Sky High (Three Contemporary Novella's) (23 page)

“I was inspired,” she murmured.

Garrett let out a low huff of cynical laughter. Her eyes dropped to his lips. They looked so soft compared to the rest of him, all hard edges and solidity. The memory of the scruff of his cheek under her lips burned through her. “’Course. Captain America is good fodder.”

She waited until he looked up at her again before she replied. “I wasn’t thinking about Spencer. I was imagining somebody else.”

He sucked in a breath through his teeth. The very air around them seemed to crackle to life. God, if he didn’t touch her soon, lay that big, rough palm of his against her thigh, she was going to go crazy. He leaned in a little, and she thought he would. He’d touch her, she’d part her legs, he’d slide between them…

“Good job, Meg.”

Garrett jumped back in his chair as if he’d been burned.

David and Ken. She’d forgotten they’d been watching that whole chat remotely, and the phone connection was still open. David and Ken had seen everything she’d just written. Oh God, how embarrassing. It would probably be entered in to evidence when they finally arrested Mark. Her cheeks flamed and she ducked her chin, letting her curls tumble forward over her shoulders to hide her face.

“Um…I couldn’t get him to meet yet.”

David chuckled. “Trust me, he’ll meet you. Give the bastard another twenty-four hours to think about that chat and he’ll be contacting you first.”

“I hope you’re right.”

“We’ll get him, Meg. Promise you.”

“Okay. So I’ll call you when he emails again?”

“Sure thing. Get some sleep.”

Her laptop pinged as the connection to David and Ken ended. She stared at the glowing screen, unable to so much as glance at Garrett. She felt like she could feel every atom as it bounced off him and made contact with her. Never in her life had she been so physically aware of another human being. Another man. She remembered how she’d scoffed on the plane when Garrett had suggested things with Spencer might not work out if they didn’t have some elemental, physical spark. Now she realized how dumb she’d been. She wasn’t sure she could ever look twice at a man who didn’t make her feel the way Garrett did. She was starting to wonder if any other man
could
make her feel this way.

But he hadn’t spoken or moved a muscle. And if he wasn’t going to, she wasn’t going to sit here throwing herself in front of him. She took a deep breath and stood. “I’m exhausted. Do you want me to take the couch and you can have the bed?”

“No.” He spoke too quickly and stood up fast, striding away toward the living room where his pillow and blanket were stacked from the night before. “Bed’s all yours. See you in the morning.”

“Okay. ’Night.”

Garrett lay awake all night, half praying to hear her footsteps coming toward him and half dreading that he would. Because if she came and offered herself to him, he couldn’t say no. But it was impossible to say yes. Her words on the screen, that erotic invitation that it turned out she was issuing to him, flashed in front of his eyes as he tried to let sleep claim him. He was hard. He had been for hours. Even as she was typing, his cock was growing hard. And then after, when she looked straight at him, all but confessing it was him she’d imagined as she wrote it… His hands on her body, his body tangling with hers in her bed…

He groaned and turned on his side. He wanted to reach down and take himself in hand, to squeeze and stroke, imagining it was her, until he exploded and this aching need was slaked. But he couldn’t jack off while she slept a few feet away in his bed. And he was beginning to suspect it wouldn’t take care of the problem. He’d just keep wanting and wanting, until he had her.

#

Garrett woke the next morning feeling entirely too hungover for a person who hadn’t had a drop to drink. When he finally rolled off the couch, he saw the door to the bedroom partially ajar. A quick peek inside told him Meg wasn’t in bed. He visited the bathroom, where she also wasn’t, and made his way to the kitchen, where he started to get really concerned. Where the hell was she? Her laptop was still on the table, along with all the new clothes she’d bought the day before. He was digging through the pockets of yesterday’s jeans for his phone when he heard the front door open.

“Hey!” she said brightly. How the hell did she look so fresh and cheerful at this hour of the morning? She was holding a white paper bag. “I went in search of more pan dulce. The situation was desperate. I might have eaten two on the way back.”

