by J. R. Ward
As he gripped the nape of her neck and locked on, he was damned aware that he was dominating the hell out of her, taking control of her body, holding her like he meant to shove her onto her kitchen table and kneel between her legs so he could suck on her sex.
But then again, that was what he wanted to do to her.
“I’m sorry,” he said, aware that he was apologizing not only for what he was about to do, but for all the shit racing through his mind, all the down-and-dirty he wanted to put them both through.
And then he sealed their fate by sealing their lips.
Her mouth was soft under him—and so were her breasts against his chest and her hips against his cock . . . she was soft and hot, the kind of thing he wanted to seep into and stay in awhile. But even as his pelvis curled in and his erection pulsed, in the back of his mind, he knew that conflict of interest was not the biggest problem they had. As much as he was pretending to be back to normal, he was ripped raw on the inside, between the shit in the woods and the update on his dad.
And he was worried Reilly looked like exactly the kind of Band-Aid he needed . . .
It was the last logical, decent thought he had.
As he penetrated her with his tongue, his arms tightened up and his lower body arched again, the squeeze and stroke on his cock juicing him even further. And that was before he felt the shudder that went through Reilly. Clearly, she was right there with him, especially as her nails bit into his shoulders and her thighs split, giving him an opening to push one of his legs through.
With an internal curse, he shifted her around and eased her down on the table, on top of the paperwork she’d just printed out. Images of her with her legs over his shoulders and him licking up the center of her core made him think he might have done some false advertising with his F-bomb.
Well, not false, really. He was just adding a very vital tourist attraction on the way to the big event.
His palm swept down to the outside of her thigh and he lifted her leg, rubbing himself even closer to where he ultimately wanted to be. Breaking the suction of their mouths, he buried himself in her neck, nipping and licking.
“Let me see you,” he groaned into her throat. “Let me . . .”
Inside, another voice said.
Abruptly, he lost his rhythm, pulling out of the spiral and looking up. Now his heart beat for a different reason.
“What is it?” she said.
His eyes flashed around. Except there were no shadows darting around her rooster kitchen. No creaks of floorboards or squeaking hinges. Nothing staring in through the windows.
After a moment, his adrenaline faded, and he became aware once again where they were and what he’d been doing with her.
Maybe it had just been a really loud internal thought.
Which considering what had happened with Kroner the night before didn’t make him feel better at all.
Her hand came up and lay on his cheek. “Are you okay?”
“No.” He refocused on her face. Felt her body beneath his own. Heard her deep breaths. “But I don’t want to stop. You’re real to me . . . and I fucking need that right now. I need . . . you right now.”
She was not like the other women he’d had: Her smart eyes saw too much, knew too much. Hell, he’d been naked in front of her from the first moment he’d met her—and that should have sent him running in the opposite direction. Instead? He just wanted the shit out of her.
“Then take me,” she said, pulling her shirt free of her skirt.
He didn’t give her more than a split second to change her mind: as he had with her lips, he dived in, running his hands under the opening she gave him, making contact with a whole lot of warm female skin. And then the buttons came free as if they had the same objective he did: all-access.
He reared up when the last popped open. . . . Holy fuck.
Red lace. Intricate red lace over a set of perfectly proportioned breasts.
Which meant that through the little cutouts, he saw her nipples, tight and straining.
“Do you like what I bought today?” she asked hoarsely.
“Not bad.” He cleared his throat as his voice cracked. “Not bad at all. But what’s underneath is even hotter.”
With smooth grace, her hands went up and traced the bra’s thin, bright straps . . . then drifted down to the hard tips that, as she arched, begged for him.
On a growl, he shoved up her skirt and maneuvered himself between her legs, spreading them further with his hips as he went for what had caught his eye: Drawing her into his mouth through the amazing bra, there was the rasp of the lace against his tongue, but also peek-a-boos of the pink, tight flesh beneath.
Wasn’t long before that was so not enough.
With a rough, impatient hand, he tugged the cup down, revealing her nipple.
“Fucking hell . . .” he bit out. “You are—”
Uninterested in him talking: in a rush, her fingers grabbed onto the back of his head and brought him downward to her breast. As he sucked her in, she jacked up off the table, and that movement, that jerking, demanding shove snapped what last restraint he had. All at once, he took over, pushing one of his arms under her and lifting her further, using his other hand to go right between her thighs, to that heat behind her hose and her panties.
He rubbed her sex, his palm hitting the top, right where she needed—
“Veck!”
The sound of his name was all about the more, more, more. And he was going to give it to her. Switching sides, he bit the other half of the bra and pulled it down with his teeth, before he suckled on her opposite nipple.
This still wasn’t enough, though. He needed full-contact naked. Here, now—
The moan that rippled up and out of her was just the kind of agreement that he needed to hear.
Christ, this was going to happen, he thought. This was going to happen.
Veck was totally dominant.
