Hurrying in her high heels wasn’t easy, but Maya managed to cross the gravel lot and enter the back door just after Axell. Men in a fury were often unpredictable. With Axell’s concealed Scorpio, he was capable of anything, including paranoia. She didn’t know why she should worry, but she did.
She heard the angry shouts as soon as she walked in. In front of her, some of the kitchen staff edged toward the back door where she stood, and the rest, toward the exit into the restaurant. Axell stood in the center of the kitchen, speaking in a low, taut voice to a couple of surly-looking young men. One of them was shouting and shaking his fist. In horror, Maya watched as the other grabbed a meat cleaver from the butcher-block counter.
She wanted to scream, but sound froze in her throat as the punk swung the weapon toward Axell. Gory images of gushing arteries and bloody hearts from every horror movie she’d ever watched flashed before her eyes. The idea of losing Axell in such a catastrophic manner barely had time to lodge in her brain before Axell’s hand shot out.
Grabbing the wrist holding the swinging weapon, Axell twisted until the guy shrieked and dropped the cleaver. Then with the same efficient movement, Axell wrapped the punk’s arm behind his back and propelled him toward the door. Maya jumped out of his way, her heart thudding in relief.
The man sailed out, landing palms down in the parking lot. Not even noticing Maya’s presence, Axell swung around and pointed at the other one, jerking his head toward the exit. The young man hastened to follow his friend.
One of the waitresses whistled her approval. The others returned to their work as if this were a daily routine. The chef winked at Maya before returning to his stove. Still weak-kneed and starting to shake, she took in the staff’s calm reaction with astonishment and stared at Axell as he casually ordered someone to call the police.
She’d thought him a safe, sane family man, a respectable guy who wore business suits and ties like she’d seen on television. No one had warned her he had the manners of a five-hundred pound gorilla when angered, or that his job entailed cleaver-waving madmen.
Axell expressed no emotion as he spotted her hiding behind the door. “I’m sorry you had to see that. I can’t afford to jeopardize my liquor license by having those two hanging around here. They’re out on bail awaiting trial on drug charges. I’ve just got the ABC board off my back over that incident.”
“He could have killed you!” Maya couldn’t shake the image of that cleaver swinging at his chest. She stared at him in wide-eyed horror. It had never occurred to her to worry about Axell’s safety. He was just there, like North Carolina’s ever-present jungle of trees. Discovering he was as human and vulnerable as Matty and Constance and Alexa turned her version of the world on its head.
A glitter of amusement lit his eyes as she gripped his arm. “Bigger men than that have tried. I grew up in a bar, Maya. I can take care of myself.”
“You lifted him off the floor! He was nearly as big as you. He had a meat cleaver!”
A waitress returned with glasses of wine. Axell shoved one into Maya’s fingers. “Settle down. I have to wait for the police and make a report. I want it perfectly clear that they weren’t here at my request.” Regret puckered his brow. “I’m sorry, Maya. I wanted to have you to myself for a little while, but I know you’re hungry. Shall I have Alphonso fix you something to eat?”
The question was moot. The chef had already dished up plates of pasta and one of the busboys was carrying them in their direction.
“It’s my new recipe,” Alphonso shouted over the noise of the kitchen. “Taste it.” He turned to snap at one of the waitresses scurrying to keep out of his way. “Bring them a Caesar salad, and don’t bruise the lettuce this time!”
Still amazed, if not as shaken, Maya shook her head at Axell. “The pasta will be fine. Will you sit and eat it with me or do you have to check on the bar?” She was slowly understanding that she had married not just a man, but his business too. They were part and parcel of each other. She hadn’t decided how she felt about that, no more than she was certain about his violent streak, or the electrical excitement leaping between them.
In reply, Axell gripped her elbow and steered her toward the employee break room, away from the staff and his patrons and any other interference. “The evening isn’t over,” he warned as he seated her in the same booth they had used the night the shop collapsed.
