“Seth?” she murmured.
“Hmm?”
“I know you think I’m a lunatic, but I feel so much better now that I’ve told you all this.”
“Oh yeah? Well, bully for you. I feel like shit.”
She hid a smile against his chest and snuggled closer. Her thigh brushed against his penis. Hot and hard. She reached down and stroked him from the base to the tip. He was hugely erect. Again.
He groaned. “Don’t get me started. Hands off. Sleep time.”
She took her hand away reluctantly. “Is this, um, normal?”
“You know how I feel about normal, sweetheart.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Ah. You’re referring to my perpetual boner, I take it.” He kissed the top of her head. “Well, I’ve never had any problems getting it up, but I have never had so much trouble keeping it down until I met you.”
“Oh. I’m, ah, flattered.”
“Don’t mind him.” His lazy voice had a hint of laughter in it. “Ignore the savage beast, and eventually he’ll calm down.”
“You can sleep like that?”
His chest vibrated with silent laughter under her ear. “Let me worry about that,” he said. “Get some rest, for God’s sake.”
To her surprise, she realized that she actually could. She was warm and relaxed, curled up on top of him, resting on his strength. For the first time, she wasn’t all alone in the dark with her monsters.
What a crazy day. So much had happened, all at once. She had a boyfriend. She was giving him a key to her house. She had confided her darkest, most painful secrets to him. He warmed her, charged her with wild energy and euphoria, maybe even courage and luck.
They were hurtling forward at three hundred miles an hour with no brakes, and she didn’t even want to slow down.
She’d never had a dream so delicious, so awash with sensation. Warmth and wetness, luscious heat and light and shifting colors. Touches, melting and swirling. Divine pleasure, as if a god were making love to her. Then the seamless slide into consciousness, the faint morning light that seeped into the room pressing on her eyes. She tried not to wake up, to make the beautiful dream linger and last, but the pleasure didn’t fade. It got stronger. She opened her eyes cautiously.
The comforter was folded up from the bottom and flung up over her chest—and Seth was lying between her legs.
Licking her.
She jerked, startled, and he gripped her hips in his hands, murmuring something reassuring. She flung aside the comforter, and he lifted his head just long enough to give her a smug, satisfied grin. “Good morning,” he said, putting his mouth to her again.
She writhed at the delicious intimacy. “Seth, you’re obsessed,” she whispered.
He laughed, and her sex vibrated with the resonance of his voice, the sweet, tickling heat of his breath. “Yeah,” he admitted. “I love giving you head. The taste of you drives me out of my mind.” He lifted his head and stared into her eyes. “That a problem for you?”
“Dear God, no,” she gasped. His tongue slid up and down her labia, circling her clitoris. He drew it into his mouth, sucking on it with exquisite care. “I just think that you—oh—”
“That I’m what?” he demanded.
“That you’re the p-perfect boyfriend,” she stammered.
She couldn’t speak, or think. She let him work his erotic magic, lapping and toying with her with sensual tenderness, his tongue flicking and dancing across her sweetest, hottest spot until he pushed her relentlessly over the crest. Spasms of bright, hot rapture shuddered through her.
He rested his head against her thigh for a long moment before he sat up. He wiped his face and gazed at her with an odd combination of lust and wonder. “Good morning,” he said again as he got up.
Raine sat up and stared at his body. His wiry muscles were so long and lean and elegantly proportioned. To say nothing of the thick, engorged penis that bobbed enticingly in front of him. “Good morning,” she replied, suddenly shy. Wild woman inside her was jumping up and down, pointing to his fierce erection, and saying, “Mine. That’s mine, and I want it. Give it to me. Now.” She struggled to express the impulse in socially acceptable terms, but her brain wasn’t functioning very well. She gestured towards his groin. “Seth. Do you want to, um—”
“Of course. But you’re new to this, and we went at it like a couple of minks last night. I don’t want to overdo it. I’m not a total maniac.”
“I am,” she said baldly.
His eyes lit up with hungry anticipation. “It won’t be sweet or soft. That’s not where I’m at right now.”
