The Skeleton King (Dartmoor Book 3) Read online

  He made a sound in his throat she took to mean not fair.

  “She’s nothing like my mother, and just as awful for him. Jesus.” She sighed. “Dad isn’t a bad guy. Except when he’s drinking.”

  “Known a few of those in my time.”

  “Known any who kicked the habit?”

  “There’s plastic forks and real plates over there,” he said, dodging the question, motioning toward the far counter. “This is done.”

  They ate sitting cross-legged on the hard tile floor, and his “eggs and such” was the tastiest thing she’d ever eaten – or so she thought in her depressed, buzzed state. She was starving, she realized, and ate half the plateful before sitting back, taking another big swig of gin, and deciding there was something she had to know.

  “Walsh is your last name, right?” The room was fuzzy around the edges and when she looked at him, he was the only thing in focus.

  He nodded and set his fork down, like he didn’t like where this was headed.

  “What’s your first name?”

  A beat. Then, “Kingston.”

  Emmie didn’t want to, but she laughed. “Kingston? Is your mom Gwen Stefani?”

  He frowned. “Who?”

  “No, nothing. I’m sorry. It’s not funny…well, it is, sort of. That’s like, a name for a stripper, or a romance novel character. It’s good, though,” she added in a rush as he continued to stare at her. “It’s sexy.”

  He kept staring at her, chin tucked, eyes penetrating. “I didn’t pick it out you know.”

  “Like I wanted to be Emmaline?” She snorted. “Kingston’s better than that. You can be in a novel. You ever read a steamy book where the heroine was named Emmaline? Didn’t think so.”

  “To be fair, I don’t read that kinda shit, so I wouldn’t know.” He almost smiled.

  “Yeah, well…” Feeling ridiculous and girlish for admitting to her reading habits, she decided it was time for the next topic. “So I never asked: that night Tally got out, what were you doing next door? That’s your land I’m guessing, since you had the key and all.”

  “You’re just full of questions,” he said, spearing a fat chunk of sausage on his fork.

  Instead of coming up with a smart reply, she took a sip of gin. “I’ve never slept with a stranger before,” she admitted.

  Walsh went very still.

  She forced a dry, humorless chuckle. “So do I call you King now or what?”

  He swallowed, took a hit of his own drink. “Everyone just calls me Walsh.” His voice was softer now, the harshness leaving his face. “And it’s my friend’s land. I was just scoping it out, realizing it was a lost cause to try and turn it into something.”

  She nodded, glad he’d skipped over her little admission. “It’s been abandoned for a long time.”

  “Too long to make a farm out of it in less than two years.” He mopped up the last of his eggs with a bite of bread and then pushed his plate to the side, its bottom scraping against the floor. “Done?” he asked, reaching for her plate.

  She nodded. “Is this your stuff? The china and pots and pans?”

  “Yeah. Had to make a run after they cleaned everything out. You know, that bitch stripped the fancy showerhead outta the master water closet, so now I gotta take a bath like an old woman,” he said with a rueful non-smile. “Guess I’m lucky she didn’t have the floors pulled up.”

  “I still can’t believe what a sellout shallow bitch she is. Underneath all the pretty.” And underneath all my misguided ideals, she added in her head.

  “Probably shouldn’t talk about her anymore, then.”

  “Probably.”

  They reached for their respective bottles at the same time, took long sips. Emmie watched the way his throat opened for the vodka and swished the gin around in her mouth, all between her teeth. It wasn’t mouthwash, but it was better than nothing.

  She lowered the bottle and closed her eyes, felt the floor tilt beneath her, felt the heavy ache inside her that was too complicated to describe. When she opened them again, Walsh was right in front of her, on his knees. His hand came up slowly, as if in a dream, and cupped the side of her face. He pressed lightly at her lower lip with his thumb.

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yes.” She closed her eyes again. “I want it.”

