by Payge Galvin
Except there was that lie between them. A desk job. The longer they were together, the harder it was to admit just how deeply she’d lied to him.
She couldn’t do it. Not after so much time. How could he forgive her for keeping something so basic from him? The worst part was, Max actually liked strong women—again, both in bed and out of it. He might have been okay with who she was and what she did, if she’d only told him up front.
But not now. It was too late. Yet she couldn’t keep lying to him. He deserved better. Every glorious grope-able inch of him deserved better—from his firm calves to his lick-able long fingers right on up to that innocent kissable smile.
So she’d bolted. She hadn’t known what else to do. Max’s new major had just been an excuse. If not for all her lies, the thought of dating a journalist would have been hot as hell—hot as everything else about Max. Deep down journalists and cops wanted the same thing—to get at the truth behind all the crap people pulled.
But instead of telling Max the truth she’d spun out one more lie, convincing as any cover story, and run.
Claire sighed. She was an idiot.
A movement at the edge of the parking lot caught her eye. Two figures emerged from behind a dumpster.
Time to rock and roll, because she might be an idiot, but she was an idiot with a job to do. She left her car and crossed the parking lot to meet them, money in hand. Pretending, for now, that she was just looking for a hit.
She might suck at relationships, but this she was good at. These guys were the first step in following a trail that would lead her to the biggest drug ring Rio Verde had seen in a decade.
One way or another, the guys at the end of that trail were going down.
Chapter 4
Max
Max got the easy stuff out of the way that night. Well, he got the easy stuff out of the way after he spent a few hours alternately staring into space, getting the shakes, and almost throwing up—letting the shock of all that had happened at the coffee shop run its course.
But after that, sometime before sunrise, he did a public records search on the dead man’s car. He turned up a day-old report of a stolen vehicle, because of course Boots hadn’t used his own car to transport his ill-gotten gains. That wasn’t too surprising. Max hadn’t really expected the license plate number to be the key to both his future career and future bedded household happiness.
The coffee cup was another matter. It might be real evidence. The more he studied the photos he’d taken of the body, the more he was convinced of it, but he had to be sure.
Which was how he wound up in Megan Jones’ office the following afternoon. Megan had been the TA of his intro chemistry course. She had nothing to do with his future but a lot to do with his past—specifically, the part of his past that had almost included a one-night-stand in the chem lab. He’d bailed on that at the same time he’d bailed on his chemistry major.
A smile and a few extra credit essays might have been enough to pass his exams, but it wasn’t enough to cover up the fact that he couldn’t isolate an unknown compound to save his life. The afternoon before he was supposed to meet Megan, he’d come out of that same lab with a hole burned in his jeans and his hands reeking of mysterious chemicals after his last failed attempt to try to isolate one. He nearly burned a hole in the change-of-major paperwork he filed that day too. Whatever they used in the lab, it was potent stuff.
How could he meet Megan for a hot-and-dirty session in the same lab he’d just sworn off forever? How could he tell her that he hated her chosen career path with the heat of a hundred burning suns?
He couldn’t, that was how. It was easier, as the confused freshman he was, just not to show.
But now Max needed to get back into that lab, and Megan was the key.
She looked him over as he stood in front of her desk, making him feel a little like a specimen pinned to a board in the biology lab the next building over. At last she whistled. “I have to admit,” she said, “I wasn’t expecting to see you here. Or anywhere close enough for me to give you the kick in the balls you deserve.” Her cold blue eyes bored right into him. An ice princess, her students called her when she wasn’t listening, one who was forever telling them their work and their conclusions were both incomplete. “I’ll spare you and your future descendants if you get out of my sight in the next ten seconds, though.” She said and looked back down to the papers she was grading.
Max waited. Exactly ten seconds later, Megan looked back up and pressed her lips together. “Still here? Do you want me to hurt you?”
Once the answer to that would have been a disarming grin and a yes. Max had fantasized about Megan for weeks before they’d fumbled their way into each other’s arms and, after a few gasping kisses that were anything but icy, decided to meet up in the lab that night. Yet looking at her now, well, she was still hot, but she was no longer who he wanted to fantasize about.
He met her chilly gaze. “I need your help,” he said.
“You said you needed me two years ago, too, as I recall. Your exact words were oh, baby, I worship the very ground you walk upon and cannot live without you.”
God, she wasn’t going to make this easy, was she? “I need something analyzed.” Max flashed her his best smile for good measure. He couldn’t bring a random cup of poison to a commercial lab. He especially couldn’t bring a random cup of poison to a commercial lab and ask for every last thing they could tell him about it. They’d ask uncomfortable questions.
Not that the way Megan was glaring at him, as if she wanted to kick his singing voice into a higher octave, was exactly comfortable. Max turned the smile up a notch and kept waiting. Outwaiting Megan had served him well before.
“What major are you on?” Megan asked. “Six? Seven?” She wrapped her blonde hair into a knot behind her neck, slid the pen she’d been grading with into it, and stood. “You know what I hate more than being stood up, slacker boy? Unfinished business. So I’ll tell you what. You finish what you’ve started for once, and I’ll look at your ... sample.” Megan made it sound dirty, put like that. She stepped around the desk and grabbed his face in her hands. When her lips were almost close enough to touch his she shoved him back. “Midnight. Show up in the lab, give me what you promised me two years ago, and then I’ll give you what you want. And then you’ll never set foot in my presence again unless you want to see your reproductive prospects seriously compromised.”
