Silk Confessions (9 page)

His brain short-circuited from the heat blasting through his veins. Her mouth closed over him, gently sucking, flicking her tongue all around the sensitive ridge of the head. She drew him in deeper and deeper, the wet warmth killing him until sweat popped out along his lip.

Two could play that game.

“Who’s supposed to be doing the exploring today?”
He drew her up by her elbows, desperate for her taste on his mouth. “Your turn to submit yourself to me.”

Licking her lips as she got to her feet, she would have fallen if he hadn’t laid her out on the oversize fur ottoman, her thighs dangling off the edge.

Perfect.

He settled himself between her legs, zeroing in on her clit. So much for taking his time. She’d gotten him hot so fast he couldn’t think how to control himself or how to hold back. He only knew he needed the taste of her. Now.

Swirling his tongue deep in her slit he made love to her with his mouth the same way he’d make love to her with his cock soon enough. Right after she came for him.

Plucking at the center of her plump sex, he felt the throbbing heat of her pulse hard between her thighs. But still it wasn’t enough. With his other hand he roamed her body, over her belly to cup her breast and tweak one tight nipple.

Her cry was his only warning before her body spas med hard, clenching again and again while her skin suffused with heat. A beautiful sight.

He didn’t let her go yet. Not until every last spasm had its way with her. Only then did he kiss her sex one last time and stretch out over top of her, covering her.

Blindly, he sought the condom he’d left near the ottoman where he’d discarded his pants. It rested by their feet now that they’d rolled the piece of furniture into the sofa with their frantic movements. Wes spun them back near the condom so he could protect her, making sure he brought this woman only pleasure.

“Please. Let me.” She took the packet from his hands, her movements faster but not necessarily more efficient.
Her hand shook ever so slightly, her body practically humming with sexual energy.

That quiver of hers humbled him, reminding him how damn lucky he was to touch her right now. He watched her as she peeled the condom down his shaft, then lined up his cock with her slick passage. He was more than ready.

His hips thrust gently at first, allowing her to get used to him. She clawed at his back, her short nails a welcome counterpoint to the mind-drugging pleasure of her soft form beneath him, her wet heat clinging all around him.

Driving deeper, he relished the way her hands moved over his chest, then over her own chest. She plucked at her nipple, teasing the tight peak with one finger until she saw him watching. Smiling, she reached up to his mouth to wet two digits and used the dampness to trace a wet circle around one rosy crest.

She made him crazy.

Out of his mind, past obsession-crazy. And with that thought in mind, his gaze glued to the sweet temptation of one nipple, he thrust hard inside her once, twice…

They came together in a rush of harsh cries and ragged moans. Her feet pinned the backs of his thighs down, as if to keep him inside her forever. Her hips arched up against his in the most intimate of matings, her heat pressed tightly to him.

He didn’t know what his thorough inspection of Tempest had uncovered about her, but he knew a hell of a lot more about himself for his efforts.

For starters, he now realized he didn’t have any idea how he would ever walk away from this woman once the threat that stalked her had been caught.

T
HE
P
ARK
A
VENUE
mausoleum echoed and creaked after Wes’s departure, amplifying Tempest’s sense of loss.
Running her palm over the still-warm sheet where he’d laid beside her until a few minutes ago, she breathed in his scent—their scent—until she could almost feel his strong, solid presence beside her again.

Foolish, romantic notion.

She wished she could be the kind of woman who boldly conducted affairs with men, taking the sex and fun, then walking away with heart intact. But she’d been a Sap with a capital S since childhood, surrounding her self in rainbows and unicorns, dotting her very first letter “i” with a heart.

Her fast-living parents had no idea where she came by her love for happy endings. Their own marriage had been a study in dysfunction since her ambitious, east Texas father wed Solange, Tempest’s old-money mother, for her family’s Louisiana gambling connections. The two of them had plotted and schemed their way into the highest echelons of New York society with their combined drive and Ray’s knack for making money, their marriage falling apart once they’d both achieved their material dreams.

They had both looked upon their daughter’s tender heart with pity, encouraging her to think big and use her privileges in life to expand the family empire rather than offering leftover meals to homeless people.

