Explosive (7 page)

Her hungry eyes made the skin on his torso prickle.

He stroked her buttock softly while his cock throbbed deep inside her. Their gazes held while he began to fuck her, his strokes long, thorough, and forceful. Her mouth dropped open and her face tightened every time his pelvis smacked against her ass and thighs.

After a moment, a low keen exuded from her throat and she dropped her forehead to the desk. He used his hands to lift her hips slightly, allowing him to take her at a downward angle that made him growl in feral satisfaction.

The final shreds of his restraint evaporated. He took her in a fluid, frenzied fuck. Her desk rattled and scooted a few inches on the floor. Maybe he could have stopped himself if she protested his forceful possession.

Maybe.
Thomas didn’t know what the hell to expect from this frenzied, wild stranger that had taken over his body.

But he needn’t have worried about her compliance. Sophie whimpered and moaned in pleasure. She bucked her hips eagerly. Despite the fact that he liked her display of eagerness, he swatted her ass. His cock leapt in her tight sheath at the smacking sound of his palm against firm flesh.

“Keep still. Please,” he grated out. “I’m about to lose control as it is.”

He began fucking her again with long strokes, his face clenched tight in an agony of bliss. Still, he wanted more of her, was wild to find some secret in her darkest depths.

He pressed her chest and belly flat to the desk and lifted his knee, rising up partially over her. He placed his knee on the desk and fucked her with deep, short, frantic strokes, his eyes rolling back into his head at the delicious friction the new angle provided him.

Sophie mewled in stunned pleasure.

“You’re so damned hot. So tight. I’m not going to last,” he muttered as he thrust madly. He slid his hand to the front of her, his finger burrowing between her labia, seeking out her most sensitive flesh, needing her to share some measure of the burning inferno about to consume him.

His curse was an acknowledgment of a blessing. She was wetter than a man could imagine in his most illicit fantasies.

When she cried out and he felt her begin to convulse in orgasm around his pistoning cock, a red haze of lust clouded his vision, the mindless nirvana he’d sought so desperately.

He placed his foot back on the floor and grabbed her hips. He thrust again and again, jerking her hips toward him, his arm muscles straining as he served Sophie’s sweet flesh to his raging cock.

He bit his lip to stop himself from shouting when he came. He shook as he poured himself into the condom.

“Sophie, Sophie,” he muttered between clenched teeth as wave after wave of blistering pleasure flooded his senses and all thought was blessedly erased from his brain.

CHAPTER
FOUR

He fell down over her, gasping for air, feeling raw and exposed, like a fish tossed up on the beach. She’d turned her head, resting her right cheek on the desk. She panted, but nowhere near as hard as he did. He was in good shape, but Christ . . . fucking Sophie had been like racing toward heaven with the devil fast on his heels.

He pressed his forehead to her temple, wanting the small contact with her while his body recovered from the raging storm. He wanted to hold her, but his heart and lungs demanded their due, paralyzing him for a moment.

By slow degrees, he returned to himself. She shifted and murmured softly, lifting her chin and brushing her lips across his cheek. He realized he was pressing her soft body down onto the hard desk. His eyes sprang open when her vagina contracted around him. Need swelled inside him once again, fierce and raw.

Grief had transformed him into a fucking animal.

“Thomas?” she whispered when he abruptly stood. He clenched his teeth at the sensation of his cock leaving the warm, slick clasp of her body. It pained him for some reason, to see her bent over the desk like that, her white cotton underwear callously shoved down to her knees. He placed his hands on her lower legs and gently pulled up her panties, lingering to let his fingers slide across the curve of her naked hips.

He winced as he removed the condom from his restiffening penis.

He didn’t respond to her one-word query while he jerked up his underwear and pants, then knotted the condom, wrapped it in some Kleenex from her desk, and disposed of it in the wastepaper basket.

She straightened as he came back toward her, pushing her skirt back down over her legs. Her cheeks were flushed pink from her arousal. Her glance held traces of confusion and concern, causing regret to lance through him once again.

