by Alison Kent
Good. She was on her way home with an escort who would make sure she got there. Relief swept through him; he’d had no idea he was still so tense. Or so hungry to see her again. He’d give them time, hang out for a while until they’d finished up their reunion. Then he’d make his move.
It was when he stepped back and turned to go that his world fell apart. In the crowd across the street he saw one face staring his way.
Danh Vuong.
Sonofabitch.
He must’ve escaped during the melee of the cops separating victims from violators. Through the alley door, most likely, though Tripp couldn’t believe that entrance wouldn’t have been under surveillance all afternoon.
But how he’d gotten loose from the ropes...double-jointed little fuck, dislocating his own shoulder while Tripp looked on, demonstrating exactly how he’d slipped his hands free.
Tripp stood immobile, watching the Asian kid, torn between charging across the street or grabbing the closest cop, knowing he could do neither without jeopardizing SG-5.
He’d have to explain how he knew Vuong. What he’d seen. How he’d gotten free. Why he’d left all the others behind.
Who the Spectra agent was and why his help had been enlisted.
As far as anyone but Glory and the agent knew, Tripp hadn’t been there. He couldn’t be found out. Couldn’t risk exposing SG-5. Couldn’t let the others go down because of his mistake.
All he could do was watch Danh Vuong disappear into the crowd.
“Mom, I swear I’m fine,” Glory said, pulling open her efficiency’s front door, having assured her parents of the very same thing for the last hour over hot tea and chicken noodle soup. “All I want to do is soak in the tub for an hour and then sleep for at least twelve.”
Ann Brighton stepped into the hallway, both hands tightly gripping the gold chain handle of her tiny black purse. Her curly black hair, so similar to Glory’s, was threaded with the silver strands of her age. “I wish you’d reconsider and stay at the house with us. You could go to prayer circle with me in the morning.”
Glory wasn’t at all opposed to the idea considering today she’d used up her stored allotment of appeals to all higher powers. But right now the only place she wanted to be was in her own bed. “I’ll come with you next week, okay?”
Her mother nodded, backed farther into the walk-up’s tiny hallway, her lips pressed tightly together as if clamping down on further concern.
Milt Brighton followed, giving his daughter a huge hug from which Glory hated to be released. She held tight to his hand until he was out of her reach.
“Your mother’s right,” he said, pushing his big blocky glasses back into place, running a hand back over his shock of white hair. “We’d both feel better if you’d stay with us.”
“I’ll lock up tight. I’ve set the alarm on the windows.” She shifted her weight to her other hip, cocked her head. “Besides, the break-in had nothing to do with me, and the perpetrators are locked up. I’ll be fine.”
“Promise you’ll call if you need anything. If you just want to talk. If you want us to come back.” Her mother glanced over Glory’s shoulder into the apartment’s main room. “We could stay now, sleep on your sofa bed.”
“Mom, I’m twenty-seven years old and I’ve been living on my own for ten of those. I love you to death but I need to unwind here on my own.”
Her dad wrapped his arm around her mother’s shoulders. “You hear so much as a squeak, you call us, Glory Marie.”
“I will, Dad. I promise.” She kissed them both once more, then locked up and headed for the bathroom.
Ten minutes later, however, she heard a knock at her door. With her bathwater running and her feet already wet, she slipped into her robe and padded silently through the apartment.
She doubted her parents had returned, but she did not want to face curious neighbors or the insistent media. The eyes she saw, however, when she pressed one of hers to her peephole, were the only eyes she wanted to see.
Her pulse raced in a pitter-patter rhythm. Her palms grew wet enough that she wondered if she’d even be able to unlock and open the door.
Tripp knocked again, more softly this time as if he had decided she was sleeping, didn’t want to wake her, was thinking of turning away...
She used the pocket of her bathrobe as a hand towel and managed to flip dead bolts, slide locks, and pull open the door before he’d gotten but six feet down the hall.
“Hi,” she said breathlessly.
“Hi,” he said, sounding winded.
“You look good for a man who’s been busy saving the world,” she said, her gaze taking in all of him.
He glanced down as if trying to see what she saw. “Part of the job description. Looking good inspires confidence.”
“Oh. Is that it?” she asked, and he nodded.
In the quiet that followed, she heard water running. She gestured over her shoulder toward the small bathroom accessible only through her bedroom. “I was about to take a bath and need to get that before I flood my neighbor downstairs. Would you like to come in and wait?”
He stood leaning forward a bit, his hands gripping the doorframe as he filled the entrance. The tense set of his jaw told her he had a lot more on his mind than checking up to see that she’d arrived home safely.
And that was okay because her thoughts of him weren’t exactly about seeing to his health and well-being. “Tripp?”
His gaze narrowed in on hers. “Get the water. I’ll lock the door.”
She nodded but barely, because doing more than breathing suddenly seemed beyond her range of motion. Tripp Shaughnessey was in her apartment behind locked doors.
Dreams really did come true!
She scurried to the bathroom and turned off the water seconds before more than two splats of foamy white bubbles escaped the lip of the claw-foot tub and hit the floor. She slipped one arm from its sleeve, reached down to pull the plug.
