“Let’s go for a walk,” he said. He paused. She was wearing heels. “Your shoes. Are they comfortable?”
“They’re fine.”
The foundations of the buildings along the street, including Marlon’s restaurant, formed an integral part of the canal system, and acted as a buttress. In the old days deliverymen would arrive at the businesses and households by boat and unload their goods at service doors opening directly onto the water.
A block down the street, beside one of the bridges that crossed the canal, was a boat launch for day tours. The tours had ended hours earlier. The bleak weather would have been hard on business. As Harry had hoped, however, a few of the boatmen still lingered, tidying their craft in preparation for the next day’s tourist operations.
After a brief negotiation, and an exchange involving several hundred euros, he’d secured a private ride. The boatman took his position at the wheel in the bow. Harry escorted Lies to the stern where they could sit in solitude and speak without being overheard. They sat side-by-side, close but not touching. The low, vinyl-cushioned benches were comfortable enough to make the ride pleasant as they pulled away from the dock and plodded up the canal under the blanket of night. City lights glittered along the banks, interspersed with the beams of slow-moving traffic and bicycle headlamps. Shadowy branches of weeping trees dipped downward to stroke the water’s black surface, which rippled like a washboard from the boat’s lazy passing. The moon was out, a pale wafer in the velvety sky, but the haze of smog and the glare from the city blocked any stars from view. The air was chillier on the water so Harry shrugged out of his suit jacket and draped it around her shoulders.
Their captain kept his back turned to them, earning his tip. The drifted along in silence, the motor chugging and the wooden floorboards humming beneath their feet. Lies didn’t speak, not even to tease him, and he found that he missed it. There had been enough casual conversation between them throughout dinner.
“Why did you sleep with me?” he asked. “Why the phone sex last night? Am I that much of a challenge to you?”
“Absolutely,” she replied, without any hesitation.
Well. That took the wind from his sails.
“And I’m a challenge to you,” she continued. “So I could ask you the same questions, but why bother? We’re both in this for pleasure. The whole evening has been wonderful. But I would have slept with you even without dinner and a boat ride, as nice as they are.” She placed her hand on his thigh next to hers, tilting her face toward his. They were very close to eye level. “All you had to do was ask.”
He disliked her thinking that he was only interested in her for sex. He disliked it even more that it was all she wanted from him. They had little else to offer each other however. They agreed on that much at least.
“I am asking,” he said. “This time I’m using a gentleman’s approach.”
“And it would be difficult to resist, assuming I wanted to, which I don’t.” She inched her fingers higher. “But don’t you ever get tired of always being so polite?”
He rubbed the back of his neck rather than slide his hand into the front of her dress as he’d like to, and tried to tame an erection that was rapidly becoming a permanent affliction when he was with her. “Groping each other in a car or on a boat in front of an audience is polite? Making so much noise that the neighbors are banging on the bedroom wall in the middle of the night is polite? Phone sex is polite?”
“I was there too, and I wasn’t complaining. Don’t you want it to be, I don’t know…” She shrugged. His jacket slid off her shoulder. “Uninhibited? Daring? To go wherever your imagination takes you? Us?” She leaned closer and tugged at his tie with her free hand. “Take me home. Then tell me what you want me to do to you, Harry,” she whispered, her breath warm on his throat, and he swallowed. “Better yet, make it an order. Trust me, I wouldn’t complain about that either.”
Chapter Eleven
He took her to his place.
Lies was surprised by his choice of residence, although not so much by the luxury of it—which was significant—as by the location. It wasn’t far from the beach in Scheveningen, maybe ten minutes on foot, in an area that was upscale and decidedly hip. He was neither of those things. She’d assumed he lived closer to the embassy and his work.
“I like the ocean,” he replied when she said so.
He’d grown up in Nova Scotia, she’d learned over dinner. His mother still lived in Halifax, the capital city, with three pugs and a cat she’d named after her son. That was all the family he had. Hers, by comparison, was enormous.
Yet another area in which they differed.
He parked in a designated spot on the street. They walked the flight of stairs to the second level. His door opened onto an enormous room that took up half the floor of the building. Pot lighting arced along the edge of a ten-foot ceiling where it met a rounded wall of curtainless windows. The top halves of the windows were crafted of colored glass.
Harry didn’t turn on the lights, but let what filtered in from the city illuminate the spacious room. A low leather sofa divided the dining from the living area. Shadows indicated the positions of a table and chairs and, oddly enough, a piano.
Lies, however, had an interest only in Harry. From the moment they’d been escorted to the best table in the restaurant and she’d realized they were dining alone, she’d longed to straddle his lap and take him inside her right there. She wasn’t normally into exhibitionism. Harry certainly was not. Not if his reaction to how they’d gotten carried away in the car after the theater was any indication. But when he’d suggested a canal ride she’d been wild with impatience and ready to reconsider. The thought of his hands on her—of having him finally inside her after waiting all evening—had left her giddy.
That same giddiness left her lightheaded now.
He tossed his car keys in a dish on the kitchen counter and loosened his tie. She’d returned his jacket to him. He eased it off his shoulders and slung it across one of the bar stools at the marble kitchen counter.