The words hung between them, a blunt warning, and a challenge.
“That’s all right,” she said. “That’s not where I’m at, either.”
Wild woman capered and howled with delight as he grabbed a condom from the shrinking stash on the bed stand, ripped it open and smoothed it over himself. He grabbed her ankles, dragging her until her bottom was at the edge of the bed, then pushed her onto her back. He spread her thighs up, folding her wide open like a full-blown flower.
His hands gripped her knees, opening her. His eyes bored into hers. “I don’t want you to go back to that asshole’s office today.”
He was seeking to assert dominance over her with his fierce masculine energy, but his vain efforts just aroused her more. “I’m sorry you feel that way,” she said. She gripped his arms, pulling him down to her. “Come on, Seth. Don’t be coy.”
“Open up for me,” he said softly. “All the way. Ankles for earrings.” He pushed her thighs still wider and spread the lips of her sex open delicately with his fingertips. “Perfect. Show me that sweet sexy thing, all buttered up just for me.”
“I’m ready,” she urged him, arching her back.
“I know you are, sweetheart. I’ve got your sex juice all over my face.” He slid his hand beneath her bottom and gently nudged the blunt tip of him inside her. “God, look at you.”
“Do it,” she snapped. “Don’t be a tease.”
She cried out at his first deep thrust, but not in pain. He stopped, alarmed. “You OK?”
She yanked him closer. “I’m fine, I’m great. I love it. Please, Seth.”
“You got it,” he muttered. “Nothing fancy today, sweetheart.”
He gave her exactly what she wanted, a deep, surging rhythm that caressed every part of her swollen, aching sex, to her very depths. He arched over her, the thick, heavy muscles of his shoulders taut and corded, his face rigid with concentration. Sobbing breaths gasped out of her with each plunge, and she clutched his arms and urged him on. Neither wanted anything other than that rhythm, just more of it. Hotter and faster, deep and furious and relentless, until they both exploded.
He collapsed and draped himself over her, trembling. “My God,” he said. “It’s always like this with you. It scares me.”
She reached down and ran her fingers lazily through his sweat-dampened hair. “What scares you?”
He pulled out of her and folded down to his knees, hooking his arms under her legs. He clasped her hips in his arms and rested his head on her belly. “You’re scaring me,” he mumbled.
“Seth,” she murmured, wiggling. “I’m all wet.”
“Yeah, and I want to rub it all over myself. Your perfume makes me crazy with lust.” He inhaled, a deep, hungry whiff.
She giggled at his foolishness. “I told you, I don’t wear perfume.”
“I’m not talking about perfume from a bottle. I’m talking about your perfume. All the scented things you use, soap and lotion and stuff, they add to the mix, but they’re only overtones. The basic perfume is like—” he stopped, burying his nose in her navel and breathing deeply, “—like a cross between honey and violets. Violets after a rainstorm. But warmer, hotter. Softer. Mix the smell of sex into it, and I’m a dead man.”
She struggled up onto her elbows and gazed at him, touched. “Why, Seth. You’re a poet,” she said softly.
He
looked alarmed. “No way. I’m just stating the plain facts. They just happen to sound poetic by accident.”
“Oh. I see,” she murmured. “God forbid that I should think you had a lyrical, poetic side.”
He scowled at her as he pulled off the condom, wrapped it up and disposed of it. “Yeah,” he muttered suspiciously. “God forbid.”
Raine sat up, gathering her courage. “Seth, next time—”
“What? What did I do wrong this time?”
She was startled by the sharp edge in his voice. “Nothing at all,” she said hastily. “You did everything incredibly right. I just wondered if the next time you’d let me try…um, you know.”
He shook his head. “I don’t dare guess. Spit it out, sweetheart.”
She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. “Oral sex,” she whispered. “You’re always doing it to me, and I’d like to try doing it to you. But I’ve never tried it. So I probably wouldn’t be any good.”
When she finally opened her eyes, he was gazing at her with a look of almost comical dismay on his face. “God, Raine. You don’t have to ask. Do whatever you want with me. Do that, and I’ll be your slave. Anytime, anywhere, and I’m not kidding. Right now, if you want.”