So it hardly came as a surprise to Tempest that she was already weaving romantic dreams around Wes Shaw. How could she expect anything less of herself when the man had given her more orgasms in an evening than she’d had in the last three years combined? Of course she was feeling a little bit vulnerable tonight.

And it didn’t help to be here, in the empty home of her past where she would never fulfill her childhood dream of seeing her parents happy together, their family whole.

She simply needed to acknowledge her foolish, ro
mantic weaknesses and get over them. Her mother was happy enough being the toast of London society, and her dad had chosen to live his life to the extreme, right up until his last breath. No childish fancies on Tempest’s part would change that.

And for his part, Wes would go out with half of the New York–based women using the Blind Date service of MatingGame, so apparently he wasn’t nursing any romantic feelings about her in return.

Tempest would get her butt out of bed and the stars out of her eyes before she started pinning any personal hopes on Wes. He’d gone above and beyond professional duty to keep her safe and catch the person responsible for breaking into her apartment. The least she could do for him in return was keep her heart on a leash and pay attention to his ongoing investigation.

Lowering her feet to the floor, she levered herself up and out of bed, dragging the sheet along with her as she sought the laptop in her overnight bag.

Maybe she’d go surf the MatingGame site again just in case she came up with something new, some hint of what really went on at the small company she’d once envisioned as a romantic new way for couples to find each other. Of course, if she’d been completely honest she’d have to admit some perverse part of her also wanted to read the profiles posted on the site and guess which ones had intrigued Wes enough to ask them out.

Switching on a lamp at the scroll-top desk across the room, Tempest flipped the soft bed linens over her shoulder, toga-style. She opened one screen after an other on the Web site, hoping to find any clue Wes might have overlooked. Her phone call to the operations manager of the site had gone unanswered since Saturday, but in the
woman’s defense, she had planned to be away for a few days on personal business.

Then again, what if that business involved leaving town for good? Could she have been aware of misconduct in the company and skipped out before her role was uncovered?

Tempest found it hard to believe that scenario, but given her tendency to see the world through rose-colored glasses, she could hardly trust her own judgment.

That applied double with Wes, damn it.

Punching the keys that took her to her own profile on the Blind Date portion of the site, Tempest reread the words she’d written about herself even though she knew she couldn’t go out on a date with a stranger when the only man who interested her at the moment was Wes. To her surprise, there were over one thousand page views on her profile, along with a private message at the top of her screen alerting her that she had mail waiting in her MatingGame account.

Curious, she clicked through the sign-in steps to access the inbox and discovered thirty-two e-mails with subject headers ranging from “Best ride of your life—guaranteed” to “Ever had twelve inches?”

Assured that this was
not
the way a self-described sap would ever meet a man, Tempest nearly clicked the screen closed when an e-mail ID jumped out at her.

KingKong.

It took her a moment to make the connection and re call why it seemed familiar. Wes had named his dog Kong.

Fingers propelled by a rush of curiosity, she clicked on KingKong’s subject header that read simply, “Meet Me?” Probably just a coincidence. Then again, Wes said he’d tried to line up a few dates.

Why should her heart speed up at the thought of Wes
choosing her anonymous profile when he’d told her ten times his dates were strictly business?

The letter opened, taking up the width of her screen with white space except for a few simple lines—“I’d like to get to know you better and I’m willing to pick up the tab. Meet you at Mick’s Grill on the lower West side tomorrow at 8:00 p.m.?”

The note wasn’t signed, but included a link to a profile on the site. A click of the mouse led her to the familiar profile she’d watched Wes create to lure potential prostitutes.

He’d chosen her. Whether he had simply arranged as many dates as possible or he’d spied something interesting in her profile remained to be seen.

Eloise whimpered at her feet and crawled closer to Tempest for an ear scratch.

Sighing, she patted her dog absently. “I know, I know. He’s looking for a woman who turns tricks for a living, so why should I be flattered, right?”

Still, she’d be lying if she said the note from KingKong didn’t lift her spirits. Maybe it was because the communication helped prove her theory that Mating Game provided a legitimate service. Or possibly the warm sense of satisfaction inside her stemmed from the fact that she’d found a way to wrangle a second date with the sexiest man she’d ever met.

