Ever since Nicole had been a little girl drooling over Johnny Depp on 21 Jump Street, she’d known she wanted to be a police officer. Maybe it had been stupid to look to TV for her role models, but that was about the only place she’d seen women who hadn’t had their lives bogged down by no-good men and accidental pregnancies. None of the women on TV looked tired all the time or lived in run-down trailer parks. Nicole had fiercely wanted to be one of those in-control women, and now she was.
She would never, ever let anything jeopardize that.
There had only been one night when she’d broken all her rules. With Ethan.
“Something is seriously wrong with me.”
Nicole surveyed her companions at the small round table—the Reality Check Sisters, as she liked to call them. They were all staring back at her suspiciously, as if they sensed the dire nature of her situation.
“You look all tense like you just got finished with a smack-down on some scumbag. I don’t like you dealing with all those criminals and lowlifes. It’s not safe.”
This from Serena, a woman who’d survived two yearlong tours in Iraq as an army captain.
“I know what’s wrong with you—you haven’t gotten laid in, like, three months,” Juliana said, piping in ever so helpfully.
“You’ve been counting?” Nicole asked, trying to do a quick mental calculation in her head.
There had been that couple of months with Randall, who lived on a boat—he’d been great, but she couldn’t get over the whole motion sickness thing—and then…nothing…for three months apparently.
“I’ve just got a good head for numbers, that’s all.”
“She keeps tabs on everyone,” Keilani said, rolling her eyes. “She wants to make sure no one’s having more sex than her.”
“A noble goal,” said Juliana, “but—”
“But nothing! That has nada to do with what’s wrong with me,” Nicole blurted before she could think the position through.
Maybe though, on second thought, there was a connection.
“Okay,” Serena said. “We’re all ears.”
The three women sipped their drinks simultaneously, waiting for Nicole to spill her story.
“There’s this guy I used to have a bit of a crush on. Totally not my usual type, but we kind of had a one-night stand a few years back—”
“Kind of?” Keilani interrupted. “You? A one-night stand? Either you did or you didn’t.”
“Well, we did, but we didn’t.”
Three pairs of eyebrows arched suspiciously.
“Care to explain?” Serena said.
Nicole glanced around at the salsa club. This was about as safe a place as any to spill lurid details. The instrumental section of a song she didn’t recognize was blaring, the dance floor was just starting to hop, and as soon as Nicole unloaded her problem, she was going to find a partner and dance up a good sweat.
La Casa, with its hip crowd of people who love to dance, was about as far from the preferred hangouts of Nicole’s colleagues as she could get, and that suited her just fine. The last thing she needed was to run into a co-worker when she wanted to unwind and act like a real woman—not when she had to spend all her professional time pretending to be one of the guys.
“We tried to get down and dirty, but he couldn’t get it up. Got it?”
A collective “Ooh” from her audience.
“I’ve got it—you didn’t get it,” Juliana said. “No wonder you’re such a prude, if that’s your sole experience with easy sex.”
“Well, anyway, there was alcohol involved, and let’s just say, I’m not willing to give him another chance. But I see him occasionally through work, and today I ran into him again, and it was like—bam, major chemistry all of a sudden.”
“Why not give him another chance?” Keilani, queen of second chances, asked.
“Because he couldn’t get it up the first time,” Serena answered before Nicole could. Clearly an inexcusable offense in her book.
Nicole decided not to tell the whole truth, which was complicated and also would have involved divulging more details than she cared to divulge—that the “getting up” in question had actually happened, for a short while, and then sort of…fizzled out.
It had all been embarrassing and humiliating and totally not worth recounting in any great detail. But mainly it had been a relief, because she’d felt that detested uncontrollable passion surge with Ethan. Before the big letdown, she’d felt herself on the edge of becoming the kind of woman she’d always fought being.
“I have to see this guy around my office too much, for one thing. What if he tells someone at the precinct that we had a one-nighter?”
“What?” Serena said. “You’re not allowed to have a sex life?”
“You know how it is—you were in the army. Everything we do is under more scrutiny.”
“I know, I know, it just pisses me off.”
“So anyway, I’ve been able to ignore him for two freaking years, and now all of a sudden, he walks into my office, and I can barely keep my hands off him.”
“Sounds like you just need a surrogate dick. You know, to take the edge off.” This from Juliana, who’d coined the surrogate dick phrase after her last boy-friend ditched her in the midst of what she claimed was the horniest time in her life. She’d managed to find stand-in penises aplenty to ease her frustration.
“And there’s one fine prospect heading over here right now,” Keilani said, nodding toward the bar.
Nicole oh so casually glanced in that direction and nearly dropped her bottle of Corona when she spotted Ethan, his gaze locked on her, his stride purposeful as he closed the distance between them.
“Oh, God,” she whispered.
She sprang up from the table before he could reach her. “Excuse me,” she said to her bewildered friends as she hurried toward Ethan. The last thing she needed was anyone getting a clue that he was the exact same guy she’d been talking about.
