One corner of his mouth turned up in a wry grimace. "Regardless, after the festival, I will be unemployed."
"Oh." I scooted closer, putting one arm around him, my fingers stroking the nape of his neck. "I'm sorry about that. I'm also afraid I can't do anything about the police. But the first item on your list, this woman you spoke of, perhaps I can make you forget her."
"No," he said, his eyes glittering now. I froze in mid-stroke. Suddenly his arms were around me, pulling me tight against his hard body—and I do mean all of it—his mouth a breath away from mine. "I will never forget her. She's everything I want in a woman—smart, sexy, and all mine."
"Ah," I said, allowing my lips to brush his as I spoke. "Well, since I can't help you with that, I'll just have to recommend that you go to bed. Perhaps a little rest will make your future look brighter."
"Bed," he growled, grinding his hips against mine. Every bone in my body melted into gelatin. I sagged against him. He shifted and hoisted me up in his arms, turning to carry me toward the tiny bedroom. "Now why didn't I think of that?"
"You don't have the intelligence I do. I am much more reasonable than you. You are tired, therefore you must rest. In bed. For a very long time."
"That is reasonable," he agreed, his voice deep with desire. He set me on my feet and had my coat off and my dress whisked up over my head before I could so much as protest. Not that I was going to, but his disrobing me still took me a bit by surprise. I stood in my bra and underwear before him.
"Very pretty," he said, eyeing the lace of my bra and matching undies. "Very nice. Very feminine. Now take them off."
"You first," I said, crossing my arms and tapping my toe, trying to look bored. I was anything but bored, though, when he complied, peeling off his shirt and baring that lovely chest and belly tattoo. I actually started to salivate at the sight of his bare flesh.
He pulled his boots off, never once taking his gaze from mine. His hands reached for the fly on his corduroy pants.
"Allow me," I said, ignoring the fact that my voice was as husky as a sled dog. I kicked off my flats and put my hands on his belt, unbuckling it as I said, "I love the way your eyes go all steamy when you look at me. You make me feel like I'm bathed by the fire inside you."
"Baby, you are the fire inside me."
I unbuttoned the button on his pants. "I love the way you smell. You smell like a man should smell, masculine, hard, hot…"
I pulled his zipper down slowly. He took a deep breath and held it as my hand deliberately stroked against the long length of his penis, his eyes positively glowing now.
"And how you make me feel when you touch me." I slipped my hands inside the waistband of his underwear, pushing them and his pants down past his hips and thighs. He kicked them off the rest of the way. I took him into both my hands, and indulged in a little tactile exploration. "You make me burn for you, Raphael. Only for you. I need your touch to feel alive. I need you."
"Ah, baby, what you're doing to me," he groaned, the cords in his neck standing out with strain.
"I haven't done anything," I said with a naughty smile as I lowered myself to my knees before him. "Yet."
"Baby, I don't think I'm going to be able to stand it if you—ah, Christ!"
He tasted just like his scent: hot, hard man. I remembered everything Dr. Ruth had ever said about the way to drive a man mad, and added a few little ideas of my own. He had both hands on my head, directing me to a rhythm that pleased him, his hips moving in time to my strokes. "Oh, God, baby, that's so good. You feel so good to me."
I added a little suction. His voice went up an octave. "You're going to kill me if you keep that up."
I lifted my head. "Do you want me to stop?"
"God, no!" he yelled, then groaned when I redoubled my efforts.
"I'm not… going to be able… oh, Lord do that again… aaaaiiiigggghhhhh… not going to be able… oh, sweet Christ, your mouth should be illegal… to last much… oh, God… much longer. Joy, stop. Stop now."
I didn't want to. I'd never really been one for oral sex before, but with Raphael it was different. It gave me immense pleasure to give him pleasure. I added a little fillip with the end of my tongue and heard him groan in response. "Baby, you have to stop now."
I wrapped my fingers around his balls, lightly raking my fingernails down them, tracing that fascinating little vein that runs forward. His hips jerked as I gave him one last stroke of my tongue.
