He zeroed in on her nipples and she covered them with both hands. “Pay attention to where you’re walking.”
He grumbled under his breath and headed for the doors opposite each other a few feet away. “Left or right?”
“Left.”
Clothes flew against the wall as he kicked a pile of dirty laundry aside and then shoved the door closed behind them. He put one knee, then the other on the bed, and lowered her to the mattress. He tossed his jacket aside, popped the top buttons on his shirt, and then yanked it over his head. She went to work on his belt buckle, then trouser button and zipper.
Her skin was on fire, pussy so wet and aching, she was half out of her mind. After she shoved his pants over his hips, he took them down to his ankles and she went to work on getting hers off as well. He tore at her waistband and jerked once to free them. The stressed fabric released, snapped, and hit him in the face.
She burst into laughter. He tried to take his shoes off, got tangled in the trousers still around one ankle, and crashed to the floor instead. She clutched her stomach and rolled onto her side. Tears streamed down her cheeks.
A large hand gripped her ankle and he yanked her off the bed to the floor, where she landed in a heap on his chest, half-plastered over him. Her thigh collided with the thick length of his cock still trapped behind the fabric of his boxers.
“Maybe you should take your pants off when you’re already on the floor all the time.”
“Shush.” He cupped her face and kissed her until she stopped laughing. The slow, teasing seduction of his tongue and lips dissolved under the rising tide of need, and he rolled her underneath him. He closed his mouth over her breast and sucked it while teasing the other nipple with his thumb. She arched her back off the floor to get closer, and he ground his groin against her center.
She gripped him through his underwear, and he groaned. “Take these off.”
They both shoved their hands under the elastic waistband, and she grabbed his ass with both hands. He canted back enough to get the boxers over his thighs and pulled one leg, then the other free. With both hands on her breasts he licked her from her pelvic bone to her cleavage, the light rasp of his stubble adding to the sparks of pleasure flooding her. He nipped at her throat and licked his way to her ear; the hard length of his cock slid along her slick folds, and nudged her entrance.
Greiff retreated, dragging the head of his dick over her clit. She used her thighs to grasp his hips and tried to pull him back down.
“Condom.” He closed his mouth over her right breast and she thrust up once more.
“In the drawer of the nightstand behind you.” Daisy Mae had thrown a box at her about a month ago; otherwise there wouldn’t have been any. The sharp sting of his teeth on her nipple zinged sparks of excitement through her, and she panted. He went to his knees to retrieve a rubber, his swollen cock standing out from his body. Oh man. It’d been awhile since she’d had sex, and feeling his erection through clothes didn’t do it justice. She closed her grip around it and stroked from base to tip.
He turned back to her with a condom in one hand and grabbed her hand with his other one, increasing the pressure. A drop of pre-cum appeared in the slit, and she used her thumb to rub it down the side of his thick length, cupping his testicles in her other palm. She licked the head and rolled her eyes up to gauge his reaction. He guided her hand up and down his length, and she sucked him into her mouth, excited by the heave of his chest. He balled his free hand into a fist.
“You gotta slow down, honey.” He reached down to her pussy and slid two fingers between her lips to dip inside. Then he smeared her wetness up and around her hood.
As a distraction technique, the move was quite effective. She released his cock from her mouth and rode his hand. He passed her the condom and brought her in closer for a hungry kiss. An intense craving for more took hold, he breached her again and finger-fucked her until she whimpered. The width of his fingers wasn’t enough. She needed to be filled with his hard dick.
She ripped at the wrapper and broke away to roll it down his length. “We can take our time later.”
She leaned back and locked her ankles behind his back. He followed her down, breaching her in a single, slow thrust, not stopping until the skin of his lower groin touched hers. In a few moments her body stretched and adjusted to accommodate his thick cock.
“Yes.” God that was good. She licked his chest. “More.”
He withdrew at the same measured pace, then plunged back in, fast and rough. “Fuck, Chloe, you feel so damn good.”
