“An important part of this break-in will be getting across that floor to disable the motion sensor,” she said. “I’ve got a one-hundred-percent success rate, and I intend to maintain it. Having you accidentally trip the alarm isn’t part of my plan.”
“Fair enough. Where can we practice? TSS?”
She shook her head, sending shiny hair over her shoulders and down the back of the chair. “Home turf. We need to test you out someplace unfamiliar to see how you react under pressure. I’ve got a place.” She powered down her computer system and pushed the chair back from the desk. “Come on.”
Jake followed her to the bedroom for a wardrobe change into what he’d termed “burglar black” when they’d recently shopped at a uniform supply house in preparation for the upcoming job.
She dressed in coveralls that molded her slim curves, and he waited until she’d turned back to the closet before sneaking up and wrapping his arms around her waist. She gasped when he pulled her against him, and Jake buried his smile in her hair.
“I’m having the most incredible sense of déjà vu here. You look like this gorgeous thief I ran into about ten years ago.” His hand found its way into the Velcro that she’d yet to fasten. Nudging aside her bra, he skimmed her satin skin.
She melted against him and laughed softly. “Never miss an opportunity to feel me up, do you?”
“Never. Especially since I can’t guarantee I’ll make it back tonight in one piece.”
Especially since he’d realized that the only way to get close to Mallory was to take her by surprise. “Will you miss me if I wind up breaking my head open?”
She pressed her breast into his hand. He tweaked her nipple, smiled when she shivered.
“I’ll miss sleeping with you.”
Here was a classic example of how she delineated those boundaries of their relationship, reminding him that he hadn’t taken a step past fling yet.
He caressed her nipple again, and she lifted her arms to slip her hands behind his neck, idly caressing the hairs at his nape, lifting her breasts up and out to invite exploration. Jake pleasured her until she sighed.
“Did you start this up because you’re trying to get out of going live tonight?” she asked.
“No, but I’d never miss a chance to peel off these coveralls. It’s been a fantasy of mine for ten years.”
“Really?”
He filled his hands with the firm swells of her breasts, shifted his hips to nourish the ache of his growing erection against her bottom. “Really. That sexy thief has been the lady of my dreams, and she’s finally all mine.”
Predictably, Mallory gave a laugh and stepped out of his reach, the intimacy of that statement enough to make her run. Jake didn’t think she’d be happy if she knew how predictable she’d become, and how much her predictability looked like panic.
Panic, like her reminders that they were having only a fling, was a good thing. It meant she wasn’t only trying to convince him there was no us, but trying to convince herself.
And that was a big step past fling, whether she admitted it or not.
13
PEACHTREE FINANCIAL reminded Jake of a small Old South bank with its Doric columns and elegant facade. “I’m not familiar with this place. What sort of financial institution is this?” he asked as he pulled into a spot at the rear of the building.
“One that caters to a very select clientele,” she replied, which didn’t answer his question.
As she was already opening the door before he’d even put the car out of gear, he was deterred from asking her to elaborate.
“FYI.” She pulled open the back door to unload her equipment. “Here’s another difference between our job and a real job. On a real job we wouldn’t be parking in the lot. We’d have someone drop us off and circle until it was time to pick us up.”
“Who drove for you on the night you visited Innovative?”
“Polish Paul.”
“The getaway driver?”
“Always.”
Retrieving his own equipment, Jake locked his car and joined her at the back entrance of the building.
“Here’s another big difference between our job and a real job,” she whispered.
“Let me guess, you wouldn’t have a key?”
“Very good.”
That one had been a no-brainer, so he didn’t comment but asked instead, “Who does this place belongs to?”
“Worried about winding up in jail?”
“No. Just curious who would trust you to come and go inside their business.”
She gave a laugh, stepped inside and used the touchpad to disable the alarm. Then she moved aside to let him enter. “Are you telling me you wouldn’t trust me with a key to TSS corporate?”
“Are you telling me you’d need a key?”
Her smile flashed white as she tugged the ski mask over her face. “Come on.”
Pulling his own mask into place, he followed her through low-lit corridors in the rear of the building. His senses heightened along with a growing sense of unreality as they moved through the shadowy interior, bringing back visions of the past.
They arrived at a storage area that appeared to be home to miscellany from high-ticket electronic gadgetry to museum-quality art. That these products would be kept outside the vault suggested that what was inside would be worth the effort of trying to circumvent the security system. It also told him that Peachtree Financial wasn’t a banking institution in any sense of the term he was familiar with.
“Is this Eddie Gibb’s pawn shop?” he asked in surprise, glancing at a late-model sound system that he knew from his own recent purchase cost close to ten grand.
“Very good.”
Jake had no idea that high-end pawnshops even existed. When he’d first heard about Eddie Gibb, he’d imagined the man’s business in a strip plaza with bars on the windows and a name like E-Z Cash.
