"Arousal is so amazing," she said. "Your brain sends a signal, and blood flow increases to the exact area needed for participation. The increased blood flow creates a solid rod, which allows for maximum penetration of the intended sleeve. Don't you find that fascinating?"
"Mm." His breathing grew ragged.
"It's an engineering marvel, Charlie. Take my system, for example. Think of all those neurons firing, which prompts the release of lubrication and readies the sleeve to accept the insertion of the rod."
He made a sound low in his throat.
"You're programmed to initiate a piston like action, which increases lubrication in the complementary components. That, in turn, allows for faster motion and greater friction."
With a soft groan, he started toward the bed.
"Bring the chaps," she murmured.
He snatched them from the dressing table, sending lip-stick tubes flying. While he buckled on the chaps, she ripped open a condom packet. But before she handed him the condom, she took one good look at Charlie naked except for his chaps. She almost came right then.
He wasted no time putting on the condom and climbing between her open thighs.
Up close she could see the fire burning in his gaze. When he thrust deep, bringing the soft leather in contact with her inner thighs, she arched upward as the first spasm gripped her. Oh, this was going to be good.
"I love it when you talk like that." He pulled back and shoved home again.
Once again the leather caressed her skin and the cool buckle pressed against her tummy. The subtle kinkiness was all it took to kick-start her climax. As it roared to life, Charlie began pumping fast, rocketing her down the pleasure highway while that wonderful leather slapped against her thighs. She'd never yelled so loud in her life.
Charlie laughed, one of those exultant sounds that only comes with triumph. Then his laughter turned to a wild groan of release. Eve held him tight as he trembled in her arms. Slowly she began to smile. Victory.
As she basked in the glow of satisfaction, both sexual and mental, she thought she heard a noise coming from another part of the house. It sounded like a soft click, as if a door had been closed. But then again, Charlie was still breathing pretty hard. It could have been one of those little clicks a person's throat makes when the epiglottis quickly snaps shut. Yeah, that was probably it.
Chapter Seventeen
The last thing Charlie wanted to hear right now was a suspicious sound. But damn it, he heard one anyway. Lying there in the kind of euphoric state he'd thought could only be achieved through heavy drugs, not that he knew from personal experience, he didn't want to move for a long, long time, maybe not ever. Round beds were awesome.
He tried to talk himself out of going to investigate. Maybe the sound hadn't been of a door closing. Maybe it had been the oil heater turning on. Or shutting off. Except there hadn't been the sound of a fan either before the sound or after the sound.
Charlie was pretty good with sounds. Changes in sound were the best way to troubleshoot any machine, if you had the ear for it. That soft click hadn't been some automatic relay, which left him with the conclusion that it had been a door closing. If he had to guess, and he was lying there doing exactly that, he'd say it had been the front door.
Finally he couldn't put off the moment. God, how he hated to move. He turned his head so his mouth was close to her ear. "Eve."
She stroked his butt and snuggled against him. "You were incredible, Charlie." She sighed happily. "And the chaps were incredible. Thank you."
"I think I heard something." Plastered against her the way he was, he could feel her lazy contentment disappear, to be replaced by the tight muscles of anxiety. Damn it to hell. "I could be wrong, though."
"I heard something, too."
That pretty much clinched it. One person could have imagined the noise. Two people—not so likely. "Was it like the front door closing?"
"Yes. Very quietly."
"Did you hear it open?" He hadn't, but maybe he'd missed that sound.
"No. I only heard it close. Maybe I was wrong, though. Maybe it was only the house settling."
"Maybe." But he didn't think so. And as the implication dawned on him, every individual hair on his body stood upright. If they'd interpreted the sound correctly, then whoever had been in the house was no longer there. But chances were they had been there, probably listening, maybe even watching, while he and Eve had been having sex.
"Charlie, what if they were here the whole time we were—"
"Let's hope not." He disentangled himself from her warmth. "I'll go investigate." "I'll go with you."
"No. Stay here." Standing with his back to her, he reached for the tissue box on her nightstand and dispensed with the condom.
"I don't want to stay here." The sheets rustled as if she might be getting out of bed.
"No, seriously," he said over his shoulder as he unbuckled his chaps. "Lock the bedroom door after I go out, just in case. That's what the cops say to do. Lock whatever door you can and call 911." He climbed out of his chaps, all the while watching the door and wishing he had better vision. He didn't want to face an intruder, but he especially didn't want to face one while he was naked and couldn't see worth a damn.
"I'm not calling the police until we know whether we actually heard something or just imagined it. We both might be spooked by the earlier break-in. And for the record, you have a great butt."
"Thanks." Grabbing his briefs off the floor, he turned to find her getting dressed on the far side of the bed. Even though she was blurry, he could tell she'd already put on her glasses.
"I'm not just saying that to take my mind off this potential home invasion."
"You're not?" He quickly put on his briefs and grabbed his jeans as he went over to her dressing table to retrieve his glasses. Once he could see clearly again, he shoved his legs into his jeans.
