LifeoftheParty (5 page)

“Doug,” she moaned, sliding kisses up the length of his
cock, “I want you so badly I could just—”

He yanked her to her feet, kissing her with manic force, all
tongue and lips and the same overpowering need. Before she could think, he had
her twisted around and against the sofa. In one swift movement he unzipped her
jeans and slid them from her, her panties following. Then just as quickly they
were falling to the cushions, his mouth on hers.

“Finish me, doll,” he breathed, Gina panting atop him. He
kissed her cheek, her neck, his slickened cock pulsing against her. “And let me
taste you while you’re doing it.”

“Doug, but I—” But he had already twisted her around,
sliding her to him, his massive cock begging for release just inches from her
mouth, his own latching on to her pussy.

“Oh…” Her hips bucked as he flicked her clit, his finger
sinking into her vagina. Gina felt her eyes roll back in her head as her body
started to tremble, pleasure radiating from her insides out as he pumped her,
sucked her, flicked her mercilessly. She looked down, nearly blinded with
rising bliss, then suddenly she seized his cock, her back arching as she bent
to him. Then she opened her throat and took him down it.

She heard his head thump against the armrest, his body jerk
as she sucked and circled as relentlessly as he’d done her only moments before.
Within a second he was back at her and she was coming, momentously,
voluminously, her body quivering with a pleasure only heightened by Doug’s. She
swallowed spasm after spasm, each one adding another glorious explosion to her
own. On and on it went until finally Doug fell away and Gina let go, his cock
slipping from her lips as she collapsed breathlessly against his thigh.

“Jesus…” Doug sighed, stilling. After a few seconds Gina
felt his hands at her hips, twisting her toward him. “Hey, doll, come here.”

She slinked around, straddling him, her pussy moistening his
belly. Funny how he’d always called her
doll
. He tossed her around like
one. A funny-looking doll with her hair in tangles and her sweater askew, her
only piece of clothing left on. She pulled it off and looked down at him. Shirt
off, trousers around his hips, shoes and socks still firmly on. Kind of silly
when she was so naked. He raised a finger to her navel, circling it before he
traced a line to one breast, his hand opening to weigh its heaviness, then
continuing on to her neck, her cheek, tracing the line of her jaw to her lips,
thumbing first the lower then the upper. His hand cupped her chin.

“Gina,” he whispered.

She slid to his side and he spooned against her, their arms
and legs tangling around each other’s. He brushed her hair back from her face
and kissed her neck, his breath warm and sweet against her skin. She laced her
fingers into his and, holding them against her heart, let herself fall asleep
with nothing between them except the truth.

* * * * *

7:43 A.M.

Doug awoke with Gina’s taste in his mouth. He opened his
eyes, blinked, focusing on the room. She was gone. He ran a hand over his head,
spiking his hair. A cold dread washed over him. Jesus, she couldn’t just leave.
Then he heard shower water raining and he exhaled, a slow, cleansing breath. He
rolled from the sofa, gravitating toward it. Through the crack in the door he
saw her, opaqued by the translucent curtain. Her neck was arched into the water,
her arms raised and fingers sunk into her scalp as she shampooed her hair. He
hardened instantly. He dropped the last of his clothes and slid the shower
curtain back.

She froze, gasping slightly before her mouth crooked. “What
took you so long, sailor?”

He growled something under his breath and stepped in.

His insides squeezed as he saw her standing there, all slick
and soapy, her long, chestnut hair a foamy tangle as rivulets of water snaked
around her breasts, down her belly and into her pussy. He pulled her to him,
kissing her deeply, lacing his fingers into her hair as her lush, full breasts
pressed against the hardness of his. She arched her neck back and let the water
rinse her, the stream straightening her long curls until the weight of the water
pulled her hair halfway down her back. He kissed her neck, her shoulder, the
tip of a nipple. When he pulled it into his mouth and nipped her she bucked
against him, raking her nails in an electric line down his back.

That was all he needed.

