by Alison Kent
She didn’t know him at all. Not in the way she was determined to. In the way any woman would need to know the man she intended to become her intended as soon as she convinced him that he intended the same.
What she’d never counted on, however, was the sudden fluttering of nerves interfering with the daffodils and causing her to second-guess her brilliant master plan to seduce him, knock him senseless, leaving him desperate for more.
She thought of career criminals and mobsters and the First Presbyterian Friday morning prayer circle.
No. No second-guessing. It was now or never. She put her foot down on all her doubts, fortified herself with another monstrous nerve-settling breath, and took a step toward him.
“It’s hard to get to know a guy when he sends his friends for his lunch.” One step closer.
“When he can’t even be bothered to order his own turkey, avocado, sprouts and Dijon.” Another step, and nearer still.
“Or when he comes at lunch rush, and a girl can’t spare a minute to flirt properly.”
Tripp pulled in a deep breath, blew it out with a shake of his head. “Oh, Glory. If you don’t think what you’ve been doing is properly...”
“So you like?” she asked, tilting up her chin just the tiniest, flirtiest bit.
He growled deep in his chest. “I’d like it a whole lot better if you’d give improperly a try.”
She grinned, laughed under her breath, pushed a hand back through her mop of black curls and decided she might be able to pull this off after all. “Thing is, Shaughnessey, for improperly I’m afraid I’m going to need a lot more help than you’ve been giving me.”
His brow arched upward. He shifted his weight from one hip to the other. “That so?”
“Yeah. Definitely so.”
She took her time closing the rest of the distance between them, not touching him, not quite yet, waiting for that, wanting to savor first contact. To press her lips to that dip in his collarbone and linger. To taste him. To breathe him in.
Her fingers itched to slip between the snaps of his pressed khaki shirt. Instead of following through, she glanced down and away from the pull of magic in his eyes. Her pink leather, wedged Mary Janes contrasted fiercely with his big bad, black motorcycle boots.
She was Red Riding Hood to his wolf. Little Miss Muffet to his spider. Wendy to his Peter Pan. He tempted her. He frightened her. She longed for him to sweep her away from the mundane and take her flying.
She was tired of making sandwiches and stuffing potatoes and inventorying supplies for reorder. Tired of having no social life except that arranged by her matchmaking parents who were determined she make a sensible match.
Sensible, schmensible. She wanted romance.
Again she sighed, allowed her gaze—now a slight frown—to climb up his long denim-clad legs to that place beneath his Adam’s apple still tempting her so. “You dress like no engineering project consultant I know of.”
“You know a lot of us engineering types, do you? To know what we should be wearing?” He uncrossed his arms, hooked his thumbs through two of his belt loops.
The move drew her attention the length of his torso, that long, strong, lean body that she ached to cuddle up to more than anything she’d wanted in a very long time. When had she grown so tired and so needy and so very enamored of this man?
“Obviously my education is lacking in the engineer’s wardrobe department.” This time she circled one fingertip around his topmost snap, there beneath that spot she was crazy to kiss. “You’re welcome to enlighten me.”
“Fieldwork,” he said simply, as if he wasn’t sure of his voice. “Boots and jeans when on-site. Suits and ties for the office.”
“I see.” She liked him in both, liked the urbane sophisticate with his debonair flare, that cool James Bond detachment, that hint of a smoldering fire.
But it was the clothes he wore today that got to her, that gave her hope. He could very well have been the boy next door she’d grown up with, building forts and selling lemonade and practicing the art of French kissing.
He seemed less out of her league, more approachable.
And so she approached, her finger moving to toy with the next button in the long row down. “So you’re off into the field? To consult on a project? Would you like a sandwich for the road?”
“Actually, I’m just back,” he said, his chest rising and falling more rapidly now. “I thought I’d stop in and see what you had to offer.”
“Well,” she began, dampening her pressed lips with the tip of her tongue. “The turkey is always fresh, and I just set out a new Cajun baked ham and a roast beef seasoned with sea salt.”
