Don’t Deny Me: Part Three Read online

  He had missed her so damned much that finally being with her was … overwhelming. Shit, it was strangling him, almost, this desire to make love to her. Not just that, but to make her feel good. To make her scream and moan and cry his name. To make her want him as much as he wanted her, which was all the time and in every way.

  He kissed her through the fabric, first her thighs. Then the juncture between them. Her scent made him harder. He needed to taste her.

  Mick hooked his fingers in the waistband of her bottoms and pulled them down. Still kneeling between her parted legs, he bent to kiss her bare flesh. Alice jerked at the touch of his tongue. At the press of his lips, she moaned. When he parted her to ease a finger inside her while he sucked gently on her clit, her hand found the top of his head.

  It was too much effort to work his belt and zipper open while he made love to her with his mouth, sweet torture for his cock to press against the denim, and Mick couldn’t decide which he wanted more. To make Alice come under his tongue or to get his cock in his fist while he did it.

  Her pussy swelled under his kiss, the tight walls clutching at his finger when he stroked upward. She was already rolling her hips and pushing against him. Close. He could tell. Her taste flooded him, making his head spin. Urging him to moan her name, a command or a plea, he couldn’t be sure, only that he wanted and needed to know he was making her feel good.

  Her body tensed and twitched. She cried out, shaking. Her clit pulsed under his lips, and he eased the stroking as he slipped his finger free of her clutching flesh. With both hands free, he got himself undone, his cock leaping into his waiting fist for a few strokes before he sat back to look at her.

  She wasn’t looking at him. She lay back on the bed, one arm flung over her eyes. Her chest rose and fell rapidly with her breathing.

  So fucking beautiful.

  Mick shucked out of his jeans and briefs and T-shirt, tossing them to the side and crawling up over her. He slid his cock over her clit. Back and forth, teasing, until she moaned again. Alice opened her eyes and reached for him.

  “Kiss me,” she said.

  He kissed her. Sweet, hard, tongues sliding. She moved her hips. She was so slick and wet he moved easily against her. And then, with a small and subtle shift of their bodies, unexpected, he was inside her.

  He should hold out, he thought, but was helpless to stop. Not with her moving underneath him that way. Her fingers digging into his back. Her legs hooked behind his thighs, pushing him to fuck into her harder. Deeper. Faster.

  He’d wanted this to last, this first time after more than a week without her. There was no drawing this out, no holding off. When Alice sank her teeth into his shoulder, Mick lost himself. Her body tensed around him, and he gave up trying to hold off. He was looking at her when he came, but Alice’s eyes were closed.

  He rolled off her, still breathing hard. Beside him, Alice was silent. She didn’t roll to cuddle against him, so he turned his head.

  “Why?” Alice asked so softly he barely had to wake to mumble an answer.

  “Why what?”

  “Why couldn’t you wait until tomorrow to see me?”

  Mick smiled, half dreaming, and reached with one clumsy hand to pull her closer. When her warmth had pressed against him, he kissed her hair. “Because I wanted you.”

  “That’s all?” Alice murmured. “You wanted me?”

  Mick smiled again, nuzzling into her. Warm and sated and filled with her taste and scent and the general glory of being with her. “What more is there, other than wanting you?”

  * * *

  Let me paint my name upon your skin with my lips and teeth and hands and tongue, you won’t regret the song we sing when we both come undone.

  —Mick to Alice, unsent

  * * *

  For once, Alice was up and about before Mick, who still snored lightly when she slipped out of bed. She had too much to do today to laze around. She had a week’s worth of salty, sandy laundry to do. She had her cat to pay attention to, because Cleo would shit in Alice’s shoes if she didn’t. She had mail to sort through.

  Yet here she sat at the kitchen table, doing none of it. She’d made coffee, but it wasn’t quite right. Not as good as Mick would make it. She didn’t have any food in the fridge to cook for breakfast, and no motivation to run out and get some. All she could manage to do was drink some now-tepid tea and try to think of how she was going to break up with him.

  “Morning.” Sleepy-eyed but with a wet head and fully dressed, looking too fucking scrumptious to stand, Mick bent to kiss her. “You’re up early.”

  “Mick.”

  He paused in looking through her cupboards to glance over his shoulder. “Yeah, babe?”

  The words rose up, choking her. Bitter. Sharp as glass. She coughed, but couldn’t force herself to say them.

  He was staring at her. “You okay?”

  She was not okay. Anything but, as a matter of fact. But all she could do was nod.

  “Hey, you wanna go out to a diner or something? You don’t have anything to eat.”

  A diner. Oh, God. He wanted to take her to a diner, where they’d order eggs and hash browns and toast and coffee and maybe a pancake or maybe a whole stack, and he would hold her hand while they waited for their food and he’d hand her the cream and sugar without her having to ask because he knew how she liked her coffee, and he would give her the syrup first. He would tell her jokes and make her laugh and shake his leg up and down, rattling the silverware on the table, until she gave him a look that would make him stop. They would play tic-tac-toe on the backs of the menus.

  And she would love him, Alice thought bleakly while Mick gave her a curious, confused stare. She would love him and want him and let him take her home and make love to her, any time he wanted. And she would miss him when they were not together, even if he never did.

  She loved him, and there was no helping it or stopping it. She’d fallen into it deep. There was no climbing out.

  * * *

  You’ve known for a long time how I felt about you, and you just kept letting me. Just like I knew for a long time how you didn’t feel about me, and I just kept letting you. So which one of us is to blame, in the end? I guess we both are, or we both are not, but either way, all I know is that I am totally and completely in love with you. I can’t imagine the rest of my life without you in it. And yet all I see for us is good-bye.

  —Alice to Mick, unsent

  * * *

  “Hey,” Mick said, sliding into the chair across from her to take her hand. His thumb stroked the back of it. “What’s wrong, Alice? You’re white as paper.”

  “Tired, I guess.”

  She sounded tired. Looked it, too. Maybe she was coming down with a post-vacation bug.

  “We don’t have to go out for breakfast. I can run to the store, grab some bagels.” Concerned, he put a hand on her forehead to check for fever.

  She leaned into his touch, her eyes closed. Her face was cool, though two bright spots of color had appeared high on her cheeks. She put her hand over his when he put it on her cheek.

  She opened her eyes. “We can go to breakfast. Just let me take a shower, okay?”

  “Yeah. Sure.”

  She hadn’t convinced him she was fine. The opposite, in fact, because while normally Alice showered with the door wide open and sang show tunes, today she closed the door tight, and Mick swore he heard the muffled sound of sobs.

  Shit.

  Anxious, he made the bed while he waited for her to finish her shower. Noticing that her closet door had come off the track again, he tinkered with it until he got it to work. Pleased, he pointed to it when she came out of the bathroom, bundled in her robe with a towel on her hair.

  “I fixed your closet door.”

  Alice glanced at it. “Thanks.”

  He demonstrated how smoothly it now opened and closed, watching her face for signs that she was happy. Or at least that she didn’t look sick anymore. The circles under her eyes