  ~*~

  She didn’t feel anything until he kissed her. Getting up off the floor, walking through the house, up the stairs into the cavernous master bedroom. She’d never seen it before, but she didn’t have eyes for it in the moment, only verified that, yeah, he had a mattress on the floor, and it even had sheets on it, the covers still messy from where he’d slept the night before. She was numb and fuzzy-headed for all of it. But then he caught her gently around the throat, drew her in, and kissed her.

  All her senses lit up at once, a circuit board flaring to life. It was an easy, clinging kiss. A question. And she opened her mouth in answer. She felt the alcohol burn out of her blood as his tongue passed between her teeth; it sizzled as it left her raw, sober, and shaking, grabbing at the soft front of his shirt and twisting it in her hands.

  She’d never wanted a man so bad in her life, and it didn’t matter that she didn’t fully understand why, only that she needed him inside her. Now.

  Emmie flattened her hand and passed it between them, finding the bulge in the front of his jeans and curving her palm around it.

  He pulled back from the kiss and she was gasping for breath.

  “Easy, love,” he murmured. His hands were at her hips, and he flicked his thumbs beneath the hem of her t-shirt, rubbed at the bare flushed skin of her hipbones. “There’s no rush. You want it to feel good, yeah?”

  A hard shiver stole across her skin. When had it ever been good? When had it ever been anything besides two bodies slamming together? “Yeah,” she whispered, leaning into him, closing her hand more tightly against his cock. “Yeah, but…”

  But she didn’t know what. She was humming with inner electricity, and all grace had left her.

  He took her lower lip between his teeth, pulled at it slowly. At another time, she might have been embarrassed by the sound that stirred in her throat.

  He chuckled again, a dark breath of sound against her face. Then kissed her jaw, the tender spot just beneath her ear. “Stop trying to be in charge for once,” his English-accented voice said against her skin, moving through her body like a tremor. “Right now, I’m in charge.”

  Holy shit, yes.

  She felt the tension leave her – the unproductive kind – and she settled against him, caught at his shoulders to keep herself upright, because he was kissing her throat and his hands were moving under her shirt, and she didn’t trust her legs to hold her up.

  He lifted her shirt off in one fast maneuver, barely breaking away from her skin with his mouth. And then he was at her bra clasp, and then the straps were sliding down her arms.

  When she was bare, he pulled back, his breath warm and uneven as it fanned across her chest. The moonlight turned his hair silver, cast deep shadows between their bodies.

  “Ah, love, that’s nice,” he said in a strained voice.

  His hands slid up beneath her breasts, cupped and lifted them. His thumbs flicked across her nipples. And then his head dipped and he kissed her there, passed his tongue across one hard bud and drew it into his mouth.

  She speared her hands through his hair, marveling at the texture of it, the way it was thick and slippery all at once. But it wasn’t about his hair – it was about curving her fingers against his skull and holding him to her as his tongue drew lazily across her nipple. Once and then again. It felt so amazing, but –

  He moved to the other, taking it between his lips, touching it with his tongue.

  God.

  Her pulse vibrated wildly in her wet nipples, between her legs. She ached there, empty and hungry and needing him.

  His mouth left her and she hated the loss of sensation, the way his hair was sliding out of her gra
sp. But then he was on his knees in front of her, and his rings caught the faint moonlight with fast glimmers as he unfastened her cutoffs. The sound of the zipper gave her gooseflesh. The feel of his hands curling in the waistband, tugging shorts and panties down together left her breathless.

  “Walsh.” She wasn’t sure she wanted him looking at her up close like this. Hadn’t expected it. The air was a shock against her bare, heated skin. “What are you doing?”

  “Shh. Shut your eyes.” His breath was a warm rush of air against her pubic bone and it startled her into compliance.

  Her eyes slammed shut. “Walsh–”

  He touched her, and it was only one finger, stroking lightly across her sex. Teasing at her.

  She reached blindly for something to grab onto and found his shoulders, braced both her hands on them.

  His finger pressed more firmly, parting her, finding where she was slippery and scalding hot. It was a careful, deliberate probing, unlike anything she’d ever felt. Not the rough pawing of a boy, but the sure slowness of a man.

