He nodded and touched her glass when she lowered it. Then he watched her tip the liquid into her mouth all at once. And waited for her reaction. She sputtered only once. Her eyes watered and when she spoke next her voice sounded like scraping sandpaper. “Why aren’t you drinking?”
He obliged, taking a gulp and banging his glass down on the bar. He swallowed the familiar smooth fiery liquid that spread warmth through his gut. He knew nothing showed on his face. “I didn’t want to miss the show,” his voice rumbled.
The bartender eyed them from his position a meter away. “Another round, then?”
Chauncey nodded. She laughed. As he watched her laugh with her green eyes sparkling, his muscles twitched and tightened and blood rushed into parts better left unnoticed.
“I’ll have a glass of ice water as well,” he told the bartender. Pixie raised her brows at that, letting her mischievous gaze wander to his unmentionable parts, steadily growing uncomfortable in the saddle.
“So…you’ve never been to London?” He quirked one side of his mouth in acknowledgment as her laughter pealed over him in waves. With a sigh he steadied his breathing and shifted his position. “I’ll be right back,” he whispered and leaned in, holding her head and nibbling on her earlobe while he dismounted from the saddle. Her laughter stopped, replaced with a satisfying shudder. Now he grinned as he walked away with one glance over his shoulder to see her staring after him with that sizzling look she had.
He returned and resumed his saddle to see that she hadn’t touched her drink. “You didn’t need to wait for me.”
“I didn’t. This is my third. Soon I will be rendered incoherent and you will be cheering the bartender in celebrashun,” she slurred.
“Nonsense. I want you very coherent this night, my little Pixie,” he spoke in a lowered voice for her ears only. She shuddered, a sure sign that the alcohol was having its affect on her cool.
“It’s like I said. I’m anxious about your father. What happened with you two? There’s something. You never said what.”
He raked his hands over his face. “I don’t suppose you’ll let this issue pass—in light of the fact that you are my slave for the night?”
Her answer was an expectant look and silence. But she was staring at his wrist. The scar. He turned it toward her and laid his fist on the bar in front of her.
“Here’s a better view. It also happens to be part and parcel of the answer to your question.”
“About your relationship with your father?” She sounded stunned.
“Yes.” He took up another shot of Ledaig left by the kindly barkeep. He didn’t care if the man listened in at this point. The barkeep was no anonymous stranger. He’d been vetted.
“Well?” She put her hand over his wrist and stroked the scar while she kept her eyes on him, unblinking.
“I was twelve. Father was gone. Duty called. Above all else. My mother and I were at home alone in the city as always. Mauve hadn’t joined the household yet. We had only day help. I was man of the house. Not of much import most of the time. Except this one night when an intruder saw it fit to, well, intrude. Mother was taken by surprise downstairs in the library and screamed. I responded, but even then I knew better than to run into the situation unprepared. It was that night that Mother feared I’d join my father in the family business. But that’s another story. After listening and stealing my way downstairs with the only weapon I possessed at that time—a bowie knife—I saw two young men. One was riffling through things and the other was attempting to tie up my mother. I rushed to her rescue with no notion of caution and struck with my knife, cutting the man’s arm and putting him back. But while I concentrated on seeing to Mother, the other man struck toward me and he had a knife of his own.” He paused and watched her hand linger on his scar and her eyes brighten with emotion. Those emerald-like eyes.
“You were lucky he didn’t have a gun,” she whispered.
“Guns aren’t as popular in the U.K. as they are in the U.S. But my luck ran out and he got the better of me, slashing my wrist, right arm, while my mother screamed in terror. I managed to kick the man and he helped his mate up and they fled, leaving me in a pool of blood. I’d freed my mother’s bonds enough for her to get out of her chair and call the Yard. She called my father directly, but he was unavailable—on special assignment even then at his rank. I hadn’t realized it at the time, but they had ripped the heirloom emerald ring from my mother’s finger, doing some damage in the process. She never said a word. While we waited for an ambulance my mother wrapped my wrist to stem the bleeding. I was barely conscious by then. I’d lost an alarming amount of blood. Lucky I was rather a large young buck for my age. But the ambulance did show up in time to rescue me.”
