by Susan Sey
This time the heat was so intense, so immediate, that her head simply lolled back, found a beautiful cradle against the hard curve of his shoulder. The front clasp of her bra gave way and suddenly his hands were against her skin, the hard prod of her nipples between his fingers. She rolled her hips back into him, strangled back a cry of need as he answered her with a roll of his own hips, and then he raked his teeth lightly up the edge of her throat.
She wanted his mouth on hers, she realized dimly. His hands were clever—hell, they were magical as far as she was concerned—but she wanted his mouth. She twisted against him, struggling to turn in the cruelly limited space, and he loosened his grip to allow it.
Then her breasts were crushed against his chest, the fabric of his shirt an expensive and exquisite friction, while his mouth came down to claim hers with a savage desperation. She answered the kiss with all the edgy need raging through her veins, opened her mouth to him, danced her tongue across his. He rocked his hips against hers in a maddeningly constricted motion that had want pooling hot and heavy between her legs.
And then something was missing.
The whistling. The light? Which had stopped first? She couldn’t say. All she knew was that they were alone again. She could feel it in every fiber of her incredibly sensitized body. Patrick had also gone utterly still. After three long heartbeats, he let her go, easing his hands away from the curve of her bottom.
The desire pounding through her veins cooled slightly, drifted toward shame. She put her clothing back together in swift silence, then reached for the doorknob with a trembling hand. She didn’t flip on the lights, didn’t even turn to look at him. She concentrated instead on the makeshift clotheslines stretching across the warehouse floor, strung with an impressive amount of counterfeit cash.
“Guess you were right,” she said softly. She checked the doors with shaking hands. Locked, all of them. “Guy has a key. Looks like I’m going to have to get to the bottom of that paper trail after all.”
“Liz,” he said, his voice dark and steady. “What just happened here?” There was no hint of reproach in the question, but she felt wretched anyway.
“You started it,” she snapped. “You tell me.” She was cranky, horny and teetering on the ugly edge of heartbreak, and suddenly she’d had enough.
“What are you trying to do here, Patrick?” she demanded. “Really. What is it you want exactly? You come to town acting like somebody blackmailed you into being here, get yourself embroiled in not one but two of my active cases, and then when I’m not appropriately thrilled to be working with you, you threaten to seduce me. And then, when I’m too damn knotted up over you to think straight, you decide no, tragically, we’re just too different for sex to be an option. But you take the first opportunity to feel me up in a closet. Why are you doing this?” The words tumbled out on a reckless surge of anger. “Why are you screwing with my life this way? Why can’t you just do the job and leave me alone?”
“What do you want me to say, Liz? That I can’t resist you? That you draw me in and I’m helpless against it?”
She gazed at him, shock and hope pooling inside her. “Are you?” she asked softly. His silence was answer enough, and it was truly all she’d expected. Even so, it sent a hot surge of anger through her that he’d been cruel enough to make her hope.
“God, of course you aren’t.” She laughed bitterly. “Even if it were true, you’d never say so. It would be too foolish, too vulnerable. It would make you a real flesh and blood man, and you’d never risk that, would you?”
His face went absolutely blank and she knew she’d hurt him. She was sorry for it, but at the same time, something hot and joyful and furious rose up inside her. She’d broken through. Finally. The mask was coming off.
“What do you know about risk, Liz?” he asked. “What the hell do you know about taking a real chance? You, with your boarding school education, your riding lessons and debutante balls. How the hell does somebody like you talk risk to somebody like me?”
“This isn’t about me.”
“The hell it isn’t.” Those black brows had lowered into a single, ominous line, and Liz felt her own temper rush to meet his.
“Fine. Then tell me just because I want to know. Tell me why you’re here.”
“Liz.” He pushed his hands through his hair again and blew out a sharp breath, struggling visibly to regain control. Liz would be damned if she’d let that happen now. Not when she was so far beyond control herself. “It’s almost over,” he said wearily. “I’ve already been here longer than I planned and I’ll be gone inside a week. Why does it even matter anymore what this thing is between us?”
