She laughed softly. “Worried I’ll wake up and stop?”
“Yes.” He arched his hips, moving into her palm. “Fuck, that feels good.”
Abruptly he let go of her hand and shifted, sitting up and urging her onto her back. He watched her, with that careful, intent stare that seemed to see straight through to her soul.
She eased back, smiling at him. “I thought you were enjoying the sleep-groping,” she teased.
“I think I want to do some groping of my own.” He settled between her thighs, lowering his head to nuzzle her through the shirt she’d tugged back on before falling asleep. “These tank tops you like ought to be illegal, I swear. Why do you even bother?”
“Huh?”
Instead of answering, he closed his mouth around one nipple, tugging on it with his teeth. He teased and toyed until he had her gasping, and then he shifted to the other one and repeated the treatment. “I can see right through them,” he muttered. “And it just makes me want to do things like this.”
With a shaky laugh, Shay said, “Well, if wearing a tank top is going to incite that kind of behavior, I’m going to buy even more of them.”
“As long as you only wear them for me.” He moved lower, shoving the blankets out of his way.
But when he went to press his mouth to her sex, Shay tangled her hands in his hair. “Elliot—”
He pressed his lips to her hip bone, gently. “Shh …”
He eased back to her belly, rubbing his lips along her skin. She jumped as he stroked one hand up her knee, catching her behind her thigh and spreading her open. Blood rushed to her face and she squirmed.
She reached for him, but all he did was meet her hand and twine their fingers. “You’re so fucking pretty, Shay,” he muttered against the skin of her hip. “So damn pretty. Fuck, just let me …”
She flinched as he went lower. Bucked as she felt his breath stir the curls between her thighs. “Hush, baby,” he whispered.
“Elliot—”
The strangled cry bounced off the walls and she bit her lip to keep from making another noise, painfully aware of how late it was, of the fact that other people were sleeping on either side of the walls.
Then she forgot all about them—all about everything as he stroked her with his tongue.
Blood rushed to her face. Too much, too much—
She tangled her hands in his hair and went to jerk him away, but then he groaned against her, sliding one hand under her butt to arch her closer as he muttered, “Let me, Shay, I’ve dreamed of this …”
The naked, raw need in his voice gutted her. And she closed her eyes. Tried to forget just what he was doing and just let herself feel …
That was all it took.
Shocked, desperate pleasure slammed into her as he swirled his tongue around her and then pushed it inside. She clutched him closer and drove her heels against the bed, arching to meet him as something hot and wickedly sweet unfurled inside her.
Closer—closer—
But right before she went screaming into it, he stopped.
“With you, damn it,” he growled, crawling up the length of her body and settling between her thighs.
Gasping for air, she stared at him as he hooked his arms under her shoulders and caught her head between his hands.
“Wrap your legs around me,” he rasped.
Shaken, Shay did just that and then cried out as she felt the head of his cock nudging at her gate. His gaze sought hers out, glittering and hot, all-consuming. Slowly, he pushed inside one slow inch at a time as she stretched around him and arched against him. She sucked in a desperate breath just before his mouth took hers.
“Hold on to me,” he said against her lips.
She reached for him, clutching at him with a desperate grip.
As he drove himself home, she choked out his name, barely able to find the breath for even that.
He pulled out and surged back inside. Slowly at first, and then faster, and she arched to meet him. She clawed at his shoulders, straining to get closer. It wasn’t enough, not nearly.
She could get lost inside him and it would never be enough.
One burning, hungry kiss after another stole her breath away. Overwhelmed, she was lost in him … lost to him, but it was wonderful. It was everything.
That burning, sweet oblivion raced closer but stayed tauntingly out of reach. Tearing her mouth away from Elliot’s, she cried out in frustration.
He raked her neck with his teeth and pulled away.
Shay swore, but then he eased her over. Startled, a little nervous, she shot him a wary look over her shoulder. “Trust me,” he whispered, nudging her onto her hands and knees.
Because it was him, because she could, she held still and then had to bite her lip to keep from screaming as he drove inside her again. Deeper, harder, fuller. One hand came around and she stiffened as he teased the hardened peak of her clitoris.
“That’s it,” he muttered, twisting his hips and surging deep. “Damn it, you’re so fucking soft … do that again—”
She whimpered and clenched her inner muscles again, shuddering as he rewarded her with another teasing stroke against her clit.
“That’s it … aw, fuck …”
He tightened his grip on her hip, leaned into her, and moved harder. Faster—
With a gasp, Shay went flying. Spinning out of herself.
It might have been terrifying. But she felt his arms come around her.
And even as she shattered into a thousand pieces, he was there to hold her together.
“You should have worn that skirt.”
“What skirt?” she asked absently as she stared at the emails that had amassed in her inbox. She had a headache, just thinking about dealing with them.
“That long denim one you like so much,” he said, glancing in the rearview mirror before cutting over into the other lane.
Frowning, she looked over at him. “Why should I have worn it?”
“Because if you had …” He laid a hand on her thigh, then slid it up until he was cupping her in his hand.