"JOY!" he yelled, panic tingeing his voice.
I looked up. "What? Oh. Sorry. I didn't realize you were that close. Wow, no wonder you blew out the end of that condom. That's got to be at least five feet over to that wall."
"Woman," he growled, pulling me up until I was pressed against his body. "You are going to be the death of me."
His hands were busy on the hooks of my bra.
"Yeah, but what a way to die."
He smiled a smile that was filled with all sorts of wicked promises, promises I couldn't wait for him to fulfill. "Baby, you have no idea."
"Really?" I asked, allowing him to remove my bra. He pushed me back onto the bed, rolling on top of me for a moment to kiss my wits away. I smiled to myself as his tongue went wild ordering mine around, checking my teeth, stroking the roof of my mouth, and generally being demanding, but then it was gone as Raphael rolled off me and opened the drawer to his nightstand.
"I get to put it on you this time. I want to try doing it with my tongue. Roxy said she heard it's possible… what's that?"
He rolled back over until he was lying on his side next to me, a long bottle in his hand. "I'm partial to cherry. I hope you like it as well."
"Oooh," I squealed, partly in response to the idea of something a little different, partly because of the desire in his eyes. "Is that one of those slicky lotions that make you slide all over one another and heat up when you blow on them?"
"Yes," he said, flipping open the top as he bent to take my breast in his mouth. I squealed again when he tugged ever so gently with his teeth on my nipple, then moaned when the cool liquid hit the tip, oozing downward. He leaned over me and took my other breast in his mouth while his fingers teased the slick oil over my breast. The combination of the heat of his mouth and the coolness of the lotion made my mind go numb with pleasure. He teased circles around my cherry-flavored breast, gently rubbing my nipples between his slippery fingers just as he started suckling hard on my other breast.
I almost came off the bed, my back arched up so high.
"Like that, do you?" he chuckled, his voice intimate and sexy and rough with pleasure. He dribbled a little lotion on my bare breast, then switched sides and sucked all the cherry goodness off the first breast, laving my breast and nipple with long, sweeping strokes of his tongue.
"RaphaEL," I screamed, clutching his shoulders as he burned my breasts up with the fire his hands and mouth were causing. "Oh, please, Raphael, you have to stop! My nipples are going to explode, and then what'll I do? I don't think they can do nipple transplants, can they? Oh, sweet baby Jesus, that's so goooood…"
He drizzled cherry down my belly, his fingers painting me with the wetness, tracing intricate paths that his mouth soon followed. While he was busy nibbling around my belly button, his hand slipped down to my underwear, rubbing the heel of his hand over me, his fingers teasing the satin into my heated core. My eyes crossed at the cool silk of his curls brushing against my skin with each stroke of his tongue on my belly. The dance of his fingers against my soft folds was driving me wild, winding the coil inside me up tighter and tighter. "Raphael!" I shrieked.
He smiled against my stomach.
"Take my underwear off!"
He cocked an eyebrow at me. "Demands? Do I hear demands?"
"Please," I begged.
"That's better," he smiled, and nuzzled the flare of one hip. "Do I take it you don't like it when I do this?"
He pulled my underwear tight against my flesh, his finger stroking out a quick tempo that had me mindless in
seconds.
I whimpered. It was all I could do, I couldn't form words—words were too much to expect when my body was being pleasured beyond any pleasure it had known.
"Baby, all you have to do is tell me what you want," he crooned, his eyes hot and wicked and full of the terrible, terrible things he wanted to do to me.
I prayed he had time to get to every last one.
"Please," I sobbed, my body bucking in time to his fingers. "Just you. I want to feel just you."
He ended one torment by pulling my underwear off, but started another when he spread my legs and went wild with the bottle of cherry.
"Dear God in heaven," I cried at the first stroke of his tongue against my heated flesh. "Raphael! Bob! Please!"
