Free Wicked Lies: A Dark Mission Novella by Karina Cooper Page A

kid was . . . hell, he was just a kid. “No,” he rasped as Danny’s lips skimmed the edge of Jonas’s jaw and lowered to nuzzle the sensitive skin beneath his ear. Every brush of skin on skin, every breath, tugged like fingers around his erection. Hard and sharp and so good. So wrong.
    Danny’s teeth scored over the side of Jonas’s neck.
    He squeezed his eyes shut. “No,” he whispered, half a guttural groan. The muscles of Jonas’s arms locked. One straight at his side, the other still buried in the other man’s sweatshirt. “Danny, stop.”
    Dark head lifting, Danny studied his face, eyes bright. Fever bright, but it wasn’t illness riding him now; Jonas could all but taste it between them. Knew how good it could be. Lose themselves for an hour or two, indulge in sweat and skin and nothing until the hurt, the memories, washed away.
    He knew that road. Danny was too good for it.
    “You’re telling me no,” Danny said huskily, one thumb tracing Jonas’s cheekbone. A knee hit the sofa, and Jonas’s breath shuddered as the warmth of Danny’s leg cradled his hip. So close. “But you’re the one pulling me in, Jonas.”
    “Oh, God.” He was. The hand at Danny’s back strained, not to push him away but to bring him closer. Harder. Keep him trapped, his weight solid and real and everything Jonas wanted.
    This kid. This man.
    Eyes gone bottomless, knowing, strong , Danny reached back, captured Jonas’s fist in his. A tug, a gentle twist, and Jonas’s fingers twined with his. Palm to palm. “I’m not complaining,” he whispered. “Kiss me, angel.”
    “I’m not—I can’t be—”
    Danny’s laughter undid him. Throaty and sexy, wickedly sharp. He bent his head, slid his lips against Jonas’s again. Slow, lingering. The flesh of his bottom lip caught against Danny’s, elicited a ragged groan that might have been his own. Jonas couldn’t tell. He didn’t know if he was breathing, if his heart still beat.
    All he knew was—
    Now.
    Jonas found himself reaching out with his one free hand, hooking his fingers into Danny’s collar. Twisting them as Danny’s tongue slid between his lips, stroked against his. Warm, wet. A sweet appetizer to the fire in his gut, and suddenly, Jonas couldn’t wait. Didn’t want to wait.
    Burned out of excuses.
    His back strained as he straightened, struggled to meet Danny’s mouth with his, to push into him. His hips tilted against the cushions, unconscious demand, and Danny sank to his knees on either side of them. The weight of his body, firm but not crushing, registered on every level.
    “No,” he rasped as Danny licked the underside of his jaw. “No promises. No—God, yes .” Fingers tight in Jonas’s hair, Danny’s mouth descended on the ragged pulse at his neck. Teeth closed over the muscle, tongue swirling over the tender flesh, and Jonas groaned as every nerve from forehead to dick to heels lit up like a bonfire.
    “Jonas.” A growl in his ear.
    “What?”
    “Stop talking.” Danny’s hips shifted. The first brush of the rigid line of his erection against Jonas’s broke him.
    And then he forgot all about pain and balance and good deeds and age. He forgot about all the reasons he couldn’t do this, forgot the line he tried so hard to draw in the quicksand at his feet. His fingers fumbled at Danny’s waistband, not fast enough, and he dimly heard laughter as he struggled to get the man’s pants off. Was it his own? Why couldn’t he tell the difference?
    Why didn’t it matter?
    Lust rode Jonas’s brain, a need sharper than he’d ever known.
    Somehow, Danny’s jeans peeled off. The sweatshirt followed, leaving the athletic man outlined in the unforgiving lamplight. It traced his muscles, taut with youth and sculpted by days spent doing . . . whatever it was he did . . . It didn’t matter. Jonas didn’t care. His gaze skimmed the man’s long limbs, his sculpted chest beneath the bandage and his trim waist, the dark thatch of hair