by Lucy Monroe
She leaned past him and locked it, then looked up at him with a naughty twinkle in her hazel eyes. “Does that answer your assumption?”
“Come here.”
But instead of waiting for her to comply, he pulled her into his arms. “You feel so good against me.”
“I concur.” She tilted her head back.
He accepted the clear invitation and kissed her. There was nothing slow or gentle about this meeting of their mouths. They devoured each other, rubbing their bodies together, staking claims he had no desire to analyze the meaning of.
All he knew was that it felt damn fine. Too good to worry about a bunch of emotional stuff like a teenage girl.
Intense pleasure gripped him low in his gut and he was once again in risk of creaming his pants. He pulled back. “How do you want this?”
“There’s an empty growing table in the back of the lab. Casey and I use it for paperwork sometimes. We like this room.”
He made what he hoped was an intelligent sound and grabbed her wrist, dragging her toward the area she had indicated.
The empty table was just the right height. Sexy images of what they could do here flashed before his eyes. He had to get them naked. Right now. He could ask her to take her clothes off, but he’d rather be the one to do it.
He stripped her, starting with the lab coat that had been featuring in his fantasies since he first walked into this lab. Today’s T-shirt was hot pink and had Tinker Bell on the front. He thought the fairy with Mae West curves particularly appropriate for his own sweet little vamp. Her bra was all lace and the same color as her T-shirt. Would her panties match?
He’d know soon enough.
He had no patience for a slow striptease today. It hadn’t taken Casey’s words for Myk to realize he could have lost Lana today, but they’d confirmed the fact.
As sexy as the bra was, her naked skin was even more sensual. He undid her pants and pushed them over the gorgeous curve of her ass. How right he had been. Her G-string panties were nothing but a triangle of hot-pink lace.
Delicious. But they had to go, too.
When he had her completely naked, he stepped back and just looked. She didn’t rush him, or ask why he was staring, or any of the things that women often did when they were feeling self-conscious.
Her mouth tilted in a half smile and she put her hands on her hips, pushing her generous breasts into prominence. “Like what you see?”
“Like is an anemic word for my reaction to your nude body.” He indicated the now rock-hard dick behind his zipper. “I could drill nails with my cock right now.”
She laughed softly. “I’d rather you drilled me.”
Oh, damn. Just damn.
He picked the lab coat up off the floor. “Wear this?”
“Fantasy?” she asked in a low, teasing voice.
“Oh, yeah.”
She crossed her arms and tapped her chin and made him wait several seconds for her answer. “Okay, on one condition.”
“Name it.”
“You keep your clothes on. Just take your leather pants down far enough to get your penis out.”
His knees about buckled at her words. “Fantasy?” he asked in a choked voice.
“Oh, yeah,” she said, copying both his words and his tone.
He put the coat on her and then lifted her to sit on the edge of the growing table. “You turn me on so much, doc.”
“Uh huh…” She was too busy sliding her hands under his T-shirt to talk.
He liked that, so he didn’t even think about complaining.
He pushed the edges of her coat apart so that her rosy-tipped breasts were framed by the white fabric. Talk about decadent. “Beautiful.”
“You get turned on by odd things.”
“This from the woman who wants me dressed while I’m inside her.”
“Don’t pretend it won’t turn you on, too.”
“Baby, everything I do with you turns me on.”
“Good.”
“Fantastic.” But he was done talking. He wanted to taste. And he wasn’t going to make love again without finding out if her nipples were as sweet as they looked.
He pushed her back until she was propped up on her elbows.
“I’ll never be able to work at this table without thinking of us, like this, again.” She didn’t sound like that bothered her.
He just winked and then leaned forward to lave first one hardened peak and then the other.
She moaned, letting her head fall back.
Lana arched her back toward the hot lips teasing at her nipples. How had she lived so long thinking this was barely worth the effort?
The answer was that sex had never been like this before. If it had, she’d be an addict.
Her hips canted off the table of their own accord, her body desperate for the joining Mykola had promised her. The man always kept his promises.
“Always, doc, always,” he said against her breast, letting her know she’d once again been babbling out loud.
She had to control that trait, or she was going to blurt something out loud neither of them was ready to hear her say. Something she had yet to even allow her mind to fully grasp.
That thought disintegrated along with every other one as he took one turgid tip into his mouth. Hot suction sent pleasure pulses straight to her already contracting vaginal walls. She’d never realized there was such a direct correlation between stimulation to her nipples and near orgasmic muscular shudders in her pelvic cavity.
She’d always liked having her breasts touched, but too many men thought that large meant insensitive. They groped, squeezed, and pinched without building up to the pleasure that Mykola just seemed instinctively to know how to create.
She jerked up and down with her hips, but the only titillation he gave her was his mouth to her breasts. He was so very good at that. He tugged on her tender flesh with teeth pressing just hard enough to give pleasure and no pain. He tickled the tops of her nipples with the tip of his tongue, making her cry out from the jolts of bliss zinging through her.
He suckled, pulling the carnal delight out of her one tug at a time. It was too much and not enough and everything in between.