She gasped, sagging back in the seat. Her lids drifted down low and she muttered, “Oh …”
“Would have made the drive a lot more interesting,” he teased.
Swallowing, she let her chin drop down to her chest as he rubbed the heel of his hand against her. Yes … yes, it would definitely have done that. “Well, it’s definitely a better option than going through email.”
He teased her for another few seconds and then pulled away. “Yeah. Too bad you didn’t wear the skirt.”
Shooting him a dark look, she shifted in the seat. A hollow ache throbbed down low in her belly and she ended up crossing her legs just to ease it a little. “That was mean,” she muttered.
“Then why are you smiling?”
Absently, she touched her lips before looking back at her phone. “I’m plotting my revenge.”
“I can’t wait.” He glanced at the phone. “What has you glaring at the phone so hard?”
“Email,” she muttered glumly. “Lots of it.”
They lapsed into silence, him playing navigator while she dealt with all those messages.
I hope you’ll understand, but I’m unable to do a book signing … I don’t travel …
I hope you’ll understand but there’s been some confusion—the Facebook page wasn’t mine …
After about ten of those, she hit a spate of reader emails and breathed a little easier. It was much easier to respond to those. Up until she hit one that wasn’t an email.
It was a picture.
Just looking at it—
Elliot just happened to glance over at her in that second. If he hadn’t, he wouldn’t have seen the way she suddenly clamped her hand over her mouth or the odd, greenish-white tinge to her skin.
He cut across two lanes of traffic and she barely got out of the car in time. He heard the wail of sirens approaching, but ignored them as he ran around the car. Shay was on her hands a
nd knees. As he knelt beside her, she tried to wave him off. He ignored her, stroking her hair back from her face.
“Don’t,” she whispered feebly in between bouts of retching.
“Shut up,” he ordered, continuing to stroke her hair.
“Everything okay here, folks?”
He glanced up as the police officer approached; Shay moaned and doubled over, another bout of nausea grabbing her.
The officer stood a good ten feet away and watched as she once more started to puke.
Elliot cocked a brow. “Well, I guess it depends on where you’re standing, Officer.”
“You going to tell me what set that off?” Elliot asked after Shay finished swishing some water around in her mouth.
She spit it out and then shut the car door. The cop was still behind them.
“Later,” she said quietly. The image … fuck, what was that?
“Shay …”
“No. Not while we still have a fucking cop behind us. Come on, we need to go.”
And she needed to see it again. She still wasn’t completely sure what she’d seen—some part of her brain knew, but the rest of her just didn’t.
“Look, just drive,” she said quietly. She glanced at the rearview mirror one more time and then over at Elliot. “I have to get moving. Or I’m going to lose my mind.”
He stared at her, that gaze searing deep into her soul. “That won’t put me off for long,” he warned her.
“I don’t need forever,” she promised him.
No, she didn’t need forever. But she needed a few minutes. Elliot was wonderful enough to give her those few minutes and more. As the minutes stretched out into an hour, he still hadn’t pushed, and she was eternally grateful.
It gave her time to settle, time to think, time to focus.
As they cut through the early morning traffic, Shay focused on the cars around them, on the sun beating down from the sky overhead, on anything but Elliot.
“Have you ever been to Ann Arbor before?” Elliot asked.
She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye, a faint smile on her lips. “Elliot … I’ve never been anywhere before. Arizona. Alaska. That’s it.”
“Hey, it’s an ‘A’ place.” He squeezed her thigh. “I thought maybe you’d decided to try it out. You’ve got a thing for ‘A’ places.”
She snorted and fiddled with the red and white paper bag on the seat next to her. He’d bought it earlier and she’d eaten half of the sausage biscuit before digging into her email. Now, there was no way she could possibly eat, not with the way her belly was pitching and rolling. Not considering that every time she closed her eyes, she saw that image—
“Why don’t you nap?” he asked. “We’ve still got some driving to do.”
Shay snorted. “There’s no way I can sleep,” she muttered, sighing. The smell coming from the bag was making the nausea worse, too. Crumpling it up, she tossed it in the back and slumped low in her seat. No. She couldn’t sleep, but she could keep messing with the nightmare of email and she could maybe try to work her way through the nightmare that was her life—
Or she could answer her phone. Which had started ringing again. Damn it.
Dread gripped her and she looked down. “If that’s Darcy …”
Elliot picked up the phone, glancing at the display. Then he pushed it into her hand. “It says Anna Kent.”
“Anna …” Clutching the phone in a hand that had suddenly gone sweaty and damp, she closed her eyes. Nerves swamped her, desperate and raw, dancing in her already uneasy belly.
Trepidation was a nasty, ugly beast. It wasn’t a beast she normally had to deal with when talking to her agent, at least not in recent years. But it was there now, clawing at her and turning her brain to a stone.
The phone continued to ring. Praying her voice wouldn’t shake, she finally answered, sounding cautious and reserved. “Hello?”
“Shay. Hello.” There was some reserve in Anna’s voice as well.
That actually made Shay feel a little bit better. Closing her eyes, she blocked out everything. Elliot, Darcy, the lingering nausea, the awful email. Nothing existed right now except the woman on the other end of the phone.
