by Tina Michele
Cate laughed. “Thank you. And I will say the exact same thing about you. That dress is stunning.”
Belle blushed. “Thank you.” To be polite, Belle was about to ask Cate if she wanted to join them when they were bombarded by a mass of people. Belle looked at Cate in surprise. “What?” Belle’s earlier sense of panic returned. Tara greeted the new arrivals, and Belle looked for an escape route. The last thing she wanted was to be inundated with crowds of Tara’s closest friends.
Cate spoke over the noise that came with the crowd. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay.” Belle grinned weakly. “I’m just gonna go.” Belle tried to squeeze herself through the horde.
As if Cate could sense Belle’s distress, she reached over and touched her arm. “Hold on a sec,” she said before she turned and grabbed Tara by the shirtsleeve.
Belle couldn’t hear what she said, but Tara looked at her with apologetic eyes as Cate whispered into her ear. Belle felt invisible as people bumped and swerved into her. It was almost like drowning in a sea of people. Belle saw Tara hug Cate and give a few people a gentle tap or two on their backs.
Cate pushed her way back to Belle and rubbed her arm. “I talked some sense into her.”
“What?” Belle had no idea what that meant.
“She just needs a good flick in the forehead sometimes. Lucky for her, this time it was just figuratively.” Cate smiled as Tara came and stood next to Belle.
“I don’t understand.” Belle looked from Cate to Tara and back.
“I have a much better idea,” Tara said as she held up a bottle of wine. “Do you want to go somewhere a little less here?”
Belle looked at Cate who nodded at her. Belle smiled. “That sounds like a great idea.”
Tara raised an eyebrow at her. “Eh, how can I trust you? That’s the same thing you said about this place.”
“Hey, not fair!”
Cate and Tara laughed. “I give you permission to flick her in the forehead,” Cate said.
“I might need it.”
“Trust me, you will. Okay. Now go.” Cate surprised Belle with a tight embrace and then smacked Tara on her arm as they left.
Belle had no idea what else the night had in store, but she found that she was curiously excited about it.
*
So far the night was going worse than Tara could have expected. There was a reason she never got so involved with the nuances of a date, because she didn’t have to impress anyone. Even if the night went poorly the only thing she was out was sex, and even the worst dates never ended without it anyway.
With Belle, it had been different from the start. She couldn’t say that she hadn’t thought about the way her skin would feel pressed up against her own, or the taste of her body on her tongue. But since the moment she’d seen Belle dancing alone in the empty gallery, she knew her old tricks wouldn’t be enough. The short time they spent at the wine bar proved that without any doubt. To get anywhere with Belle she needed to change her strategy.
She pulled into the dark parking garage and swiped her keycard at the guard station. She gave a friendly nod to the officer and continued through the automatic gate and up to the top level.
“Where are we? Am I about to be murdered like some serial crime drama?”
Tara laughed. “Well, I’d be the worst serial killer ever since I just swiped my parking card and registered with security. But I guess you never know.”
“Yeah, I think I saw this episode on Criminal Minds.”
Tara drove to the topmost level and pulled into the parking spot. She cut the engine and turned toward Belle. “I’ve seen all of them, and I’m almost certain that was not an episode.”
“Uh huh. That’s what a killer would say.”
Tara rolled her eyes and laughed as she got out and opened Belle’s door for her. “True,” she said as she helped her out of the Jeep and grabbed the bottle of wine from the backseat. Tara took Belle by the hand and led her to the elevator. She pressed the button for the top floor. The elevator chimed and opened to a dim space.
Belle read the sign above the reception desk. “Hicks Architecture Group. What are we doing here?”
“I need to grab something. Wait right here.” Tara stepped into an office and came out with two glasses. “Can’t drink wine without these.”
“Tara, you can’t take those. What are you doing?”
Tara grabbed her hand and pulled Belle back into the elevator. As the doors closed, she fished a key from her pocket and inserted it into the control panel and turned it. The elevator rose to the final level, the roof.
