Leave Me Breathless

by HelenKay Dimon

  When he slipped down her stomach and then lower a few minutes after that she almost cheered. She went with groaning instead.

  His tongue made another pass over her, causing her entire body to tighten. “Ben…”

  This time he lifted his head. His wet mouth smiled up at her. “Yes?”

  “Get the damn condom.”

  “Your bedroom talk needs some work.”

  She threw her arm to the side and patted the nightstand for the foil packet. Feeling it, she scooped it up and threw it on her stomach. Without missing a beat, her hand returned to the bottom of the headboard.

  “Now,” she said on a half breath.

  “No arguments here.”

  But he took his time crawling up the length of her body. Muscles stretched. Long limbs moved in concert. His erection jutted out, easy for her to see and even closer for her to touch. If it were possible to stalk her in three feet of space, he did it.

  With a sharp rip, he had the protection out and rolled it on. “Are you ready?”

  “Way past that.” Her head rolled from one side to another as her insides pulsed. “Please.”

  She was willing to beg. Thought about sliding her hand down his stomach and moving this along.

  Then he picked up the pace. He slipped his hands under her knees and pushed her legs back toward her chest. The position opened her wider than before, free to his gaze and his body. This time he didn’t wait. With one long push, he entered her. His cock went in smooth and deep until she couldn’t tell if he was surrounding her or vice versa.

  Leaning down, his mouth met hers in a soft, searching kiss so breathtakingly beautiful that her heart stopped for a second. When he lifted his head again, she saw the heat and determination. With his damp body over hers and his cock lodged inside, he began to move. This wasn’t their usually frenzied mating. No, this one breathed with emotion and longing. Hours of wanting exploded in a rhythmic push and pull as he entered her and then retreated. The friction set off tiny fireworks behind her eyes.

  Every part of her surrendered. She squeezed him from her legs to her tiny inner muscles. And when her body blew apart in orgasm, she took him along with her.

  He panted and gasped as her chest heaved in an effort to suck in extra air. Her head fell back and her body shuddered. She came on a hard shout just as his body pressed inside a final time. While her hips rocked, his body jumped and twitched. With his eyes closed, he blew out a breath. As if his arms couldn’t hold him, his shoulders fell and his full weight collapsed on top of her.

  Except for rubbing her hand in gentle circles over his upper back, neither of them moved. Even after the last whispers of their lovemaking faded, they stayed in each other’s arms. The room filled with the faint smell of sex. His harsh breathing hammered into her ear, but he quickly brought his body back under control.

  After a few minutes he raised up on shaky elbows. “I should get you keyed up in the office more often,” he said with a smile.

  “Only if you want to have that conversation with Rod every day.”

  Smile—gone. Lazy banter stopped. The post-sex relaxation disappeared.

  The mood broke that fast.

  She immediately regretted raising the issue. They needed to talk about Rod and everything said in that room, but she rushed the timing. That much was obvious from Ben’s sudden silence and severe frown.

  “I guess I should have waited until the morning to bring this subject up,” she said, hoping Ben wouldn’t take the out.

  He rolled off her and fell onto the mattress next to her. “Since when do you back down from a tough discussion?”

  “I prefer being in control of them. Something tells me Rod is in the lead here.”

  Ben stared at the ceiling. “Thanks to you I’m starting to hate that kid.”

  Not the response she expected but still appreciated. “I told you.”

  “When I hired him he wasn’t a…what did you call him?”

  “Pisher.” Loser, moron, twit. She had about a hundred names for Rod, each one more profane and nasty than the one before.

  “Right. Well, Rod kept his pisher tendencies hidden until you came to the office.”

  She drew the sheets up to her chin. “Don’t blame me. He’s a parasite. Not that unusual in the legal world, from what I can tell.”

  Ben switched his gaze to her. “I’m hoping you’re excluding me from that pile.”

  “Wouldn’t let you go down on me if I did.”

  “I love your mouth.” He brushed his thumb over her bottom lip as if to prove his statement.

  “Funny but I was going to say the same thing about yours.” Her lower body still tingled, all sensitive and fiery, from his expert attention.

  The tension swirling around the room broke. The easy bedroom calm returned.

  Ben slipped an arm under her shoulder and pulled her close. “Happy to be of service.”

  The return to their usual post-sex cuddling eased the frustration running through her. Being there, in his arms, just felt right.

  With her head on his chest, Callie fingered the sprinkling of hair on his chest. Working up the courage to talk about Rod and his accusations proved harder than she expected. She had heard every word, seen Ben’s face when he walked out of the office. Sure, he covered his questioning frown with a small smile, but she saw the doubts lingering there. In only a few minutes Rod had inflicted some damage. Not enough to kill the sex, but enough to have an impact on everything else.

  And suddenly the everything else mattered. She didn’t want it to, but it did.

  “Are we going to pretend it didn’t happen?” Her voice came out so soft that she almost didn’t recognize it.

  “The sex?”

  “Oh, no. We are most definitely going to remember that.”

  He chuckled, his warm breath blowing across her forehead. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

  “The highest, but I was talking about Rod.”

