by Jill Shalvis
Nothing had ever backfired on him quite so spectacularly, because now he wanted her more than ever before. Even just standing here with her in that wig flashed memories of her he couldn’t control. Her lips on his skin, her breath hot on his neck, her legs wrapped around him, her hardened nipples pressing tight against his chest as she arched up into him. And her gasp when he’d moved deep inside her . . . God. The low, sexy sounds she’d made as she’d come had been his complete undoing, and the memories combined with what she’d said about him in the pub had him turned on all over again.
“I thought we weren’t going to do this,” she murmured, her eyes her own twin pools of fathomless emotion. “Give in to any real feelings. Thought you couldn’t.”
He was an inch from saying screw that when someone spoke behind them.
“I know I was supposed to vanish,” Old Man Eddie said apologetically, “but I went around to the other alley behind Reclaimed Woods and there was an envelope leaning up against the back door with Kylie’s name on it. Thought she’d want it.”
Kylie stared at the envelope without moving, maybe without breathing, so Joe took it from Eddie. “Did you see who left it?” he asked.
“Nope, and it’s wet from the rain like maybe it’s been there a while. I didn’t want it to get ruined.” Eddie’s smile faded as he took in their expressions. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” Joe said. “Thanks for thinking to bring it to her.”
Eddie, not taking his gaze off Kylie, nodded. “You got it.” He slid a look at Joe, brows up, silently asking if Joe was going to take care of their girl. Joe nodded and Eddie backed out of the alley.
“Open it,” Kylie said.
He did and revealed a pic of her penguin on a workbench, with someone holding a lit Bic at the penguin’s feet. On the back of the pic were a few scribbled words.
You’re running out of time.
“I am,” Kylie said. “Running out of time.”
“We’re going to get your penguin back,” Joe said firmly. “Before the deadline.”
She looked up at him with those melting eyes of hers and he found himself cupping her jaw, stroking her skin with his fingers. “We will,” he said firmly, wanting her to believe.
Eyes still locked on his, she nodded.
He nodded too and then took her by the hand to walk her through the courtyard. Kylie slowed at the fountain and looked into the water.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
Instead of answering, she pulled a coin from a pocket and closed her eyes for a moment, about to toss the coin into the water.
Joe stopped her. “What are you doing?”
She looked at him. “Do you know about the fountain’s myth?”
It wasn’t a secret. The myth went that if one wished for true love with a true heart, they’d find it. Good thing Joe didn’t have a true heart. Or a heart at all, at least not a working one.
“So you do know,” she said, watching his expression carefully.
“Something about true love, blah blah blah,” he said with a shrug. “Why?”
She let out a small smile, and this both brought a reluctant one of his own because she never failed to make him feel things, whether he wanted to or not. “What does the fountain have to do with your penguin?” he asked.
“I’m going to wish for its return.”
“Yeah, I’m pretty sure it doesn’t work like that. It’s about love.”
“Well, I love that penguin,” she said stubbornly and tossed the coin, which hit the water with a soft plop.
“So you wished for the penguin?” he asked cautiously. “Not for love for yourself?”
She went brows up and he knew he’d given himself away.
“Are you afraid of the myth?” she asked incredulously.
“Of course not.” Actually, he was terrified. Because not one, not two, not three or even four, but five people he knew had been bitten by the love bug in the past two years and all were directly linked to wishes from this very fountain. He stared at the coin she’d tossed, shimmering beneath the water’s surface, mocking him. “Just tell me that you really did wish for the penguin,” he said, because out of everyone he knew, she had the truest heart of them all. So if she’d just wished for love, they were both screwed.
She smiled, and he had one thought. He was so screwed.
“You were taking me somewhere,” she reminded him, stepping closer. “By the way you dragged me out of the pub, you were clearly in a big hurry, too.”
He gazed down at her in that red wig, unable to keep his hands from going to her hips in order to hold her to him. “We had unfinished business,” he said.
“So finish it,” she dared him.
His heart skipped a full heartbeat as he tightened his grip on her hand to lead her up the stairs to the second floor, where he disarmed Hunt Investigations’s alarm and let them into the dark offices before resetting the alarm.
His office was the first door on the right. He could’ve found it with no light at all, but there was some ambient glow coming in through the closed shades on his window. He shut and locked that door and then turned to Kylie.
She was unbuttoning her coat. After letting it fall to the floor, she hoisted herself up onto his desk. “Nice work space,” she said casually, looking around, as if she hadn’t just laid herself out like a buffet for a starving man.
