Vigilante Mine (23 page)

"A prosecution on the warpath can make anything plausible. I've been benched for months. All they need to do is prove I've been desperate for more action or insinuate that I decided to take matters into my own hands. My rather public dismissal could even give them my motive for escalation against cops, Ryan." She stood, reaching for her coat. "It's dicey, but if I get witnesses the issue might disappear."

Ryan lifted the jacket away from her fingers, returned it slowly to the chair. "Stay."

The lightning-fast look of want she shot his way, buried in a hurry by disbelief, was encouragement enough.

"Stay with me. Let me be your alibi." He cupped her cheeks between his palms. "Everyone saw us this afternoon. They won't question a night."

Please, say yes.

"You don't have to risk your reputation for me." Her hands closed around his forearms, her eyes searching, searching. Then, the last tiny, defensive chips of ice-blue melting, burned away by flames of desire, blooming with smoldering appeal.

"You're worth it." As long as she stayed in his arms, right here, right now, he honestly couldn't give a damn about covers and reputations. To be on the same page . . . "I swear to you, that's not a line. Please. Will you
—
?"

"Kiss me." His detective's full, tantalizing lips parted in invitation and Ryan moved at the same time, a long, drugging caress of sleek, velvet heat.

Molten need.

Heaven help him, the blaze he remembered had dimmed with memory.

Except this round with his detective was no mindless mating of tongues, but a kiss of pure intent, potent as sex itself.

Amanda burrowed into his embrace, her nails tracing over fabric and along his abs as she met his lust with equal fervor. Honey-dipped hair bunched in his fingers.

He'd never before enjoyed the taste of coffee, but the lingering strains on this woman's lips became a springboard for all things carnal. Images of what he could do with an evening alone with her flooded his mind and edged into the kiss, beckoning, promising, rejoicing that she wanted him in return. One of his hands slid over her shoulder, down her side, pressing her tight against him.

Slim fingers cruised over his chest and he smiled against her lips. Amanda popped one button, then another, and from the way her tongue sought his in a deeper kiss
—
desperate, hard, commanding
—
he knew she didn't intend to stop.

Dear lord, she'd better not stop.

Ryan flicked his tongue against hers, taunting, playing, then kneaded his fingers over the nape of her neck. His other hand inched up the back of her shirt, finding smooth, warm skin to welcome his touch. He hauled in a wild breath and ran his fingers up her spine.

Chocolate and caramel and coffee.

She was every delicious sinful flavor wrapped in flesh, and he craved more.

"Amanda," he murmured against her lips.

She melted into him, baring his chest with a grand sweep of her hands before wrapping her arms tight around his waist.

"No wonder you have them lining up down the street." She broke the kiss a fraction, her words a ragged whisper. Her eyes brightened with pleasure.

He kissed the teasing corner of her turned-up lips. "And here I thought they were all after my wallet."

Or maybe the blessed, blessed 3-pack of condoms Jay had jokingly snuck into it before lunch.

"Just your lips, that's all," she said with a grin she couldn't hide. A wiggle of her hips. "Nothing else."

A laugh bounced from his chest. "Minx."

He bracketed her body with his arms, walking her backward toward his desk. Tossing his glasses onto the top, he pressed a button for the sound system. It kicked on with a delicious, smooth saxophone, low strains of jazz and a singer's voice as tempting and lush as Amanda's to his heightened sense of sound.

She smirked at him and leaned back on her hands. "Ella Fitzgerald?"

"What can I say? I like fast cars and slow jazz." He ran his hands up her sides with a smile. "Don't tell anyone."

"Ryan McLelas has secrets?" A mock gasp he wanted very much to make real, then her hands finished the work they'd begun and shoved his shirt and jacket off his shoulders. She tipped up her chin, her eyes glittering with play. "I like donuts."

"Coffee and donuts? Bordering on cliché, Detective." He kissed the smirk off her lips.

His palms weren't touching enough skin. That cursed sweater had played in his mind since lunch.

No more.

Her top went somewhere across the room, and every drop of his blood went south in approval. White lace and creamy satin curved over full breasts and unabashed, tight peaks like icing. Ryan wanted all of her at once. Did she taste like sin everywhere? Would she let him find out?

Better still, would she ask him to?

Lust zipped through him with the breakneck speed and power of an express rail car.

"Hot chocolate, not coffee." Her hand rolled over his shoulder and gave an insistent tug.

Closer.

Ryan knew his smile was wickedness personified, the mood reflected in her eyes. His hands cradled her hips and he lowered his head to kiss along the entrancing scar along her cheekbone. Goosebumps popped over her arms.

"You drank coffee earlier." He moved down to the satin, breathing warmth over her breast.

"I was . . . conned," she managed to gasp as his tongue stroked over one pert nipple and she arched like a bow.

Her hands went to his hair, delicate fingers tugged at the strands. The earthy croon of a bass clarinet slid through his filters and cranked the heat in the room up a dozen degrees. Ryan nuzzled her breast with his chin, the brush of his five o'clock shadow over sensitive skin making her hips jerk in his grasp.

He nipped at her skin and she moaned his name.

Ryan left sense and reason behind, and Amanda wasn't far behind. Fingers tangled on buttons, hooks, zippers. No more barriers. Just skin. Finally, finally skin
—
every beautiful, glorious inch of exposed Amanda. Past coaxing, past thinking, he dropped onto the wide seat of his office chair, and pulled her on top.

Hot little kisses danced across his skin. He rolled on the condom as her heartbeat sang in his ears, daring his to follow. Amanda's fingernails sank into the coarse leather back of the chair. The supple length of her neck, just over her pulse, tasted of sweet, urgent hunger. She squirmed on top of him and her hands found his shoulders, clung tight.

