Danger and Desire: Ten Full-Length Steamy Romantic Suspense Novels

by Pamela Clare

  Still she hesitated.

  “I won’t let things get out of hand, if that’s what you’re worried about.” Even as he offered the assurance, he prayed for the strength and patience he was going to need to call upon to keep his promise.

  “I know.”

  With those two words and the trust implicit in them, any doubts about his self control fell away. He’d damned well die of sexual frustration before he betrayed that trust.

  He stroked his thumb along the inside of her wrist again, felt the heat of her blood, the strength of her pulse. “So, what do you say?”

  “Okay,” she said, her voice high and thin. He felt her fingers flex around his. “Okay, let’s do it.”

  *

  Omigod, what had she agreed to?

  She’d gone one way to arm the alarm and John had gone the other way to secure Bandy. She’d protested that measure initially, but conceded it was preferable to having their calves clawed to ribbons or their ankles bit the moment they touched.

  She was having second and third thoughts when he came to find her a minute later. The misgivings she might have voiced were silenced when he pulled her into his arms and covered her mouth. No thrusting tongue, no full on assault, nothing to make her draw back. Just a long, slow brushing and sliding of lips. The sweetness of it pierced her. At last, he lifted his head.

  “Your living room still equipped with that nice soft couch I slept on?” he asked, his breath fanning her face.

  “Yes.”

  He nipped at her lower lip. “And the living room’s still through that door?”

  She smiled against his lips. “Yes.”

  With a quick, economical movement, he scooped her into his arms and started toward the aforesaid sofa. Despite herself, she felt her muscles tighten at being swept off her feet. He must have felt it, too.

  “Want me put you down?”

  Trust me, he’d said. “Not until you get to that sofa.”

  His laugh was a rumble she felt go straight to her center.

  Seconds later, she found herself sitting on the couch. Somehow, she’d expected him to plunk her down and come down on top of her, crushing her against the cushions, or at least to settle with her on his lap where he could ravish her. Instead, he deposited her on the cushions and sat down beside her, twisting to face her.

  “Nervous?” he asked.

  “No.”

  Soft laughter.

  “Okay, maybe a little.”

  Then his hand was on her hair, stroking it lightly. “Can we take this down?”

  She lifted both hands to find the clasp, releasing it. Her hair spilled down and John released his breath on a sigh.

  “God, I love your hair.” He threaded a hand into it, lifting it from her scalp and combing his fingers through to the end. “Gorgeous.”

  Desire, sweet and potent, stirred in her belly. “Kiss me again.”

  More laughter. “So impatient.” He lifted a strand of her hair to his nose, inhaled, sighed. “There’s no destination, no finish line. Only pleasure. Just relax and enjoy.”

  “I don’t know if I can.” Lord, was that her voice?

  “Try closing your eyes. Stop thinking and just feel,” he suggested. “Let me worry about the rest.”

  She obeyed. The cushions shifted, and she felt his lips, dry and cool, on her forehead. His hand burrowed deeper into her hair to cradle her head. Soft as a whisper, his lips roamed her face, her eyelids, her eyelashes. Somehow, that barely there contact set up a trembling deep inside. When his mouth finally found hers after long moments, it was only to nuzzle, skim, tease, his tongue a mere suggestion against the corner of her lip. Why, oh why, couldn’t all men kiss like this instead of trying to stick their tongues down your throat?

  Eyes tightly closed, she savored every fleeting touch, every graze and retreat of his now moist lips. Then, between one heartbeat and the next, something unprecedented happened. She found herself longing to deepen the kiss, to draw his tongue into her mouth, to let her tongue tangle with his. Incredibly, he seemed oblivious of the need growing in her. With studious care, he kept up the torture until finally she clasped his head and pulled him down to meet her lips, opening her mouth in wet, mute supplication.

  She felt a shudder pass through him. Then he leaned into her, pressing her back against the cushions, answering her demand with a fierce one of his own.

