She caught Charlotte’s glare and turned away. “I didn’t have time to go through all of them. Enough to know they were what I was looking for. I assume photographing them is why he’s getting this special treatment.”
Alex scowled looking at the monitor and the exhausted man lying faceup on the bed. “Yeah, but I’m not finished with him yet.”
“I take it this is…personal,” Jeannie said.
“Very.” The word came out more like a growl.
They watched Cord leave. Davidson strained to get off the bed, grunting as he did. He limped into the bathroom and ran a bath, as Alex had predicted.
“Looks like he forgot the recorder altogether,” Tom said. He quickly fiddled with the lock, pulled back the painting, and snatched the disk from Davidson’s recorder. “This is what it’s all about.”
Alex nodded. “Yes, it is. Pull your stuff and close up shop.”
“You don’t want to wait until he sees the disk is gone?”
“No. I want to split now. Even though I’d like more than anything to watch his reaction when he finds out he’s been had, it’s too risky to stay. The setup could only come from this room. Can the cameras wait until tomorrow?”
“No problem,” Tom said quickly disconnecting his video feed. “He won’t find them, and I had no problem getting into the rooms.”
“Good,” Alex said. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
Tom packed the recorder and monitor in a case.
“He’ll know it was me, and he’ll figure Cord was in on it, which he wasn’t. The bruiser just wanted to play.” Alex slipped the straps of the grocery bag Jeannie had given him over his shoulder and put his arm around Charlotte. “This is the most dangerous part. Not being seen getting out of the hotel will take a stroke of luck. After Davidson sees the disk is missing, he’ll go to his office to check his safe. We want to be long gone.”
They quickly slunk into the corridor, heading for the stairs to avoid the elevators. They descended the four flights quickly.
Jeannie held something out to Alex when they got to the lobby and out onto the street. “Here’s my card. I’m a security consultant. Call me if you ever need…security.”
The inflection in her tone suggested something else. Alex glanced at Charlotte but took the card anyway. “I will. And thanks.”
“Thank you. Nice to work with you all.” She offered Alex a wicked grin, turned, and strutted off in her high heels toward an expensive sports car in the hotel circle.
“She’s something, isn’t she?” Tom asked.
“She is that,” Charlotte said.
Alex noted the sarcasm in Charlotte’s tone. “Thanks, Tom. Good work.” He took out another thick envelope and handed it to him. “I don’t have to tell you to forget this evening.”
“What evening?”
“By the way, you know if Davidson got anyone to take the job he offered you?”
“Haven’t heard. I’m sure he dropped the idea after he decided to get the proof for himself. I’ll keep my ears open anyway and let you know. You worried?”
“No. But I’m curious who’d take the contract.”
“With your name linked to Max, I doubt he’d find any takers.”
“There’s always someone.”
Tom said good-bye to Charlotte and headed to his car. Alex put his arm around her. “Ready?”
“Yup.” She didn’t speak until he got behind the wheel. “Did you see her? Jeannie Day did everything but open her legs to you.”
Alex laughed out loud. “You’re jealous.”
“No, I’m not.” She sniffed and wiggled in the seat. “Okay, yes, I am. She was in heat, and the heat zeroed in on you.”
“But I’m only interested in one woman, and she’s right here.”
“Humph,” she snorted. “I still didn’t like it.”
“Forget it. She’s a burglar. Not my type at all.”
“What do you call what you did tonight?”
“Sweet justice.” He leaned over and kissed her. “You were great. Thanks for helping.”
“Yeah, well…”
Seeing Jack get a taste of his own medicine must have satisfied her. It did him. Maybe he’d been around Max too long, but he thought most people had a taste for revenge when they’d been wronged. It was why the audience clapped in theaters when the good guy turned the tables and the bad guy got his. Human nature, human being the operative word.
He couldn’t wait to get home and make love to Charlotte. After she fell asleep, he’d go over the next part of his plan.