She was stopped by Tripp at her back saying, “Don’t.”
She straightened, turned. “Don’t?”
“Don’t drain it. Take your bath. I’ll wait.”
“Okay. The place is small. You should be able to find your way back through.” What a stupid thing to say when he’d found his way this far just fine.
“I thought about waiting in here.”
Oh. Oh, oh. “You want to watch me bathe?”
He shrugged. “Or bathe you.”
“Bathe me?” Oh. Oh, my. “Not bathe with me?”
“I showered while you were finishing up with the police,” he said.
It was a hedge, not an answer. That was okay. She was nervous, too. “I saw you, you know.”
“When?” he asked, his eyes sparking.
“You were on the sidewalk. When I was leaving with my parents. I thought about waving you over, but realized there would be too many explanations about me knowing you and everything.”
She waited for his response, saw a multitude of ones that remained unspoken come and go in his eyes. He finally settled on looking at her with what felt like admiration, like approval, like all the things she wanted him to feel.
And then he reached back and closed the bathroom door.
“I knew there was more to you than this fabulous body,” he said, reaching for the collar of her bathrobe and pushing it back, exposing her bare shoulders.
She felt the strange urge to shrug back into the warm chenille, an urge followed quickly by a polar desire to shrug it off completely.
This was what she wanted, wasn’t it? To have Tripp all to herself? To explore what might be the relationship she’d been waiting for all of her life?
She let the robe fall and stood wearing fuzzy, red slouch socks, her bra and baggy sleeping boxers.
Tripp’s grin spread ear to ear. “Oh, Glory. You are the most amazing woman.”
Now she really wanted to grab her bathrobe off the floor and use it to cover all her imperfections and insecurities. There was nothing much amazing
about her at all.
He, on the other hand...
He was gorgeous beyond belief. And he was looking at her as if she was truly more than he’d expected to see, to find, to discover.
The grin on his face had her nervously rubbing the toes of one sock over the Achilles’ tendon of the other. And how apropos considering she was certain he would quickly become her biggest weakness.
When she took a deep shuddering breath, he stepped closer and wrapped one arm around her neck to pull her near.
She buried her face in the crook of his shoulder, absorbing his comforting warmth the way she’d so wanted to do when they’d been held captive.
He nuzzled her ear, her jaw, her throat, whispering soft nonsense about how good she smelled, how soft she was, how beautiful… Oh, but this felt so right. And he smelled so crisp and so clean, like a sweet apple tart.
It was when he reached back with his free hand and released the clasp of her bra that she realized they were going to go where she’d wanted to go forever. The straps slipped from her shoulders; she shifted one way then the other until the seamless white cotton fell to the floor.
Tripp set her away then, held her shoulders and her gaze for a long, tense cherry bubble bath-scented moment before he looked down.
Her nipples tightened; she drew back her shoulders, sucked in her stomach, watched his appreciative expression darken seconds before he turned them both around.
He sat on the edge of the tub, pulled her between his spread thighs, held her waist and kissed the bony spot of her sternum. She closed her eyes and swore she’d go to prayer circle with her mother every week as long as no one ever took this moment away.
“Are you okay with this?” he asked, moving side to side, kissing and nipping the plump fleshy curves of her breasts until her thighs trembled with heat.
She nodded, moved her hands to his shoulders for balance. “Oh, yeah. I’m very good with this. You’re very good with this.”
He chuckled, the sound tickling her skin. “Wait till you see what I can do with soap and a sponge.”
She was going to die. No way around it. “I’m not sure I’ll survive that long.”
“I’ll stop if you want.”
She didn’t want. “I’ll let you know if I’m in danger of death’s door.”
“Taking off your socks might help.”
“My socks?”
He nodded, his five o’clock shadow scraping her skin, his tongue circling around and around her nipple. “Those are deadly looking.”
She smacked the back of his head. He closed his teeth over her in response. A nip, nothing more, but she groaned as the ribbon of pleasure curling through her snapped taut.
“I’ve had these socks since high school.”
“The boxers, too?” he asked, tugging the elastic waistband lower to circle her abdomen at a spot that was dangerously low.
“Yeah. I like feeling comfortable in my things.”
“How ‘bout feeling comfortable out of your things?” The boxers were barely hanging on her hips by now.
“As long as you don’t complain about what you see, I think I can manage a decent comfort level.”
He lifted his head from her breasts, dug his thumbs into her pelvis and held her tight. His eyes, when he met her gaze, were heavy with arousal but bright with a spark of what she swore looked like anger.
“Why would you think I would have a goddamn thing to complain about?” he asked, his voice tight as he controlled his response.
“Because I’m definitely less than perfect, and that’s what a lot of men seem to want.”
“Perfection is in the eye of the beholder, sweetheart. And the best sex is had in the mind. Any man deserving of you would know that.”
“Are you that man?”
“I’m working my way in that direction.”
“Oh, Tripp,” she said with a sobbing sort of sigh. “How do you manage to make me laugh and cry at the same time?”
“One of my many fine talents.”
“Are you going to show me the others now?”
“Only if that’s what you want.”
