by Trudy Doyle
His eyes close, finally releasing me. He shoves his hands in his coat pockets, looking down. “I’m sorry,” he whispers.
Stunned isn’t a strong enough word. “What could you possibly have to be sorry about!”
He huffs. His hands come out from his pockets, fisted. “You almost got killed tonight,” he says, his voice hard, unforgiving. He swallows. “You almost got killed tonight and I was there and this is why— You see, this is why—” He stares at me so intently I can’t breathe. “Pam, this is why I’m not a cop anymore.”
Oh my God. I get it, and my heart is breaking. He thinks he’s failed me. But knowing my own conceit and let’s face it—stupidity, I certainly don’t deserve such homage. But what greater honor could this wonderfully honorable man give me? I’m humbled beyond words. Still, I can’t let him feel this way. I know I’m not worth it. Yet telling him that would only belittle the way he feels, and there’s nothing little about this man. So I break the tension in the only way I know how, this funny girl, this woman of a thousand laughs. I grab the lapels of his coat, pulling him down, his face just inches from mine. “Listen, Tanaka, are you sure that after twenty years it wasn’t just for the pension?”
He cocks his head, staring at me, and for a moment I’m terrified I made a horrible mistake. But then the tiny lines raying out from those remarkable eyes crinkle and suddenly his arms are around me and he’s raising me up, higher and higher until I’m looking down on him, my hands braced on his shoulders, his eyes shining up at me as my lips hover inexplicably over his.
“Pam,” he whispers, pulling me to him, the world falling away.
Chapter Seven
There are times when I’ve wondered how much I really know about myself. Now that might seem like a ridiculous statement, but if you take into consideration our capacity for surprise, our ability to act out of the ordinary, especially when we find ourselves in situations where we have to ask, My God, how did I get here? then maybe you know what I mean. Because when Roark lifted me off my feet and kissed me, a whole other woman than Pamela Flynn kissed him back.
I pull away, staring at him, his scent surrounding me. There’s a hunger in his eyes and a curl to his lip that should scare me but it doesn’t. That should send me howling down the block clutching my coat tighter, but instead I want to strip myself bare. The fog’s rolling in from the river and it wraps around us like soup, and all I can see is Roark in front of me, closing in, bearing down. I put one hand to his shoulder and another around his neck and pull him to me. He growls, his mouth once again on mine.
His lips are surprisingly soft for such insistence; they taste of mint and a strong dose of lust. His tongue slides into my mouth to collide with mine, my mind blanking from the bliss of it. His hands are on my face, stroking my cheeks, my temples, slipping to my neck, shivers running rampant through my body, his tongue delving ever deeper. I press myself against him, my nipples hardening against his wide, taut chest, his hands slipping down to cup my bottom. He growls again, squeezing my copious posterior, and I swirl my hips, riding his hands, reveling in it.
He breathes hard, drawing me against him, biting my neck, his fingers kneading my ass as I grind my hips to his. I can feel his cock growing. And growing and growing and growing. My hand falls to it and he flinches as if he’s been shocked, pushing it aside. “Not yet,” he says gruffly, and he turns me around, my backside against the knotted muscles of his thigh, his hand at my zipper, yanking down.
My breath catches; his hand slides under my panties and then his fingers are against me, gliding lower. My head falls back against his shoulder and I can feel him spreading his long legs to shorten his reach, pressing his cock against me as his fingers find my clit. I jolt against him and he laughs low and sultry, flicking away as I sway with heat and a pleasure almost painful. He delves deeper, circling the periphery, and I groan as his finger flicks and circles, faster and faster, his cock hard as iron as my motion begs for the very invasion he’s denying me.
“Oh please…” I whisper, my hips twisting, my clit throbbing, my panties soaked through to my jeans. Suddenly his fingers ease off and he circles my pulsing clit once, twice, slowly, agonizingly tracing my opening, so ready and waiting his invasion. Then, in the space of one breath, he stops, gauging my sweet torment.
“Roark,” I feel the mist on my face as I shiver in the fog, breaking out in a sweat. What he’s done to me all week in my fantasies has become too real, as again I’m pushed to the brink. And I’d like to go out of my mind.