"Well, maybe partly. But that doesn't mean it's not true." She came around the bed wearing her sweater and jeans. "You have excellent buns, and I'd much rather think about them than some jerk who might have been standing in the bedroom doorway while we played mattress bingo."
"I understand completely." He buttoned and zipped his jeans. At that point, he'd put on all the clothes available to him. The rest were in the kitchen. "And for the record, you have outstanding tits, and I'm not just saying that, either."
"Thanks."
"You're welcome." He'd much rather think about her tits than the other subject crowding into his mind. Whenever he allowed himself to consider the possibility of someone hiding in the house while he'd gone through his undressing routine in the kitchen and Eve had waited alone and naked in the bedroom, he got the shakes.
He was reasonably sure that had been the scenario. He didn't really think someone was still in the house. They'd left five minutes ago through the front door.
What if his repair on the back door hadn't held up? If he'd had any sense whatsoever, he would have checked that door the minute he and Eve had come home from the bakery. Had he done that? No, he hadn't. He'd been too busy thinking about getting naked with Eve.
He glanced at her. "At least let me go first."
"Okay." She looked scared.
"If someone was out there, I don't think they're around anymore."
"Right." She nodded and tried to muster a smile, but it looked fake and her pupils were still dilated.
He couldn't blame her. It wasn't only the thought that someone had been in the house. It was also the thought that they'd stayed for the show in the bedroom.
That was the only explanation for the timing of the exit. They would have had a better chance of leaving undetected if they'd taken off right in the middle of the activities. Instead they'd left after the main event was over. Creepy.
He peered out the doorway, looking right and left. "Where's the switch for the that light?" At this point he was ready to turn on every damned light in the house. He wanted no shadowy corners anywhere.
"At the
far end, right before you go into the living room, and another one by the back door."
Then neither one would help light his way in advance. "Then maybe you'd better stay here. I want to take a look at the back door."
"Are you kidding? Wherever you wander, there I'll be, cowboy."
He glanced down at her. I suppose that's better than splitting up, now that you mention it."
"You think?" Her eyes rounded in mock amazement. "I can tell you haven't seen enough scary movies or you'd never suggest splitting up. That's the kiss of death. When somebody says 'you stay here, while I go look around,' then you know one of them is going to get whacked."
"Neither one of us is going to get whacked." He started slowly down the hall. "If they'd had that idea, they could have done away with both of us very easily."
"Don't remind me." She followed close behind, her hand on his bare back. "I'm feeling extremely traumatized. I'm worried that I'll never want to have sex again."
Finally his sense of humor reasserted itself. "It's just like falling off a horse. You have to get right back on."
"Is that right?" She slid her hand down his back and squeezed his butt. "Are you offering to be my riding instructor, smarty-pants?"
"Why not? Are we going to let some voyeuristic intruder ruin our evening?" He was secretly afraid that he was as traumatized as Eve.
But he also was attracted to the cure he'd tossed out originally as a joke. He was especially attracted to it after she'd squeezed his butt. That brought back the warm sensation of lying between her thighs, his extremely happy dick buried deep inside her as she'd stroked his naked backside.
So yeah, once they were satisfied that the house was secure again, they should probably get it on and wipe out all the scary associations. He didn't know if he'd ever have sex with her again after tonight, and he didn't want the lingering memory to be the icky feeling of being spied on.
In the meantime, they had to go over every inch of this house while they tried to figure out what the hell was going on. He turned the comer expecting to find that the back door had been pried open once again. But no, his hinges were still screwed firmly in place.
Eve stood beside him. "Maybe we really did imagine the whole thing. Wouldn't that be great?"
"Yeah, it sure would." Charlie flipped on the light to make sure he wasn't missing anything, but the door looked exactly as he'd left it. No one had come through this way. "Guess we go to the front door next." He started back down the hallway.
Eve hurried after him. "I just had a horrible thought."
"More horrible than some creepizoid getting his jollies by watching us in bed?"
"I'm not sure I locked my car. The garage door remote is inside the car."
"Then we'd better start with the garage." At the end of the hallway, Charlie veered right toward the kitchen. But the minute he got there, he remembered that he'd locked the kitchen door. "Nope. Even if somebody got into the garage, they wouldn't have made it through this door without jimmying something." He pulled at the door and it didn't budge.
When he turned around, Eve was smiling at him. "What?"
"Your clothes." She used her Vanna White gesture to indicate his stuff scattered around. "It tells a whole story. Jacket neatly hung on the chair. Boots lined up and socks inside. Then, judging from the shirts tossed in each corner, something must have snapped."
"In case you hadn't noticed, wild and crazy doesn't come naturally to me."
"Not yet." She stepped forward and slid both hands up his bare chest. "But you're making progress." Leaning forward, she kissed him.
He'd known the kiss was coming and he'd told himself not to get too involved. They hadn't finished casing the house for clues. But her wide, generous mouth was magic. Before he could stop himself, he'd pulled her close, and in no time, tongues were involved.