He pressed her against the wall, his mouth seizing hers. He
bit her lip, the corner of her mouth, his hand splaying around her breast, his
hard length immobilizing her. She squirmed against him but it was useless. She
wasn’t going anywhere unless he allowed it. His hand slid down her thigh, his
fingers pinching her clit. She jolted, crying out, and he laughed, low and
sultry as he flicked it, his index finger sliding into a slit already moist and
slick and so hot he felt singed. As her clit went rigid against his hand, he
teased it, sliding his fingers around it, slipping his hands to the firm mounds
of her ass. He lifted her, her legs instantly wrapping around him, her clit
lightly resting atop the long shaft of his erect cock.

“Jesus, Doug,” she said breathily, her hands pressed against
his chest, her eyes half-masted with desire. She squirmed in his grasp, her
clit a hard, pulsing knob.

He kissed her neck, swirling the bar of soap around her
pussy. And then he began to move.

If there was cruelty involved, it was only self-inflicted.
Because with this warm, slickened goddess in his hands, her voluptuous breasts
rising and falling with her quickening breaths, her skin like velvet and
pungent with arousal, all he wanted to do was sink his cock into her pussy
until he touched her womb, until his balls melded against her, until her climax
squeezed his own clean out of him. But he just couldn’t. Which only frenzied
him more.

What the fuck was he doing?

He stared at her, this luscious woman in his arms,
half-wondering if she were real or this was just some waking nightmare he’d
walked into because, Jesus Christ, didn’t she once nearly drive him out of his
mind? Yet here she was, softly moaning against him, and he was crazy for her
and wanting more, with as bad a jones as any junkie.

“Gina,” he growled.

With his cock against her pulsing clit, he slid her back and
forth, the water raining between them slickening the slide. She groaned,
arching, gripping his shoulders as his shaft teased her clit with such savagery
her body fairly pulsed. Back and forth he slid himself, from the cleft of her
ass and across her slippery pussy. She felt exquisite, she looked beautiful and
he couldn’t believe how he had actually survived two years without her. She
writhed, moaning as Doug’s fingers dug into her cheeks, and he didn’t know how
much longer he could take it. His legs were weakening, his groin was
tightening, the urge to sink himself into her so overwhelming he pulled back,
pressing the glistening head of his cock against her clit. Suddenly she cried
out, spasming against him. He thought he would die.

He held her body against his, his cock between their bellies
as she bit his shoulder, riding out her orgasm and just as suddenly he was
coming too, shooting a gallon of lust between her breasts. She was still coming
when he pulled her up and caught her mouth, kissing her wildly. His come had
slickened her skin, erupting over the curve of her breasts and around her
nipples. He kissed her once more then leaned her back, Gina bracing her hands
against the wall as he held her into the shower’s rain, a sated yet questioning
look on her face. He lowered her to her feet.

He didn’t want to answer anything. He just took her in his
arms and kissed her and, grabbing the bar of soap, washed away their lovemaking,
smiling with satisfaction when again, the brush of his hands made her erupt.
They still had it, he knew.

So he shouldn’t have been surprised. Not when they stepped
from the shower, when he toweled her long hair, when they took turns drying
each other, when he rubbed lotion all over her body and watched her skin glow
under his touch, when he dropped to his knees and tongued her almost to the
point of amnesia. But not quite. Because after they dressed, after she had
slipped into a tailored suit and he’d slipped into his holster, as they sat
across from each other at the little table with coffee mugs between them. Just
as he was about to slip into official police procedural mode and drill her
about the case when all he really wanted to do was drill her and couldn’t, she
slid her spoon from her mug to the table and, setting her sherry-colored eyes
on him said, “Okay, Doug, let’s get it over with.”

HOLLY HOUSE INN

8:22 A.M.

Doug glared at her from over his coffee. “You want me to say
it? Okay.” The mug hit the table with a thud. “You kicked me in the balls when
I was half-dead and then you walked out on me. There. Out in the open.”

“I didn’t walk out,” Gina said. “You threw me out.”

Doug pushed up from the table. “Merely a technicality. You
were on your way out anyway.”