  If the thrust of his tongue weren’t enough to drive the last remnants of reason from her mind, the slide of his hands on her body through her silk blouse was. Hard, warm, thrilling, they skimmed her back, her sides, the outside of her breasts. Nothing could have stopped the whimper that rose to her lips.

  A shift of the cushions, a cool layer of air against her skin. He was pulling away! She tried to pull him back down, but he resisted the pressure of her looped arms around his neck. She moaned again, this time at the loss.

  “Hush,” he said, drawing back even further. “I just want to look a minute.”

  Her eyes, which she’d kept tightly closed to concentrate on the sensations he was producing in her, sprang open. The sight of his face, skin stretched tight over his cheekbones, eyes burning, made her pulse take another jagged leap. Then she dropped her gaze to her breasts, the object of his heated gaze. Against the fine material of her blouse, beneath the seamless cups of her sleek bra, her nipples jutted in unabashed arousal.

  “So beautiful.”

  Mesmerized, she watched the hand at her waist travel upward, pushing the silk over her sensitized skin, across her midriff, up, up… Then he lifted his hand off her, bringing it back to rest high on her chest, above her breasts this time, fingers tracing the neckline of her blouse.

  “Please.” The sound of her own voice, the need in it, shocked her. Excited her.

  He smiled. “Please what?”

  She lifted her hand to his, drawing it down. When his fingers closed around her right breast, she cried out, closing her eyes.

  His fingers tightened on the soft flesh. “You like that, baby?”

  “Yes.”

  “Open your eyes.”

  Powerless to resist his command, she lifted her lids to meet his gaze. Impossibly dark, his eyes glittered with sex and promise and something else. Safety. She was safe here.

  “Look how beautiful you are.” He drew his thumb across her hardened nipple, dragging a gasp from her. Then his hand was moving again, closing on her other breast, covering the whole of it easily with his palm. Her eyes drifted shut again, the better to savor the feel of him there, only to fly open again when she felt his fingers at the buttons of her blouse.

  “I just want to look at you.”

  Suddenly, she wanted nothing more than his hot gaze on her breasts. Another unprecedented development. By now, her muscles were usually tightening up, an involuntary girding against intimacies to come. But she hadn’t lost her faculties entirely. She brought her hand up to still his. “Is this a good idea?”

  “Best one I’ve had all day.”

  She smiled, and he bent to kiss her again. When he lifted his head a moment later, her senses were spinning.

  “What do you say?” The backs of his fingers brushed her breasts through the fabric of her shirt. “We’ll stick to your mama’s rules all the way.”

  “Mama’s rules.”

  “Yeah, petting rules. Nothing below the belt, just like back in high school.” His fingers slipped to the next silk-covered button. “What trouble can we get into, above the waist?”

  “Petting rules?” She’d stopped trying to check his progress. “That’s a conversation I never had with my mother.”

  His hand paused. “I thought every girl had that talk. Every girl I ever encountered, anyway.”

  “I wasn’t every girl,” she reminded him. “I was the Chief Justice’s daughter. I didn’t go parking with boys.”

  His eyes widened. “Never?”

  “Never.”

  The worked the next button loose. “Did you want to?”

  She
thought about the tangle of emotions she’d been in high school. She thought about Burke Wheeler, leather jacketed, cigarette smoking bad ass. She remembered the excitement in the pit of her stomach when she thought he was going to ask her out, the disappointment when he’d walked right past her to loop an arm around her more buxom friend’s neck.

  “What I wanted or didn’t want was immaterial. Nobody was going to risk my father’s wrath by asking me out.”

  He unbuttoned the last button and pushed her blouse open. When he spread his hand on her flat belly, she drew her breath in sharply. He smiled, then bent to kiss the tops of her breasts above her bra.

  “What do these rules say about the removal of bras?”

  She felt his smile against her skin.

  “That kinda depended on the dexterity of the guy,” he said.

  She sucked her breath in again as he smoothed his hand around and up her back. “And were you particularly dexterous?”

  His reply was to pop the clasp on her bra.