Kissing Eve was a stress-buster to end all stress-busters. As he combed his fingers through her silky hair and cupped the back of her head to deepen the kiss, he managed to convince himself that no one had been in the house, after all. The click had been a branch rubbing against the eaves, a piece of ice falling off the roof, an owl dropping a pebble into the chimney. The longer Eve kissed him, the more creative he became in explaining away the noise.
She was the first to pull away. "Oh, Charlie, I just thought of something else."
"Me, too." He slipped his hand under her sweater, gratified that she hadn't put on a bra. "A couple of things, actually."
"No, about the intruder."
He cupped her breast and rubbed his thumb over her nipple. "I think we overreacted. I'll bet it was something else, and we leaped to conclusions."
She moaned and closed her eyes. "I hope you're right, but... oh, that feels so good."
"It's supposed to." He had a fantasy of doing it in the kitchen, with Eve braced up on the counter. First he'd get on his knees for a little oral sex, and then, once he stood, he'd be at the perfect height for the next stage.
He still had his two condoms, because she'd come up with one while they were in the bedroom. She must have snagged it from the bathroom, but that left him with—
"They could have..." She took a shaky breath. "They could have relocked the door."
"What door?" Somehow he'd lost track of the conversation, probably because he was hard as a rock which meant his blood had drained south, exactly as she'd described back in the bedroom. That had been some monologue. He hadn't realized you could be nerdy about sex. And boy, did it work for him.
"The kitchen door. It's one of those old-fashioned locks you can open with a credit card. They could have done that and then relocked it."
His hands, which had been so busy under her sweater, stilled. Shit. Sex was making him stupid. How could he have looked at that locked door and made the assumption that no one had gone that way? She was right about the ease of opening a lock like that. Any marginally intelligent person would have come into the garage, used a credit card on the kitchen door, and locked it behind them.
With a bitter sigh of regret he withdrew his hands from under her sweater. "You're right. Obviously I don't have a brain cell working."
There wasn't a smidgen of blame in her blue eyes. "It's been a long night."
"We might as well check the front door and then we'll go outside and find out if you left your car open." He walked over to the converter and snagged his flannel shirt. "And this time I promise to concentrate." He buttoned the shirt as he walked back toward her.
"You've been concentrating." She stood on tiptoe and gave him a quick kiss. "Just on other things."
"I don't have that luxury right now." Cupping her cheek, he gazed into those incredible eyes. "I haven't told you, but I'm taking the next two days off work."
"For me?"
"Yep. You and your invention." "That is so sweet!"
He could live on that sparkle in her eyes. "And necessary. You and I need to get this hovercraft operational so you can take the design to New York. I think someone's trying to steal your concept, but if we start negotiations with a viable company, we'll make the thief irrelevant."
"Sounds like a plan." She hesitated. "Um, does that cut out your 'getting back on the horse' idea?"
If he hadn't been falling in love with her before, that question tipped him right over the edge. He wanted her so much at that moment that he couldn't speak. Finally he cleared his throat and managed an answer. "I don't think it has to."
"Oh, good."
Yeah, he was done for. How he'd ever reconcile that with his future plans was anybody's guess. He might have to clone himself.
If she had to be in this situation, Eve was glad she was in it with Charlie. Granted, she hadn't been in this situation until she'd revealed her hovercraft concept to Charlie, his cousin, and his cousin's two assistants. Until that night at the Rack and Balls, she'd muddled along on her own, with only a minor explosion.
But as she walked with him to the front door, she wondered if the explosion had been her fault, after all
. She didn't want to suspect Eunice, but it would be just like Eunice to enter the house for her own purposes and then decide to stay and watch the sexual show in the bedroom.
When it came to that, Eunice was the only person Eve could picture doing something like that. And the woman was frustrated by her inability to buy the finer things of life. Yet that didn't explain why she'd sabotage a project that she wanted to steal.
And there was the broken back door. If Eunice could get in with a key, would she break down the door to confuse the issue? That seemed like a lot of extra work when she could slip in and out undetected.
Charlie walked into the entry way and stopped. "Damn it. The door's unlocked."
Eve stared at the position of the dead-bolt lever and shivered. It was open.
"You didn't leave it that way by accident when we left, did you?" Charlie asked.
A headache was coming on. Eve put her fingers to her temples and began a slow rotation. She pictured leaving the house on the way to the bakery. She'd been aware of Charlie watching her to make sure she'd locked the door. And she had locked it.
"I wish I could say I wasn't sure." She looked at him. "But I am sure. I remember thinking that you'd give me a lecture if I didn't lock the dead bolt. But I would have locked it, anyway. I'm not casual about that anymore."
They both looked at the door in silence for several seconds.
"Maybe it has fingerprints on it," Eve said at last.
"I doubt it." Charlie sighed. "Whoever is doing this is trying to confuse the hell out of us so we won't guess. I'm going to bet they're at least smart enough to wear gloves."
"They were here when we had sex, weren't they?" Eve looked at Charlie in growing horror. When it had been only a possibility, she'd been able to keep the creepy crawlies at bay, but now, facing the unlocked door, she couldn't deny the obvious.
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