"Imprudent?" she questioned, the word wiling like melted sugar off her foreign tongue.
"Wrong," he said.
"Oh." She wriggled her toes until they were tucked under the white sheets. Her skin was as pale as the crisp linen, and appeared softer. "Because of your … job."
"Yes, of course, because of my job." Suddenly agitated, Jake stood. What he wouldn't give for a little of her chattiness right about now.
"I see."
"Good." He stepped to the curtains and pulled them back to stare outside. Rain came down in drenching sheets, making the night dark and intimate.
He watched her reflection in the glass as she got up and went into the bathroom again, then came out with her monster-size purse. Within moments, she was on the bed, propping something up on the nightstand next to the generous helping of cherry pie from the all-night diner next door. He slowly turned, finding her running a fingertip along the surface of a picture. Then she sat against the pillows and closed her eyes.
"Your daughter?"
She blinked and looked at him. "Yes."
He sat on the other bed and folded his hands tightly between his knees. The little girl looked nothing like he'd imagined she might. Rather than the dark hair and eyes he'd given her, she had straight blond hair that shone nearly white, and large green eyes.
Nearly four years old and she'd gone without seeing her mother for eight weeks. Jake ran his hand over his face then rubbed the back of his neck. He'd been seven years old when his mother had died. And the days afterward, recovering from the shock, had seemed like months. Years.
Michelle propped her chin onto her bended knees and gazed at him. "Explain to me why your job makes it—what is the word that you used?"
"Imprudent."
She pressed her mouth against her skin. "Yes. Imprudent. Imprudent for us to have sex."
Jake shifted on the mattress, which reminded him that he was sitting on a bed. And that Michelle was sitting on another bed not a foot and a half away. He focused on his white-knuckled hands. "I could lose my job."
"If anyone found out."
"I'd know."
"Oh."
"Anyway, it's not in my, um, nature to sleep with someone I just met twelve hours ago."
"Eighteen."
"Huh?"
"We met eighteen hours ago. Remember? When we bumped into each other in the parking lot."
"Ohh. Yeah. Eighteen hours ago, then."
She rubbed her cheek against her knee. "Why?"
He grimaced. "Why what?"
"Why is it not in your nature to have sex with someone you just met eighteen hours ago?"
He didn't miss her word usage. He'd described the possibility of their coming together as sleeping together. She'd called it having sex. He cleared his throat. And that's exactly what they would be doing, wasn't it? Having sex? They didn't know each other well enough for the word love to enter into the equation. He thought back, trying to remember if he'd ever done it. Had just plain sex. All six of the women he'd been with intimately had been longtime girlfriends, and he'd cared for them to varying degrees. But had he loved them? At the time, he supposed he had, which meant he'd made love to them, not had sex with them.
He gazed at Michelle. With all that wild hair pulled into that neat little twist, she looked different. More presentable. More like the type of woman he would be attracted to. Then why did he have the irrepressible urge to take it down? Watch it cascade down her back in silky, curly strands?
"Do you do that often?"
Her soft, feathery brows drew slightly together. "What? Have sex?"
He averted his gaze.
"Not nearly often enough."
He didn't respond. Couldn't respond.
"I haven't been with a man … well, since before Lili was born."
Over four years.
Jake didn't know why that should make him feel better. The woman had just suggested they climb between the sheets and have at it, and she didn't know him any better than the man in the moon. But he did feel better.
His want of her also shot up a hefty notch.
Michelle's lusty sigh pulled his gaze to her face as she leaned against the pillows and stretched her legs out in front of her. "I thought it couldn't be true. The rumor that Americans are sexually uptight. I guess it's the truth."
The word sexually came out sounding like a highly provocative suggestion. Jake fought the desire to stare at her mouth, though she had likely just insulted him. "I don't know that we're sexually uptight. We're just cautious, that's all. These are dangerous times we live in."
She shrugged, the movement making her small breasts jiggle under the cotton of her camisole. "That's what condoms are for."
