Silk Confessions (10 page)

“What the hell are you doing here?” Wes slid out of the rounded corner booth to stand, rapidly inserting himself between her and the crush of the dinner crowd and assorted happy hour partygoers. “I’m interviewing suspects, damn it.”

“I know. I just wanted to—” It was rather complicated actually. She hadn’t planned to greet him so abruptly.

What’s more, he looked less than pleased and maybe even a little suspicious.

“How did you even know where to find me?” Frowning, he nudged her toward the curved bench seat and settled across from her at the table.

“You asked me to meet you.” She hoped he wasn’t going to be mad about this. But damn it, she had a right
to be here to prove to him Blind Date had set them up legitimately. “I’m the dog owner whose ideal foreplay is good conversation.”

“You?” Wes looked confused for about a nanosecond before a small tic started pulsing beneath his left eye. “You entered your profile on Blind Date?”

“I figured if you were trying it out to see how it worked, I could, too.” She didn’t mention that she’d also toyed with the idea of trying to date her way out of her fixation with him. The tic under his eye warned her this was really
not
the time to bring it up. “Once I saw a note from KingKong, I remembered about your dog and I knew it was you, so—”

“I’m a trained investigator looking for a killer and I happen to be armed for the job.” The tic picked up speed. “You care to tell me what makes
you
qualified to test the system, Nancy Drew?”

Okay, now that pissed her off.

“I own the company, Wes. This might be just another case to you, but Boucher Enterprises is my whole life. I’m not going to sit back and watch it go belly-up be cause of some deranged prostitute on a killing spree.”

A harried-looking waiter arrived before Wes could say anything. The college kid with a crooked bowtie picked up a leftover glass with a red lipstick print on the rim and asked Tempest what she wanted.

“No, thanks, we were just leaving,” Wes informed him, tossing a wad of cash on the guy’s tray.

“I’ll have a vodka tonic with a twist, no ice.” Tem pest never took her gaze off Wes, refusing to be steam rolled.

As the waiter took off, she leaned forward over the table, needing to clarify one more point. “And furthermore, I don’t even think you’re right about the whole prostitution angle. The woman you were meeting before me
happens to be an employee of my company and trust me, we keep her
far
too busy for her to moonlight as a hooker. She also happens to make plenty of money by using her brain, without having to throw her body into the mix.”

“You mean Katrina?” Wes’s gaze flicked down to Tempest’s breasts, lingering long enough to send a rush of heat through her. By the time he met her eyes again, the tic had faded. “She also happens to have damn kinky tastes.”

“Well her name isn’t Katrina, it’s Kelly Kline and although I can’t picture her having any reason to murder a man she met through the MatingGame site, she does have reason to be unhappy with me since I’m the biggest obstacle to her stepping into the CEO shoes at Boucher.”

“You think she might have been the person who trashed your apartment?” Wes lifted a skeptical brow as he straightened his skinny silk tie. Between the retro neck-wear and a slightly faded pinstripe suit, he looked like a gangster from the forties. All he needed was the fedora.

“I don’t know. I just thought it seemed odd that you’re here looking for a killer and possibly someone who’s upset with me because I’m in the wrong business, and in walks Kelly.” She smiled up at the waiter as her vodka tonic arrived. “Thank you.”

“I see you brought my coat back.” Wes’s eyes drifted lazily over her after the waiter left.

Music pulsed through the bar, the light rock changing to old seventies disco tunes. And thanks to a Gloria Gaynor song, Tempest began to feel very bold and brazen as “I Will Survive” blasted over the speakers.

“I did.” She smoothed her hands over the lapels and admired the texture of the finely woven garment. “Al though I like it so much, I think you’re going to have to take it off me yourself if you want to get it back.”

His focus narrowed solely to her, his nostrils flaring as
he stared at her across the table. “I’m not willing to part with the coat.”

She sipped the vodka, allowing the alcohol to tingle pleasantly through her veins and enhance the buzz of sexual awareness humming through her. “Really? Then why don’t we take this in the alley and you can fight me for it?”

