Hot Pursuit- the Complete Collection

by Liza Mitchell

  CHAPTER FIVE

  ______________

  SLOANE

  She stood from her desk and stalked across the room to another computer. Her feet beat against the floor as if somehow punishing it could relieve some of her frustration. Honestly, she didn't know who she was more upset with: Marc for being a bossy asshole, or herself for getting turned on by it, or her fucking arrogance thinking she could move a camera without getting caught.

  Her current investigation was fucked; who knew if her perp's stream would come back online.

  Taylor had just shown up with half a dozen severed thumbs she'd found at her breakfast table.

  And here she was getting wet over her co-worker's new alpha attitude. Fuck. Who was she?

  Deep breath.

  She opened the plastic bag and pulled out the thumb drive. A fucking thumb drive. She rolled her eyes and jabbed the power button on the computer.

  "Ahem."

  She looked behind her and saw Taylor hovering behind her with her arms crossed.

  "Pull up a chair,” Sloane said. “It's going to be boring."

  "First tell me what is going on."

  "Oh, well, this computer is used when we get things like external hard drives or other pieces of evidence we're completely unfamiliar with. It's kind of like its own little island, so if there’s some tragic bug on the drive, we lose just the one computer and the rest of our hardware and the network is safe."

  "Cool. Not what I was talking about." Taylor popped a hip and raised her eyebrows, jerking her head toward the lab.

  "What? Nothing,” Sloane answered. She may have misunderstood her the first time, but she knew exactly what Taylor was getting after now. Still, the denial slid out of her mouth involuntarily.

  "Oh, stop it. You never mentioned that you were seeing each other again," Taylor said as she grabbed a chair and sat down next to Sloane.

  "We aren't," she replied, pretending to be preoccupied with logging into the computer system.

  "Sloane." Taylor swatted her knee and swung her chair away from the desk, forcing Sloane to face her. "I'm not fucking blind. And I've watched this dance for years. Years. What the hell is going on? What changed? Spill. I'll have you know, I'm a love expert now."

  Sloane snorted. "Watching episodes of The Bachelorette at your desk don't count."

  Taylor was the only other person she knew who was as dedicated to their job as she was. Their friendship was practically rooted in the mutual hatred of people giving them shit for being "too old to be single." If they'd had dicks, no one would have dreamed about saying something like that to either them.

  "That show is television gold. But no, Paige finally set me up. We can get to that later. Right now, I want to know why there’s so much panting and sweating between you and Marc all of a sudden."

  "I don't know. I can't explain it. Today we got into a fight. A legit raised-voices, almost-yelling fight." Taylor's jaw dropped. "Don't get too excited,” Sloane said, waving her hand dismissively. “It wasn’t actually that dramatic. But he grabbed my wrist when I tried to leave, and it was the hottest, fucking thing ever. He's spent years showering me with 'sugars' and one hard yank on my arm, and I didn't know if I wanted to punch his face or devour it."

  "Shit."

  "And what you saw was the aftermath. He saw right through me. He knew what that did to me, and twice now he's pulled out Dark Marc, and it makes me want to climb onto his lap… then break his nose." Sloane bent over and buried her head in her hands.

  "Hey." Taylor's voice softened. "Where's the problem?"

  "I can't even get out of my fucking head long enough to enjoy a movie or like making out. And now Marc bruises me once, and my body is begging for more."

  "Have you ever thought that maybe that's what you want because that's what you need to get out of your head?"

  "I’m not going to get off on shit that brings so many victims pain."

  "Nope," Taylor said sternly. "That is why when you leave this building, and that door closes behind you, you are leaving every single case you are working on too. By your logic, none of us should enjoy our spouses or partners or best friends. You need to leave all of this messy shit here. Including any shame you might feel about enjoying your life."

  Sloane finally looked up and glared at her. "Like you should talk, Taylor. I know you work sixty hours a day, nine days a week."