Upon reflection though, he supposed that all the late-model vehicles parked behind Polish Paul’s Tattoo Studio on the night they’d brought Lance home should have clued him in that this pawn business would be more lucrative than most. Upon further reflection, Jake supposed that wealthy folks who had a need to unload their possessions would also need a place that dealt exclusively with high-ticket items.
“Eddie’s got quite a place here.”
Mallory gave an absent nod and motioned to the open doorway. “Take a good look at the photoelectric sensor array from this angle. We won’t be worrying about anything except getting to the floor without triggering the sensors. I’ll only be able to block the beams in an area wide enough to create a channel for us to maneuver through. I will disable the voice and temperature sensors for this quadrant, though. That’ll make our job a little easier.”
He only nodded, not seeing anything easy about the job ahead. Forcing his concentration onto the thin streams of red light that appeared to be criss-crossing in a random pattern, he studied their design. “Exceptional placement. I implement similar patterns with several of my systems.”
“I know.” Her green eyes flashed. Her whisper filtered through the quiet, adding to his growing sense of unreality.
Jake took in the angle of the closed-circuit surveillance camera that manned the doorway while she keyed in the access codes to arm the system for their trip into the storeroom.
“Where will we come through the ceiling?” he asked.
“There’s enough room to maneuver through the crawl space with the duct work.”
“Obviously you’ve done this before.”
“We tested out every angle of this system before Eddie was satisfied it was ready to go.”
“He doesn’t mind us cutting through his drywall?”
“Not a problem. The repair falls under the category of additional daily expenses. Polish Paul will patch it up, and you’ll pay the bill.”
Jake snorted.
They accessed the crawl space through an electrical cabinet that housed the climate control system, and then all h
is thoughts focused on maneuvering through the dusty passages that ran along the vents with his gear on his back. His knees ached by the time they reached their destination, and he learned that burglary was a far more physical business than he’d ever realized, despite all the hours he’d spent at the rock-climbing gym.
Mallory told him to unload the battery-operated power saw, and then directed him through the process of creating places to fasten clamps around the three-foot section of drywall he’d be cutting away so she could secure it when it detached.
A drop ceiling lay beneath the roof and she had him remove a panel from the frame. “Don’t drop it, or our job will be over before it even gets started.”
He handed it to her and she set it aside, but still within easy reach, he noticed.
The drop was only twenty feet. Jake had scaled much more distance with Mallory at the rock-climbing gym, but twenty feet took on a whole new meaning with the thin photoelectric beams cutting off his access to the floor below.
Using special equipment that Jake had never seen implemented for this purpose before, Mallory blocked the beam array to allow them a passage to descend, but getting through the slim apertures separating the beams meant not only steering clear of the beam itself, but not disturbing the air around it. Because of her smaller size, she would have more room to maneuver, a fact she’d already factored into her decision to let him descend closest to the vault where she’d been able to widen the channel.
Jake didn’t think he should be feeling nerves right now. This was a dry run, and he had no pride left to salvage after weeks at the Vertical Playground proving how inept he could be. But his pulse raced and his heart was pounding hard when he lifted his gaze to Mallory, who looked exhilarated.
“Ready?” she asked in a whisper.
“Ready.”
Leaning forward, she surprised him with a soft kiss and a smile. “Just remember if you trigger the alarm, the police come. There’s nothing to worry about if you don’t trigger the alarm.”
“Right.” She made it sound so simple.
And that was Jake’s last thought before he was strapping on his harness and securing his line. Mallory insisted they check each other’s handiwork as an added precaution before she lowered herself through the ceiling and hung there until she’d controlled her line.
Jake followed, his muscles tight as he slipped his boot into the foothold Mallory had insisted he use. Grasping his line, he lowered himself through the ceiling frame and allowed himself a moment to acclimate to the feeling of weightlessness.
Then they began their descent. He lowered himself slowly, his muscles controlled from the effort of keeping the line steady. He kept his gaze focused on the slim opening in the sensors that was his access point below. The only sound in the stillness was their breaths.
Maybe he was paying too much attention, because when his feet reached the first sweep of sensor beams, he missed his hold on the line by mere inches, inches that made him sway unsteadily before he contracted his body enough to regain control. Mallory inhaled sharply behind him, and he could feel her gaze on him.
Jake couldn’t touch down on the floor, where pressure sensors in the mat in front of the vault formed a circuit to the floor that would trip a panic siren if he touched it before disabling the system.
Coming to a stop within easy reach of the touchpad, he waited for Mallory to provide the access code, pleased he’d managed the descent.
She flashed him a smile that he interpreted to mean she was similarly pleased just as her booted foot found the toehold of her own line. Before he had a chance to consider what she was up to, she pitched forward in a motion so controlled that she never even came close to touching the beams that outlined her channel of maneuverable space.
Suddenly she was crouched in mid-air before him, dangling perfectly still from her harness.
“What the hell—”
“Shh.” She slipped a hand away from her line, paused as though waiting to make sure she wouldn’t sway and then reached straight for his crotch.