She blushed, and shook her head. “I’m already late. Next time.”
“I won’t let you forget.” He lunged on top of her, pinning her onto the bed. “There’s just one more thing I have to know before we face the day. How do you like your eggs?”
She stared at him blankly. “Eggs? I don’t have any eggs, Seth.”
“Sure you do. I got breakfast stuff last night, along with the deli stuff. Eggs and bacon and orange juice and toast and coffee. With real cream. You need to get some more meat on your bones.”
He looked so pleased with himself, she had to laugh. “You were feeling pretty confident last night, huh?” she asked, caressing his face.
“Don’t hold it against me.” He rubbed his cheek against her hand like a cat, then grabbed it and kissed her palm. A warm, glowing feeling heated up her chest. It had been so long since she’d had any reason to feel happy in the morning.
She glanced at the clock, and winced. “Actually, it’s really late. I’d better just pop into the shower and run. I have to—”
“They can goddamn well wait until you get some breakfast into you.” His voice cut harshly over hers. “You’ve been opening your veins for that place for weeks. Enough already.”
She was unnerved by his uncanny grasp of all the details of her life. “How do you figure that?” she asked hesitantly.
“All I have to do is look at you.”
She winced. “That bad, huh?”
“Cut it out,” he said. “You’re drop-dead gorgeous and you damn well know it. But you need to eat more. And I’m the one who’s driving you to work, anyhow. I’m not doing it until you eat.”
Her eyes wandered from his scowling gaze, down over his naked, gorgeous golden body. “Do you want to shower with me?”
His frown vanished, and his gaze heated up. “Oh, yeah. Only more than I want to breathe. But you know exactly what would happen. And I want you to eat breakfast.”
Sensual images rushed through her mind of soapy hands slipping and sliding over flushed skin, clouds of steam rising as he pinned her against the slippery tile. Hot water pouring, pounding.
He backed away from her, shaking his head. “You are dangerous, babe. Go quick and take your shower, or I’ll fuck you again right now.”
She scurried into the bathroom and turned on the shower. She stood beneath the stream of water, amazed and grateful to feel no residue of terror or grief from a nightmare clutching at her. She was rested and relaxed, her muscles loose, filled with energy. Joyful.
She was actually hungry. She’d never felt hungry in the morning in her life. Lately, she’d begun to forget what hunger felt like altogether. But right now, bacon, eggs, toast and orange juice sounded like heaven. She danced beneath the water, humming as she worked shampoo into her hair. A dark shadow loomed on the other side of the glass door. Seth slid the door open, his eyes raking her soapy body.
“I tried to be good,” he said. “I tried to be self-controlled. I tried to be civilized and restrained. I tried to resist temptation.”
Raine rinsed foam out of her eyes and blinked at him. “Oh? And?”
He stepped into the shower and reached for her. “I failed.”
Chapter 14
“You remember the drill?”
Raine leaned across the seat and kissed him. “Don’t worry, Seth.”
She meant the smile to be reassuring, but it had the opposite effect. It made him uncomfortably aware that she wasn’t taking him seriously enough. If she knew the whole truth, she’d be scared to death.
“I didn’t ask if I should worry. I asked if you remember the drill.”
The hard edge in his voice made her pull away, eyes wide and wary. He took a deep breath and tried to soften his tone. “Not one foot out the door of that place without contacting me. Got it?”
“Yes. You have a lovely day, too, Seth. Have fun inspecting the warehouses.” She smiled over her shoulder at him, and was promptly swallowed into the revolving glass doors of the building.
He fought down the urge to run in after her, and distracted himself by keying her transmitter codes into the handheld monitor. He adjusted it until the cluster of signals were showing in the grid, spatial data streaming in a continuous flow of changing coordinates alongside the flashing icons. He punched up McCloud’s number.
Connor answered on the first ring. “Yeah?”
“I need to know everything you can find out about a guy named Peter Marat,” Seth said. “Get Davy to run a check. He worked for Lazar about seventeen years ago until he mysteriously drowned.”