But Tempest feared her sudden surge of optimism didn’t really relate to either of those things. Ridiculous though it might be, she celebrated her small victory to night because she hadn’t included anything remotely sexual in her profile on Blind Date and Wes had said he’d be on the lookout for profiles openly offering explicit sex.

Her profile had none.

Coincidence? Not in her romantic heart, it wasn’t.
Detective Wesley Shaw might have been working when he’d chosen to set up dates with the other women on his list, but some deep-seated feminine instinct told her he wanted to meet her for more personal reasons.

And there wasn’t a chance she would disappoint her blind date.

“Y
OU DISAPPOINT ME,
Shaw.” Vanessa Torres knotted her long, dark hair into a braid while she squinted down at the morning paper spread out over her desk at the precinct. “You finally made the social pages and you couldn’t even trouble yourself to shine your shoes? The trench coat is pretty stylin’ though. Maybe there’s hope for you yet.”

Stationed at the desk beside her, Wes ignored his partner the same way he’d blown off the landslide of jabs from his colleagues, including a life-size blow-up of the newspaper photo some wiseass glued to a piece of cardboard and posted in the break room. The home made artwork wouldn’t have been so bad except that the joker responsible had carefully colored a border of pansies around the photo.

He could take a lot of crap, but any guy who implied he was a pansy had a serious ass-kicking coming to him.

Vanessa chattered on, unruffled by his silence. “So Tempest Boucher is the new Flavor of the Month? It’s good to see you getting back in the game, but high-class chicks like this might not appreciate the old Wes Shaw cut-and-run routine four weeks from now.”

That got his attention.

Wes spun away from his computer, where he’d been coordinating a dating schedule that would put the world’s biggest Casanovas to shame.

“Has it ever occurred to you, Torres, that maybe
I’m
not the one who does the cutting and running after a month?”

Vanessa leaned back in her chair, her sleek leather jacket rustling with the movement. A five-year member of the force, she still seemed like a rookie. Not that she didn’t do her job well. On the contrary, Wes had seen this five-foot-eight, trim woman collar some seriously big guys when push came to shove. But she remained a loner in a job that necessitated strong partnerships, preferring to maintain strict privacy about her personal life and never allowing anyone to get too close to her.

A few guys on the male-dominated force had tried to write her off as an ice princess, but Wes defended her whenever the insults got any worse than that. He didn’t know what made Vanessa so aloof with most of the guys, but he understood the need to be left alone better than most. Maybe that’s why they made good partners. They might share cases, but they were each content to operate solo for the better part of every day.

“That’s an interesting scenario.” Vanessa tapped her chin as if deep in thought, but a telltale crease in her cheek—an optimistic dimple in a cynical face—assured Wes she was still messing with him. “You think you possess some sort of time-release scariness that makes women from all walks of life begin to see your true nature after exactly four weeks and decide to give you the old heave-ho?”

“I’ve had relationships last longer than four weeks.” He didn’t know why he bothered to hand over that piece of information now, when he had never felt compelled to share as much with her any other time she’d hassled him.

Maybe it was because he couldn’t envision getting his fill of Tempest in a few weeks’ time. The woman appealed
to him on an instinctual level even though their being together made no sense from a logical standpoint.

“You?” Vanessa tipped forward in the ancient wooden office chair, the hardware squawking with the movement. “The king of love ’em and leave ’em? I’ve been with the NYPD for five years, Romeo, even if I’ve only been your partner for the past eighteen months. Don’t try to tell me you’ve hooked up with anyone serious in all that time.”

“It so happens I haven’t, since my stints at long-term predated your arrival.” He’d been burning a path through girlfriends in the couple of years before his first partner died—a knee-jerk reaction to two previous relation ships where he’d been played. “But what makes you think you knew anything about me from the days before you got assigned to hold my hand and make sure I didn’t go off the deep end after Steve went missing?”

He understood that had been a small part of Vaness a’s job back then—keep an eye on Wes and make sure he handled the guilt. Wes had blamed himself for not taking a bigger role in Steve’s undercover assignment, for not seeing warning signs that he was getting in too fast, too far.

And then once he’d turned up dead, Wes couldn’t deceive himself any longer that his friend had slipped into deep cover somewhere to make a big bust or bring down a whole crime syndicate. Wes had never been much for wishful thinking, but coming up with possible scenarios to explain Steve’s disappearance had kept him from facing the final truth for over a year.