Max hesitated, and for just an instant his smile faltered.
Megan looked right at him. “Or we can start never seeing each other again now and save us both some time. I have problem sets to grade.”
Max gave her his best saucy smile. “Oh, you’re not wasting your time. I’ll be there.” He turned and left the room before she could answer that, grin still in place.
Only once he was out in the only-103-degree-air did his smile falter. He remembered exactly what he’d promised her when they’d decided to meet in the lab.
A night she’d never forget.
‡
There were lots of ways to give someone a night they wouldn’t forget, Max told himself as he walked home. Not all of them involved sleeping with Megan—or cheating on Claire.
Was it even cheating when she’d walked out on him? It didn’t matter. It would feel like cheating. It would feel like something he’d be ashamed to admit to when they got back together.
They were getting back together. They had to be. Max wouldn’t even let himself imagine a future without Claire.
But he could still give Megan a night she’d remember. He could give her the night she’d deserved all those years ago. He could finish what he’d started and keep one of his promises.
It just required a bit of shopping. Max could afford that—not to mention the month’s rent—thanks to the hundred grand stashed in his safe deposit box. So he pulled out all the stops, and filled his backpack with ... supplies.
He got to the chem building early—a gray concrete monstrosity trimmed w
ith green that looked like the sort of place you’d hide bodies and not just unknown chemicals—and waited outside in the cool desert night, which was nothing like the sweltering day. Why did anyone even try to do anything during the day in Rio Verde?
As Megan approached the building bright moonlight washed the campus in light and turned her pale hair, twisted and piled atop her head, to silver.
Max stepped out of the shadows and silently took her hands in his. Megan opened her mouth, probably to say something sarcastic, and Max put a finger over her lips to stop her. She raised her eyebrows. He traced his finger down to her collar. “Unlock the door,” he said.
She watched him with cool detached interest as she did as he said. Max closed the door behind her, locking it, and then he caught her wrists in his hands.
She let him as she kept watching him, still from that cool distance, as if waiting to see what he would do before rendering judgment. He pressed her gently against the locked door and leaned toward her to caress the hollow of her neck with his tongue, making his way down to her blouse.
He undid the first three buttons with his tongue, which earned him a faint shiver from Megan before her cool mask slid back into place. Claire had taught Max that little trick. God, Max wanted it to be Claire whose buttons he was popping open one by one. Instead he pulled a real mask, or rather blindfold, out of his pocket and looked to Megan.
She gave him a long, considering look, a “your work is being graded” look, before she nodded.
Max tied the blindfold firmly over her eyes. He reached up and untied her hair, which fell in a cool cascade to her shoulders, ice to Claire’s warmth. His hands trailed down her face and neck to undo another button before he took her hand in his.
He led her across the lobby and down two flights of stairs into the dark, his eyes adjusting as he went. Megan’s breathing sped up, almost imperceptibly. When Max stopped at the lab door, she handed him that key without being asked.
He unlocked it and led her in, both locking and bolting it behind them. A faint chemical smell washed over them, reminding Max of all those messy, failed labs. If he needed anything to assure him he wouldn’t be the one getting turned on tonight, that was it.
He closed the door behind them with an audible click, but he kept his focus on the bemused smile that crossed Megan’s face. Tonight wasn’t about him. It was about keeping his promises. Not that he’d have even tried to keep this particular promise while he was still with Claire, but she’d left him. He was going to prove he was worthy of Claire, nail that story, and get her back. This was a step toward doing that.
But along the way—right now—he could set something else right, too, and fulfill one of the far-too-many promises he’d abandoned alongside his majors through the years.
Max turned on a single light, just enough to give the concrete room a faint yellow glow, and he led Megan toward the storage closet in the back. Max led Megan inside, leaving the door ajar for that faint illumination. He unzipped his backpack, laid it on the floor, and turned his attention to undoing the rest of her buttons, one by one. He slid Megan’s blouse over her arms and let it drop to the floor. He took her surprisingly lacy black silk bra off just as gently and let it drop too.
Max ran his hands along Megan’s arms and around to her bare breasts. Her nipples hardened as he ran his fingers around them, slowly, rhythmically.
Megan made a low, appreciative sound, and her breath hitched. “Not bad,” she whispered, as if this were an exam and she were still grading him.
Max lowered her to the floor slowly, so slowly that Megan grabbed his arms and pulled her to him. He allowed their lips to brush for just a moment, then pulled away, leaving her fumbling for his face. His lips skimmed down to those breasts as he straddled her, sucking one, then the other, first gently, then more insistently. “Mmmm,” Megan whispered. “Nice.”
At her obvious pleasure Max felt himself beginning to go hard after all, because there was something damned sexy about focusing on making a woman happy without thinking about what he did or didn’t want himself. His lips kept up their insistent pressure as his hands skimmed the waistband of her jeans. He slipped on the rings in his pocket, flipped them to vibrate, and let his fingers slip down into her panties.
