by Michele Hart
He slipped a second finger inside her, and filled her mouth with his to catch her next cry. The dilatory dance of his touch tightened her entire body. She felt the evidence of his desire pressed against her thigh, making her need him to the point of watering eyes. She tried like Hell to keep from shaking.
“What would you do if I slid my hard body into you right here?”
“I would scream so loud,” she panted, “the police would return.”
“I better take you inside then, because there’s no way I’m not going bury myself in you until you make me deaf.”
The words made her shiver, the promise made her ache.
Greg released her, rolled off the mattress and into the water, and he pulled the mattress to the steps where he tugged her to her feet and over the distance to the glass door of his room. The breeze against her nude body felt fabulous and so erotic.
Without bothering to slide the door closed behind him, keeping the possibility of being discovered still present to titillate them, Greg put Elissa against the wall, his body pressed to hers with a firm, hungry weight. No lights were on in the room, only the sunlight streaming through the white sheers of the glass door. She melted to imagine what ecstasy he’d put her through.
His hand slid down the back of her leg, caught up her calf and wrapped it around his hip, pressing his hard erection against her. He filled her mouth with his again as he spread her moisture with the slide of long gentle, probing fingers triggering little catches of air in her throat.
“You feel so incredibly good, Elissa …”
Her hands squeezed his biceps to keep some part of her in touch with the world.
Greg lifted her onto his rock-hard cock and impaled her slowly, her weight taken against the wall. Elissa cried out without restraint, squeezed his hard biceps, hungrily wrapped her legs around him, locking her to him.
He pulled them away from the wall, and put her back on his bed, not wasting a moment. Greg grasped her hips and thrust into her, making her cry out his name until she only saw his face above her, his teeth locked in endurance of what he did to them both, stars dancing through her view of him. He gave her rises and crashes like a tsunami battering a coast. Every plunge of rapturous bliss struck electricity through her until she was a mass of sweat and red hair tossed about, and weak as a newborn kitten.
Greg drove into her a last time, groaning nearly as loud as she cried out. He stilled above her, his arms embracing her and sending the most intoxicating quiver through her.
Then he rested against her, his body and hers drenched in sweat, paradise infiltrating her entirely.
Elissa had to catch her breath and still saw stars, unsure of which direction was up and which was down when the room spun so. She could barely stand the thought of having to separate from him. Playing with the risk of being discovered, he’d just given her the most incredible sexual moment of her life.
“Elissa.”
When he parted from her, Greg reached out and stroked a lock of her red hair from over her eye. The sun must have been setting. More shadows haunted the bedroom.
“Elissa, for a week, I’ve had you dancing through my mind like a screensaver, and I’ve wanted your company. I have you now in my lair, and you’re all I can think about. You smell like toffee, Elissa, and that makes me want to consume you.
“And now you say, I must live without you for three days? I will if I have to, but banishment’s over-harsh, and I don’t deserve the punishment.”
Her cheek against his chest, Elissa listened to his sweet words and imagined them working on every woman lucky enough to find herself in Greg’s bed. He had a way of making things seem real.
Elissa pressed the restart button of her inner preprogramming. For her own good, no matter how difficult or painful. Better now than later, before what he did to her was big and undefeatable, before what he did to her became a resounding need.
“I need to return to the life I led before the Amigos interrupted my ketchup decision. I can’t stop taking school seriously just because the sexiest man in the world makes me forget who I am.”
Greg gave a glossy smile. “Wouldn’t you rather have me instead of telescopes? What do stars and galaxies have that I don’t have?”
The question stilled her. He spoke of astronomy and didn’t know his true competition was her lifelong aspiration for a career with the FBI. She wanted Greg to be a touch-and-go relationship, as in a lot of touching before she goes ... to Quantico.