“Honestly?” Vanessa folded up her newspaper and chucked it in the wastebasket along with Wes’s social page debut. “I had the hots for you when I first came on board here.”

Wes had never been a man of excess words, and he
couldn’t have come up with a response to that one if his life depended on it.

“No need to look so terrified, Clouseau.” She whipped him on the arm with a pencil. “I’m long over any feeling of attraction for a guy who sucks at relation ships even worse than I do.”

Relief smacked him like a tidal wave. Vanessa was nice enough, and he admired her skills as a top-notch cop, but she seemed way too complicated. And although she was Bronx born and bred, something about her still screamed high-maintenance.

Funny that Tempest was about as uptown as a woman could get, yet she didn’t strike Wes as high-maintenance at all. Somehow a woman with dog hair on her suits who called microwave popcorn a meal seemed more like his type.

“I’ve seen that Ginsu crap you do. I could never date a woman who kicks more ass than me.” He planned on keeping his head permanently attached to his shoulders, thank you very much.

“It’s kendo. Ginsu makes knives.” She rolled her eyes. “I guess I just thought—at first glance—that you and I were kind of alike. A couple of loners in the midst of the big cop family where everyone knows everyone else’s business. I didn’t realize back then you were so much a loner that you were completely relationship challenged.”

“Guilty.” He could hardly deny the obvious. Thinking he’d reached his quota on personal chat for the day, Wes turned back to his computer to finish logging in his appointments for the afternoon and evening.

“You know, if you decide you want this Tempest woman to stick around longer than four weeks, it couldn’t hurt to try trusting her a little.” Vanessa pulled a red floral day planner out of a desk drawer and dumped it in her purse.
“No one appreciates it when you expect the worst from them.”

“Trust is something earned, not given.” He’d learned that the hard way with women. Twice. And even then he’d told himself he could at least trust his partner, a mistake he wouldn’t make again with Vanessa even though they got along just fine. But he’d thought Steve was his friend and the guy either sold out to the lure of money or he’d simply gotten way too careless on a job where every breath he took should have been weighed and measured.

Shoving herself to her feet, Vanessa breezed past him, the leather strap of her jacket’s belt slapping the back of his chair. “You keep telling yourself that, Wes. I’m sure it will be comforting next month when your up town girl dumps you.” She paused to fill a cup of water from the cooler on her way to the door. “Just don’t for get people are very good at living up to your worst expectations. It’s a satisfying fact of the cynic’s creed.”

She lifted her cup of water toward him in a mock toast and then sailed out of the room before Wes realized he hadn’t told her squat about his progress on the case.

Damn.

So maybe Vanessa had a valid point about him being a loner. And a tad cynical. That didn’t mean he couldn’t keep Tempest in his life longer than a month if he wanted.

Although, as he stared unseeing at his computer screen with the list of women he planned to meet starting this afternoon at one o’clock, he had to admit he was already well on his way to pissing her off. She hadn’t liked him arranging dates as part of his investigation, but he’d gone ahead and made the arrangements anyway since Tempest hadn’t been able to produce the woman at MatingGame who should have the answers to his questions.

The appointments were the only way to find out more
about the women who used the Blind Date service. Forcing thoughts of Tempest from his mind, Wes re turned to his private message box at the MatingGame site and found two more responses to his e-mails re questing dates. Guilt nipped him as he realized that one of the notes came from a woman whose profile had caught his eye on a personal level. He’d streamlined his investigation to include only women who posted blatantly sexual profiles on the Web site—except for one that snagged his eye because he’d been thinking about Tempest.

He nearly deleted the post, knowing his dates didn’t have a damn thing to do with his personal life, but at the last minute he paused. Thought about it.

Maybe he should meet one woman who hadn’t mentioned a lot of kinky sex anyhow, sort of like a standard for comparison in a science experiment. His 8:00 p.m. meeting with the dog owner who described her ideal foreplay as a good conversation would give him a more rounded look at Blind Date’s clientele anyway, some thing Tempest’s company deserved.