"There's more than that to be cautious about."
"What? What is there that could possibly be important enough to keep a man and a woman apart when it's apparent they want each other?"
He was unable to tug his gaze away from her openly poignant one. She looked so unimaginably sexy, her eyes alight with fire, her mouth lushly challenging. "Fatal Attraction?"
Her burst of laughter was nearly his undoing. "You're talking about that movie, yes? The one where Michael Douglas's lady friend boiled his daughter's pet rabbit?"
He grinned. "Yes."
"Do you have a rabbit?"
"No."
"Then I can't very well boil it, now, can I?" She rubbed her toes against the arch of her other foot, her expression shifting. "Anyway, I'm returning to France tomorrow. There's no risk there, is there?"
He stared at his hands again. "I guess not."
"So what are you still doing on that bed when you're welcome in this one?"
Jake felt himself on the losing end of this battle. His pulse rate sped up. His throat tightened. And he wanted nothing more than to take her up on her invitation, consequences be damned.
"Respect," he said.
"Respect?"
"Yes. A gentleman never takes advantage of a woman. He…" He couldn't think when he looked at her, so he shifted his gaze to his fingers. "He, um, gets to know her first—her likes, her dislikes, her favorite color, things, um, like that. Gets to know her on an emotional level before moving on to the physical."
Her generous smile caught him off guard. "That's the most I've heard you say all at once. This subject must really bother you."
He shrugged his tense shoulders. "It's the way I was raised."
"But why give a woman what she isn't asking for?"
He didn't answer her. God, she was forthright, wasn't she? Her head lolled on the pillow. A few strands of dark hair broke free and drifted to lay across her cheek. "Okay, then. Things I like. I like the feel of the sun on my face when it's just risen over the horizon. I like it when I'm in the kitchen cooking, experimenting with new flavors." Her voice dropped an octave. "I like holding my daughter after she's been outside, smelling the fresh air in her hair, on her skin."
Jake's gaze drifted to the picture on the nightstand.
"My dislikes. I don't like when the shower runs out of hot water when I still have shampoo in my hair. I don't like new shoes when they're too tight and need to be broken in." She bit briefly her bottom lip. "I don't like that I can't hear my daughter's deep breathing as she sleeps."
Silence settled over the shadowy room. He'd asked the questions. He didn't know why her answers should affect him so.
"My favorite color is purple."
He looked up to find her smiling. "Purple?"
She nodded. "Now you go."
Jake's stomach tightened. He'd said he wanted to know those things of the women he dated. He hadn't mentioned sharing those answers with them.
"You like…?" Michelle prompted.
"I like…" His words drifted off.
She waited, her head resting against the white pillowcase. "Why don't you start with your dislikes? It might be easier."
"Okay." He paused, thinking. "I dislike…" His mind went completely, totally blank. This was a unique situati
on for him. Not his reluctance to speak—he'd always been conservative with words. But Michelle's interest in his thoughts threw him for a loop.
"You want me to try for you?"
He nodded slowly, relieved by the reprieve, curious as to what she'd say.
Michelle sat up cross-legged. Jake fought the desire to look at her lap, at the way her panties were likely stretched across her feminine parts. "Okay, Jake McCoy, this is how I see you."
He smiled, wondering just how much she thought she knew about him in such a short period of time, and what he'd say when she was wrong.
"You don't like to step outside your box."
"Box?"
"Yes … your comfort zone. You like things the way you like them, and you don't like change."
He stared at his hands.
"You obey a set of internal rules—"
"What do you know about rules?" he asked a little too abruptly, unaware he'd felt so vehemently about her apparent lack of them, and uncomfortable of her awareness of his truckload full.
She sat silently for a moment, gazing at him. "I know plenty about rules." She rubbed her palm against her leg absently. "It's rules that will cut short my search for my daughter. It's rules that have you on that bed, me on this one." She hopelessly tried to smooth stray tendrils of hair into the twist. "No one actually likes stepping outside their box, Jake."
