In Love by Design (The Adventures of Anabel Axelrod) (20 page)

But that’s actually not the happy
place I was referring to. In the dark room, my questing fingers found my phone on the bedside table. I slowly slid my arm back under the covers and carefully slid the comforter up over my entire face.

I turn
ed my phone on and held my right hand out in the reflected light, admiring the brilliant sparkles of my early birthday present from my boyfriend. Turning my hand this way and that, I told my grumpy, tired voices a bedtime story to make us all sleepy.

Hey, if I’m up, they’re up.

“Oh yes, you may kiss our hand, my dutiful subjects. Yes, we agree this is the most beautiful ring in the kingdom. It is true; we are such a lucky, lucky Princess. Indeed, the royal mani-pedi
would
look smashing in O.P.I. Chick Flick Cherry for the holidays, but we mustn’t tell Stella because
she
says GelColor is toxic. …”

A hand lift
ed from my breast and the comforter was pulled down. “Who are you whispering to on your phone this late?”

“Oh, sorry. Er…I’m just talking to the voices in my head.”

“What, do they have their own phones?” Luke asked, his voice rising in amused disbelief.

Tossing my phone aside, I
rolled in my Dark Prince’s arms to straddle him while he pretended to grunt and groan at my weight, his hands spanning my waist. I pulled smartly on his chest hair in retaliation and Luke’s deep chuckle made me smile in the dark

Gliding
my hands over his chest, I circled and traced across his nipples, tugging with my fingertips until they are hard as little pebbles. I ran my hands along his wide shoulders and down his upper arms, squeezing and rubbing while luxuriating in the contrast of his soft, smooth skin that was taut over the hard, defined muscles. My fingers drifted lower along his strong forearms and skimmed the crisp texture of the black hair that so inexplicably makes me hot. I linked our hands, and coming up onto my hands and knees, raised his arms over his head.

Leaning
down, I kissed the warm, sweet spot just under his ear. “Since we both can’t sleep,” I paid no attention to Luke’s impolite snigger, “tell me a bedtime story. The one about the Hero, the incredibly smart girl, and how the stupid bitch of an ex-cousin came to be the Hero’s partner.” I swirled his ear with a pointed tongue and then took a little nip of his lobe. “And pretty please make it a good tale with plenty of back story and facts.”

Luke
didn’t attempt to lower his arms, but his voice was temptation incarnate in the dark night. “How about you show me some pretty bedtime tail, and I will make it plenty good.”

Tsking, I ask
ed, “Haven’t you ever heard of ladies first? I’ll make you a deal. How about you tell me mine and then I’ll show you yours.”

Lightly sucking on his neck, I
allowed no part of my body to touch his other than my mouth and the tips of my breasts. Those I slowly moved back and forth across his chest, my erect nipples grazing his. It’s understandable I had to move my hips to do this, and the head of his hard penis brushed against my inner thighs, and other fun places, every time I swayed. My smile grew.

Luke let out a long suffering sigh. “Once upon a time
there was this man with a fixation on a very strange and different woman. This woman…”

“This incredibly smart Princess,” I supplied helpfully, wiggling on him.

My hands are squeezed in warning. “…had the hottest, little body but a tendency to blab, instead of concentrating on pleasing her man like a good girlfriend should. He decided to kidnap her for a couple of days. His plan was to tie her up and train her to behave.” Luke spoke low in my ear, “He’d take his time and do whatever he damn well pleased to this smart-mouthed Princess regardless if she begged and pleaded,” I moaned into his neck, “or tried to time him or make deals.”

“
But doesn’t the Hero love her smart mouth and her deals?” I protested, licking along his neck and blowing softly.

Luke pull
ed my hands up higher above his head until he had me stretched out full length on top of his body, nose to nose, while his cock rubbed slowly up and down my cha-cha. “What the hero loves is for that smart mouth to be busy showing him the love, so listen up, Princess.”

“
Yes, sir.” I replied meekly, and pressed my thighs tightly together around his erection to create a loving, if friction filled environment.

I felt
his body still at my movement, and then sounding matter-of-fact, Luke told his bedtime story. “I was sitting in the truck in that narrow alley across the street from Bel’s Books rear parking lot and waiting for you to come home. I’d picked up some coffee at the gas station.” Luke murmured against my cheek, “Here’s a tip for your first lesson in self defense. There’s nothing glamorous about guard duty or surveillance. It’s boring. You’ve got to keep alert however works best, so caffeine helps.”

At this moment, his erection
rubbing against me was working impressively well at keeping me alert, and I stored this fact away for future reference. If Luke and I ever do joint surveillance it could come in handy.

He lift
ed his hips. “Are you paying attention?”

“Of course I am! I love your tip.
Tell me more,” I breathed out eagerly.

Luke squeeze
d my hands again, but his voice is all business. “I’ll tell you what I tell the operators and other DDL employees that I train; the key component to effective surveillance is not to let the boredom of inaction dull your brain because then you get complacent. During intense spurts of dangerous action, complacent people tend to die first.”

This statement actually made me forget the action going on between my legs.
Keeping my voice detached, I asked, “Is there as much danger with your current position at DDL compared to when you were on active duty?”

Luke’s chuckle
was brief. “Ah no, I’d say the risk factors are considerably less now when I’m out on a field assignment with DDL, but I still practice the skills that have kept my ass relatively whole and alive up to this point.”

“
Huh. Anyway, thanks for the…coffee tip.”

I
have a vague concept of what Luke does at his private security company, but it’s based on TV shows with muscular mercenaries dressed in black and wearing Ray-Bans. I have no idea how boring or dangerous the reality of his job may truly be. One thing I’ve learned when talking to men; if you want to get the real scoop on what’s going down, showing it scares you or worries you is the fastest way to get nothing but lip service and platitudes. Men don’t want their women freaking out at home about danger and possibly spoiling their fun.