He moved to stand between her legs and placed his hands flat on the desktop on each side of her hips. “If I’d known we might end up here,” he said, “I’d have cleaned it up.”
She smiled and wrapped her legs around him, locking her ankles at the small of his back. “Liar. You don’t care what anyone thinks of you.”
That was true. He’d never cared what anyone thought of him. But he found he did care what she thought. With one hand, he swept his things to the floor. The other moved to her ass to anchor her to him.
A sound escaped from deep in her throat. She’d enjoyed the Neanderthal move and that did something to him too. With her, he could be himself—good mood, bad mood, riled-up mood, whatever. He didn’t have to control himself for her. Ever.
Yet another huge turn-on.
She tilted her face to his, but then, just as he leaned in to kiss her, she pulled back an inch.
“What?” he whispered, fascinated by her, all of her.
She gave a single shake of her head. “I was pretty determined not to like you. But I keep learning new things about you. Things I like.”
He half smiled. “Even though I’m pushy and arrogant and . . . what else was it you said? Bossy?”
Her lips twitched. “Definitely bossy. Maybe you should repeat them out loud every day to work on them.”
“Sure,” he said easily. “If you say something out loud for me.”
“What?”
“My name.” He nipped her ear and whispered into it, “I’m going to make you scream it, Kylie.”
He heard the breath stutter in her chest. “I’m not much of a screamer,” she whispered.
“A challenge.” He slid a hand beneath the hem of her shirt and encountered warm, creamy smooth skin. He stroked his way north until his fingertips brushed lace. Picking her up, he turned to the couch against the far wall.
“What are you doing?” she asked, clutching at him.
“I want to be horizontal this time.”
“But . . . here?”
“Most definitely here.”
“Your desk phone,” she gasped. “You knocked it off the hook.”
“Later.”
“You have a candy bar. It’s on the floor too, which seems like a big waste of a really good candy bar—”
“It’s okay,” he said. “I know something that’s going to taste even better than a candy bar.” He licked the sensitive skin beneath her ear and she let out a shuddery moan. Dropping her to the couch, he reached for her shirt, tugged it up, and pulled it over her head to reveal the chocolate brown lace of her bra. “Pretty.” In another secon
d he discovered that her barely-there panties matched.
No chocolate required . . .
“Hurry,” she whispered, her voice a soft plea as she reached up for him. He was lowering himself over her when from his back pocket, his cell vibrated. He dropped his forehead to her gorgeous breasts and gulped in a breath.
“It might be urgent,” she said, her hands in his hair.
No doubt. But it’d been a text and not a call, so he decided it couldn’t be that important. “I don’t care.” Unhooking her bra, he drew it away from her, feeling his heart quicken at the sight of her sprawled beneath him. “Everything else can wait a minute.”
She put a hand to his chest. “And if I need more than a minute?”
“You get all the minutes you need.” His hand slid down to grip her sweet little ass, pulling her closer into the cradle of his thighs.
“Mmm, you want me,” she said breathlessly, squirming against the part of him that wanted her the most of all. Her eyes were shining with triumph, humor, and her own need.
Damn, he was such a goner for her. “I do.” He lifted his head to brush a kiss over her bare shoulder and then the underside of her jaw. “And I want you bad, too.”
With a dreamy sigh, she tipped her head back, humming in pleasure as he trailed his mouth down her throat. Over her collarbone. The tip of her breast, which he drew into his mouth, making her arch up with a gasp as his tongue rasped her nipple.
Her hands slid into his hair, tightening on the strands. “Don’t stop.”
Never was his first thought, his fingers teasing her through her panties until they were wet. Then he hooked his thumbs into the straps. “You’re not going to be needing these,” he said and slowly drew the tiny scrap of material down her legs.
“Your clothes too,” she panted. “Off.”
“And you think I’m the bossy one.” He rose to his knees over her naked body and peeled his T-shirt over his head while her fingertips skimmed his chest and stomach, wreaking havoc on his self-control. Knowing she had to touch him every bit as much as he had to touch her drove him crazy in the very best way. Bending over her, he took a nibble of her hip, then a rib, making her squirm. Gently, he closed his teeth around her nipple and tugged, and she tightened her grip in his hair. That made it difficult to remove the rest of his clothes but he managed, kicking everything off.
Kylie came up on an elbow to watch and reached for him the minute he was finished, her legs parting for him. And as he first protected them both with a condom and then made himself comfortable between her thighs, he felt a deep sense of . . . coming home. There was no other way to describe it as he slid into her.
