Prohibited (Tulsa City Sinners #1)

29. Ryan

Chapter twenty-nine

Ryan

They were kissing again, abandon seizing both of them. “Please,” she moaned softly. Then her hands were between them, fumbling with the buttons on his trousers. He shifted back just a touch so she could get them open and pull his cock free with practiced fingers. She squeezed it once, firmly, before he groaned and backed away from her, which drew a moan of protest. He ignored her, settling on his knees on the floor. Both of her feet rested on his shoulders and he scooped his arms under her ass and pulled her sharply to him so that her gorgeous cunt was at the edge of the crate.

Desire for her was making his head foggy. Eliminating his reasoning, his sense of self.

“Ryan,” she said softly. A plea.

He smothered a moan and then opened his mouth to taste her cunt. Better than he remembered. The most exquisite delicacy. He stroked the hard pearl of her pleasure with his tongue, deliberately and rhythmically, pleased with the way she writhed against his hands. He slipped his tongue through her silken folds and dipped it inside of her, gathering as much of her nectar as he could.

She moaned softly. Her hands were in his hair, massaging his scalp. God, the scent of her was driving him mad. Crazy, animal impulses were rioting through him. The desire to rub her glorious, glistening cunt all over his face seized him. To bathe in her nectar, to absorb the scent of her through his very flesh.

“Ryan,” she moaned, hands gripping his hair as he feasted on her cunt. “Fuck me. Please.”

A fresh surge of hot blood boiled through him, igniting every inch of his skin and turning it to fire. Though he craved the taste of her, the scent of her, the call to join their bodies was more than he could resist.

With one last luxurious sample, he rose sharply to lean over her, giving her a generous taste of the pleasures he had enjoyed as he pressed his mouth to hers and coaxed her lips open with his tongue.

Her legs and her hands drew her against him, binding him to her with a quiet desperation that made him grit his teeth to keep from moaning against her mouth. The way she kissed him made him feel like she was going to suck his soul through his lips. The very floor trembled beneath them as she reached between them and gripped his cock again. She ran her thumb over the bead of cum sitting like a drop of dew on the head and then she began to stroke him, gliding her hand up and down in a rhythm that made him want more, more. She looked at him with heavy eyelids, eyes burning, and drew her knees back so that her perfect ankles and feet hovered delicately in the air and her gorgeous, ripe cunt was on perfect display for him.

Smothering a deep, animal sound, he pressed the head of his cock against her hot, soaking entrance.

“Yes,” she said at once. He leaned down to join their mouths but watched her so that he could see her beautiful, jeweled brown eyes watching him from inches away as he slowly began to invade her body. “Yes.” She moved her hand so that she could guide him.

“Yes,” he echoed back as he eased inside of her.

The sheer pleasure of joining with her again was almost enough to make him come. He gritted his teeth and pressed his head into her shoulder, drawing a deep breath while he paused and schooled himself.

“Fuck me,” she murmured, drawing his face up and caressing his cheek with her beautiful fingers. “Fuck me.”

Ryan began to move his hips, helpless to deny her. To deny himself. It was perfect. She was perfect. This woman he had dreamed of in spite of himself for the last fifteen years. There wasn’t a scent or texture that had escape his memory, and yet it all paled in comparison to the flesh and blood goddess that he held in his arms, the goddess he fucked with his hot, pulsing cock.

Their mouths melted together, kisses hot and rich and indulgent as melted sugar. But he wanted to look at her, to see her writhe in pleasure while he impaled her with his cock .

“Yes, just like that,” she whispered sharply, eyelids fluttering as he reached new depths inside of her. One of her beautiful hands slipped between her legs and began to stroke the gorgeous little bead secreted there, causing her body to tremble.

“Oh god,” he said, unable to look away from the sight of her pleasuring herself. The blood in his cock surged dangerously and he bit down on his tongue to distract himself from plummeting toward his own release.

He linked his hands behind her back and crushed her body against his, crushed his mouth into her hair and took in every sound, every scent, every sensation as he thrust into her over and over again, driving them both toward the heavens. Her soft, gorgeous mouth was pressed to his neck, sporadically scattering kisses and tiny nips against his flesh between soft moans.

He drew his head back so that he could kiss her lips again, swallowing the sound of her pleasure.