"Anything for you, baby," he said, settling my thighs on his shoulders and preparing to send me flying. His mouth sent me into a maelstrom of sensations: fire, silk, pleasure, love, desire, need… they were all tangled up together as he drove me higher and higher until at last I went up in a bonfire of ecstasy. He caught my shout of exultation in his mouth as he plunged into me, so deep it was impossible to tell where he ended and I started. He pulled my hips against him as he entered me again and again with quick, hard thrusts, touching my womb, touching my soul, searing himself into my heart with every hot word of love he moaned into my neck, setting me alight with the pure joy of our combined rapture.
"Each time," I told him later as I stroked my fingers down the long, damp sweep of his back to the curve of his lovely behind; "each time I think it can't get any better, and then it does."
His head raised from the crook of my neck just enough to press a kiss to my collarbone.
"You set me quite a standard to follow," I complained. "I don't know how I'm going to match you, let alone exceed you. Everything you do to me is wonderful. Do you have any idea what sort of stress that puts on me to strive for perfection? What if I fail? What if I can't ever match you?"
"You're forgetting an important fact." He pushed himself up so he could grin before swooping down to capture my lips in his. "Practice makes perfect. We'll just have to let you practice until you're perfect."
I thought about that for the scant second before I gave myself up to the hot lure of his mouth. "Works for me."
Chapter Seventeen
"Where's your gun?" I asked, stepping out of the claustrophobic shower so tiny I wondered how Raphael fit into it.
He was dressed, sitting on the bed pulling his boots on, having washed off all our cherry fun. He looked up as I toweled myself dry and reached for my clothes.
"My gun?"
"Yeah. You know, the one you pulled on us when we did our breaking and entering the other day. The big one."
"Why do you want to know?"
I unzipped my dress, stepped into it, and turned so he could zip me up. "Idle curiosity. I thought maybe since you were in charge of security you'd be wearing it, but you haven't, and it's not under your pillow, so I was just wondering what you did with it."
His hands were warm on my back as he pulled the zipper up; then he turned me around and looked at me for a minute with those amber eyes that could melt my knees. With a sigh, he bent down and reached under his bed, pulling out a small black metal box.
"Oh, it's in there?"
"Yes."
"Ah."
He pushed the box back under the bed, then grabbed my hips and pulled me onto his lap. "Joy, about what you said earlier—"
"Oh, my apology? Yeah, I know I still owe it to you."
"No, about—"
I put my hand across his mouth. "Let me do this with style, will you? I really am sorry for what I said, Raphael. You're entitled to your privacy, and if you don't feel like you can trust me with something in your past, that's fine. It hurts me, but I'll live. I just want you to know that, despite the pain I feel because I know I'm not as important to you as you are to me, I will still be here for you. I love you, and that means I'm stuck with you no matter how badly you treat me."
I pulled my hand from his mouth and smiled at him, pleased I had gotten my groveling out of the way.
There was a decidedly disgruntled look on his handsome face. "That was an apology?"
"Sure was."
"Ah. Perhaps it is the latest rage in apologies—one that backhands the person you're apologizing to."
I nudged him on the shoulder. "Stop being so argumentative. You're supposed to accept it and tell me you love me and worship me and you'll never, ever keep anything from me again."
"I'm supposed to do that, am I?"
"Yes, you are."
He tipped me over onto my back and loomed over me. I smiled and looped my hands around his neck.
"And you came all this way just to apologize to me?"
He started nibbling on my neck, his hot breath starting familiar fires that had just been put out.
"Well, not just for that. Roxy and I had to talk to Dominic."
"Why?" he asked, his hands sliding up my dress to massage my breasts.
I squirmed and lifted my jaw to give him better access to all the sensitive neck spots, my hands tracing out the muscles in his back. "Roxy set it up. Dominic had something to tell us."
"Something about what?" His tongue curled around the outer edges of my ear, his uneven breath doing more to me than the hot touch of his mouth.
"Something to help us. Oh, God, Raphael, you can't do this again, we just got cleaned up!"
"Something to help you what?" he asked, sucking my earlobe into his mouth as he gently squeezed my breasts.
