He simply held her for a moment or two without speaking, without moving, then she felt his palm soothing over her back.
“I know what it is to be hungry,” he said quietly. “I want you to eat. Okay?”
She nodded against his chest. She could hear the steady beat of his heart, the rumble of his voice through the dark-green T-shirt he was wearing. He smelled so good and she wondered what cologne it was he wore. The scent aroused her.
His hand moved up to cup her head—pressing it closer to him—and his other arm tightened around her waist.
“Are you afraid of me?” he asked, moving his hand to her neck. “Ah, you are. I can feel the blood pounding in this vein.” He traced it with his thumb. “I’m not going to hurt you, baby. I’m going to make you feel really good.”
Just as she began to relax against him, he released her and stepped back. “You may leave now,” he said then turned his back on her and walked back into the darkness, disappearing as though the room had swallowed him.
For a second or two she stared into the blackness beyond the shaft of light coming from overhead then angrily pursed her lips. She spun on her heel and marched to the door, savagely twisted the deadbolt open, yanked open the door then slammed it behind her as hard as she could.
He was trembling as he moved back to his chair. A raging hard-on stabbed at the front of his jeans and when the door slammed shut, he jumped.
“Temper, temper, little beaut,” he said then snorted.
Slowly he took a seat in the overstuffed wingback and put a hand to his crotch. He hurt he wanted her so badly. Feeling the treacherous organ leap at his touch, he snatched his hand away. He was determined to refrain from rubbing one out though he wanted to so badly he could taste the need in his mouth.
He laid his head along the back of the chair and closed his eyes. He had not instructed her not to wear perfume so she had. It was a light, delicate scent and it drove straight to his libido and did things to his groin that should have been illegal. He wanted to know precisely what brand that perfume was because he intended to buy a couple of gallons of it. It was all he ever wanted her to wear.
The image of her wearing nothing at all save the perfume made him groan.
His cock hard as steel and throbbing in his tight jeans, there was no way he could ignore the pain beating at him. More than ever he wanted her beneath him. He wanted to be tight inside her untried cunt, filling her with every inch of him. He wanted to fasten his lips on her nipples and suckle until she was moaning with the same depth of need goading him.
But it wasn’t time yet.
It wasn’t anywhere near time yet.
He groaned again and shifted uncomfortably in the chair. In denying her, he was denying himself but when the time came to take her, the wait will have been worth it.
She shoved the outside door open and hurried to the Town Car.
“Are you all right?” Jono asked. He had been leaning against the front quarter panel with his arms folded when she came bursting out of the building. He’d quickly straightened, arms going to his sides, eyes concerned.
“Just open the damn door,” she said, trying to hold back the tears that hovered behind her lids.
“What happened?” he asked as he pulled the door open for her then shook his head as though he realized he shouldn’t ask.
“I don’t want to talk,” she said as she threw herself into the car.
All the way back to her house, she stared out the window not seeing anything beyond the glass. Her lower body was aching. It felt heavy—damp—from his body having been pressed to hers. If just the touch of his body could cause such a reaction, she thought, what would his actual lovemaking do? What degree of unbridled lust would his hands on her cause?
A hard shiver ran through her at the thought of that hard bulge that had pressed so intimately against her. If that hardness was any indication of what lay behind the denim of his jeans, she knew she was in for a helluva wild ride.
Chapter Six
Night Three
She was surprised to see a straight-back chair placed within the cone of light. Bottom lip tucked between her teeth, she took her place in front of it, fingers twitching at her sides.
There was no wait this night.
“Unbutton your blouse.”
A quiver ran down her spine and heat pulsed between her legs at his words. She put her hands on the buttons and was working her way down them as he came out of the darkness. She lowered her eyes to the last button as she pulled her blouse from the waistband of her skirt.
“Look at me,” he ordered.
She brought her eyes back to him. He had stopped about two feet from her. Once more he was dressed in jeans—black this time—and a pale blue T-shirt with the national flag of New Zealand emblazoned across the front. She started to shrug out of the blouse.
“I didn’t tell you to take it off.”
She stopped—hands curled around the two sides of the blouse.
“Hands down,” he told her.
She did as he commanded.
One step and he was close enough to touch her. She watched his right hand come up and she tensed, held her breath.
He placed the tips of his fingers against the soft hollow at the base of her throat where she knew her pulse was racing like crazy. She knew because she could hear the thud of blood beating against her eardrums.
Slowly, he dragged his fingers down her chest to the front closure of her bra. He tipped his head slightly to the right then pushed her blouse to one side and over the lace cup of her bra, tucking it between the side of her breast and her arm. Unhurriedly, he molded his palm to her breast and gently squeezed. Though his palm wasn’t in contact with her nipple, she could feel it harden.
“I don’t like this bra,” he said, running his thumb along the underwire beneath her breast. “You should always wear lace and I hate these damn wires. A woman’s breasts should not be caged.”
She knew when she came home from work tomorrow, the bras he preferred would be delivered the same way the ton of groceries he’d ordered had been that morning.
