by Nicole Helm
She knew that the erection currently pressing against the juncture of her thighs needed to be inside her. With absolute certainty.
His big palms slid down her back, his fingers inching under the hem of her underwear until he cupped her butt. She moved against him and he groaned against her mouth.
“I should have, uh, brought this up sooner, but if you don’t have condoms I’m going to need about twenty minutes to regain brainpower and run to the closest gas station.”
“Lucky you, I am a prepared woman.”
“Thank God.”
“Be right back.” She hopped off him and hurried to the bathroom, pushing around under the sink until she found the rarely used box of condoms. She took a quick peek at the expiration date, gratified that it wasn’t until next year.
She all but skipped back to her bedroom, absolutely refusing to let any bad thoughts or regrets invade. Returning to find him on his back, arms folded behind his head, black boxer shorts riding up those impressive thighs, well, it helped.
“Please tell me you work out all the time to look like that.”
The corner of his mouth quirked up. “Moving kind of put a dent in my schedule, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t spend a decent amount of time in the gym. I’m sure not as much as your bodybuilder.”
She grinned at that. The fact he remembered that one random mention of James was weirdly sweet.
She tossed the condom on the bed next to him, then wiggled out of her panties. Enough weird sweetness. Enough him looking good enough to eat. Time to get to the main event.
“Christ, you’re gorgeous.”
She worked pretty hard to stay in shape, more for work and reputation than out of sheer vanity, but the tiny vain part of her was gratified to hear he thought so.
“Not so bad yourself. Please tell me you played football. I’ve been fantasizing about you in those tight pants.”
“Sorry to disappoint. If it makes you feel better, that run the other day about killed me.”
“Wimp.”
“Not because of the distance. Because of you, in front of me, in spandex.”
She laughed at that, couldn’t help it. Imagining him being a little tortured during their run was a nice thought.
“You didn’t even make a move.”
“You didn’t want me to.”
When he said things like that, she was certain there was something hard and painful inside her chest, squeezing her heart. The feeling was so deep and real and new, and scary. Scary and exciting all wrapped up into this weird pain—hurty and nice at the same time.
She cleared her throat for who knew what time. “You didn’t exactly act like you liked me those first few days.”
“Kind of my default. I’m not very good with people. I tend to keep my distance. Easier that way.”
She wondered what was easier, but maybe now—standing next to her bed naked, with him almost naked—wasn’t the time for that conversation.
“Come here,” he said as she hovered by the edge of the bed. “Please,” he added, as if being polite was some sort of necessity in the bedroom.
She slid next to him, and his arms came around her, and why had she ever thought this could be something she could resist?
“I like you.” He kissed her neck. “I respect you.” Her shoulder.
“I...know.” Why the hell was respect a turn-on? She had no idea. Maybe because she worked so hard for it. And he got that.
“I want you,” he said, his voice lower, his hand gliding up her side, to her breast, cupping it and brushing his thumb across her nipple.
The warmth in her heart spread, centered at her core. He lowered his mouth to her nipple, tongue brushing across it just as his thumb had.
Yeah, this was definitely going to be okay. She slid her leg between his, enjoying the coarse friction, and then the hard length of him against her thigh. His hands roamed her back, her ass, her hips, his mouth exploring her chest.
She traveled his body with her hands, following the dips of muscle, the hard planes of his chest and abdomen. When his hands slid between her legs, she let hers slip under the waistband of his boxers.
She grasped his erection, squeezed lightly until he hissed out her name. She smiled, tugging at the boxers with her free hand until he got the hint and kicked them off.
Then there was nothing between them, and that was exactly what she wanted—what she needed tonight. She pawed around the bed for the condom packet she’d thrown on there. Enough exploration, enough teasing, she wanted more. She wanted to feel as if nothing, nothing separated them, even if it was a lie.
She finally found it, tore it open and produced the condom. “Ready?”
“Nah,” he said, folding his arms behind his head again. “I could take it or leave it.”
“Ha. Funny guy.”
She liked the way he looked when she said he was funny. Baffled and pleased, one of those full-blown smiles that creased the skin around his eyes.
She liked even better when she rolled the condom onto his dick and the expression vanished. His gaze sharpening on her hands, his lips parting as she straddled him. His hands came to her hips, a grasp. Easy, light.
She liked that about him, how he could make her feel easy and light when nothing in life ever had been. Even relationships. Always shrouded by the things she tried to keep separate.
But Marc knew.
She didn’t want to think about that now, so she lowered herself onto him, focused on sensation, body heat, being filled with him, enveloped by his arms.
“Hold on.”
When she did, wrapping her arms around his neck, he very deftly rolled them so she was on her back, and he was on top, still inside her. “This okay?”
“Um, yes, I am not lodging any complaints.” When he smiled, she smiled back. She could not recount a time when sex had ever been so smiley.