  “Oh!”

  “Ummmm.” He bent to push her bra out of the way to catch her hardened nipple in his mouth.

  Susannah’s world careened out of control. There was nothing left but the hot, wet tug of his mouth on her breast and the pulse of need it set off in her belly. By the time he’d ministered to both breasts, she was all but mindless with wanting him. Mindless enough that she wriggled into a semi prone position, pulling him down with her. For a second, she gloried in his weight pinning her to the cushions and the evidence of his arousal against her lower limbs.

  Then he pulled back. She groaned a protest, but he scooped her up into his lap and pressed her head close to his thundering heart. Over the next minutes, with soothing words and calming hands, he gradually brought her back down again.

  *

  Quigg inhaled, breathing the subtle scent of her hair. He couldn’t quite identify it, but it smelled great. Something exotic, like grape seed extract or green tea. Some organic thing or other. He might not know what it was, but he doubted he’d ever forget it. It was imprinted indelibly on his brain.

  As was the taste of her, red wine and woman and passion.

  Passion. God, did she really think she lacked it?

  She lifted her head. “Thank you.”

  He’d restored the bra over her breasts, but it was still unfastened, her shirt still hanging open. Yet it wasn’t her delectable body that drew his gaze. He was more interested in what was written on her face.

  Gratitude. Peace. And her body. Even now, it felt relaxed and boneless, as though she’d melted against him. It made the ache in his groin seem a small price to pay.

  “My pleasure. Or couldn’t you tell?”

  “I could tell. I guess that means you get a passing grade.” She laid her head back down on his shoulder and his arms came around her easily, as though they’d done this a hundred times. How’d it come to feel so natural, so fast? The thought gave him a little bit of a jolt. Time to move.

  “The History Channel.”

  She pulled back. “Huh?”

  “You asked me what my TV tastes ran to. I like the History Channel. And police dramas. And baseball. Which means I should be able to keep myself occupied while you work.”

  “You’re going to dump me off your lap to watch reruns of NYPD Blue?”

  She said it jokingly, but he saw the ghost of a shadow in her eyes. Could she really not know how badly he burned for her?

  “Baby, I’m not doing it because I want to. I’m gonna do it because I said I would. And to score points for my super human restraint.”

  She smiled. “Well, okay, then. When you put it like that.”

  So saying, she pushed away from his chest, levering herself to her feet. Suddenly, his arms felt empty, bereft. Instead of releasing her hand, he hauled her back down again. Surprised, she fell onto him, into him. Oh, Lord, it was sweet, to catch the laughter on her lips, feel her sigh her pleasure against his mouth. Minutes later, heart pounding just as hard as before, he set her away again.

  “Damn, woman, I’ve gone and missed the first fifteen minutes of my show. Sipowicz’ll have it all wrapped up without me.”

  She laughed, and this time there were no shadows in those baby blues. They glowed with a new light as she untangled herself and stood up. Her clothing was all askew, her mouth as kiss swollen as he’d pictured it in his hottest fantasies, but somehow she managed to retain that proper, regal dignity that was so much a part of her. A treacherous tenderness unfurled in the vicinity of his heart.

  “Suzannah?”

  She glanced up from fixing her blouse.

  “This was just a taste. There’s lots more where that came from.”

  She blushed and it was all he could do not to haul her down again. Fortunately, he knew his own limits. If she landed on the couch with him again, she wouldn’t get up for a long while.

  “Here.” She picked something up and flipped it at him. His hand shot out in time to keep the object from hitting him in the chest. The remote control for the television. “Don’t keep Andy waiting. Lord knows he probably can’t solve the case without your armchair advice.” With that, she collected her briefcase from the table in the hall and disappeared.

  Grinning, he pointed the remote at the TV, clicked the power button and found NYPD Blue. Did she have him pegged or what? Shifting to adjust his still aching groin, he sprawled back to enjoy the show.

