by Marie Jermy
“He sure is. He did lose somebody he loved deeply eighteen months ago. He’s still coming to terms with being single, so be patient.”
Was the reason why Scott had pulled back after their hot kiss because he felt he’d been unfaithful? It certainly would explain his rebuff. Leia felt a pang of conscience. Honestly, she could kick herself at times. Whenever she wanted something or someone, like Scott, patience wasn’t always her best trait. “Will do,” she promised to Jessica and to herself. “What was her name?”
“Laura. So…” Jessica drawled, “…did he kiss you back? How does he rate? He’s got a very sexy mouth, so I’ve always wondered. And his laugh. Boy, he makes me come on the spot with that lively, suggestive laugh of his.”
“Yes. Twenty out of ten. And you’re a married woman!” Leia admonished. “You shouldn’t be thinking about another man in that way. Whatever would Ross say?”
“What he doesn’t know doesn’t hurt him” was Jessica’s swift response.
She laughed. “So you don’t mind?”
“What, you and Scott? Nah. I knew you would be good together. Why do you think I hired you?”
So Jessica had played matchmaker. Leia didn’t know whether to punch the air with restrained glee or reach down the end of the line and punch her friend. “There’s something else. There’s an aura of darkness and secrecy, not just around Scott but the whole office. Like the agency is the epicenter for the paranormal. And I’ve felt a ghost’s presence. It was a woman, and she stood right behind me. Archie wasn’t too impressed. Were you, boy?” she asked, poking him awake with her foot.
Two woofs.
No.
There was a pregnant silence on the line, unheard of for Jessica who was always forthcoming with responses— well, apart from being tight-lipped about why Ross and Scott didn’t get along. “You always did have an overactive imagination, Leia.”
“Overactive…” Incredulous, Leia trailed off before sharply reminding her friend, “You believe in ghosts just as much as I do, Jessica. What’s going on?”
“Nothing’s going on.”
“You can’t fool me—”
“Oh, boy, is that the time? I must go. Bye.”
Leia frowned when the line clicked, and the dial tone sounded. Jessica couldn’t fool her. There was something going on. Yet she knew her friend well enough to know she wouldn’t tell. She could ask Ross, but even then she sensed she’d get nowhere. And it would be a waste of time asking Scott. The man was sealed up tighter than a drum. It would probably take more than a crowbar and a stick of dynamite to get him to reveal the reason for the animosity between him and Ross or his true eye color—she didn’t believe Jessica—let alone what secrets he was harboring.
Then she remembered he had told her his cold hands were because he suffered with Raynaud’s. Was that the only thing he willingly made public knowledge? Since it was a condition that wasn’t easy to evade answering questions about, especially from people he shook hands with, she believed that it was.
And then he’d kissed her. Would he reveal more after other kinds of sexual activity? Like if she jumped his bones. She knew he wanted her to. However, Leia had made a promise to be patient. She intended to keep it. The first move would be Scott’s. And his alone.
Chapter 3
With a muttered curse and a long and hard press of the horn, Scott spun the steering wheel of his Aston Martin to the right, eliciting a volley of angry blares as he cut across the traffic and raced down the ramp into the underground garage of the towering glass skyscraper where Magnum Investigations was based. He was an hour late.
Because of Leia.
The night before, he’d had a lengthy appointment with two female ghosts who wanted to open and manage a gay and lesbian bar in Chelsea. Why they couldn’t just haunt one was beyond him. However, they’d been determined, so he’d authorized it with the condition that Todd Marshall, a Federation member and barman who’d always expressed a wish to run a bar of his own joined them as partner.
The two ghosts had left happy. And so they should have. It might have raised more than a few eyebrows if they’d applied for the license and filled in all the relevant paperwork and not Marshall, who at least was alive and didn’t hover.
Then, after an equally lengthy meeting with new Federation recruits discussing the various tasks they would carry out, including vaporization, Scott had spent the little time he should have been sleeping thinking about Leia and that kiss.
A kiss that had rocked him to his very core and one that could have so easily led to hot and hurried sex on the desk. Most probably a sexual harassment suit, too.
