CHAPTER 1 - BEAU #2
"So wet." I slide one finger inside, then two, curling them until she keens. "All this for me?"
"Don't get cocky." But her voice is wrecked, her head falling back against the door as I work her with my hand. "Anyone could have… oh god, right there…"
"Anyone?" I press harder, finding the spot that makes her shake. "You feel like this with anyone?"
"No." The admission rips out of her, raw and honest. "No, it's never… I've never… "
She comes apart on my fingers with a sound that I want to hear every day for the rest of my life.
I don't give her time to recover. Can't wait any longer. I'm so hard it hurts, every nerve screaming for her, and when I free myself from my jeans and notch against her entrance, the first brush of contact makes my whole body shudder.
"Protection," she gasps. "Do you have anything?"
"Wallet. Back pocket."
She reaches around, finds it, and her hands shake as she tears open the foil packet. When she rolls the condom down my length, agonisingly slowly, her touch is firm and confident despite the trembling, and I have to grit my teeth against the urge to thrust into her fist.
Then I'm sliding home, and the world goes white.
Tight. Hot. Perfect. She clenches around me like her body is trying to keep me there forever, and for a long moment I can't move, can't breathe, can only press my forehead to hers and try to remember my own name.
"Move." Her voice is thin, desperate, but still bossy as hell. "Please, I need you to move."
I do.
The first thrust punches the air from both of us. The second makes her cry out, nails scoring down my back. By the third, we've found a rhythm that feels older than both of us, deep and relentless and exactly right.
She meets me stroke for stroke, hips rolling to take me deeper, and the sounds she's making, god, the sounds. Breathy moans and bitten-off curses. She doesn't know my name, so it's just yes and there and please and more, a litany of need that I answer with my body.
"I can't wait." She's shaking in my arms, her inner walls starting to flutter. "I'm going to come."
"Let go." I angle my hips, hitting that spot I found earlier with my fingers, and she shatters.
The clench of her orgasm triggers my own, pleasure crashing through me in waves so intense I see stars. I bury myself to the hilt and stay there, pulsing inside her, as I groan against her throat and hold on.
We stay like that, pressed against the door, for long minutes after. Both of us breathing hard. Both of us stunned into silence.
"That was..." She trails off again, laughing weakly.
"Yeah." I kiss her temple, her cheek, the corner of her mouth. "It really was."
Slowly, carefully, I lower her to her feet. She wobbles, and I catch her, and we end up tangled on the floor without quite meaning to, my back against the carpet and her sprawled across my chest.
"We didn't even make it to the bed," she observes, her voice slurred with satisfaction.
"Give me ten minutes, Red." I trail my fingers up her spine, and she shivers despite the warmth of the room. "I'll make it up to you."
It takes less than ten.
The second time is slower, more deliberate.
I map every inch of her body with my hands and mouth, learning what makes her gasp and what makes her moan and what makes her dig her nails in and beg.
She does the same to me, exploring with a thoroughness that leaves me wrecked, and by the time we finally come together again, it feels less like sex and more like worship.
We almost make it to the bed. The floor of the bathroom, then the footboard, then finally, finally, the mattress itself for round three, where I press her into the pillows and take my time until she's practically sobbing.
Somewhere in the haze of pleasure and connection, I realize I want her to know my name, to hear it on her lips when she comes.
This is not just good chemistry or a random hookup. I’m already addicted.
After, I clean her up with a warm washcloth, gentle despite the rawness of what we just did. She watches me with something soft in her eyes, something vulnerable that makes my chest ache.
"You're sweet," she murmurs. "Didn't expect that."
"I'm full of surprises."
She laughs, and the sound makes me feel like a king again.
Right then, I decide I want to take her to dinner tomorrow and learn what makes her laugh like that, what makes her angry, what she looks like in the morning with sleep still clouding her eyes.
I grab my phone from where my jeans ended up crumpled near the door and toss it to her.
"Put your number in."
She catches it one-handed, still sprawled naked across the sheets, hair a tangled mess and skin flushed and red from my beard. She looks thoroughly ravished and utterly beautiful, and I want to do it all again immediately.
