She turned, glanced at him, then deliberately away, and kept dancing. And the guy with her, if possible, looked even less welcoming than she did, his hand tightening on her hip, and Joe wanted to deck him now.
“Alyssa.”
“Go away.” He couldn’t hear her, but he got the message anyway.
“Come on.” He grabbed her hand, pulled her away from her new friend. “Outside.”
“Hey. Back off, buddy,” the other guy said, and Joe could hear that just fine, and Alyssa was pulling her hand out of his.
“No,” Joe said. “You back off. Right now.” And in case the guy couldn’t hear, Joe made sure he got his point across.
The guy glared back at him, and Joe didn’t think he’d made it onto his Christmas card list. But he backed off all the same, melted right into the crowd. So much for his chivalrous impulses.
“Go away,” Alyssa said again, almost loud enough for him to hear this time. “Leave me alone.”
“Alyssa. Come on. Talk to me.” He wanted to grab her again, but he didn’t. He might not know women, but he knew Alyssa. He jerked his head toward the door. “Come on. Now.”
She came with him, maybe reluctantly, but she came.
“Got a coat?” he asked when they were near the exit, the music not quite as loud. She fished in her purse, handed him the ticket, and he went to the coat-check and retrieved it, handed it to her.
Marcus raised an eyebrow when Joe hit the door again. And then he saw Alyssa, and the tooth flashed again. “Hey, brother. Have a good night.”
Joe barely noticed. He had Alyssa’s elbow, was leading her around the corner, to the alley that led to the back entrance. Although he had absolutely no idea what he was going to say.
Just Asking for Trouble
“You’re going to make this about me,” she said as soon as he’d turned the corner, once they were in the alley. Next to the dumpsters. First he’d stood her up, now he was taking her for a chat by the dumpsters. And this was the guy she’d spent fifteen years wanting? “You’re going to make it like I did something wrong.” She twisted her elbow out of his grip. “I’m on my date. I showed up. It’s not my fault I’m here alone.”
“Alyssa. Wait,” he commanded, and she shut up, but she glowered at him all the same.
“I’m waiting,” she said when he just stood there. “But what comes out of your mouth had better be an apology.”
“I’m sorry,” he burst out. “All right, I’m sorry. I screwed up. I’m just so . . .” He broke off, shrugged, a heavy, helpless movement, and despite her hurt and anger, she could see him. She could feel him. “It’s just always been so important to get it done.”
“But don’t you see?” she tried to tell him. “Don’t you see that when you say that, you’re saying I’m not important?”
“I get it,” he said, running a hand over his head and looking at the ground. “I do.”
“No,” she said. “No, I don’t think you do, or you wouldn’t have done it. I was excited. This was supposed to be my big celebration for the board saying yes to Geek Day. I know it isn’t really a big deal, not like your job. I know it, I know I’m just . . . little, but it was a big deal to me. It was the biggest deal to me I’ve ever had at work, and I thought you knew. I thought you cared about it. I thought you wanted to take me out and celebrate. I looked forward to it all day. More than all day. It was my celebration, and turns out it didn’t matter to you.”
The tears were close to the surface now, and she blinked them back, because she needed to tell him. She’d felt so bad, and she wanted to be comforted, and he wasn’t the man who could do it after all. “And when I realized it wasn’t an emergency,” she said, “that it was just your work, that I didn’t matter as much as some work problem, that you didn’t care that I hadn’t had dinner, you didn’t care that I was waiting for you, when I knew I was that low on your list, it . . .”
The tears were there, and she was ruining her makeup, not that it mattered, because if anybody had ever had a disastrous evening, this was it. “It hurt so much,” she finished, and she couldn’t help crying. She couldn’t help it at all. “I thought I was special to you, and I’m not, and it hurts.”
“You are,” he said, and he looked miserable, the wooden expression gone for once. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think, that’s all.”
