"I have an idea," she announced, then released his hand to cross the stage.
She sorted through a nearby box of CDs, then held up one in triumph and slid it into the portable player. The already dim lights played on the inky hair that hung in a sleek, glossy fall nearly to her elbows.
In his chest, Mark's heart started doing the samba against his ribs.
Nicki DiStefano was the full package: Gorgeous, smart, determined, assertive, unique.
And very possibly involved in the planning and execution of a felony. He couldn't forget that.
A soft jazz tune filled the air, lilting over him in a smooth, suggestive rhythm. Rich with sax and piano and a faint tinkling of bells in the background, this was music meant to seduce.
"Dance with me." She held out her hand, eyes beckoning. "Now?"
She nodded. "We're going to dance together on this stage, so that every time you stand up here, you can picture dancing up here with someone else. With me."
Mark took hold of Nicki's hands, more because he couldn't resist the opportunity to touch her than because he believed she could cure him of stage fright in a night or less. But her attempt to do so confused him. Why was she trying to help him, especially if he was just in her way while she was trying to commit a crime? Why not just fire him and hire someone oblivious?
The questions evaporated when Nicki stepped into the circle of his arms, one hand on his biceps, the other held up as if waiting for his hand. Close but not too close. Mark ignored her invitation and took more. He erased the space between them immediately by gathering her against his chest and winding his arms around her waist. He hadn't thought it possible, but he got harder--again.
Cinnamon and citrus blended together to tantalize him with memories, fantasies of what they could have together if he didn't believe in upholding the law ... and he knew for sure that she wasn't trying to break it.
At the moment, he almost didn't care--almost. Her laughter, intelligence, and sass drew him like metal to a magnet. Memories of her tight flesh closing around him, sucking him back in with every thrust, pervaded his memory. The way she'd looked the instant before she'd exploded around his cock, blue eyes wild and blurred, cheeks pink, throat arched and bared for him. Her expression in the first few seconds afterward, soft and sated and worshipping.
You can have that again, have her again,
whispered the devil in his head.
"Obviously, I'm not alone up here." He sidled closer still, molding them chest to chest, belly to belly. He had no doubt she felt him--every inch of him. "Being alone doesn't make me the human equivalent of steel pike."
Nicki tsked at him. But she also wriggled closer, brushing her center right against his throbbing erection, as if testing the waters, before backing away.
"This isn't about your penis; it's about your stage fright."
"Right now, with you this close, I don't know that I can concentrate on anything but how you make me feel--and the way my penis and I would like to make you feel."
Mark felt her smile against his chest. "Then let me go and focus!"
He'd give her focus ... He notched his cock right against her, where she could feel the heat and need for herself. God knew he could barely think about anything else.
He whispered in her ear, "I get within five feet of you, and logic goes out the window. Your smell alone drives me beyond rational thought. When I get my hands on you ..." he slid one of his palms down the smooth line of her back, all the way to her ass. Curving one broad palm around her cheek, he lifted her against his cock, resisting the urge to hiss at the contact. "Any brains I have give way to sheer need."
At the feel of her against him, lust streaked through him like an addiction. She wasn't immune, either, based on the way she wriggled against him, her breathing hitched.
He'd uttered the words so that Nicki would let him back into her life. Too bad every syllable was true--and then some. He didn't just want to touch her; naturally it couldn't be that simple. He wanted the right to touch her.
He wanted to possess.
"Mark..." she warned, her voice satisfyingly breathy. "Let me go and dance next to me. You need to concentrate on dancing onstage, feeling the rhythm--"
"The only rhythm I want to feel is the one we make together as I'm pounding deep inside you, baby."
Nicki trembled. Mark smiled in wicked satisfaction as he felt a shiver stir her small frame. At least he wasn't feeling this fever alone.
"Sex is not the point of this exercise." She tried to steer him back on course. It might have worked if her thin voice hadn't sounded as if she'd just run a marathon.