He turned to study her where she stood by the door, keeping several feet of distance between them. “If we’re going to have a sexual relationship, we need to go over the rules. I don’t want this spilling over into the office. And I expect exclusivity.”
He said the last with a hint of a challenge, as if he dared her to argue or seek definition. She’d be offended except she understood where he came from. She’d been lied to by a lover as well. While Harry didn’t have it in him to pretend to be something he wasn’t, Lies had no difficulties with it whatsoever. When it came to her investigation she would lie to him if she had to.
But never about what they did together in private. Intimacy required honesty. And trust. Those two things went both ways. Therefore she had a rule to remind him of too. “What we do when we’re in bed together is separate from our careers. There’s to be no pillow talk about work.”
“Come here,” he said.
She felt a rush of excitement at the command in his tone. Up until now she’d kept her sex life conservative. There’d be no need of safe words with Harry. Ever. And Lies was fine with that. While she wanted him to take charge, and to give her instructions, she wasn’t about to start this kind of game with a man who might get carried away and not take her personal safety into consideration. But she’d spent weeks pushing Harry out of his comfort zone. Let him test hers for a change. She could tell that he’d like to.
And once committed, Harry did nothing halfway.
She stopped a hand’s-breadth from him and ran her palms over her breasts and down the front of her dress. “I wore this because I thought you’d like it.” She slid her arms around his neck and pressed against him. “Tell me what you were thinking when you first saw me in it. Did it make you want to touch me?”
His eyes had gone very dark. He was already hard against her. “I imagined bending you over the back of my sofa and taking you from behind.”
She spun out of his arms
and walked to the sofa, adding a sway to her hips. She ran a finger along the length of its low-slung back. “You mean this one?” She bent forward, grasping the butter-soft leather in both hands, and looked over her shoulder. “Like this?”
“Exactly like that.”
“Is this why you brought me here? So you could take me from behind against your sofa?”
A muscle in his jaw jerked. “Yes.”
The tightly-leashed arousal in his tone served to increase her boldness. “When I put this dress on, do you know what I thought you might like even more?” She arched her spine, pushing her hips upward in an invitation that wasn’t meant to be subtle. “What I’m wearing underneath it. Do you want to find out what that is?”
She tracked his movements as he crossed the room. He looked so staid. Refined. Until she took in the intentness of purpose in the set of his mouth. Anticipation had her damp and ready for him.
He stopped directly behind her. He skimmed a palm up the back of her thigh and under her skirt, then over one bare cheek. “My God. You aren’t wearing any underwear.” He sounded as if he were strangling on a mixture of fascination and shock. “You walked around all evening like this?”
“You could have had me on the boat if you’d bothered to try.”
“Hold still.”
He dipped a finger inside her, then a second, and began to work her into such a complete state of arousal that obeying his command to remain still soon became impossible. She rocked against the heel of his hand.
“Do you like that?” he demanded. “Do you want more?”
“Yes,” she cried.
He pushed her skirt around her waist, exposing her bottom half to the air. She felt something warm and damp replace his fingers and she gasped. Harry was licking her, thrusting his tongue in and out of her, and it felt so good she was shaking. She lifted her hips, thrusting against his mouth and his tongue, and within seconds, she came. She collapsed against the back of the sofa, a quivering mass of boneless satisfaction.
He gave her no time to recover. The soft rasp of a zipper reached her ears.
“Turn around,” he said. “Kneel in front of me.”
She did as he told her. He had his pants around his ankles, his erection jutting toward her face. He put both hands on her head, his fingers knotting in her curls. “Take me in your mouth. Suck me. Do the things to me you talked about doing last night. And what you were thinking about doing.”
Her whole body throbbed with an eagerness to please him the way he had her. She traced the vein on the underside of his erection with the tip of her tongue. He hissed in a breath. His fingers tightened. She cupped his sac with one hand, then guided him into her mouth with the other. She worked her lips around his rim, sucking gently, her fingers stroking his length lightly.
“Stop. I’m going to come if you don’t.”
She ignored that command, instead working him harder, taking him deeper into her throat until he was groaning with pleasure. His hips jerked and his legs stiffened as he exploded. “God, Lies.”
She had her hands on his thighs and she sat back on her heels, satisfied with herself in a way she couldn’t begin to explain. She’d never let a man come in her mouth before.
His legs were trembling. He tipped her face upward and stooped to kiss her, his mouth hot and fierce. “I can’t believe you let me do that.”
“I already gave you permission to do what you want. If it’s something I won’t enjoy or I’m not comfortable with, you’ll be the first to know.”
They were both only half undressed. Lies’s skirt was bunched around her waist. Harry’s pants and boxer briefs had been kicked aside and his shirttail hung around his naked thighs. His tie was askew and he was breathing hard. The refrigerator kicked in, its quiet hum the only other sound in the room.
He took her by the elbows and lifted her to her feet.
“That was to take the edge off,” he said. “We’re just beginning. Take off your clothes.”
All she had on was her dress. It unzipped at the side. She peeled the tight sleeves off her arms and dropped the dress to the floor. She stepped out of it.