"I thought we weren't doing any of that, Whiskey."
"That was before." I head for the bathroom. "Now I want to know how you take your coffee in the mornings."
Her laugh follows me through the door. "So cocky."
"Tell me I'm wrong."
She doesn't answer. She knows this is worth exploring.
Feeling excited at the positive beginning to my fresh start, I take my time cleaning up, splashing water on my face, trying to get my head on straight. This woman is special. I can’t let her get away.
Except when I come back out, everything has changed.
She's sitting up in bed, the sheet pulled to her chest, my phone clutched in her white-knuckled grip. Her expression has gone cold and closed, the warmth from moments ago completely extinguished.
"What the hell is this?"
"What?"
She turns the phone toward me. The screen shows a text, something about a skip trace I was working on last week, and underneath it is the case file I've been reviewing. High profile bail jumper. But that’s not my thing anymore.
"You're a bounty hunter." There’s more than a hint of judgement in her tone.
"Sometimes." I reach for my jeans, the easy intimacy of seconds ago souring fast. “Why?”
She laughs, but there's no humor in it this time. In fact, it’s positively icy. "And you just happened to be at this bar, tonight, when I was here."
"I just happened to be at this bar because I'm staying in this hotel." Unease prickles down my spine. "What exactly are you accusing me of?"
"I'm a detective. This was my case." She's out of the bed now, grabbing her clothes from the floor. "And you expect me to believe you didn't know that? That this wasn't some pathetic attempt to pump me for information on where this guy might be?"
"I didn't know you were a cop." My voice comes out harder than I intend. "I didn't know anything about you. You didn’t want small talk, remember?"
"That's convenient,” she snaps, as if that was my plan all along and not her words to me.
"Convenient?" I stare at her, something cold spreading through my chest despite the heat still lingering on my skin. "Are you for real?”
My brain is struggling to catch up, to adjust to this sudden change in atmosphere. I was coming in here to ask her out properly. To look for a do-over and the chance to show her I’m interested in more than a hook-up.
"Show me your ID,” she demands.
I go still.
"What?"
"Your ID." She's got her blouse on now, buttons misaligned in her haste, but all business. She looks nothing like the woman who was moaning in my arms ten minutes ago.
Dread pools in the pit of my stomach as I dig my wallet from my jeans and toss it to her. She flips it open, scans my license, and her face goes white. As I expected.
"Lennox." The name comes out strangled. "You're a Lennox."
"Yeah. So?" Defensive.
"So?" She’s incredulous as she throws the wallet at my chest hard enough to sting. "If anyone finds out I slept with you, I'm done. My career is over."
"I'm not my family."
But she’s not listening. She’s got her head in her hands, spiralling.
"God, I'm such an idiot. My colleagues already think I'm a joke.” She sits upright, suddenly moving fast, shoving her feet into her heels, desperate to get out of here. “Imagine they find out I let a Lennox get information by fucking me."
"What information?" The words tear out of me, raw with frustration. “Just stop. Please. Everything that happened tonight was real. It was…"
I stop. The word catches in my throat because saying it out loud will make it worse when she glares at me, daring me to say the word. But I do anyway.
"Special. Spectacular, actually." I drag a hand through my hair before waving my hand back and forth between us. "Because this doesn't happen to me."
Something flickers in her expression. Doubt, maybe. Hesitation.
"I should go." Her voice is quiet. Sad.
"Yeah." The cold has spread through my entire chest now, freezing over whatever stupid fragile hope was growing there. "You should."
I'm already pulling on my jeans, grabbing my jacket, shoving my wallet in my pocket. I can't stay here and sleep in sheets covered in her scent.
She's still standing at the door when I reach it, her hand on the knob, and for a second she looks as wrecked as I feel.
"This is your room," she says quietly.
"I don't want it anymore."
Her jaw tightens. "Look, maybe I… "
I cut her off, too wounded to hear whatever justification she's about to offer. “Move.”
She doesn’t.
"You know what? I haven't done a single thing wrong.” I reach past her for the door handle. She steps aside slowly. “You’re the one fucking this up for no reason.”
I step out into the hallway, slamming the door behind me, and don't look back.