Reilly hadn’t expected anything less, but what was a surprise was how much it turned her on. Part of it was her sense that if she got uncomfortable with how far they’d gone, he’d pull back in a second. But the other half was the way he handled her, the confidence, the power, the erotic possibility that came from his mouth and his hands and his intense, hot eyes.
No doubt he’d started out with a natural talent for sex . . . and developed it over the years.
Abruptly, as if he read her mind, his stare flashed up to hers and locked on while he flicked her nipple with his tongue . . . and as his lids lowered, she knew he wanted her to watch him.
What a sight it was. He’d pulled down the other side of her bra and was working her there, licking and sucking as his flat hand pushed into her. God, he was big—all over: His erection was a long, thick ridge rubbing against her inner thigh, his shoulders were so huge she couldn’t see anything past them, and his lower body was taking up all the room between her spread legs.
With her breasts pushed up by the bra he’d pulled down, her shirt wide-open, and her skirt up around her waist, the next logical undoing was the thin nylon covering her legs, and she popped her pelvis off the table, feeling that circling palm of his press harder into her. Dipping her thumbs into the elastic waistband, she scooped the hose down and ducked her hips, the constriction slipping onto her thighs.
“I’ll take it from there.” Veck eased back, his eyes on fire as he stared at her body. “Mmm . . . right where I want to be.”
As he smiled like a predator, she brought her knees up to help as he stripped the hose off slowly. And it wasn’t until the thin wisps were free of her feet that she had to wonder how far this was going to go. Was she really going to take what they’d started to the conclusion they were both gunning for?
If that was a “yes,” there were practicalities to deal with.
But, crap, what a buzz kill the condom discussion was—and, yeah, now she knew why people made dumb choices when it came to sex. All the things that truly mattered, the things that were going to sting after
these intense minutes were over and done with, the things she’d have to live with, maybe forever . . . were nothing more than distant echoes she could barely hear, spoken in a language she didn’t want to translate.
Fifty thousand years of evolution knew what was up.
With a surge, Veck came back to her mouth, kissing her deep as his hands drifted downward—
The curse that shot up her throat was more vibration than sound: His hand was back between her legs, brushing over her inner thigh, heading for the match to the bra he’d already seen and dominated.
“Veck!” she barked again as his touch slid to that center strip of satin.
He was careful, putting just enough pressure on that sensitive place, stroking her in a tight circle that made her body go both utterly loose and unbearably tense.
Screw the panties, she wanted nothing between them . . . and yet the silk barrier was not all bad, the seam at the top adding another dimension to the rhythm he’d fallen into. And he didn’t stop kissing her mouth or her neck or her breasts, until she felt as though he was all over her, surrounding her, taking her even though they had yet to become fully joined.
With a quick shift, he lifted his torso from her, and pushed his hips into her sex, locking their bodies together. Then curling his lower spine, he ground into her, stroking her with his erection as he looked down at the connection.
God, his face was dark with hunger, that cool reserve of his gone, that impassive mask blown to hell and gone by the driving need that locked his jaw.
They were going to do this, she realized.
Which was a shock. In her life, choices were made based on data screens of should and have to and better not. This hot sex was definitely in the last category . . . and yet she wasn’t going to stop it.
They were going to do it safely, however—although not in a bed. This table was working just fine.
But there were things she wanted to get a better feel for first.
Reaching down her body, she took her palm and slid it between them—
Veck’s head dropped back. “Fuuuuuck . . .”
Perfect sentiment: His erection was even bigger than she imagined, and it kicked against her palm—
The sound of the doorbell was loud as a gunshot.
And yet for a moment, she couldn’t comprehend what the hell the noise was, or why she should care.
Veck recovered his senses first. “Pizza.”
“Wha . . .t?”
With quick, logical thinking, he reached over and canned the lights so that whoever had brought their pepperoni and sausage didn’t get a floor show. Then, with efficient hands, he pulled her shirt back together, tugged the hem of her skirt down, and reached into his pants, rearranging his arousal so his fly didn’t look like a circus tent.
“I’ll take care of it,” he said in a level voice. Like nothing had happened. At all.
As he walked off for the front door, Reilly sat up slowly, her head swimming and her body shaking. Holding her blouse together, his brisk return to normal made her feel totally out of control—and then she shifted herself off the table, and the papers on the Barten case fell to the floor.
The flurry of individual pages formed a kind of carpet at her feet, and they were just the kind of mirror she needed to see herself clearly in: Across town, there was a whole family mourning for a daughter they knew they had lost, and instead of focusing on their pain and her job . . . she was hooking up with a man she had no business getting within ten yards of.
Couldn’t get a better conflict of interest than this one. It was frickin’ textbook.
Fumbling with the buttons on her shirt, she did them up fast and then bent down to pick the copies of the report up. As her hair fell into her face, she thought, where was her scrunchie?
Who the hell knew.
Tucking the tangled mess behind her ears, she pulled the printouts together with careful hands, reordering the pages, separating everything back into two piles, hers and Veck’s.
Separate was better.
Had she lost her mind?
Down the hall, the deep rumble of a thank-you was followed by the front door shutting and his heavy footfalls coming back toward the kitchen.
