“I didn’t think of it that way.” And she wasn’t sure she wanted to.
“You should.” Gena dropped her hand and headed for the door. “We’ll celebrate after we both get a few hours of sleep.”
Kyra realized the knocking was the sound of her tapping foot and stopped. “Believe it or not, I know what I’m doing.”
After holding at the door, Gena glanced over her shoulder. “You’re not the one I’m wondering about.”
TEN
The next day had gone to hell before eight in the morning. More than ten hours later Bast had corrected all the misdirection and cleaned up the fallout from every client explosion. It was as if the good people of DC had lost their minds. So much complaining, and one businessman after another who wanted out of problems without writing a big check. Talk about not understanding how the power game was played in this town.
The worst news came a half hour ago. Natalie insisted on coming in today instead of tomorrow as scheduled. He half expected her to show up in his doorway demanding his attention. That’s the way she operated. She didn’t give people the opportunity to say no. She hovered and swooped when you weren’t looking. Bast admired the strategy.
If a man acted the same way, he’d be praised for his strategy. Natalie took a lot of flak for being tough and smart. For all the forward strides, the CIA remained a boys’ club, run by powerful men and some who wished they were, hampered by archaic thinking. Things were changing but not fast enough for Natalie to get the credit she deserved.
Bast knew because he’d negotiated the deal for Elijah and Becca with Natalie in the room. She asked the right questions and pushed for concessions at the right time before talking about letting two valued agents—her words—go. She played every move as Bast would have done. Didn’t concede much and stayed focused.
Her male superiors underestimated her and talked around her. Bast didn’t make that mistake. He recognized her power and refused to attend any meeting without her being present and signing off on the deal. But that didn’t mean he wanted to see her now.
No, he mapped it all out. He’d head over to Kyra’s place in about an hour. Tuck her in his car and get her to his home and into bed, then keep her there. No clothes. No limits. No talk of anything except what he intended to do to her.
A simple plan.
Natalie ruined all of that. She talked about an emergency that heightened her concern for her safety. For a woman like Natalie to divulge even that much meant the walls were about to come down around her. Bast had a soft spot for her. One that took some time to develop, but it existed. Which meant all the things he wanted to do to Kyra had to wait.
After asking his assistant to hold his calls and shutting his door and locking it against the buzz of activity in the office halls and the conference room a few doors down, Bast lifted the receiver and punched in Kyra’s cell number.
She picked up on the second ring. “Are you downstairs already?”
Wrong conclusion. He really had to work on the shitty treatment she accepted from guys in the past. “When I pick you up, I’ll park the car and come to the door.”
“Not the honk-the-horn type?”
“Not for about fifteen years.” The scratchy sound on the line registered. When he realized she sounded breathless his mind went to a dirty place. “What exactly are you doing?”
Her long exhale echoed in his ear. “How can you tell I’m doing anything?”
“My hearing is fine and your breathing is all harsh and hot.”
“Smart-ass.”
The labored breathing continued but he also heard the smile in her voice. She had to know the breathy thing would do something to him. He wouldn’t be surprised if she saw his number and got all flustered just to torture him. If so, point to Kyra because all he could think about now was her body stretched out across her bed with him over her.
He decided to share. “You sound like you did when you begged me to fuck you faster.”
A beat of silence filled the line. “Are you really at work?”
Yeah, the sex talk on work time surprised him, too. He only intended to call and talk scheduling. Now his mind wandered to a much hotter place.
“In my big office with the door closed.” He leaned back in his chair and brushed a hand up and down his leg as the sudden need to keep moving hit him.
“Well, aren’t you naughty?” The breathiness fell away and that husky fuck-me-now tone took its place.
He loved that sound. “I plan to be very soon.”
“What time are you coming over?”
He could hear her moving around. Her voice cut from soft to loud as if she kept shifting the cell in her hand. The temptation to stall by asking her what she was doing came and went. He needed to spell this out. “That’s the problem. I can’t.”
“Why?”
“Scheduling issue.”
“Okay.” Her voice boomed through the phone. So did her anger.
“Wow.” His chair squeaked as he rolled closer to the edge of his desk and leaned on his elbows. “It’s amazing how that one word managed to telegraph ‘you’re an ass’ and ‘I’m going to castrate you’ at the same time.”
“Picked up on that, did you?” The sharp whack of her voice made her point.
“I have a work emergency.” He kept the response simple and clear. She should understand and—
“Uh-huh.”
Son of a bitch.
Frustration smacked into him with an edge of anger right behind. People might not like him or want to deal with him, but they trusted him. He didn’t fuck around when negotiating and never screwed anyone by playing a bait and switch. Yet the woman he wanted to strip naked and keep that way doubted him.
“You think I’m lying.” Every time he thought it his temperature rose a degree.
“Are you?”