  A finger entered her and her inner muscles contracted. Exactly what she needed, wanted, but yet not enough.

  “What does that feel like?” he asked.

  “Good…it feels good.” So good her fingertips were digging into his shoulders.

  “More?”

  “More.”

  He pressed in and in, and then she felt his ring, the heavy ornamental metal warm from his skin, sliding into her entrance.

  She took a deep, ragged breath, and he chuckled, a low dark sound.

  “Not just knuckle dusters, yeah?”

  He stroked her inner wall and she felt the movement so acutely, in every nerve ending. There was a stretching – he added a second finger. All the way to that ring, and its ridges and raised designs.

  He withdrew a fraction, and then pushed in again. Back and then forth. A thrusting rhythm, driving his rings into her, mimicking what they’d do later, when he was joined with her.

  His thumb found her clit and she was lost. She let her weight sag against him, braced her feet on the floor, and let her hips move with the rhythm of his hand, overcome by the winding tension of pleasure.

  When she came it was shattering. She bit down on her tongue and tasted blood, leaned down onto Walsh to keep from falling, made a sound deep in her throat that made him say, “That’s a good girl.”

  It was a slow, blurry fall from grace, and in the midst of it, Walsh stood and gathered her up in his arms, lowered her down to the mattress and stretched out beside her.

  “Oh my God.” She rolled toward him, put her hands on his chest, and swore she could feel his self-satisfied smile through the dark. “I…” She didn’t even know what.

  His hand settled in the curve of her waist. “When was the last time you did that, love?”

  “You mean, when was the last time I did that…or when was the last time I came?”

  He kissed her. “When did you last come?” he asked against her lips, and those words said with his accent made her shiver.

  “A very long time ago.”

  “Really?” There was no imagining the satisfied lift to his voice.

  “And even then, it wasn’t that good.”

  He made a low deep purring sound in his throat, and his hand slid down to her ass, pulled her in tight against him so she had to hook her leg over his hip.

  “You’ve got too many clothes on,” she said, flexing her fingers into his pecs.

  “Wanna help me with that?”

  In a clumsy rush, she lifted his shirt over his head and he managed to work off jeans, boxers, and boots, all of it going off the edge of the mattress in a heap.

  The moonlight silvered his skin, shadows marking hair and the grooves of muscles. When he gathered her to his chest again, she was shocked by the heat of him, electrified by the scratch of his legs against her smooth ones, the tickling of his chest hair against her breasts. He kissed her and it was amplified by the skin-to-skin contact. The small, unconscious movements of her hips pushed his erection against her belly.

  She reached to take him in her hand. “You bragged,” she said, smiling against his mouth, and felt him smiling back.

  “Disappointed?”

  “Oh no. I’m a very little girl. You’re just perfect.”

  With a pleased growl, he rolled her onto her back, settled between her legs.

  Emmie caught herself in the act of lifting toward him. “Condom,” she reminded.

  “Shit. Yeah.” He twisted around, fumbled with his jeans. She heard the foil tearing and imagined the sight of him rolling it on. All she could see was the white shine of his shoulders, the mess of his hair.

  Then he was lowering over her again, kissing her mouth, bracing himself. One of his hands slipped between them, found her still warm and wet from his fingers.

  He entered her with one sure thrust, and being suddenly filled like that overwhelmed her in the best way. She’d told him it had been a long time, and so he waited, breathing in strained gasps against her throat until she slid her hands down his back and latched onto his ass.

  “I’m good,” she said, wrapping her legs tight around his hips. “I’m ready–”

  He took it slow and deep, more of that assured maleness that had nothing boyish about it. Thrusting, rooting into her with a depth and force that lifted her hips up off the mattress, had her whimpering deep in her throat.

  “I want to feel you come around me,” he said in her ear, and the pleasure arced through her, lighting her up from the inside out.

  He grunted and stiffened, and she knew her pulses had kicked off his release.

  They lay on their backs afterward, the echo of their breathing filling up the empty room. Through the drowsiness, Emmie could already feel the low sizzle of wanting more, a banked fire in the pit of her stomach.

