He made his decision. He dropped his head back to the pillow, looked up into her eyes, and said, "I want to stay. I'll stay as long as you'll have me. And if all we do is cuddle up and sleep, that's fine by me."
She stared down at him, tears giving her eyes a misty sheen. The smile that lifted both corners of her mouth grabbed his heart and squeezed. "Are you just saying that to get me to put out?"
"Hell, yeah," he answered, his vision blurry, a bitch of a frog clogging his throat. "Was it that obvious?"
"It was." She shifted her weight to one arm, slid her free hand down between their bodies,
wrapped
her tiny cool fingers around his fire-breathing cock.
"Especially since you punctuated it with this."
"Oh, well, never let it be said that I'm a master of understatement." And if she didn't let him go, let him breathe, she was going to witness the true power of his punctuation skills.
What she did, instead, was raise up onto her knees and
position
him exactly where he wanted to be before taking him inside and slowly sliding down into his lap.
He ground his jaw, his eyes rolling back in his head— though averting his gaze didn't do much in the way of helping him find the control she'd crushed with her very light weight.
She leaned forward, placing both palms along his rib cage and massaging her way to his shoulders. The caress was firm, not the least bit hesitant, and would've brought him to his knees if he wasn't already on his back, swaying off balance, on his way to a very big fall.
When she reversed the process, dragging her hands down his torso, her fingertips teasing his nipples as she made her way to his navel where she threaded her fingers into the hair beneath, he couldn't help it. He surged upward, his hips leaving the mattress and taking her with him.
She fell forward, catching herself on his shoulders, one brow arched as she stared down into his eyes. "Punctuating again?"
"In bold and italics."
She chuckled, shook back her hair,
then
leaned down to kiss him. The spoken conversation had come to an end. Now she was talking with her tongue, teasing it over his lips, dipping it into his mouth.
And she was talking with her hips, rotating and lifting and coming back down until he was a mess of groans and hisses and sounds that had no meaning at all.
He should have been spent by now with all they'd done already, but he felt like he was fifteen, not twice that age, what with the way his cock was throbbing, his balls drawn up into his body, the entire downstairs package ready to blow.
"Glory, sweetheart.
It would be really cool here if you'd stop for a second, oh, God, damn, please stop." He poured the words into her open mouth, feeling the heat of his own breath backwash over his face.
Glory stopped moving the part of her body giving him hell, but continued to kiss him, abandoning his lips to tickle his eyelids, eyebrows, his cheekbones, temples and ears, her hands kneading the balls of his shoulders all the while.
And he would've been okay. He would've calmed down and been perfectly fine. The kissing kept him mighty hard, kept him on edge without sending him over.
But as she sat there unmoving, he felt her juices begin to seep out from where their bodies joined and ease down the underside of his shaft.
And that was the end of that.
He hooked an elbow behind her neck, planted a palm in the small of her back, pulled and pressed her down while grinding their mouths and bodies together.
He pumped upward, the friction of sex against sex creating a heat that sent steam to the ceiling. He spread his raised knees, jerked his mouth from hers. She braced her forearms on his chest and curled her fingers into the muscles where his shoulders sloped down from his neck.
It was impossible not to look into her eyes. The room was dark, though she'd left a tiny lamp across the room on her desk burning; the lacy black shawl draped over the shade tossed shadowed shapes onto her skin.
But her eyes were bright with what he swore were tears burning with the same emotion making it impossible for him to speak. All he could do was move, driving, thrusting, pumping and pouring
himself
into her; sweat broke in the small of her back. He held her there even tighter, his hand slick with desire's perspiration.
She clenched around him then, sucking in a sharp breath as her orgasm hit. He saw that she wasn't ready, that she wanted desperately to wait, to hold on, to make what they were doing last forever.
But he was done. Her contractions were like a fist of fine fingers milking him for all he was worth. And so he gave it up, emptying himself inside her, spilling
himself
in ribbons of come until he had nothing left to give.
Until he felt as if a blade had speared the base of his spine with a pain that was sear-
ingly
sweet.
He held her tight while she came down, while she learned how to breathe evenly again. While she did her best to dry her tears on a pillowcase, her head turned so he couldn't see.
He didn't have to see. He felt the sobs she tried to suppress, but he didn't say a word. He simply held her, stroked a soothing hand down her back and told her with meaningless noises and whispered nonsense how miserable his life had been without her. How he could lie here beneath her for centuries to come and be the happiest man in the world.
They both must have dozed, because he startled awake when she disengaged their rather sticky bodies a long time later, rolling to his side and draping an arm over his chest.
"Tripp?"
"Glory?"
"Will you answer one question for me?"
"Anything."
"Why do you do what you do?"
The easiest answer of all.
"Because if I don't do it, who will?"
Fourteen
Glory finally returned to Brighton's on Monday morning. The police finished their investigation over the weekend and gave her clearance to open for business again. That very business was why she had shown up two hours earlier than she usually did.
