A Whisper Of Wanting
Page 2
“And where, exactly, did you find this lust potion?”
“A little tourist shop called Jag’s at the edge of the Gaslamp Quarter,” he said, tilting the bottle to and fro. “Damn it, the bottle’s leaking.”
He wiped his hand on his pants, then checked the cork to make sure it was on securely.
“So you bought a bottle of so-called lust potion, and you’re only now realizing maybe you were ripped off?”
“I didn’t buy it. The shopkeeper planted it on my friend.”
“Planted it?”
“Yep, as in, stuck it in her purse when she wasn’t looking. The police were headed into the shop when it happened.”
“So he was possibly trying to get rid of evidence,” Nicole said, eyeing the bottle with newfound interest.
“That’s my guess,” he said, but his voice sounded far away. “I was on my way to turn it over to the lab, but—Oh, bloody hell, this stuff is still leaking everywhere.”
She snapped back to attention. He held up his hand and sniffed it.
“Doesn’t smell like anything. Do you have a tissue or something I could wipe this off with?” he asked.
“Right over there,” she said, nodding at the bookshelf against the wall with the tissue box on top.
“Hey, before I clean this off, why don’t we do a little experiment—you know, see if it works?”
Nicole laughed. “You be my guest and take a drink of it.”
“That’s the thing. I’m not sure if you’re supposed to drink it, or…” He closed the distance between them, rounding her desk, entering her space.
Her carefully guarded space.
“Go ahead, take a whiff,” Ethan said, holding his hand out.
“Let me get this straight—you want me to sniff your hand?”
He flashed his signature smile, and somewhere out there, a woman’s panties spontaneously combusted.
“This is ridiculous.”
“Come on. Just one little whiff.”
His hand was a few inches from her nose now, and the only way she could think to get rid of it was to smell it and shut him up. One sniff could put to rest for good the possibility that some exotic lust potion was on the loose in San Diego.
She edged her nose closer by an inch and inhaled deeply. He was right—there was no scent, save that of Ethan. That warm, almost-woodsy scent that lingered in her mind, even after two years and no satisfaction.
But then a white flash blinded Nicole for a split second, and a crazy-hot image flashed in her mind. Bare limbs intertwined, a woman’s hand against the naked flesh of a man’s back, a woman’s legs wrapped around a man’s narrow hips—and then their faces, rapt with pleasure.
It was her and Ethan.
Her breath caught in her throat for a moment, but she recovered, took a step back and bumped into her bookshelves.
She shook the image out of her head, but a sudden warming trend started in her neck and moved south, turning into a full-fledged electrical storm when it reached its destination between her thighs.
She looked up at him and their gazes locked. He was staring at her as if he’d been hypnotized, and now she had a vague sense she was doing the same to him. She felt herself moving forward, felt a burst of pure pleasure as Ethan came closer.
Closer, and closer still. A magnetic force pulled them together, and there was no fighting it.
Nicole felt as if she were seeing him—really seeing him—for the first time, and she couldn’t imagine why she’d been able to mostly resist him until now.
He was irresistible.
And then her mouth was against his, and they were locked in a desperate kiss that was all tongues and lips. All grasping and wanting.
It was strange how she had no actual recollection of deciding to press her body against Ethan’s, twine her arms around him, and kiss him.
She was only aware of the here and now. Only cognizant of the rough heat of his kiss, the texture of his lips, the urgent pressure of his hands against her neck, against her waist.
She heard a moan and realized it was coming from her. She was moaning into his mouth. Her leg snaked around Ethan’s as her appetite for him took on epic proportions. She wanted him with a fierceness she’d never felt before, and she wanted him right now.
How had they gotten here to this delicious place, and how would she ever let go?
And was that actually her hand now traveling down his shoulder, over his chest, to his waist, and below?
When she felt the solidness of his erection, she couldn’t doubt the reality of their embrace any longer. The warm pleasure coursing through her nearly drowned out the voice of protest about where her hand was and where they were at that very moment.
In her office…at the precinct…anyone could see.
Horribly…ridiculously…unprofessional.
Nicole felt them moving dangerously toward a destination the small voice in her head now cried out that she didn’t want to go. She struggled out of the deep fog that had overtaken her, and she untwined her arms and leg from Ethan and willed herself to push him away.
Her lips weren’t obeying. She continued to kiss him. But no. They couldn’t go any further than this.
Been there, done that…no going there again.
Must…stop…now.
With every ounce of her strength, she forced herself to break away from the kiss.
“No, we can’t do that,” she said. But her voice didn’t sound very convincing.
Ethan gazed at her through what looked like a fog of his own, barely comprehending her puny protest.
She took a step back from him, then another step, instinct telling her that putting some distance between them was her only hope. She bumped up against the bookcase again, then scrambled sideways, farther away.
“What’s the matter?” he asked, breathless.
“This! We can’t do this,” she said, more determined now.
With a few feet between them, the fog in her brain wasn’t so thick now, and she could hear the warning voice a little louder. It was saying, Stay the hell away from him. Stay the hell away!