“Because!” she yelled, throwing out her arms in frustration. “I’m in love with you!” She sucked in a breath that didn’t seem to contain enough oxygen. “Christ knows I don’t want to be, and I’ve done everything I can think of to get out of it, not that you’ve been any help, Mr. Do The Right Thing. So if you’re not going to sleep with me, I’d consider it a personal favor if you’d really make an effort to stay out of my life. Starting with avoiding any FBI investigations in the future. You want to do something nice for your sister, maybe you could send flowers. That’s what most brothers do.”
He stared at her, shock written plainly on his beautiful face. “Oh, for God’s sake,” Liz snapped. “Don’t look like that. It isn’t a death sentence, you know. I love you. I’ll get over it, whether you fuck me or not. Just make up your mind so I can settle on a strategy, okay?”
“And what if I do?” he asked slowly. “Sleep with you. How exactly are you going to handle that? I mean it’s not exactly in your best interests, careerwise.”
She jerked her shoulders. “I’m not asking for a permanent arrangement, Patrick. Given your cooperation and unlimited use of my bed, we can be on the other side of this in a couple days. A week, tops.” She left out the part about the unlimited wear and tear on her heart, but surely he didn’t need to know about that. “Love’s not one of those lasting things.”
He snorted. “And your superiors? Have they okayed your plan to screw the daylights out of a former thief?”
Liz stiffened. “The FBI doesn’t choose who I sleep with.”
“The hell it doesn’t,” he said. “Letting me into your bed, however temporarily, puts your badge on the line, Liz. Maybe not in any official way, but anybody finds out and your career path dead-ends.”
“That’s not going to happen.”
“Why shouldn’t it?” He leaned in, dark and knowing. “Tell me you love me more than your badge, Liz. Tell me you’re willing to risk everything you’ve worked for to get this thing out of your system.”
She folded her arms and gave him a defiant glare. The very idea of losing her badge set loose a slithering terror in her chest but she pushed it back. It was either risk her career or spend the rest of her stupid life miserably in love with him. And as much as she needed her badge, she needed her heart back more.
“What do you care?” she said. “Isn’t it your plan to have your wicked way with me anyway? Don’t you want your sweet revenge?”
He gazed at her for a long, tense moment. “Not at any price,” he said. “Not at this one, anyway. I’ll take you home.”
HE HELD out his hand when they reached Liz’s front door and she handed over her keys without an argument. Progress, he thought.
“You want my gun?” she asked.
He curled his lip into a sneer that probably made them both feel a little more normal. “I’d rather not. Guns are so . . . obvious.”
“True. But they’re darn handy for shooting armed intruders.” She sneered back, and Patrick felt things settle a bit in his gut. He liked Liz sneering at him. He expected Liz to sneer at him. He did not expect declarations of love. Though now that he considered it, the style had suited her completely. Both reluctant and defiant, straightforward and pissed. He wondered if there had ever been a problem she hadn’t tackled just so.
“Stay here,” he
said, and eased into her darkened house. Five minutes later, he returned to the porch, found her leaning against the railing, her gun in hand. “Come on in,” he said. “You’re clear.”
“Great.” She sailed past him in a cloud of temper and pride, that lovely back stiff, those eyes still blazing blue fire. “Thanks for everything. I’ll be in touch should we require your service again as pertains to this case, but I don’t anticipate that. Good-bye.”
Good-bye. The word struck him like a physical blow. One second he was enveloped in the hot, clean scent of her as she passed under his nose, the next she was shoving him out of her house and out of her life. Suddenly it was more loss than he could bear. He moved before he could even think it over.
“What? No kiss good night?” He had her wrist before she could snatch it back, shouldered past her door and captured the other one. He backed her up against the wall of her little foyer, her wrists pinned on either side of her startled face, and settled his weight right into all those tidy, compact curves. God, he loved the way her body fit him.