She had no idea how much cleanup she'd have to do but knew it would take longer than did her usual morning prep. She was in such a good mood, however, she didn't care how long it took or that she'd be handling most of the lunch rush— what there was of it—on her own.
Knowing it might take customers time to warm up to returning, she'd phoned Neal over the weekend and scheduled his next shift for tomorrow. The time alone didn't faze her at all. In fact, she found herself humming silly love songs and thinking of the last four nights spent with Tripp.
Cliché or not, their time together had been the best of her life. He was fun.
And funny.
Making her laugh about things she'd never taken the time to look at before. Like the way she never could fill an ice tray without spilling. Or how many pairs of ratty socks she actually had.
Even over the way she liked to spoon backward when they slept, tucking her knees behind his thighs and pulling his back to her chest. He said the whole point of spooning was for her to feel safe in his arms while she slept. At which point she reminded him she'd been sleeping alone for a whole
lotta
years, and liked the idea of being the one to offer haven to a man taking on too much of the world alone.
He'd cuddled back closer, then. Made sure they were touching everywhere possible.
Which eventually led to him taking hold of her hand where it draped his waist and moving her fingers lower.
The feel of his hard shaft in her palm, the soft, taut skin of his erection's head beneath her questing fingers, meant neither of them slept much at all.
Funny thing today was that she wasn't tired at all. She was too busy to be tired. So busy, in fact, that it took her a minute to register the opening and closing of the front door—until the snap of the blinds being drawn shut doused half the room's light and brought her head up.
"I'm sorry." She squinted, glanced toward the door. "I'm not quite . . . open . . . yet
.. .
oh
. . . God . . ."
Danh
Vuong
headed her way, wielding a gun identical to the one he'd wielded on Thursday.
The weapon failed to deter her. She wasn't going to be a victim again. She snatched up the phone's handset and ran, punching in 9-1-1. It wasn't until she put the receiver to her ear that she realized the line was dead.
She screamed, turned back around, flung the phone at the approaching man as hard as she could. "What the hell do you want?"
He dodged the phone, but didn't stop or lower the gun. He simply walked straight up to where she stood and shoved the barrel of the weapon against the base of her throat. "It's back into the storeroom for you, Miss Brighton."
She wanted to refuse, to scratch out his eyeballs, to barrel forward and knock him over like a bowling pin. But she was rapidly losing the ability to breathe or to swallow. And so she backed her way down the hallway.
Once he'd shoved her through the door and released her, she rubbed the bruise in the hollow of her throat. "How did you get here? I saw the police take you and your gang out of here."
"You saw them take my associates," he said, one brow raised. "I managed to twist free of my bonds and hide in the same ceiling through which your rescuers arrived."
That didn't make sense. It didn't make sense. "Why didn't they look for you when they only found the five others?"
"Did you tell anyone there were six intruders?
Because you were the only one who knew the truth.
At least the only one who would've been around to provide the
details.
"
Had she told the police there were six men? Had she mentioned a number?
Or had she been too busy relaying Tripp's story of how
Danh's
men had turned on one another? How two had disarmed the others. How their leader had taken out those who had betrayed him. How she and the professor had managed to knock him unconscious and bind them all with the zip ties they carried while they were unconscious?
Preposterous, yes.
But the professor had backed her up without question. And the physical evidence supported her story. Especially since the police surveillance proved no one had gone in or out through the front, the back, or the side door into the parking garage.
"So now what?" she asked.
"Now I will stand at the front door and turn away all customers but for the one man I am waiting for."
The one from the diamond exchange.
"What makes you think he'll show up?"
"Because he's been instructed to.
If he does not, I will kill his family."
"You've got to be kidding me." This guy was nuts! "What could you possibly want so badly to ruin so many people's lives?"
"That is not your concern, Miss Brighton."
"But if I'm going to die because of it, I want to know."
He gestured her to back across the storeroom; he stood in the open doorway once she had. "It is about honor, Miss Brighton.
About retrieving merchandise stolen from my employer.
And about paying my personal debt to him at the same time."
And then he pulled shut the door.
She paced the short room, back and forth, finally slamming her fist into the metal cabinet housing the security screen. The door sprang open, bounced against its own hinges. She watched as
Danh
passed beneath the camera on his way to the front door.
If only she could signal Tripp's people. But the security service had replaced the cables this morning. She shoved her fingers into her hair and tugged while she whipped around in a circle.
This wasn't happening. This couldn't be happening. Why the hell was this happening? She leaned forward, hands on her knees, to catch her breath.
When she straightened, her gaze landed on the open lip of the Advil box and Tripp's knife lying inside.
"Paperwork is the bane of a man's existence," Tripp grumbled as he filled out an expense report for Smithson Engineering, using bogus travel, entertainment and licensing receipts. He understood the company needed documentation to prove he was earning his keep.