She loved that Harry was getting into this. He’d seemed somewhat hesitant at first. Not any longer. He eyed her with complete self-assurance, his bold gaze skimming over her nakedness in the semi-darkness, the slight smile on his lips suggesting he liked what he saw. “Now undress me.”
He had nothing on but his shirt and tie. She unfastened the buttons slowly, one by one, pressing one of her knees between his thighs so she could stand close and rub catlike against him. She had no inhibitions about her body. She had less about his. He was beautiful, solidly built without too much muscle, and perfectly proportioned. He wasn’t short, but he wasn’t tall either. And his feet… She ran a toe over the high arch of his instep. There was nothing so sexy as well-shaped feet on a man.
“Lean over the back of the sofa and spread your legs for me.” His voice alone had her ready for him.
He dragged the tip of his finger up and down her cleft, occasionally dipping into her dampness until she was begging for him. “Not yet.” He took her cheeks in his palms, spreading her wide with his thumbs. He placed himself at her entrance and slid the smooth head of his erection inside her, to the rim, then withdrew. He did it again. And again.
“Please, Harry.”
He stopped. His voice was harsh. “The next time you decide to try phone sex with me, you’re going to know how I’d be touching you.”
He ran his hands up and down her back, his thumbs grazing her spine, his fingers trailing along the edges of her ribs and skimming the sides of her breasts, pebbling her skin. He eased his hands underneath her to cradle them. He squeezed his erection between her buttocks as he leaned over her, hard and insistent. His knees parted her thighs. He reached down and positioned himself, then drove his entire length deeply inside her with one hard thrust.
“Again,” she cried out.
Needing no more encouragement than that single plea, he took control in an unrestrained manner that she found unbearably exciting. She lifted her hips to meet each of his thrusts. The legs of the sofa lifted beneath them to thump rhythmically against the hardwood floor. He had his hands on her hips, his knees between hers, and he buried himself inside her again and again until tiny ripples of glorious sensation began in her belly, spreading down to her cleft, her body quivering with joy at her release. Her hands clutched at the cushions on the sofa, desperate for something to hold onto as she raised her hips to take Harry’s length deeper. He swore as he came.
She could have purred with contentment, even draped naked as she was over the furniture. He stayed inside her for a long time, his hands idly stroking her skin. She wondered what he was thinking.
Probably that he was going to regret what they’d done in the morning. She hoped he did have regrets. It would mean he’d stepped out of his comfort zone, which in turn meant she’d be memorable to him.
He was already memorable to her. She liked the contradictions in him she was discovering. She liked the tightly-controlled diplomat with the great sense of humor and the sexual boundaries that begged to be pushed. She hadn’t yet found their limits.
Neither had he.
He withdrew, sliding from her semi-erect.
“The bedroom’s this way,” he said.
Now that he’d committed to an affair he was very thorough, exploring every inch of her body well into the wee hours of the morning and until she was limp with exhaustion.
She lay on her side with her hands under her cheek, facing Harry. He was on his stomach and had one arm resting over her waist. His fingers played at the small of her back, stroking her skin with a delicate touch that felt far more intimate than anything they’d done. Deep shadows, parted by a crack of light cutting between imperfectly-drawn curtains, coated the bedroom in night.
She was tired, but not too tired to talk.
“Tell me more about your childhood,” she said, stretching against him. S
he rubbed a toe against his calf.
He turned his face toward her. “There isn’t much more to tell. I wasn’t a daredevil, never at the epicenter of trouble, always in the top percentile in school, and overall I was pretty dull.” She could hear him smiling at her in the dark. “Not much has changed.”
He couldn’t possibly believe that to be true. “I have the sore spots to prove you aren’t dull.”
“A lot of that can be credited to you. Your enthusiasm and energy spills over.”
“I didn’t notice any lack of enthusiasm or energy on your part. I think it’s fair to assume we’re equally matched in this one area, at least.”
“I suppose we are.” He sounded so smug she couldn’t help laughing.
“What led you into the trade commission?” she asked next.
“You mean you didn’t investigate me?”
“Of course I did. You studied commerce and international business and marketing at Carleton University, then spent two years abroad as an exchange student in Stockholm. You interned for three summers with the United Nations while you did your MBA. After university, you worked for several different defense contractors in international marketing, brokering deals with foreign governments. You speak French, Spanish and Italian.”
“I’m not sure how I feel about you knowing all of that.”
“Those are a bunch of facts in a file that anyone could find by doing an Internet search of your name,” Lies said. “I could pull them off LinkedIn. I don’t know anything about you as a person.”
“I could say the same about my knowledge of you—except I couldn’t find anything about you on the Internet other than that bullshit story about your diplomat father.”
“You know me as well as anyone does, including my mother. You simply can’t accept that I really am who I appear to be because I work undercover.” She kissed him, a soft brush of her lips against his. “I know one thing about you. You have trust issues.”
“I suppose I do.” He was quiet until the clang of a church bell, dulled by distance, pronounced the half hour. “Would you really have had sex with me on a canal boat if I’d asked?”
His Spy at Night (Spy Games Book 3) Page 14