Stockings and Suspenders (16 page)

But once again, he didn’t try
anything. Didn’t even touch anything from what I could tell.

Our date started with dinner at an
adorable diner, and ended at the animal shelter where we walked and played with
the dogs until they locked up for the night. Then it was back to the
beach—sober this time. He held my hand the whole time we walked, and I fought
to pay attention to the conversation in the wake of sensations touching him
gave me. I was warm in places I shouldn’t have been warm. I mean, it would have
been handy for the seduction plan, but that had gone so craptastic the night
before I didn’t want to try again.

Looking for his naughty side proved
exhausting though. I just couldn’t see it. Not that he was a total boy scout,
but his indiscretions were minor compared to some of the shit Santa let slide.
By the time he walked me back to my room, I’d decided there had to be dead
bodies involved. Which meant, no matter how hot he was or how much I was
growing to like him, I needed to keep my distance and stay objective. Because I
was pretty sure getting involved with a mass murderer would lose me my job.

Then, outside my door, I reached a
simple conclusion. This mission sucked. My body wanted one thing, my brain
something else, and I had no clue how to do what Santa wanted. The simplest
answer to the conundrum was to just finish it and get back to toy repair.

Screw this dating crap. It’s time
for a good, old-fashioned interrogation.
I unlocked
my door, grabbed the front of his t-shirt, and dragged him inside the room.
Before I thought better of it, I kicked the door shut and pushed him up against
the wall.

“I heard you’ve been very naughty.”

He gaped at me like he was seeing me
for the first time then his lips curled up at the corners in a smile I didn’t
quite understand. It wasn’t the full-on, compete-with-the-sun-for-brilliance
grin, but it wasn’t the subtle one either. This one made heat curl up and take
residence between my legs.
So nice and warm.
“Maybe I have.”

Great. He’s cocky, but maybe he’s
cocky enough to just spill.
“Oh, I have it on good
authority that you’ve been on Santa’s naughty list for years.”

He blinked and paused for a beat. “I
have? Okay.” The odd little smile transformed into a full-on smirk. “What do
you plan to do about it?”

“I…I…I…”
Street
smarts I had from before Brady found me. Sex I had… upon occasion with other
elves. But the seduction game? I hadn't ever read the rules to that one, and
apparently I’d started playing.
I dropped my hands from his biceps and
took a step back.

“Isn’t the appropriate response that
you’re going to ‘get me off’?”

I retreated another step, trembling,
with my mouth gone bone-dry. Interrogation… not sex. That was the plan.

Gage’s playful manner disappeared, a
deep furrow forming between his brows. “Okay, did I mis-read here? You drag me
into your room, slam me against the wall, then all the naughty talk…”

Crap. What the hell am I doing? Now
I’m going to have him running out the damn door.
It
didn’t help that Gage was being so understanding and sweet about it all. I
sucked in a deep breath and ran my hands through my hair, making sure to keep
my ears covered. “Can you just… give me a minute?”

“Look, Daisy, we can just hang out or
call it a night if you want.”

Damn. Damn. Damn. I can build an
XBox360 from a box of scraps but screw up what has to be the world’s easiest
seduction.
“No, I don’t want you to go. I just…”

He closed the distance between us and,
shaking his head, tipped my chin up. “Breathe. I’ll stay.”

I exhaled, not realizing I’d held my
breath when I stopped talking. With his hands on me, I couldn’t think though. I
needed space. No. What I needed was for Santa to send a fucking sign of how to
play this. I slipped from under his touch and moved to the bedroom. “I’ll be
right back…”

As soon as I had the door between us,
I could focus.
I suck at interrogation. But the seduction thing isn’t off
the table, right? I just need to woman up and try not to lose myself in the
sex.
Then I turned around.
Goddamn mother-fucking son-of-a-bitch.
Santa
sure as hell didn’t believe in subtle signs. I yanked the leather corset, boots
and whip off the bed and threw them in the closet.

With the dominatrix outfit off the
table—or the bed—I felt better, like the pressure was gone.
Just talk to
him. Let one thing lead to another. Get him to spill everything he’s doing
wrong so I can fix it.

In the other room, he stood by the
window, his reflection showing worry lines still. I eased up next to him and
laid my head on his shoulder. “Sorry about my freak out.”

He turned, his steely gaze meeting
mine as he brushed my hair back. I forced myself not to flinch when his fingers
brushed against the tip of my ear. “We just met. I get it. But it is nice to
know that you’re as attracted to me as I am to you.”

“I am. I most definitely am.” The same
stupid heat and electricity I felt every time I was too close to him flowed
through me again. Damn it. I didn’t want to seduce him for information. I kind
of just wanted to seduce him. Were Santa’s wants really more important than
mine?

Then he turned and wrapped his arms
around me. “Then why don’t we just see where the night takes us and not try to
push it there?”

Before I had time to think about a
response, I stood on tiptoe and brushed my lips against his. I froze an inch
from him. My lips felt alive; every kiss until that moment faded as if they’d
never existed.

Then he moved in and pressed his mouth
against mine. The old kisses had faded before, but this… this made the world
disappear. Gage and I were the only things that existed. His hands tangled in
my hair, and I opened to him. Lips, tongue, fingers, skin… all I knew was his
touch, and what I knew was incredible.

Oh yeah, that was the moment when I
thought the one thing guaranteed to get my name on the naughty list right next
to Gage’s.
Fuck what Santa wants.

Letting that go freed me in a way I
never expected. The next thing I knew, we were against the wall again, my hands
clawing at his t-shirt until I could get my palms underneath. His skin was so
hot, like he’d been lying out in the sun all day. It melted the sliver of North
Pole chill I still carried, warming me to my straight to my core and then some.
I wanted his heat, yearned for it. His shirt was off and tossed to some corner
of the room or other. I pressed the length of my body against his, savoring the
sensation along with the feel of his growing erection.