She rose to meet him. “I didn’t have a choice.”

“Ah, sure you did. You always have a choice.”

“No.” She looked away, drawing into herself. “Sometimes you
don’t.”

She could see it even now, as she stood in that tiny kitchen,
with Doug so close and the heat between them barely banked, that horrible day
two and a half years ago. She had been out on the West Coast for nearly two
weeks, fielding regional leaders for the primary, part of her new job as
Assistant to the Vice Chair of the Democratic National Committee. She was a
rising star in the DNC, the feisty former trial lawyer with insatiable ambition
and indefatigable energy. But that morning when she stepped off the red-eye,
all she wanted to do was collapse into her lover’s arms. Maybe for the last
time.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

She had known Doug only a couple of months, but she knew
from the moment he hit the witness chair at the trial that would end her career
as a defense attorney, she’d fall hard for the hard-boiled police detective.
The trial took two weeks, but as soon as it, and their conflict of interest,
were over, they scrambled to the nearest hotel, barely making it into the room
before he’d ripped off her panties and fucked her right atop the credenza. And
with such deadly force, Gina’s screaming had security at their door within
minutes.

“I-I’m fine—I am,” she half laughed, half panted out, Doug’s
cock still ramming her.

“Yeah, go away or I’ll call the cops!” Doug yelled, bending
to add breathlessly in her ear, “Not that they aren’t already coming.”

“Are they? Shit, Doug!” Gina arched up, ready to shove him
off when Doug laced his tongue into her ear and she was gone in a wave of
bliss, his cock emptying itself inside her.

“God damn,” Doug breathed, collapsing against her. “That
wasn’t supposed to happen.”

“Especially when I have three dozen Trojans in my purse,”
Gina said, her hand on his ass.
And God! What an ass,
she thought, her
fingers smoothing it.

He lifted up. “Oh well, if it turns out you are, I’ll just
have to marry you.”

Gina stared at him. “You’re joking, right?”

“Doll,” he said, pulling the combs from her hair, his eyes
like twin chunks of blue ice, “anyone who can make me come like you just did
has my undying loyalty, not to mention…” He slipped his hands under her blouse
and quickly split it, her buttons flying off. Gina barely had time to gasp
before he unsnapped her bra, her breasts tumbling out, Doug swooping to take an
already hardened nipple between his teeth. “You’ve got three days of payback
fucking coming at you for winning that case,” he said, sucking her nipple until
she groaned against him.

Winning that case.
And she
had
won, by any
means necessary. Including compromise, even of herself. Disgust washed over
her. When had winning become more important than even her self-respect? She
should have known whatever conscience she had left would still come back to
haunt her, extracting its inevitable price.

Oh God
, she thought as she drove to Doug’s apartment,
what I wouldn’t give for those first three days of voluntary amnesia
.
She laughed with twenty-twenty hindsight.
Of abject, blissful stupidity.
She pulled his key from her purse and stepped into the pre-dawn inkiness
inside.

It was almost like following his scent. She snaked around
furniture and his strewn shoes to find him still in bed, his arms thrown over
his head as he lay on his back, his legs tangled in a sheet that barely covered
his cock. She set her bag on the floor with a sigh. He was such a gorgeous man.
Broad shoulders, muscled arms, tight pecs and abs like granite. And those eyes!
So intense, they were just as riveting whether mired in lust or lit with the
thousand different topics that filled their conversations, from politics to
cooking to movies to law. He shifted, groaning slightly, and her heart twisted.
God, how she loved him, inside and out. She slinked out of her clothes and
slipped in to spoon behind him.

“About time,” he said, grasping her hand.

She started. “You’re awake?”

“Doll, I’m a cop. Of course I’m awake. And with my finger on
the trigger.” His hand snaked from under his pillow and he slid his pistol to
the night table. “I wondered how long you were gonna stand there staring at
me.”

Gina felt herself flush. “Sorry. It’s just that—”

“You missed me?” he asked, turning around. He pushed himself
up, half arching over her. “Same here.”