  "True. But those six seconds I spend not sleeping and not working I thoroughly enjoy. You should try it. Fuck, I even took a vacation… that ended up with me back at work, but still, a full twenty-four hours isn't bad.

  "Honestly, I'm not telling you that you need to jump into Marc's arms. You can figure that out for yourself. But if I had known how far this job had sunk its claws into your life, I'd have told you to quit years ago. It's one thing to be dedicated to your job, but it's another to be a slave to it."

  She sighed and plugged the drive into her computer. "Listen, this is going to take hours, maybe days. Can I just call you when I'm done?"

  "Yeah. I'll give you some space. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to…"

  Sloane spun around in her chair and looked up at her. "No, it's fine, really. I'm just going to concentrate on this for now. Maybe we can get lunch sometime and talk some more about the messy stuff."

  "Sounds good," Taylor said, slipping out of the computer lab.

  She brought her attention back to her computer and the USB drive. She went into autopilot, running the hard drive through some preliminary tests in order to determine what she was actually dealing with. She'd honestly expected it to be no big deal, maybe even a prank. After a couple of hours, she realized she was dead wrong. The files on this drive were encrypted to the moon and back. She had a program that could probably decode them. It would just take a solid eighteen hours. Groaning, she slammed her head on the desk.

  "Oh, so you even like a little pain when you're alone?"

  CHAPTER SIX

  ______________

  MARC

  He took his thumbs—his thumbs? The thumbs—to the lab and swabbed them for evidence, running a cotton bud over each digit and scraping under each fingernail. Then he ran the thumbprints through the FBI's NGI database, a collection of millions of criminal and civilian fingerprint records. The FBI claimed they purged civilian records monthly and even had a public report to prove that, but the database had never let him down. While he wasn’t quite willing to go full tinfoil hat and buy into conspiracies like the government compiling complex files with complete biometrics on every citizen that were ripe and ready to be exploited by some dystopian regime… NGI was just a hop, skip, and a jump away.

  He buzzed around the lab, processing the samples, preparing slides, and running tests. It was a lot of repetitive work just to get everything inputted into the computer and let the programs do all the heavy lifting. Once everything was set to autopilot, he knew test results were hours, if not days, away, so he closed up the lab and crossed the hall to collect Sloane.

  Now that he knew her weakness, she didn’t stand a chance. She'd come up with excuses for years about why she couldn't be with him, all the while they both knew it was horseshit. She was a victim of her own prison. Now he'd found a way to drag her out, and he wasn't going to stop until she told him to. And they both knew she wouldn’t.

  Just as he crossed the threshold, her head fell onto the desk. "Oh, so you even like a little pain when you're alone?"

  "Fuck off."

  "Gladly, but not here. You ready to go?"

  She raised her head and glared at him. That fire in her eyes made his whole body tingle with anticipation. "I just need to run a decryption program. But I never said I was going home with you."

  "I didn't ask."

  Sloane scoffed and turned back to her computer, furiously typing on the keyboard. Fuck, he hoped she was gentler with herself. He groaned quietly at the thought.

  "Be patient," she hissed. "I'm almost done."

  Marc cleared the area between them in two strides
and stood behind her chair, waiting for her last few keystrokes.

  "There," she said. But the words barely had enough time to leave her mouth before Marc grasped her arm and pulled her against himself, wrapping his other arm around her waist. Sloane tipped her head back, and just the slightest bit of cleavage peeked out from the top of her shirt. He wanted to run his tongue along that line and make her whimper. He dragged his gaze up to her face, and her honey-brown eyes looked back at him. "The fun starts when you say yes," he said.

  "I thought you weren’t asking," she responded defiantly with a clip in her voice.

  He grinned at her sharp tongue. "I'll ask just this once. Let me take you home."

  "Ugh, fine. I guess so, Fabio."

  Marc raked a hand through her hair and pulled her ear to his mouth. "Call me that one more time and I will punish you. Say yes if you want this. Because ‘Fine, I guess so' doesn't cover all of the things I want to do to you."

