Chapter Nineteen—Mirror, Mirror
For some reason, getting his jeans off this time was ten times harder than it had been to peel out of soaking wet denim earlier. Rodriguez did battle with the Levi’s while Brittany floated in boneless oblivion on the bed. When he finally got the damn things off, he yanked open the bedside table drawer.
The sight of the condom box inside renewed his faith in God.
Rodriguez was suited up and ready to play before Brittany lost the rosy flush of her orgasm. When his weight dipped the mattress and tipped her toward him, she threw a leg over his waist.
Then continued over him right off the edge of the bed. She danced out of reach with a wicked glimmer in her eyes.
“Beds are so conventional. I believe I requested an
adventure
, Mr. Rodriguez.”
“So you did.” The possibilities flashed in graphic Technicolor through his mind. Luis grinned. “Do you have any specific instructions?”
Brittany glanced around the room, apparently considering their options. Her eyes locked on the floor-to-ceiling mirror on the closet door and her lips slowly curved. That particular smile was one he’d never seen before, but from the debauchery it promised, he looked forward to seeing it often.
She went to stand in front of the mirror, smoothing her hands over her naked hips. “I want to watch you
do
me from behind.” She said
do
like she really wanted to say a much dirtier word, but couldn’t make her mouth form the vulgar consonants.
Rodriguez eyed her and then the mirror. He liked the way she thought. His brain automatically went to work on the logistics. She was only a few inches shorter than he was, but without high heels or her standing on something, him
doing
her standing up was going to kill his back. Not that he particularly cared at the moment. He could live with a sore back.
As he was wondering if he could talk her into standing on a couple of phonebooks, Brittany burst out laughing.
Rodriguez frowned when he realized she was definitely laughing at him. “What’s funny?”
“You’ve got this expression on your face like I just asked you to remodel the kitchen. I didn’t expect my request to have home-improvement implications.”
He walked up behind her, meeting her eyes below his in the mirror. “You’re short,” he explained.
“You aren’t exactly a skyscraper. For a guy.”
He wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her back until her ass bumped his thighs and his cock pressed against the small of her back. “You’re
short
,
corazón
,” he repeated.
She blinked, her eyes widening. “
Oh
.” Then a flicker of disappointment flashed in her eyes. “So we can’t…” She waved to the mirror.
“Sure we can. But we have to be creative.”
“Hence the home improvements.”
“Hence.”
“And?”
He glanced around the room, but didn’t see anything that would boost her up. “Wait right here.” He strode quickly out of the room, scanning the rooms he walked through for appropriate props. It was, to the best of his knowledge, the only time he had ever walked through his own house naked and hard, looking for something exactly three inches tall and sturdy enough to stand on.
A small smile quirked his lips as he searched. Brittany was a font of new experiences. Life with her would never be dull.
When he returned to the bedroom moments later, carrying a footstool from the utility room and a cushion he’d pulled off the couch—not sure which would work better—he found Brittany leaning against the wall next to the mirror with her arms folded across her stomach.
“I killed the mood, didn’t I?” she asked, wrinkling her nose. “We’re all bow-chica-bow-wow and I have to go and mention home improvements. I suck at this.”
His cock jumped in Pavlovian response to the word
suck
. He dropped the footstool and cushion in front of the mirror and turned to her. “Do I look uninterested?”
She glanced down at him, saw that he was giving her a full salute, and color rose to her cheeks. “No.”
“No one killed the mood. You can talk to me about whatever you want whenever you want. Even if it’s home improvements when I’m thinking dirty thoughts about watching myself fuck you.”
Her face flushed even brighter at the word
fuck
. “Really?”
“Really.” He extended a hand toward her. “Now get over here and let me do unwholesome things to you.”
She beamed, took his hand, and bounced over to jump up onto the stepstool. Normally her bubbly enthusiasm seemed innocent, but watching her bounce and jump buck-naked inspired thoughts that were far from chaste.
Rodriguez shifted to stand behind her and instantly grinned. Oh yeah, the footstool was exactly the right height.
He nudged her legs apart until she was standing as widely as she could without falling off the stool. “Put your hands on the mirror,” he instructed.
She leaned forward slightly and braced her hands on the glass.
He could slide into her right now, but even though he was still horny as hell, Brittany’s afterglow had worn off substantially. He had some work to do to get her back where he wanted her to be.
Brittany licked her lips and watched Rodriguez behind her in the mirror. Their position put him in complete control, but it gave her a heck of a view. The mirror had been an impulse decision, but she was coming to realize it was pure brilliance.
She’d never really thought of what they looked like together. Her pale skin against his dark tan. His strength against her softness. When his hands skated over her skin to caress her breasts, she shivered—both at the deliciousness of the touch and the sight of it. The brown of his skin against the pink of her nipples. Warmth coiled and pooled between her legs at the eroticism of the sight.