I rub
bed my nose to his and encouraged, “Go on.”

Luke’s starting to get into it.
“I’m sitting there and something had my spidey sense prickling, but I didn’t see anything out of place. So I just kept drinking the shitty coffee and thinking about how I could really use a good workout because it had been two days.”

I prompt
ed, “And...?”

Luke raise
d and lowered his hips again, poking all my buttons while teasing, “And what?”

“And you were missing your
brainy girlfriend,” I supplied helpfully, spreading my legs to loosen the love grip my thighs had on Luke’s manhood, and then pressing them together again.

“Oh yeah, and I was
thinking about how less boring surveillance is when the prize at the end is this incredibly cute woman with these perfect breasts and the tightest...”

“Get on with the story!”

Luke’s murmur in the dark was seductively caressing, “Your cheeks are blushing right now, aren’t they, tough girl?” I could feel his smile, even with my head buried in the crook of his neck. “I know you hate compliments like that,” His low laugh had an edge, “but if I live to be a hundred, I’ll never forget you dancing for me in the barn. You were so hot; I thought my dick was going to explode. When you went down on me, it was so good that I got possessive. I wanted to kill any man that’s ever felt your mouth. Christ, and that was before you did cause my dick to explode.”

Shocked by this revelation,
I lifted my head and state baldly, “You are!”

Luke went quiet for a moment, and then his hands squeeze
d mine. “I am what, Anabel?”

“You are the only
human I’ve ever given a blow job.”

Th
is silence lasted longer. “I’m almost afraid to ask, but does that mean you’ve given blow jobs to something…not human?”

I giggle
d and kissed him quickly on the lips. “Finish your story, please.”

“
Don’t think we’re done with this conversation, Princess,” Luke warned and shifted his shoulders back on the pillows. He bent his arms until our joined hands rested on either side of his head. “There wasn’t much traffic, so I took note when this white panel van drove by the alley again. The driver was a lone white male in his late twenties and wearing a ball cap. The large painted sign across the passenger side of the van read “Take the Plunge and call Plumber Bob!”

“
He drove at a normal speed down Fourth St. and took a left on Division St. I figured the man was going home after running an errand, nothing unusual about that to cause the back of my neck to tingle.”

“So you’re saying you had a feeling something was wrong?” I asked curiously, since most men don’t admit to having
feelings; although I believe men have as much intuition as women do. My theory is we just think men don’t have “feelings” because the situations that interest men enough to listen to their guts are action based, and not emotion based like women. Sports, hunting, and fighting; these types of activities often don’t include females, so we don’t get to see men in intuitive action.

Luke answer
ed easily, “Yep, I don’t know why, but something felt off.”

I nod
ded against his neck. “Hmm, I felt that way, too, but about the lighting in the back parking lot. There was nothing wrong with my motion detector light, it was brighter than ever, but it just didn’t seem right.”

“
Would this be a good time to let you know that was my doing?” In response to my surprised exclamation, he said. “I’ve never liked how dark that area was in your back lot and had picked up some higher wattage bulbs. I had some time while I was waiting tonight, so I changed them out.”

“Well, thanks, I guess,” I muttered and Luke chuckled.

He lifted his head up off the pillow and pressed a lingering kiss on my lips. “Here’s the second tip of the night, Anabel. Situational awareness is the single most important aspect of self-defense. I saw when you noticed the lighting because I was watching from across the street when you drove up, followed by James Byrd in his SUV.” His voice only subtly changed, but I heard the question in there about James. “It’s a good sign you picked up on the difference in the light. You’ve got great instincts.”

“
Oh.” I said brilliantly, aware of a warm feeling spreading throughout at Luke’s thoughtfulness and praise, even if it had messed with my mind. “Yeah, James and Jaz followed me home because Lady Liberty was acting up.”

“I
didn’t see Jazy since the windows were tinted, but Byrd’s presence changed my original plan.” He added dryly, “I couldn’t exactly kidnap you with an audience, so I decided to stay put in the truck.”

I
got irked seeing serendipity at work against me. Most people never know for sure what the end result in their personal universe may be when they choose left versus right, or say yes instead of no. Tonight, I was only too aware that it was mere seconds that made the difference of me being kidnapped for My Turn and tied up at Torquemada’s mercy to be trained, or tied to a chair by a man named Dickie and my ass riddled with splinters.

I wonder
ed what bad things I’d done in a previous life to deserve such rotten karma, and then I wondered nervously
, ‘What does Luke mean by trained?
’

I’m
fascinated at the concept of a man trying to train me, but can’t get the image of Luke holding a bucket of small fish, maybe sardines, that would be thrown my way after I performed a new trick. My only consolation was my trainer’s buck naked in this image.

“
If you keep wiggling we’re not getting to the end of this story.”

I laugh
ed and went obediently still.

“I watched you talking to James Byrd
. I saw you point behind to the lights, listen, and then pat your purse. I’d hoped this meant you were carrying your gun.”

“
For all the good it did me,” I responded glumly, letting loose of Luke’s hands to push my hair out of the way behind my shoulders, one side at a time.

“When they left and you were heading back to your jeep
, I got out of the truck and took cover in another dark spot by the back entrance of Bel’s while I waited for you.” I heard the amusement in his voice. “That’s when you started banging something metal around in the back of the jeep and arguing with yourself.” His hands started rubbing up and down my back in long, soothing strokes from my shoulders to my hips while he laughed at me. “Have I told you lately that you kill me? I was too far away to hear what had you so riled up,” he paused and then said seriously, “but thank you.”