Confirming the time and place with the last woman on his list via e-mail through Blind Date’s private account, Wes had every intention of catching his criminal this week. His time frame for solving the case seemed all the more urgent after Tempest’s apartment had been trashed. What if she was next on the killer’s list? While he couldn’t be sure the break-in had been related to last week’s murder, he knew he’d sleep a hell of a lot better once the person responsible had been caught.

Maybe then he’d be able to figure out how to convince Tempest to stick around for more than a few weeks. Because, no matter what Vanessa said about his ability to trust, Tempest was one woman he didn’t have any intention of letting go.

T
ONIGHT SHE WOULD LET GO
of all her inhibitions.

Tempest had told herself as much ten times over on the cab ride to Mick’s Grill in the lower West side. But while banishing her inhibitions in the bedroom sounded easy enough, she hadn’t fully prepared herself for the challenge of being loose and carefree on the streets of New York at night.

And not just loose in a figurative sense. No, Tempest had elected to wear the trench coat Wes left at her place and nothing more for her rendezvous tonight, so her breasts were jiggling around inside the jacket like mounds of unconfined Jell-O.

What had she been thinking?

Her gaze skated up to meet the cabby’s eyes in the rearview mirror, hoping he hadn’t noticed any unusual breast activity. Luckily he was flipping off the guy in the taxi behind him, completely engaged in his work.

God bless the high level of job commitment in New York cabdrivers.

Swallowing back an attack of nerves, Tempest figured as long as she could pay the man his fare and get out of the car without giving anyone on the street an eyeful of cellulite, she’d be okay. Once she had Wes in her sights again, she would focus only on their night together—the night she planned to shed the last of her hang-ups and concentrate solely on pleasure. After all, she’d progressed beyond the blindfold stage and was now well on her way to making serious strides in the bold and brazen department.

Nervous and a little excited, she tipped the cabby and stepped out of the car with extreme caution. Awareness of her nudity beneath the coat made everything about her surroundings feel sexual. The rumble of a truck vibrated through her as it hurried down the street. The hiss of steam from a subway vent snaked up her thighs to
warm her intimately. At the corner, the stoplight turned from yellow to red, bathing a handful of pedestrians in a seductive flush of color.

Amazing how the simple absence of undies filtered all her perceptions through a sex lens.

Tugging on the ends of the coat’s belt, she made sure she was still covered before pulling open the door to Mick’s Grill. An old Billy Joel tune spilled out onto the street along with scents of spicy teriyaki sauce. The small bar and eatery wasn’t jam-packed, but it seemed crowded for a Tuesday night.

Weaving her way past the corporate crowd that liked to invade the quirky establishments on the lower West side in a relentless search for atmosphere, Tempest spied more room in the back where the locals congregated. Squinting through the hazy smoke from the grill, she thought she spied her personal KingKong at the back corner table where he said he’d be. But wasn’t that a woman just leaving his booth?

Irritated, she would have stomped straight over to her date’s female companion to claim Wesley Shaw for her own, but something about the woman’s familiar posture stopped her.

Tall and slim, the redhead possessed a confident stance as she bent to place a flirtatious kiss on Wes’s cheek. Her dress was short and sexy, designed to catch a man’s eye.

Recognition came when the woman turned on one red-and-white polka-dot heel.

Kelly Kline, Boucher’s vice president of global development.

Flustered and not sure what else to do, Tempest darted closer to the bar, ducking under the arm of a short guy in a suit so Kelly wouldn’t see her. “Well,
hello
.” The balding Mr. Corporate huffed a beer-
stinking breath over her before he nearly fell face-first into her exposed cleavage.

Eyes glued on Kelly’s disappearing red dress, Tem pest shoved away from the barfly and scrambled closer to Wes, concerned that maybe they’d overlooked some thing by not examining her work associates sooner. Could Kelly have trashed her apartment in anger? If office gossip held true, the woman probably harbored a fair share of anger with Tempest for not giving her a chance at the CEO slot.

Coincidence that she’d shown up here tonight? Tempest didn’t think her driven business associate was capable of murder, but it didn’t sit well to see the woman among Wes’s suspects when she already had reason to resent Tempest.

Picking up the pace, she reached Wes in a distracted huff, eager to share her suspicions.

“I know that woman.” She began without prelude as she latched on to Wes’s arm, pointing toward the front of the bar where Boucher’s most ambitious employee had vanished.