Her thighs began to tremble and her fingers worked faster at her own pleasure. A gorgeous sound escaped her as she let her head fall back, baring her throat to him. He was helpless to do anything but lean forward and caress the column of it with his tongue.

Her breaths were coming sharper, shorter. She gasped and began to bear down on his cock with her cunt, gripping him so tightly that he almost saw stars. He bit the inside of his cheek until he tasted blood, she was so close to ripping his orgasm out of him. Like he was a boy again, barely able to contain himself. He would have been embarrassed if he’d had a shred of concentration to funnel into it.

She went silent, body rigid, for the span of an eternity while he drove into her, desperately, greedily glorying in the intensity of the pleasure he wrought in her, how close she was to her climax. That beat in between, when they both began to blur and to truly merge, was rapturous. Divine.

Then her body was turning to melted butter in his arms and he had the sense to press one of his hands over her mouth while she unleashed a series of screams into his palm that could have cracked the foundation of the house. Her eyes, misty with pleasure, met his as he fucked into her harder and harder, until his cock felt like it would burst from the pleasure and the intensity of it.

Then he ripped it out of her as he felt the trigger pull, detonating the pleasure that erupted through the column of his cock and through his body, causing his balls to draw up and back while he moaned and stroked himself until he had spilled all of his seed onto the concrete between them.

“God,” he breathed, feeling for a moment like he would faint.

Her hands cradled his face and drew it to hers. The small, guileless smile on her lips made him helpless but to return it. Their mouths met slowly, sensually and he pulled her to him, slipping his fingers through her short, dark hair .

“You don’t need to,” she said, a bit shyly, glancing down between them at the wet stains on the concrete. “Next time. I can’t, um, I can’t have children.”

A strange melancholy rippled through him as he drew her against him and tilted her face back so he could look into it while he caressed her cheek.

“Why not?” he whispered.

She looked away. “I was pregnant once. After–” She cleared her throat. “It was my fiance’s child. Etian. He died in France.”

“You loved him,” he said without envy.

“Yes,” she said. Her shoulders sagged slightly. “Well, we– We thought we would marry. So we were careless.”

“You lost the child.” Ryan placed his knuckle under her chin and raised her face so that he could watch her expression closely.

“Yes,” she said, matter of factly, but he didn’t miss the pain that flickered in her expression. “In France. It was the shock of the war. The shock of Etian’s death. It almost killed me. The doctor had to take– take her from my body. He told me I would never be pregnant again.”

Though she tried so hard to look brave, she could not stop the single tear that startled to roll slowly down her cheek. Ryan crushed her against him suddenly, and gritted his teeth against the sorrow he felt for her. He tried to resist, tried to remember what it felt like to ignore his empathy for her. It was too big, too much. The unbearable weight of loss was on him again. Tommy. His mother. His grandfather. Despair at the inevitability of it. He breathed deeply and she gripped him just as tightly.

“What about your husband?” he asked her in a voice that he managed to keep steady. The curiosity had been gnawing at him all this time.

“What about him?” she said with a touch of disgust.

“You threw your ring,” he said. “You took up with Walter Stanley.”

“I should have never married Linus,” she said with a sigh. “It was a mistake. Losing Etian, the baby– It was a… reaction.” She said the last word bitterly.

“And Walter Stanley?” he said, not bothering to keep the hatred out of his voice.

She shrugged and laughed humorlessly. “Another reaction. To Linus. To being forced to come back to Tulsa.” She glanced up at him, a touch of a real smile on her face. “He reminded me of you. At first. That’s why I–”

Of all the things she could have said to him, that was not something he would have expected. It didn’t make him happy.

“I mean, there’s something about you physically,” she said quickly, obviously registering his displeasure. “I didn’t mean– You’re very different people, obviously.”

“Obviously,” he said shortly. But he caressed her hair and pressed his lips to her forehead to show her that he’d forgiven her for drawing such a comparison.

After a moment, she said, “It wasn’t a reaction. It was a mistake. ”

Ryan pressed her face against his shoulder. “We’re going to kill him. Tomorrow.”

Her head snapped up and a jumbled look of fear and relief clouded her face. They stared at each for a long moment while he waited for her to say something. Anything.