~~~~~
Alex spent all day figuring out how to break off the relationship with Gianni. He agonized, plotted, even made a list of points to explain why he wanted out. By dinnertime, he was a wreck. He didn’t want to hurt Gianni, but he couldn’t go on the way they’d been going. The thought of eating anything made him want to retch.
Gianni had wanted to give Alex a key to his apartment, but Alex refused. That simple act committed him, he thought, and he wasn’t ready for that. He’d take the few things he’d left there―an extra razor and toothbrush, some school things―and hope there wasn’t an ugly scene. He’d make sure to return the things Gianni left at his place.
Outside, the temperature tipped ninety degrees. Gianni’s window air conditioner strained to cool, failing miserably. He wore shorts without a shirt. His muscular body glistened in the stifling heat. In the beginning, Gianni’s beauty had turned on Alex, but he fell in love for other reasons. They shared common interests that cemented the relationship. But as Gianni became more and more possessive, as his neediness increased, Alex found those original attributes lost their appeal. Even Gianni’s handsome face held little allure. Alex felt like he had when, as a teenager, he discovered a particularly sweet liqueur. He couldn’t get enough of it, until one night he drank too much and fell violently sick. He’d never touched that particular drink since.
But Gianni wasn’t a liqueur. He was a sensitive man―fragile even, Alex had found out―and he couldn’t discard him like an old play toy or a liqueur he’d grown disenchanted with.
“Good thing I could make this without turning on the oven,” Gianni said. His darting eyes and tense body language suggested he dreaded the conversation both knew they were going to have. Gianni’s nonstop talking as he flitted around the apartment could only put it off for so long. He put the plate of sautéed tilapia topped with a shrimp parmesan sauce at Alex’s place setting.
Alex kept his eyes on the food. “I don’t know how to do this.”
The room echoed in silence for an uncomfortably long minute. “Then don’t,” Gianni said. “Please don’t.”
“It’s not working out. You’re smothering me.”
“I don’t mean to. I can’t help myself. I love you. You have to know that.”
Alex did, but it only made the moment harder.
Gianni’s voice took on a pathetic tone. “I know you felt the same way. I don’t know what happened, but I’ll never get over it if you leave me. Please, don’t make me beg.”
“I can’t help the way I feel. I care for you, Gianni, but I should never have started this.”
“Wasn’t it good? It was. I know you thought so. I still do. Why, Alex?” He paused. “Is it the woman you were with at the library? That’s it, isn’t it?”
The four walls closed in until Alex struggled for air. He couldn’t tell Gianni that he’d gone back to Callie’s place before going home last night. It would shatter him. “What if it was? What if there were a hundred women? Or another man? What if I’m incapable of loving anyone? Is that what you want in a relationship? That you give everything and get nothing in return? Because I’m not sure I can be what you want―what you need. But I know I can’t continue like this, because it’s not fair to either of us.”
Gianni scoffed. “You’re going to leave because it’s not fair to me?” He got up from the table and walked around the side to Alex’s chair. “How noble of you. How altruistic.”
<
br /> “Don’t make this more difficult.”
“Maybe you’re right. Maybe you are incapable of love. But I’m not, and I love you. We can work this out.”
Alex felt Gianni’s hands on his shoulders, kneading the muscles that felt to Alex like hard rubber. His stomach churned.
“You’re my life, Alex. I don’t want to live without you. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
That got Alex’s attention, raising the hair on his arms. He realized the situation he’d entered as an experiment, as a curiosity, was much more difficult to extricate from than he thought. He now saw in Gianni a dangerously apparent fragility that cautioned him to be very, very careful. He let out a long sigh. “Okay, Gianni. We’ll try again. But you can’t suffocate me. I need space. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“I understand. You need space.”
He let go of Alex’s shoulders and took his seat, a tight smile on his face. “Now, eat your dinner before it gets cold.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Alive in Glorious Pain
On the way home, Charlotte told Alex everything that happened in the bar. “Jack was pitiful. He played his usual game, charming when he wanted something, and he made promises that were impossible for him to keep.” She mimicked his voice. “‘I’ll be different, Charlotte. You’re the best thing that ever happened to me. I’ll never take advantage of you again. I’ll quit drinking.’ My head swam with all the bullshit he spewed.”