“Yeah, well,” she said, doing her best to rally her forces, running a knuckle over the corners of her eyes, wishing she had a Kleenex. “You should have. You should have. I got ready. I wanted to look nice for you. I wanted you to be proud of me. And I felt so . . .” She was crying again, because she couldn’t help it. “I felt so stupid. Because I did it again. I thought you cared about me, that you were the right guy. But you’re not. You’re just a guy. Just another guy.”
“No,” he said. “Alyssa. Sweetheart. No. Wait. Let me try. No, I’m not. I’m stupid sometimes, but I’m not just a guy. At least, I am. I’m a guy who’s crazy about you. That’s why I’m here, because I know I screwed up. I left as soon as I talked to you. I came as fast as I could, and I’ve been looking for you . . .” He exhaled, cast an arm out. “All over. Worrying about what you were doing, that you’d be too mad to call me this time if you got in trouble.”
She couldn’t help it. She softened. “You have? You’ve been looking for me?”
He reached out for her, then. “All over,” he said, one arm around her waist, his other hand smoothing back a wisp of hair that had fallen in her face. “How about going back in there with me, giving me another chance?”
“You admit that you were wrong?”
He groaned. “Oh, man. You’re going to make me say it, aren’t you?”
“Yeah. I am. I felt really bad, Joe. I really did. You have to at least say the word.”
“All right,” he said, tucking the hair behind her ear, his thumb caressing her cheek. “I was wrong. I screwed up. Now will you come dance with me?”
“Maybe.” She leaned into him, because he was so big, and so warm, and she didn’t want to fight, she wanted Joe. “Maybe if you kiss me like you mean it first.”
He had a hand behind her head, and the other one around her, and he was kissing her the way she liked it. Thoroughly, and a little bit hard, and like he meant it. She had her hands around his shoulders, and she could hear herself making little noises into his mouth, because she was back in his arms, and it felt like he wanted her there, and she wanted him to want her more.
She was vaguely aware that he was backing her up, but she didn’t realize what was happening until her back hit the wall, until he had reached down to pull her legs up, wrap them around his waist. And she was against the wall, his hand behind her head, and the knowledge that he was holding her up with one arm was thrilling, and what that didn’t do, his mouth against hers was taking care of.
He shoved harder into her, and she wrapped her legs around him more tightly, pulled him closer, and kissed him back, her hands under his leather jacket, under his shirt, against the bulk of muscle at his side, coming to rest on either side of his spine, then running up and down there, her fingers reaching down under his waistband, stroking his skin down low, near his tailbone.
“Do it now,” she breathed. Her fingers were circling, and she could feel him jerking against her as if there were a direct line of electric current running there, just like the one that was zinging from her neck, where his teeth were closing on her skin, straight to her center, making her need him inside her right now. Right now. “Come on, Joe,” she begged. “Do it now.”
His mouth stilled, and he pulled his head away, rested it against the bulk of his arm for a moment. He stood back, lowered her to the ground, steadied her against him. “No. You make me so damn crazy. No. Not in the alley.”
She straightened her skirt, smoothed her hair where his hand had ruffled it, feeing bereft and angry and confused, because why was she mad?
“You say I make you crazy,” she said. “But you never act crazy. You never lose control.�
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“What?” He was the one looking confused now. “I’m supposed to do you against the wall, where anyone could see? I thought I was supposed to make you feel special.”
She shrugged, not sure how to tell him that knowing he couldn’t stand not to be inside her, that he had to do it now, that she’d pushed him past his boundaries, was what she needed from him tonight.
“That’s not happening,” he said. “Not here. But how about dancing? How about a do-over on that?” He smoothed her hair some more for her, like he needed to touch her, and she forgave him a little.
“You want to dance with me? You sure?” she asked, trying for her usual sassy tone. “Don’t you have some work to do?”
“No,” he said. “No more work. It’s all about you tonight, all night long. And right now, I want to dance with you. At least, I want to watch you dance. But only if you promise to do all those things you were doing before to make me jealous. Only if you do them all for me.”
