Troubleshooters 05 Into The Night

by Suzanne Brockmann

  He stopped her from saying more by kissing her. Yes, they were in the parking lot. The very empty parking lot with nothing around them but empty parking slots. Anyone pulling in wouldn't come near them—they'd park much closer to the hospital entrance.

  And, Jesus, he didn't want to wait to drive all the way back to the hotel.

  And maybe have her change her mind.

  Muldoon pushed his seat back as far as it would go, which was far enough—thank you, Mr. Ford—as he unfastened her jeans.

  He had to stop kissing her to pull them off her legs, which was dangerous because that meant she could talk.

  "Oh, my God," she gasped, even as she helped him by kicking off her sneakers. "You actually want to ... Anyone walking past can see us!"

  "No, they can't," he said.

  She wasn't wearing any underpants, which would have been a really excellent discovery if he'd been taking his time. As it was, it only served to distract him.

  "I happen to know that we're not invisible. At least I'm not—

  "No one's walking past," he told her, cupping her with his hand, quickly trying to calculate how, in their limited amount of space, he could kiss her there.

  No, there was really only one way two people their size could make love in the front seat of a truck like this one.

  He pulled her on top of him, so that she was straddling him.

  "Mike—"

  "No one's walking past."

  "Easy for you to be blasé—I'm the one who's naked and you're not!"

  "I noticed." He grinned at her as he dug a condom out of his wallet. He'd put it there just a few days ago, in a burst of hope. "I'm finding that to be quite an incredible turn on. Shades of slave girl and cruel master."

  That completely cracked her up. "I think you just like the idea of getting caught," she said, but she pulled her T-shirt over her head and her bra off her arms so that she really was completely naked and waiting for him.

  It almost seemed a shame to unfasten his pants. But he did it without hesitating, quickly covering himself with the condom. "Who's going to catch us, slave girl? It's after four A.M."

  "It's after four?" Her voice rose in dismay.

  He grabbed her hips and pulled her toward him and...

  "God!"

  He was inside of her, and she was laughing. He hoped it was because this felt as mind-blowingly wonderful to her as it did to him. He was in heaven with her breasts in his face and her body straining to get even closer to his.

  "Suddenly four A.M. doesn't seem so awful anymore," she gasped, and he had to laugh, too. "In fact, it's my new favorite time of day. Oh, God, if you don't slow down, I'm going to come right away!"

  He didn't. "Tell me," he demanded. "Tell me when. I'm going to come with you."

  What he was doing to her was apparently really right. She was making a lot of wordless noise, deep, sexy sounds of intense pleasure, and it was pushing him hard against the edge of his own release.

  Was she coming? He wasn't completely sure.

  "Tell me," he ordered.

  "I'm... yes!" she said. "Yes!"

  He let go.

  The crash of pleasure was so intense that he shook, that bright colors actually cart wheeled before his eyes.

  And she was feeling that pleasure, too. Right at that exact same moment. Knowing that made it ten times better, and he started to laugh.

  It was either that or cry.

  Joan collapsed against him, and he held her close.

  "Oh, man." He could feel her heart pounding, racing in time with his. "Oh, baby. That was amazing. Fast, but amazing."

  She sighed, a bone-deep sigh of contentment that made his throat ache.

  Please, God, let her realize that this was not just another mistake, that what they'd found together could truly make her happy.

  She sighed again. "Can you really do that?" she asked. "Come on command?"

  "It's just a control thing," he said. "You fight it, and you fight it, and then you stop fighting it. And bang."

  "Bang?" she repeated, lifting her head to look down at him.

  "Yeah." He smiled back at her. "That's pretty much how it happens."

  She touched his face, the amusement in her eyes changing to something tender, something that had a hint of sadness. "What on earth am I going to do with you?"

  He tried to make it into a joke. "Something really kinky I hope."

  She opened her mouth, as if she were going to speak, but headlights swept across them.

  A car was pulling into the parking lot.

  Joan leapt down onto the floor on the passenger's side of the cab, scrambling for her clothes.