“What happened with your father?”
“He showed up at the hospital the next day with my mother. He said he’d not leave us unattended again since I wasn’t up to taking care of us. My mother insisted I was brave and chased the criminals off. My father said he’d rather I’d stopped them and detained them. ‘Now we still have two criminals on the street. The idea is not to let the criminals get the better of us, Elizabeth,’ he said. I still remember the words. They’ve inspired my entire career, of course.”
“And your wrist? It didn’t heal fully, did it?”
“How do you know to always ask the key most difficult questions? Since the moment I met you, you have not failed to hone in on the exactly least desirable things to discuss.”
“Then it’s not healed is it? I didn’t think so. I had noticed you favor it.”
“It’s a constant reminder. Scar tissue makes it less mobile than ideal. But I manage. I’m still a sharpshooter in spite of it. Or maybe because of it I’ve worked harder.”
“I see. So you have a chip and a hero complex and you’re trying to prove something to your father, but you have a soft spot for rescuing damsels. That sum it all up?”
“If by ‘it’ you mean me, then, in a nutshell. Shall I pay you a fee for the psychoanalysis? Or perhaps you’ll give me a turn at summing you up?”
“Go for it.” She smiled wide as if she felt like Fort Knox.
“Don’t look so smug, my little Pixie. You have a sizable chip yourself. Perhaps it’s exactly because of your size you try extra hard to stand out.”
She inhaled sharply. She had had too much to drink to play coy tonight, he knew.
“You’re a lone wolf type aren’t you?”
The accuracy of her assessment heated him. His fist clenched under her touch automatically, as if assaulted. He’d been too protective of his inner vulnerabilities to care too much over the years. And this was how he ended up. The lone wolf suddenly finding himself in a bar very much attached to Little Red Riding Hood. And she was very much a wolf in a siren’s clothing. That must be what he reacted to. His protective instincts combining with his hormones dragged him under her spell.
“I should run the other way about now before you rip me apart. I should definitely not continue to answer your questions.”
“Why not?”
“I’m the master and you’re the slave, remember?”
“Oh that…” She giggled.
“Or rather I’m more like the genie with the magic lamp and you’d just as soon keep rubbing it to get all your answers.”
She pealed into laughter at that. “I haven’t even touched your ‘magic lamp’ yet.”
“Yes, and yet it grows warm and effusive by the moment, ready to explode with your wishes.” He leaned in very close and didn’t disguise the fact that he took in the abundant cleavage of her creamy breasts only half-hidden by the gaping leather jacket over the skimpy tank shirt. He questioned his choice in her ‘disguise’ at this moment and shifted in his excruciating saddle.
“Let’s go,” he commanded. It was about time he took control as master of this show.
She shrugged out of her jacket, jutting out her chest in the process and teasing him with her bedroom eyes, accentuated by the whiskey’s eff
ect.
“Will I get to rub the magic lamp, Mr. Genie?” She spoke the words in a serious church whisper causing his lamp to grow more restless.
He took his time standing from the saddle. Reaching around her, he grabbed her jacket and dragged it closed across her shoulders, stroking her skin as he did, lingering on her neck and the delicate pulse there. He felt his own pulse jumping wildly and barely found his voice, but he spoke anyway.
“I insist that you rub the magic lamp until you get as many wishes as you can handle.”
He watched her shudder and steeled himself against the assault of his screaming nerve endings and his rushing blood. He didn’t care if he had to lift her from her seat and carry her, but she slid off at the gentle prompt of his arms around her.
