Born Wild

stand it any longer, he pressed into her. One long, wet, heated slide of hard flesh invading soft. And the sight of himself disappearing into her, the sight of her body swallowing him whole, was, hands down, the most erotic thing he’d ever seen. Because she was so tight, and so pink, and so plump, and so—

“Oh, God, yes,” she moaned, tossing her head back on the pillow. She grabbed his shoulders to pull him down over the top of her and eagerly sought his mouth. He obliged, giving her a penetrating kiss.

And then he began to thrust. Slowly. Again and again. Long, slick slides out until only the head of him remained inside her, and then slow, forceful plunges that seated him to the hilt, that pressed his throbbing balls tight against her ass. And all the while she was kissing him like her life depended on it, like she drew breath only from him. Her tongue was halfway down his throat, her hands were skating over his shoulders and down his back to clutch his ass as her knees drew up higher on his hips. And every time he buried himself in her, she made that little purring sound at the back of her throat. Jesus! He swore he could feel that gentle vibration deep in his gut.

It was amazing.

Better than amazing. Because for this moment, the woman he’d been dreaming about for years was his to hold, his to touch and kiss and caress. The hot female flesh between her legs was his to quicken to pulsing, wet release. Unremitting lust fueled his thrusts, driving them faster until they were primal and persistent. And the friction produced by her sultry walls? It drove him to the brink.

And then he felt it. He felt her sex clamp down on him. Hard. She wrenched her mouth from his to scream, “Oohh, Billy! Oohh, Goddd!”

She strained around him, against him, digging her nails into his ass as she held him to her. And that was it. He followed her straight over the edge, pouring himself into her, pumping and thrusting and coming harder than he’d ever come before. And in that moment, as they hurtled over the brink together, he experienced the kind of rapture that managed to create an entire universe out of two intertwined bodies. The kind of rapture that only happened once in a lifetime…

He didn’t know how long he lay atop her afterward, his heart thundering like he’d just cut the leads on an IED, his breath sawing from him in ragged gulps. But eventually, he became aware of her sweet softness beneath him, of the smell of her—and sex—all around him, of the sound of her gently breathing in his ear.

He reveled in it. In her. And then her inner muscles spasmed around him again, and he pushed up on one elbow to find her eyes half-closed and sleepy. Spent.

He knew just how she felt. Wonderfully, completely, fantastically spent.

“Eve?” he whispered her name as he bent to nuzzle her neck before opening his mouth over the bruises circling her throat. He gently pressed kisses there, until he moved back to suck on the soft spot just beneath her ear. She rewarded him by sliding her hands up his sweat-slicked back.

“Mmm?” she mumbled, that little purr sounding at the back of her throat.

“I’m going to want to take you again in about five minutes,” he told her, nipping at her deliciously naked shoulder. The sweat from her skin had mixed with her lotion until she tasted salty-sweet.

“Mmm,” she sighed dreamily, lifting her legs to hook her ankles together just above his ass. “I approve of this plan.”

And right then he realized he’d been fooling himself. Having sex with Eve hadn’t brought him any closer to some sort of closure where she was concerned. It hadn’t taken the mystery or angst out of their history together. It certainly hadn’t sated his hunger—because, if anything, he wanted her more now that he’d had her, and he wasn’t sure that would go away even if he had her a thousand times again. And it definitely, most definitely, hadn’t clarified his yo-yoing feelings about her.

Shit. What’ve I gotten myself into?

Although when her inner muscles squeezed his semi-erect penis, causing it to twitch as it once more filled with blood, he knew what he’d gotten himself into. He’d gotten himself into Eve. Into smart, beautiful, sexy Eve. And right at that moment, that’s all that mattered. That’s all he would allow to matter…

* * *

Somewhere on Lake Shore Drive

2:51 a.m.

He was leaning against the wall of his condo, sweating like some sort of blue-collar cretin as he listened to Devon Price’s cultured voice ask, “Tell me, what do the police have on you?”

Sometimes it amazed him how unlike the stereotypical gangbanger Devon was. The man had a degree in finance from Northwestern University, for Christ’s sake. Yet instead of going to work on Wall Street or down at Chicago’s Board of Trade, he’d taken his education back to the streets where he’d been raised. He’d taken his degree, combined it with his criminal genius, and built the most well-funded, well- disciplined, and well-insulated gang in Chicago.

The Black Apostles were untouchable, unbreakable, and…unrelenting. Which should’ve been enough to keep him from throwing in his lot with them. But he’d needed the money. Damnit! He still needed the money. Only now, he needed it to pay Devon back…

What a god-awful, unimaginable mess.

“Nothing,” he assured Devon. “They don’t have anything. And they won’t have anything.”

“Hmm,” Devon murmured, a huge amount of skepticism evident in that one small utterance. He lifted a hand to wipe at his perspiring brow. It should’ve never come to this. It should’ve never— “You may be right,” Devon cut into his rapid-fire thoughts. “But that doesn’t solve our little problem now, does it? Eve Edens is still alive. You still owe me two million dollars. And I’m running out of patience.”

The seed of fear that’d been planted in his belly when his last big gamble failed to pay off grew into a redwood of terror. “You c-can’t kill me, Devon,” he insisted, hating the fact that his voice sounded weak. He wasn’t supposed to be weak. He was supposed to be a man of power. “You’ll never get your money if you kill me.”

“Yes,” Devon hissed out the end of the word like a snake. “But it’ll send a strong message to others that they shouldn’t cross me unless they want to find themselves encased in a cement block at the bottom of Lake Michigan. And I find that scenario increasingly appealing.”

“I didn’t cross you, Devon,” he insisted, his pulse racing out of control. “The deal went south and I—”

“I’m tired of listening to your excuses. This arrangement of ours has reached its conclusion, I think. And I —”

“No. No, I-I know where she is,” he panted, sliding down the wall until his ass landed on the cold marble tiles. “I know how you can finally get her. I know how you can end this thing once and for all.”

And thank God he’d managed to overhear that tidbit of conversation about the sailing trip to Ludington. If he hadn’t, he had no doubt he’d be a dead man.

Silence on the other end of the line had his stomach jumping up to lodge in his throat. Then, finally, “I’m listening.”

“She and one of those thick-necked bikers she hangs out with are sailing her boat to Ludington, Michigan. Tonight.” That last part was a guess. He hadn’t overheard exactly when she planned to make the trip, but he didn’t want to give Devon a reason not to believe him. “You can send a couple of your men to meet them at the dock there. Then…then…” The plan was formulating in his head at the same time he was laying it all out. “If your guys have a second boat, like a rental, or hell they could just hotwire a boat there at the marina that they could tow behind the sailboat until they were in the middle of the lake, then they could kill Eve and the biker, sink the sailboat, and motor back to shore.” And even though it was an on-the-spot plan, he figured it might just work. “No one need be the wiser. Ships go down on the Great Lakes all the time. I mean all the time, so it’d be just like we discussed. An accident. It’ll be—”

“Shut up,” Devon interrupted, his tone as sharp as a rapier. “I’ve heard enough.”

He swallowed, licking his lips, looking with longing toward the decanter of scotch sitting by his favorite armchair. This fiasco was turning him into a goddamned drunk. And he hated drunks. His mother had been a drunk. And just look where that’d gotten her. And him, come to think of it…

“I agree with your plan,” Devon said, and his heart leapt with hope.