“It’s not you, Greg. I have things to do, goals to accomplish. I can’t do any of that when you have me naked in a pool, or you’re pressed up against me, kissing like this. As much as I’d like to go on with that forever, it distracts me from study, makes me stupid. Once you start that enticing-male, bedroom-eyes-thing, I can no longer think. The study part of my brain just shuts down, and I go oblivious to all but wanting you.”
“Okay,” he said through his conceding smile. “That I distract you is enough power to please me for now. Three days. So what do you want to be when you grow up? Why are you studying the stars so hard?”
Many times Elissa had asked herself why she wanted to be an FBI officer, what drove her without release. Her father had been an officer on patrol gunned down by a fleeing suspect, and the trauma of it in her young age had made an indelible mark.
Then one of the students at her middle school had gone missing, only to turn up dead several months later, and the local police had never found her killer. Elissa realized young, the world was filled with chaos and danger. And she didn’t want to feel as though she were always in jeopardy.
It was injustices like these Elissa had seen so young that had always made her want to prevent another family from experiencing that great misery of losing a loved one in a senseless criminal act, like she had.
Realizing Greg expected an astronomy-flavored answer, she replied, “I want to study what’s out there, maybe keep an asteroid from hitting someone.”
“Trying to save the world?” he asked, twirling a sweat-dampened tendril of her red hair.
“Yeah. Don’t we all want to save the world? I guess I want to save my little piece of the world.”
“Go save the world another time.”
Greg pressed a hot kiss to Elissa’s mouth, and his arms squeezed her to him, making her feel his every hard muscle as if he knew the sensation diverted rebellion. The hairs of his chest tickled her breasts, super-sensitizing her all over again to every rock-hard curve of his body against hers.
Struck by the fact that he was way too easy to want, she hadn’t done her homework, she’d missed a karate practice night, and she’d have to somehow jam a chapter in her head while she gobbled nutrition bars through dissertations and statistics. She’d pay for all the pleasure in Greg’s arms.
Sad revelation told Elissa she needed to put some distance between Greg and her, if she planned any grade over a C. Just thinking of staying away from him made her heart sink a little, and she lectured herself on the hazards of distractions.
Greg reached up and turned on the single weak sconce light, enabling them to see each other in the setting sun, then he kissed her again with a reborn fervor that tossed every thought away, his hands seeking the most favored places to stroke her, infusing her with a fresh flood of want.
Playful, Elissa rolled Greg on his back and she straddled his hips, hungry for feel of him deep inside her again. His grin was so eager, her body throbbed. Rock-hard again, his erection rose from the junction of their hips, and Elissa encircled him and stroked him to see his eyes close, his head fall back with her touch, and hear his incredible, lustful groan.
When she bent forward to kiss him, his hand guided his stiff cock into her body to the unleashed groans of ecstasy. And Elissa rode Greg’s hard body until his best efforts failed to hold back the explosive climax between them.
* * * *
Elissa’s eyes popped open, saw the time, 2:30 A.M., and she realized she hadn’t left Greg’s bed. No, of course, he hadn’t
let her go at eleven, but had kept touching and kissing her until she wanted him again, a task taking only seconds and little effort on his part. Then he made love to her again until she screamed.
Now it was 2:30 A.M.
Clear thought took hold of her, and she recognized the gravity of her predicament. If she awakened next to him in the morning, she’ll have done so against her best judgment and will have lost another round in the competition to keep her life on track. She’ll have lost her best thinking to Greg and his hot bod. And that meant she’d lose everything she ever wanted.
Squeezing out from under his heavy arm and pleased to learn he slept deeply, she tiptoed around until she found most of her clothes, and she quietly slipped from the room. Cutting off thought that would impede her exit, Elissa dressed like a machine, grabbed her purse and homework, and she slipped from the house, re-engaging the security system behind her with her code.
All the way home, taking turns in the V-dub through dark roads, lost in wealthy neighborhoods she’d never driven before, she chanted, “I want to be an FBI criminologist. I want to be an FBI criminologist.”
And she tried very hard to think that’s all she wanted.