He took her in his arms and brushed back tendrils of hair from her cheeks. This close, he could see the gold strands seemed to hold onto the muted light, making them incandesce and shimmer. He pressed his lips to her temple. For a full minute, neither of them spoke.

“What can I say?” he eventually asked next to her skin. “I don’t know where that came from. ‘Sorry’ doesn’t really seem adequate, seeing as how I just barged in your office and made love to you with all the finesse of a locomotive going at full steam.”

She leaned back and studied him. He closed his eyelids when he felt her fingers burrowing through his hair. Her massaging fingertips caused a wave of heaviness and exhaustion to sweep through him. He dropped his forehead to hers. His world was spinning out of control, but Sophie’s touch steadied him. Maybe that’s why he’d entered her office earlier with such a single-minded purpose.

“I am, though,” he mumbled. “Sorry I mean. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

“You don’t have to apologize. You’re in pain. I wanted you just as much.” She glanced down between their bodies. “What’s happening between us has been a long time in coming. Thomas?”

He lifted his head slowly, surprised by her words.
What’s happening between us has been a long time in coming
.

She started to say something, and then seemed to edit herself at the last moment. “Are you all right?”

He nodded.

“I’ve been worried about you,” she whispered. “Those men—were they cops or federal agents?”

Irritation pierced his feeling of languorous comfort. He should have known it felt too good to last long.

“Yeah. FBI.”

“What . . . what did they want?” she asked shakily.

He inhaled through his nostrils, trying to calm his anger, which was never far from the surface these days. “You’ve probably heard on the news? About the FBI investigating my father . . . the allegations that ...” He swallowed in order to get the bitter words out of his throat. “ . . . he’s involved in organized crime?”

She nodded.

“They were here asking me questions about a Nicasio Investment client.”

He felt her go still next to him.

“Were they accusing you of being involved in organized crime as well, Thomas?”

“No. But they
were
trying to link my father to a huge gambling operation, and using one of my clients to do it. They’ve already arrested my client for supposedly using his vending machine plant and distribution business to launder mob money. They were trying to use me to get a link between my client—Doug Mannero—and my father.” He glanced away from Sophie’s luminous face and inhaled slowly. “Tax evasion and money laundering are the least of the crimes the FBI would love to pin on my dad. Agent Fisk claimed they have someone on the inside providing them with information, but the only thing they’re being fed is lies,” he finished grimly.

“You believe entirely in your father’s innocence?”

He turned abruptly, causing pain to slice through his head.

“Thomas?”

He shook his head briefly, trying to bring her into focus as well as shake off a momentary vertigo. He peered at her closely. Why was he telling her this stuff—a virtual stranger?

“Of course I believe he’s innocent. The FBI must be getting desperate these days. They were trying to get me to say my dad had referred Doug Mannero to me, but I refused to give them any fuel. I went over Mannero’s accounts myself when I first took him on. They were clean.”

She swallowed convulsively and spread her hand on the side of his head. “What are you planning to do?”

He glanced around her private office dazedly, feeling like he was just seeing it for the first time—which maybe he was, as consumed as he’d been by a fever to fuck earlier. Her office was about a sixth of the size of his, but the cinnamon-colored walls, tasteful paintings, and candles on the end tables next to the ivory couch gave the room a warm intimacy that his workspace had never known.

“I should go over to Mannero, Inc., and look at the books. I was actually on my way over there when I came here ...” He faded off, once again focusing on her somber face. Regret lanced through him. “I can’t imagine what you must be thinking of me.”

Her brow crinkled. “I think you’re not yourself, Thomas. You loved your brother and nephew. You’re drowning in grief. The FBI’s investigation of your father must feel like another blow when you were already spinning. I can only imagine what it’s doing to your family.”

He watched himself as he ran his fingertip over the soft shell of her ear. She was so delicate . . . so exquisite.

He felt like swine when his cock tightened.

“Abel was my godson, you know,” he murmured distractedly as he stroked her. “He was ten years old. I was teaching him how to water-ski. Rick and he were going to be picking me up at Diversey Harbor on that day. They never came.”