Standing up fast, she put the two stacks of papers on the table and kept her eyes on them. She couldn’t look at him. Just didn’t have the strength at the moment.
“I think you’d better go.” Her voice didn’t sound right, but then, she didn’t feel right.
“Okay. I’ll call a cab.”
Crap. His bike was back at the station house, wasn’t it.
With a silent curse, she muttered, “That’s all right. I can drive you—”
“No, a cab is better.”
She nodded and brushed the front page of the report . . . right where Sissy’s vital stats and disappearance date were listed. “We’ll go through this in the office tomorrow morning.”
“Yeah.” As he pulled on his coat, the soft sound of fabric on fabric was loud as the doorbell. “I’m sorry.”
She crossed her arms over her chest and nodded again. “Yeah, me, too. I don’t know what got into me.”
But she damn sure knew what would have if dinner hadn’t arrived in the nick of time.
Moments later, he was gone, and he shut the door behind him so quietly it didn’t make any sound.
When she finally looked over her shoulder, all she saw was the pizza on the counter. Uh-huh, right, like she was eating anything right now.
The box went right into the fridge.
On her way out, she passed the table and found her panty hose on the back of a chair. Her scrunchie, on the other hand, was on the floor by the archway into the little dining room. Leaning over to pick the thing up, she went eye-to-eye with the Victoria’s Secret payload.
And realized that her bra was still waaaaaay out of place.
She left the bags where they were and fixed the immediate problem with a couple of jerks and a whole lot more cursing.
As she headed for the stairs, she thought, tomorrow she was wearing her old boring cotton underwear to work, thank you very much.
CHAPTER 12
“Question. Is it still B and E if you don’t actually break anything to get inside?”
Adrian let that little ditty fly just as Jim and the boys took form in Thomas DelVecchio Jr.’s front hall—and all things considered, the angel could have come up with a much worse comment. Or broken into an ear-destroying, off-key rendition of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.”
Jim had never spent so much time praying for plugs and muffs.
At least the bastard didn’t try to rap.
“Well?” Ad said.
“Look, we don’t even exist,” Jim muttered. “So you could argue we’re not really here anyway.”
“Excellent point. Guess it’s legal.”
“Like it would bother you if the shit weren’t.”
The house was decorated in exactly Jim’s style: functional, nothing special, lot of empty floor space. The problem? Not a lot of personal effects, and they needed one that had some metal in it. Preferably gold, silver, or platinum. If they could get just an object with enough of Veck’s imprint on it, they could use that as a connection to get into the man’s brain from a remote location: According to Eddie, it was too risky to do it one-on-one in person. Not with Devina around.
“Let’s split up,” Jim said. “I’ll cover the second floor.”
As Ad and Eddie fanned out, he mounted the stairs two at a time. The master bedroom took up one whole half of the second story, although that sounded more impressive than the reality, because the total square footage of the place wasn’t more than twenty-one hundred, maybe twenty-two.
“Christ, here much, buddy?” he muttered.
There was nothing in the room but a big bed and a crappy bedside table with a lamp on it. No alarm clock—guy probably used his cell phone for that. No landline telephone, but why would you need one? Requisite flat-screen screwed into the wall with the rem
ote in the tangled sheets.
Some dirty clothes were in a plastic bin in the corner, socks and boxer briefs hanging off the sides as if the thing were drooling black cotton. Closet revealed . . . shit actually on hangers, which was better than the duffel bag shuffle Jim had lived with for years. On the back of the door, there were a couple of belts with metal fittings, but there had to be something better he could use.
He headed for the bathroom. All the lights were off, but the guy didn’t believe in drapes, so there was enough from the streetlights to go by—
As soon as he stepped into the squat, tiled room, the back of his neck went wild, ants crawling over his skin.
Devina.
“Where are you,” he said, turning in a tight circle. “Where the hell are you . . .”
The demon had been here—he could sense her presence lingering in the air, kind of like the stench of garbage hanging onto a trash bin even after the thing had been emptied.
And didn’t this lend a little credibility to Devina’s reveal at the diner.
As he turned to the sink, he frowned. The mirror was covered with a towel, and the tickling at his nape grew more intense as he reached up and pulled the terry cloth down.
Nothing except an eighties-vintage medicine cabinet sunken into the drywall. But the glass-front face of the thing was utterly contaminated.
Had she come through it somehow? he wondered.
The instant his fingertips made contact with the reflective surface, he retracted his hand. The medicine cabinet was icy cold.
Shit, Veck knew something was after him, didn’t he. Why else drape the thing? The question was, how far was that demon into him?
“What did you do to him, bitch.”
Replacing the towel, Jim opened the vanity drawers, rattling the backup deodorant and the extra toothpaste and the nail clippers—hey, maybe they would work. Except they were hardly something the guy would have an emotional connection with—
Light swept across the front of the house, blasting through the window Jim was standing in front of, and reminding him that he hadn’t bothered to go invisi.