I nuzzled his cheek and tried to remember what I wasn't supposed to tell him. "We're trying to find out who killed Tanya."
He froze for a moment, then released my ear to look into my eyes. "Why?"
I traced my fingers across his silky eyebrows. "Because you're a suspect. So am I, although I don't think Inspector Bartos was serious about that. I hope he wasn't serious. But you… he doesn't seem very happy about you. And, Raphael, say what I will about you being pigheaded and stubborn, you're everything to me. I can't lose you. I won't let him take you from me. So if Roxy and I have to do a little detective work to prove you're innocent, we will."
He kissed me, hot and demanding. "You're the most amazing woman. I've never known anyone as giving as you." I opened my mouth to tell him that was the sort of thing I wanted to hear, but he silenced me with another hot kiss. "Regardless, I can't let you do this. I appreciate that you want to help me, but you don't have anything to worry about."
"But Inspector Bartos—"
"Leave the detecting to the police, Joy."
I pushed him back so I could sit up. "Look, I have enough on my plate right now, what with having to deal with Christian, I do not need you locked up in jail on a trumped up murder charge simply because I didn't make the effort to prove you're innocent."
He took hold of the back of my dress and kept me from getting off the bed. "You don't have to prove I'm innocent; the police know I am. What do you mean, you have to deal with Christian?"
I gave him a look of sheer disbelief. "Oh, sure, the police know you're innocent. That's why you're heading up their suspect list."
"What has Christian done? Why do you have to deal with him?"
"I don't want to talk about Christian, I want to talk about saving you, you arrogant, maddening man! Why I want to save your annoying, if extremely dishy, hide, I don't know, but I mean to, so you can just stop being all macho and ordering me around and—"
"Joy." He took my face in his hands and leveled a look at me that shriveled the words up on my lips. "You will not investigate this murder any further. The man who killed Tanya has not been apprehended, and until he is, you are not safe. Do you understand me?"
"Of course I understand you—you're being possessive and dominating—"
Raphael rolled his eyes, muttered something that sounded like an oath, and pulled me forward, his kiss hot enough to take the curl right out of my hair. "I'm telling you I love you, you foolish woman.
"
"You are?" I asked, breathless from the power of his kiss.
His eyes were things of beauty, gems of the brightest quality, clear and translucent and filled with love. Somehow his declaration took the sting out of his bossiness.
"I am. I love you and worship you, and after this is over, I'll never keep anything from you."
It was exactly what I wanted to hear, what I needed to hear. He was acknowledging my concerns and fears, and promised to answer all my questions… after it was over? I stopped him just a hairsbreadth from my lips. "What do you mean, after this is over? Raphael, you could be in jail then!"
His fingers curled into my hair, teasing my nape. "Baby, I won't go to jail."
"What's to keep you out this time?"
I regretted the words as soon as they left my lips. His fingers stop stroking my neck.
"This time?" His gaze held mine. I stared at him, my heart tearing into a thousand pieces at the flicker of pain in his eyes, a layer of ice settling around me as he pushed me off his lap and cocked an eyebrow at me. "I see. That's the information you wanted from Dominic. Do you mind my asking how you expect to use what Dominic told you to prove who the murderer is?"
"That wasn't exactly the purpose of our meeting with him," I said miserably, tears starting at the back of my eyes. "I'm sorry, Raphael. I'm very sorry and ashamed of myself. I don't like poking into your past, I just want to help you. I want to keep you safe, and since you won't tell me what it is you are keeping from me, I thought if I knew, I'd be able to do whatever it takes to keep Inspector Bartos away from you."
He watched for a moment as tears streaked down my cheeks, then wrapped his arms around me and pulled me to his chest. I buried my face in his neck and watered his shirt. "Baby, I wish I could tell you everything," he said, his lips in my hair. "I wish I could, but it's not possible yet. You have to trust me just a little bit longer."
"I do trust you; it's you who doesn't trust me," I pointed out, sniffing and wiping the dampness of my tears off his neck.
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