As he slipped the sheet from her she rolled onto her back,
his eyes grazing appreciatively over her. Inwardly, she thrilled. If these last
few weeks with Doug had proved anything, it was he thought her beautiful, and
that made her body bloom. Her lips felt lusher, her breasts fuller, her skin so
much more sensitive to his touch. At least that was what she wanted to believe.
As she lay naked before him, his gaze thick upon her, she could already feel herself
rising. All he had to do was touch her and sure enough, she’d explode.

“You’re beautiful, you know that?” he said, mischief in his
eyes as he traced a finger down her belly. “So beautiful I gotta eat you for
breakfast.”

“You do, do you,” she said, brow arched, squirming when his
finger met her clit. “But I’m not so—”

“Shh.” He quieted her with a kiss, his lips roaming down her
neck, from one breast to the next before he slid his tongue down her belly to
her pussy. “Are you trying to tell me what to eat?”

She smiled, slipping her hand to his mouth. He sucked in a
finger, nipping it. “It’s just that I should take a shower. It’s been a long
night.”

“Don’t care,” he said, opening her legs as he slid down
between them. “I can’t wait that long and besides, I love the way you taste.”

“Well, all right then,” she said, her neck arching as his
tongue found her clit. “Who am I to argue?”

He spread her lips, barely flicking against her clit as a
finger slipped into the fiery canal of her vagina. Then back he drew it,
feeling for that high and inner spot he knew always drove her half out of her
mind. He did this over and over, easing in and out of her pussy while
mercilessly teasing her clit until it throbbed and hardened against his tongue.
Gina moaned, squirming as she fisted the sheets, Doug splaying her even wider
as he pulled her to the edge of the bed and her sanity.

“Pull your legs up, doll,” he said, kissing her inner thigh.

“What? Oh no, Doug, please,” Gina pleaded, barely coherent
as his slickened fingers slipped in and out of her swollen vagina.

“Like this,” he said, pushing up until her heels rested on
the end of the mattress. “That’s it,” he said, his hands searing her thighs as
he opened her. He licked her periphery, his breath hot against her skin, her ass
writhing as he pursed his lips and blew softly against her throbbing clit.

“Fuck me,” she begged, but he only pushed her legs back
until her knees nearly met her breasts, the engorged whole of her pussy raw and
exposed and completely at his mercy. “Doug! Goddamn it! Do some—”

When his mouth fell upon her she nearly screamed, his tongue
as manic against her clit as it had been
laissez-faire
before. Almost
instantly she broke into a sweat, her ass lifting off the bed as a climax
racked through her body.

“Like that?” She heard the packet tear and then, climbing to
the bed, he rammed his cock in to the hilt.

This time she did scream, apoplexed by the most intense
pleasure she’d ever felt. He drove his cock in and out, shackling her wrists
over her head with one large hand.

“Did you miss me, Gina?” he asked, driving her harder with
every thrust. “Did you think about me fucking you?”

“Yes,” she whispered, hardly able to speak. She was coming
again, this time even harder than before, her head thrashing, her hips bucking
to meet his. “Oh yes, all the time, all the…
Ah…
”

“Really?” he asked, those eyes burning right into her. Yet
even through the haze of her pleasure she could see him clearly. With the dawn
eking though the blinds, he looked as drunk on her as she felt on him, a sheen
of sweat on his forehead, those powerful shoulder muscles flexing with each
thrust, his lips curling around the edges of his imminent orgasm. He let go of
her wrists, looking down on her. “That must mean you love me.”

She gripped his face between her hands. “Oh God! Oh God!”
She seized his mouth with hers as she wrapped her legs around him, Doug
pummeling her once, twice before he went rigid from his climax, slumping
against her.

A few moments later he brushed his cheek against hers. “Jesus,
you can fuck.”

She laughed. “All I did was pretty much lie there.”

He smiled, shifting the weight of his large body off her.
“Sometimes that’s all it takes.” He kissed her quickly. “Christ, I missed you.”

“Same here, sweetie,” she whispered, and again her heart
twisted. How would she ever tell him?