"You seem to do it easily enough."
"Only because I have to."
He narrowed his eyes. "You have to sleep with me?"
He watched her slender neck contract as she swallowed. "I want to sleep with you."
"So what is it you have to do?" he asked.
Her voice was so low it was almost a whisper. "I have to find my daughter so I can go back to my life the way it was."
Jake paused. Interesting. He was just thinking his life had truly yet to begin.
She worried her bottom lip between her teeth, then sighed. "All right. Enough of your dislikes. You obviously dislike anyone guessing anything about you. Why don't we go back to your likes?"
"My likes?" She nodded.
Well, he'd better get on with it, or she'd likely offer answers for him. And he didn't know if he could bear her guessing so accurately.
"I, um, I like the smell of hay when it's just been cut," he said haltingly.
Her brown eyes warmed. "Good. That's good. I like that, too. You must have been born in the country, like I was."
Too bad those countrysides were in different parts of the world, Jake thought. He caught the errant thought and went on. "I like the taste of roast beef straight from the oven. You know, when it melts on your tongue like gravy." He coughed. He'd be the first to admit, he never went beyond what was absolutely necessary to get his point across. So what was with that gravy bit?
He expected to see amusement in her eyes when he looked at her. Instead, he saw a simmering heat that caused a responding spark to ignite in his groin.
He didn't quite know what it was about this woman that made him feel different, made him want to act on impulses he might not even have noticed before. He traded the side of his bed for hers, and hesitantly cupped the side of her face.
She uncrossed her legs and leaned into his touch, her lashes fanning across her cheeks.
He eyed her mouth, torn between wanting to kiss her and needing to pull away. "I, um, like you."
Like wasn't even the word. He burned for her. If he couldn't take her right now, bury himself in her slick, hot flesh, he felt like he'd die. Right then and there. He couldn't remember a time he'd wanted a woman so passionately, so desperately. Above and beyond everything he knew was right and made sense. All he knew was an obsessive need to possess her.
He inexpertly pressed his lips against hers. Testing her. Testing himself. Then all thoughts of right or wrong, awkwardness or skill deserted him, and he branded that lush mouth of hers with a kiss so hot, even she widened her eyes briefly before curling into him, opening to him, moaning in obvious relief and desire.
Maybe she was right. Maybe there were times when just plain sex was called for.
He reached up and tried to take the band from her hair She made a soft little sound, telling him he must have hurt her. He began to pull away.
"Sorry."
"No, no, it's okay."
Catching his hand, she freed her hair for him. He carefully shook the pins out with his fingers, reveling in the silken feel of her curls as they cascaded around his hands and wrists, teasing the skin there. He tangled his tongue with hers, unable to taste near enough, fast enough for his liking.
There was that word again. Like. He liked her responsiveness. He liked the way she arched against him, the pointed tips of her breasts pressing against his starched white shirt. He liked the sound of her soft moans, her shallow breathing as she pushed and pulled at his jacket, getting it halfway down his arms, essentially pinning him, before moving to the buttons of his shirt.
Oh, how he liked giving himself over to something greater than his internal code of conduct. It felt … indecent. Demanding. Liberating.
He clumsily shrugged the remainder of the way out of his jacket, then his open shirt and bunched-up T-shirt. Michelle immediately pressed her hot palms against his flat nipples, then followed with her tongue, nipping at his sensitive flesh with her teeth, then sucking him deep into her mouth.
Jake groaned, then grasped her upper arms, claiming her mouth once again as his. Delving his tongue deeply into the wet recesses, skimming the smooth enamel of her teeth, pulling her tongue into the depths of his.
She tasted of toothpaste and mouthwash, warm skin and soap. She tasted of things forbidden, things denied. She tasted of hungry female to his needy male.
He wasn't sure how it had happened—whether she had done it or he had done it, or if they had done it together—but he was suddenly undressed. His erection pulsed against the skin of his abdomen, ramrod straight and aching. And Michelle was straddling his lap, staring at him with such incredible longing in her eyes he was afraid it would end before it had even begun.