“Please…” I groan, begging for release. “Please…”
Suddenly one finger dives inside me, the other sliding against my clit, and I buck against him, an electric charge shooting through me. I explode with an orgasm near blinding and collapse into his hand, riding it out. But before the last waves leave me he throws my coat aside and yanks my jeans down. I brace myself against the shelter’s Plexiglas wall as I hear his belt jangle open and his zipper go down, and like a call to nature, I tilt myself up. In answer, he takes hold of my hips and drives his cock home.
As the unreal length of him sinks in, as he fills me completely, his breath ragged as he starts to move, I tell myself I am a virgin. Because out of all the men whom I’ve fucked or who have fucked me, not one of them ever made me feel like I do right now. I’m frantic for the feel of his skin against mine, inside mine, his hot, pulsing flesh overtaking me, and I’m terrified by the need yet utterly insatiable for it. He pounds me relentlessly, one large, fiery hand leaving my hip to grab hold of a shelter beam, and I arch myself even higher, hungry for every impact.
When has it ever been like this? Never, I’m sure. His hand slides over my ass, stroking and caressing, a finger slipping in between my cheeks and I almost lose it, my palms sweaty and shaking against the Plexiglas wall. I can hear his cock ramming in and out of me, and I can’t help thinking it must be massive as I feel stretched to the limit, every inch of me on fire as I imagine my mouth around it, swallowing his full length, his velvety balls rolling between my fingers.
The thought fires me on and my climax begins to build, and when I moan, he growls and his fucking becomes almost savage, his hand cupping my breast, his fingers splaying possessively as he pulls me so close, I can feel his heart beating in his groin. He kisses my neck, nipping my ear, his tongue tracing the delicate skin inside, his breath hot as he pants against my neck. I can’t stand it any longer and all at once my legs go rigid and I’m boneless and nearly out of my mind until suddenly—rising from the fuzzy interior of the rational portion of my brain, I’m hit with the realization we are—
“Oh no—Roark! Roark, stop!” But it’s too late—I’m coming once more, my body exploding as I cry out his name, lost in a glorious spasm against him. He wraps an arm around me, trembling all over, rigid from the force of his own climax. With his cock pulsing inside me, he empties himself, groaning softly, filling me. He tilts his head to mine and seizes my mouth, his kiss warm and desperate, and now it’s me who’s groaning. Then his eyes fly open, looking past me.
“Damn!” he yells. I straighten and see a light brightening the fog—a train coming at us from the opposite direction. He pulls himself from me and suddenly I’m cold, freezing, and he yanks my jeans up, his release flooding out of me. “This way,” he says, throwing his arm over my shoulder, nearly lifting me off the ground as he hurries us out of the shelter and into the fog of the river walk just as the train washes the platform with misted light.
I lean against the railing, his large body shielding me from the train and its disgorging passengers while we both zip up, tuck in our shirts, right ourselves. Well, as right as we can be, still slickened and flushed from sex, my body still tingling, still seeping, my dizzied mind trying to download what just happened. Then the train pulls away into the fog, restoring our misty shroud of privacy, and I lift my eyes to Roark as he straightens his overcoat, the steely secret under his arm flashing me once more. But it’s hardly the gun scaring the crap out of me now, my pr
e-climax realization finding its way back to me.
What the hell did we just do?
He slides his hands up my arms, rubbing at the chill. Does he actually think I’m shivering because I’m cold?
His mouth crooks. “Well, that was kind of intense.”
I want to belt him. “I need to go home,” I say, bolting for the street.
“Pam!” But I don’t stop. “Dammit! Pam!”
I can’t talk to him, not right now anyway, not with his marks so fresh on my body, not with his taste still in my mouth. Not with his jiz soaking my panties.
“Son of a bitch,” I mutter, literally running up the sidewalk, my eyes dead ahead. How could I have been so stupid?
After a minute he’s at my side. “Pam, don’t run away. Jesus—talk to me.”