He pulled himself from her, dropping the condom in the trash
before he lifted her from his bed. “
Now
it’s time for a shower.” When
they got in together, he soaped her from head to foot and fucked her again, holding
her high against the shower wall, his legs splayed and hers around his hips.
And after they got out and they dried each other, and he rubbed lotion all over
her body, he hoisted her atop the sink and fucked her once more. Even in the
bedroom she wasn’t safe, because as she bent into her suitcase to find her
jeans, he fell to his knees behind her and tongued her until she writhed and
shook and fell to the bed.

“Holy—shit,” she panted out, Doug behind and caging her with
his leg, “you sure like to fuck me.”

He pulled her hair back from her neck and kissed her pulse
point. “I
love
to fuck you,” he murmured. “So much I can’t keep my cock
out of you.” He turned her to face him, his eyes tentative. “Is that insane or
what?”

Those eyes— Jesus. How they tore through her. She couldn’t
look at him, snuggling against him instead, wishing she could crawl inside him
and hide until he absorbed what she knew she’d have to tell him. “Maybe.”

He kissed the top of her head. “Gina, baby, come on. You
know it’s more than that. I love you. I love you so fucking much I’d like to
die sometimes.”

Damn, she hated it when he got Gothic. Hated how it made her
feel. As crazy paralyzed in love as he was, and she just couldn’t allow herself
that. Not when she had to do what she knew she must. Even thinking of it made
her sick. She cringed against him.

He felt it. “Gina?” he said, lifting her chin. “What’s the
matter?”

She couldn’t put it off any longer. She had to tell him.
Because as odd as it seemed, in such a short span of time, he was so in tune
with her, she was certain he already knew. “Doug, there’s something I have to
tell you.”

He stared at her a moment before his eyes lit with joy.
“You’re pregnant.”

Gina pulled back, the breath knocked out of her. She was
right. Sometimes he positively terrified her. “Why did you say that?”

“Oh come on, Gina.” His eyes swept over her. “Just look at
you!” He brushed back her hair, gazing at her with such love she nearly
collapsed. “We haven’t known each other long, barely a few weeks with all the
time we’re apart, but I’ve never felt like this with anyone. I know it’s crazy
but sometimes I think I can feel what you’re feeling, know what you’re thinking
even before you say it.”

She touched his cheek. God. She knew what he meant. Even
knew what he was going to say next. Knew she couldn’t bear to hear it.

“Gina,” he said softly, “are you?”

She said, “Yes, but—”

“But
what
?” He smiled, absolutely beaming. “Marry
me.”

She shook her head. “Doug, I know you said that the first
time we were together, but no one would take that kind of offer seriously.”

He grabbed her, kissing her neck, her cheek, then quickly on
the lips. “I was as serious then as I am now.
No.
Even more. Because I’m
so much more fucking in love with you than I was then, and let me tell you,
that’s a lot of goddamn love because I was insane for you from the minute I
walked in that courtroom. Marry me, and let’s raise our baby and maybe even ten
more.” He laughed. “I never had a real family, so this ought to be nuts, but
what the fuck.”

“Doug.” She shivered. Those eyes, so icy, were positively
drilling through her, mining her thoughts as easily as if they were his own.
And Christ, if that didn’t scare the hell out her. Because if they were, if he
truly knew what she was thinking, she was honestly afraid neither one of them
would live through the experience. She eased away from him and off the bed.

He didn’t say anything as she hurried into her clothes,
pulling his own on as a minute passed and the next round of revelations queued
up before them. Finally, as she fumbled through her purse, he took her by the
shoulders and turned her toward him, dipping his head to her upraised eyes.

“What is it?” he asked simply.

She closed her eyes, taking a deep breath before opening to
his. “I can’t marry you.”
Ever. Not now. Not after this.

His jaw clenched. “Why?”

“Because I can’t. It’s not right.”

“What do you—”

“Because…” She wanted to say
because I love you too much
,
but she couldn’t. She could never say that. If she did, if he knew what she’d
done, it just might kill him. Lord knew it was killing her. “It isn’t fair.”