Ethan blinked at her as if she’d just spoken to him in Urdu.
“Ethan? Are you okay?”
Stupid question. He was clearly anything but okay.
He stepped toward her again. “I want you, Nicole. And you want me.” Another step closer, and Nicole felt that crazy buzzing again. “Why do we have to fight it?”
She grabbed the rolling desk chair next to her and pushed it between them, holding on to the back of it ready to slam it into his shins if he came any closer.
“Listen to me,” Nicole said. “That stuff, whatever the hell it is—it’s affecting our brains. Maybe it’s some kind of odorless inhalant drug.”
“You can’t blame this thing between us on a fake lust potion. The attraction’s been there since long before today.”
She held out her hand. “Give that bottle to me, and I’ll turn it over to the lab for analysis. You may be in possession of an illegal substance.”
“Are you going to charge me and book me?” he said. “Maybe handcuff me and drag me off to a private room where you can—”
“Stop it. You know there’s something freaky going on here.”
She glanced over at the open door into the office, horrified at the thought that one of her co-workers might have caught the lurid sight of herself and Ethan engaged in mutual tonsil inspection a minute ago. No one was nearby. Thank God.
“What’s weird is that we can have a kiss like that, and you can act like it wasn’t supposed to happen.”
Another step closer, and Nicole’s will to resist him nearly vanished again. She pushed the chair as hard as she could toward him and it glanced off his shins. Then she climbed on her desk and slid across, knocking papers and files on the floor as she went, swinging her legs over on the other side. She kept moving until she reached the doorway.
“Leave that stuff on the desk, and get the hell out of here.”
Out in the main office, they garnered a few curious glances, but nothing more. She stood in her office doorway and watched as Ethan slowly made his way across the room to the hallway, glancing over his shoulder every few seconds as if he wanted to come running back. He looked like a man entrusting a bag of gold to a stranger, not quite sure if he really should.
And Nicole, even with the fog drifting out of her head, wanted to stop him so badly she could feel his name on the tip of her tongue, and it took every ounce of her willpower not to say it.
She was so damn predictable.
Nicole couldn’t help loving men. It was in her genetic makeup. Every Arroyo woman for as far back as she knew had harbored a legendary weakness for the male gender, and each and every one of them—except Nicole—had the train-wreck love lives to prove it.
It was one thing to like men, to enjoy their company, to think they were a useful addition to the human race. It was quite another to have the soul-deep lust for them that the Arroyo women had. Nicole could spend a lifetime studying the lines of a man’s body, savoring the hot, musky scent of male flesh, losing herself in the way he felt on her, inside her, against her.
She had a bad habit of losing herself to men, and she knew it all too well. So as a grown-up woman, she’d made the very conscious choice to stay away from the kind of men who made her get lost. She dated the safe ones instead.
Safe, as in domesticated. Never those wild, untamed men who ignited primal urges in her. But always the men who were polite, not too demanding…and never too passionate. These men she could remain in control with, and she always knew there’d be no danger of unleashing the passion that couldn’t be contained.
She wasn’t sure which category Ethan Ramsey fell into. On the one hand, he’d proven himself to be a lack-luster lover on that one disastrous night two years ago when job stress and pent-up lust had led to her giving in to his flirtation. But on the other hand, he’d been drunk, and she’d felt wildly turned-on by him before things had fizzled out. She’d sensed that beneath his laid-back exterior lurked a man of great passion.
That night she’d bumped into him at a trendy pub she’d never been to before—and hadn’t been to since—and already knowing him from his coverage of a few cases she’d worked on, she’d thought he would be a safe one-night stand.
Instead, she’d gotten another lesson in why it was always a bad thing to lose control.
She turned and eyed the bottle Ethan had left behind. What the hell was that stuff? Or was it simply all her long-ignored libido that was to blame for the scorching kiss?
“Hey, Arroyo,” a male voice said, jarring her out of her thoughts.
Nicole turned around to find Tom Yates, the office clerk, standing next to her. “What’s up?” she said.
“I just heard Jonas Pulatski’s made parole. Thought you’d want to know.”
Dear God.
Just the freaking news she needed. Her stomach twisted at the horrible memories that name dredged up. She’d known he was up for parole, and she’d blocked out the painful fact from her mind.
Jonas and his sixteen-year-old little brother Carl had been involved in an armed robbery at a convenience store. Nicole and her partner Max Robbins had been called to the scene. She hadn’t made detective yet—had only been on the street for six months. Carl had panicked when the police showed up, shot at her, and Nicole had returned fire, killing him. He was the first and last man—no, child—she’d ever killed. Jonas, a longtime street thug, had killed Max.
Jonas had sworn revenge on Nicole before going to prison, but he must have learned to keep his mouth shut about such things while serving his time, hence the parole.
“Thanks for letting me know,” she said.
“You look a little pale. Are you okay?”
“Sure,” she said and went to get the bottle of mystery potion to take to the lab.
She needed to get the hell out of here, like now. And since she needed to know what was in the bottle, it was the best excuse she could think of to get away from her office.