“You could tell that’s what I was doing?” she asked as he took her hand and they rounded the corner, past the doorman again, who let them in with a grin for Joe.
“I knew what you were doing,” he said just before the noise level rose too high for her to hear. “And it worked.”
Dancing was good, but after an hour of showing off her moves for him, of watching those pale blue eyes leveled on her, the intensity in them while she did it, she needed something else.
“You like me?” she asked, as close to his ear as she could reach as they swayed to a slow, bluesy number, as Joe put a hand on her lower back to pull her closer. “You like to touch me?”
“You know I do.” And if she hadn’t, what she was feeling against her would have let her know.
“Then show me.” She moved her hand inside the collar of his dark gray shirt, stroked the side of his neck, up over the rasp of his hair, keeping her touch light. She lifted her cheek from his chest and kissed him there, not caring who was watching. He smelled faintly of soap, and of man. He smelled like Joe.
He had her hand in his again, was taking her off the dance floor for the second time that night. A quick detour for her coat, and he was helping her into it, all without attempting to speak over the throb of music, the incessant waves of conversation washing over them.
The quiet, the chill outside were a shock. Joe said a couple words to the guy at the door, and Alyssa saw the flash of a bill changing hands, then the guy was speaking into a phone, and another, only slightly smaller man was out the door of the club and jogging down the street.
A brief wait in the night air, then. Joe’s silence, rather than annoying her, was exciting her. Something about the look of him, so still, so set. As if he were saving his energy.
He held the door for her when the car pulled up with a screech of tires, then swung up beside her and was driving, headed north, to his place. He was almost there, she could feel it like a physical thing in the confined space, the tension between them. But she wanted him further gone. She wanted him all the way, because she needed to know.
“Guess I’m glad I didn’t give any of those guys my number after all,” she tried. “Or let them take me home, either. I bet they didn’t valet park. We’d still be walking.”
She could see his jaw set, his body stiffen, and she shivered. Yep. That had worked.
“You’d better not have given it to them,” he told her. “And we’re not even going to talk about them taking you home. You need to be clear about this. I don’t care if we have a fight. I don’t care how mad you are at me. It’s not OK to go out and dance with other guys. It’s not OK to let them put their hands on you.”
“You’re jealous, huh? You should be jealous.” She was just torturing him now, and she knew it, and she was doing it anyway. “If you don’t want me to be with anybody else, then I guess you should take better care of me, shouldn’t you?”
He’d reached his loft, because it was only a few blocks. They could have walked, except that she’d been right, Joe would never make her walk. The garage door rolled up as they approached, and he pulled the car inside, and she listened to the grinding sound of the door shutting again behind them.
“I’m not joking,” he said, not making any move to get out, his expression hard in the faint light. “All right, I screwed up. I won’t do that again, but I’ll do something else wrong, because I’m a guy. You can yell at me, and you can fight with me. But you can’t do what you did tonight.”
“Or what?”
“Or . . . what?” he repeated, staring at her.
“Or what?” She shrugged. “What are you going to do, if you really care that much? What are you going to do, if I was so bad?”
He looked stunned for a moment, and then he spoke, the warning clear. “Alyssa. You’d better stop.”
“If you want to show me,” she challenged, “show me. Don’t tell me.”
Another pause. “You are just asking for trouble,” he finally said, and the intensity she heard in his voice set up a faint answering drumbeat deep inside her. “You keep on acting like a naughty little girl, you’re asking to get a spanking like one.”
“Huh.” She tossed her head and opened her car door, her heart beating hard. “Big talker.” She slammed the door, headed off without waiting for him.
He was out of the car and at the entry door, punching in the code, with all the speed his normally deliberate moves belied. And then he had her by the hand once more, was pulling her through the hallway, but not all the way to the bedroom, not like she’d expected. He stopped at the living room, next to one of the wide brown leather couches.