She stopped breathing as he tightened his hold on her breast and twisted gently from side to side. A small smile tugged at the corners of his mouth and his eyes took on a boyish gleam of mischievousness as he stared at her breast.
“I love boobies,” he said and the word made her laugh despite the intensity of the moment. The moment his eyes flashed up to hers, she knew that had been the wrong thing to do. Her laughter stopped and the smile slid quickly from her face.
The warmth and impishness left his gaze. He glared at her for a few heartbeats then snatched his hand back.
“You may leave now.”
Frustrated, her breast tingling from his touch, the heaviness between her legs gripping her, she took a step away from the anger on his handsome face. The backs of her knees struck the wooden chair and had it not been for his quick reaction, she would have fallen backward over it. As it was, he snaked out a hand and grabbed her upper arm, pulling her to him to keep her from falling.
“Watch what the hell you’re doing!” he snapped. “You could have been hurt!”
She opened her mouth to tell him it was his fault she’d almost fallen but he moved so quickly all she could do was gasp as his mouth came down hard, his lips covering hers, his tongue thrusting boldly between her teeth.
The man knew how to kiss! Dear Lord did he know how to kiss! she thought as her knees buckled beneath his assault. Had he not been gripping her upper arms, she might well have sagged to the floor. The kiss was brutally hot and his tongue expertly probed her mouth. The heat and hardness of his body as he clutched her to him sent waves of sheer lust rippling through her cunt. She heard him groan and answered in kind as his kiss turned from hot to scalding. His hands slid from her arms to the sides of her face as he anchored her head—the better to press his mouth to hers.
She clung to him. Her fingers snagged in the back of his T-shirt. Peripherally she could
feel the tensing of the muscles in his back as he ground his lower body against hers.
He was feeding from her. Drawing from her. His mouth was sweet, his tongue wet and questing. The firmness of his lips covering her own was a heady experience in itself.
“Melina,” he whispered huskily against her lips then twisted his mouth over hers in the opposite direction.
She didn’t know what to call him. It wasn’t right that she didn’t know. She wanted to know his name. She had to know his name but she dared not ask.
Almost as though someone had thrown iced water over him, he jerked away from her, stumbling back with eyes wide and lips parted. He stared at her as though she would attack him then shook his head savagely.
“Leave,” he said in a deep, grating tone. “Leave now!”
His hands were opening and closing and he was dragging shallow, harsh breaths into his lungs. The look on his face disturbed her and she all but ran to the door. In her haste, she didn’t close it behind her. Instead of waiting for the elevator—she wanted to get away from the threat she’d seen stamped on his face—she shoved the door to the stairs open and hurried down them.
Scraping his hand over his short hair, he spun around and went to the laptop on the desk. He wanted to see her in the elevator. He needed to see her face. He needed to know how his kiss had affected her. But when he raised the lid and found the screen with the elevator empty—as well as the screen that showed the closed door of the cage—he hissed like a cornered panther with his lips drawn back from his teeth.
“You took the fucking stairs?” he shouted. “The stairs, Melina?”
There were no cameras in the stairwell. An oversight on his part but come tomorrow there would be.
His gaze shifted to the front door as she came running out of the building. He barely had time to type in instructions to switch one of the screens to an interior shot of the car before she collapsed in the seat—her hands over her face.
“Did he hurt you?” he heard Jono demand. His friend was leaning into the car, his hands on the door opening. “Lina, did he hurt you?”
“No,” she said. “Take me home, Jonny. Please?”
“Jonny? Lina?” he repeated silently and the snake of jealousy hissed and struck. When, he wondered, had she taken to calling him Jonny? How dare he call her Lina?
It didn’t matter, he thought.
He’d put a fucking stop to that shit!
“No, I didn’t fucking hurt her. Get in the goddamn car and take her home!” he yelled.
He watched with satisfaction as Jono flinched and slapped a hand to the ear bud nestled in his right ear. Jono turned his head and glared into the camera where only he and the installer knew it was as he yanked the ear bud from his ear.
“Knob head,” he saw Jono mouth before his friend shut the door and walked around to the driver’s side.
“Don’t you fucking call her by her given name again!” he shouted but he doubted Jono could hear him.
That was okay too. He’d have a talk with his friend before the night was through!
All the way home in the car, she shifted uncomfortably in the seat. Need—deep and abiding—had built between her legs and she knew of only one way to assuage it.
Chapter Seven
Day Four
“No session tonight.”
No explanation either, she thought as he hung up the phone. He’d sounded angry, but then again, he almost always did. Relieved and disappointed at the same time, she replaced the receiver and sat down at her kitchen table.
What now? she wondered. What was she to do with her evening?
She’d spent the day with Drew. In less than two months Friendship Manor would be closed and Drew would be moved either to a state-run home or—with any luck at all—Cedar Oaks. The premier long-term care facility was holding a bed for him and she knew that was because he had made it so. She suspected—though the officious woman at CO would not admit to it—that he had already paid for Drew’s place there.