He walked them toward the door and he glanced at the bartender. The man gave him a thumbs-up. He realized on some level that most guys would have nodded at the man-friend gesture, but he only felt the heat of protective anger at the possible assault on his woman’s honor. How dare the man presume, was his instinctive thought. He tightened his grip and hurried his steps, fighting not to glare at him as they left the Polo Bar behind.
The last thing she needed was to be captivated by a marauding lone wolf crime fighter. His touch caused tingles of goose bumps to pop from her skin as they walked down the hall toward their room. She suppressed a hiccup as her stomach rose to somewhere near her heart, which pounded madly in her ears. It must be the whiskey. But she knew it was too late for her to escape and only hoped he didn’t realize it.
She could not let on how vulnerable she was. Never mind that moments before he’d confessed all manner of his own vulnerability and melted her heart forever. But he was strong. He’d proven himself capable of standing up to the loss and moving on. She was untested and a million times less strong. Her knees felt weak as they walked down the hall toward their door. He practically had to carry her alongside of him. She heard nothing but her heart roaring. Her muscles twitched and jumped so that she could barely function. She’d never been this excited, not even when she was eight years old and rushing down the first dip in the Coney Island roller coaster. Nor ever this afraid.
At the door, as he slipped the key from his jeans pocket, she tried to cast herself as the vulnerable Red Riding Hood to his Big Bad Wolf. After all, he was a lone wolf. A vulnerable lone wolf. The most dangerous kind and she needed to keep that in mind.
But when she looked up at his predatory gaze she saw only the twelve-year-old boy trying to protect his mother. And as she acknowledged his unrelenting protective streak toward her, the hot clench of moist desire between her legs nearly buckled her knees. Dizziness threatened to shut down her mind. He swept her up in his arms and carried her to the bed. She held her arms around his shoulders, burrowing her face in his neck and smelling the salty maleness of him mixed with soap and whiskey.
The headiness of his scent drove her to lick his throat and trail her tongue along his jawline to his earlobe. His jaw twitched with tension and he groaned, running a hand up and down her body as he lay partly over her.
“I need you to make love with me right now. Don’t say no. Don’t make any excuses why you can’t. Why we shouldn’t.” She pulled his face close to hers as he pushed himself back, grabbing the hair at the nape of his neck. He breathed into her face and she gulped it in as if she would suffocate without him.
“I want you—I’ve wanted you since I saw you holding the sign with my name.” He pushed himself up to stare down at her face, his hands pressed to the mattress at her side, his lower body still fitting over her and throbbing. She squeezed her eyes shut and concentrated on feeling him against her. Sensations like hot molten liquid shot through her veins and she quivered, arching her hips up into him.
“Look at me,” he demanded. “I want you desperately and if you were any other woman I would have taken you long ago. But…”
“I don’t want to hear any buts. I want you now. Make love to me now.” She heard the plea in her voice as it cracked.
“But making love is a different business than I’m used to. I don’t have relationships with women. I have affairs. That’s not you. I know it’s not you. You’re complicated.”
“Back to being a complication. Look if you’re worried about what David would think—don’t. He’d never need to know.”
He laughed a low sexy vibrating laugh from deep in his throat. “No, my Pixie, I’m not worried about what David would think. I’m worried about my heart and yours and if they would be the same. And if they might break.” He lowered his head and whispered his lips over hers in an exquisitely soft caress. She shivered and moved her hips into his again.
He responded with a grind of his hips against her and spoke in a rasp. “Maybe I should be worried about our hearts if we don’t make love—mine feels like it might burst.”
She took his face in her hands. “Quit being so noble and let yourself go. Let your instincts and feelings take over for once. Lose the control.” She willed him to love her with the most intense look of desire she could manage, focusing all the heat she felt into her eyes aimed at him. For the fraction of a second it took for him to absorb her passion, she saw the blue light of his eyes turn to flames. As if he’d only needed a spark, he didn’t answer her with words.