That time he heard another sound in her voice. Maybe hurt. He wasn’t sure but now he wondered about the men who came before him. Maybe younger guys threw her lousy pickup lines. The dumbasses. The whole playing-games part of being with someone turned Bast off. He said what he meant and expected to be treated the same way.
Tiptoeing through this minefield would be tough because he could guess the thoughts spinning through her mind. He went with the response least likely to get him kicked in the balls later. “No.”
“That’s succinct.”
“Do you need me to have my law partner write you a note verifying my absence? He’s out of town but maybe he could fax it in.” When she didn’t say anything, not even a “no thanks” to his sarcasm, Bast stomped down his rising anger and tried again. “Well?”
“I’m still thinking.” But some of the heat left her voice.
“This is one of those cases that impacts a lot of people.”
“Including me, apparently.” She huffed as the moving sounds started again.
“Listen to me.” His hand tightened on the phone as he focused on the streaks of color in the painting directly across from him on the wall. “We will push the dinner back one night. That’s all I’m talking about.”
This kind of thing happened when people met up to have sex. Schedules got messed up and changes had to be made. No big deal . . . yet part of him sensed it was.
“That means I have to change shifts again.”
She didn’t say “duh” but he sensed it. He also hated putting her through a game of musical shifts. That amounted to a big mess, annoying for her and the other attendants at the club. No one liked the person who kept moving schedules around and ensured nothing ever stayed settled. Bast knew that from the in-fighting that occurred every year at the firm as they attempted to work out office coverage over the holidays. The posturing made him sorry to be managing partner.
“Okay, the shift thing sucks. I get that.” He closed his eyes and cursed Natalie. If her life literally wasn’t
on the line, he’d push her off and go through with his plans.
“Imagine how I feel.”
“I want to spend the whole night with you.” Since he fucked up the leaving part so badly last time, he needed things to go right or this arrangement could end before he had the chance to explore more of her. And he could go a lifetime without seeing a repeat of the expression she shot him early this morning as he reached for his shirt to go. The one that didn’t match their casual understanding.
“What are the chances of you canceling again tomorrow?”
“Zero.” No hesitation. That was the goddamn answer. “We’ll have dinner at my place tomorrow and—”
“Don’t talk about sex when I want to gut punch you.”
“You do?”
She barked out a rough laugh. “For a guy who’s supposed to be such a big-time ladies’ man, you’re being a bonehead.”
“This won’t be the last time, so you might want to get used to it.” But it was time to get them back on the sex track. “But maybe there is a way I can make you feel better.”
“That sounds like a lame line.”
“Trust me.”
“A little warning here, there are any number of things you could say next that will ruin your admittedly slow forward progress in our relationship.”
He decided to ignore the word “relationship” and smile anyway. “Like?”
“I’m not a woman you bribe.”
He had no intention of doing that. Exact opposite. His idea would be fun for both of them. “What about seduce?”
“I’m listening again.”
The catch in her voice let him know she was on the hook. “What were you doing when I called?”
“Honestly?”
He thumped his fingers against his desk. The steady beat gave him focus as he fought for control. “That is always how I want you to answer my questions.”
“Okay, Mr. Lawyer Man.”
The way she shot back and verbally sparred with him turned him on almost as much as those legs. She opened her mouth and his temperature spiked and his dick got hard. The thing where she didn’t take any shit made him wild to have her. She carried her body and held her ground with a confidence well beyond how he remembered being when he was twenty-something.
“I’m serious.” At this point he was more curious than serious.
“I was on the treadmill.”
Not really the answer he expected. “What?”
“The thing by the window was not, as you may have thought from the stack of shirts, a clothes rack.” She mumbled something unintelligible under her breath. “I cleaned it off for once and used it. Well, technically, I used it for eight minutes, then I saw your number on my cell. Thanks for the diversion even though the subject of this call kind of sucks.”
That was a lot of words. Almost amounted to babbling. He tried to wade through it all. “Why would you have a treadmill and not use it?”
“Laziness, maybe? I have no idea.”
“Yet you look like that.” One of the benefits of being younger and possessing a speedy metabolism, he guessed. If he went days without exercise, his brain got clouded and his gut expanded. “Must be nice.”
“What?”
“Nothing.” He’d be damned if he knew what she was trying to tell him, or not tell him. “I guess I’m wondering why you turned it on all of a sudden today.”
She sighed. Even miles away and over a phone line he knew what the noise meant. Something about men being slow and clueless, and him being their idiot king.
“Because I plan to get naked and slide all over you tonight and pretended one day of exercise would tighten up the not-so-tight parts.” This time she snorted. “Scratch that. I planned to do that. I may as well go eat a brownie now.”
He ignored the shot because it was crap. The rest could only be described as unbelievable. She had to be fucking kidding. He looked at her ass and could barely form words. He entered her and his brain malfunctioned. And she was over there worrying about calories. The whole idea she didn’t see what he saw made him lose his mind.