  Adrenaline and testosterone pumped through his veins, and he felt Sloane's chest rising and falling rapidly against his stomach. He loosened his grip, seeing if she was trying to find a way free of him, if he'd pushed it too far.

  When he finally leaned back far enough to look into her eyes, they weren't wide with surprise or fear. Instead, they were heavy, clouded, glazed. His cock was hard as steel. She was under his control, and all he’d done was pull some hair.

  Again, her teeth raked across her bottom lip, trapping all her words inside her mouth. He dropped her hair and cradled her face in his hand, his thumb resting on her lip that was turning a deep mauve. He dragged the pad of his finger down the center of her mouth until her lips parted and hung open.

  He wanted her to bend her head forward, slip her tongue out of her mouth ever so slightly, and take him into her mouth. Her cheek would hollow as she slipped her lips over his knuckles, watching him through her lashes.

  “Speak,” he growled.

  "Yes," she said slowly and quietly, bringing her lips together and kissing the tip of his thumb.

  Marc's cock jumped. Years of fantasies were about to become reality. "Go," he barked and pointed toward the door.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  ______________

  SLOANE

  She fumbled with her keys, desperately trying to unlock her front door as Marc's hands raked over every inch of her, working their way under her shirt, sliding along her waistband, trying to delve deeper, discover more of her. Her heart pounded, and she couldn't focus on her task at hand. She was seconds away from being disrobed in her hallway.

  "Which one is it?" Marc growled behind her.

  She held up a key, and his arms reached around her, unlocked her door, and pushed her inside.

  The lock snapped shut behind her as he pressed her up against the door, his hand sliding along her spine. Shivers shot up her back, and gooseflesh trailed after his touches. His lips covered hers as he unclasped her bra. He dragged his hands down her flanks and pulled her hips against his erection as his tongue pushed its way into her mouth.

  She moaned and rolled her pelvis against him, a slow heat building through her. She swayed her hips, looking for his thigh, but her skirt restricted her movement and a whimper escaped her mouth. His hands let go of her and slammed against the wall on either side of her head, shaking the apartment. Caging her in. Breaking the spell.

  Sloane tore away from his mouth and ducked under an arm. "I can't. I'm sorry. I don't know. That," she said, pointing at the empty space she'd left between his arms, "should not be sexy." Her voice shook, and her breath was uneven. She was really worked up. Turned on. In that split second before guilt set in, she'd wanted him to spin her around and press her against the wall, tearing her skirt up and forcing her legs apart.

  "Sloane." Marc's voice rumbled deep within his chest. "All that matters is that you like it."

  She backed away slowly, hoping the hum thrumming through her would settle down. Stop. Instead, her pulse only quickened as Marc stalked toward her, his presence suddenly filling the room, his sights set on her.

  "Sit," he said, pointing to the couch.

  She continued backward across her living room until her calves grazed upholstery. She couldn't take her eyes off him. Sparks of excitement radiated throughout her body. Even her fingertips were on fire. She should be scared—he looked fucking dangerous. He looked like a predator, and she’d just denied him his meal. Two seconds ago, she’d had the self-control to run away, but there was no harm in sitting on a couch. She took two small steps to the side before sitting down, putting the coffee table between the two of them.

  "Take off your shoes," he ordered from above her.

  Without taking her eyes off him, she leaned forward, reaching toward her feet, trying to remove her flats with as little movement as possible. She felt like a hostage, trying desperately not to make the wrong decision around her captor. Her heartbeat pounded in her ears, and every nerve ending was tingling with anticipation.

  "Pull up your skirt."

  She exhaled slowly. Her head swam. Did she have to remind herself to breathe? Her fingers slipped over the hem of her skirt, and she paused before moving any further. Blood pounded in her ears. All that matters is that you like it. Her cunt ached. Her panties were soaked. She needed something to tie her down, get her out of her own fucking head.