Jake sucked in a huge breath, feeling his body spin out of control before he managed to impose an iron grip on his muscles to halt the jerky movement that would send him into the wake of a sensor beam.
His next breath cleared his head enough to recognize exactly what this was. Another test. She was changing the script so he was forced to improvise. He had no doubt that she would love for him to trip the alarm, and he was absolutely determined not to let her make him lose his focus.
That was of course, until she pulled apart the Velcro fastening of his coveralls and slipped her hand inside.
Given that his adrenaline pumped double-time and he held his body so tight that his muscles ached, Jake would have guessed it impossible to become aroused. But, just like that night ten years ago, he was mistaken. He could get aroused anywhere around this woman. He was on his way to a promising erection the instant her gloved fingers slipped beneath his waistband, zeroed in on the target and freed the whole deal.
“Mallory,” he ground out, desperate in the quiet.
“I can’t resist an opportunity to fondle you.”
She gave him a reinforcing squeeze, and his body came alive, a mass of conflicting impulses as the two halves of his brain warred for control. The rational half reasoned that if he moved one muscle—other than the one she was currently teasing with strokes of her gloved fingers—he was sure to cross a beam and trip the alarm.
The impulsive half urged his hips to move, to take what she offered. So he hung there, hovering on the edge of indecision long enough for Mallory to get a really good grip and use his stiffening erection as a handhold to pull them together across the weightless distance.
She sucked him into her mouth with a hot wet pull, so deep the ski mask covering her chin came flush against his balls.
A man who’d been servicing his needs regularly should have had more self-control. He didn’t. He could only grit his teeth and will himself not to move as she worked him with a liplock that by all rights should have been impossible given that she didn’t appear to be moving a muscle.
Except for those above her neck. And those muscles were doing the job.
Maybe it was the excitement of the moment or the challenge of not losing his grip on the line, but she took him from zero to sixty in the time it took his stalled heart to roar through the first few stuttering beats.
When she slipped her gloved fingers around his erection and gave a healthy squeeze, Jake discovered that it was physically impossible for him to come without moving. He tried. Oh man, did he try. But his hips bucked hard, looking for the additional friction to push him over the edge.
Mallory must have realized the same thing, because she let him slide from her mouth just then, making him buck hard against the cool air that assaulted his throbbing skin…making him lose his grip on the line.
To Jake’s credit he controlled his fall enough not to infiltrate any beam sensors, but he landed right on the pressure mat in front of the vault, his legs vibrating so hard they almost buckled beneath him.
The panic alarm shrieked to life in an ear-piercing blast.
With a huge burst of motion, Mallory launched herself toward him, swinging right through the beams and releasing her harness as she went. She dropped to her feet in front of the touchpad and her line swung wildly out behind her.
A few glances of her fingers against the display and the panic siren shuddered to an echoing halt.
“You lasted longer than I thought you—”
He had her before she finished turning.
His heart thundered. His crotch throbbed. His throat was so tight he couldn’t even contemplate a reply.
But his hands were working just fine.
Dragging her against him, Jake ripped apart the Velcro fastening, tugged the coverall down her arms with jerky movements…down past her hips…down to her thighs…until she stood there clad in nothing more than her burglar black bra and thong.
The thong too
k nothing more than one well-aimed swipe to move aside before he could position himself exactly where he wanted to be.
Mallory’s hands came around his neck, and she sank back against the vault to brace herself, legs parting as far as the tangle of garments would allow. Then she arched toward him, lace-covered breasts thrust out, and though the ski mask concealed her features, Jake knew she was as caught up in the moment as he was.
He found her moist and ready, entered her in one hot stroke. Jake had no problem controlling his movements with both his feet planted firmly on the ground. With his hands on her breasts and his hips riding her in driving thrusts, he made short work of bringing Mallory right to the edge. And only when she trembled in his arms, did he allow himself to go over, too, grinding out his release with a growl that echoed in the quiet.
They stared at each other, looking almost startled by the intensity, the violence of the moment. Mallory stood before him practically naked, lace-covered breasts heaving, the ski mask covering her beautiful face.
She looked like a vision from one of his fantasies, reminded him so much of ten years ago that Jake felt as if he were in time warp. Only this time…this time he tugged the ski mask from her face, dragged his own up enough to kiss her.
His mouth came down hard, and he felt her sigh burst against his lips, knew beyond a doubt that this woman was his soul mate, that he would never want another woman the way he wanted her. He’d been waiting ten long years to catch up with her.
And she’d been waiting for him too, whether she allowed herself to believe it or not.
But Jake was determined to make her a believer. He made love to her mouth with his tongue, letting her know with each stroke that he would be relentless and ruthless. He wouldn’t stop until she was his. No matter how much she challenged him. No matter how often she tried to turn the tables. No matter how cleverly she tried to gain the upper hand.
He’d still be here no matter what she pulled on him.
Over the Edge Page 18