made were lewd and, oh, so dirty. Turning his head against my belly, he nailed me with a hungry look that caused more of my excitement to flow eagerly over his hand.

  “Take off your top. Let me see your tits, baby.”

  I couldn’t help my gasp. He didn’t talk to me like that. And I definitely never ran hotter and wetter just from words uttered in a low, filthy voice.

  Said by the man I loved with all my heart. Still. Always.

  No. Dammit, this was just sex. Just feeling good. It was natural for old feelings to bubble over. A lit match touched to gasoline, spilling everywhere. But he’d walk away again, and I’d leave Slater’s, and we’d be finished. No repeats. No do-overs.

  Done.

  Hands fumbling, I pulled my top over my head and threw it in the direction of my bed. It had barely landed before his mouth descended on my nipple, his lips pulling hard. His fingers—two now—were still inside me, pumping away, and I couldn’t stop squirming against the dual assault. His free hand slid up the back of my thigh, squeezing reflexively, contributing to my sense that he was everywhere at once. I’d never been the type to come super quickly, but he’d never gone at me like this either, growling out his need in concert with his maddening sucks on my flesh. His teeth scraped my taut nipple, reddening the pale skin until he
eased back and shot me another of those sinful glances that had me twisting into his palm.

  “Look at you,” he whispered. “Getting all pink for me. Here too.”

  I followed his gaze between my legs to his slick fingers slipping in and out.

  “Let’s make this one match.” He latched onto my other nipple and gave it a sharp tug that stole my breath.

  I couldn’t even cry out when he started moving faster between my thighs, using his thumb to circle my straining clit. Every part of me was primed to his touch and his voice, and surging toward orgasm at his hands was like coming home. I’d missed it more than I could say.

  “God, I want to touch you everywhere. Lick every part of you. All the nights I missed this….” His fractured speech blew hot against my breast, creating a new wave of tingles that traveled straight to my clit. “Did you think of me? Imagine me fucking you?”

  “Yes.” Lying wasn’t an option. Not about this. “But we didn’t fuck. We always made love.” Gasps punctuated the words.

  Unerringly, he sought the spot deep inside me that made my legs shake. I canted my hips upward to feel more of his touch. More of him. I couldn’t get enough.

  I wasn’t just going to come. I was going to break apart. Naked, vulnerable, open to him in every way.

  And he was still fully dressed.

  As if he could read my mind, he dragged his hand back and flicked his tongue over the tips of his fingers, shutting his eyes on a groan. Then he pulled at his belt and undid his jeans, shoving them and his boxers down with an economy of movement that made me tug harder at my own hair.

  Somehow I’d managed not to scratch the bench or grab hold of him, but, damn, I couldn’t watch this striptease without ripping out a few strands of my own hair.