Chapter 9
Listening only peripherally to the world news, Elissa pulled the off-black stocking over her calf, and smoothed it tight against her leg before she tugged the mesh further over her thigh.
“I’m exhausted already, and I still have a whole night on my feet to go—in stilettos,” she complained to Penny, who rummaged through her closet, trying to pick clothes boring enough to wear to the Bay Cook-off tomorrow so Elissa could be bland and unnoticeable.
Penny gave up. “What a triumph that you have so few hideous clothes. I’ll lend you my I’m With Stupid t-shirt. That’s tasteless enough to offend everyone. Just make sure Greg doesn’t stand where the arrow points.”
“Any way to turn the arrow upward? If I weren’t so tired, I’d laugh.”
Elissa tugged on the other leg of her pantyhose and hauled the waistband over her hips. “Every time I have to put on pantyhose, I always picture how a sausage must feel shoved into its casing.”
Penny choked back a laugh and sat on the bed.
Stilled for a minute by a report of rockets hammering a village in the Middle East, Elissa frowned and returned to her dash about the room, preparing for a long night of serving drinks. She mumbled to herself, “Why is the world so messed up?”
Fishing the dresser for her gold loop earrings, she put her favorite gold necklace around her neck. She possessed little real gold jewelry and was glad of it. If she lost the fake stuff, she wouldn’t cry, but now she needed to wear gold to match the gold trim of Club Reno’s uniforms. If she lost her real gold jewelry working a job, she’d weep. She couldn’t replace them, and gold-colored jewelry quickly lost their color at first wearing, so acidic was her skin. Nothing that looked gold, stayed gold for long on her.
“So, have you heard from Greg?” Penny asked nonchalantly, as if the question just floated into the room by itself.
Elissa’s heart took a tragic shift. “Damn you for mentioning him.”
She caught Penny’s frown. “I thought you really liked him.”
If Elissa sat and thought of it a while, she’d become deeply depressed. “He’s wonderful. He’s nice, gorgeous to look at, smart, and too terribly sexy.”
Elissa made a sour face. “I dislike people who have everything. Barbie should be lurking somewhere in his life.”
Penny issued a humph and crossed her arms at her waist. “Sounds like a hard guy to get over. So how are you going about that, getting over him?”
Elissa bent to the closet floor, collecting her spike heels, and she sat on the bed to strap on the torture devices.
“I’m employing classic mind-control techniques on myself. I’m chanting to myself that I’ll not get any more involved with him. I’m chanting that he’s horrible, and that I don’t want him. Thought-reconditioning is always difficult at first, but my brain will catch on, and all will return to normal. My mind will be back on books.”
“So you can’t take your mind off him, huh?”
Elissa thought a good cry in private would serve as a good purgative.
“It’ll be easier when the month’s over, and I won’t have to see him again. I’ve already reigned in my wandering mind, put limits on how much I’ll see of him during this bet. Only what’s required to end the prank and put the grand in my hand. I’m not going to let my heart blow everything. I’m not going to play with fire.”
“Well, there’s no reason why you can’t have fun with him.”
“Yes, there is,” Elissa deadpanned, buttoning the tuxedo jacket of her work uniform, working to cut out any unnecessary good feeling for him. “We’re from different worlds. The more time I spend with Greg, the cuter he gets. The more time I want to spend with him, the less time I’m studying, and the further away my goals float from my reach.”
The more handsome his pecan-brown eyes become, the more of my soul he steals. The more he touches me, the more I need him to keep doing it.
“The more of myself I give him, the more he’ll crush when he leaves. The more of myself I’ll crush when I leave. I’ll have found myself fallen behind in my dreams for all the time I spent gazing at him. I’ll regret having given up school time.”
Penny had no answer for that.
“I don’t want a man in my life,” Elissa stated, more as an affirmation to drive into her head than an actual announcement of how she felt at this moment. She’d worked hard to keep Greg locked out of her thoughts these past three days, but the memory of his last touch hadn’t gone away at her request or demand, and didn’t stop invigorating the air she breathed.