He grasped her left thigh and moved the leg so her calf rested on his shoulder. His cock rammed home again, brushing a spot inside she’d never felt before. It intensified the friction, her muscles clenched tighter each time his shaft stimulated it.
“Oh damn…Jake.”
“Feels good?” He studied her face, swept her body with his gaze, and settled on her breasts as they bounced with each forward surge.
“God, yes.”
Their bodies met with the heavy slap of flesh on flesh.
His stare flicked up to meet hers, furrows creased his forehead and lust darkened his eyes. “I want to see you touch yourself. Play with your clit for me.”
She licked and suckled on her fingers, enjoying the flare of his nostrils and the way he trapped his lip in between his teeth. She spread her labia, moved her fingers in a slow circle around her clit.
Greiff tipped his head down to enjoy the view, put his weight on one arm and held tight to her ankle with the other.
“That’s it, baby. Tease yourself.” He released her leg, took her hand, and sucked her juices off it, then placed it back between her thighs and joined his fingers with hers in teasing her hood. “Come for me. I want to feel it. Show me how you make yourself come.”
Their gazes locked and formed a connection, secured the lust into tiny, new seeds of love. He shoved himself into her three more times, and she cried out from her orgasm. Tingles rippled through her tummy and nipples, her clit pulsated. Her shoulders lifted from the floor, then went back.
“Yes. Good.” Both of his palms hit the carpet next to her head and he tensed with a groan, pumping into her, releasing his cum.
He buried his face in her neck, heavy, broken breaths fanned over her skin.
“I have something to tell you,” he said.
“What? You’re not married are you?”
He chuckled in response to the question and the sound dissipated her rising panic.
“No, not for five years. I have an ability too.” He rolled to the side and looked at the ceiling. “I can smell things.”
“That’s not an ability.” She snorted and traced her finger around his nicely defined pectoral muscle. She couldn’t wait to explore his body more later.
“It is when you can attach smells to certain people. Like a bloodhound.”
She pushed up onto her elbow and grabbed him by the chin. “You’re serious?”
“Yep. Weird as hell. Started one summer after I went to this camp. I spent most of the two weeks I was there laid up with the worst case of poison oak you’ve ever seen. Not too long after I got back, I went totally color blind. Can’t see in anything but shades of grey, black and white. You’re the first person I’ve seen in years in color. It’s why I followed you to begin with. The thing with my nose started about the same time my eyes went weird. It’s how I know for sure you were in that apartment this morning. I smelled you. That’s why I smoke. Helps dull things.”
“Oh, God.” Panic clenched her stomach. “What was the name of the camp?”
“Camp Sunny Woods. Why?”
***
Daisy Mae closed Chloe’s bedroom door. She’d oiled the hinges on a regular basis so they wouldn’t squeak. Taping people having sex wasn’t something she wanted to do, but the Professor demanded visual proof that his subjects had completed their mating.
The condom wouldn’t do a damn thing to prevent pregnancy. She’d pricked them al
l with a tiny syringe after being notified the operation had been set in motion.
She tapped the send button on the video, gathered her duffel bag from the living room, and slipped out into the hall. In four weeks, her plan had come to fruition. Pride surged through her. A few “concerned” comments about a string of breakins in the right neighborhood, some jokes about needing a real-life super hero to take care of the mess, and Chloe’d run off to save the day. Even hiring the young street thugs so Chloe had someone to bust had been simple.
Jacob Greiff had been located five weeks ago. He shouldn’t have been lost to begin with, but he’d grown up an Army brat whose father belonged to an elite unit that often went on classified missions. The government had whisked his family to a new base too fast for the Professor to utilize his usual means of control over the subjects in the study.
Then Greiff joined the Army, got into a unit not dissimilar to his father’s, and fell off the map for several years. With his unique form of color-blindness, his father had to have pulled strings to get him in. He’d never pass an eye exam. Unless the government knew about Greiff’s nose and had orchestrated the whole thing themselves.