Wes reached over the table, suddenly very interested in the coat. He slid a finger under the lapel of the jacket and skimmed it down. Down.

His gray eyes darkened, stormy and foreboding. “Just what the hell do you have on under there?”

S
HE COULDN’T
be naked.

No. Way. In. Hell. Yet even before her lips curled upward in a wicked grin, Wes knew the truth. The woman didn’t have a stitch of clothing on beneath her trench coat.
His
coat, damn it. The same one he’d slung around his shoulders countless times now hugged her nude body, the silky lining caressing her skin the way he wanted to.

“I had the advantage of knowing who I was meeting for my blind date tonight, so I thought I’d dress accordingly.” Her voice curled around him like a wisp of smoke from the fat candle flickering on their table.

“How do you know I don’t have five other women lined up after you tonight?” He was still frustrated she’d shown up in the middle of his investigative work. What if she’d arrived during an arrest? Or worse, what if she’d gotten caught in a shoot-out with a desperate criminal?

She should have been a hell of a lot more careful. And he shouldn’t be contemplating forgetting the lecture she deserved in favor of tearing the coat from her body.

“Do you?” She straightened, her abrupt attention to posture robbing him of the delectable view he’d had down
her jacket. “Have five other women lined up to meet you, I mean?”

Peering around the bar she nibbled on her bottom lip and looked unsettled. Worried.

Amazing how that small display of uncertainty could go so far toward evening the balance between them. He hadn’t appreciated being caught off guard tonight.

“No.” He finished her drink for her, the only sip of alcohol he’d allowed himself in eight hours at a bar. “Somehow I knew to save the best for last.”

“So you did choose my profile for personal reasons.” She reached under the table to put a hand on his thigh.

Her touch hadn’t been the only occasion he’d been groped in his day of nonstop dating, but it was the first time he had enjoyed a feminine hand on his thigh. He pictured those neatly manicured nails clawing hungrily at his skin, her high society facade stripped away so that the real Tempest could have her way with him.

“I thought I should meet with one woman who hadn’t blatantly advertised sex in her profile, just in case subversive hookers were more discreet than I thought.” He found it difficult to converse with her in a noisy, public place when the only thought in his head right now was how fast he could have that coat off her.

“That’s the only reason you picked me?” She slid closer to him in the rounded corner booth, giving her self all the more access to him under the table. Her nails sketched higher on his thigh, lightly grazing his trousers and hovering to one side of his Johnson. “I was your control group?”

“We need to go.” He reached beneath the table to imprison her wrist, thinking there was nothing “con trolled” about the chemistry between them.

“What about my foreplay?” She wriggled her arm against his grip.

“You’ll have all the time in the world to try out your moves as soon as I get you out of the coat.” It was all he could think about. Her full breasts even moved differently underneath the fabric. In fact, now that he had realized she was naked, he was certain anyone who looked at her would notice right away.

“Not foreplay for you.” She crossed her legs, rubbing one calf seductively against him. “I mean what about our good conversation? The foreplay for
me?
”

Tossing some bills on the table to settle their tab, Wes tugged Tempest out of the booth. “You should have thought of that before you went commando on me.”

“Wait a minute—”

Her words were lost in the din of shouted conversations above the blaring disco music.

Wes kept his eye on the door and his arm around Tempest, determined no man in her path would get a bonus feel of anything save her elbow as she moved through the crowd. When he finally reached the door, he plowed through it so hard the metal barricade bounced back on the hinges against the building.

Fresh, rain-scented air blew over him, a welcome relief after the muggy heat of the bar, but it didn’t do a damn thing to cool the fire within. Drawing Tempest to ward the alleyway between Mick’s Grill and the laundromat next door, he figured he’d found the fastest path to a little privacy.

Ducking deeper into the shadows, Wes backed her against the brick wall of the building and reached for the tie of her coat.

“If you need a conversation first, you’d better start talking because we’ve got about five seconds before you’re giving me one hell of a show.”