“Fuck,” he breathed, closing his eyes and leaning on the back of the couch. “I had no idea where you were.”

She held up the bag. “Bakery.”

“Yeah, I know that now.”

“Sorry, I didn’t think you’d worry.”

“It’s okay. I just… It’s fine.”

Meg pointed toward the kitchen. “I made coffee before I went. You want some?”

He nodded. Coffee would be good. She smiled and then her eyes briefly dipped down his body, and he realized he was still wearing sweat pants and no shirt. Self-consciously, he rubbed his palm across his abdomen. Her eyes tracked the movement before she cleared her throat and darted into the kitchen. Garrett groaned. There was no way they could spend the day closed up in this apartment. They’d tear each other’s clothes off by lunch time.

“So what do you want to do today?”

“Do?” Meg came back from the kitchen and handed him a cup of coffee.

“It’s Monday. You could go to the embassy about your passport.”

She glanced away. “But I can’t leave until this thing with Mark is resolved, and if they catch him, I could get mine back. I might as well wait.”

“Right. Okay, then. I guess until Mark emails back, you’re at loose ends. Do you want to get out of here and see something in the city?” He shrugged, trying to play it off as no big deal. This was not a date. They were
not
doing things together like a couple. Not shopping together or having dinner together or sightseeing. He was just filling her time until Mark emailed, this case moved forward, and she was free to go home. He was definitely
not
going to think about the way the idea of her leaving made him feel.

He thought about taking her to the Frida Kahlo house. Wasn’t that what tourists in Mexico did? They got as far as the Coyoacán neighborhood but somehow never made it to the museum. Instead they wandered the streets, which really were picturesque, and eventually ended up at the Coyoacán market, where Meg lost herself in buying Day of the Dead paper flags, random spices he’d never heard of, crazy Mexican candies and anything else that caught her eye, which was a lot. Garrett mostly hung back, trying not to admit to himself that he was charmed by her enthusiasm.

She’d worn another new dress, light blue and floaty. Very small. There were a lot of long, bare arms and long, bare legs to distract him. Her tumble of soft brown curls was loose, tendrils getting caught in the breeze every now and then. If he had a dollar for every time he’d imagined fisting his hand into that hair… Fucking madness. Doing the right thing had never, ever felt so wrong.

There were street performers to watch and sidewalk vendors hawking their wares all along the crowded sidewalks near the plaza. They strolled and observed and talked, sometimes about her life, sometimes about his. They stopped for dinner at some restaurant facing the plaza, drinking cold margaritas and eating the best tacos he’d ever tasted. She looked dubiously at his order of
nopales
, so he regaled her with stories of much more outlandish things he’d had to eat in various foreign countries. After he finished describing the unique taste and texture of fermented yak milk, she tried the cactus, just to get him to shut up, promptly declared it to be delicious, and stole the rest of his order.

The afternoon slid into twilight as they drank and listened to a bad mariachi band in crazy, spangled costumes roaming from table to table. As the last of the day faded, the fun came to an end when Mark finally emailed her back. He wasn’t suggesting they meet up yet, but he wanted to talk some more. Of course he did, perverted little fucker. No doubt he thoroughly enjoyed that soft-core chat Meg gave him the night before and was back for more. Garrett wanted to rip his type-happy fingers off one by one, but they needed to catch him first, which meant Meg needed to play ball.

So they went back to his apartment, set up another call with Ken and David, and Meg opened her chat window.

Meg: Hi. I’m glad you wrote back.

Spencer: I thought about you all night.

Meg: You did? Tell me.

Abruptly, Garrett stood up from his chair next to hers. Nope. He was not going to sit next to her, aching with lust, while she wrote that stuff to that creep. Meg looked up at him with alarmed eyes, but he waved her on with his hand and walked away toward the bar. A drink. That’s what he needed. Something to take this edge off. What he most definitely did not need was to sit next to her, smelling her, watching her curls brush the backs of her bare arms, reading words he wanted her to be saying to him.