But a few feet away from him, that near-orgasmic sensation overtook her again, more intense now. She halted, gasping at the way her girl parts tingled.
This was insane.
He took a step closer, and there was no fighting the way she felt.
“How did you find me here?” she said, her voice coming out a little more breathy than she meant for it to.
He flashed a mischievous grin. “I’m a reporter, remember? I have my ways.”
“You mean you followed me?”
“Not exactly.”
“Why are you here?”
He was looking at her like he was a starving man and she was the last Big Mac on earth.
“Because, what happened in your office? It doesn’t feel finished,” he said, and oh, how she agreed with him.
“Yeah,” she said.
“There’s a lot of stuff between us we’ve never really talked about….” he said, then trailed off, his gaze growing more intense.
“It’s all in the past,” she said. “I only want to think about tonight.”
She wanted to lick him—take all his clothes off and lick him up and down like a Popsicle.
But the last bit of reason left in her head said to get away from here. To get the hell away before she lost control again. She had to resist, and yet she couldn’t muster the slightest bit of willpower to tell him to bug off.
And then there were her friends staring, and she had to play it cool. No licking, or arguing, or talking too much at all right now. No suspicious behavior. She glanced at the dance floor, the only place she could talk to Ethan at the moment—and hopefully find the will to tell him to get lost—without her friends being all over her with questions later.
“May I have this dance?” he asked, taking the hint.
“You know how to salsa?”
He shrugged, and his devil-may-care smile made an appearance. “A little. I might embarrass myself, but…”
Without thinking—or hesitating—Nicole took his hand and led him toward the dance floor, t
oward the safety of anonymous bodies and pulsing music. She needed him close—as close as possible.
She was seriously losing it.
“Then again, you might not,” she said over her shoulder.
Amid the other dancers, they fell in step, their bodies molded against each other. Nicole told herself she was not supposed to enjoy herself. She was supposed to resist. Resist, resist, resist.
That’s what her brain said, while her body just wanted to dance. To get closer. To feel and sweat and move.
He had good moves. Not very fancy ones, but good, solid moves.
“Where’d you learn this?” she asked, trying her damnedest now to think of anything but how incredible he felt against her and how badly she wanted to plunge her tongue into his mouth.
“I dated a dance instructor for a while. She taught me the basics.”
“Lucky her,” Nicole blurted, surprising even herself.
Her control was slipping more and more. She could feel it, but couldn’t stop the momentum.
Ethan smiled slowly, probably realizing how far down her guard was.
She glanced over at her friends and caught them all staring with their mouths agape. She might as well have stripped off all her clothes and shimmied around on top of the bar naked, for the way they were looking at her. And then she looked down at herself and realized she and Ethan had nearly gone straight from hello to down-and-dirty bump-and-grind dancing of the sort that most people at La Casa didn’t start doing until after midnight.
She had to stop, put her foot down, come to her senses and back the hell off. Somehow… But instead, she edged closer. She pulsed to the music, let it take control of her body, let their bodies intertwine as they danced.
No, she didn’t let it happen. That wasn’t quite accurate. Rather she felt herself watching it happen. She had already lost control.
Having him so close was like a drug. She inhaled his scent and felt dizzy with desire again. Too dizzy to dance. Too aroused to be here on a dance floor, with her friends’ gazes following their every move. She may be horny, but she was no exhibitionist.
“Let’s get out of here,” she said, and before the words had finished forming on her lips, Ethan had her hand in his and was leading her off the floor, toward the door.
Somehow they made it to his car without stripping off any clothes. As he was unlocking the car, a glimmer of sanity appeared in her head. She thought of all her rules, all her strict avoidance of this kind of behavior. But she felt as though she was observing herself from above—too far away for any words of wisdom to be heard. So what if she let loose one more time?
What’s the worst that could happen? A limp dick?
She could handle it. This time, she’d know what to do. She’d coax and tease and caress until she had him in a state of arousal so intense, there would be no turning back.
Somewhere between unlocking the car and climbing inside it, they’d started kissing, and thank God he had tinted windows in the rear, because now that they were in his backseat, articles of clothing had been tossed aside at lightning speed. Nicole was straddling Ethan, and when he took her breast into his mouth, she felt as if she’d come right then and there. Clasping the back of his head, she pushed him closer as he licked and teased, while her breath came out in ragged bursts.
He cupped her breasts in his hands as he kissed them, then he lifted and pushed them closer together so that he could move easily from one to the other and back again. Nicole arched her back, ground her pelvis against his erection, and felt a delicious burning between her legs more intense than she’d ever felt before.
No stopping now. She had to have him inside her, the sooner the better. She had to feel him filling her up and stretching her. Had to know if he was as good as he looked. As good as he tasted. As good as the intensity of their attraction promised.
His mouth moved up to her neck, then to her mouth, where their hungry, urgent kisses left her raw. Their hands explored in a desperate frenzy, and their bodies moved against each other as if already making love. The only things standing between them were the fabric of her panties and his boxers, which she wanted to rip off at the seams.