  Seconds later, he heard the clicking of toenails on hardwood floor. Bandy. Poor bugger. He’d forgotten him. Suzannah must have liberated him from the kitchen. Automatically, he lifted his hands to shield himself as the dog sprang up onto the couch, but the mutt still managed to land one foot—and a good quarter of his weight—dangerously close to Quigg’s groin.

  Quigg swore. “Miserable mongrel. I don’t know why I keep you around.” Bandy gazed at him lovingly. Quigg cursed again, but settled a hand on the dog’s ruff, stroking the silky coat as he turned his attention back to the television.

  Chapter Eight

  Suzannah was deep into case law when her phone rang. Absently, she picked the receiver up. “Suzannah Phelps.”

  “Hey.”

  John. “Hey, yourself.”

  “You taping this conversation?”

  She leaned back in her chair. “No. It’s not set up yet.”

  A sigh. “You promised.”

  He’d wanted her to let the cops put a tap on it, but as a criminal defense attorney, she’d had to draw the line at that. She’d agreed to a tap on her line at home, reasoning that if she got a call from an incarcerated client, she could tell them to clam up until she got there to discuss the situation in person. She could hardly do that here at the office. As a compromise, she’d agreed to run her line through the dictating equipment so she could record a conversation at the flip of a switch.

  She rolled her shoulders to ease the tension that had built up there from too many hours at the same task. “The tech guy is coming this afternoon to do it.”

  “Good.” A brief pause. “So, I guess this means we can talk dirty.”

  A little jolt of excitement spiked her pulse. “I guess we could if we were so inclined.”

  “What are you wearing?”

  That was his idea of talking dirty? “Some detective you are. You saw what I was wearing when we left the house.”

  “Yeah, but I didn’t see what you were wearing under it.”

  Just like that, she was hot. All he had to do was pitch his voice low and raspy. She didn’t think it would even matter what he said, especially if those eyes were on her. She closed her eyes and reproduced that look he gave her, all banked heat and patience. She swiveled her chair toward the window, oblivious of the view. “Maybe I’ll give you a little preview at lunch.”

  “You’d let me look down your blouse?”

  “Like it would be the first time that happened.”

  “Damn the bad luck.”

  “What?”

  “I can’t make it for dinner. T
hat’s why I’m calling. Trial went into a voire dire and I’m stuck here until they get back.”

  That’s right. He’d said he had a jury trial. Local businessman on a decade old sexual assault charge. She squelched her disappointment. “Sounds like you’ve got your hands full.”

  “You know how it is, these hot-shot criminal defense attorneys from Upper Canada. Gotta justify that fat fee somehow.”

  Frankly, she was inclined to agree with John’s assessment, but there was no way she’d tell him so. “You are such a cynic, Detective,” she said, careful to keep the smile out of her voice.

  He snorted. “Like you’re the original Pollyanna.”

  She didn’t try to hide her smile this time. “So that’s why you called? To stand me up for lunch?”

  “No choice about standing you up, I’m afraid, but I’d like to send a stand in.”

  Suzannah tipped her chair forward so fast her elbow connected painfully with the desk. She transferred the telephone to her other hand, grimacing as she shook the pain out of her left arm. “You want to send a stand in?”

  “Yeah. Ray Morgan.”

  John’s sidekick. His image came instantly to mind, as impeccably pressed as John was carelessly rumpled. “That’s not necessary.”

  “Not to look down your blouse or anything. Just to keep you company.”

  “No.”

  A pause. “No?”

  “I don’t need a cop to babysit me over dinner, John.”

  “Hell, Ray’s a friend. He’d be doing it as a friend.”

  “Your friend is a cop.”

  “Suzannah…”

  “I’ve gone as far as I care to go by filing a complaint.”

  “Well, of course you filed a complaint. Any person with two clues to rub together would –”

  “Hey, I agree,” she overrode him. “And I don’t regret it for a minute. But that doesn’t mean I’m ready to have the entire force think I’m scared to cross the street for a burger without a police escort.”

  She heard his sigh loud and clear through the receiver. “Order in, then.”