“I’
M AFRAID YOU’VE SEEN
it all before, Detective.” Tem pest shifted on her skinny stilettos, the back of her heel scraping against the rough brick in the darkness. A streetlight shone a few yards away, near the curb, but their alleyway retreat remained shrouded in the comfort of anonymity. “Nothing new to show you tonight.”

She loved how dangerous he looked in the shadows, his tall, lean outline tense with restrained hunger.

Loved?

Catching herself romanticizing, she wanted to correct herself but found she’d chosen the best word possible. Still, she could love something
about
the man without falling for him, right?

“On second thought—” growling low in his throat, Wes reached for the knotted belt at her waist, his finger tugging the fabric apart “—you’ve lost your conversational window, Tempest. Less talk, more nakedness.”

A fluttery sensation tickled over her skin as she contemplated baring herself to him here. Now. Glancing sideways toward the street she didn’t see anyone nearby. And Wes’s big body would shield her from public view anyway.

She couldn’t think of anything she wanted more right now than to expose herself to this man’s hot gaze. Heat bubbled deep inside her and she welcomed the chance to bury old insecurities and fears forever. She thought she’d
been finding herself by buying a downtown studio and defiantly watching soap operas before she threw herself into her artwork every weekend?

Ha! Wes Shaw was artwork in motion.

With him, she lived her hopes and dreams instead of imagining a world she’d never touched before. This moment with Wes was the real deal—the heat, the hunger, the wanting. She needed him so badly she could taste him even before he kissed her.

As the knot on her coat loosened, she pressed her self against the wall, fingers gripping along a mortar seam between bricks. She had to hold on to something before her trembling legs gave way beneath her.

When the belt slipped free completely, the coat hung around her, slightly parted but not enough that he would see anything in the shadows. A thin slice of cool night air drifted through that opening, heightening her anticipation.

“I’m waiting.” Hardly daring to breathe in the tension-fogged air between them, Tempest bent one knee slightly and nudged a bare leg through the open slit. Her calf caught a shaft of light filtering into the alley from the streetlamp, her skin pale and luminous in the surrounding darkness.

Wes’s hands plunged through the coat all at once, finding her belly and smoothing up, down, palming a breast at the same time he curved a hand around her hip. Releasing her hold on the wall, she twined her arms around his neck, falling into the hard planes of his body. His heat seared her, igniting a forbidden sizzle. Her breasts molded to him, heart beating so hard she could swear it pounded directly on his chest.

The coat cloaked her back and sides, even as it completely exposed her front. The full drape of the garment
under her arms made her feel like a bat creature, a naughty, naked vampire on the loose.

For good measure, she shoved aside his jacket and nipped Wes’s shoulder through his shirt, sinking her teeth lightly into his hot skin.

His touch grew rougher, more insistent, fingers sliding over the curve of her bottom to lift her against him. The delicious friction against her most tender parts only made her crave more of his wicked touch. Her moan echoed in the narrow alleyway before drowning in the honk of a cab out on the street.

A new fervor swirled low within her until her thighs twitched. She reached for his hand, determined to place his fingers where she needed them most.

His groan made her pause, her ragged breathing loud in her own ears.

“What?”

He stared down at her with enough blaze in his eyes to scorch her before he blinked slowly, deliberately, until some of that fire was banked. Marginally con trolled.

“We’ve got to get out of here.” Wes tried to edge away but her arms refused to release him.

“We only just got here.” She gave a little shimmy, rolling her hips against his in an unmistakable message. “Besides, I’m the woman who won you fair and square from all the other females swarming around you today. I think I deserve my prize, KingKong.”

Stroking her tongue up his jaw, she tugged at his tie, ready for more of him. She had no idea where this week’s unexpected sexfest with him was going, but she didn’t want it to end yet. He’d touched off some hunger within she hadn’t known she possessed and now that the yawning ache had been unleashed, she knew he was the only man capable of fulfilling her.