He brought his mouth down onto hers in a ravishing possession, sucking her lips, exploring her mouth, his tongue tangling with hers and raking over her teeth. She felt herself moan and held onto him tight, the liquid fire in her veins sparking her center to fevered trembling.
Amidst the ravishing kiss and her feverish response, she felt him pulling her skirt up and pulling her panties away. She moved her hands down to his zipper to feel the certain heat of him under her palm with shaking fingers. He lifted himself slightly from her and she released him while he moved his mouth to her neck causing her to shiver.
He pulled his pants down and she reached for him, holding him in her hand at last with a deep thrilling satisfaction. He felt smooth and hot and pulsating with need. She heard him groan. He caressed her melting center with deft fingers.
She jumped and called out with an instant starburst of blinding release, tightening herself around his fingers.
“Put me inside you.” He spoke with his jaw as rigid with tension as the rest of him. She felt him pulsating in her hand and pulled him toward her. He slipped inside as he pushed against her, kissing her face and whispering her name. Sophia.
Gripping her hips with his two hands he thundered into her and she felt herself go. She gave herself completely up to him and his body as her body exploded with heat, clenched around him in excruciating pleasure.
She didn’t hear anything with the thunder of her pulsing blood, but she knew they both called out. He pushed relentlessly inside her with his powerful release like an unstoppable surge of nature. In that blinding moment she felt him fill her and shock her with his heat.
As her heartbeat sounded in her ears and her limbs quivered around him, she felt the slickness of sweat and the trembling of his muscles under her fingers. The sounds around her gradually returned to her consciousness. The rasping of his breath in her ear. Her own panting. He groaned and kissed her temple, her eyelids, her nose, her upper lip, then the lower.
“I adore you, Chauncey. I’m so in love with you.”
She said the words from her heart. Her eyes had been closed.
He went still. She popped her eyes open and looked into his face above her.
Her first instinct was to make light and take it all back—all the raw heartfelt emotion that raged through her. But the feelings were too raw to be denied. He stared down at her. She held her breath as she knew he would say something. She didn’t know if he would try to trivialize her feelings or ignore them or…what he might say. And she more than anything wanted to know what he really felt. The beat of silence felt endless before he opened his mouth to speak in that raspy post-lovemaking whisper.
“I know exactly how you feel, my Pi
xie.”
She couldn’t help beaming her smile. He smiled back and enveloped her in a fierce embrace, rolling to her side and tugging her up against him.
“I hope you don’t mind if we sleep for a while now. Big day tomorrow.”
The next thing she knew the scent of coffee filled the air and she opened her eyes to subdued sunshine through windows with the drapes wide open and in a strange bed. Alone.
After hurried preparations that morning, they went back to the airport. They hadn’t talked. He had his game face on and she knew enough to leave him be. He needed to concentrate on the mission. He would have to wait until later to worry about forgiving himself for his lack of self-discipline—causing their ridiculously complicated relationship—or whatever it was. He took a deep bracing breath, bordering on a sigh, as they walked in the doors of the international terminal at Heathrow. Once again. He needed to clear his too-crowded mind.
She stopped walking once they were inside the doors and gazed toward the coffee shop. He gave into a full-fledged sigh and veered in that direction to indulge her.
“But what the heck are we supposed to do once we spot Azzam or his men? What then?”
“You let me worry about that.” He stood at the counter and ordered them two coffees.
“A secret plan? Or no plan?”
“I have a plan, but…”
“Do not tell me I don’t need to know about it because there is no one who needs to know about it more than I do. Since we’re attached at the hip, which is attached to my butt, which is very much on the line I…”
“All right.” She stopped and they stared at each other. “I bought an extra pair of throwaway cell phones before we left the States and I gave one of them to someone. I’ll make the call and certain parties will be brought in for the kill…”
“Kill? Did you say kill?” Her voice rose. He squeezed her arm and glanced around at the sprinkling of people who might have heard.
The Scotland Yard Exchange Series Page 82