During those restless couple of hours, Scott concluded he missed sex with a woman. A living, flesh-and-blood woman. As he rode the elevator to the eightieth floor, Laura filled his thoughts. After Laura died, making love to her ghost had been an emotional and spiritual union, but he badly missed the physical aspect. Not just the sinking of his cock into a women’s pussy, but the actual touching of flesh. Stroking. Caressing. Massaging. Kissing. Licking. Filling his hands with tits and ass.
Scott smiled as he opened the main office door. Laura had a great ass. Firm, high, and as sexy as hell…
Holy crap!
His laptop case hit the floor. Not three meters away, Leia was bending over, retrieving what looked like some kind of label from the floor. Beneath the clingy fabric of the plum-colored calf-length skirt, and as high and firm as Laura’s, possibly even more so, her ass was just begging for his hands to fill. His throat turned as dry as sandpaper, and all blood roared straight to his cock, filling it to bursting point.
Suddenly, Leia straightened and twirled round, her blank and unresponsive, yet lovely brown eyes unerringly locking with his. Under the lights, her sassy, rich burnt umber hair shone with a halo effect, and her pale pink lip gloss glistened.
“Good morning, Scott. Did you just drop something?”
“Laptop,” he managed to answer through arid lips. His hands grew restless at his sides.
“Oh. Coffee?” Her voice purred with an undercurrent of wanton desire.
Coffee? He didn’t want a damned coffee. And sexual harassment suit be damned, too. He wanted her. On the desk. Right now. Two long strides later, Leia was in Scott’s arms, and he was backing her into the reception desk, his lips bruising hers in a scorching kiss that had his heart slamming against his chest.
A deep growl emitted from his throat when he filled his hands with her ass and lifted her onto the desk. He again growled when her hands snaked down his back to grab his own ass, dragging him closer and sandwiching him tight between her thighs, her booted feet hooked behind his knees. His lungs fighting for air, he tore his mouth away. Her lip gloss had been kissed right off, and a primal thrill surged through his body.
“Don’t ask me to stop, Leia,” he said thickly, squeezing her ass and grinding his cock against the heat filtering through her skirt that was gradually inching upward.
“I won’t,” she breathed. “I want this. I want you, Scott.”
“Now?”
“Now.”
Scott didn’t need to be told twice, but first things first. He turned to Archie, who sat beside the desk watching them with what he was sure was a bored expression. Would the dog do what he told him to? There was only one way to find out. “Archie,” he ordered. “Turn away now.” And to his amusement and amazement, Archie went one better. He got up, trotted over to the kitchen, turned the handle with his paw and disappeared inside, even closing the door behind him.
He turned back to Leia, her breathing still hitched and a soft, sexy smile on her bee-stung lips. He sensed a note of impatience. Something tightened in his chest. He didn’t just want to screw her, he wanted to taste her, touch her, breathe her. He lowered his head and flicked his tongue over the pulse beating in the hollow of her throat. On a moan, her head lolled back, giving him better access. Her sweet scent floated around him.
“You smell so good,” Scott murmured, freeing hi
s hands so he could unbutton her blouse to bury his face in the V of her breasts. He frowned. Pink, sheer, and silky, her blouse was extremely feminine, but, dammit, there were literally dozens and dozens of tiny pearl buttons. No doubt his life would have expired by ten years by the time he undid them all.
“Why don’t you unbutton a few, ten should do it, and then lift it up over my head?” Leia suggested.
“Good idea,” he agreed. “But how in hell did you know my predicament? I didn’t say anything. And I didn’t think it.”
“You didn’t have to. When you’ve been blind for almost half your life, you develop certain perceptions that other people don’t have.” Her fingers skimmed over his lips. “Like I know when somebody is smiling. Or…” she said, moving her fingers to the groove in his brow, “…frowning. Besides, how do you think I put the freaking thing on?”
Scott laughed and proceeded to free ten buttons from their enclosures before raising her arms and lifting the blouse over her head. He thoughtfully placed it on the desk beside her. Despite the shudder he knew he’d induced when he trailed his fingers down her arms as he lowered them, Leia arched and pressed her hips farther into his groin, a soft moan of pleasure falling from her lips.