  "They parked on the other end," he told her. "It's safe to come back."

  But she didn't. She quickly pulled on her clothes before sitting back in her seat. "God," she said, as he refastened his own belt buckle. "I haven't had sex in a motor vehicle since college. That was... something of a novelty."

  He didn't want to be a novelty. But he tried to keep things light. "Stick with me, babe. It'll be high class all the way. Tomorrow I'll take you out and we can get rocking' in my boat."

  "Tomorrow we're both going to be a little busy," she said.

  "Not tomorrow night." He started the truck with a roar and pulled out of the hospital lot. "Can I see you tomorrow night?"

  Joan glanced out of the window, as if gauging how fast they were moving and if it were possible for her to jump out of the truck and get away from him without injuring herself.

  Not a good sign.

  She gave him a smile that was forced, and his heart sank even further. "I don't know what I'm going to be up to, with Brooke, with Donny—God, now that Tony's visiting..."

  "I know you have things to do," he said quietly, "but sooner or later you will be done for the night. I don't care if it's really late—"

  She closed her eyes. "I know this is going to sound awful, but please, let's not do this right now."

  Muldoon shut his mouth, and they drove the rest of the way back to Joan's hotel in silence.

  Muldoon parked in the lot, over by the side entrance, instead of dropping her at the front of the hotel.

  "Thank you," Joan said, hating herself for having been cruel to him—again. But if she was terrified before, now she was in a complete panic. What was she going to do? "And, Mike, I'm really sorry—

  "I want you again," he told her, his voice low. "Already. Can you believe that?" He looked over at her, and his expression was as serious as she'd ever seen it.

  It was as if she were suddenly sitting in this truck with that man who'd run down a mountain with a broken kneecap instead of her good ol' buddy Mike.

  "At the risk of being crude ..." He took her hand and placed it over the zipper of his shorts.

  Joan snatched her hand back. He wasn't exaggerating. "Wow. I guess that's one of the perks of having a younger boyfriend."

  "Is that how you think of me?" He didn't so much as crack a smile. "As your boyfriend?"

  Shit. "I shouldn't have said that. It was a lousy attempt to make a joke."

  "Okay, so then I'm not your boyfriend. I'm just someone you had sex with twenty minutes ago... ?"

  Joan sighed. "Mike. We're both exhausted—"

  "I'm just looking for a little clarification," he said. "Don't misunderstand—I'm not accusing you of anything, honest. I'm just trying to figure out how to proceed from here. See, the pathetic thing is I had this plan to keep sex out of our relationship entirely, to show you there's more between us than this physical attraction thing. That worked real well, huh?"

  "Yeah." She had to laugh at that, but her heart was in her throat. He had a plan...

  "I don't know what to do now, because making love to you tonight was so incredible, I'm not sure I can go back to that friend place without going completely insane. I want you endlessly, Joan."

  She looked up at him. God, that was such a romantic thing to say.

  And he looked the part of the romantic hero, with the soft
light from the hotel parking lot casting shadows on his beautiful face.

  "I don't know what I'm doing," she admitted. "I can't seem to keep my hands off of you, and I love spending time with you, I really do..."

  "Then spend tune with me," he said. "Spend lots of time with me. Starting right now. Let's go back to your room."

  "And have sex? Again?"

  "No," he said, absolutely. "I want us to make love."

  Okay, that was another really romantic thing to say. He was wearing her down, and he knew it.

  He touched her lightly, pushing her hair back from her face with just one finger. "Invite me to your room."

  Madness. It was total madness. The idea of any kind of relationship with this man scared her to death. There were so many reasons why she should get out of this truck and run like hell.

  "There's not enough time to get any real sleep before we both need to be up and in the shower," he persisted. "Think of what we could do with this next hour."

  Oh, she was thinking about that, all right.

  Cheerful Muldoon was always hard to resist, but this decisive, determined Muldoon was impossible to turn down. He just sat there, watching her, waiting for her to speak.