As if she didn’t have enough to worry about with Jonas Pulatski being on the loose, she also had that kiss to dwell on. That impossible, fiery kiss that had made her want to throw Ethan onto the nearest horizontal surface and ride him like a wild stallion.
A wave of heat washed over her again, and she sat down with a thump on the edge of her desk, steadying herself. What the hell was going on?
Had that fake lust potion contained some kind of toxic chemical that was screwing with her brain?
Could she trust herself to walk through the building to the lab without embarrassing herself any further? What if Ethan wasn’t gone yet? What if he was still standing around talking to someone?
If her co-workers saw her getting all hot and bothered by some guy—a reporter, no less—they’d never let her live it down. Nicole couldn’t say she loved the male-dominant culture in the police department, but she did love her job.
She loved being part of the thin blue line that stood between civilization and chaos, and she wouldn’t do anything to jeopardize her career. Even if it meant pretending she wasn’t a real woman with real physical needs whenever her colleagues were around.
But today, all of a sudden, she was feeling as if her physical needs could absolutely not be ignored—or controlled.
3
ETHAN FORCED HIMSELF to walk away. It was the most arduous walk of his life, leaving Nicole there, their personal business unfinished.
How to explain what had happened? Was there any rational explanation for a kiss that had felt as if it was burning the soles off his shoes?
Maybe it was just her. After all, whenever Ethan could make up an excuse to put himself in Nicole’s vicinity, he became possessed with fantasies about him, her, and the handcuffs she surely had stashed in her purse. It was a fruitless pursuit, since he stood little chance of finding himself in the territory that included her panties again in this lifetime.
Still, she fascinated him. She tried really hard to look like a professional. She pulled her long dark hair back into a severe bun at her nape, but this only drew attention to the delicate satin flesh of her neck, skin, he knew, that was as ripe and delicious as a summer peach.
She also tried to hide her curves behind an array of restraining undergarments. Ethan had encountered several of them on his one and only night with Nicole, and if he hadn’t been so damn drunk, he might not have found the heavy-duty bra and girdle such a challenge. But a few too many pints of Guinness and the late night led to an embarrassing fumbling attempt at passion that had ended with him passing out and her disappearing from the hotel room before dawn, never to grace his presence again.
At least not voluntarily. He found reasons to stop by her desk at the precinct whenever he could, usually under the guise of work. Each encounter, however brief, fueled his pathetic fantasies. Sure, he could have other women, but there was something about Nicole.
Something smoldering, burning just below the surface. All her tightly wound control—the facade she presented to the world—concealed a wild, passionate woman. He just knew it. He’d seen a glimpse of that woman and he longed to fully unleash her.
No, unleash was the wrong word. It made him think of large snakes trapped in burlap sacks. Wrong image entirely. Maybe unravel was the right word. Or, simply, undress.
God knew he’d had a never-ending succession of fantasies about the ways in which he wanted to undress her, strip her bare, and take his own sweet time about exploring every lush spot on her body. Kissing, licking, tasting, burying his face in her flesh and drinking her in like water.
Sure, maybe it was a bit of his hidden control freak nature coming out in his wanting Nicole so much. He wanted her partly because he couldn’t have her.
While the rest of the world might not have been aware of the type-A personality lurking beneath his easygoing exterior, Ethan couldn’t deny its presence. He liked to feel in control of his world, and Nicole was utterly and completely out of his control. That unfortunate night—or more accurately, his failure to perform—were perfect examples of the effect she had on him.
Ethan would not—could not—let this latest encounter with Nicole end in one hot, incredibly frustrated kiss.
So what? What else could he do?
And why did his brain feel so damn fuzzy and sluggish?
Well, not sluggish exactly, but…maybe dazed was a better word. He felt as if he were waking up from a long, ill-timed sleep—the kind he always ended up having after suffering jet lag from the eight-hour time difference between London and San Diego.
Maybe Nicole had been right about the lust potion having some sort of narcotic effect. Or maybe…
Maybe it really had been a lust potion the lizard man had planted on Zoe. It wasn’t outside the realm of his imagination that the right combination of chemicals could produce a high level of arousal. Especially if the people involved already had some latent—or in Ethan’s case, blatant—attraction to each other.
He wandered to the main desk of the police station and asked the clerk which officer on duty could answer his questions about the multiple homicide case he was researching. Twenty minutes later, he’d gotten everything he needed to complete his story, and had no further excuse to linger there any longer.
On his way back to the car, his mobile phone rang, and he saw Zoe Aberdeen’s number appear on the LCD.
“What’s up?” he answered.
“Did you turn in that love potion crap to the crime lab?”
“Just now dropped it off, actually.”
“Oh good. I was a little worried you’d decide to keep it, and I just have kind of a weird feeling about that stuff.”
Should he tell her about the odd effect the stuff had had on himself and Nicole?
His brain answered immediately with a resounding “Hell no.” Not only would such a claim make him sound as if he’d gone dotty, but he didn’t exactly have any facts to back up the story, either.