“You’ve got more confidence in me staying the course than I do, Sir,” she mumbled as she swiped at some crumbs on the tabletop that she’d missed with the dishrag.
Sir.
The word poked at her like a stick to a wasp nest. It kept buzzing around in her head and she was beginning to hate the title.
“There’s got to be a way I can find out who the hell you are,” she said.
How did one go about finding out the identity of someone if you didn’t know their name?
“Fingerprints,” she said. “DNA. Facial recognition.”
All the ways the guys from NCIS and CSI would go about it, she thought with a snort. None of which she had access to.
But she did have a computer and the World Wide Web was only a few keystrokes away.
“I’ll bet you own that office building if not the entire park,” she said. “Why didn’t I think about that before?”
Getting up, she hurried into the living room and over to her desk. The computer was already on, connected to the internet. She pulled out her chair, sat down and put her hands on the mouse. Instantly the black screen gave way to her Hotmail homepage. She noticed she had three messages but ignored them as she moved the mouse to the address bar so she could type in the address.
“I don’t know the address,” she said with a whimper.
And not because she hadn’t tried to discover it, she thought. She knew how to get to the office park but she’d never seen any street signs off the Morrison Parkway. She’d seen no building numbers or names. At night, the only building out there that had any manner of lighting was the one to which Jonny took her. If there were numbers and names they would have been hidden in the darkness. The trouble was she’d scanned the building she visited each night and had never seen number or name attached to it.
She might not know the name of the office park but she did know how to get to those buildings!
Chapter Eight
Day Five
“Are you sure we’re in the right place?” Rachel asked the next morning.
She’d asked Rach to pick her up an hour early for work just so she could go by the office park, lying to her about the reason for the visit.
“I don’t see anything that even closely resembles a nursing facility.”
They were driving slowly through the office park where cars were parked in nearly every available spot. Unfortunately the buildings had no names or numbers on them.
“Aren’t all buildings supposed to have numbers or names on them?” she asked Rachel. “Isn’t that required by law?”
“There are numbers,” Rachel said.
She turned to gape at her friend. “Where? I don’t see any.”
Rachel lifted her hand and pointed a finger upward.
“Damn,” she said, noticing the numbering on the black roofs of each building. At night, those numbers would not be seen unless illuminated by the two spotlights on either side of the numbers. She knew he’d had them turned off for that very reason. “Sneaky bastard.”
“What?” Rachel asked.
“Nothing. Just keep going.”
“We’re not in the right place. This looks like a strip mall, Lina,” Rachel complained.
“I’m sure this is where I was told to come,” she said, compounding the lie. “Right around this next corner.”
Rachel turned the corner and there was the correct building.
“469 Saur Rd.,” she said as she looked at the roof.
“That is not a long-term care facility,” Rachel said. “Whoever gave you the information was either drunk or shining you on.”
“I can see that,” she agreed. “Let’s go, then. I’ll call their number when I get to work.”
* * * * *
“Well if you have the address and know where to look there are apps on the net where you can do property searches. I can’t guarantee you can find out the owner’s name but at least you can learn what corporation owns it,” Steve told her at lunch. “Want me to loo
k something up for you?”
“Would you?” she asked. “I’ve got just enough computer savvy to do my job. I wouldn’t have a clue how to go about finding out who owns that building.”
“What’s the addy?” he asked. He wrote it down on his napkin when she gave it to him. “I’ll use my phone since I can’t use my computer at work. Give me ‘til the end of the day.”
“You’re a sweetheart,” she said and meant it. “What kind of cake do you like? I’ll bake you one.”
His eyes took on a smoldering look. “I’d rather have a date,” he said smoothly.
Never in a million years would she have imagined a player such as Steve Ingram would ever ask her out. She was surprised.
“You aren’t seeing anyone are you?” he pressed.
She shook her head. “Not really.”
“Then how ‘bout I pick you up tonight and we get a bite to eat? Maybe take in a movie?” he asked.
She thought of the nightly sessions that rarely lasted longer than half an hour.
“I don’t know…”
“Just supper,” he said.
He had said nothing about her dating other men. She thought that might have been an oversight on his part but as long as he hadn’t expressly forbidden her to date, she saw no reason why she couldn’t. There was no chance she’d be giving any other man what he was expecting her to hand over to him.
“It would have to be late,” she said. “After nine and I doubt you’d want to wait that long to eat.”
“Nine it is,” Steve said, his white-toothed grin pleased. “Where you wanna go to eat?”
* * * * *
“Sit down and unbutton your blouse,” he instructed. She gave him an odd look—one that bordered on concern—but put her fingers to her blouse and took a seat in the straight-back chair. As each button gave way, he felt his cock stir in anticipation of what he intended. When she was finished undoing the blouse, he told her to drop it to the floor beside her.
Beneath the spotlight, the flesh of her bare shoulders and the tops of her breasts, the expanse of her body from the edge of the expensive lace bra to the waistband of her skirt gleamed with a light sheen of perspiration. It was hot under the light and he had purposefully turned the heat up in the room because soon she would be bare from the waist up.
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