“Kylie,” he said, staring down at her. “Look at me.”
She opened her eyes and revealed so much emotion that he felt his throat go tight. He kissed her then, hungrily drinking in the little noises she made in her throat as he began to move deep inside her. He tried to hold it together, but she was so tight, so wet, so hot that he thought he was going to blow right then. But somehow he managed to hold on through her first orgasm. He barely reined it in, but he didn’t want this to be just a release like the first time they’d been together. He wanted to show her what was in his heart.
Except his heart had way too many walls up for that, even now, so he had to settle for showing her how much she pleased his body. And he thought, given the way she clung to him after, that maybe he’d given her that.
Much, much later, Kylie rolled over in her dark bedroom and heard a soft growl. “Oops, sorry,” she whispered to Vinnie and rolled the other way, this time coming up against a different roadblock, one of the human variety. She reached out with a hand. Yep. A naked, hard, warm human body.
“Mmph,” said that naked, hard, warm body, the one that had taken her to new heights and back. It reminded her that Joe had brought her home after they’d . . . well, decimated his office. No other word for it. And afterward, still hungry for each other, they’d ended up here, in her bed.
Now Joe reached out and wrapped his arms around her. She thought he’d get up, pull his clothes on over that amazing body, and walk it out her door.
But he didn’t. Instead, he pulled her in close, pressed his face into the crook of her neck, and sighed heavily, his entire body relaxed. Sated.
“I didn’t think you’d stay,” she said.
“Tired.”
She bit her lower lip because she didn’t want to mistake this for more than it was, something she could all too easily do if she let herself. “Thought maybe we were going back to separating church and state after, like last time.”
“I can keep it in my pants if that’s what you want,” he said, voice low and husky.
“But you appear to sleep naked.”
He let out a low laugh, but didn’t move to get out of the bed. In fact, he didn’t move at all. Vinnie did though. He came in hot and plopped down on top of them both, making his way to a spot in the crook of Joe’s neck. It was a good choice. Kylie herself loved that spot. Rough with stubble, scented like a man, warm . . . With a smile, she closed her eyes and let herself drift off to sleep, safe and warm and wearing a ridiculous smile.
The next morning Kylie was in the shower when she felt the air pressure change. Then a hand, much larger than her own, took control of her washcloth. Joe’s hands were slow and knowing as they glided over her body, making her heart pound as she melted into him.
Abandoning the washcloth, his slightly calloused fingers stroked her belly, and she shivered in spite of the hot water. When she tried to turn to face him, he held her still while continuing his delicious torture with his knowing fingers, until she’d flattened her hands on the tile in front of her, dropped her head back onto his shoulder, and let herself go. She was still shuddering when he pulled her hips back and entered her from behind, doing what he’d done the night before.
Taking her to heaven and back.
She was still in the afterglow when she finally showed up at work. Gib took one look at her face and closed his eyes.
“What?” she asked.
“So you and Joe are a thing.”
“No,” she said.
He gave her a get real look. “You decide that before or after you fucked him?”
She narrowed her eyes, some of her happy glow dimming. “You don’t get to go there, Gib.”
“He’s going to hurt you, Kylie. He’s not the right guy for you.”
“I don’t want to talk about it, not with you.”
He looked pained. “Look, I screwed up, okay?”
She tossed up her hands. “What does that even mean?”
“It means I should’ve made my move sooner,” he said.
“No kidding!”
He grimaced. “There was just never the right time—”
She laughed. Like really laughed, even when this caused Gib to frown.
“I don’t see what’s so amusing,” he said.
“You had years, Gib.”
“We were kids,” he said. “And your grandpa did so much for me that I couldn’t allow—”
“Come on,” she said. “Be honest at least. When push came to shove, you just weren’t that into me. And no matter what I told myself, it was the same for me or I’d have made a move on you.” She sighed and then reached for his hand because she didn’t want to lose him from her life. She really didn’t. He’d been an important part of it for a long time and life was too short. “It’s okay,” she said. “We’re okay and we’re going to stay okay. But this subject’s closed. I’m going to get to work.”
And that’s just what she did. She went into the back and put her head down and concentrated on the mirror she needed to finish before Molly’s birthday tomorrow, instead of dwelling on the fact that she had only a week left to find her penguin, one week until playtime—or until whatever she and Joe were doing—was over.
Chapter 21