“Take off your coat,” he said, shrugging out of his own jacket and tossing it onto the opposite couch, and she did the same with a pang of disappointment, adding her bag while she was at it. Well, this wasn’t exactly sexy.
“Now take off your underwear,” he said, and that was a whole lot better.
“What?” She played along. She’d wanted to see what he would do, had pushed as hard as she’d dared. Was he really going to do it?
“You heard me. Right now, Alyssa.” There was no mistaking the purpose in his voice, or the look on his face.
His pale blue eyes never left hers, and she felt her eyes widen in spite of herself as she reached slowly under her skirt, because she had pushed hard, and now he actually looked dangerous.
“Turn around,” he said. “I want to watch.”
She turned her back to him, her breath coming short, hiked her skirt up, pulled the scrap of fabric down with both hands, leaning over to ease it over her heels, her skirt falling back down around her bare thighs.
“Put them on the end table,” he said, and she did it, the scrap of pink making an incongruous, frivolous contrast against the solid, heavy wood, its polish gleaming in the soft light of the lamp.
He sat down in the center of the couch, looking a little less certain now, and she held her breath, wondering if he was going to lose his nerve. She’d be willing to bet he’d never done this before. Not that she had either, but she’d thought about it often enough, over the years. And the hand doing it had always been Joe’s.
She shrugged as the seconds ticked by, as he said nothing. “Well, guess I’ll go to bed.”
“No, you won’t.” That got him, just as she’d hoped it would. “You’re going to lie down across my lap. Right now.”
He was going to do it. The thrill of it sent a shock right through her, so sharp she shivered with it. She knelt carefully on the couch beside him, got her balance, then set her hands down on the cold leather across from him and lowered herself down, the bulk of his thighs raising her pelvis high, the toes of her shoes digging into the smooth surface behind her. The arousal in her was like a live thing, pulsing and beating, and she was panting already.
“Turn your head towards me,” he instructed. “I want to see your face while I do this. I want to watch you feel it.”
She obeyed, and he stroked her cheek, and she opened her mouth a little and
sighed.
He put one hand on her back, used the other to pull her skirt up around her waist, then sat for a moment, ran one big hand over her. The size and the weight of it, her vulnerable position, it all felt so good, and she wriggled into him, rubbed herself over him, needing the contact, needing more.
“You’re a very bad girl,” he said, and she could see that he wasn’t looking at her face after all, not right now. Instead, he was watching his hand move over her. “You push me and push me. But I’m going to let you decide. How many smacks do you think you deserve for running out without talking to me? For dancing like that, and letting that asshole touch you like that?”
“Two,” she said as best she could with her cheek against the cold leather of the couch, while his hand stroked again and again over her bottom, her upper thighs, awakening tingles of pleasure along her skin that made her squirm, while the most insistent part of her screamed for his touch. “Two, please, Joe.”
He laughed softly. “Oh, I don’t think so. I just changed my mind. I’m going to decide.”
And then he slapped her. Not hard, because she’d known it wouldn’t be hard. But the sound rang out, shockingly sharp in the silent air of the loft, and she felt the sting of it, and jerked against him.
And then he spanked her again, and again, four, five, six times. Her hands gripped the leather surface of the couch, braced against the blows, coming a bit faster now. The warmth was growing, every smack sounding loud, and she was wriggling and moaning, the excitement leaping inside her.
He stopped. “Am I hitting too hard?”
“Quit ruining it,” she said crossly, and he laughed a little, and then he was talking to her again.
“You’ll never—” Smack. “Do that—” Smack. “Again.” A pause. “Are we clear?”
“Yes. Yes.” It was a gasp.
Another smack, harder this time. “Not good enough. I want to hear, ‘Yes, Joe.’”
“Yes. Yes, Joe.”
His hand was rubbing again, taking the sting away, and the tingling on the surface was no match for the fire that was consuming her now. “Never going to run out on me again?” he asked softly. “Never going to flirt with other guys just to make me mad?”
Asking for Trouble (The Kincaids) Page 22