And I will, I assure myself, but not right now. I can’t even look at him, let alone utter anything resembling coherency. Right now all I crave is the sweet aloneness of my apartment just ahead, where I can in complete privacy throttle my completely stupid self.
“Pam.” Suddenly he’s in front of me.
Wall that he is, I have no choice but to stop. I still can’t bring myself to look at him, but somehow, from the force of his will, I do.
“Pam,” he says, starting to reach for me then apparently thinking the better of it. “What just happened—”
“To me was insane. And I can’t talk about it. Not now, anyway.”
“Then don’t,” he says, his eyes luminous and defiant in the foggy light. “But you know you will because you have to. We have to. Because it didn’t only happen to you, you know. It also happened to me.” He grips me by the shoulders and pulls me to him, kissing me hard and thoroughly and way too quickly. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” he says as a statement of fact. Then he turns and disappears into the mist, leaving me breathless and conflicted and dammit, wanting him even more. I wander into my apartment, bereft.
I fall atop my sofa where everything that happened crashes with me. I went to Camden where I nearly was shot before getting fucked in a train stop shelter. With Roark. Without a condom. The result of which is still seepingly present. I pluck at the crotch of my jeans. I jump off the sofa and run to the bathroom, stripping my clothes off as I go. Before long I’m standing naked at the mirror.
I rake my hair back and clip it atop my head, noticing my neck as I do. Roark has left me a tiny mark and I brush my fingers over it, the memory of how it got there rippling goose bumps across my body. I touch my hips where he was too, feeling his hands pulling me to him, sliding across my ass, his cock ramming into me…
I bend to the sink, splash water across my face, rub soap into my hands, scrub. I flood my brush with too much toothpaste, scour the crap out of my teeth but still, I can taste him in my mouth, on my lips, smell him in my hair. Still naked, I leave for the living room and grabbing an afghan, throw it over me as I crash back to the sofa, thinking only of Roark. He’s there with me, sticky and real, and I touch my clit, and right there in the dark I have the one of the most erotic moments of my life. And concurrently, the most sobering.
I could be carrying any one of a dozen sexually transmitted diseases.
Or the beginnings of his baby.
Or holy crap—both!
I hunker down, throwing the afghan over my head. Like the emotionally procrastinating Scarlett O’Hara, I can’t think about it now; I’ll think about it tomorrow. Yet I fall asleep, dreaming about it anyway.
The next morning I awake to the phone ringing. I reach over my head to the end table and knock the phone to the floor. I blink twice to see Renee glaring up at me.
Jeez. Just what I need at 8:00 a.m.; grief from my over-caffeinated agent. I grab it. “Hello, Renee.”
“Pammy, how are you? Fabulous, I hope. Listen, sweetie, I’m having lunch with Suzie Schwartz from Renner Productions today and let me tell you, they are hot, hot, hot for you, girlie-girl. So how’s it coming— Oops. No double entendre intended! Anyway, how’s the sex scene going?”
I suppress the urge to yell which one? and instead give my standard, “It’s coming along fine, Renee.”
“No kidding?”
“Yes. Really.”
She pauses. Which, let me tell you, is as rare as a blue moon eclipse. “You’re not bullshitting me?”
“Why would I do that?”
“Then send me the pages.”
“They’re not ready.”
She huffs. “Because they’re not started.”
She knows me too damn well. “I didn’t say that. They’re too rough yet. Besides, you gave me until Monday.”
“Monday morning,” she clarifies.
Might as well be Monday ten years from now, because right now it’s the furthest thing from my mind. “Renee, I’ll get it done in time, don’t worry. I’m on it, 24/7.”
“Really. Well I guess that means you won’t be making Malcolm’s book party Saturday night. Which would be a shame, because you know how much Consuelo loves her writers supporting each other.”
My editor and her darling little stable. She would’ve been right at home in Old Hollywood. “You know I love Malcolm. I wouldn’t miss it.”
“But how are you going to find the time to come up to New York? You’ll be so busy working—”
“You mean like I am now? Jeez, Renee, I gotta go.” I hang up to her still yapping.
