He shook his head. “No, my folks just didn’t give a shit.” He let out a bitter laugh. “At least Sam’s mother made an effort at giving her kid a decent life before a bullet got in the way.” He’d changed the subject back to Sam, and Ariana knew that’s all she was likely to learn about him for now.
But that was okay, since she’d plumbed unexpected depths and gained a deeper understanding of what made him tick. She still couldn’t put all the pieces together, but she’d made a start.
“Social Services will have no choice but to place her in a group home filled with mostly troubled teens. But she needs love and stability and she sure as hell won’t find it there.” He rubbed the heel of his hand over his eyes.
“Maybe another couple that can’t have kids will want a teenager?” she asked hopefully.
He shook his head. “Not likely. Sam’s got so many strikes against her I don’t know where to begin.”
“What else is there besides her age?”
He cocked his head to one side. “You met the kid, so you shouldn’t have to ask. She’s a wiseass for one thing, and you experienced her petty-theft tendencies firsthand.”
“But underneath it all, she just wants to be loved. Surely somebody will see past the facade,” Ariana said. She had seen past it the first time they’d met.
Quinn shook his head again, his eyes wide with obvious disbelief. “You don’t really buy into that humanity crap, do you? Not everybody’s got the rosy family you do.”
She bit her cheek to keep herself from giving him a wise-guy comeback about her family, because he was right. At least she’d had a loving home to grow up in. “Okay, I get your point, but there’s got to be a solution.”
“I wouldn’t leave my dog with half the applicants on this list, and besides, they’re looking for younger kids. Anyone who’d consider a teen will be hard pressed to take her, given her history.”
“But she’s got reasons for the way she acts.” Ariana knew she was grasping at straws, but like Quinn, she already cared about Sam.
His anguished gaze met hers. “The reason she acts out doesn’t matter. The facts in the reports do.” With a wave of his hand, he trashed the papers, sending them sprawling to the floor. “I’m going to have to work on Felice and Aaron, because nobody decent wants a troubled teen.”
In Quinn’s gaze, in his expression and in his posture, Ariana could see traces of the little boy who had once been in the same position as Sam. He still remembered being the kid nobody wanted.
But he wasn’t that teen anymore, he was a man. A man whose hurt she wanted to ease and who she desired more with each breath she took. Knowing it wasn’t wise, she reached out anyway and placed a hand on his shoulder, a safe distance away from the hair-roughened chest that interested her so.
His heated stare locked with hers and she realized there was no safe place to touch or to run. There was no way to escape from her mounting desire for this complicated man.
He leaned closer, his lips hovering near hers. Every time she inhaled, she smelled his masculine scent and her ni**les puckered tighter against her stretch tee. Desire pulsed inside her, and from the fire burning in his gaze, he needed her, too.
“This is crazy,” she said softly.
He nodded in agreement. “Then walk away.”
“I can’t.” Once again it was that simple.
She didn’t know who kissed who first, but finally, blessedly, his lips were on hers, hot, devouring, demanding, and giving her exactly what she’d yearned for.
They were combustible and the fire between them flared out of control. Her hands started at his waist, slid upward, her fingers trailing over his skin and taking in every contour and sensation. His flesh was smooth to the touch, made coarser by the liberal sprinkling of hair. And everywhere she touched, his skin was aflame.
He held her head in place with one hand and all the while his tongue dipped and swirled inside her mouth, setting the pace. One she gladly matched. He was a man who obviously liked being in control, and if it made her feel this good, she didn’t mind allowing him the liberty. Not as long as she could take a few of her own, and she did, as her hands came to rest over his chest, his hard ni**les spearing her palms. He let out a slow groan of intense satisfaction and she took pleasure in knowing she could affect him as easily as he did her.
His lips slid over hers, then down her neck. “You drive me insane.”
“You do the same to me.”
With shaking hands, he pulled her top high around her midriff until he cupped her br**sts in his hands. He’d anticipated her need, as he fed her hunger, his warm hands plumping and kneading her aching flesh. His hands worshiped her br**sts and desire pulled a straight path to her center while a rush of liquid trickled between her legs.
A pulse beat harder in her throat as waves of temptation beckoned to her. He caressed and plucked her ni**les with his fingertips, each movement creating a pull of exquisite desire throughout her body. She realized she was trembling, her hips gyrating in time to his unspoken commands.
He understood what she desired and pulled her onto his lap. Though it took some adjusting, she managed to straddle his legs, her thighs bracketing his. Her skirt inched up and only a thin scrap of cotton and his denim jeans provided a barrier between mutual, aching need. As his erection pressed warm and full between her legs, a delicious heat spread through her. She tipped her head back and let out a slow moan, allowing the pleasurable sensations to infuse her body, mind, and spirit.
“Let go,” he whispered in her ear. “Let me make you come.”
She had no doubt he could. Without him ever touching her there, he had the ability to make her lose control. But that was the thought that cut into her pleasure and forced her to think instead.
Her control was the very thing that had kept her sane. She had always held herself in check, deliberately forced composure because doing so distinguished her from her family. Her more dramatic, emotionally freer, bordering-on-crazy family. Control distinguished her from her twin.
Their moment had passed and Ariana scrambled off him, pulling down her skirt as she moved. “I can’t do this.”
She’d come here to question Quinn about Zoe. Instead she’d taken one look at his distraught face, seen his pain over Sam, and fallen into his arms with no questions asked.
He met her gaze, looking as shell-shocked as she felt. But he wasn’t the one who’d made a mistake. She had. Because while she was sitting in Quinn’s hotel room, shirt and skirt hiked up, br**sts bared, her precious control nearly shot to hell, her sister was missing.