When the doors opened, Tara stepped out into the balmy Florida air. The sky was clear and thousands of stars sparkled in the deep blue night. She turned to take Belle’s hand, but she hadn’t yet gotten off the elevator. “What are you doing?”
“What are you doing? I doubt we should be up here.”
“It’s fine. I know people.” Tara smiled and reached out for her.
Belle took Tara’s hand and let her pull her gently out of the elevator. “No kidding. Who don’t you know?” Tara pulled her to the side of the building and Belle gasped. “Wow! This is amazing.”
Tara pointed to the ground twenty-three stories below at a couple walking in the park. “I don’t know them. I don’t think.”
Tara watched Belle as she stared out over the downtown Orlando skyline and Lake Eola. Strands of hair that broke free from their arrangement and blew in the breeze that swirled around them. Belle’s eyes were wide with amazement and the shimmering city lights reflected in them. She was beautiful, and by far the most intriguing and intelligent woman Tara had ever met.
She opened the wine, poured two glasses, and handed one to Belle. “Here’s to ending this night far better than it began.”
“Mission accomplished,” Belle said as she gently tapped her glass to Tara’s.
“The view is so much better from up there,” Tara said as she pointed back toward the top of the elevator.
“Are you serious?” Belle’s mouth hung open in shock.
“Yeah. But we’re fine here. You’re in a dress and heels. You don’t need to be climbing—”
Belle cut her off in mid-sentence. “Well, now we are doing it.”
Belle took her wine glass and marched over to the scaffold ladder on the side of the mechanical room. She slipped off her shoes, held them and her glass in the same hand, and stepped onto the first rung.
“Holy shit!” Tara ran over to the ladder. “Belle. No. Come down. You’re going to fall.” Either Belle didn’t hear her or she wasn’t listening. Tara’s money was on the latter.
“Hold these.” Belle tossed her shoes to Tara. “I don’t need them. Just put them down there.” Belle raised the tight skirt of her dress high up her thighs. Tara couldn’t help but graze her eyes up the smooth exposed skin. Her pulse quickened and her body thrummed with fear and desire as she watched Belle make her way up the ladder.
When Belle reached the top, she stared down at Tara. “Haven’t you learned never to tell a lady she can’t do something?” She straightened her skirt and took a prideful sip from her unspilled glass.
“Well, I’ve never met a lady quite like you before.”
“Are you coming?”
Tara’s mind flashed to a vision of Belle’s body pressed against her as her fingers coaxed those very words from her lips. She thought, not before you do, but said, “Absolutely.”
Chapter Sixteen
“What am I looking at?” Roz asked impatiently as he stared at a wall of monitors.
“This, sir, is a live feed of every surveillance camera in and around the museum,” Jesse said.
“Well, I’ll be damned. It is.” Roz stood and leaned in to one of the screens. “Will you look at that? You dumbasses did something right for a change.”
“I did it, sir. I figured that we could use a little more sophistication, seeing as how the brute force tactics weren’t getting us very far. I’m working on
hacking into the proximity card server so that we can gain access without needing an employee or their badge. But so far I’m not having much luck. But I did manage to hack some of the locking mechanisms. That might come in handy.”
“I prefer taking things by force. Not with this pansy ass computer shit.” Pete added his opinion.
“Nobody asked you, did they?” Roz shut him down. “I don’t give a rat’s ass how we get in. You just better get us out.”
“I might have a way to disarm the entire system before we breach the doors and disable the guards so they can’t activate the alarm.”
“What about the manual switch or exterior doors?”
“Since that one isn’t connected to the system I won’t be able to deactivate them. But since it isn’t, the alarm is strictly audible and does not connect to police dispatch. Even if it’s triggered, we still have time before it’s called in.”
“And there is your brute force.” Roz looked to Pete. “You will make sure that alarm is not triggered, by any means necessary.”
Pete grinned devilishly. “I like the sound of that.”