“I want you,” Ethan whispered, his voice low and husky.
“Do you have a condom?” she said, but he was already pulling one out of his wallet and taking the wrapper off.
“You’re sure about this?” he asked, and for the first time, his glazed expression seemed almost lucid—almost free of their crazy desire.
“Shut up and do me,” she said as she wrestled her way out of her panties.
Good thing he had a big backseat. She pushed him back on it, straddling him as he tugged aside his boxers and slid on the condom. He was hard now, fully aroused. Ready for her. And it felt in that moment like the sweetest sight she’d ever laid eyes on.
SOME PART OF ETHAN WANTED to take it slowly. He wanted to drive Nicole home, spread her out on a bed, and plunge his tongue inside her until she came in his mouth. Then he wanted to do it again. Then he’d lick every inch of her luscious body, memorize her every curve and dip. He’d let his hands take their time exploring her, let their bodies learn each other’s rhythms, and then, when they could stand it no longer, he’d make love to her.
But that simply wasn’t possible now.
A tsunami of desire had swept them out here into the car, into his backseat, and the only way it seemed he could save them was to plunge his cock inside her again and again until sanity returned.
But would it?
Ethan wanted to weep at the sight of Nicole straddling him in the cramped space, her breasts bobbing so close, her amazing honey-colored body like a work of art he could stare at all day. But there was this buzzing in his head, in his body, and the only way he could think to make it stop was to steady her hips, find her tight, wet opening, and push into her there.
He did, and she cried out in a sweet gasp of pleasure that echoed his own. He forced his way in as far as he could go, savoring how her body took him in, so tight, so hot.
“You feel like heaven,” he whispered.
Her eyes were glazed over with pleasure, and she rocked her hips against him, bracing her hands on either side of his torso as best she could on the slanted leather seat, but he held her still to set his own rhythm with his feet braced against the floor and the door of the car.
He pounded against her, their bodies making a raw slapping sound, their breath coming out ragged and fierce. With each thrust he felt closer to some lifelong sought-after treasure. It was as if he’d found his purpose in life, to be inside this woman, here and now.
Her hips were soft and full, her pussy pliant but tight, and he could barely blink as he watched her face rapt with pleasure. She was a Mayan princess, exotic and beautiful beyond words. Her hair hung down thick and wavy over her shoulders—only the second time he’d ever seen it down. And her dark brown eyes, when she locked them on him, seemed so deep he could lose himself there.
And as he felt the delicious coiling inside of himself, the promise of release building up with such incredible tension that he could not imagine stopping it, he also had the fleeting thought that he’d found his soul mate in Nicole. Never mind that they barely knew each other, or that they were screwing like rabbits in the back of his car, or that she probably hated him. When he looked at her face, it was as if he was finding himself.
And then her release came, obliterating his crazy thoughts. Her body’s contractions triggered his own orgasm, and they writhed against each other, all gasps and tangled limbs, desperate kisses and shuddering moans.
He came with such force he feared for a second that the condom might have shot off had it not fit so snugly. Nicole quaked against him, her breath heavy as it brushed his cheek. Then she buried her face in his neck and relaxed her body, his cock still inside her.
As he recovered from his orgasm, the fuzzy-headedness lifted from his brain for the first time since…since he’d been with Nicole at the precinct earlier…with the bot
tle of lust potion.
“Wow.”
“Yeah, wow,” she said.
“What the hell was that stuff?” he said.
“Hmm?” she murmured into his shoulder.
“That lust potion. Do you think maybe it could have been real?”
She laughed. Not something he’d witnessed often, and the sound of it was like hearing an old favorite song on the radio. He wrapped his arms around her and held her tight, recalling only now those crazy thoughts of love that had filled his head moments ago. Best not to mention that part, for sure.
“Do you believe in unicorns and fairies, too?” she asked.
“Only the magic ones,” he said wryly. “Who knows. Maybe the potion does work. Or maybe that stuff just gave us an excuse to do what we’ve been wanting to do for years.”
She was silent for a moment, and then, “Hmm. I don’t know.”
“Judging by what just happened,” he said as he looked her in the eyes, “we probably shouldn’t let two years’ worth of attraction bottle up inside us—”
His words were cut off by a sharp rapping at the windshield. “Police! Open up!”
He looked at Nicole, and she was looking at him with an expression that could only mean “Oh shit.”
“Oh bloody hell,” he muttered.
She scrambled off of him and was desperately tugging on items of clothing as he tried to pull his pants back up.
“Just a minute, officer!” she called out. “We’re, um, changing clothes, that’s all!”
A flashlight shone through the front window of the car, straight back at them, pinning Nicole in its beam. She halted with her top clutched over her chest, and Ethan understood in that moment how much more dire the situation was for her than for him.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I had no idea—”
“Sh!” She tugged on her top and shot him a glare that could halt criminals in their tracks. “Say as little as you can, and follow my lead.”
A Whisper Of Wanting Page 4