Sheesh. I know that was rude, but rude has Renee tattooed all over it, so I’m sure she didn’t take offense. The phone rings again. Or get the hint.
I grab it. “Listen, Renee, I really don’t—”
“Pam, it’s Roark.”
A tiny gasp escapes me. “Roark,” I say, gathering the afghan around me.
“Did I wake you?”
“No. My agent already had the pleasure of doing that.”
“Then she’s a very lucky woman.” He pauses. “Look, Pam, I have to leave for New York in a couple of hours, and I’d really like to see you before I go. I’ll make you breakfast. What do you say?”
His voice is so smoky and intimate it almost sounds like foreplay. Well, that’s how it strikes me anyway. “You’re going to New York?” See? I’m playing for time. Makes me sound elusive and mysterious. Also somewhat coherent because actually, I’m ready to jump out of my skin. “Just for the day?”
“Overnight. It’s a trade association thing, a brew-off. One of my blends is up for an award.”
“Really? Which one?”
“Mocha Javette.”
“Ooh, I love that one.”
“Then let me make you some for breakfast.”
A large part of me can barely contain myself until I see him. Another part is terrified of what will happen when I do. But overriding both is the basest, most elemental part of me, which craves him like an addict, and I’m powerless to resist. I sit up, the blanket falling to leave me exposed. Already my nipples are hardening. If this is Roark-style phone sex, then I’m more than halfway there.
“Put the pot on, Roark, I’ll be there in forty-five.”
“Great. Come to the back door, you know, where Doug came in yesterday. Okay?”
Like secret lovers. Good God, my inner drama queen’s working overtime. “Okay. See you in a bit.”
I hang up and run for the bathroom. As I jump in the shower I can’t help thinking tomorrow’s here, Scarlett, so you’d better come up with something.
Because amid the thinly veiled banter, it’s abundantly clear there’s a pretty big elephant in the room. And unlike me, the emotional wussy, Roark’s not wasting any time pointing it out. I jump out of the shower, slather my body with lotion, blow the dryer through my hair, seeing the plastic case as soon as I open my medicine chest. I finger the container. Should I? Hey, after last night, I’d better do the Girl Scout thing. I open the case to slip out the latex disk. Before long I’m yanking on my underwear and pulling on a tweed skirt, a turtleneck, thigh highs and a pair of boots and grabbing my jacket, running out the door. The back of my brain hears
Renee yelling at me, but such is life, babe. Handle it.
I’m out of breath by the time I get to Serious Joe, and I wonder if he’ll notice, or read anything into, my getting there in under a half hour. He opens the back door before I even get a chance to knock, and when I see him I don’t care if he does. He looks so flat-out glad to see me, my heart does little flips.
“Hey,” he says, smiling wide. I take his hand and let him reel me in through the back doorway and into another room just a few feet away, his office by the look of it. He closes the door and I brace myself against it.
“Good morning, Roark,” I say, his eyes so intent I’m nearly speechless. He looks just out of the shower, his thick hair still damp, his t-shirt still untucked, and on his neck—good golly, did I put that there? I step closer, catching his dizzying scent. “I…uh—”
“Pam.” He pulls me to him and again, I’m in his arms, his mouth taking mine so sweetly. I curl into him as he threads his fingers through my hair and I’m lost in his taste, his touch, his feel. He breaks away to trail little kisses across my cheek, my legs weakening as he whispers in my ear, “I’m so happy you came.”
“Are you?” I murmur, my hands smoothing the incredible muscles of his back. “Did you think I wouldn’t?”
His whole body sighs and he pulls away. “Baby, we have to talk.”
Reality descends. “Yeah.” And memory. “I know.”
“Why don’t you sit down.” He gestures to a chair in front of his desk. “I promised you breakfast, after all.”
“Okay.” I do. He reaches to a pot on his desk and pours me a cup of coffee, Mocha Javette like he promised, as wonderful as always. On a tray is fresh citrus, crepes and a cheese plate, but my appetite has escaped me. He perches on the edge of the desk and after a moment he begins.
“Last night…last night was wonderful, you were wonderful. But you were right, it was insane, and for that I apologize.”