Trying not to yell because he was already hanging on the edge of never having sex with her again due to the cancellation, he stated his case. “So that we’re clear here, you do not need to change your body in any way for me.”
“Decent guys always say things like that.”
“This one means it.” She just didn’t give an inch. Women rarely made it this hard on him. He had to admit he didn’t hate the change of pace with Kyra. Being challenged suited him. “I think my reaction to seeing you naked should tell you I love everything about how you look.”
“Okay, you’re forgiven for being a dumbass earlier.”
If she said one word about a diet, he would drag her over to the club and sit her down for a lecture, then let all of their friends have a turn. “I’m also serious. Do not change one thing for me, except maybe your insistence on wearing underwear. You can knock that off.”
“I’ll take that request under advisement.”
Time to get back to the other reason for his call. The one that rose up after he heard her voice. “So, what are you wearing now?”
Her laughter filled the line. “Dirty old man.”
“Damn straight.” No way would he back down now. “Tell me.”
“An exercise bra and bicycle shorts. In other words, an outfit I would never wear outside my apartment.”
Funny but he wanted to see her in it. Look and then peel it off piece by piece. “You shouldn’t be wearing it now either.”
“You mean . . .” The breathless quality returned but this sounded different. Deeper . . . sexier.
“Are you all sweaty?” In his mind she was. Sweaty and half naked and two seconds away from getting on her knees in front of him.
“Let me run my hand over my chest and see . . . Well, look at that. I’m wet.”
The inflection in her voice. The soft draw that let him know her thoughts mirrored his own. He loved that she played the game with him. “You should take the clothes off so you don’t get sick.”
“It’s summer.”
“It can happen. I’ve read studies.”
“You like stories?” She let out a soft sigh. “Tell me one.”
He had a vision in his head and followed that. “I only know dirty ones.”
“Maybe I should lie down for this.”
Sweet damn, he wished he was in her apartment. He’d have her on her stomach in two seconds. Pushing back against him, begging for his cock to enter her, in five.
He’d have to settle for getting her naked and wet. “But you need to take those clothes off first so you don’t get the sheets all sweaty.”
“I have to put the phone down to take off the bra.”
All good answers. “Put it on speaker.” Because he wanted to hear every move and she was going to need her hands free.
So was he.
Dropping his cell on the desk, he hit a button and let the sound of her rough breathing fill the room. With his hands free, one went to his lap.
“I can wait.” But he really couldn’t. He craved that gruff rumble in the back of her throat. She didn’t scream when she came—not yet—but that damn noise set his blood on fire.
“Done.”
“Are your breasts—”
“Tits.” She sounded so naughty, so tempting, when she used the word.
“Very good. Are your tits all wet with sweat? Rub them and see.” He closed his eyes and pictured her smooth skin. The way they fit his palms. “Hold them in your hands.”
She let out a little groan. “They feel good.”
“Massage them to make sure.” He rubbed a hand over his crotch. “Swirl your fingers over the nipples.”
“So good.”
“Harder.” He heard her mumble some
thing but he needed her gasping. “I don’t think you’re giving them enough attention.”
“I am.” Her breath hiccupped.
It was as if she wanted to torture him. “If I were there, I’d push your breasts together and suck on those nipples until you screamed.”
“Come over.”
“I can’t but it doesn’t matter because you’re touching them for me.” The temptation to get in the car and race over there rocked through him. “Imagine my hands under yours, right against your bare skin.”
“I love your hands.”
He wanted her brain misfiring as she fought for words and shifted on the bed. “Squeeze them together.”
She groaned. “You should see them.”
“I remember.” He could feel them without even touching them. “I remember every delicious part of you. How your skin turns pink and your hips come off the mattress as you get excited.”
“It’s happening now.” The words slurred together.
He had to move to the next step or risk losing it right there. “Now your pants. Your underwear . . . are you wearing any?”
Hints of shuffling filled the line. “White cotton.”
Sounded sexy to him. On her, he’d take her in anything. “They’re probably wet and tight.”
“So uncomfortable.”
His hand clamped down on the armrest of his chair. “Shove them down. All the way off. Clothes will get in your way.”
“Why?”
Man, she did dirty well. The questioning tone and mock innocence. She played the role and revved him up. And if he didn’t have her again soon, he’d rip walls apart in frustration.
“You know why, Kyra. Don’t be naughty.”
The deep laugh echoed through the phone. “But I love being naughty.”
“Answer me. Are they off?” He pressed his palm against his pants and rubbed the ridge of his erection. “You need to be naked.”
“I am.” She made a sound that suggested she stretched out and loved the sensation of it.
“Should I believe you?” Fuck, with his eyes closed he could see her, even smell her.
“You should come see me.” She cut off to treat him to a series of soft moans. “My tits are so sensitive. So ready for you.”
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