She’d seen her parents be selfish all their lives, put ting their own needs above their marriage. Above her. When would it be her turn to indulge in what she wanted? Just this once—for a few more days, a few more weeks—she planned to live like a hedonist and soak up every sensual touch of Wes Shaw’s very capable hands. He would be her private indulgence.

“We can’t risk it.” His words confused her, but she wouldn’t have stopped touching him until he backed away again—farther this time. “Someone might see us and if anyone recognizes you…”

He didn’t need to complete the thought since she knew too well how devastating a naked tryst in the alley would be for her family’s business. She damned his practicality even as she appreciated the cool head.

So much for her attempts to be selfish.

“You’re right.” To her horror, her voice broke. Oh God, she couldn’t be that upset about delayed completion, could she? Obviously her emotions had gotten all tangled up where Wes was concerned despite her best efforts. Hoping to hide her slip, she reached for the belt on her coat, covering her gaffe with a flurry of sudden activity. “We can go to my house, if you want. The new security system is already in place at the Chelsea apartment.”

He was so quiet, so still, she realized how presumptuous—and eager—she sounded. He peered down at her with an inscrutable expression on his face, studying her carefully.

Coat secured around her waist, she blasted forward toward the street, more determined than ever not to romanticize her time with Wes. She had vowed to take control of her own life as one of her New Year’s resolutions, and this would be a fine time to prove to her self she didn’t need anyone. “Then again you probably have things to
do and that’s fine, too. I should grab a cab and call it a night.”

Wes caught her before she emerged into the light.

“I want to be with you.” His words whispered over her ear with unexpected warmth, igniting shivery tingles down her neck until her skin tightened.

Relief, hope, anticipation—too many emotions scrambled inside her, making her aware of how much power she’d given him over her. Bad decision, Tempest. A woman didn’t find emotional security and independence by making herself sexually reliant on a way-too-sexy detective.

As long as she kept it short-term, she could handle it. Heaven knew she would have traded her shares in Boucher Enterprises to have her cake and eat it, too, when it came to Wes.

“You do?” She closed her eyes for just a moment, soaking in the musky scent of his aftershave and the sharp cut of his angled jaw against her cheek.

“Trust me, I would have never risked my badge and your public image to cop a feel in an alley if you didn’t make me crazy.” He squeezed her tighter against him, allowing her to experience exactly how crazy she made him. The proof nudged insistently against her bottom.

“I never thought about the risk to your career.” She stiffened in his grasp, uncomfortable with the idea of putting him in danger because of her newfound lust.

“It probably wouldn’t have been a big deal, but when a detective is tapped for any kind of misbehavior, the department becomes very unhappy.” He threaded his fingers through her hair and tipped her head back, ex posing her neck for a kiss. “We shouldn’t let the nudity go public again.”

Eyes sliding closed at the lash of his tongue on her
throat, Tempest nodded. She could be indulgent. Selfish. Take what Wes had to offer for a little longer be fore she morphed into the independent superwoman of her New Year’s goals.

“Got it. Private shows only. Now what do you say, Detective, your place or mine?”

M
INE
.

Wes had to continually hold himself back from speaking the word aloud when he was around this woman because he wanted to wrap her up and take her home, shield her from the eyes of the rest of the world so he could keep her for his alone.

A healthy, normal male desire?

Hell, no. He’d never been so possessive with any female in his life. And he had the misfortune of two notably bad relationships to teach him that no person can ever truly belong to another. So this caveman urge he battled around Tempest was stupid. Primitive.

Undeniable.

“Let’s go to yours.” He forced himself to articulate his choice very clearly, concentrating hard on not giving in to the urge to haul her back to his place. Hers would be safer, less intimate. “I can give the new security system the once-over.”

“As long as
I
get more than a once-over.” Her white teeth flashed in the shadows as she smiled.

“I can assure you more than once. But keep in mind I’m not one of these mythical soap opera studs who can go nonstop all night and then shower you with rose petals in the morning.” Releasing her from his hold, he drew her out of the alley and into the street, relieved to see no reporters, no cameras.