He splayed one hand over the small of her back to keep her tight against him, inducing another shudder. “Sorry,” he murmured.
“Don’t be. I find it delicious.”
Delicious? That was new. None of his previous girlfriends had liked his cold hands. Even Laura had complained, though not so much after she’d died. But Leia thought it delicious? Maybe refusing to take medication wasn’t such a bad thing. After all, he knew she was as turned on as he was.
As she helped shrug him free of his jacket—not so thoughtfully tossed to the floor behind him—Scott took his time feasting his eyes on the pale pink satin bra molded to the pair of gorgeous creamy breasts. C-cup, he guessed. With his free hand, he popped the front clasp, and his tongue practically rolled out like the red carpet on Oscar night at the rosy peaks that tumbled out.
“You are beautiful,” he said, trailing an icy finger over the right rosy peak, puckering it into a tight bud. Then, cupping her breast in his palm, reveling in its soft fullness, he brought it up to his mouth. His tongue laved her nipple, then he drew it fully inside and suckled hard, making her pant and writhe. She tasted of vanilla and heaven and of life itself.
Something hard brushed her shoulder as Leia writhed against Scott. Slightly concerned, she asked, “Scott, is the safety on?”
For a moment, he had no idea what she was talking about. She tapped her finger against his holster. “Oh. Right.” Removing the holster and throwing it on the desk where it landed on the telephone, he returned to feast on her gorgeous breasts, giving the left rosy peak the same attention he had the right one.
Scott was a goner until he realized Leia had skillfully unknotted and pulled his tie from around his neck, the silk length now on the floor with his jacket, and had undone the first three buttons of his shirt. The hand that had been splayed over the small of her back stilled her fingers on the fourth button. He couldn’t allow her to touch him, no matter how much he wanted her to. He had no intention of answering questions about his scars.
Even now, Leia’s expression was inquiring. He could lie, but Scott, and definitely no pun intended, just knew that she would see right through it. Her mouth opened, and he kissed her long and hard, silencing whatever she’d been about to say. He guided her hands to his fly where his cock strained and stretched his pants. She got the message, and within two hot seconds, his pants along with his boxer briefs were shoved down his legs.
Scott managed to remove his wallet before his pants hit his ankles. Another realization struck him. He didn’t have any condoms. He hadn’t needed them with Laura, either in life or death. Her skirt already hitched up around her waist—when had that happened?—he stopped Leia before her panties, also pale pink and satin, were halfway down her thighs. “Leia, I don’t have protection.”
“We’re safe. I’ve just recently had my three-monthly contraception jab. And I haven’t got anything catching.”
“Me, neither,” he said, confident in the knowledge that ghosts didn’t have sexually transmitted diseases.
She smiled, and her panties again began their descent. “Now?”
“Now. Definitely now.”
Scott stood back and helped Leia with the removal of her panties, and again thoughtfully placed them on the desk beside her. As creamy as her breasts, her legs were slender, smooth and, between, covered with a scant patch of dark curls, the plump lips at the entrance to her pussy glistened temptingly. His cock throbbed.
I have a feeling the next woman you screw will become your wife.
Ignoring Anderson’s words that had suddenly popped into his head, Scott nudged his middle finger inside to probe her velvety depths. He added his forefinger. So hot. So slick. So vibrant. And so very, very ready. Withdrawing his fingers, he shifted Leia to the edge of the desk and, in one smooth stroke, penetrated her with his cock. Hard and deep.
Her slick inner muscles tightened and gripped him. He pulled out, slipped his hands under her ass to angle her slightly, and plowed back in. That really hit the spot, and he nearly came, but he forged on, intent on satisfying her before himself. She wrapped her legs around him, sealing them tight. Not even a ghost could have slipped between them.
