Sweet Southern Betrayal Read online

  “This will do,” he said.

  Teague closed his eyes for a moment, his desire for this woman a molten river just waiting below the surface, but ready to erupt at the slightest provocation. He should let her go. He should walk away and spend the rest of her stay in polite, distant, reasonable proximity if he had any chance of escaping with his sanity. He was out of his depth, but it didn’t stop this strange pull inside him to plunge into the deep end and take a chance with her.

  “You told me you had no expectations, no demands on me while I am here,” she said, her lips now brushing the line of his jaw, spreading the fire of the words she whispered in his ear. “But I want to know what your demands are. I want to try to meet them.” Her teeth bit lightly on his earlobe, shooting sensations straight to his dick, which was now pressing against the flimsy fabric of his sweatpants. “Tell me what you want.”

  He lifted his hands to frame her face, weaving his fingers in her hair to anchor her in place, forcing her to continue looking at him. Damn, she was beautiful and dangerous, a threat to his tenuous hold on his reason. The past year had strung him out and he was at the breaking point.

  Fuck common sense.

  “I know what I want.”

  “What do you want, Teague?” Risa leaned in, brushing her lips against his with the weight of a whisper, and he knew that in spite of his grip on her, she was the one who was in control. “Throw out all your plans. Live in the moment, and tell me what you want. Not for your family or the firm, but you.”

  Her tongue was wet and warm against his lips, pressing lightly until he allowed her to enter for a slow, sweet kiss that promised him all he desired if he would just say the word. “Tell me what you want.”

  For one more night—fuck the plan.

  Teague took her mouth wanting, needing, to make her stop talking. She opened to his tongue as he swept inside her, tasting and devouring her breath with every press of their lips. Her hair was like a silken cord wrapped tightly around his fingers and he couldn’t tell if he held her or if she’d captured him. Her moan, deep and low, tore him open like an explosive blast, unleashing everything he’d kept bottled up inside him.

  “You make me so goddamn crazy.” He panted against her skin, tasting her sweet desire, soaking in her surrender. “You live so freely, but I know you’re holding things back, pushing me away.” He caught her lips in another kiss, swallowing her cry of passion. “But I can’t seem to shake you loose.”

  “What do you want, Teague?” She wouldn’t let it go. Risa tracked her hands down his chest, across his stomach, until her fingers curled around the waistband of his sweatpants. Her skin against his belly made him gasp with its heat and electricity. His body was on autopilot, his hips bucking forward until she responded to his silent request with the press of her palm against the hard, aching length of him. “I’ll leave soon and this will be over, but I’m here now. All you have to do is ask and you can have it. Anything you want.”

  “I want—” He swallowed hard, the images of what was to come making it difficult to speak with his heart clamoring in his chest. “I want your mouth on me.”

  Risa’s eyes flared at his request and his knees gave a little when she licked her lips at his demand. They stayed like that, eyes locked for several seconds, the only sound the ones of the appliances humming in the kitchen, a clock ticking in the entryway.

  He loosened his fingers from the tangle of her hair and placed them on her shoulders, pushing her down to her knees in front of him with a firm pressure. Risa went willingly, the silky skin of her exposed neck glowing in the amber light of the nearby lamp. Her hair was like fire, alight with her lust. Her fingers undid the tie, curled around the waistband, and lowered them, exposing his rigid cock to her touch. He was commando and the glide of her cool palm against the fevered skin of his dick shot up his spine and caused him to arch into her grasp.

  She released him, hooking her hands to pull his pants down until he was bare from his thighs upward, his penis jutting toward her in urgent supplication. He was so hard he had to grit his teeth through the ache, counting down from ten to keep from falling on her like a horny teenager.

  “Put me in your mouth, Risa. I want you to suck me.”

  She complied so sweetly, her willingness to take his direction in contrast with the wicked glint in her eye. Her wet heat closing over him was like an earthquake, rocking him on his feet until he had to lock his knees or face the possibility of falling over.