“Please, Mykola. Inside me. Now.” She had never wanted so much. She had never begged, or moaned like this, either. Not before him.
The sound of his zipper going down was a symphony of pleasure to her ears. Then other sounds, a tear, a growl from him as his hands were busy where she could not see. And then his penis was there, the big head pressing against her entrance made dewy in welcome.
“Please,” she begged some more. “Make it hard and fast.”
He did, pulling her hips until her bottom rested right on the edge of the table. He slammed into her and she would have slid backward but for the lab coat whose sleeves held her in place while he pinned the bottom of the garment to the table with his thighs.
He was so big and he went so deep, hitting her cervix with thrust after thrust.
The pleasure didn’t build so much as explode through her, bringing a massive orgasm that stopped her breath so she couldn’t even scream.
He didn’t have the same problem and his shout was deafening.
Afterward, he wrapped her up in his arms as he kissed her back to earth, talking sweet nonsense in her ear about her beauty and how much he wanted her.
“You’re amazing, Mykola,” she panted.
“You’re the incredible one. I’ve never been with a more responsive woman.”
“Sex just isn’t like that for me,” she admitted, the realization of why that might be settling in her heart and head at the same time.
She wanted to believe it was just Mykola’s immense sexual talent and experience, but unfamiliar emotions from deep within her soul said it was more than that.
“It’s not usually like that for me, either.”
She forced herself to meet his gaze, to accept whatever she found in the dark brown depths of his eyes. “But it is sometimes?”
His jaw went granitelike and he stood up, pulling away with care, but inexorably. “I don’t talk about my past exploits with my current partner.”
“Is that all sex is to you, an exploit?”
“That’s not what I said.”
“That’s exactly what you said.”
“Look, we need to get back to the case. Is there somewhere in here we can clean up?” He looked around. “You water the plants with something, right?”
“The growing trays are equipped with soaker hoses.”
“Oh.” He wrinkled his nose. “Maybe you’ve got paper towels, at least?”
“There’s a sink.” She and Casey used it to wash their hands after mucking about in the dirt. “It’s behind the small divider over there.”
She wasn’t sure why the building designers had put the wall up between the sink and plumbing area for the hoses and the rest of the growing room. It would have made more sense to her to have the sink by the door, but she was the scientist, not the architect. Though she’d come to work very soon after ETRD opened its doors, she’d had nothing to say about how the labs or their connected rooms were set up.
They cleaned up in silence, but afterward, they still smelled like sex to her sensitive nose. She kind of liked it, even if she didn’t particularly enjoy feeling like a soon-to-be past exploit.
No matter how he defined what had just happened, for her it had been earth-shattering. And life changing. It might come with a cost and pain would very likely be her final emotion from this relationship, but she knew now she would not die never having been in love.
After straightening her clothes, she turned to him with a smile tinged with inner sadness. “I’ll never look at my lab the same way again.”
“That would have never happened in your lab.” He didn’t return her smile.
“Oh, really?” He’d seemed just as hot for it as she had been, but then her experience was admittedly dismal compared to his.
“Really. Elle installed security cameras in all the main labs. They run on a random pattern, but I would not risk having our naked asses caught on one.” Now he smiled, but it was a bad-boy smirk accompanied by a wicked little wink.
No regrets or emotional baggage weighing him down.
“Your behind wasn’t naked,” she pointed out in her own effort to keep it light.
“Actually, it was, just not the rest of my body.” He leaned down and spoke right in her ear. “You wanted it that way, remember? Did it do it for you?”
In ways she could never explain to him. “Yes.”
“Good. I aim to please. Can we put your serum in the refrigerator yet?”
So, that was that? Well, what had she expected? He’d told her their fling, for lack of a better word, wasn’t about hearts and roses. At least not for him.
No matter how out of this world the sex was, she couldn’t mistake his consideration for her pleasure as anything other than sexual prowess. Certainly not emotion that matched her own.
“No, but soon. I’ll get a cooler ready for transport so we can head back to the beach house while it is cooling.”
“I like the way your mind works, doc.”
“Thanks.” He wouldn’t say that if he knew the three little words flitting through her mind right now though.
And if it killed her, she wasn’t going to say them out loud.
Chapter 18
When they came out of the lab, Collins was arguing at the door with a furious Nisha. “What do you mean you can’t let me in here? I have clearance for all the labs in the building! Where is Lana? She was supposed to meet me for lunch.”
“She’s not available right now, ma’am.”
“Not available?” Nisha demanded. “I don’t believe it. I’m calling security.” She spun on her heel, clearly intent on leaving to do just that.
Collins reached out to grab her. She spun and kicked out, missing his groin only because he did a quick turn and deflect.
“Damn, she’s not exactly your traditional Sunni woman, is she?” Mykola asked.
“First of all, she’s not Sunni. She’s from India, but she’s an American citizen and she’s not Islamic at all. Second, no, she’s not traditional anything.” They needed to rescue Collins before one of Nisha’s well-aimed blows landed where she intended it to. “I’m right here, Nisha.”