The main office door was wide open, his pants and boxers down around his ankles, his ass covered only by the tail of his shirt, and anybody could walk in at any time, but Scott couldn’t give a flying fuck. Not when Leia rode his cock like a woman possessed. Her increasingly wanton and desperate mewls urged him on, and he hammered into her, pushing deeper with each stroke until he didn’t know where he ended, and she began.
“Scott, oh, Scott!” she panted. “Don’t stop. So good. Make me come.”
“Count on it,” he managed to assure between thrusts. His chest heaved, sweat trickled down his spine, and his balls ached from holding back, but he upped the pace and intensity, driving his cock in and out, squeezing her ass with one hand, the other snaking between them. Just as she unerringly locked eyes with him, his thumb and forefinger unerringly found her clit.
He petted and pinched and stroked. Hot juice slipped over ice as he worked her with his fingers, his cock a heated blur. Then, gripping his shoulders and with an ecstatic “Yes!” her whole body jerked, and intense, pulsating waves ran the length of his cock from base to tip as she climaxed around him.
And for Scott, that did it.
One final powerful thrust seated him up to the hilt, and he exploded, his searing, thick seed shooting out of his cock in a torrent of grief, guilt, and ecstasy.
His grief at losing Laura in death and her subsequent passing to the other side.
His guilt at his failure at preventing Senator Charles Williamson from ending Laura’s life.
And his ecstasy for this moment with Leia.
Leia kissed him then, sucking his tongue into her mouth, prolonging the moment. Enfolding her still-trembling body in his arms, Scott returned the kiss with equal ardor until the need for air became paramount. He pulled out and looked down.
Leia’s rosy nipples still stood at attention from his hot mouth and cold hands. Her skirt was shoved up to her waist and her exposed pussy saturated from their recent screwing. Another primal thrill surged through him. His breath still labored, he said, “I know you can’t see this, Leia, and God, I wish you could…”
“Me, too,” she murmured, her breathing just as labored.
“But what I see makes me want to beat my chest and roar like a caveman.” Scott laughed with Leia, then rested his forehead against hers. “That was…”
“Mind-blowing?” she offered when he trailed off lost for words.
“And then some.” He smiled and kissed the tip of her nose. The telephone then jangled, and they leapt apart like startled rabbits. Still in a somewhat erotic haze, he picked up his holstered gun
before realizing it wasn’t the telephone. He put it down and picked up the receiver. “Yeah?” he panted.
“Rafferty?”
Scott snapped out of his erotic haze, and his fist curled around the receiver. Ross fuckin’ Anderson! His eyes fell upon his Beretta, and he wondered if it were possible to laser Anderson’s ass down the line.
“Where’s Leia? And what gives with the heavy breathing?”
“On both counts, none of your fucking business!” he snarled, mashing the receiver down.
Leia frowned. “Ross?”
“In one.” He expelled an exasperated breath and reached down for his clothes. As he made himself more presentable, he watched Leia dress and sighed with sadness as her blouse covered the bra that cupped her rosy-tipped and gorgeous creamy breasts. Just the thought that he’d suckled on those rosy peaks had his cock stirring with renewed desire.
I have a feeling the next woman you screw will become your wife again sounded in his head when she slipped her panties on and pushed her skirt down.
Leia remained silent, but Scott knew she’d heard Anderson’s words and was bursting to ask about them. He would only marry for love, yet he wasn’t ignorant to the fact that it could strike twice. Yet he couldn’t have fallen in love with Leia this fast, not when his feelings for Laura had taken a year to fully develop.
No, this was a case of lust. Pure and simple. He’d missed the physical side of sex with a living, real flesh-and-blood woman. And Leia had just happened to be the woman to break his vow of celibacy. He smiled as he knotted his tie. Oh, Leia had broken his vow all right. Probably smashed it out of the stratosphere.
The phone then rang again.
This time, Leia went to answer it. Scott covered her hand with his before she lifted the receiver. “If that’s Ross, tell him to go and screw himself.”
Leia hitched a tentative brow, but probably guessed from his tone that he was serious. “Good morning. Magnum Investigations,” she said, answering the phone. “How may I help you? Who’s calling? One moment, please.” She held the receiver out to him. “Sam Carrick.”