“He wants you back,” Alex said.
“I cringed every time I looked up and saw his lying face. The whole time I wanted to be with you, feel you stroke my body, kiss every part of me. Fuck me.”
“I can satisfy that right now,” he said as the elevator opened into his apartment. He moved her directly to the sofa and nuzzled her into a corner, spoke roughly into her ear. “I want to eat you, suck you, nibble you, lick you. I want to devour you.”
His scratchy beard tickled, his hot breath made her quiver, and she laughed. “You’re a hungry man.”
“This is no laughing matter. I’ve been thinking about this all the way home. I have a serious hard-on, and you are so fucking fuckable, with that tight sweater and no bra. Don’t think I didn’t notice.”
She pulled him down. “So why aren’t you fucking me? It’s one a.m., and I’m very horny. It’s been a long night. I could go for a snack, but I bet you have nothing in your fridge but veggie stuff, so I need you to satisfy my hunger.”
He got up and shed his clothes. “You are magnificently, excitingly beautiful.”
“And you, my dear Alex, by the size of your cock, are supremely ready to find a home for it. Right here.” She stripped and offered herself to Alex, who pushed her breasts together and bit one nipple, then the other, hard. She yelped, but he didn’t stop. She didn’t want him to. “Harder. I want you harder.”
“You asked for it,” he said. “No foreplay. Straight fucking.” He pushed her down on the sofa, spread her legs, and rammed his cock into her, powerfully and deep. Pulled out. Thrust into her again. He bit her nipple, pulled it out as far as he could without tearing the skin.
This time she screamed. “More. I want more.” She wanted him to hurt her, to make her feel alive with glorious pain. She took hold of his tight, puckered balls and squeezed. He groaned. Sweat slicked his body as he kept up his assault, jamming into her. They came, panting and loud, and he didn’t quit. His hard dick still inside her, she came again. And again.
Spent, he fell to her side. “I’m keeping you inside me.”
“I want you to. We’re fraternal fucking Siamese twins.” Then he laughed so loud and hard that he slipped out of her. “Oh, the vision of that.” He laughed some more. “Charlotte, I’m so in love with you.”
She stopped. So did he when he realized what he said. “Are you, Alex?”
His golden eyes pierced straight into her. “Yes. Completely and irreversibly.” He kissed the tip of her nose. “I’m a man who knows what I want, and I don’t play coy. I’ve waited a long time for you. Seventeen years. I never thought I’d let myself fall in love again, but I have. So there you have it. I ask nothing in return. No commitments. No promises. You know everything about me you wanted to know. More than anyone alive knows. You know who I am, for better or for worse.”
He looked so earnest. She brushed back his damp hair and planted a kiss on his forehead. “For better.”
“That’s a good response.”
He held her, and her heart lurched as if she soared the dips and hills of a roller-coaster ride, screaming with excitement.
“Come on. Let’s hop into the Jacuzzi. I’ll wash your back. And your front, and all the places above, below, and in between. And I’ll eat your pussy underwater.”
He yanked her off the sofa, and she laughed all the way to the bathroom. She always thought sex should be fun. If you couldn’t laugh in bed with your lover, then you wouldn’t laugh with him when you weren’t in bed. Alex was fun. In bed and out.
He filled the tub, turned on the jets. “Bisexual foaming oil,” he said, holding up a bottle of pearlized liquid.
“Huh?”
“Not flowery, not masculine,” he said, “but spicy and fragrant. A little x, a little y.”
And she laughed some more. They stepped into the deep tub with its jets churning from all sides. “I can’t believe it’s one thirty in the morning. I’ll never get up to go to work. But I’ve never had so much fun making love.”
“So it is love,” he said, but he didn’t look at her. “Not asking. That was a statement. I know it sounded like a question, but it wasn’t.”