Anticipation shivered up Maya’s arm as Axell squeezed it. He wouldn’t kiss her in front of others; he wasn’t a publicly demonstrative man, but she could see the heat in his eyes as he looked down at her. The man definitely intended for the evening to have a more intimate end.
***
“We found them smoking in the alley, both higher than kites,” the patrol officer announced as he accepted the soft drink a waitress handed him. “Claimed they came after their back pay, but the drugs blow the terms of their bond. They won’t be out again.”
The detective in charge snapped his ball point shut and shoved his notepad back in his pocket. “Until we find the dealer and where he stashes his stuff, the problem will only get worse.” He glanced in Maya’s direction. “Heard your sister is back in town.”
“My sister has absolutely...” Maya started out of her seat as if prepared to scratch the cop’s eyes out.
Axell grabbed her shoulder and shoved her back down. She turned her glare in his direction and spiked his foot with her heel so hard, he grimaced, but ignored her fury. He calmly answered for her. “Cleo is out at my place tonight, reading books to her kid. That was a cheap, lazy shot. And I’d already paid the bastards. This is a set up. Ask them where they got the stuff.”
“Those kind never give straight answers.” Undeterred by Axell’s insult, the detective got in his parting remark. “Heard that musician staying at the shop is working at a club downtown that got raided. You might wanta be more careful who you associate with, Mr. Holm. Tar sticks.”
For a woman who detested confrontation, Maya certainly put up a struggle as Axell grabbed her arms and physically held her in her seat, clapping a hand over her mouth as the detective walked off. She bit his fingers as savagely as she could and dug her fingers into his arm. He was damned glad he wasn’t wearing just a T-shirt. She’d had her nails done, and they cut like miniature knives.
“You have no right—” she sputtered as the door closed behind the police and Axell released her.
“I have every right,” he returned coldly, dragging her from the booth and toward the door. “This is my place, and I’ll not have the local cops on my back. They just don’t like outsiders, and Cleo and Stephen,” he glanced down at her briefly, “and even you, are outsiders. It’s much easier to pin bad things on people they don’t know. They’re human. Hell, I’ve met your sister and Stephen, and I still don’t trust them. So let it go.”
“You don’t trust them?” she asked incredulously as he pushed her into the alley. “You think I would leave the kids with anyone I didn’t trust? What kind of person are you? Would you leave Constance with someone you think deals drugs?”
“I’m trusting your judgment in leaving them there, and that’s all I’m trusting. And there are times I wonder why the hell I’m doing that.” Axell could see all his plans for the evening going up in a tower of flame. If he’d thought Maya capable of planning anything, he’d blame her for the evening’s fiasco. He was in dire need and she was no less attractive for being furious. He had to hold on to her arm to prevent her from slapping him. He could think of a lot better things his hand could be doing right now.
“Right. I’m an airheaded idiot too naive and too stupid to know if someone’s doing drugs. What do I know about people, anyway? They all look alike to me.”
She was on a real roll, Axell realized as he tried to steer her toward the car. He’d married a spacy pacifist, and she’d emerged from her cocoon as a Valkyrie, prepared to defend those she loved. He’d always detested scenes like this, but the earlier adrenaline rush had combined with too much testoste
rone, and his lust not only took on new proportions, but entirely new perspectives. The heat of her in his arms baked his brains.
“Why don’t you take away my license and keys and keep me at home, where I can’t hurt myself?” she taunted as he tried to drag her toward the car. “That’s what you’d really like, isn’t it? Complete control. Well, dammit, I’m not one of your little tin soldiers.”
To Axell’s surprise, she jerked her arm from his grasp and ran down the alley in those ridiculous strapped high heels. He’d never seen Maya in high heels. She had ankles halfway up to her knees. Shaking his head at his wayward thoughts, he waited for her to discover she had nowhere to run.
He figured she’d give it up before she crossed the street to the next block, but she didn’t. Cursing at making a spectacle of himself, Axell chased her across the street and down the alley behind the town’s oldest stores.
