Ink Lust (6 page)

“I like it.” She smiled and the impact nearly knocked him off his chair.

“Are you busy next weekend?” he asked, thanking their server when she rather intuitively brought the check he was about to ask for.

“My mom and I are going up to visit my aunt in Charlevoix. It’s her birthday. We leave Friday morning and come back Sunday night.”

“And I leave for L.A. Sunday morning.” When she tilted her head curiously he added, “I’m working in a buddy of mine’s shop next week while one of his top guys is on vacation. I usually sit in for him a couple of times a year.”

“I haven’t been to the West Coast for years.” She smiled dreamily. “My sister and I went out before she got married and were beach bums for a few days. Came home sunburned and broke.”

“I don’t see a whole lot of sun while I’m out there. The first day is usually wasted sleeping off jetlag, and then I’m booked from open to close the whole week.”

“So you’re making a celebrity guest appearance.”

The matter-of-fact way she’d said it made him smile.

“A lot of times my book fills up for the next trip before I’ve left, but I’m not famous by any stretch.”

“Mm. Modest without the slightest hint of irony. I like it.”

“I almost forgot,” he said, reaching into the pocket of his riding jacket. “I have a present for you.”

She looked at the small square box, then up at him, eyebrows raised.

“A gift on the first date?” she asked, reaching for it tentatively.

He hunched one shoulder. “Since we’re doing everything out of order anyway.”

Her expression stayed neutral while she lifted the lid off the box. She stared at what was inside for the longest minute and then the most beautiful pink bloomed in her face.

“I’ve had them for years,” he told her. “I think I bought them during a trip to Japan just because I thought they were kind of cool looking. They’ve just been in a drawer at my house since. It’s like they were meant for you.”

Her eyes were glittering when she looked at him. “They’re not earrings.”

He couldn’t help but laugh. “No, they’re not.”

She lifted one of the nipple weights out of the box and looked at it more closely. To the casual observer, or nearby diner in their case, it looked as if she was holding an earring in her palm. But the silver clasp was a clamp, not an earring hook, and the heavy glass teardrop hanging from the inch-long chain was too heavy for a woman’s ear.

And the red was the same shade as the beads on her nipple rings.

They were more jewelry than torture devices, but Leni wasn’t looking to be tied up and whipped. He wasn’t the kind of guy who got into bondage anyway, but it did make his blood boil hot in his veins that she liked it more than a little rough around the edges.

“You just had these lying around?” she asked, lips pursed in a dirty smirk.

“Sweetheart, I have a whole collection of things I’d love to show you sometime.”

She turned her bare wrist toward her face like she was checking a watch.

“I happen to have some spare time now,” she said.

Jamie pushed his chair back so fast it scraped on the floor.

“Imagine that.” He took her hand and nearly dragged her to the door. “So do I.”

Chapter Five

“Wow.”

Leni looked up at Jeannette, the main librarian in the children’s library, then looked toward the door to see what she was gaping at.

Wow wasn’t the word for it.

Her stomach dropped and her heart started racing at the sight of Jamie standing just inside the door. In a white button-down linen shirt that looked as though it had been made especially for his body and long legs in dark, very well-fitting jeans, his black hair purposely mussed and green eyes shining, he was beyond wow.

“Can I help you?” Jeannette asked him.

He broke the lock he had on Leni’s gaze and smiled at Jeannette.

“Thank you, no,” he answered smoothly. “I’m here to see if your coworker has a lunch break coming up anytime soon.”

Jeannette turned to Leni, eyebrows raised, then back to Jamie. “She’s free.”

“You sure?” Leni asked.

Preschool story time had just started. In theory she had plenty of time to take her thirty-minute break and be back before it ended, but if the volunteer mom on duty stopped reading early, as they sometimes did, Jeannette would be swamped by herself.

Jeannette winked at her. “I got it.”

Leni made her way around the corner of the desk feeling a little as if she was moving in slow motion. He couldn’t have been more than a few hours off his redeye flight into Detroit that morning. She was so surprised and happy to see him she wanted to fling herself into his arms and wrap herself around him, but the place was crawling with impressionable young children, of course.