She didn’t reply but she placed her hand over his heart. Her simple gesture made something dangerous swell in his chest.

“I should go,” he said roughly.

“Where?”

The sharpness of her query made him blink. She probably thought he was abandoning her after he’d just fucked her like a madman.

“Can I see you . . . later tonight?” he asked.

“Come with me
now,
Thomas.”

A trickle of unease went through him. She’d sounded soft, but the thread of steel in her tone confused him.

“Listen . . . I know how strange the way I’m acting must seem to you,” he tried to explain. “You must be thinking I’m a real asshole for busting in here and making love to you so . . . forcefully for the first time while you were bent over a desk.”

She paled and her mouth dropped open. She looked stunned, but he rushed ahead, needing to tell her this. Jesus. Here stood a woman who likely had an IQ that would put him to shame, forget about the body of a Venus, and look how he was treating her? He rushed ahead anxiously, trying to explain, even when he himself couldn’t understand what the hell he was doing.

“I’m not trying to get away from you, Sophie. I’m just . . . something . . .
something’s
happened.”

Her expressive, dark eyes made him want to relent, to stay there with her, to forget all the horror and chaos that was his life.

“But I need to go and have a look at those books at Mannero, Inc. I need to know what I’m dealing with as far as this FBI investigation,” he finished regretfully.

For a split second, he saw panic flicker across her flushed face. “Thomas, don’t go there. Please. You . . . you need to rest. You’re not well.”

He brushed his thumb across her cheek and attempted a smile. “Is that your professional opinion?”

“
Yes
. I don’t think you should go. Come with me now. I’ll make you dinner at my condominium. We’ll talk . . . or . . . or not, if you don’t want to.”

He leaned down and kissed her opened lips, lingering when he caught her taste on his searching tongue. He felt guilty. She sounded so worried . . .

After a moment, he lifted his head reluctantly. He’d be a liar if he said he wasn’t fantasizing about having her yet again . . . taking her in another fevered frenzy. He’d heard death could heighten the sexual instinct. People needed to feel alive in the midst of their anguish . . . to celebrate the fullness of existence when death hovered and beckoned into the void.

Thomas now knew firsthand how true it was.

“Tell me your address,” he muttered as he nudged her middle with his once again stiff cock before he backed away, depriving himself. At least for a while. His body was far from being done celebrating Sophie Gable’s vibrant existence. Next time, he’d take it slow. Now that he’d consumed her, next time he’d savor her.

If he could get a handle on himself, anyway.

He nodded when she said her Gold Coast address. He’d remember, even if his concentration hadn’t been that great for the past several days . . . even if the past few days had been a strange collage of too-bright, vivid images and darkness. Thomas didn’t forget numbers.

“I’ll meet you at your place in a few hours. I
promise
. No one and nothing is going to keep me away from a second time, Sophie.”

A shadow flickered across her beautiful face, but Thomas determinedly levered his body away from hers.

He hadn’t remembered
.

The thought kept replaying like a skipped record over and over again in her brain as she locked up her office after Thomas left. He hadn’t remembered last night . . . hadn’t remembered making love to her.

He thought he’d just made love to her for the first time.

Her brain couldn’t quite seem to wrap around the reality of it. She’d known he’d been traumatized . . . unwell, but she hadn’t guessed he wouldn’t remember, that he’d become amnesic to those hours in her bed, to their raw, volatile lovemaking. Another thought made her freeze while her key was in the door.

What else didn’t he remember?

The thought sent her brain into another riot of uncertainty. She’d been stunned when he’d mentioned that he’d just made love to her for the first time in her office just now. At first, she’d thought it must be a joke, but then she’d taken in Thomas’s rigid muscles and tortured glance and known in a rush of dread that it wasn’t.

She’d stopped herself from spilling the truth. He was like a walking time bomb. Who knew what would happen if she suddenly forced him to recall what he’d forgotten?

She shouldn’t have let him leave
, she thought as she pulled her key out of the door and swiftly turned. She slung her purse over her shoulder and headed toward the elevator, but came up short when a man called her name.