He brushed his lips against hers, slowly pushing deep, and it wasn’t so smiley. It was more dreamy. Yummy. A delicious and much-deserved treat. Slow and languorous, he entered, withdrew, elbows bracketing her face, eyes never leaving hers except to occasionally glance at where they met.
She was about to hesitantly explain to him she could usually only orgasm if she was on top, but his hand drifted down her thigh, to her knee, lifting it, adjusting the angle and—oh, well—that could work.
“Better?” he murmured into her ear.
“Uh-huh.” She arched to meet each thrust, the sparkling heated rise starting to fizzle, grow, explode. As she went over the edge, Marc’s mouth crushed to hers, the first sign of any impatience, anything other than quietly restrained interest.
But that kiss, as the orgasm rocked through her, was all pent-up desire. Lust. Lusty thoughts, and his thrusts went deeper, quicker, until he pushed one last time, pulsing his own release.
He collapsed on top of her, and it was strangely satisfying. Or was that just the orgasm? Nope—granted, some of it was the last dregs of pleasure—but some of it was the weight of him on top of her, pressing her into the mattress, making it feel as if this was where she wanted to be.
If only that were possible.
No. Not yet. For now this moment was all that mattered. The future could go screw itself.
* * *
MARC KNEW HE should go, or at least offer to go, but lounging in Tess’s bed with her, still naked, was too damn great to willingly pry himself away from.
Tess sighed against his chest, the pattern she’d been drawing over and over on his abdomen with her fingers coming to a halt.
“Um, so that was great.”
“It was that.” He let his fingers trail through her hair, all loose down her back, but some of the lazy indulgence left her body, muscles getting tight, posture going rigid as she pushed up onto her elbow.
>
“You should...I know this sounds terrible, but you should probably go.”
He met her apologetic smile and tried to make one in return. “No, I get it.” And he did. He really did, but that didn’t stop him from wishing things were a little different. He scooted off the bed and went in search of his clothes.
He’d spent a lot of his life wishing things were different, and it had never changed much of anything. So he got it better than she could possibly understand.
“I hope you do, Marc. Because I wish you could stay. You have no idea how badly, but my job, my reputation—it’s everything to me. I need it. I need that department to look at me and see cop first, woman second. If it gets around that we—”
He stopped halfway through pulling his jeans back on, hurt that she’d even think— “I’m not going to go around bragging that we slept together, Tess.”
“I know. I know.” She crossed to him and framed his face with her hands, smiled. “I know.”
That smile felt as if he’d won some kind of lottery. Or something bigger, better. Something he could do, just by being him. She saw when he made a gesture, an overture, when he tried to help. She noticed. She appreciated.
Even if some of his thoughts echoed all the things he was trying to escape or avoid, this was new, and he didn’t want to forget what appreciation and notice felt like.
But it didn’t change their reality, as evidenced by the way her smile went sad.
“I’m not sure how we’re going to make this work,” she said before exhaling loudly. “I know you wanted to talk about it before we...well, and maybe we should have. But I needed something for me, for once.”
That resonated. Enough that he covered her hands with his, wishing he could find some way to keep them there.
“Any ideas on how to magically make this work for me? Because I’d be really good with that.”
No, he didn’t, though he’d be really good with it too. Sure, life and death didn’t stand between them. He thought of Leah’s reluctance to build a life with anyone due to her health issues. No, it wasn’t something that big.
But complications did stand between him and Tess. Real complications that weren’t easily dealt with, even if they weren’t life or death.
He’d never presume to understand what it was like to be a woman on the force, but he doubted her reservations about her reputation were exaggerated. Especially after the way Granger had sort of disgustedly told him at the bar that night that she didn’t fuck cops.
There were also down-the-road complications. As much as he hated to be the weirdo thinking that this would last, he was too much of a planner and a thinker not to recognize that even if they found a way to have a relationship, should things get serious enough for...serious things, one of them wouldn’t be allowed to work at BCPD anymore.
What else did either of them have?
She pushed her thumb to the middle of his forehead. “From the pensive line right here, I’m guessing you don’t have any answers for that conundrum, either.”
“I...no.”
“Bummer.”
“Yeah.”
“I guess it could be a one-night-stand thing.” She stepped back, picking her bra up off the ground and putting it back on.
He didn’t say anything to that, because the only thing he could think to say was fuck, no. And the only thing he could think to do was cross to her and take that bra right back off.
But...not what she wanted.
“I don’t know how to get around it, you know?” She shrugged, stepping into her panties.
“I know.” And he did. He was not the bulldozing kind of guy. He was a nice guy who did the right thing and took the high road and all that other bullshit that had gotten him nowhere.
Except here. Here was nice. More than nice, it was exactly, exactly where he wanted to be, more so than anywhere else he could remember being.
But he had to leave. He finished getting dressed, glanced at Tess, who was standing there in her underwear, chewing on her bottom lip.
The stirring in his dick was ridiculous and unwelcome. “It was...great.”
