Girl Gear 6: Indiscreet (7 page)

His frown deepened, just before his eyes closed and his hands moved down between his own legs to take hold of his cock. He stroked himself, as if he was the only one who understood what he needed, the relief he sought and where he’d find it.

She slid from the window ledge into his lap, straddling his thighs with her own. The tip of his cock settled into the cleft of her sex, and she desperately wanted to take him inside. But not yet. Her hesitation wasn’t about the lack of a condom. Birth control wasn’t an issue, and the sex they engaged in was safe. No, she waited for him to return to the moment. She wanted him with her all the way.

He opened his eyes, and she swore they glistened with unshed tears. Either that or a redness born of unbearable frustration and a sadness he rarely released. Wrapping
her arms around his neck and pulling him close was suddenly more important than joining their bodies.

She soothed him with tiny kisses, with strokes of her palm over the back of his head. He buried his face in the crook of her neck and inhaled, waiting, resting, finding whatever strength of will he needed to fight the demons that raged within him.

When he looked up again, when this time he met her gaze, his eyes seemed to burn with an inner fire, a dangerous fire that sent her heart racing. And then he drew the tip of his cock through her sex, finding her entrance and plunging deep.

She cried out, but he caught and swallowed the sound with his kiss. He surrounded her, consumed her; he burned her inside and out, and she thought she might die.

His cock remained still but for the throbbing pulse she could feel all the way to her womb. His tongue, however, swept madly through her mouth. He held her head so she couldn’t move, trapping her between both of his large hands, and kissing her feverishly, as if his life depended on what she offered.

She moved her hands to his cheeks and kissed him back, giving him all that she was capable of giving without opening up her own stores of hidden needs. Right now, at this moment, nothing mattered more than saving Patrick’s soul.

It was when his urgency lessened, his kiss softened and his hold relaxed that her body began to ache. The muscles in her widespread thighs burned from straddling him so awkwardly.

Yet every time she adjusted her position, she was reminded how completely he possessed her. Her sex had never felt so full, and even the tiny shifts of her hips
increased the friction of his thick shaft against her swollen clit.

She couldn’t take any more of the pressure urging her toward orgasm, the sensation of coming undone. And so she pulled her mouth free and stared into his beautifully sad eyes.

“Let’s go to bed.”

P
ATRICK WONDERED
if he’d ever again be able to enjoy a woman the way he did Annabel.

He lay above her, his upper body braced on his elbows, his lower body tucked soundly between her spread legs. Legs, in fact, wrapped tightly around the backs of his thighs as if keeping him from pulling away.

That wasn’t going to happen. He was buried exactly where he wanted to be, and could see himself growing old like this. Well, not exactly like this. Eventually, he’d shrivel up and then he’d have to move. But, yeah. The concept of staying around indefinitely was worth thinking about.

Annabel didn’t agree. She wanted him to go. She had this bug up her butt about him getting in her way, being a distraction, keeping her from taking her life forward. As if he were some sort of detour or something.

He thrust forward, thrust deeper. She gasped, her head arched back, her eyelids fluttered. His gut clenched hard. He got off majorly on making her crazy. Making her want him.

Want
him.

She reminded him that he was alive, and that counted for more than the way her body turned his inside out. She knew exactly who she was, and she didn’t need him for anything. But, God help him, he needed her. To make
him remember that it was time to do more than simply survive. To make him feel safe and sane and whole.

When she raised up on her elbows, he shifted his weight to his hands, suspended above her, his breathing as unsteady as the tremors in his legs, which came from holding completion at bay. He pushed into her even harder, not caring that he was as deep as physically possible.

He needed to own her, to make her aware of what she’d be missing once he was gone. To imprint on the both of them the reality that what they had together was rare.

The corner of her mouth quirked, and he gritted his teeth, feeling her inner muscles tense around his cock. His balls drew close to his body, yet still he held on, playing her game of endurance, easing back until only the head of his erection teased her.

Her expression grew desperate. Score one point for him. A point she matched when she slid her feet down his thighs to his calves and locked her legs over his. She held him there, using her feet to spread him apart when he much preferred the leverage of holding his legs together.

He reared back, pulled out and made his way south, settling his mouth over her beautiful sex and breathing in her unique scent of salty warmth. She tasted way too much of him, but he could deal, what with the way she writhed and enjoyed.

He swirled his tongue through her folds, pushed into her opening, pulled out and went at her again. He loved how wet she grew when he concentrated his efforts. Though this sort of effort required no concentration at all. It was a purely erotic pleasure.

When her hips arched urgently and her breathing was
no more than frantic panting, he crawled back up her body, driving his cock back into her willing warmth, his tongue into her mouth in a mirror of their mating.