Lifting his free hand from her mid-back up to wind around her neck, Mark stared down at Nicki, gratified to see her pulse pounding at her neck as solidly as the beat of a hip-hop dance song.
The previous night all through dinner, Mark had looked across the table at Nicki's exotic, flushed face and fought a terrible urge to clear the table with one swipe of his arm, prop her on it, and feast on her instead. But he'd managed to hold out. Somehow.
Tonight, with their proximity and his restraint pushed to the limit, there was no resisting. He wanted. Period.
Nicki molded around him, yielding, soft. Her nipples poked his chest, as if daring him to touch them. He could feel the heat from her body all over his cock. And her expression, yearning, wary, was delicious.
She wanted, too. But she was fighting it. "One dance," she whispered. "Please."
At times like this, he wished he was the kind of heartless bastard who could just seduce a woman without regard for her wants and feelings. Life would be simpler, anyway. But he wasn't built like that.
Everything below his waist protested when he eased some space between them. He wasn't about to release her, so he simply held her close, swaying to the music, until the first song ended. Another began with a flare of violins.
"Thank you," she murmured, trying to push discreetly at his chest.
"You're welcome." He ignored her attempt to put distance between them.
"When you're up onstage," she whispered, her lips a breath away from his neck, "don't think about the audience as a whole. Think about being somewhere else. Or being alone in the club. Or focus on whatever you were thinking about when you auditioned for me. That was perfect."
"Dancing for you was easy. You looked at me like a starving woman cases a buffet."
"You made me feel hungry for you," she confessed. "Whatever you did that day, it was like magic. Can you do it again?"
"Maybe. If you're in the audience, watching, it might work."
"I will be. I promise."
"That day I auditioned for you, I imagined getting my hands on your body, giving you pleasure."
Nicki sucked in a breath. "Mark ..."
"I still imagine it every time I see you."
She didn't respond for a long minute. The music cascaded around them, lilting, a caress to the ear drums, a soft seduction. The dim golden lights beamed a spot on the stage to Mark's left, leaving him in shadow with a warm, cinnamon-scented woman in his arms.
The way she pumped his libido up with a steady stream of lust wasn't smart. It made no sense, how badly he wanted to taste Nicki. To claim her. But Mark couldn't wait another second.
Cradling the back of her neck in his hand, he tilted her face to the perfect angle and stared down at her. Her red lips parted, her breathing grew shallow. Reading her breathless anticipation only made his gut tighten again, his erection that much harder.
Damn it, why this woman?
He stopped cursing, stopped questioning, when he slanted his lips over hers. He didn't ask for entrance or cajole. No patience. He simply took full possession of her mouth. Nicki opened for him without hesitation. Her fingers clawed their way up his shoulders. She stood on the tips of her toes to press her lips into the kiss. And she moaned. God, the sound was like heaven as it sang down his spine, and then directly into his cock.
A haze of lust fogged his mind. He had to have her. Now. No more waiting, no more wondering why she scorched him like a desert brushfire blazing a hundred thousand acres.
It just was--and he was done questioning it.
His hand at the back of her neck found the zipper to her sexy red dress on the first feel. As he guided it down the length of her narrow back, the metallic glide accompanied the music.
Nicki stiffened. "Mark..."
He answered by capturing her mouth again and sliding his hands to the clasp of her bra. As he nibbled on her lower lip, he swept into her mouth with a melting kiss meant to drown her in the lust he felt. Mark swept away the top half of her dress with insistent fingers until it pooled around her hips, ready to come off with one tiny tug. Her bra followed, and he dropped it to the ground as he broke the kiss to fasten his hungry gaze to her nipples. Rosy nipples. Hard, swollen nipples.
An instant before he leaned down to seize one with his mouth, Nicki raised her hands and covered her breasts. She did a really lousy job, though. Her palms barely covered the essentials. Lots of pale, rounded flesh beckoned him between her fingers. God, he'd love to have a picture of this. Arousal itched just under his skin, distracting him from everything except scratching it. The only thing sexier would be to watch her stroke herself.