She scratched her hands through her hair, making it even messier, even sexier. “Seems to be the consensus. I really am sor—”
“Tess.”
She rolled her eyes. “Let me guess, friends don’t say sorry any more than they say thank-you. I’ll bring you brownies tomorrow. Or cannoli.”
He should not get pleasure from her remembering that was his favorite, and he should not smile at her. But he did both. “I’ll take it.”
She crossed to him and he had to hold himself perfectly still to keep from indulging any of the things he wanted to do. Touch her. Hold her. Talk her back into bed, no matter how bad he was at talking.
She hesitated, then lifted on her toes and brushed a kiss against his mouth. “You’re a little too amazing. I’m going to need you to develop some flaws so I can keep my hands off you.”
“Well, if that’s the case I’ll continue to be perfect,” he replied drily.
She let out another gusty sigh. “It seems silly to say it here, when there’s a lot of really unfair things in life, but this blows.”
“It does at that.” He brushed some of the unruly hair behind her ear, then cursed himself for touching her, even in such an innocent way. Because he wanted so much damn more than that. “I do have flaws, you know.”
“I know, but you hide them so admirably.”
He didn’t know what to say. All he knew was it was uncomfortable having a positive characteristic attributed to him.
“Things are going to be weird now, aren’t they?”
The chuckle escaped his lips, though he wasn’t particularly amused. He felt, well, fuck if he knew. “We’ll figure it out.”
“Yeah? Okay, well, if you say so, Captain Quiet.”
“Not allowed, Tess.”
“You rocked this mortal’s world.”
“Leaving now.”
“All right.” She crossed her arms over her breasts, chewed on her lip a little more. “Enjoy your day off tomorrow. I won’t be seeing you.”
He let that sink in. “You know, you can. This doesn’t negate the friends thing or the distraction thing. I’m not some creep who can’t control his baser urges.”
“No. You’re not.” She shook her head. “Too damn perfect.”
“Not.”
“You’re going to have to give me some evidence of that.” She pulled a T-shirt off the floor. It was crumpled and wrinkly, but when she put it on, it hit her midthigh, covering up the necessities. “But not tonight. I’m going to pretend the perfect guy gave me the perfect orgasm.” She made a shooing motion toward the door. “You’re going to have to vamoose if I’m going to accomplish that.”
“Got it.” Leaving was the absolute last thing he wanted to do, but he did what people wanted.
“Marc?”
He paused with his hand on her doorknob, debating whether he should look back or not. “Yeah.”
“It did mean something. I don’t want you to think I ignored all my rules for myself just because you’re hot or I was super horny or something.”
“Here I thought it was because I had X-ray vision.”
She was beside him and poked his shoulder. “No. It’s because you’re exactly what I needed.” She wrinkled her nose. “Corny, I know. But...true.”
Corny, maybe, but it soothed his pathetically bruised ego. He gave her a nod, opened the door enough he could slip out without anyone looking in her door—not that he’d ever seen many people besides them in their hallway. “Night, Tess.”
“Night.”
She closed the door behind him, and Marc supposed that was...that.
CHAPTER TEN
TESS LOUNGED I
N BED, afraid to leave her apartment. It seemed as if every time she did, poof, there was Marc, and as much as she wanted to see him, she knew she shouldn’t.
The serious way he said, “I have flaws, you know,” played over and over in her head. Because he did have those hidden hurts she’d been afraid he would, but she hadn’t seen them. He’d seen all of hers. In all sorts of vivid detail, and the only bad thing she knew about him was he wasn’t a talker.
Which, considering all his other talents, was not a bad thing. Not even a little bit. So the rest she knew about him was good and sweet, and she wasn’t stupid enough to think he actually was perfect, but as she’d said last night, it was kind of nice pretending he was. He had been exactly what she’d needed.
As ill-advised as that need was.
She tried to imagine just doing it—going for it with Marc, screw what everyone at the department thought. But every time she did she saw Granger making blow job motions and Franks’s opinion of her souring and...
She couldn’t do it. Too much of her day was that job, too much of her life. The police academy, and then becoming a cop, had given her the kind of control she’d never had growing up, and as much as she liked Marc, as much as the sex was, well, fantastic, she couldn’t trade that in for what kept her sane.
Determined, she got out of bed. She needed to run some errands, check on Dad, see if she could afford hiring another cleaning lady and, if not, do the job herself.
It was enough to keep her very, very busy.
But none of it’s for you.
Well, she’d had her for-her thing last night and that was going to have to last for a while.
She pushed her feet into tennis shoes and laced them up, then stood staring at the door. There was no way she could run into Marc again. There wasn’t.
But she hesitated until she realized what a wimp she was being. She’d been the one to initiate sleeping with him. She’d been the one to say it couldn’t be more than that. So she could damn well stand to run into him in the hallway and not immediately remove all of her clothing.
And his.