Temper chased the shock right out of her eyes and he nearly laughed at the sweetness of it, the ridiculous rush of satisfaction he got from fighting with this woman. She opened her mouth, presumably to singe his hide with some well-chosen words, but he kissed her before she could wrap that gorgeous mouth around any of them. Her words were always so hard but her mouth was so damn soft, and he fell into it with something like relief. God, he wished he could keep her like this. Just like this—startled, then open, yielding, melting—forever. Was that possible? Her tongue touched his, and he was suddenly inclined to find out.
He pulled back, looked into her determined little face so full of frustrated desire and reluctant love. His heart thudded to a halt, then broke wide open. She loved him. Him. And he loved her right back. Maybe he couldn’t give her the words, but he could give her this. One night to stamp his love on every inch of her beautiful skin. One night to worship her with his body, his hands, his lips.
“So this is what you want?” he asked softly. “This, your bed and the next couple days?”
“Yeah,” she said her eyes burning and clear. “That’s it.”
He moved in again, pressed the entire length of his body to hers. He wanted to moan at the perfection of the fit. “I think we can work something out.”
“Thanks be to God,” she said. She wrapped her hands into the front of his shirt, kicked the door shut and pulled him into that wanton, willing mouth.
Chapter 20
SHE DIDN’T bother with the lights, just kept kissing him as they groped their way down the short hall to her bedroom. She didn’t want to open her eyes, didn’t want to know what he looked like in this moment. She’d have a hard enough time forgetting how he felt under her greedy hands, how she felt with his hands racing over her body, setting off minor earthquakes in their wake. She didn’t want to have to forget his face, too.
She fumbled blindly with the buttons on his shirt, keeping her mouth fused to his as they finally popped free under her trembling fingers. Then her hands were on him, streaking over smooth golden skin, over muscle and bone. It wasn’t enough, she thought wildly. Not nearly enough. Desire spiked with bright panic whipped through her in a wicked, rising tide. What if she couldn’t ever get enough? What if this burning thirst to touch him couldn’t ever be slaked, no matter how deeply she drank of him? How was she ever going to be free?
A noise of distress escaped her, and her hands faltered against his chest. “I can’t,” she whispered. “This isn’t going to work.”
He stilled against her. “Liz. Darling.” He turned her in his arms, put her back against his stomach and rocked her in his arms, slow and soothing. He laid his mouth into the crook of her shoulder and spoke against her skin, his voice sliding over her like honey. “It’ll work just fine. Relax.”
His hand slipped under her shirt to draw slow circles low on her belly. He pressed himself into the curve of her behind and she could feel him there, hot, hard and demanding. Even so, his hands stayed lazy, playing against her stomach, tracing circle upon circle, each one reaching just the tiniest bit higher than the last.
Her breath caught in her chest and she found herself swaying with him, allowing him to comfort her even while her breasts swelled and tingled with anticipation. His thumbs finally brushed the lower swell of her breast and she stopped breathing altogether. Her nipples hardened to tight straining points and his hands slid up to cup the aching weight in his palms. His thumbs feathered over her nipples with slow deliberation, and the shock of it ripped through her, shoved the air from her lungs and all rational thought from her mind. She arched into his hands with a throaty cry of surrender while those clever hands of his dealt with the front clasp of her bra.
In that moment, she stopped worrying about what would happen to her if she went through with this. She was more concerned about how she’d survive if she didn’t. When he urged her arms over her head, she raised them without conscious thought. He pulled her shirt over her head and tossed it away.
“Open your eyes, Liz,” he murmured, rubbing his jaw lightly against her cheek. “You’re beautiful.”
She’d been lost in the dark haze of desire he’d woven around her, but her eyes flew open at his words. Beautiful? Even the men who’d claimed to be in love with her had never tried that one. But then she focused on what he was showing her, and she stared. She’d never seen such a thing. God, she’d been right to keep her eyes shut. She’d never erase this image from her brain.