“So did Trish explain to you what was going on?”
“Yes.” There was a brief pause. Then Anna sighed. “I have to be honest, Shay, I’m confused, I’m worried, I’m angry … can we just take it from the top? This just seems so … well, bizarre.”
Bizarre. Yeah. That about covered it. Shay had spent the past fifteen years of her life living in paranoia, certain something would happen, go wrong. She’d been right, damn it.
She just hadn’t expected this sort of thing to go wrong.
“From the top,” she whispered. “I can do that.”
“And you think it’s Darcy,” Anna said about ten minutes later, after Shay had explained everything that had happened.
“Does anything else make sense?” Shay hadn’t even tried to explain the convoluted problems surrounding Darcy. Darcy’s disappearance, her imposter … how the imposter seemed to know so much about her. She’d told Anna just enough … and still, it was too much.
“Well, none of this makes sense … but she’s the only person who’d have the kind of access needed to do what was being done with your email. Not to mention the times when she tried to cause problems with us.” Anna muttered, “I need a drink.”
Shay scowled. “I want one, too. But I’m on the road and it’s too damn early for a drink.”
“You should have one, too. Considering this mess, it’s definitely not too early for a drink. Okay, first things first … so you didn’t send the letter to my office. Is that correct?”
“Damn straight.”
“Okay.” Anna blew out a breath. “I have to admit, I’m so glad to hear that, even as I’m … well. Never mind. And I’m so sorry this happened. I should have tried harder, something …”
“We can talk about all of that later,” Shay said quietly, still staring at the trunk of the car in front of her. They’d covered it with bumper stickers. Everything from election campaign slogans to MADD stickers to SAVE A HORSE—RIDE A COWBOY. “I need to know what to do, Anna. I’ve done what I can about the crazy pages and most of them are down, but there’s still a blog, and she started another Facebook page …”
“Does this mean I’m still your agent?”
Shay closed her eyes. “Would you rather not be?”
“Of course, I still want to be your agent. But …”
“Anna, you’re the only agent I’ve ever worked with. The only one I want to work with. Unless you’d rather not come back into the middle of this mess, I don’t plan on going elsewhere.”
“Well, then.” Even over the phone line, Shay could hear the woman’s smile. “Considering some of the mess happened because of a lapse on our part, my office is definitely going to help get this straightened out. I’ll get with the people here and see what they suggest. I’ll also contact your publisher, see if there’s anything they can do.”
A knot settled in Shay’s chest. “Thanks.” Closing her eyes, she told herself she didn’t need to ask. There was no reason, right?
But she had to … “Anna?”
“Yes?”
“You believe me, right?”
“Why wouldn’t I?” Anna’s voice was firm. “Look, this is some crazy shit, I’ll give you that, but we’ll get it straightened out. I want you to be careful, though. This lady—if she’s that obsessed with you, there’s no telling what she might do.”
Shay grimaced. “Hasn’t she done enough? She tried to take over my life. She accused the guy I’m involved with of trying to rape her.” And a friend of mine is missing … She didn’t say that, though. Not yet. First she needed to see just what was going on with Darcy. The real Darcy. Then … then she’d figure out what to do next.
“No. She pretended to be you. And although it’s bizarre, she may have thought she was helping you … and when you didn’t get it, she
was pissed, wasn’t she? Now her house of cards is really toppling down. We don’t know how she’s going to react, do we? She could try to do a lot of damage.”
Those words made Shay shiver.
Because she already suspected that this woman had done quite a bit of damage.
Part of her wanted to ask … Just how much more can she do?
As the echo of a child’s scream danced through her mind, as the memory of horrendous pain rippled through her body, she knew the answer to that unvoiced question.
Worse. Much, much worse.
“This is the place.”
Elliot’s hand rested on the back of her neck.
“You’re sure?”
Shay nodded. “I had her mom’s info buried in my laptop from ages ago. Darcy used to move around a lot, and her mom was how I could reconnect if I lost her phone number or something.”
She blew out a breath and muttered, “This is going to suck, Elliot. I mean … if I go up there and say, I need to talk to you about your daughter … What’s that going to do to her? If she really is missing?”
“If she really is missing, and somebody is pretending to be her, you realize the imposter, whoever it is, may know something, right?” He brushed a kiss against her brow. “And you can’t just ignore that fact. You can’t tell me you haven’t thought of it.”
“I’ve thought of it,” she said, anger and resolve settling inside her. That was why she was here. If nothing else, she had to do this … for Darcy. For the friend she remembered.
She swallowed and made herself take a deep breath. She needed to do this. No matter how much it sucked, no matter how much it hurt, the woman in there needed to know that somebody might well be masquerading as her daughter, and Shay needed to know what had happened to her friend.
If there were any answers, anywhere, they needed to find them.
There was no mistaking the woman at the door for anybody other than Darcy’s mom, Shay thought.
Even the eyes were the same.
Though older, sadder, faded.
They were the same gentle brown. From the lines that fanned out at the sides, she looked like she laughed a lot. And the smile on her face was one that made Shay think of Darcy.
Stolen: A Novel of Romantic Suspense Page 24