  “You okay?” Walsh asked, voice husky with aftermath.

  “Very much so.” Except it felt vast and lonely over here on her side of the bed suddenly. With the sort of bold familiarity that only existed in the dark of night between sheets, she reached over and found his hand on top of the covers. He let her lift it, arm pliant and unresisting, so she could take his palm between both of hers and angle his knuckles toward the weak haze of moonlight above their heads.

  “I have to know about these,” she said of his rings, passing a fingertip across their ridges. “Do they mean something? Or did you just like the way they looked?”

  “Little of both. Mostly it’s because when you’re my size, it never hurts to have a sharp punch.”

  She grinned.

  “But that one there on my thumb?” It was the face of a snarling dog, wrought with incredible detail. “I got that when I patched in London. Everybody gets one.”

  “It’s…well, I won’t say pretty. That’s probably not the effect you’re going for.”

  He snorted. “The Union Jack’s to remind where I come from, not to get too above my means.” It was on his ring finger, and though colorless, the distinct bars of the British flag were visible. “The W my mum gave me.” It was done in masculine but elaborate font. “I’ve got the eagle on the other hand, for the States. And the skulls I just liked.” He shrugged and the sheets rustled.

  She rubbed her thumb slowly across the laughing face of one of the skulls, flushing with heat as she remembered the feel of it against her sex.

  “Any tattoos?” she asked, not sure if she wanted there to be any.

  “No.” His voice became reflective. “There just wasn’t anything I wanted in my skin.”

  “Hmm.”

  “Okay, my turn for a question. How long do you need?” he asked. “Before we go again.”

  She rolled toward him, smiling.

  Fifteen

  The sun woke her. Not her alarm clock, not the chirp of her phone, not a hungry horse pawing at its stall door below, but the sun’s bright early rays, stabbing at her closed eyes and sending her into a little ball beneath the covers. Five more minute
s, she thought. Just five more minutes, and then I’ll get up.

  And then she remembered where she was.

  “Oh shit.”

  The covers slid off her naked skin as she sat up, and she grabbed for them as her eyes skipped across the bare room. Mattress on the floor. Her clothes in a puddle a few feet away. Memory of Walsh, neon all over every part of her skin.

  Damn.

  It had been nothing like she’d been expecting. It had been so much more than that.

  But now she was faced with the reality that she’d slept with her boss, and that she had to go to work and pretend the world hadn’t been knocked askew.

  Fuzzy-headed and vaguely sick from drinking, she scrambled to her feet, determined not to stare at the marks on her hips and thighs where finger-shaped bruises were going to darken over the next few days.

  She hurried into her clothes, a little breathless, heartbeat pounding in her temples, and not only because of the drinking. The wide room with its knotted pine floors and heavy moldings felt too empty, too cold.

  The en suite bath, trimmed in modern chrome fixtures and sensible but expensive porcelain, echoed with the sound of her breathing. In the mirror, she looked pale, drawn, muddled. Like a ghost.

  What had she done?

  She didn’t have rash, frenzied sexual encounters with near-strangers. She didn’t have sweaty, gasp-inducing, spectacular –

  Don’t go there. Just don’t.

  Part of her hoped Walsh would be gone, off on his bike to do whatever bikers did first thing in the morning. But as she took the stairs down to the first level, another part of her hoped to see him. Laying eyes on him, all disheveled the morning after what they’d done, would be the real test. The thing that determined how much of a mistake it had been.

  She got the chance to find out, because he was on the front porch, sitting down on the far end at the built-in wooden breakfast table, laptop open in front of him. He’d pulled on his jeans from yesterday, but the belt was unfasted, his feet were bare, and without a shirt, the morning sunlight was catching in his golden chest hair, highlighting his truly awful farmer’s tan. Dolly lay at his feet. A cup of coffee sat beside the computer. The utter absorption as he stared at the screen was both boyish and cynical, the lines in his face harsh, his focus adorable.