*
Belle’s heart pounded and her hands shook. She couldn’t believe that she had just scaled the side of an elevator shaft and stood barefooted overlooking the glittering lights of downtown. She was as exhilarated as she was frightened. Never in her life would she have imagined herself there, either alone or with someone like Tara.
She looked down the side and watched Tara make her way up the ladder. Now that she was up there, Belle couldn’t believe that she’d went through with it, dress and all. She realized that there was no way she had gotten away without showing her ass, literally. As soon as Tara reached the top, Belle asked, “Have you ever seen something so ladylike?”
Tara laughed and wrapped her arms around Belle. “That was the best thing I’ve ever seen in my life.”
Belle blushed and buried her face in Tara’s shoulder. “You saw my butt, didn’t you?”
“Maybe a little.”
Belle was embarrassed, but there was something so comforting about the way Tara held her. And the scent of Tara’s cologne intoxicated her. “You smell so good.” As soon as she said it, Belle grunted in regret.
Tara chuckled. “Thank you.”
Belle pulled away and looked up at Tara. She was curious. “What did Cate say to you earlier?”
“Oh, nothing.”
Belle didn’t buy it. She stepped out of Tara’s arms and backed up against the railing. “I call bullshit!” Belle turned around, lowered herself down, and hung her legs over the side of the building.
Tara laughed at Belle’s familiar words. She sat next to Belle and swung her legs over as well. “Okay. You want to know?”
Belle wasn’t sure she did after she’d said it like that, but she still said, “Yes.”
Tara rested her hands on the bar above her and turned her head toward Belle. “Honestly, she asked me why I brought you to the same place I bring all my dates.”
Belle was right. She could’ve done without the answer. “Oh. Wow.” Belle sat and looked out over the city. The fountain caught her attention as it began its evening show, a beautiful choreographed spectacle of lights, water, and music. She couldn’t hear anything except the sound of her beating heart and the rush of wind around her. “Have you always been this way?”
Tara dropped her hands into her lap and looked at Belle. “What do you mean?”
Belle was coming to the conclusion that no matter how attracted she was to Tara or how unexplainable her feelings were, Tara wasn’t the right woman for her. “You, with your aloof attitude, noncommittal lifestyle, and carefree personality. I mean, how many jobs do you have?”
“Oh. That.”
Belle couldn’t help but laugh at Tara’s detached response to her question. “That’s what I mean.”
“Is this about what Cate said? Yes, I have a lot of dates. Many of them are just casual acquaintances that I spend time with, nothing serious.”
“It’s not the number of dates. It’s that none of them are serious. Do you have anything in your life that is constant?” Belle knew too well what it was like to live without structure and continuity. She couldn’t imagine someone choosing that life on purpose.
“My family, I suppose, but someone can only take so much of it. My whole life my parents have had everything planned out. My life, my education, my career. Hell, they’d have had me in an arranged marriage if I wasn’t a lesbian. Until I turned twenty-one, I did everything I was supposed to. But then I couldn’t do it anymore. I was suffocating. I felt like if I didn’t get out I was going to be crushed. So I did. I quit school, I traveled, I worked any and every odd job I could, and yes, I slept with a lot of women.”
Belle was speechless. The very thing she had spent her whole life wishing for was the exact thing that Tara was running away from. “I didn’t know.”
“I know. It’s okay. So, no. I haven’t always been like this. Just since college. But I can’t imagine ever going back to the way it used to be.”
Belle’s heart squeezed in her chest. “I see.” Tara all but confirmed that she would never be what Belle wanted her to be and she was just another jaunt in Tara’s quest for freedom.
Tara brushed her hand across Belle’s cheek and looked into her eyes. “But right now I don’t feel any of those things here with you.”
A knot tied itself in Belle’s throat, and she couldn’t speak. Tara leaned in, and Belle held her breath. Her lips parted and her eyes closed as Tara’s soft lips pressed to hers. A fire sparked to life inside her and spread through her body. Belle slid her hands up Tara’s arms and around her neck. She felt Tara’s tongue flick at her bottom lip, and Belle opened her mouth for her. Their kiss deepened and Belle lost herself in Tara’s taste and touch.