They came within seconds and together, Patrick moving his mouth from hers to bury his face in her pillow. He shuddered, feeling the center of his body surge with a release that was powerful and primal, and took him apart. The base of his spine tingled. The base of his cock pulsed. And beneath him Annabel’s skin dampened with sweat.

He waited until she’d stopped quivering before he rolled off and collapsed. He was going to die. No, he was already dead. Moving any part of his body ever again was not going to happen, though getting his hands on a cigarette sounded damn fine. Of course, with Annabel bouncing around the way she was, a busy little bee stacking pillows behind her, his postcoital-man disease was curing rapidly.

She settled back and sighed. “You are amazing.”

Lying on his back, Patrick tossed one arm across her lap and squeezed her thigh. “Is that a compliment or an invitation for a second helping?”

“Both, I suppose,” she answered, twining her fingers through his. “But, actually, it’s a question.”

Groan.
“Let me guess. Who taught me what I know, right?” Eyes closed, he shook his head. “Why is that what women always ask?”

She seemed hesitant before replying. “Maybe because we like to think your talents are individually inspired.”

“You do inspire me.” There had never been a more certain truth.

But she kept on.
Pick, pick, pick.
“As did obviously so many others.”

Patrick groaned audibly this time, rolled out of bed and to his feet. “I’m not going to talk about this.”

She didn’t even argue, but came right back with a quick and almost apologetic reply. “You’re right. It’s none of my business. I shouldn’t pry.”

Then she followed him out of bed, pulling the bed-clothes with her and balling them up to wash, changing the subject with a rapidity that had his head spinning. “We should make a run out to Central Market. We’re almost out of coffee.”

Cocking her head and holding the sheets to her midsection, she stood there naked and gorgeous and rumpled, and more than his dick began to stir. Especially since she hadn’t even seemed to think twice when including him in their shared coffee dilemma. He liked that, liked feeling as if she considered him a part of her life, even if only a temporary one.

Yes, she deserved more details about his captivity than he’d been comfortable sharing so far. He’d tell her—he would, and soon. Just not right now. “Good idea. I want to make a practice run at a few of your menu’s recipes, so I’ll put together a quick shopping list.”

“Do you think you can pull this off with only two weeks to prepare?”

Standing there as naked as the day he was born, he grinned. “With you nagging me every step of the way?”

She narrowed her eyes, obviously trying to keep him from seeing the glint of amusement, the same one tugging up the side of her mouth. “A woman must do what a woman must do. Just answer the question.”

“Sweetheart, as long as I’m on that list of things you must do, I can pull off anything.” He lunged for the crumpled sheets and pulled them away from her clutch
ing hands, tumbling her back into bed, where she squealed. She actually squealed.

Oh, yeah. It was going to be a hell of a fine day.

P
ATRICK READILY EXPECTED
the stares of other shoppers while he and Annabel cruised the aisles of Central Market on this busy Sunday morning. Being judged on his appearance was something he’d used to his advantage for years, from the first time he’d been made aware that his looks were worth a bundle.

As a cocky college frat boy, he’d found his blue eyes and dimples got him laid on a regular basis. The same way his shaved head and unfortunate expression of having lived a stark horror now sent women running.

He had to laugh. Good thing they couldn’t see his tattoo or the ring piercing his nipple. They’d be offended right out of their lily-white Keds. Hell, they should’ve seen him eighteen months ago, wearing no more than threadbare khaki shorts held on with a rope, his hair a knotted mess, his right thigh a palette of caked-on blood and colored ink.

It had taken Soledad months to complete the tattoo, but it had been a way to pass the time, talking, laughing, loving—

He cut off the thought because love hadn’t been a part of his relationship with Soledad. She’d been his sanity, yes, his bedmate and, in the end, his savior. But thinking about her now was akin to selective memory. She had been but a part of the overall horror. The one good part. The only good part.

And he needed to remember the bad if he expected to flush out Russell Dega and see to Annabel’s safety. Keeping that in the forefront of his mind was all that mattered.

“If we work this right,” Annabel said, interrupting his musings and bringing him back to the present, “we can have this entire store to ourselves.”

“How do you figure that?” he asked, dragging the two-tiered grocery cart behind him through the market’s bakery. He frowned at the display of baguettes and
bâtards,
thinking about the menu’s tenderloin cocktail sandwiches.

“I’ll send you on ahead to clear the aisles. We won’t have a single basket blocking our way.” Annabel read the label on a package of imported focaccia and tossed it into the cart, shaking her head as yet another shopper reversed direction to avoid them. “This is ridiculous. I can’t believe you have to put up with this.”

He followed as she continued browsing, shelving the focaccia while her back was turned, wondering about the impatience in her tone. He’d learned to shrug off the less than subtle glances he received from a large segment of the phobic public.