The golden-skinned woman stopped struggling with the bodyguard and looked past Collins. “Lana! You missed our lunch and you didn’t answer your phone and Casey isn’t answering his, either. And you’ve got G.I. Joe guarding your door. He won’t let me in the lab.”
“Let her by,” Mykola told the other man. “Why didn’t you call me?”
Collins stepped aside. “I would have, but she required my full attention.”
“He means I would have forced my way past him if he had picked up the phone. Are you the new head of security?” Nisha demanded of Mykola, giving him the evil eye.
“I am the acting head of security.”
“So, you are responsible for this man not allowing me access to this lab?”
“Yes.”
Nisha’s eyes narrowed and Lana worried for Mykola’s safety, no matter how good an agent he was. “He had a good reason for ordering extra security measures.”
“Really? I notice they aren’t in effect in the other labs. What’s going on, Lana?”
“A very dangerous South American cartel attempted to kidnap Casey today.”
Under her dusky complexion, Nisha paled. “Casey? Is he all right?” She looked around the lab, her expression agonized. “Where is he?”
The naked emotion on Nisha’s face wasn’t mere worry. It went much deeper than that. The woman loved Casey. Was in love with him. Lana wondered for how long, but didn’t dwell on that.
What was important right now was reminding Casey what was good about his life and helping Nisha to see that the man she cared for was okay. Her concern for Casey was a beacon no one could miss. She hadn’t once asked why he’d been kidnapped, or if anyone else at ETRD was at risk. Her entire focus was on Casey’s well-being. A situation like this could bypass barriers Nisha would never have let down otherwise.
Both she and Casey deserved a chance to explore the very real emotion they felt for one another.
Love didn’t always come at the right time or to reciprocating people, but for Nisha and Casey, it was all there. And Lana wasn’t going to let anything stand in their way. Not Anibal Vega or Ahmet Musa. And not Agent in Charge Mykola Chernichenko.
“Casey is fine.” She didn’t mention the possible concussion from when that stupid thug knocked her friend on the back of his head. “If you wait a few minutes, we’ll take you to see him.”
“Like hell we will,” Mykola said.
Lana ignored him.
Nisha did too. “Is he at home? I’ll go now.”
“No. He’s someplace safe.”
“And he’s going to stay that way,” Mykola firmly inserted.
Lana frowned at him. “I’m not proposing we compromise his safety. I wouldn’t do that.”
“She’s an unknown. We can’t take her to the beach house.” What he didn’t say, but she knew he was thinking, was that no one but they and Brett Adams and his team knew where the house was.
Clearly, Casey and the others would be safer if it stayed that way, but Lana wasn’t a threat.
“I…He’s safe.” The usually supremely confident scientist looked uncertain. “I shouldn’t bother him.”
“Casey won’t see it as a bother, believe me.”
Nisha looked away and sighed. “He’s so young.”
“Does that really matter?”
Nisha was silent for several seconds, but then shook her head resolutely. “No. No, it doesn’t.” She took a deep breath and let it out, like she was letting go of a wearying burden. She let her gaze settle back on Lana. “I fell for him the first time I saw him. He’s so sweet and attractive. So different from the men back home, both in how he looks and the way he treat
s me. Like he recognizes and respects my intelligence, but still sees my femininity. I haven’t dated anyone else in more than a year. But I thought it was wrong to pursue something with him.”
Lana smiled. “And then he pursued you.”
“Yes.”
“Are you glad?”
“Yes. I still wasn’t sure this morning, though. I was meeting you for lunch to talk it over.”
“I figured as much.”
“He told you he asked me out?” Nisha asked.
“He told me he wanted to. I encouraged him. And then, yes, he told me he did it and that you said yes.”
“That’s a relief. I was worried you wouldn’t approve and that would make it hard for him at work.”
“You should know me better than that.”
“Lana, I don’t think anyone working for ETRD knows you well enough to guess how you would respond to anything but a chemical reaction.”
“Casey does.”
“He’s your friend.”
“Yes.”
“He’s mine, too.”
“But he’s more, isn’t he?”
Nisha drew herself up. “Yes. I hope he’s as ready for a relationship as he thinks he is.”
“He may have boyish features, but he’s twenty-four. Not a child.”
“I’m thirty-two.”
“Still young.”
Nisha laughed softly. “You think so?”
“Definitely.”
“What if he changes his mind down the road? My feelings for him are only going to grow.”
“You don’t think his for you will?”
“I don’t know.”
“He compares every woman he meets to you. They all come up lacking.”
“He told me that.”
“Did you believe him?”
“I wouldn’t have said yes to the date if I didn’t.”
“Then believe in him. And in what you two can have together. He’s not going to break your heart. I know him.”
“Even if he were, I’m willing to take the risk.” Her eyes said it all. “I have to.”
Lana was going to hug the other woman, even if that sort of thing wasn’t her usual way, but Mykola inserted himself between them.
He looked ready to grind bricks between his teeth. “Speaking of risks, taking you to see Casey might not be the best course of action.”