Moonlight streamed through her bedroom window, brushing everything with a silvery glow. They were reflected together in the mirror above her dresser, both naked to the waist. She looked soft, she thought wonderingly. Curvy and ivory white against the darker gold of his arms. He loomed behind her like a fallen angel come to lead her into sin, his hands splayed possessively over each breast, her nipples jutting wantonly through those long, clever fingers. He plucked and rolled them while she watched, and the sight sent a nervy desire crashing through her. Her eyes drifted shut and he nipped at her jaw.
“No, darling. Stay with me. Watch what I do to you. What you do to me.”
“No.” She couldn’t. Not if she wanted to come through this intact. She wrenched herself free, spun in his arms and took his mouth with a fierce kiss that had him stumbling back a step. He came up short against the bed and she toppled him onto it, then leaned over to plant her hands on either side of his face.
“You’ve had your turn at the wheel,” she said. “Now I want to drive.”
He blinked up at her, then a wicked smile tipped up that elegant mouth of his. He reached up, filled his hands with her. “By all means,” he said, brushing a kiss over the upper swell of each breast. “Take the wheel.”
She trailed a finger along the groove running down the center of his abdomen, flicked open the button of his khakis and slid down the zipper. “I will, thanks,” she said.
She found him hot, hard and ready. Renewed need rocked her when he hissed in an appreciative breath at her touch. She was empty, aching, and she wouldn’t ever be full until she was closer. Until she’d covered herself with all that lovely heat, drawn that hardness deep inside.
But what about after? a voice whispered in her head. Will you still be warm after, or will everything just seem colder because he’s gone?
She shoved the thought aside and released him long enough to strip off the last of his clothing, the last of hers. Then she straddled him, shared with him the moist heat that pooled between her own legs, and he rocked up into that melting center. She accommodated him with a smooth little twist of her hips and had the indescribable pleasure of watching those cool, controlled eyes of his go hot and blind. His hands went to her hips, clutched there, stilled her.
“Liz,” he said. “Wait. Slow down.”
She smiled down at him, wondered if it looked as fierce as it felt. “Hell no,” she said. Another quick twist of her hips and she’d taken the very tip of him inside her
body. Taken, she thought, latching onto the word, focusing on it with grim determination. She had to remember that this was taking.
She slid down onto her elbows, the silky friction of his chest against her skin sending ripples of pleasure straight to her core. He jerked against her and she took him deeper.
Putting her mouth to his ear, she took the lobe between her teeth and bit gently. “I want this, Patrick. Hard. Fast. Sweaty. Give it to me. Now.”
He groaned and took her hips in his hands, plunged into her with one swift, sure motion. She gasped, arched back as profound satisfaction shot through her, coupled with a bolt of pure terror. He was in her now, heart, brain and body. She was no longer even a separate being. He’d invaded her very self, and God help her, she craved more. She drove herself down upon him, pulled him deeper even as her brain sputtered and panicked.
She rode him with fierce determination, set a viciously demanding rhythm, but he matched it, rising to meet her in perfect countertempo. He took what she offered, but at the same time stretched her, filled her, fit her so perfectly that a sob rose up and took her completely by surprise. She muffled it against his chest, but he stilled immediately.
“Oh God, Liz.” He was hard and aggressive inside her but his voice was gentle, his hands incredibly delicate as they spanned her waist. “What is it?”
She kept her face buried in his shoulder, shook her head silently as she bowed up then sank back down on him. He slid into her as if he’d been custom designed for her body, and she shuddered at the exquisite friction.
“Nothing,” she said, and repeated it inside her head like a mantra. Nothing, nothing, nothing. There was nothing here but his body and hers and the primal urge to drive herself onto him until the world shattered out from under her. “It’s nothing. Just let me do this. I need it.”