As bright as she was, she should’ve known a haircut wasn’t going to change things any more than losing the earring he wore. “I’ve gotten used to it.”

“So was I wrong?” she asked, frowning when she realized he’d replaced her focaccia with a loaf of brown bread and a fresh-baked
bâtard.
“Is the shaved look more off-putting than the wild Tarzan hair?”

“Hard to tell.”

“How so?”

“Having you here legitimizes me.”

“Really?” Displaying her fickle moods, her face brightened at that. She seemed to like the idea. A lot. “So, it’s as though I’m keeping you on a leash, then? And you can’t attack unless I let you go?”

She stopped and gave him a grin that staggered him
like a left hook to the jaw. “Would that make you my bitch?” she joked.

“Funny,” he said with a growl, and she cocked her head in a bowing acceptance of the compliment. Even though he hadn’t meant it as one. “I like to think of it as having made a pact with the devil.”

They moved into the produce section, and Annabel huffed, handing him a plastic box of fresh dill. “If I were the devil, I would have long since corrupted you.”

“And you haven’t?” He brought the dill to his nose before placing the herbs in the cart. Then he bowed his nearly shaved head, running a hand from his forehead to his nape.

She huffed a second time. “A simple haircut is hardly corruption.”

“Simple? Simple?” With the tic in his jaw loud enough to hear, he rounded the cart that sat between them and backed her into the plantain and mango display. “What exactly about this haircut do you find simple, Ms. Lee?”

She sighed, a full-body capitulation that made his knees weak even while notching up his protective instincts. The reaction would’ve had him laughing if it didn’t feel so damn real. He was not going to let Russell Dega lay a hand on this woman.

“I know the haircut was my idea, but I didn’t want anyone judging you by your rather savage appearance,” she said, pressing her palms against his chest.

He loved the feel of her fingers, so strong yet so tiny. “And you don’t think that’s what they’re doing now?” He cast his gaze to the side, where more than a few of the shoppers who skulked near the bins of Rio Grande Valley grapefruits and oranges stole quick glances his way.

Annabel ignored all of them, boldly sliding her hands from his chest up to his shoulders, one palm moving to cup his nape. “You’re a beautiful man. It’s their loss if they can’t see that.”

“Yeah, that’s it,” he scoffed, even while her compliment had his heart beating faster.

She tilted her head and studied his face. “I’m serious, Patrick. You’re observant about so many things. I’m surprised you don’t see your own appeal, even if others don’t have the sense to notice.”

He waited for one heartbeat, two, then a third before he stepped out of her clutches. “And what appeal would that be? The fact that I can fill your stomach and your body and kill both those hungers without thinking twice?”

“Must you always be so crass?” she asked from the other side of the cart.

“I’m simply acknowledging my appeal. I thought that was what you were urging me to do,” he said, knowing full well she wanted him to peel away the protective coat he’d worn the last four and a half years and expose the raw nerve endings beneath.

She turned and headed to the refrigerated cases of fresh and packaged seafood. “You know I was talking about your physical appeal. And, yes. Your looks are simply one part of the total picture. But you have this bad habit of using your appearance to intimidate.” She finished considering the smoked salmon and moved to the shrimp. “You could use it instead to get what you want.”

She was baiting him, and he would gnaw his leg off to keep from being caught in her trap. “Isn’t that rather shallow?” he asked, though he’d admitted to himself moments ago that he’d done that very thing for years.
“Expecting my wishes to be served on a silver platter because of my nose, my eyes and my all-American jaw?”

“Of course it is,” she readily agreed. “But it’s the way of the world. It’s refreshing, at least, to see that you recognize the value of your deeper qualities.”

He wasn’t doing so well with the gnawing. “What? You think I actually have redeeming values?”

“I’ve always known that you do.” She gestured to one of the fish market’s employees. “I just wanted you to acknowledge them,” she added, quickly flipping her attention back to Patrick before he could say a word. “And I’m not talking about your kitchen or bedroom skills.”

“I’m pretty sure I was there last night when we signed our catering contract.” A fool’s contract. “And I’m fairly damn confident those two reasons are the only ones you gave for keeping me around.”

“Do you want to call this off then? I need to give the caterer my decision by Monday.” She stepped back to let him select the shrimp and the salmon, as if choosing the seafood would be the formal binding seal on their agreement. He would cook, she would serve and then good night, Saigon.

With his forearm braced on the chrome butcher case, his other hand at his hip, he stared at her, standing there with her arms crossed over her chest and her lips bowed up in the snotty pout he adored and hated, her weight leaning into one cocked hip.

The fingertips of one hand tapped the opposite forearm while she waited for his order to be weighed, wrapped and priced. While she waited for him to give her an answer that was about a whole lot more than catering. That was about cleaning up his attitude and getting the hell on with living his life.