She stepped into the elevator and her phone chimed. “Yes. Visual confirmation as well as video documentation. Heading for rendezvous point now.”
She ended the call, dropped the pay-as-you-go cell phone on the ground, and stomped it until it broke into several pieces.
Undressing with quick efficiency, she shoved the discarded clothing into the duffel. With the drag queen persona shed like an old skin, he could breathe again as Damien. As his true self.
He breathed a sigh of relief, happy to be out of the heels and bra. He scrubbed over his face with a pre-moistened face-washing cloth and stuffed it into the bag as well.
Re-garbing in jeans, a black t-shirt, and a pair of lace-up boots, he popped on a pair of aviator sunglasses to hide any remaining eye make-up. The nails he’d tortured Chloe into manicuring peeled off with practiced snaps of the wrist. They’d been held on with special cosmetic glue. He closed the zipper on the duffel after carefully gathering the pieces of cell phone and tucking them inside. It was important to ensure that no traces were left behind.
Guilt swamped him, but he had to think of his own family. One more mission using his charisma and ability to become other personas. One more and he’d get his wife, Jasmine, back. Despair joined the guilt, but he had to stay focused.
It was too bad about Chloe. The woman was sweet and friendly. She’d make a great mother.
Until the Professor took the kid.
Chapter Nine
Chloe paced the room and peppered Greiff with questions. He interrupted her when she started in about some guy she referred to as the Professor.
“Wait, slow down, sweetheart. I told you earlier, I’m not letting this shit go. I want answers. And now you’re telling me there’s some nut-job who is going to come kidnap me because I went to some summer camp when I was a kid? Ain’t gonna happen.”
She flattened her hair behind her ears, a gesture he’d begun to associate with nerves, and tucked her hands into her armpits. “Yes, that’s what I’m saying. You have to get the hell out of here. Get out of the city. As far away from me as possible.”
“Chloe, I can’t leave like that. I have a job. A life.” He stood and accepted the crumpled bundle of clothing she thrust into his arms. “I’m a cop. I was Army Special Forces. I’m not exactly helpless.”
If he hadn’t witnessed her ability to fade from sight and didn’t have the little issue with his own nose, he’d have been on the phone calling for an ambulance to take her down to County for a psych eval. He wanted to learn more about how she healed so fast and disappeared in plain sight, but the whole conspiracy thing struck him as too damn deep and crazy to be real. This was real life, not a science fiction movie.
But no matter how nuts it sounded, he knew she believed it. Every word she said, she thought it was the truth. And part of him believed it too. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t have the drive to investigate. Plus, when he admitted it to himself, he wasn’t normal either.
“You have to go. Run. It’s no mistake that we met, okay? And now…now…oh, God, no—”
She bolted from the room and into the hall. He followed her. Someone pounded on her door hard enough to rattle the chain lock. He ignored the knocks. Chloe slammed the bathroom door behind her and the sound of water running came through the thin panel.
“Hey, are you okay in there?” He dropped his shirt to the floor and stepped into his pants. Even with the water running, he heard her vomit. “Chloe, let me in. Why are you so upset?”
“Go away Greiff. Forget you ever met me. Run. Get out of the city.”
Crazy woman. No way he’d leave her, even if they hadn’t had sex. He didn’t bail on terrified women.
“I’ll get you a glass of water.”
As he passed the door, the person outside escalated from knocking to outright pounding. He changed directions and stalked to the door. A quick glance through the peep hole revealed his partner Spetrino on the other side of the door, flanked by a thick-necked bald guy. The expensive cut of his dark suit jacket would hide the lines of his firearm from the average citizen.
He stepped back, zippered, and buttoned his pants. The chief had taken his service weapon at the station as part of his mandated leave after shutting down the attempted robbery earlier in the day. Crap. Spetrino didn’t look totally comfortable next to the guy. He’d never gotten good at reading emotions by scent; now he wished he’d spent more time using his nose and less time trying to dull the damn thing.