“Hmm.” He widened his stance, adjusted his weight, balanced on both feet. “I was thinking of something sweeter.”
“I don’t believe that for a minute, Shaughnessey. You never order dessert,” she replied, certain that she would soon be unable to breathe, having lifted her gaze to meet his.
The twelve-by-twelve cinder block room shrank to the size of a matchbox. It didn’t matter that they were surrounded by industrial steel shelving and metal lockers and enough ketchup to paint the town red. All she knew was that bad boy look in Tripp Shaughnessey’s eyes.
Forget the fairy tales. He was Tarzan, she was Jane, and the heat of the jungle seethed.
“Oh, I don’t know.” His voice was low, a raspy whisper, rough and achingly raw. “I could go for a mouthful of cake right about now.”
When he set his hands at her hip bones, she let him pull her forward, inching closer with tiny, sliding, baby steps until their bodies were flush. Her fingers returned to the first snap she’d toyed with, the first in the long row down...and pop.
“I have key lime cheesecake.” Pop. Her heart blipped in her chest like a target on a radar screen. “Italian cream cake.” Pop. She curled her toes in her shoes. “Fudge pecan pie.” Pop. Her fingers shook. “Butter brownies and chocolate chip cookies.” Pop. Her lungs deflated.
She pulled the tails of his shirt from his waistband and pressed eight fingertips to the first ridge of muscle delineating his abs. “Do any of those sound good?”
“I’m not so big on sugar.”
She resisted letting her fingers drift lower to see if he was big on her. Instead, she tested the resilience of skin and muscle from his abs upward, stopping only when she reached his collarbone. Then, her index fingers found and measured that sexy little indentation she’d dreamed of kissing.
Frowning, she tapped him there. “Lean down a minute. You’ve got something right here…”
He did. And she did. And he tasted like heaven.
Tripp froze, an ice cube under assault from a blowtorch. Oh, Glory. Hot barely began to describe her. And it sure as hell didn’t make a dent in explaining the temperature of her mouth.
He flexed his fingers at her hips where he held her, loving the give of her flesh, the nicely rounded curves that filled his hands with no poking from protruding bones.
He’d come in here to surprise her, to tease her, to steal a kiss or two or three. Yet he was the one now scrambling to recover. The one wondering if recovering was what he wanted to do.
He cleared his throat and swallowed. As expected, Glory lifted her head, and he asked, “Did you find what you were looking for?”
Her eyes grew sleepy, dreamy, and she nodded. “I did, yes, thanks.”
She dropped her gaze to his chest, slid her palms from his pecs to his shoulders. He slid his hands from her hips around to cup her fine rump and handfuls of thick khaki skirt.
A smile stole along the edges of her mouth. He took it as encouragement and tugged her forward into the cradle of his lower body. “Hope you don’t mind. Just making sure you’re comfortable.”
She wiggled a bit. “What about you?”
Oh, he was hard and beginning to ache and thinking it had been a long time since he’d found relief with a woman who tickled his fancy and not just his—“I’m good. Comfy. Still thinking about dessert.”<
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“Well, I do have a special recipe. One I rarely share.” She kneaded his shoulders beneath his shirt.
Her hands...he groaned, liking that “rarely” part a lot more than made sense. “Yeah? What might that be?”
“It’s fairly rich. Definitely sweet.” Her fingertips drifted to his armpits, down the underside of his arms until his sleeves caused resistance. “I’d call it...intense. The way it feels when a lemon torte hits your tongue.”
He knew the feeling. A sizzling burst of too much too soon, which quickly gave way to wanting more. With Glory, he wanted more. He wanted to linger.
How many licks did it take to get to the center—
“Tripp?”
“Glory?”
“You’ve changed your mind, haven’t you?”
Her question was spoken softly, hesitantly, as if she were bracing for rejection when he’d given her no reason to. He had no intention of turning her down or of letting her down.