In fact, the idea made Mark smile. He moved that to the top of his priority list.
Nicki retreated a step. "Mark, this isn't a good idea."
He snapped his gaze up to her face. She said the words, all right, but her voice, breathy and uneven, along with her dilating blue eyes, told him it was her head objecting. Her body wanted him just as bad as he wanted her. Until she stopped lying, he wasn't listening.
"Put your hands down."
"I think we should talk. What if Blade--"
"I don't give a shit about Bocelli. This is between you and me. Put your hands down before I tie them down," he growled.
She blinked, hesitated. But her chest rose and fell with a shaky breath, then another. Her lips parted, flushed and moist. Her hands began to tremble. Arousal had to be creaming her slit, because he smelled her in the air between them. It nearly brought him to his knees.
Oh yeah, the rational part of her was fighting it. Too bad that part of her wasn't going to win. Even without his seduction, Mark sensed her lust growing faster than she could fight it off.
"Now, Nicki."
Mark was relishing the thought of making good on his threat to tie her down when she slowly lowered her hands, exposing the hard peaks of her nipples and the gentle slopes of her breasts to his greedy gaze.
"Good girl. Now take the rest off--dress, panties."
She closed her eyes. "Nothing good can come from this."
No doubt, she was right. After all, Nicki was a suspect.
But with every word, every scrap of resistance, she tested the unraveling thread of his patience. He'd never found himself so hungry, so demanding of a woman, felt such a deep need to have her full cooperation in her own surrender. Something about Nicki ... She had to submit utterly; he wouldn't accept anything less.
"Orgasms aren't tragic." His voice sounded like something rubbed raw with sandpaper. "Don't lie to me. Don't lie to yourself. Do you want me?"
Nicki hesitated, bit her lip. "Yes," she finally whispered.
"Then take everything off."
Biting her lip, Nicki opened her eyes on a sigh. But the truth now darkened her upturned blue eyes. She did want him and she accepted that fact.
Mark's heart pounded like a hundred horses circling the track at the Kentucky Derby as Nicki raised her hands to the dress about her hips, wriggled once, twice, then let go. She stood before him wearing nothing but black, wrap-around stilettos.
A surge of lust had his hands clenching into fists. Desire burned his blood. He never remembered feeling anything as strong as the demand pounding at his body, the ache pooling in his cock, the need to have her open to him, accepting him, taking everything he could give.
"Are you wet?" As if he didn't know the answer. Still, he asked in slow, controlled tones, fighting off the urge to rip his clothes off and fuck her until he didn't know his own name.
"Yes." She swallowed.
"Prove it."
Nicki's gaze clung to his--wide, uncertain, confused. Then she looked down, past her flat stomach, all the way to her pussy, and hesitated. Her gaze, now shimmering with heat, climbed up his body, to his waiting stare.
Taking a deep breath, Nicki covered her dark, shadowed mound with her hand, fingers sinking slowly between her slick, pouting lips. As he watched, Mark felt a jolt of lust as potent as a live wire.
She spread her legs slightly, brushed her clit with her fingertips.
"Deeper," he urged. "Get inside."
For once, she did as he asked without pause. Her fingers sank deep, and a moan slipped from her parted lips. Then she eased them out to toy with her clit again, rubbing in small, whispering circles until her eyes slid shut and she arched her neck on another moan.
God, she looked hot, wanton--a woman seeking her own pleasure, baring it to him. It enticed the hell out of him, made his erection swell yet again against his leather pants. She likely knew she affected him, and he didn't care. At the moment, he was her adoring audience of one.
Her moans shortened to panting mewls. Her fingers swept over the swollen bud of her clit more rapidly. With her free hand, she grasped one breast and pinched her nipple.
Desire surged through him, trapping the breath in his chest, stopping his heart.
Damn, a man could only take so much teasing. Mark had always enjoyed spectator sports, but when given a choice, he'd rather be a player. This was no exception.
"That's enough."