  He widened his stance, legs spread just wide enough to give him balance and to fit her squarely in the frame of his thighs. Teague stared down at her, lips wet and shiny, stretched over his cock as she sucked him in and out of her glorious mouth.

  “Damn, you’re so fucking gorgeous,” he said. Weaving his fingers in her tousled red curls, his palms cradling her head. His hips moved forward, the first tentative motions of fucking her mouth, her eyes fluttering shut as she hummed low in her throat. The vibrations of her noise surrounded his cock, pulsing in his balls and spreading warmth in his groin. Her hands traveled up his thighs, skimming over the skin of his hips to grasp his ass. The tingling left in the wake of her touch was eclipsed by the press of her fingers into his flesh and the unmistakable way she pulsed his hips forward to take him into her mouth.

  “Oh hell. Risa, baby.” Teague gasped as he rocked into her again and again. His body was dying to bury itself in her heat in time with the tattoo of his heart, and she welcomed it with every suck and swallow. He gritted his teeth, determined to remain in control in spite of her enticement to let it all go. “You aren’t real.”

  She was like his fantasy come to life and he wouldn’t be surprised if he woke in that shitty Vegas hotel room and discovered that the past few days had been a dream fueled by Jose Cuervo. He would wake up soon enough when she went back to Vegas, and he was shocked again by the increasingly frequent pang at the idea of her leaving. She didn’t belong in his world, but he wished she did.

  Risa took him deeper, sucking on him from where she kneeled at his feet. The strap of her negligee had slid down her arm, folding the material over her breast enough to expose her hard nipple. He swallowed convulsively, mouth watering, to taste that pink tip and draw on it until she cried out in pleasure. As if she read his mind, she reached up and squeezed the mound, rolling the peak between her fingers as her eyes locked with his own.

  He needed more. Maybe it was the whiskey. But right now the short distance between them was too much. He needed her closer now, needed to know they were in this together, that he wasn’t the only one caught up in this maelstrom of lust and uncharted emotion.

  “Come here,” Teague said as he leaned over and hauled her up by her arms, capturing her lips in an openmouthed kiss. He tasted himself there and his dick pulsed with the intensity of knowing he’d laid claim to her in that way.

  Breaking apart, he kicked off his pants, picking her up to wrap her legs around his waist as he walked down the hallway to his bedroom. He kissed her as they went, suddenly hungry for her mouth, making his way by instinct to the side of his bed. He released her, lowering her to the floor.

  “Lift your arms,” he said. When she complied, he reached down, grabbing big handfuls of the skirt of her negligee and pulling it over her head. Tossing it onto the floor, he stepped forward, capturing her face in the frame of his hands as he dove back in for another kiss, walking them backward until he could lower her onto her back on the cool cotton of his sheets.

  He released her again, his heart hammering in his chest at the sight of her laid out on his bed—naked and open for him. A quick dip into the drawer of his side table for a condom and he was covered before she had time to catch her breath. Settling in between her spread legs, sliding into her slick heat was effortless.

  Risa sighed deeply, throwing her head and arching her body into his own thrust until he was fully seated inside her. Hot. Wet. Tight. She was everything he could ever want. The thought of how impossible it was to keep her cut him like the
sharp end of a blade shoved just below his ribs.

  “You break me, every time,” Teague murmured against the skin of her shoulder, a sharp bite emphasizing the savage edge to his words. This was primal. This was elemental. This was beyond his control and he had no choice but to move inside her.

  …

  Risa gasped at the siege Teague was raging against her body.

  He was inside her—hard, deep, invasive. She’d lain in the dark for hours, her skin tight and sensitive as she replayed the evening with him. He’d been so kind, so intense, so accepting of her story. She was proud of how far she’d come and for him to recognize it and applaud it? It set into motion the slow descent that she’d been fighting since that night in Vegas.

  Teague was a man she could fall for—a man she was falling for—and she should be strong enough to fight her attraction. But she wasn’t.