“How long do you have?” he asked, holding the door for her, waving to Jeannette.

“Half an hour.” She took his hand. “Where are we going?”

“What’s in here?” He walked past the elevators to the set of double doors opposite the children’s library.

“It’s the auditorium. The doors might be locked,” she warned a second before he pushed them open. “Or maybe they’re not.”

The room was dark except for the security light over an exit door at the other end of the room. He spun her in a little pirouette, pinned her to the wall and covered her mouth with his. Molten heat washed over her, setting her on fire from head to toe as she sank into his mouth, his kiss, his body. God, she’d missed him.

They’d spoken on the phone at least every other day while he’d been gone. She’d been so busy with work and helping Jo with Frankie she’d hardly noticed how quickly time had passed. But now that he was there, solid and real under her hands, the taste of his mouth and the smell of his skin both familiar and foreign at the same time, she was struck with the force of just how much she’d missed him.

“Jesus, Leni,” he breathed, loosening his grip on her only slightly. “I really just stopped by to see if I could take you to lunch, but the second I saw you…” His words trailed off as he pulled back just far enough to look into her eyes.

It was good to know it wasn’t just her.

“I like this dress,” he said, looking down the length of her body. She was wearing a long white sundress with big red poppies printed on it under a little black cardigan. “Any chance you can play hooky the rest of the day?” His hand slipped under her sweater, stroked the curve of her waist before moving down over the swell of her hip.

“I can’t.” But, man, did she want to. “We’re really short-handed as it is.”

“Then give me something to hold me over.” He was gathering the fabric of her skirt in his hands, raising it slowly.

She wanted it like nothing she’d ever wanted before.

“I’m at work,” she protested less than halfheartedly, her hands spread over the solid curves of his chest. She could see the rich olive of his skin and the colors of the tattoos on his shoulders through the fine fabric of his shirt. Her eyes closed briefly when his fingertips skimmed her bare thigh, sending a crackling heat along the entire surface of her skin.

“I won’t leave any evidence.” He turned her around slowly until she was facing the wall and pulled her hips back. “I need to touch you, sweetheart,” he murmured, his erection, still confined by his jeans, pressing into the seam of her ass.

She braced her arms on the wall and groaned as his hand passed over her stomach to her sex, covered by the plain cotton panties she wore to work.

“Jamie, someone could walk in here any minute.”

“Then I’ll make this quick,” he whispered against the sensitive skin behind her ear.

He stroked her over the increasingly damp fabric, and she spread her legs for him.

“I want more than quick,” she told him, gasping as he dipped his fingers beneath the elastic waist. “I want all of you—oh God!” Her groan echoed through the empty auditorium as he buried two fingers deep inside her.

“All of what?” he asked, putting pressure on her clit with the heel of his hand, fucking her in small, circular strokes with his fingers.

“You. Naked. Your body. Your cock in my mouth,” she whispered harshly, then nearly choked when he groaned deeply and curled his fingers into that magic spot within her body and teased.

He touched the tip of his tongue to her earlobe. “What else?”

She shook her head. She couldn’t think.

He bit down on her ear just hard enough to get her attention. “What else, baby?”

“I want… Oh shit.” Her voice was ragged, breathless. “I want you buried to the hilt inside me, Jamie. I want you to fuck me until I’m saddle-sore for a week.”

“That’s my girl,” he breathed, increasing the pressure on her clit as he ground into her through their clothes from behind.

And just like that her body exploded. She clenched her teeth and swallowed the cry that threatened to erupt from her throat. Her legs gave out from under her and she shook from the very core of her being outward.

“Jesus, you’re like a Ferrari,” he whispered reverently against her neck, holding her tight around the waist. “Zero to sixty in no time flat.”

She shivered through the last waves of her orgasm and turned her face to his. “I think it has more to do with the skills of the driver than the make of the car.”