  Joan cleared her throat. "Please," she said. "Will you come up to my room?"

  He kissed her. Oh, baby, the man could kiss.

  "I'll come up on one condition," he said, as if she were the one talking him into going upstairs. "It's a little kinky—you might not want to do this."

  Was he serious? God, he was.

  "You have to promise to do whatever I want," he said. "We make love exactly the way I want to. You know, from my script."

  His script... He'd told her that, in his experience, most women's sexual fantasies followed a script.

  "You have a script?" she asked.

  "Yeah," he said. She could tell from his slow smile that he knew she was completely intrigued. "It's kind of new. It's something I've kind of figured out over the past few days. And since you're the star in it, I thought... I might as well ask."

  She was the star of his fantasy script. "Wow. Is it just you and me or there any special guest stars?"

  He laughed. "No barnyard animals, if that's what you mean."

  "Do I, like, have lines?"

  "A few," he said. "But they're pretty easy. You mostly say yes. You can improvise and embellish it if you want."

  "This is a little weird," Joan admitted.

  "If you get the least bit uncomfortable, we can stop. At any time, okay?" He was smiling at her as if he knew she wasn't going to say no.

  Maybe she was a little bit kinky. She was the star of his fantasy script. "What's the first thing you're going to ask me to do?"

  "Take off your clothes."

  Muldoon watched as Joan followed his first order. T-shirt, sneakers, bra, and jeans. She actually folded her jeans before turning back to him, standing up straight, chin held high as she let him look at her.

  "What next?" she asked. It was pretty warm in her hotel room, which meant... she was getting into this.

  Good.

  "Kiss me," he said.

  She started toward him, but then stopped. "Where?" She was trying not to smile, but the edges of her lips kept twitching.

  "You can start with my mouth," he told her.

  She kissed him sweetly at first, then deeper, longer, as he pulled her into his arms and ran his hands over and across all that soft, bare skin.

  "Help me get out of my clothes," he said.

  In truth, she was more of a hindrance than a help—she couldn't quite get his belt to unbuckle. But it was fun to let her try.

  And finally he was naked, too.

  She was sitting on the floor, having just pulled off his sneakers and socks, and she smiled up at him, waiting for his next command.

  Yeah, she was definitely getting into this.

  "I think we better have a condom on hand," he told her. "Can you get one?"

  "Just one?" she asked, on her way into the bathroom.

  He laughed. "We've got only an hour."

  "Forty-eight minutes now," she called back to him.

  Yikes. He had to speed this up.

  "Hurry," he said.

  She did, which was incredible to watch.

  "On the bed," he said.

  She climbed onto the bed, and knelt there, looking at him questioningly. God, she was sexy.

  "Time for you to say one of your lines," he said. "Okay?"

  "Yes," she said. She held out her arms to him. "Yes."

  "Okay," Muldoon admitted. "I lied a little bit about the lines. There's more to them than just yes. I want you to ask me, well..." He laughed. "To go down on you. You can say it however you want."

  "But aren't I supposed to..."

  "My script doesn't say, 'And then she argued,' " he countered.

  She laughed as she shrugged. "Okay. I mean, if that's really what you want. I think I'm getting the better end of the deal, but it's your fantasy."

  "Yes," he said. "It is."

  She lay back on the bed, blushing slightly. "I don't know exactly what you want me to say... How about... Kiss me, baby, where the sun don't shine. I need you to kiss me. I'm dying for you to kiss me." She extended one foot toward him, let her other leg fall open. Oh, yeah. "Starting with my instep and then my ankle and so on and so on and just keep heading north until I tell you to stop."

  "Perfect," he said, doing just that.

  "Stop," she said. "I mean, don't stop..."

  Oh, yeah.

  She was soft, she was sweet, and he was setting her on fire.

  "Please," she moaned. "Oh, please!"

  It was close enough to what he'd wanted her to say next, without any prompting at all. He covered himself with the condom, and buried himself deeply inside of her.