He leaned on the bar and sipped his scotch, watching her face in the glow of her laptop screen. Every now and then she’d flash a quick glance at him as she typed and he could only imagine what she was saying. He didn’t have to wonder if she was thinking about him this time. He knew she was. He wouldn’t feel this churning need in his gut otherwise.

“He wants to meet tomorrow afternoon,” Meg said quietly.

“Say yes.” David’s electronic voice came from his phone on the table. Garrett had forgotten David and Ken were there for all of this. Again.

Tomorrow afternoon. She’d meet him, David and his team would sweep in and grab him, and this would be over. His gut twisted again, but this time with a different kind of feeling. He could not
long
for her. It was ludicrous and impossible. He knew that in his head, but it didn’t seem to be working to ease this weight pressing down on his chest.

“That’s it,” she said. “Did you guys get that location?”

“We got it,” David said. “Damn, Meg,” David chuckled in a way that made Garrett want to reach through the phone and strangle him. “That was, um…good work. We’re almost there. We’ll be over in the morning to go over the plan. ”

She nodded, not looking in the least bit pleased. “Right.”

“Goodnight.”

The phone blipped as the call disconnected. She looked up at him. Desire rocketed through his body. He turned away, pouring another two fingers of scotch in his glass. He’d shuffle her off to bed, spend another sleepless night with a raging hard-on, and tomorrow, he’d begin the process of scouring her out of his life.

“Can I have one, too?” Her voice came from right behind him, startling him, and he turned. Then she reached out, her fingers closing over his on the glass. “Or maybe I’ll just have some of yours.”

He let her slide it out of his hands, unable to look away as she raised it to her lips and took a slow, deliberate sip, watching him the whole time over the rim.

“He liked what I wrote,” she said, her voice soft and husky.

“I’m sure he did.”

“Joke’s on him, though, because I didn’t write it for him.”

Fuck. He needed to move, but he was frozen to the spot, pressed against the bar with this girl standing in front of him with a challenge in her eyes. “No?”

She shook her head, taking another sip, never taking her eyes off his. “You know I didn’t.”

“Meg…” His voice cracked, a harsh, agonized whisper.

Slowly, she reached past him, setting the glass on the bar next to his hip. “Did you like it?” He nodded, in spite of himself. “You should have read tonight’s. It was better.”

He said nothing, just swallowed thickly around the lump in his throat.

“I told him exactly what I wanted to do when I saw him again,” she whispered, taking a step closer to him. He could feel the warmth of her body now. Every inhalation brought her breasts a hairsbreadth from his chest. “And it started with this,” she murmured. Then she rose to her toes and kissed him.

She tasted of scotch, warm and sinful.
He shouldn’t, he shouldn’t…
he did
.
He raised his hands to cradle her face, tangling his fingers in her curls. Her hands slid up his chest, up his neck, her fingers threading through his hair as she pulled his head down to hers. Her open mouth was an invitation he couldn’t ignore, his tongue slipping in to find hers. Breasts pressed to his chest, hips pressed to hips, as he drank his fill of her for just a moment.

“Meg,” he groaned as he broke away.

She caught his lips with hers again and her fingers went to the front of his shirt, tugging at the buttons. His hands closed over hers and he pulled back again.

“Meg.”

She opened her eyes and stared up at him. “Garrett, don’t. Don’t tell me it would be wrong because of my situation or what I’ve been through or any of the rest of the bullshit you’re about to say. I don’t want to be a victim. I’m not fragile. I’m choosing this because I want it. I want you.”

He squeezed his eyes shut, resting his forehead against hers, battling with himself. “I don’t want you to be sorry.”

She worked her hands free of his, sliding them inside the collar of his shirt, sending tiny shock waves of sensation through him wherever she touched. “I won’t be. And I won’t expect anything from you.”