Then he smiled that roguish smile, and her heart leaped into her throat. Alex was sinfully handsome, and he knew it. He had to, although he lacked the egotistical, full-of-themselves qualities of many handsome men who frequented her store. Her thoughts were interrupted by a gnawing between her legs from under the water. The sensation of warm licks and bites almost catapulted her out of the tub. She grabbed on to Alex’s head.
“Jesus. Oh.” And she laughed and she came and she screamed and she laughed some more. Alex popped up from underwater with a smile on his face. And she kissed him hard on the same mouth that had moments before nibbled her clit. “You are evil.”
“Definitely.”
“After this glorious bath, I’ll be zonked. I want to curl up next to you and fall asleep in your arms.”
Alex helped her out of the tub and dried her. He gave her a fresh toothbrush, and they shared the sink. She felt truly pampered, and she loved the feeling. They walked hand-in-hand naked into the bedroom where the Boston skyline twinkled outside the glass walls and the moon shone high in the sky. Life couldn’t be more perfect. Alex slipped a Ray Charles CD into the player and got into bed next to her.
“I’m Rip Cord,” he said. “Mr. Andros sent me.” Charlotte broke up. She laughed and laughed. When she stopped, Alex wiped the tears of laughter from her eyes, and she curled into his space. With his warm mouthwash-scented breath on her neck, she fell into a blissful night’s sleep.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Too Small World
Alex rose early to look over the material Jeannie Day had removed from Jack Davidson’s safe. He watched Charlotte sleep for a minute, cheek pressed into the pillow, squishing her lips into a sexy pout. Eyes fluttering under her lids. He wondered if she was dreaming of him.
He strode the long hall to the kitchen and put on a pot of coffee, then took the shopping bag into his office. He’d just skimmed the material last night. What he saw this morning was dynamite. He assumed the videos to be as bad or worse. He now had no compunctions about what he’d done or was about to do. Davidson was a bottom feeder, and he deserved what he was going to get.
“Where’d you go? I rolled over, and you were gone.”
Charlotte wore nothing but panties and one of his dress shirts. Only two buttons were fastened, and she looked sexier than if she were naked. Her tousled hair gave her that fuck me look
that jerked Alex’s cock from sleepy to alert, but he had too much to prepare for tomorrow to be sidetracked.
“That’s my favorite shirt. It looks better on you than on me. I’d make a dramatic statement and tear it off you, but I like that shirt.”
She laughed. “It’s easy to unbutton.” Sidling up behind him, she asked, “You looking at Jack’s stash?”
“Yeah. I’ll go over them more thoroughly at my office.”
“Nasty stuff, huh?”
“Invasive. Jack’s an even worse slug than we thought.”
“Nothing about him surprises me.”
“I should be getting a call from Jack within the hour. He is not going to be happy.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Call a meeting with Max tomorrow morning.” On top of the complicated mess with Jack, an unexpected development arose he’d have to face. One he didn’t look forward to. In fact, he wished he could go to sleep with Charlotte in his arms and wake up the day after tomorrow, because tomorrow was going to be a very tense day.
“I’d better change. Even lowly store owners have appointments, and I have one at ten.”
The coffee was ready by the time Charlotte got out of the bathroom. She wore last night’s clothes, little makeup, and bare feet. Clothed or unclothed, he wanted to take her. Instead, he willed his dick to behave and poured two cups of coffee. They sat at the kitchen bar and shared a bagel and cream cheese.
After, Alex drove Charlotte to her apartment. He leaned over and kissed her. “I’ll be busy all day to prepare for tomorrow. I’ll call you later.”
“Promise?”
“You know I don’t lie.” He kissed her again and watched as she opened her door and went inside.
* * * * *
Charlotte quickly changed clothes. The store opened at ten, and she wanted to be there when the designer she was working with came.
Lenore had already arrived. She lifted Charlotte’s chin. “You look, um, I don’t know, different.”
“Do I?”
Sexual Persuasion Page 16