  Joan made a sound that was identical to the way he was feeling. Somehow she opened her eyes and looked up at him, obviously struggling to keep this about him and what he wanted. "Do you want me to get on top?"

  "No." He wanted to be in control. He wanted to be face-to-face with her, to look into her eyes. He moved slowly, setting a rhythm that made her eyelids close halfway.

  "Mmmm," she said.

  "You have another line," he said.

  Her eyes opened a little wider. "Now?"

  "Yeah. You say, 'Let's do it. Let's make this long-distance thing work.' "

  She closed her eyes. "Oh, God, Mike..."

  "Come on. It's my fantasy. My script. You promised you'd make it good for me."

  "Okay," she said. "All right. I'll try. I'm willing to try to make this work."

  "That's not the line. It's 'Let's do it,' " he repeated." 'Let's make this long-distance thing work.' If you want something done, you do it," he reminded her. "You don't try."

  "Let's do it," she gasped. "This is not fair. This is coercion ... Let's make this long-distance thing work!"

  He kissed her. "Thank you."

  "That's it," she said. "There're no more lines except for the part where I scream yes, right?"

  "Actually, there are a few more, but we can do it pretty quickly. You say, 'I understand that our age difference is inconsequential, that it doesn't matter to you, and it doesn't matter to me, either. Seven years is nothing in the grand scheme of things.'"

  "Mike..."

  "You promised."

  Joan groaned and closed her eyes. "Seven years is nothing in the grand scheme of things and if you don't fuck me harder, I'm going to die."

  "Close enough." He did as she asked. "Better?"

  "Uhhhh," she said. "Oh, God!"

  "My turn for a line." It was getting harder for him to think, let alone talk. "I say,. 'If you're worried about what people will think when they see us together, don't be. You say, 'Why not?' "

  "Why...not...?"

  "Because people will think, 'Wow, he really loves her. And they'll be right."

  She opened her eyes and looked right up at him, shock on her face. "Did you just say... ?"


  "I love you," he said. "Yeah, that's what I said."

  He reached between them, knowing exactly where to touch her to push her over the edge.

  "Oh, Michael," Joan gasped as she exploded.

  He had to grit his teeth and think about differential equations to keep from joining her.

  And when she finally lay beneath him, limp and exhausted, he was still hard inside of her.

  Her eyelids fluttered open in surprise as he began moving again. "You didn't...?"

  He shook his head. "No. We have a little time left, and, well, I still have this one thing that I really want you to do. Something that'll completely get me off. Something that'll rock my world for a long, long time."

  "Ask me," she said. "I'll do it. Just tell me what to do."

  Muldoon nodded. "Promise?"

  "Yes."

  He took a deep breath and said it. "Marry me."

  Chapter 26

  As Mary Lou drove to work, she saw Ihbraham walking along the road that led to the base.

  What was he doing, walking?

  She passed him, but then pulled over, out of the heavy stream of traffic, reaching to roll down the passenger's-side window as she waited for him to catch up.

  "Where are you going?" she called.

  He came and leaned in the window. "To see the President speak at the Navy base," he told her. "I knew there would be much traffic and trouble with parking, and it's a nice enough day to walk, so..."

  "Hop in. I'll give you a lift."

  "That's not necessary." He started backing away.

  "But I wanted to talk to you. It's important. I had dinner with Bob Schwegel last night."

  Ihbraham stopped moving, but he didn't lean back down so she could see his face. "And you are telling me this because... ?"

  "You were right about him," she said to his blue T-shirt. "He's a creep. I think he's a con artist. He asked me to run away with him to New York—can you believe that? I was supposed to pack a bag and bring it to work today. He said he'd meet me here and then we'd go pick up Haley and leave town. Of course, we'd make a quick stop and clear out all of Sam and my bank accounts before we hit the road. I called Medway Insurance—that's where he said he worked—and they never even heard of a Bob Schwegel. He was scamming me right from the start."

  Ihbraham sighed, and then crouched down next to the car. "I'm sorry."