Belle pulled her close and leaned back bringing Tara with her. She felt the weight of Tara press against her, and a low heat built between her legs. Tara pulled back from their fevered kiss and stared at her. Belle watched as the desire she felt was mirrored in Tara’s wild eyes. She had never wanted someone so badly. She throbbed with a need that took over her logic and sense.
*
Tara looked down into Belle’s darkened eyes. She knew she could so easily get lost in them, and the thought frightened her. Tara had just finished telling Belle that she wasn’t the type to wrap herself in a single woman. She couldn’t help but think that she was telling herself as well as Belle. Tara stroked away the strand of hair that blew across Belle’s forehead, and her eyes fluttered closed. She was so beautiful that Tara ached to kiss her. But she feared that if she began again she would never stop.
Against the warning signs that her head threw out at her, Tara leaned down and pressed her lips to Belle’s once again. Their soft and languid connection turned into a voracious need for more. Tara ran her hand up Belle’s arm and gripped her shoulder. Belle moaned, and a surge of heat moved up Tara’s thighs. When Belle twisted her hands into Tara’s hair, an intense desire jolted through her, and she pulled away. While she had the desire and the ability to take Belle right there on the top of the building under a clear night sky, she couldn’t.
Tara sat up and stared at her legs that dangled over the side of the mechanical building. She wanted her, without a doubt; it just didn’t feel right. Not there, and not that way. Belle deserved something far more meaningful and passionate. The problem was, for the first time, Tara didn’t think she was the one who could offer her that.
“Are you hungry?” Tara asked Belle who had sat up beside her. She couldn’t look at her because she was afraid of what she would see, whether it was disappointment, frustration, or hurt. In spite of how much she wanted Belle and how relentless she was pursuing her, Tara found herself in an unfamiliar place. A place she had spent the last decade of her life avoiding.
“You know, I think we should just…maybe we should just call it a night.”
Tara was right. She could hear the emotion in Belle’s voi
ce. She looked over at Belle to see her face, but she had already turned away and was pulling herself to her feet. “Okay.” It was all Tara could say as she watched Belle grab the railing of the ladder and climb down the side of the building.
Neither of them spoke as Tara drove Belle home. Tara didn’t know what to say to explain herself so she said nothing. She wasn’t certain that it was the best course of action, but in her head it sounded better than any I want you, but I don’t want to be tied down speech she’d used a thousand times before. Yet unlike those times, Tara was afraid that it wasn’t the complete truth anymore, at least not where Belle was concerned.
She pulled up to Belle’s house and killed the engine. Nothing about the night had gone right, and she needed to tell Belle she was sorry for that even if it wouldn’t do any good.
“All right, well, I’ll see you,” Belle said as she pulled the door handle.
Tara reached across Belle’s lap and stopped her from getting out just yet. “Belle, wait a second, please.”
Belle looked down at the arm that held her and Tara withdrew. “I just wanted to tell you that I’m sorry.”
Belle looked over at Tara. “For what?” Belle asked.
“For this pretty disastrous evening I made here.”
“It’s not your fault, Tara. I think both of us put too much into making it something bigger than it was. It happens. I wouldn’t call it disastrous, just misguided. You are a great person, and I’d like to be your friend.”
“Friend?” Tara had friends. Hell, she had more friends than she could count. Why did such an innocuous word sound so final, so nonnegotiable?
“Yeah.” Belle looked away from Tara and stared out the window.
Tara thought she heard the faint sound of a breathy sigh. “Belle?”
Belle cleared her throat and looked over at Tara. “Yeah?” Her tone was upbeat, and she beamed, as if a switch had been flipped.
“Uh, nothing, I guess.”
“Okay. Well, I had a nice time tonight, in spite of the few glitches. Thanks!” Belle leaned over and kissed Tara quickly on the cheek. She paused for a split second after, and Tara thought she saw a flash of disappointment. But it disappeared, replaced by one of Belle’s beautiful smiles. “Good night, Tara.”