  Ben’s arms tightened around her. “Is the goal here to kill the mood?”

  She couldn’t drop this. Suddenly the truth she tried to hide from him weighed down every part of her body. She wanted it out there. They could go through it and, hopefully, get around it.

  Her palm rested against his thumping heart. “You can just ask me, you know.”

  “I already tried.”

  “At the gun range? Yeah, I know, but this time I’ll answer.”

  “Why?”

  She lifted her body and leaned on an elbow. She wanted to watch him, see his reaction. Test if he was the man she believed him to be. “Because the answer that’s out there is wrong. So incredibly wrong.”

  “Tell me what’s right.”

  “I want you to know the truth.”

  “Then I’ll ask again.” He curled an arm behind his head, lifting it slightly and bringing his face even with hers. “Why did you leave the FBI?”

  “I worked for a jackass—”

  “Wait.” He closed his eyes for a beat and then opened them again. “Can you not use that term since you use it to refer to me all the time, and I have a feeling I’m not going to want to be associated with this guy in any way.”

  “You’re nothing like him.”

  “Still.”

  She refused to get sidetracked with semantics. “He made a pass. Kept making passes. I deflected and ignored. After all, he ranked above me and had all the power. I was brand new and owed most of my career to him.”

  “This isn’t 1950, Callie.”

  Blame. It hit her like a verbal slap. She expected more from Ben. Hoped for more.

  “It is so easy for you to say if you’re not the one sitting there,” she said through a jaw locked to keep from screaming.

  He wove his fingers through hers and drew them to his mouth for a kiss. “You’re right. Knee-jerk jackassery. Sorry.”

  Callie wasn’t ready to be soothed, so she pulled her hand away again. “I had dreamed of that job forever. It was my ticket out of Hickville. I didn
’t excel at school, never even thought about going to law school, which is what most FBI agents end up doing. I hadn’t worked my way up through the law enforcement ranks. See, every way into the FBI was closed to me. It was pure luck that I got in. Or so I thought.”

  “Meaning?”

  “The recruiter said he saw something in me.”

  “I can believe that.”

  “Then he became my boss. Turned out what he saw in me was an easy lay. A woman who would owe him.” She waited for Ben to say something, but he kept listening. “He set me up perfectly. I got a promotion, a nice office. We weren’t sleeping together, but everyone—and I mean everyone—thought we were. That was the only excuse anyone could come up with for why I even got in. Must have done it on a mattress or my knees.”

  “Jesus.”

  Ben rubbed her back. She doubted he even realized he was doing it, but it did calm the anger building inside her. Rather than fight him, she gave in and allowed her muscles to relax.

  “I eventually found out I wasn’t alone. There were two women before me. One got promoted and got out of his office. The other saw her career come to a full desk duty stop. Guess you can figure out which one took him up on his sex offers.”

  “Did he touch you?”

  “He tried.”

  “What’s his name?” The bed rocked from the force of Ben’s fury.

  Here she thought he judged her choices. Instead, he simmered. The rage rolled off him and knocked against her like being hit with a brick. She knew the feeling because it brewed inside her all the time. Some days, she could tamp it down and forget. Most others it rose up like an uncontrolled beast.

  It was tempting to have a powerful judge take up her cause, but she had made her choice, good or bad, and refused to be one of those people who turned to rabid power to get her way. No matter how tempting.

  That meant easing Ben from his superhuman pissed-off form back to normal. “It doesn’t matter now.”

  “Of course it does. It just happened.” Ben shimmied up higher on the stack of pillows behind his head. “When did you leave?”

  “Not that long ago.”

  “Which means this is all still fresh.” He switched into boss mode. “We’ll get you a hearing and a superstar lawyer and—”

  She kissed him to get him to stop. “Thank you.”

  “For what? I haven’t done anything yet.”

  “Without knowing everything, for not assuming I brought this on myself or deserved it.”

  “Who the hell said that?”

  Most of the people she worked with. Her friends who deserted her, leaving her alone and devastated. “There isn’t going to be another hearing.”

  “Another?”

  “The day he went too far, when he tried to take what I wasn’t giving for free, I took out my gun and threatened him.”

  “He was lucky you didn’t show off your gun skills and shoot him in the head. I would have been tempted.”

  “Well, he wasn’t all that bright, because he tried again.”

  Ben’s eyebrows shot up. “And that time you did unload on him.”

  “Right in the upper thigh, as close to his dick as I could get.”

  Ben didn’t smile, but his fierce scowl relaxed. “I’m impressed.”

  “Well, don’t be. The move started a horrific chain reaction. After a hospital stay, he got called in for questioning. To save his own sorry ass, he insisted we’d been having an affair. That I was the scorned woman who went nuts when he decided to stay with his wife over me.”

  “Fucking jerk.”

  “Exactly.”

  “He got in trouble for having sex with a subordinate. No more supervisory positions. Had to undergo some harassment classes.”

  “And you?”