  And now the battle was being won by his words. The raw, guttural edge to his confession almost too much to endure. She wanted to shut her ears and she wanted to strain to hear every last syllable.

  “You splay me open. You make me want things,” Teague continued in a low growl punctuated by the slow, deep thrusts inside her body. “I don’t want it. I can’t stop it. No matter what I do.”

  Risa had to look at him. Opening her eyes, she was caught in his stare, hazel eyes more green than anything and flashing with fire. She reached out, stroking his face with her fingertips, his shuddering exhale of breath vibrating against her skin.

  “I want you just like this. All the time.” Risa admitted. “I want to need you.”

  Teague rocked into her and her breath caught on the sparks of delicious pleasure rippling along her nerve endings as he hit the best spot.

  “Like this?” Teague slid his arms under her back, lifting her body at an angle that let him touch the deepest part of her. His pelvis grinding against her aching swollen clit with each motion in and out her body.

  “Yes.”

  The scents from his room filled her nostrils. His sharp cologne. The clean cotton underneath them. All of them blended with the fragrance of their lovemaking, sharp and musky, mixing with the sweat slicking their skin as they rocked against each other.

  “I’m going to keep you in my bed until you have to leave. I swear it,” Teague murmured against her lips, his tongue dipping inside to emphasize his point.

  “Teague,” Risa cried out at the spike of pleasure building in her belly. She was close. So close. Her body strained upward, nails digging into his back as she scrambled for purchase. Something to anchor herself to as the wave of ecstasy broke over her and coated every inch of skin, sizzled along every nerve ending. In the end she clung to the one thing that would suffice as her rock: Teague.

  She was in too deep with this man.

  His happiness, his future, was already too important to her. She’d defied Big Tony to protect him. She worried that she would take too much of him with her when she left. But that didn’t stop her from taking everything now.

  The muscles along Teague’s back grew rigid under her palms, the ripples of his orgasm traveling up and down in a shiver. He groaned, he cursed, he fucked her harder as he rode it out and prolonged her own. This was what they did best.

  The aftershocks of her orgasm made her muscles tremble, legs used to holding tight now slack and weak with the strain. She loosened her grip on his shoulder, surprised when Teague surged up on his forearms and took her mouth in a deep kiss. It was thorough, passionate, but edged with a sweetness that made her ache in the general vicinity of her heart. Risa looped her arms around his neck, pulling him closer as the kiss went on and on.

  Breathless, they parted, Teague sliding out of her body and disposing of the condom. He flopped back onto the sheets, his arm draped across her body as he stared at the ceiling. Risa watched him, her ears picking up on the sounds of the city outside his window.

  “I don’t understand what...” Teague broke the silence, his confusion clear in his tone and matching her own. “What the hell are we doing?”

  I’m falling for you. But she couldn’t say that to him.

  “We’ve always been attracted to each other. This is a detour.”

  “A detour. I like that.” He shifted the heavy weight of his hand to span her waist and it felt good to be grounded in this time and place by this man. “Not a permanent change to our path.”

  “Exactly. The two of us enjoying each other for as long as we have. Nothing more.”

  Chapter Twelve

  “We could just go to The Comfort for dinner,” Teague grumbled.

  Risa half turned, flashing an eye roll in his direction before turning back to the lettuce she was inspecting as though she was on the county health department payroll. She’d shown up in his office a half hour earlier wearing his favorite pair of ass-clinging yoga pants with a pronouncement that he had nothing to eat in the refrigerator. The next thing he knew he’d abandoned his review of the case file he desperately needed to complete, driven her out to the Harris Teeter, and was now following her around the store with the cart. The only explanation was the yoga pants. He was a sucker for those pants.

  “I’m tired of eating out all the time. I want to cook.”

  “You don’t have to cook.”

  She turned and placed the big head of leafy greens into the cart, placing a hand on her hip while she scolded him. “I said I want to cook. We’ve been out every night and I think we need a night in.”