He just wasn’t sure this was the time or the place.
“Are you kidding?” He shook his head to reassure her, gathered up more of her short skirt’s fabric until his fingertips brushed the flesh beneath. He had a hell of a time swallowing his responding groan. “I was just thinking it might be nice to start with an appetizer.”
“I think that’s what we’re doing,” she said, looking up at him then from beneath a fringe of jet black lashes.
He chuckled. He liked that he hadn’t scared her away. It was always a matter of balance, of taking his time as he tested the waters.
He gave a playful smack of his lips. “I’m not so sure. I’m not tasting anything here.”
Her roaming fingers found the edges of his shirt, closed around the fabric, used his collar as a handle to pull his head down and press her mouth to his.
She’d known by looking at his mouth that he’d be a wonderful kisser. She’d listened when he’d talked, watched the way he’d held his lips when considering what he wanted to order.
She’d known, but she hadn’t known at all, because he kissed like Tripp and like no one else at all.
He was gently demanding, his hands having moved from her bottom to her head, the heels of his palms at her cheeks, his fingers threading into her hair as he held her.
Held her and kissed her as if she were the only woman in the world he wanted to kiss, the only one who mattered.
She loved the daffodil tingles sweeping through her body, loved the feel of his lips. The soft searching, the sweet nudging press as he urged her mouth open and slipped his tongue inside.
She released his shirt collar, moved her palms to his chest, enjoyed the dusting of hair there that tickled. He was lean, possessed with the type of body that seemed to thrive on less sustenance than more. Of that she was certain because of how little he ordered; she had often wondered how much of what he bought and paid for he actually ate.
His ribs lay beneath the same sleek muscle that rippled over his abdomen. She touched him there, explored all she could reach of his bare skin, setting loose a feral growl that rose in a rumbling wave from his belly up his throat.
His kiss grew demanding, grew hungry, as if what he needed right now in this moment were things only she had to offer. If he only knew how much there was, how deep ran her longing to give...
“Oh, Glory,” he pulled his mouth free to mumble. “You amaze me.”
“Why’s that?” she mumbled right back, her lips brushing his cheek, his jaw, over his chin. “I’m not so amazing, really.”
He chuckled. “Oh, yes. You are. Especially the way you do that. Right there.”
“This?” she asked, her thumbs circling his navel like finely meshed gears. One clockwise, one counter, around and around and around.
He shuddered, clenched the muscles beneath her hands, nuzzled the skin under her jaw with his nose and his mouth, a little bit of teeth.
Heaven. Pure heaven. Absolute bliss. She couldn’t conceive of anything better even knowing how much of the unknown remained to be discovered.
She slipped a hand around Tripp’s waist, found the doorknob, made sure he’d turned the lock all the way…
The Verizon telephone panel van pulled into the alley behind the sandwich shop having made a final circle of the long city block.
The six men inside each wore identical black warm-up suits, athletic shoes, leather gloves and ski masks. All logos and labels had been stripped from the clothing, rendering each item as generic as was possible.
Each man carried the same Beretta 9mm. The guns no longer bore traceable serial numbers. None of them had ever been fired. Not in a crime, nor for fingerprinting by any firearms manufacturer. Not a single ballistics marking existed in any database.
The van had been jacked while the service tech took his lunch break. He now lay blindfolded, gagged and trussed like a Butterball on the van’s floor, but would be back on the clock in less than thirty minutes.
It would take the men half that long to get in and out of Brighton’s though they’d been drilled to do it in less.
Danh Vuong wasn’t the least bit worried about getting caught. He’d covered every base, taken every precaution. If anything came up, his men would adjust, improvise. They’d been drilled, too, to think on their feet.
No one working for Son Cam survived long without that particular skill, and Danh had been working for the man for close on twelve years now.
A dozen winters spent wearing Italian leather, cashmere and wool.
A dozen summers spent driving German luxury cars, riding in air-conditioned interiors behind bulletproof glass.