“That’s okay. I’m not much for rose petals anyway,
since Eloise is allergic to flowers.” She hugged her arms around her waist, her brown curls skimming the collar of her coat. “Why don’t you just do what you can for me tonight, and we’ll call it even?”

“Your dog has allergies?” Grateful for the reprieve from talking about sex when he wasn’t free to act on it, Wes hailed a cab at the street corner.

“She’s a very unique animal.” Tempest fluffed her hair and slid into the taxi, her long, bare legs giving him a view he wouldn’t soon forget.

Seating himself beside her, Wes gave the driver the address of the Chelsea apartment a few blocks away. He’d walked to Mick’s Grill from the precinct earlier, leaving the car for Vanessa to use. Now, settling inside the darkened interior, he fought to keep his hands off Tempest.

Because the next time he touched her, he wouldn’t stop until he’d gotten his fill. He didn’t know how she’d wound herself up in his thoughts so thoroughly that he could barely escape, but maybe once he’d caught who ever trashed her apartment, he’d be able to find his footing alone again.

Not exactly an inspiring thought, but Vanessa had nailed it on the head when she accused him of being too cynical to forge any kind of relationship these days. He didn’t possess the kind of trust necessary to play much of a role in Tempest’s life.

Hell, he didn’t know if he even possessed enough trust to make a good partner for Vanessa. Not that she ever complained. But she damn well deserved someone to watch her back more than Wes had for the past year and a half.

That was going to change. He might not ever be the marrying kind, but he could damn well get his head out of his ass long enough to be a solid partner and an even
better cop again. Spending time with Tempest had made him see how antisocial he’d become in the past two years and recognize that he didn’t want to tread any further down that path.

As the cab rolled to a stop up the street from Tem pest’s building, she pulled out her wallet, offending him to his caveman core.

“Your money’s no good with me.” He paid the driver and helped her from the car while scowling at a handful of photographers who lurked around the doors to her building a few doors up.

“But you bought my drink.” She still waved her wallet around like a magic wand to soothe over life’s rough spots. She hadn’t noticed the looming members of the media—yet. “It’s only fair I get the cab. I don’t want you to think I’m a moocher.”

Grateful the cab hadn’t let them out under a street light, Wes tucked her under his arm and pulled the collar of her trench coat up high around the lower part of her face.

“Who do you think has to worry more about mooching in this relationship? Me or you?” He plucked the pink leather zipper pouch from her fingers and jammed it back into a staid brown purse. Just like Tempest, her bag looked no-nonsense at a quick glance and hid a softer inside. “Besides, I’m a single cop whose only real bill to pay has been a hefty dog food tab. I think I can afford to keep you in vodka tonics and popcorn for a little while. Now hold on tight because we’ve got to get past a few camera lenses.”

She muttered a couple curse words under her breath, a testament to how nervous the press attention made her. Determined to get her past the reporter vultures who now knew where she spent her free time, Wes ushered her toward her building. They passed a homeless guy sleeping on a hunk of cardboard beneath an awning and a couple dressed in sweats walked their dogs in the un seasonably
mild winter weather, carrying a steaming box of take-out pizza between them.

Darting around the press hounds and into the building with only a few flashbulbs blinding him in the process, Wes caught himself envisioning him and Tempest walking together like that. As if they belonged together.

His wrist itched where his tattoo rested, reminding him of the poison ivy effect of women in his life. A knee-jerk reaction after all these years, no doubt. Logically, he knew New York was filled with great women. It was finding the right one that seemed more daunting than tracking a killer.

Tempest wasn’t the kind of woman he would have ever pictured himself with, but he had to admit, he’d never been with a woman who would give up roses be cause her dog had allergies. Maybe there was a chance…

Maybe he’d suddenly morph into a stand-up guy willing to put his neck in the noose for incredible sex and a few good laughs? Seemed bloody unlikely. Hell, he put himself on the line enough at work without dishing up his guts in his personal life, too.

“Is that how long you see us lasting?” Tempest smoothed the collar of the coat back into place once they were safely inside the building. “A little while?”