Stumbling over a garbage can, he caught up with her before they could both break their necks. Grabbing her arm, he pulled her hard against him, despite her twisting protest. To hell with arguing. He was ready for the next part. Past ready. “Yell at me if you want, but don’t run away, dammit!”
Holding Maya’s squirming curves tight with both arms wrapped around her, he dived down to claim the lips he’d coveted for too long.
In seconds, they were both going up in flames. Gasping for air, Axell leaned back against the door of Cleo’s old shop.
The door opened, and they fell in.
Twenty-seven
If you smoke after sex, you’re doing it too fast.
“You forgot to lock the damned door!” Axell muttered as he staggered backward into the musty darkness and righted both of them before they could collapse into the chaos of old boxes left from the move.
“It’s a condemned building, let someone else lock it,” Maya sniped, more disgruntled by having the fieriest kiss of her entire life interrupted than worrying about whether or not she’d locked a door. Still, she shouldn’t have let him manipulate her like that. She was angry at him. Furious. She just couldn’t completely remember why.
“Proper civic attitude.” Slamming the door closed and casting them into total night, Axell backed her against the wall. “Now, where were we?”
“If you think you can...” she started to protest, but Axell’s mouth cut her off. His tongue took advantage of her parted lips and initiated an intoxicating foray that had her gripping his shoulders for support. Virgo’s avoided spontaneity. Surely he didn’t...
“Axell, we can’t—”
“We can.” He propped his hands on either side of her head and deepened the kiss.
The heated, masculine aroma of Axell’s skin and shaving lotion surged through Maya’s senses as his weight pressed her against the wall. She was piercingly aware of all the places they touched, of the way her breasts in their thin silk crushed against his suit coat, of the way his zipper ground into her belly beneath the pressure of his arousal. With what remained of her mind, she knew this was insane, but the insistent hollow in her lower parts had no mind, only needs, and her hips pushed up to find his.
“I’d meant to take you to a hotel and buy champagne,” he muttered in frustration as his hands located the curves of her breasts and crushed them in a desperate caress.
“The nearest hotel is in Charlotte and I hate champagne,” she protested without thinking, sinking her fingers into Axell’s glorious golden hair and pulling his mouth back to hers.
“Oh, God, yes,” he muttered hungrily against her mouth. “No kids, no cats, no interruptions...”
She couldn’t argue with any of that, especially with his hands unfastening the thin collar holding the top of her dress in place. She could see nothing in the darkness, but the lack of vision heightened her other senses. Axell’s fingers slid caressingly beneath the fabric of her dress, slipping the neckline down until he cupped her breasts with those big firm hands she’d admired from the start. She sucked in a breath as the callused roughness stroked her skin.
The urgent mouth plundering her lips suddenly lowered to suckle at her breast.
Given the freedom to scream, she did. The moisture of Axell’s mouth connected with the electric current already surging through her, jolting her into a different dimension. Maya arched higher, grasping his broad shoulders for support, pushing into him and demanding more. Axell obliged.
With a haste she’d never seen in him, he drank her deeper, harder, until she thought he’d sucked her inside of him and swirled her somewhere in the dark vortex of his soul. His other hand plucked the nipple of the breast his mouth had yet to claim. The twin sensations spun her into a spiral from which there was no return. Only the crush of his hips against her belly prevented her from elevating entirely from the floor.
Somewhere in the back of her mind, Maya knew what they were doing was ridiculous for two grown, married people, but she didn’t care. Releasing Axell’s shoulders, she wriggled her hands between them and sought his belt.
He groaned deep in his throat as her knuckles brushed his fly. “I’ve been wondering what you wore under this piece of nothing,” he muttered, lowering one hand to pull at her skirt while his mouth traveled from one breast to the other, via the hollow of her throat and by means of kisses so hot they left scorch marks.
Maya got his belt unfastened and started on his zipper. “Keep your romantic fantasies a little longer. Just help me with this damned...”