“What’s the connection?”
“He’s Raine’s dad. She wants to prove that Lazar snuffed him. An apparent sailboat accident when she was a kid.”
There was a brief silence. “The plot thickens,” Connor said, in a mock ominous tone.
“Just get on it. One of you guys has to cover her while I’m in Renton. I’m heading out there now. She’s at the office. I planted five Colbits on her yesterday. Here are the codes. Got a pen?”
“Hold on a sec…yes. Go.”
Seth read out the transmitter code sequences. “Key up one of the monitors and get your ass over here, fast. I don’t want her uncovered. Get Sean to tail Lazar this morning.”
“Yeah, sure. No problem. Hup, hup. You know, Seth, when all this is over, you and I are going to have a serious talk about your social skills.”
“No, we’re not.”
Seth broke the connection and edged the car back into the dense morning traffic. A window dresser was putting up Thanksgiving decorations in a shop, and he stared at him idly while he was waiting for the light. A wicker cornucopia with squashes and corncobs spilling out, a papier-mâché turkey, mannequins dressed in pilgrim garb. His stomach clenched. Jesse had been killed in January. The winter holidays without Jesse were staring him in the face. He wasn’t ready.
Not that holidays had been any big deal to them when they were kids, on the contrary; but they had taken on more significance once they started hanging out with Hank. The holidays had been important to Hank, like some kind of emotional link to his long-dead wife, so he and Jesse had played along, grumbling all the way. Every year they’d buy a pre-roasted Safeway turkey, pumpkin pies, stuffing, all the rest of that holiday slop. They’d scarf the stuff off of paper plates and spend the night listening to Hank’s old Julie Andrews and Perry Como Christmas albums, knocking back shots of Jack Daniels until Hank started getting maudlin about his lost Gladys. That was their cue to take him by the armpits and haul him off to bed. It had gotten messy and sad towards the end, when Hank was so sick, but it was as much of a family as any of them had, and they were all three of them grateful for it.
For some reason, in the last few years after Hank died, he and Jesse had kept
up the habit of hanging together on the holidays. They usually opted for Mexican or Thai rather than the insipid traditional stuff, but the shots of Jack deep into the night were a memorial to Hank. The first Christmas after his death had been depressing, but they’d gotten through it. They’d cracked a lot of lame jokes, clenched their teeth, tossed back the whiskey, and faced it down together.
He had no idea how he was going to face it down alone.
The swishy guy in the store window was arranging the pilgrim maiden’s long yellow hair. Seth was comparing the Dynel floss to the warm gold of Raine’s hair when the idea came to him. The perfect way to get through Christmas unscathed.
He could kidnap Raine and take her away to the coast with him. Find a hotel room with an ocean view and a Jacuzzi tub and spend the whole holiday in an endorphin-induced haze. Ply her with champagne, hand-feed her oysters on the half shell in between bouts of hot, juicy sex while rain pounded against the window, and surf pounded on the shore. White foam surging across the sand in sensual, rhythmic pulses.
Hell, yes. He almost shouted with glee. That would be one righteous mother of a distraction. Jesse would have been proud of him.
He could persuade her. He could play her like an instrument. She was so sweet, so affectionate. It would be awesome. He could hardly wait. He got so excited, thinking about it, that for a minute or two, he completely forgot what the hell he was here for.
Jesse, Lazar, Novak. Bloody retribution. Christ, what was he thinking. Everything was subject to this investigation. Everything.
Still, a part of his mind clung stubbornly to the idea of himself and Raine, the hot tub, the pounding surf. Maybe he could get this fucking nightmare wrapped up by then, and Christmas at the coast with her could be his reward. Assuming he lived through it.
Horns blared. Someone howled an obscenity. The light was green, and he was still staring at the pilgrim maiden’s vacuous smile. He laid his foot on the gas and forced himself to remember what Jesse’s body had looked like when Novak was done with him.
Just the image to shake a guy’s priorities right back into place.
Behind Closed Doors (The Mccloud Series Book 1) Page 22