  “We could order in and accomplish the same thing.”

  “Stop. No we couldn’t.” She turned away again, her hair a shiny tumble of red curls down her back. He leaned on the cart and admired the curve of her back, the graceful way she reached for a bunch of baby carrots. Every move she made reminded him that she was a dancer at heart. “I want to cook for you. It’s what normal married people do and I miss it.”

  He bit back the comment that they weren’t a normal married couple, conscious of the fact that their abnormality had felt damn good the last few days. Waking up with Risa, having her stuff all over the apartment, knowing she’d be there when he got off work. It was.... nice.

  “I didn’t know you could cook.”

  “I have many hidden talents,” she said with a wink and a smile that showcased the dimple on her left cheek. “There’s tons you don’t know about me.”

  That was the truth.

  “I think I know some things about you very well.”

  He loved making her blush. Her eyes widened and a pink tint colored her cheeks as she understood where his thoughts had immediately gone. It was hard not to think about Risa and all the time they’d spent between the sheets since returning from DC a couple of days earlier. The physical chemistry part of this charade was very, very real and he was enjoying himself as he hadn’t in a long time. But this was a chance to get know her outside of the bedroom.

  “So, spill some secrets.”

  “Oh no.” She shook her head as she placed the carrots in the cart. “You went to law school to learn how to ask the right questions. You ask and I might tell.”

  “Fine. Tell me how you learned to cook.”

  “Gloria. She was a great cook and tried to pass it on to me. It was nice to hang out with her in the kitchen and just be a normal kid for a while.”

  There was that word again.

  “Normal is overrated, I hear.”

  “Says the guy who had it his whole life.” She moved down the row of vegetables, reverently touching the groupings of broccoli, cauliflower, and something called broccolini. “I also learned a few things from a chef at the casino. He showed me recipes that I could make to impress my dates.”

  “Did it work?”

  “I don’t know. You’ll be the first guinea pig.”

  “Really?” He watched as she nodded, seemingly engrossed in the bundles of fresh herbs. “They must grow them stupid in Vegas.”

  “You don’t need to flatter me. But it will get you dessert.” She turned, walking backward as she tu
rned the tables on him. “So, tell me a secret.”

  “My favorite vegetable is brussels sprouts,” he said as he snagged a container of them and popped them in the cart.

  “That’s sad,” Risa said, leaning against the cart to halt his progress, “and not good enough. Tell me another. Something good.”

  Teague tamped down the first thing that came to his mind. It was too much. Too heavy. But he wanted to share it with somebody. He wanted to share it with Risa, even if they were in the produce aisle of the Harris Teeter.

  “I broke up my parents’ marriage.”

  Her smile disappeared at the same moment that the piped-in music over the sound system paused. It was as if the universe decided that his words needed extra emphasis—a highlight to the constant loop of self-flagellation that already played in his head.

  “No.” She stopped up short, grabbing the opposite end of the cart as she stared at him openmouthed, her expression hard to read.

  “Yes.” Teague let go of the cart and walked past her, tearing off a produce bag and filling it with a few green apples. He didn’t particularly care for them but he needed something to do with himself, something to distract him from the itchy feeling now creeping all over his skin. He didn’t like this—feeling raw and exposed—noting that he would avoid it in the future.

  “And how do you figure that’s true, Mr. Harvard Law Graduate?”

  “I’ve known since I was old enough to understand why man’s number one pursuit is to get in a woman’s panties that my father was having affairs on a pretty regular basis. Elliott is a small town and when people are talking about it all the time, you figure it out.”

  “That’s sad. For you, your mom, Taylor.”

  “It was what it was and I decided that it was my mother’s battle to fight. She pretended not to know, so I did, too.”

  “What changed?”

  Risa moved in closer and he knew she was watching him, examining his face as he laid out this story. He looked down at the apple in his hand, turning it over and over in his fingers, unable to look at her.