And after a moment she finally said, “Good.” She swallowed. “Just be careful.”

He huffed a dark laugh. “Darlin’,” he said, running his thumb over her bottom lip again. “He’s the one who should be careful.”

“It’s just that–” She paused, hesitating. “He has a lot of people on his side. In the police force. In society.”

“To his own detriment,” Ryan said with a smile that wasn’t nice at all. “One of his own guys is ratting him out to us.”

“Who?” she said, drawing her eyebrows together.

“Don’t worry yourself,” he said, leaning in to kiss her again.

“How do you know it’s not a trap?” she said, leaning back from him, face serious.

“One of our people set it up,” Ryan said. “We trust her.”

Evelyn bit her lip but didn’t look convinced. “You of all people should know that he excels at ambush.”

“Not this time, Evelyn,” Ryan murmured against her lips. “Not this time.”

“Is that the phone call you got today?” she said, pulling her face back to look at him. “You and Alex were talking–"

“Yes,” he said with a finality that he hoped she would accept .

She nodded and let her eyes drop. Ryan’s fingers drifted up to her hair, stroking it out of her face. A stab of remorse went through him as he caressed it, soft as rabbit fur.

“I’m sorry about your hair,” he said quietly.

“I think I probably deserved it,” she said, voice heavy.

“Stop talking about deserving,” he said, voice sharp. “Evelyn, I shouldn’t have– Alex shouldn’t have– I was just so angry– And I thought you–”

A hideous feeling seized him, turning his throat to barbed wire and his jaw to lead. He gritted his teeth and held onto her so tightly that she gasped.

“I’m sorry.” He hated the way his voice twisted. How weak he sounded. How frail. He swallowed the ache in his throat. “I’m sorry for everything. For what I did to you. For what Alex– That doesn’t make up for– But I am–”

“Don’t,” she said softly but sharply. “Don’t.”

“But you–”

“Shh,” she said, slipping her fingers into his hair, soothing him gently. “Let’s not compete to see who’s sorrier.”

Ryan pressed his face into her hair and swallowed again, forcing himself to calm, to push back the ferocious swell of emotion that was threatening to drown him.

“I’m sorry I never wrote you back,” she said, voice muffled, catching him by complete surprise. He had never expected her to bring it up.

“Why didn’t you?” he said, trying to sound neutral, voice still hoarse.

“My father said he would have you killed,” she said. Simply, sadly. “If I ever spoke to you or saw you again. He meant it. I couldn’t leave the house without a chaperone until I left for New York, just to be sure. And then after I got there, well… I guess I thought you’d probably forgotten about me by then. But I kept them. Your letters.”

Ryan scoffed. “Why the hell would you do that?”

“Because–” She broke off as if she didn’t dare say it.

Impatiently, Ryan lifted her chin again so he could see her face, though she wouldn’t look at him.

“Because?” he prompted, trying to sound indifferent but he couldn’t keep the touch of apprehension out of his voice.

She swallowed and stared at the ground. “Because I loved you.”

“Funny way of showing it,” he said, without venom. Then, unable to resist any longer, he kissed her again, craving the taste of her. The scent of her. How it soothed the ache in his chest.

“Did you ever love anyone else?” she whispered.

“Yes,” he said quietly.

With some hesitation she said, “A-Alex?”

A stab of shame and anger went through him. That she would dare bring it up to him. As if he wasn’t the one to do it in front of her. He tensed, ready to move away. But she sensed his anger and held onto him more tightly.

“No,” he said, shortly, making her wish she hadn’t said anything.

Wisely, she changed the subject.

“I never forgot about you,” she said, voice trembling with her sincerity. “Never. ”

He swallowed audibly and looked at her, loving the earnest expression on her face as he caressed the perfect angle of her jaw. “I never forgot about you, either, Evelyn.”

And they kissed again, drenched in the scent of apples and the ache of nostalgia.

“Your child?” he said quietly after satisfying his desire to kiss her. “What was her name?”

Surprise registered in her face. Then grief. Tenderness. She smiled at him, a good, sad smile that made her eyes glisten. “Camille,” she said in a voice as fragile as tears. “I named her Camille. For his mother.”

Ryan pulled her head against his chest and held her tightly while she wept.