  “Paid administrative leave for six months, followed by a hearing on the improper firing of a firearm. My boss claimed I had tried to kill him and wanted criminal charges filed, but I was able to duck those. The FBI higher-ups didn’t believe me, but the prosecutor did.”

  “But your FBI supervisors eventually realized you were innocent, right?”

  That was the part that hurt the most. Everyone abandoned her. Sided with the guy with twenty years’ service over her. Neither of the other women wanted to testify, and Callie didn’t blame them, but she had expected more from the group she hung out with, drank beers with, and analyzed cases beside.

  “My coworkers lined up to talk all about the perks I received. Everybody added two plus two and got thirty.”

  Ben wiped a hand over his eyes. “This ending is going to suck.”

  “Unfortunately, yes.”

  Ben let his hand fell against the mattress. “Say it so I can get furious all over again and then hunt this fucking moron down.”

  “I took a voluntary discharge. In return I was promised a good recommendation and the destruction of my personnel record. I didn’t want the lies to follow me. This might be a city, but in many ways it’s a small town. Having so many in the FBI know about me, or who they thought I was, stunk. And, really, I have to take some responsibility for the situation.”

  “You can’t possibly think you should have slept with the guy.”

  “No, but losing my temper and shooting him was a huge mistake. Up until then I did everything right. Never mouthed off. Bet you can’t believe that, huh?”

  “It’s hard to imagine.”

  “The FBI is a rules organization. You look a certain way, act a certain way, and don’t bring unwanted attention to the workplace. I violated all of those unspoken mandates.”

  “I can’t believe you had to deal with that. That no one stood by you.”

  “It’s not over.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m not independently wealthy. I have to work if I want to eat. That’s why Mark’s offer saved me. It gave me the chance to pay the mortgage and build my résumé outside of usual government service.” Panic over what was ahead swamped her for a second, but she beat it back. “Now I have to figure out how Rod got his weaselly little hands on my file.”

  “I want to rip his fucking head off.”

  “I’ve been saying that about Rod since the day I met him.”

  “I mean your ex-boss.”

  Ben’s anger fed her. Instead of getting her ramped up and ready for battle, it relieved her of months of pain and frustration. Knowing he believed her based only on her word, sided with her over the FBI and their pencil-necked investigators, took all of the anger balled up inside her and set it free.

  “You know what I think?” she asked, ready to move on to a better subject. One that had nothing to do with her former career.

  “We should call Mark and get him on this.”

  That one stopped her. “Since when do you willingly go to Mark looking for help?”

  “I’d do it for you.”

  In that precious moment, her feelings and attraction for Ben came together in a thought both irrational and rational. She was falling for him. Not because of his robe or position. Certainly not because she wanted to land the guy other women wanted to bed. No, her heart grew and pounded because he was a good man, and when he looked at her like that, as if he could forget every responsibility for her, every ache inside her eased. He made the days better. He could take a verbal punch and light her world with his smile.

  “I have a better idea,” she said.

  “We go to Rod’s house and drag him out of bed?”

  “Last thing I want to see is Rod naked. So, no thanks.” She dropped a line of kisses from the dip at the base of Ben’s throat to his nipples.

  His fingers found her hair and held her there. “Callie?”

  “I don’t want to talk about the past.”

  “But I want to help.”

  “Oh, you do.” She slipped lower and kissed his stomach. When it clenched at the touch of her lips, she kissed him again.

  “We’re not done with this conversation.” The last syllable came out as a groan.

  “Mayb
e, but first you’re going to get soooo lucky.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Ben’s good mood shattered early the next morning. Stepping out to get the paper counted as a pretty mundane activity, but not when a stalker roamed free and could come right up to the door to drop off a new threatening note.

  Sitting on Callie’s bar stool in the kitchen, Ben stared at the plain white envelope. Wished he had gone right to the shower and skipped his usual routine of checking the news. Mostly he regretted dragging Callie into the middle of this mess. All he wanted was for this sick bastard to make a move and get caught or go away. The middle ground, never knowing when or how the potential lunatic would make contact again, made Ben second-guess every move. Which Ben assumed was exactly the goal. Whoever this guy was, he toyed with them on purpose.

  Ben glanced down again and saw his name scrawled across the front. He had seen the handwriting only once before but didn’t need repetition to recognize it. The memory of that script was imprinted on his brain.

  But what really bothered him was the location of this one. Callie’s house.

  Thanks to him, she wasn’t safe.

  “Damn it.”

  “I’d think a night of hot sex would put you in a good mood.” Callie walked in wearing nothing but her robe and headed straight for the coffeemaker. “Guess not.”

  “I was fine until ten seconds ago.”

  “What happened…?” She turned around with a mug in one hand and the pot in the other. Her gaze bounced from his face to the counter. “Oh, shit.”

  “Different swearword but same conclusion.”

  She slowly lowered her arms, abandoning both forms of caffeine in favor of joining him in staring at the envelope. “Where was it?”

  “Out front. On top of the paper.”

  “My paper comes right before six.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “That means the stalker, or whoever delivered on behalf of the stalker, came by within the last half hour.”