Megan gasped as his fingers found her clit. “What the fuck was that?” She reached down, suddenly eager to push jeans and panties off as quickly as possible.
Max removed his fingers to slap her hands away. He took it slow, unbuttoning her jeans and sliding them inch by careful inch over her hips and down to the floor. His vibrating fingers teased at the outside of her wet panties, and he was rewarded with a faint moan. His cock pressed hard against his jeans. When was the last time he’d focused on making Claire happy, instead of letting her take care of him?
God, he wished it was Claire here with him now. He forced that thought aside as he pulled Megan’s panties off and stroked the rough thatch beneath them, slapping her hands away again as she tried to tell him exactly where his hands should go. He circled her clit, teasing while she moaned some more, then abruptly plunged his fingers down inside her.
Her back arched, and she sank to the concrete floor with a quiet, happy gasp. She wasn’t a screamer, any more than Claire was.
“You’ve learned a few things since the intro course,” Megan said breathily. She started to sit up.
Max pushed her back to the cool floor. “Oh, we’re not done yet.” He reached into his backpack to pull out the magic wand he’d stashed there. “Not even close.” He flipped the vibrator on, then moved his also-still-vibrating fingers beneath her to stroke slow circles on her back. With his other hand he took the wand and caressed first her thatch, then her clit. He probed deeper, and deeper. He knew he’d found the right spot when her hands clenched into fists on the floor and her back arched again.
Her moan was louder this time, her gasp more breathless.
The wand had attachments, and Max worked his way through them one by one: the Tickler, the Nuzzler, the Hummingbird, the Lily Pad. Again and again she came gasping and groaning beneath him. His hard-on ached as it pressed against his jeans, closer and closer to release while never getting there, but he focused only on bringing Megan over the brink again and again. He’d always thought the phrase throbbing manhood was an expression limited to bad porn novels, but he was totally throbbing now.
When he got to the “Panther,” Megan flung off her blindfold, reached her hand into his pants, and gripped said manhood, hard. Aroused as he was, he would have expected to come at once, but he remained firmly on the brink. He swallowed his groan—not to mention his thoughts of just what Claire’s hands would have done, were she here in Megan’s place—and pushed Megan’s hands away one more time, making it all seem part of the game.
“So,” he said, forcing an innocent smile. “Do I pass?”
“You,” Megan whispered—making it sound like a curse or a blessing, Max couldn’t tell. “You get an A+. Bring me your sample. I’ll analyze the hell out of it for you.”
She got to her feet with a languid smile and dressed, slipping the blindfold into her back pocket. “I won’t be forgetting this for a long time,” she informed him.
“Good,” Max said, still smiling as well. He offered her the wand, and she stashed it in her purse. They left the lab together.
Max kept smiling until they parted ways halfway across campus. Then he let out his breath in a long sigh. He walked the rest of the way home to his empty apartment painfully aware of just how alone he was.
He lay back in bed, closed his eyes, and played out the scene in the chem lab in his mind, only this time, he imagined Claire instead of Megan lying blindfolded beneath him, her dark hair fanned out around her, her moans turning more and more breathless until she had no choice but to scream as he brought her over the edge again and again.
With those images in mind, it was easy. A firm grip and a few firm strokes and Max came all over sheets that still smelled of Claire, too.
&
nbsp; But that didn’t change the fact that when he fell limp into an exhausted sleep, he still slept alone.
Chapter 5
Max
Max brought the half-full coffee cup to Megan the next morning, and she said she’d text him once she’d analyzed it, warning him it might be a few days. “Finals to grade,” she said, but her ice princess exterior wasn’t quite so icy as before.
Max spent those days googling the hell out of everyone whose first name he’d gotten at the coffee shop.
He learned that Rio Verde had a Hope who spent way too much time playing Candy Crush on facebook, a Lauren who practically had a campus police warrant out for her arrest on account of all her parking tickets, and a familiar-looking Whitney who’d never met an online petition she wouldn’t sign. Blake-the-quarterback had about the sort of sports coverage you’d expect, complete with hopes of an NFL draft, and a few pics of him smiling with his picture-perfect girlfriend. Joe Cunningham, IV, the only other guy in the joint whose last name Max actually knew, had nothing more than a bunch of over-slick web pages that were all about how awesome he thought his Dad was. A Dillon got regular mentions on The Coffee Cave’s own Facebook page, where people said there was no point showing up unless it was a night he was playing. Three different Allisons were on probation for various DUI offenses, and one Violet wasn’t on probation for another.
Digging deeper into the public aspects of his fellow coffee-conspirators’ private lives didn’t reveal much more than pictures of puppies and family birthday parties. Apparently not only the murderer, but everyone else in The Coffee Cave that day, took cybersafety and identity theft way too seriously. Good for them, bad for him.
Except the second DUI Allison, Allison Daniels, had some ... interesting ... vids up on YouTube. Not the sort of vids that revealed an unhealthy interest in murdering random drug-dealing coffee drinkers. The sort of vids that resulted in obscene comments suggesting acts even more improbable than those in the original video.