She’d never in her life wanted anything more. And so she took a step back, brought down one heel on the toe of the opposite sock and pulled her foot free. The other sock followed in the same fashion, leaving her wearing nothing but the worn boxers. She moved her hands to her waist.
Tripp stopped her with a shake of his head. “I want to do that.”
She canted her head to the side and considered him. “Okay, but first I want to see you get out of your clothes.”
Getting naked had been his plan all along, but when she put it like that...
He started with his feet, balancing on one to tug the boot from the opposite, reversing the process until he stood in his socks.
The room smelled like sweet cherries, and he felt like he’d fallen into a strawberry patch, what with the tiled floor of white and red and the matching curtain over the one tiny window.
Then there was Glory, standing with her arms crossed beneath her gorgeous tits, her nipples puckered like raspberries in dark chocolate centers.
He groaned at the sight, his hands going to the hem of his T-shirt, tugging it from his jeans and up over his head. He wadded it into a ball, tossed it on the floor and groaned again for what would probably be only one of a billion times tonight.
She’d shifted her weight from one hip to the other, the stretched waistband of those boxers she wore sliding farther down her body every time she moved, answering his question on their way south.
She wasn’t wearing panties at all.
No bikinis, no thong, nothing. He knew that because he could see the barest edge of the strip of dark hair above her sweet pussy lips.
“You’re taking too long, Shaughnessey. The water’s getting cold.”
They were never going to make it into the tub at this rate anyway, so what did it matter?
He unbuttoned the fly of his jeans, shimmied them down his legs. He and Glory now both stood wearing boxers—though his were a lot tighter on his body parts than were hers.
She stepped closer, stopped when she stood at the end of his fingertips’ reach, ignored what he’d said about wanting to strip her, and pushed her shorts to the floor.
He was going to come where he stood. His cock bobbed upward, his balls seized up. But it didn’t take him two seconds to get as naked as she was.
Or so he thought until she pointed to his socks.
He was out of those puppies in a nanosecond, and then Glory was there, her arms around his neck, her tits flattened against his chest, her thighs open to accommodate his cock that had a heat-seeking mind of its own.
She nuzzled her nose to the side of his. “This feels so nice.”
“Yeah,” he squeaked out. “Nice.”
She pulled back, frowned. “You don’t think so?”
“Oh, Glory. If you knew what I was thinking right now...”
“Tell me?”
“And ruin a perfectly good fantasy?”
This time, she tilted her head to the side and, smiling, said, “Aren’t I your fantasy?”
He slid his hands from where they rested on the small of her back down to cup her ass and squeeze. “All those times I’ve come into the shop and ordered lunch? I sure as hell wasn’t thinking of eating a sandwich.”
She blushed, and it was a beautiful sight, the way her cheeks colored like rosy apples. “I knew you were dying for my cake.”
“I’m dying now, Glory.”
“Then what are you waiting for?”
He backed her into the edge of the tub and pushed her to sit, dropping to his knees between her spread legs. Her thighs shook when he opened her wider. Her hands grew as white as the lip of the porcelain tub onto which she held.
He looked up once, saw that she’d closed her eyes, that she’d caught the edge of her bottom lip between her teeth, and so he lowered his gaze and took in the view he’d been waiting to see.
&nb
sp; Her hair was trimmed. That he knew from touching her earlier. What he hadn’t known was how dark it was against her soft skin. The lips of her pussy were plumped up, her clit hard and protruding, her juices sparkling there in her slit.
He couldn’t wait. His palms on her thighs, he leaned forward and lapped, dipping the tip of his tongue into her hole, dragging the flat part up between her folds. One long, hot hard taste of her and he knew they were both in trouble here.
His cock strained toward his belly, the tip weeping. Glory shuddered until he thought she would tumble back into the tub. Water sloshed over her bottom, between her legs, onto the floor. He wet two fingers with her cream and slid them into her cunt.
She cried out, and he fucked her with his fingers, slowly, steadily, sucked at her clit with the same rhythmic motion, worked her pussy in and out and around, using lips, tongue, the crook and stroke of his fingers until she burst.
It was heat lightning, the sparks arcing between them. She contracted around his fingers, shuddered, trembled, groaned so deeply in her belly his fingers buried deep inside her body vibrated with the sound.
She was exquisite in her pleasure, and he took his time bringing her down, pulling away only when she placed a palm on his head. He got to his feet and she did the same. And then she smiled.
“My turn?” she asked, but he shook his head, scrambled for his jeans and his condoms.
“Sweetheart, as much as I’d love to tickle the back of your throat, there’s something I want even more.”
“Anything,” she said, and he knew she would deny him nothing.
“Bend over.”
She got a look in her eye that spoke of a very wicked nature and willingness to please. And then she stood on tiptoe, brushed her lips over his earlobe and whispered, “Take as much as you want.”
He closed his eyes and swallowed the urge to shove himself into that mouth. “God, Glory. What are you saying?”
“Exactly what you’re hearing, Tripp.” And then she turned and presented him with the keys to heaven.
He used one hand to guide his cock to the mouth of her sex and shoved himself forward, waiting for the initial sensation to pass and grabbing hold of her hips for purchase.