“Men do have their good uses, Elissa.”
“I plan to fulfill my part of the bargain, to show up with him in public and play the part of the bland girl he’s supposed to fall for. I’m going to think of the money, and then the walking away. I’m not going to encourage intimacy again.”
Elissa made a fist, a promise to her soul. “I’m going to think of the money, and then the walking away. The money, and then the walking away. It’s just a matter of mental conditioning. I’ll endure a lot of it in the FBI Academy. I’d better get used to it.”
* * * *
Greg sat in his car in the parking lot of Elissa’s apartment, had just ended a phone call with the state police, exchanging information on the recent crimes. His eyes roamed the apartment house to Elissa’s second-story apartment, and he wondered ominously if Elissa were in any kind of danger because he’d done something to catch the Mob’s eyes.
Greg had denied the presence of any organized crime connection, and here Elissa had handed him evidence to the contrary, the Mob attorney linked to the wine thief. Greg hadn’t expected a reaction to the heist so quickly, and he wouldn’t have known about any Mob connection if Elissa hadn’t snooped around, playing detective.
If all the weird occurrences turned out to be related to the Cook-off, it would all go away tomorrow.
Greg didn’t like Elissa’s curiosity in this experiment intended to shake some evidence of his father’s unsolved murder. He hoped none of it reared its ugly head in front of her again. The march to the apartment cleared his thoughts.
Greg crossed his fingers when he knocked on the door. He heard Smoochy bark and congratulated himself in figuring Penny would want to watch TV at Elissa’s tonight.
He saw a shadow pass over the peephole, and he heard Penny’s voice through the door. “That you, Greg?”
“Yeah, Penny,” he replied loudly, glad to see the women more safety-conscious since the robbery. “Just me.”
He checked his watch as he heard the door’s locks and chains roll. It was just about the right time he’d told George Staples to fire Elissa, and Greg thought he might use the few minutes with Penny to learn more about the woman who was the center of his mind now ... and running at top speed to get away.
Greg w
asn’t going to let Elissa disappear.
The timing was bad. He wasn’t yet ready to settle down into a deeper relationship, didn’t have the time to devote his full attention to the future when the present was so active. There was a lot more he wanted to do, like put Rubia’s on the kind of solid ground that guaranteed everyone successful careers. That’s what a family business was for. That was his job, and he wasn’t ready to pull away from that great responsibility yet.
Greg wasn’t going to leave his father’s murder unsolved, either.
Elissa carried the kind of beauty he’d never grow tired of seeing. She was the exact kind of woman he wanted when the time came for him to think of the future in his personal life. Smart, sexy, mysterious.
Well, the mysterious part was getting old, and a bit scary that Elissa would share no details of her life. He couldn’t keep playing slap-and-tickle with a woman who would open nothing of her world to him. What did she protect so earnestly?
He wished for her company in nearly anything he did now. If he let a case of bad timing allow her to drift away, he’d regret it later. He sensed he should keep some kind of tether between them. He couldn’t just let her go.
Penny opened the door and stepped aside for his entry. Greg lugged an overnight bag hung on his shoulder and the last case of wine into the small apartment, setting the case down beside the coffee table.
“Elissa’s working tonight,” the petite and perky brunette informed him. “She’ll not be home any earlier than two, three in the morning.”
He grimaced, and he wouldn’t have liked that at all if he hadn’t arranged for Elissa to come home in the next ten, fifteen minutes. “Penny, I’ve come to speak to you.”
Scooping up Smoochy, Elissa’s neighbor dropped onto the couch before an old movie on TV and regarded him suspiciously. “What do you want to know?” she asked, swatting curly brown hair from her glare.
Greg took the corner of the couch, not really wishing to give his thoughts away like this, but he felt his hold of Elissa’s attention tenuous if she could stand to be away from him. He didn’t like to be away from her. Two nights had been enough.