“I want you so fuckin’ bad, Viv,” my murmured against my skin. “You don’t even know.”
The brush of his beard across my sensitive skin made me gasp and sink my nails into his shoulders. The growling sound he made as he ripped the button of my jeans apart was primal. He slid his hands down my hips, taking my jeans down to the floor.
I was shaking with desire as I stepped out of the jeans, still clutching his shoulders. He pressed his mouth to my wet panties and I cried out again. Then he ran his tongue up and down the seam of my opening through the fabric.
“Oh God,” I cried. “Fuck me now, Kane. Please.”
He slid his hands up my thighs, his fingertips gliding beneath the sides of my panties. When he looked up at me and our eyes locked, I saw reverence.
His hands stilled and he held my gaze. I waited several seconds, my body wound tight with eager arousal.
“Fuck,” he muttered, sliding his hands out from beneath my panties. “I can’t.”
He reached for his t-shirt on the floor and I let my emotions take control.
“No,” I said, ripping the shirt from his hands. “You’re not walking out on me again. Not now. No, Kane.”
He sighed heavily and pressed the heels of his hands over his eyes. “You don’t know, Viv. This isn’t right. Give me my fuckin’ shirt.”
“Not right? You lick me through my panties and then decide it’s not right?”
“Yeah, that’s what I decided,” he said, lowering his hands and glaring at me. His tone was filled with bitter anger. “It’s not right for me to fuck you, Viv. Not because I don’t want to.”
“Oh, don’t play that,” I said angrily. “Fuck that. What’s really going on?”
He leaned closer, his face just inches from mine. “I. Just. Can’t. You don’t know me.”
“I know enough,” I said, forcing myself to hold his steely gaze.
“You don’t.”
I threw my arms up in frustration. “Do you have . . . performance issues? Because it’s okay if you do.”
He shrank back, his expression horrified. “Performance issues?” He gestured at the giant tent shape jutting out from his jeans. “Does this look like an issue to you?”
“I don’t know. I thought maybe you couldn’t . . . finish or something. We can work through it.”
His lips parted in shock. A second later he closed them and put his clenched fist up to his mouth, a vein in his forehead bulging ominously.
“Let’s get one thing straight,” he said. “My dick gets hard, stays hard and fucks well.”
“Then let’s have it,” I challenged.
He shook his head and reached out. “Give me my motherfucking shirt, Viv.”
“No.”
“Fine.” He narrowed his eyes at me and picked up the leather jacket he’d put on the console table. “I’ll fuckin’ freeze, then.”
I jogged to the door, my breasts bouncing shamelessly in my bra. Kane scowled at me as I pressed myself against it.
“You are not walking out on me again.”
“Don’t do this. I’m not right for you. Just trust me, okay?”
Something inside me sank hopelessly. I wouldn’t be the only one fighting for this. I stepped aside and crossed my arms over my chest.
“Okay. But this is the last time. Walk out now and we will never talk again.”
He closed his eyes and sighed deeply.
“Viv . . . I just need time.”
“Time for what?” A horrifying thought took hold. “Are you in another relationship?”
“No. Fuck no.”
My eyes filled with tears. Damn him for reeling me in and throwing me back like this.
“Don’t,” he said softly.
“Just go. You’ve humiliated me enough.”
“You don’t know—”
“Then tell me!” I clenched my hands into fists at my sides. “Fucking tell me or don’t, but stop playing these games.”
“You want to know the real me?” he challenged bitterly. “The guy who did six years in prison? You want to fuck that guy?”
I swallowed hard, the silence between us heavy. “Is that it? That’s why you think—”
“For armed robbery. I pulled a gun on a gas station clerk, Viv. I would’ve done anything for a fix. Anything. You have no idea what it’s like to wonder for all these years whether you would’ve pulled the trigger if the guy hadn’t handed over the money. I think I might’ve.”
My heart thumped wildly. He’d mentioned drug use in his past, but hearing he might have been willing to kill over it took me aback.
“You’re not that guy anymore, though,” I said. “You own a business now. We all make mistakes, Kane.”
He laughed bitterly. “That’s not even the worst of it, Viv.”
“Then tell me. I want to know.”
“Why?”
“I want to know you.”
He shook his head, his eyes distant now. “You won’t want to anymore. You want it all, Viv? You want everything?”
His cold mocking of my earlier words made me shudder. I held his gaze and waited.
“Fine,” he said. “I have a daughter.”
I felt my eyes widen with surprise. That, I hadn’t expected.
“A daughter I’ve never met,” he continued. “She’s nine. Lives an hour away and I’ve never even laid eyes on her. I found out I’d gotten a woman pregnant when she came to visit me in jail. It was too late to do better by then. I wasn’t there when my daughter was born. I never held her. I didn’t so much as buy her a single fucking diaper. How much more worthless can a man be?”
The hard hatred in his eyes was for himself, then. My heart ached for him. I took a deep breath and spoke softly. “What about now? How long have you been out of prison?”
“Four years. I paid all the back child support I should’ve paid Cori when I was in prison. I didn’t have the money then and had no way to get it. Now I send child support and presents for my daughter’s birthday and Christmas. I don’t have a right to more. Cori raised her alone. She doesn’t owe me shit. Probably hates my guts.”
The American Girl bag in his closet at work. My heart broke as I realized who it had been for.
“Cori is . . . ?”
“The woman I got pregnant. We’d fucked a few times, that was it. Nothing serious. But I owed her a hell of a lot more than she got.”
“What’s your daughter’s name?”
His face crumbled with emotion. “Brooklyn.”
I took another deep breath in and out. It was cold, so I wrapped my arms around myself to ward off the chill. “Okay. What else?”
Kane scowled at me. “What else?”
“Yeah. You went to prison for armed robbery, used to do drugs . . . have a daughter. What else?”
“Are you fucking with me? Like that’s not enough?”
I rubbed my hands up and down my upper arms to warm myself. “Is there anything else?”
He gave me a confounded look. “No.”
“How long has it been since you used drugs?”
“Ten years. Last time was the day before I got arrested.”
I nodded. “So you’re clean, you don’t plan to hold up any more gas stations and you support your daughter?”
“Yeah.”
“I can live with all that.”
He drew his brows together and studied me. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that if you thought knowing those things would scare me off, it doesn’t.”
“Are you out of your fuckin’ mind?”
“Everyone makes mistakes.”
“Mistakes? Abandoning the mother of your child and your child is more than a mistake.”
“Abandonment is willful. You were incarcerated.”
He pressed the heel of his hand to his forehead. “Is this because you deal with deadbeat parents in your job every day? Are you just numb to it?”
“A deadbeat parent is one who doesn’t support their child. And you do.”
“I’ve never met her.” He gave me an incredulous how am I still inside your apartment right now look.