Her head fell back and she wrapped an arm around his neck, pulling him toward her for a kiss. She was losing herself in the slow slide of his tongue when he slipped his hand from her panties and let her skirt fall. He broke their kiss. Leni’s knees went loose again and she leaned into him, whispering, “Oh, my,” as she watched him suck first one and then the other of his wet fingers into his mouth.

“See me later.” It wasn’t a question. He turned her around and fixed her skewed sweater while she steadied herself on her shaky legs.

“Okay.” She nodded, fixing her ponytail as the reality of what she’d just risked settled in. On some level she knew she should feel guilty, or at least a little panicked, that she’d just put her job on the line for a few dirty moments with him. On another, more basic level, she instinctively knew he never would have put her in that kind of situation if he’d thought there was the slightest chance they’d get caught.

“My place,” he added, kissing her lightly. “I’ll cook for you since I just took up most of your lunch time.”

“You’d better. I’m going to be starving.” She smirked, sliding her hands up his chest to his neck, where she wrapped them around and buried her fingers in the back of his hair. “Although this was a whole lot more interesting than the PB and J I packed.”

He laughed and touched his forehead to hers, his hands light on her waist now despite the fact that he had to be highly frustrated.

She’d felt the size of his erection. He was full to bursting and she knew it. For a moment the temptation to drop to her knees and relieve the pressure for him was overwhelming. Having someone walk in while she was getting felt up under her dress was one thing. Having someone walk in while she was on her knees with her boyfriend’s cock buried balls-deep in her face was quite another.

Her eyes blinked open at the thought.

Boyfriend. That was getting way ahead of the game, now, wasn’t it?

“I missed you,” he said.

Her heart stuttered optimistically and she let it. She could hear her sister’s voice echoing through her head, reminding her to just slow down and enjoy. Reality could sneak in and crash the party later. For now she just wanted to ride out the high.

She smoothed her hands over the wrinkles the pressure of their bodies had put in his shirt, looked up into those amazing green eyes and said, “I missed you too.”

* * * * *

Home.

The word kept repeating through his mind over and over again. He was home.

And that godforsaken Bryan Adams Spanish guitar song his sister used to listen to incessantly kept running through his fucking head.

She was laying half cradled in his left arm, half sprawled wantonly over his body, her back to his chest. Sunlight coming through his bedroom window touched the fine sheen of sweat covering every inch of her skin, giving her an otherworldly glow.

The sight of his dark hand on the pale skin of her throat, exposed by the way her head was thrown back over his shoulder, was intoxicating. He watched his fingers trail over the thin skin covering her chest, down the long line of her flat belly and over the inside of her thigh. He saw the goose bumps rise on her skin when he barely traced the taut muscle from the inside of her knee to where he was buried in her cunt.

He kissed her neck and she arched her back so he could push deeper into her from behind. She winced and sucked in a sharp breath through her teeth when he spread his fingers over the soaking wet folds of her pussy, brushing over her swollen little hot button, indulging in the feel of her skin stretching to accommodate him.

She was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen in his life. And she was all his.

He couldn’t bring himself to qualify the thought with “for the moment” either. She had to be his. The thought of her being with anyone else now that they’d been together made him want to kill with his bare hands.

He wanted to spend as many Sunday mornings as he could just like this, making love to her, watching her lose herself in him—them lose themselves in each other. He fucking wanted to make her pancakes for breakfast every day for the rest of his life.

It was happening so fast, this being overwhelmed, almost consumed by her. Two weeks ago she’d been sexy Leni from the fringes of his circle of friends. Now she was in his bed and undeniably under his skin in all the right ways. He kept thinking he should be nervous about the speed at which they were moving, but he wasn’t. No matter how he tried to rationalize slowing down, he just couldn’t.

Jamie peeled her arm from around his neck, put her hand between her legs. “Feel what I feel,” he murmured against her neck.

Her eyelids were at half-mast and her mouth was open when she looked at him over her shoulder. She was so far gone. He wanted to take her the rest of the way to pure, mindless physical pleasure, and he wanted to spend all day doing it.