Danh was a far cry and a continent away from the stowaway wharf rat who’d made his way to the Los Angeles harbor via container ship, who’d crossed the grand ole U.S. of A. using his wits, his brains, his two hands and his mouth in ways a ten-year-old boy should never have had to do.
New York City had been his destination. No other location existed. He had plans. Big plans. And the past that had brought him here was now a very small memory. One he’d locked away and left to wither and die.
Danh double-checked the contents of his pockets. His cell phone was a prepaid throwaway he would use only should he run out of options. The zip ties would guarantee his safety as well as that of any bystander he was forced to restrain.
His contact at Marian Diamonds had gone mute, and had done so at the same time the Spectra IT syndicate had begun trespassing on Mr. Cam’s business. It was an unsatisfactory state of affairs, one Danh intended to correct today.
During the last circle the van had made around the block, he’d seen the Spectra agent enter Brighton’s. By the time the traffic signal at the corner had changed, the contact from Marian’s had come and gone.
Danh was having none of it. Mr. Cam had given Danh a home when he had none, an education when he’d thought to never read, the food and clothing he’d wondered how to pay for.
He’d offered to pay in the same way he’d paid for his trip to New York from L.A. Mr. Cam had declined, teaching Danh his first real lesson.
With a family behind you, you were never on your own. Even if said family shared no blood but that which bound their oath.
Though Glory had double-checked the lock on the storeroom door, Tripp hesitated, uncertain whether she was keeping him in or keeping everyone else out. It was a subtle distinction that he doubted a lot of guys would make, but then, he overanalyzed on a regular basis.
That trait remained at odds with his tendency to take very little seriously, but it was the one that had drawn Hank Smithson’s attention while the older man was busy boning up on the facts of Tripp’s imminent court-martial—a future he himself had pondered while on the run from his own superiors in Colombia.
How Hank had gotten his hands on Tripp’s Top Secret records remained a mystery the older man would take to his grave. Not a one of the SG-5 team members knew how or why he’d found and saved their sorry hides. Not a one of them really cared. The fact that he had was all that mattered.
Just like the fact that Glory had locked the storeroom door was all that mattered here.
Tripp moved his hands from her face, settled them on her shoulders, did his best to ignore the sensation of her fingertips flirting with his skin. It was hard when she flirted so sweetly, teasing him and tempting him there above his belt.
If he didn’t ignore what was happening below, however, he’d be back at the ops center eating his lunch and wondering why the hell he hadn’t savored this sweet opportunity to have dessert first.
Sweet. Oh, Glory. That’s exactly what she was. Purely sweet. Her mouth, her fingers, her coffee-bright eyes when she looked up while brushing his collarbone with featherlight kisses.
He shuddered, kneaded her shoulders, whispered, “Amazing.”
She chuckled, still kissing his chest and shaking her head. “Mandarin cream chocolate torte is amazing. Raspberry silk truffles rolled in powdered hazelnuts are amazing. I’m just Glory.”
“You make my mouth water.”
“That’s what desserts are supposed to do.”
He dropped his head back on the door and pulled in a breath he hoped would ground him back in the world of meat and potatoes. It wasn’t happening. He was dying here. She was killing him sweetly, softly.
He’d stop if she said to. Only if she said to. But she didn’t say a thing. One more deep breath and he pushed off the door, backed her into the wall at the right, spread her thighs with the knee he wedged between, and kissed her madly, feeling the thundering beat of her pulse where he cupped the base of her throat.
He sent his other hand exploring lower, down between their bodies to the hem of her skirt and her legs that he’d parted. He found her panties. Cotton. As soft as her kisses, as were the plump lips of her sex swollen beneath. He slipped a finger under the elastic at the crease of her leg.
She gasped into his mouth at the contact. He swallowed the sound, nudging his knuckle upward through her folds. Her fingers dug into his biceps. He feared she would push him away, that he’d gone too far, and readied himself to stop.