The crisp, evergreen smell that clung to his partner was easy to catalogue and ignore. Sour sweat clung to Spetrino’s skin below his base scents, but Greiff had no way to tell if the sweat was fresh. The suit with him didn’t smell like anything.
He backed away and stared at the door knob. Impossible. Everyone smelled. The oils on skin, perfumes and colognes, deodorants, even the contact they came into with other people mixed together into a scent.
“Greiff, it’s me Spetrino. I need you to open the door, man.”
No viable way out of the apartment without super powers. A nose on steroids didn’t count when it came to needing a way through walls with no one knowing. And there was the Chloe situation. She hadn’t come out of the bathroom, and if even a tiny bit of the conspiracy stuff she’d told him was true—and his instinct told him it was—no way he’d leave her here with some over-muscled suit.
Fuck. He opened the door, but stood in the threshold to make it clear that his partner and the guy with him weren’t welcome inside. Chloe didn’t need to deal with this shit. “Hey man. You lookin’ for another old broad to flirt with? There’s a real doozy of a hoodoo priestess down the hall.”
Dark suit nodded with a small inclination of his head. If the other man had had hair, it would have been buzzed into a military high-and-tight. Greiff returned the gesture and pretended to ignore him. Both men knew the posturing was crap, but they had to do it. Unarmed, and with a woman to take care of, he wasn’t backing down and letting the goon in all easy-peasy. It took all his concentration to try and look relaxed and unconcerned.
Spetrino ignored the dig. “This is Major Rebane. We need to come inside.”
“Why?” His partner took a step closer and Greiff held his ground. Rebane maintained his position to the back and left of Spetrino.
“This isn’t a conversation to have in a public hallway, my color-challenged friend.” Spetrino pushed past him into the apartment.
Unless Greiff wanted to get physical, he had no choice but to let the other man pass. Unease wormed its way into his gut. The tone of the comment didn’t fit with his partner’s normal jabs about his wardrobe. “So, I can’t match my clothes. Who cares?”
“We both know it’s more than that.”
Greiff locked gazes with his partner, who stared back. Shit was spinning out here in a big way, and without knowing what facts Spetri
no had, silence was the best answer.
Spetrino put his hands on his hips. “Greiff let him in, man. This is about you and your new girlfriend. You care about her, you let him in.”
“I’ve seen a lot of weird shit recently, and heard even weirder. You sure I can trust this guy?” He raised one eyebrow and stared over his shoulder at Spetrino. It put Rebane out of sight, but he needed to see his partner’s face.
His partner sighed. “No, I’m not. But—”
“Detective Greiff, I know everything about you. I know that you lost your virginity at sixteen to a girl named Holly Marie Thompson. I know that you are color-blind, divorced, and that you lost both your parents before you turned thirty. I know your little sister lives in Oklahoma and works too many hours as a nurse.” Rebane’s low voice sounded like the darkest part of midnight. “And before you say that anyone could have picked up that information with a little digging, I also know that you have a couple hundred bucks stashed under a panel in your closet floor. I even know that you paid another kid to write all your papers junior year in college,” he dropped his voice to a whisper and leaned in closer, “and that you can see Chloe Saunders full color.”
The bathroom door opened and shut, and then the bedroom door closed as well. He stood aside and allowed Rebane to pass. The desire to warn Chloe warred with his need to maintain a defensive position where he could keep both men in sight.
“No more posturing. Tell me why the government is sending their bogeyman here.” Greiff moved to guard the hallway entrance.
Spetrino popped a piece of his nicotine gum. “I came with him because I wasn’t letting my partner get into something with some government spook without backup.”
He frowned. They’d only been partners for about a year. “Spetrino, if even a quarter of the things Chloe told me are true, you might want to get the hell out of here.”
The bedroom door opened again, and he tensed. Chloe might think she could take care of herself, but Rebane’s bicep out-sized her thigh. He glared at the G-man from under his brows and widened his stance.
Covert Craving Page 6