“You’re so warm,” I murmured against
his neck as I trailed kisses against that gloriously fiery skin. I teased his
nipple with my tongue, the light salty taste of sunshine and sweat did nothing
but make me want more.

“And you are making it nearly
impossible to behave myself. All I want to do is take your clothes off, throw
you down on the bed and take you.”

“Not happening.” My hands slid along
his back while his stopped inches from anywhere interesting.

He gave a throaty moan when my hips
ground against his. “Why not? You’re sure as hell acting like you want it as
much as I do.”

“Because you missed a step.” I nipped
at his chest. Whatever it was about this man, it drove away all those silly
concerns about what I did or didn’t know how to do. All that remained was the
heat, the electricity, and the want. “If the rest of your clothes stay on, all
your other plans are pointless.”

A low growl rumbled through his chest
as he fisted my hair and tugged my head back until I met his eyes. “Any other
complaints about my plan?”

“Only how long it’s taking you to get
to it.”

The muscles in his arms bunched, and
he picked me up and threw me over his shoulder. My instinct from years growing
up on the streets was to kick and yell, but I’d asked for this.
Fuck.
I
wanted this. He kicked open the door to the bedroom and flopped me onto the
king-sized bed.

The chill hit me an instant before the
panic. Without his heat around me, everything I was doing roared
back—disobeying Santa, having sex with a man I barely knew… A really wonderful,
sweet, incredibly sexy man who made me forget about everything else.

Then he was on the bed next to me,
teasing open the buttons of my blouse as he kissed me. When I tried to take
over, to get closer, he pinned my hands over my head. “Oh no. I let you lead
out there. My turn. I figure it’s the only way to be sure I control how fast
things go.”

He let me go and in my attempts to do
what he asked, my fingers brushed against something, making metal clank against
metal. Gage lifted his head from my neck and I wanted to scream. Then with a
beautifully evil smile, he reached up near the head of the bed and lifted a
pair of handcuffs. My breath caught. “I… I… I…”

“And you said I was naughty.” He
dipped his head and gave me a phoenix kiss—all feather-light and on fire.
“Thanks for giving me a way to be sure you don’t try anything funny.”

Before I could put up more than the
tiniest protest, that I wasn’t sure I really felt in the first place, Gage had
shifted me up the bed, and the cuffs snapped around my wrists.

All those years on the street and my
first time in handcuffs was in a posh hotel in Florida. If this was the naughty
list, I never wanted off.

Then my shirt was open and Gage’s lips
blazed a path on my stomach. The heat of his breath seared through my lacy bra,
and my eyes rolled back into my head. Something fluttered low in my belly when
I felt the button on my shorts come undone. Soon the shorts were gone and his
touch set my skin afire, blazing through me and burning up the butterflies.

His tongue traced the edge of my
panties, and this time I wished I had skipped them. But the sensation was so
delicious, I lifted my hips for more. His fingers hooked under the material and
tugged them off, his fingers lingering a moment on my ass.

I stopped caring about his fingers the
instant his tongue flicked my clit. There is no word for the noise I made in
that moment, but obviously he liked it because his tongue fire-danced on my
clitoris, sending me to places I’d never even imagined possible. My hips rose
off the bed, begging for more until he drew back, his kisses running down my
thighs.

“Careful, I might think I’m not going
fast enough for you.”

The only thing that saved me from
trying to tear my hands out of the cuffs was the whisper of his shorts falling
to the floor. Then the jerk lay down next to me and nuzzled my neck. “Why are
you stopping?” No matter what else, my voice did
not
crack when I asked.

At least not much.

His tongue traced the shell of my ear
and my pulse sped.

Pointy ears. Ignore the pointy
ears….

“I have you all tied up. I’m going to
take my time.”

As much as I didn’t crack the first
time—which let’s face it, I totally did—I cried out now. “No!”

“No?” He tugged the sensitive skin of
my neck with his teeth.

“Please just have sex with me.”
And
you can bite me like that again whenever the fuck you want to.

His lips curled up against my skin,
but even if I hadn’t felt it, I could hear the smile in his voice when he
whispered, “Ask me again.”

“Please.”

“Again.”

“Please, Gage.”

“Again.”

“Damn it. I’m begging. Please fuck
me!” I’m not proud—I was almost crying I wanted him so bad. Then again, he’d
finally clued me in to why he was on the naughty list.

I heard him open a condom and roll it
on. Then the only thing I heard was the sound of my gasp as he slid into me. He
was bigger than I’d had before. Not crazy mutant big, but with the flaming heat
of his body against mine, the stretching was a delicious agony.

He moved inside me, and it was like my
residual elf magic transported us to a blanket on a stretch of pristine beach.
Waves crashed around us with every thrust. Sunlight glinted off the sand and
cast a halo of golden rays around Gage’s head. The angel I’d first thought he
looked like.

The heat built around us until I
thought it would burn me alive. In the depths of his eyes, I saw nothing but
me—like I was the center of his universe, the only thing that mattered. My
muscles clenched around his length, spasming as the knowledge pushed me over
the edge. He tensed, his own orgasm coming right on the heels of my own.

He collapsed next to me and the beach
faded away as he unlocked the cuffs and wrapped his arms around me. I know I
shouldn’t have, but within seconds I’d fallen asleep.

Burning with the fires of Hell in the
arms of an angel.

Chapter Two

Nothing kills the post-smexy
happy-sleep more than waking up naked and freezing at the North Pole. Okay, I
take it back. Turning around to find Santa standing there destroyed it more.
Every inch of my insides that Gage had warmed turned right back to ice.