  “Higher,“ Marc growled. He was cast in shadow in the darkened room. He loomed over her, dark voids beneath his brow bones where his eyes should be, and his hands formed fists at his sides. He looked like a thing of nightmares, an unknown villain watching his prey. She wanted those hands around her wrists again, holding her, pinning her to the floor.

  Her fingers slipped from the fabric and fell to her sides.

  "Sloane," he barked, his voice vibrating through her bones. He stepped over the coffee table, taking ahold of her chin, bringing her face to meet him. “Do you trust me?”

  She nodded, barely moving her head. It was just the two of them. And she liked his hands on her, his fingers digging into her jaw.

  “Pull up your skirt. Show me your pussy." He sat down on the coffee table inches away from her and rested his elbows on his knees, tenting his fingers in front of his mouth.

  Her entire body vibrated with excitement. She fought with the fabric of her skirt as she lifted herself off the couch to slide it down her thighs and over her legs. She held her knees together, silently challenging Marc.

  "Open them," he said, inching forward.

  She pressed the balls of her feet into the carpet and parted her knees barely an inch, unable to stop a small smile from spreading across her lips.

  A deep rumble filled the entire room as Marc sprang forward and drove his hands between her knees, forcing them open, her legs forming butterfly wings on either side of her body. Her thighs rubbed against the couch as she shifted her hips. Her muscles screamed in protest at the sudden stretch.

  Marc's face was inches from her bare pussy. His hot breath washed across her sensitive, wet lips. "Why the fuck don't you wear panties to work?"

  “Tight skirt. Practicality."

  He raised a single eyebrow, a crack of the true Marc showing though.

  “I want to see you come." Marc's fingers tightened, holding her hard enough to leave bruises. Veins snaked around his forearms and biceps. She shifted her legs and watched his arms flex, muscles tightening to keep her in place.

  She dropped her hands between her legs and spread herself for him. She circled her clit, teasing the sensitive bundle of nerves, sliding her fingers over the top, barely making contact, and moaning softly at the sensation.

  Marc's eyes bounced between her own and her pussy, devouring her entirely. He rocked on his knees. His motions matching the rhythm of her fingers, until finally he bent forward and licked her slit with his flattened tongue, tasting as much of her as possible.

  She started to draw her hand away, but a growl from Marc's chest made her pause. "Did I tell you to stop?"

  She shook her head, tho
ugh he wasn't looking for her answer or even waiting for it. His tongue went right back to her cunt, lapping up fresh drops of cream elicited by his demanding question.

  Her head rolled back as she strummed her clit, and Marc's tongue explored her pussy, sucking and licking and flicking every inch of it he could find until he drove the tip of his tongue inside her, dragging a cry from her lips.

  A wicked laugh trickled up to her ears as Marc's tongue circled her cunt before gliding in torturously slowly. She whimpered, pinned in place. Her fingers, tracing desperate circles around her clit. She fought against his hold. She was so close to coming. Her orgasm was just below the skin, begging to break free.

  She heard tiny clinks of metal and the rustle of denim, and incoherent pleas tumbled from her mouth. She wanted release. She was done with his teasing tongue.

  Marc seemed to have understood something she said. He rose from her pussy and brought his mouth to hers, reaching his arms around her and letting her leg relax. He pulled Sloane toward him and dragged her onto his lap on the coffee table.

  She planted her knees on the table on either side of him and wrapped her arms around his neck. Her body pulsed as she devoured Marc's mouth, her desperation dictating every single one of her movements. She used her hand to guide his cock and lowered herself down onto his length.

  Her low, satisfied moan filled his mouth as she took all of him in one careful stroke.

  His fingers closed around her hips, speeding up her tempo and slamming her down onto his lap. Over and over he guided her to the crown of his cock and brought her crashing down, burying himself in her cunt until finally she refused to rise again. She arched her back as waves of pleasure washed through her cunt as his fingers gripped her sides and he bucked against her, his satisfied growl filling her ears.

  She collapsed against his chest. "Fuck. That was—"