"Now, Ryan." A hot little demand to go with more of those hot little kisses. "Please, now."

Ryan lifted his hips, eager and demanding. Amanda shamelessly countered the thrust and his erection buried to the hilt inside his detective. She rocked forward with a cry as desperate for him as his cock was for its own taste.

"Amanda," he groaned.

Chocolate and caramel and unquenchable craving.

Fast, hard, needy, a pulsing rhythm caught hold and drove them together. Golden hair lashed his cheek. Excited gasps and kisses worked down his neck, across his shoulder, over his bicep, on and on with each grinding clash of their bodies. Ryan drowned in her exploration, his ability pulled under the riptide of passion. His fingers rubbed tiny, frantic circles over her lower back, driving them higher, tighter, hotter with each stroke.

Amanda dug in her nails.

He went up like a roman candle.

"Oh, God."

Ryan wasn't sure which one of them shouted first.

Release struck glittering bright, an inferno burning every bit as volatile as the one they'd escaped days before. Heavy, gasping breaths of spent pleasure caressed his power like the rippling aftershocks of her heat around his shaft.

"Amanda." He stroked his thumbs over her naked backside.

"Mmm?"

"Still just here for my lips?" He knew his smile matched the one that curved against his chest. Nudging her forehead with a light kiss, he added before he could think, "Come home with me."

The condo. His gut tightened, but it seemed fantastic sex sent his internal dread-meter offline. The nausea that usually attacked at the thought of his place
—
the virulent fear of being somewhere too far away to help his brothers
—
stayed dormant this time.

He blamed it on the lure of an entire night spent with Amanda's high, firm, absolutely bitable breasts snug against his chest.

"You want more? After that? I can't move, Ryan," came the husky reply. She rubbed her head against his shoulder.

"God, yes. I want more." Ryan laughed and gave one hip a squeeze.

"How close is your bed?" With her hands feather-light and tickling over his abs, Amanda eased back on his lap. She tipped her head to the side with a sly smile. "And which car will you be driving to get there?"

"Clothes first. Then I'll show you our garage." He winked.

"Are you sure? I can't promise not to drool on the paint."

The way the corners of her eyes crinkled with glee made Ryan damn glad he could afford to maintain the fleet. He never thought he'd have her here, smiling, naked, his, agreeing to spend the night, and threatening his muscle car collection. All he could do was grin.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Few motor vehicles
meant only "essential" roads were plowed for emergency services, and there weren't many en route to the condo. He couldn't push the Ford faster safely, but he had to get her indoors and in bed soon, because they'd both started to think again.

Chief in his mind, the fact that Murphy knew about Old Town, and Ryan needed that information. Klepto had to be at that meeting. So did Amanda. She couldn't be at the condo when Klepto came for her.

Chief in her mind, "You don't need glasses, do you?"

Ryan's whole body cringed. Sure enough, he'd left the useless frames on his desk. "It's a press thing."

"There aren't any cameras here." She peered over at him, her fingers tucked under her thighs. "Care to enlighten me?"

"When my father passed, I already had a reputation for charm." He smiled. "I came off irresponsible, even though I'd been working for my father in a negotiating capacity for years. I'd proven myself, but the stakeholders weren't happy. They threatened to bail with the changing of the guard unless I shaped up my image. Focus groups said I needed specs like my father. Made me more responsible, more trustworthy."

"Like nothing had changed."

"Change isn't always welcome in the business world."

"I'm glad you left them off tonight." She smiled, then stared out at the increasingly dense snow flurries. "Some of your charming repertoire is for the camera too, isn't it? Not just the flirting, either. You've been different with me, Lilah, your brothers. More . . . you."

He wasn't surprised by her perceptive words. Klepto wasn't the only mask he wore. Showing different sides to his audience was a well-practiced art form by now. He gave the public what they liked, shareholders what they wanted, business associates what they needed, and his brothers saw through to every truth except his personal demons
—
doubt, fear, failure, a sole regret. Amanda had worked her way through his defenses, stepping past his masks one by one. From the minute he'd first touched her, the flirting, the teasing, took on a new light. He wasn't pretending for the paparazzi, wasn't leering for show. He enjoyed sparring with her and craved her reactions. The game they played was theirs alone.

There'd be no public façade to hide behind in the bedroom. Just himself, real, freed from boardroom politics and social niceties.

"I guess you can't believe everything you see on TV," he said, flicking her a rueful grin.

"How much of it is truth, Ryan?"

Ryan bumped the windshield wipers up a notch. "You think too much."

"That's who I am." Her eyes caught a passing streetlight and gleamed with intensity. "Who are you?"

"A man tired of feeding the press one-night stands." If he could come clean on one thing now, he needed her to know the truth about his public persona, the "women".

She draped a hand over his leg that morphed the comforting warmth of the truck cab into a volcanic flow of heat as his libido vaulted to a higher gear. "This isn't one-night stand material?"

"I sincerely hope not." Sex with Amanda had only pulled him further under her spell. Her fingers clenched on his knee and Ryan turned into the condo parking lot. He slowed the truck. "Amanda, I
—
"

The radio interrupted with a squelch and an emergency alert peppered into the space between them.

"Relek City Police have moved the city-wide curfew up to nine P.M. Civilians and non-essential personnel are to be indoors and off the streets early tonight." The curl of a notebook page glanced off Ryan's ability as the reporter's voice continued. "No comment has been made as to whether this emergency policy has anything to do with the recently discovered body in the East Hook. Again, the curfew has been moved from eleven tonight to nine P.M . . . "