He obliged readily. Before she could exclaim over the size of the erection she brushed against, Axell had her skirt hiked to her waist, and his hot palm seared her flesh.
“Garters. Damn, you wore garters. I want to see...” He uttered a guttural groan as she stroked him. “Maya-a-a...ah-h”
She thought he tore her panties in two — her stoic businessman reverted to uncivilized Norse god.
She wasn’t in any shape for thinking. She only knew the moment when Axell’s fingers probed higher, stroking her to the brink with a rough caress. His finger wasn’t enough. Clutching his shoulders again, she shoved against him, demanding more, demanding what now rubbed against her belly, heavy and aroused.
A keening cry of ecstasy escaped her lips as Axell stroked her deeper, in just the right spot, instantly carrying her to the precipice and...over...
Maya shuddered and wept and fell against him as she lost control. It had never been this way before. Never. Men used her. She used men. Nothing like this had ever happened. She couldn’t stop. She needed more, needed it more urgently than ever. The tension spiraled up inside her so quickly, she gasped. It wasn’t enough.
Axell understood. Lifting her hips in his hands, he raised her to his height. Instinctively—because she was incapable of thought—Maya wrapped her legs around him and arched outward, demanding what she knew he could give.
He drove into her with a stroke so deep, he should have struck her backbone. Crying now, she rocked against him, taking him deeper, until he rubbed the mouth of her womb and the shudders rocked all the way through her.
He withdrew and plunged again, took her all the way up, then teased her by drawing back some more. Maya screamed, then cursed, then buried his throat in kisses. He didn’t even have his shirt off. She pawed at the cotton, but she couldn’t reach his chest. He pounded her back against the wall again, protecting her hips with his hands, driving her back into that spiraling vortex that swept them both into its center like leaves in the wind.
“Now, Maya, now...”
And at his command, she broke, splintered into so many pieces she’d never recover them all. She was aware of Axell’s shout of release, of his powerful surge deep within her, of the rush of hot liquid filling her as he shattered along with her. All their atoms and particles twinkled and twirled in a cosmic dance in the darkness, combining them as no piece of paper or human words could ever do.
Speechless, they panted in each other’s arms, ignoring their surroundings, wrapped up in the physical bond they’d just forged. Anything else would be an intrusion, and t
hey’d had far too many intrusions in the past.
“My God, Maya, I never thought...” Axell lowered her carefully to the floor, not releasing the smooth skin of her buttocks. She had such delectably soft skin, skin that wafted a scent of roses as he stroked, skin he couldn’t stop touching if his life depended on it. Maybe if she would let him, just one more time…
He must be mad. They were in a condemned building, no doubt surrounded by rats. He’d meant to give her champagne and a honeymoon suite.
“Could we do that again?” she whispered breathlessly somewhere just below his ear. “So I could know it wasn’t just a fluke?”
Axell laughed helplessly against her fallen stack of curls. Even her hair smelled of roses. No complicated chemical scents for his Maya. The ache inside him right now was all her.
He lifted his head and finally releasing her tempting skin, smoothed her hair. “Let’s test it out in bed, all right? I’m afraid that next time, the walls will tumble down with the vibrations.”
“I’m still furious at you,” she reminded him.
“I want to see what you look like with all the lights on,” he countered, pulling up the neck of her dress and reluctantly trying to fasten it.
She wriggled beneath him, inflaming his senses instantly. He didn’t do things like this. He never lost control of a situation. He’d never tried to control Maya. His palm filled with plump breast as he tried to hold her still.
“Gotcha,” she whispered. Then, as suddenly as she’d wriggled, she went stock still. “Did you hear that?”
His mind wasn’t thinking clearly. His hearing wasn’t working at all. “Hear what?” he murmured without paying attention to anything other than the warm squeezable places his fingers explored.
“Mice?” she offered tentatively. “Really big rats?”
Impossible Dreams Page 24