Hesitantly, Jake ran his hands up the velvety skin of her belly, inching her camisole up and then over her head. He caught his breath at the sight of her, then gently cupped her breasts in his palms. They were the perfect size for her height, with large, upward tilting nipples the color of warm honey. He ran the length of his tongue against one, watching as it tightened into a thick nub. He'd never been so turned on by the mere sight of a woman's breasts before. But Michelle's… They encompassed all that she was: small, saucy, provocative and so very, very sexy.
He thoroughly laved first one, then the other, his motions starting out slow, then growing quick, impatient, until he hungrily pulled at her stiff nipples, his hands restlessly traveling over her molten skin, then down to rest on her outer thighs.
Her voice, when she spoke, was soft and husky, "Yes … yes. Touch me … there."
He closed his eyes and muttered a curse against her temple, then drew back as he slid his fingers inward toward the swollen folds pressing against the soft cotton of her panties. Ever so gently, he skimmed his thumb in the shallow crevice, feeling the dampness of her need and her violent shudder. She tried to squeeze her legs together, but he held them open, then tugged the crotch of her underwear aside, baring her curls to his sight
She whispered something in French. The sound of the thick, unintelligible words drove him mad with longing as he kissed her again and again. She ground her pelvis against his touch, seeking something he feared for a moment he couldn't give her. Then she reached for his erection, rolled on a condom he vaguely remembered taking out of his wallet, then eagerly guided the hooded tip to her slick opening.
Jake was helpless to do more than watch as she lifted herself up onto her knees, then slowly took him into her, inch by torturous inch.
"Oh, God." She was so exquisitely snug and wet, fitting over him like a too small glove. Sweet, agonizing pleasure broke over him, clenching his muscles, contracting his
chest until he could do little more than let her take the lead.
And take the lead she did. Much to his surprise, she took every last millimeter into her compact little body and remained perfectly still, as if allowing her muscles time to adjust to the difference in their sizes. Then she rocked her hips forward.
Jake groaned and grasped her hips. If he … if they … if she continued, he'd be a goner in no time at all.
Michelle hungrily ran the tip of her tongue along the seam of his mouth then drew his lower lip into her mouth. "You, um, never told me what your favorite color is," she murmured, then moaned when he thrust upward into her sweet flesh.
What was she talking about? Oh, yes. His favorite color.
He plucked her from his lap and laid her across the sheets, then covered every inch of her skin with his before lifting her right knee and plunging deeply into her with one long, urgent thrust.
Gone were all the barriers that separated them. He was no longer an INS agent. She was no longer an illegal alien. He was no longer a man who had a difficult time identifying and expressing his emotions. She was no longer a woman with problems he couldn't hope to understand. They were simply a man and woman, giving themselves over to the most fundamental of human needs.
He absorbed her shudder and drank her cry into his mouth as he kissed her. He slowly withdrew, then thrust again … and again, until red colored the backs of his eyelids.
"Red," he said between clenched teeth, sliding his hands under her behind and tilting her hips upward. "My favorite color is red."
Then his world exploded into multifaceted spears of the brilliant, vibrant color.
* * *
Chapter 5
« ^ »
Somehow even the rain looked different. Fantastical. Fantastical? Jake hated the rain.
But this morning all he could do was sit inside the car and stare out the windshield at it, wearing a silly grin.
Last night was … incredible. Hot. Just thinking about it gave him a hard-on. Maybe all this—his near obsessive attraction to Michelle, his preoccupation with her whereabouts, her tight little body—had been about his need to get laid, and laid properly. Giving in to Michelle's request for just plain sex, without commitment, had been one of the best things he'd ever done. He'd never felt so … free in his life. He wanted to get out of the car and stand in the rain, feel it roll down his face and into his mouth, drench his clothes. And usually, unless it had something to do with a shower, he hated getting wet.
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