When one darkly tanned hand stroked down across her stomach and between her legs, he found her already hot, wet and eager. He muttered something in Spanish, as his fingers coaxed more dampness from her.
He bent and pressed a kiss to the base of her neck where her hair had fallen to the side. Brittany shivered. Her back arched, her hips pushing back toward him.
His eyes met hers in the mirror, the black of them searing and intense. Slowly, deliberately, he fitted himself to her and pressed an inch inside her. Then another. She was captivated by his eyes, captured by his body’s slow invasion.
He pressed deeper still until his hips pressed tight against her buttocks. Brittany closed her eyes. The feeling was exquisite.
“Watch,” his voice commanded roughly. “You don’t want to miss this.” She opened her eyes in time to see him draw back and plunge forward again. She wavered on the stool and his hands locked tight on her hips to steady her. “
Mira
,” he commanded again. Then he began a steady rocking rhythm.
Brittany grew breathless as she watched. Seeing it, feeling it, every sensation was multiplied. And seeing
him
, as his face darkened with passion, was an aphrodisiac in itself. A stream of Spanish words flowed over her. Heat tightened and coiled in her, bringing her right back to the edge. His forearm, with its black tattoos, wrapped tight around her hips, pulling her back hard into his body and pinning her there as he stiffened, his orgasm hitting him hard. The sight of his release slammed her into her own. Her eyes snapped shut as if she couldn’t take any more as pure, electric sensation sliced through her.
She rode out the jagged waves of pleasure, coming slowly back to a world where the only sounds were the soft, reverent whispers of Spanish across the back of her neck and the pounding of her own heart.
Rodriguez kissed Brittany’s scar as she lay sprawled on her back on his bed. He should wake her. Karma would have long since grown suspicious about their extended absence. But he wasn’t ready to leave this room.
His eyes were drawn again to the pink scar running along her breastbone. It was noticeable, but hardly the disfigurement she seemed to think it was. She had nothing to be ashamed of. It was a badge of honor. She should be proud of it. She had survived.
If anything, the scar made her more precious to him.
A spike of rage pierced him. What kind of idiots had she been with that they let her feel like she was anything less than beautiful? She had a scar. So what? Lots of people had been marked by life in one way or another. It wasn’t like she had a swastika carved into her ass.
Rodriguez tamped down the rage he felt toward the men who’d made her feel inadequate. They didn’t matter right now. Brittany mattered. It scared him how much she mattered.
He was grateful she didn’t understand Spanish. Seeing her reflected in the mirror, he’d been moved to say things that were both dirtier and sappier than he’d ever said in his life. The things he’d promised, the words of love, were just as well forgotten. At least for a little while. It was much too soon for vows.
He couldn’t take his eyes off her then and he found the sight of her now, rumpled and asleep in his bed, deeply satisfying. The smooth curve of her waist, slim legs, and small, delectable breasts all perfectly suited her sleek frame.
Every inch of skin was mouthwatering, but the part that kept drawing his eyes again and again was the hollow of her collarbone at the base of her throat. Between the scarves and the cunningly designed necklines of her blouses, he’d never seen it before. He hadn’t realized until he saw her naked for the first time how much he loved that elegant hollow on women, like the dimple at the base of a spine or the soft line at the back of a knee.
The subtle sexiness of that hollow was all Brittany, like a secret layer of sultriness only he could see beneath her laughing charm.
It hovered right over the top edge of her scar and he pressed a kiss into that tiny divot.
She stirred, her big doe eyes blinking sleepily. “Luis?”
“
Sí, corazón?
”
“What time is it?”
“Too late for regrets,
amorcita
.”
Her brow wrinkled in confusion, and then her eyes flared wide as realization hit. “Oh, darn. Karma! I told her I’d be looking into alternate venues, but she’ll expect me to make an appearance at the office eventually.” She looked down at her naked self and her hands fluttered as if she could magically clothe herself. “Are my clothes dry? We need to get to work. Karma can’t suspect that we…” She trailed off, her face flaming. “Oh, jeez.”
Luis didn’t really see the point in trying to hide it. Karma was sharp—especially where interpersonal relationships were concerned. She’d take one look at Brittany and him and
know
.
But Brittany’s modesty was kind of cute, so he just followed her with a little grin on his face as she ran naked to check the dryer.
“Oh, thank goodness, they’re dry.” She quickly began pulling on her outfit, which was extremely wrinkled, but no longer see-through. As she buttoned the blouse up to her throat, he mourned the loss of every inch of visible skin. She caught him looking at her and a frown flickered across her face. “You can’t look at me like that. Everyone will
know
.”
He shrugged. “Everyone’s going to know anyway.”
She paled, her hands stilling. “You’re not going to tell anyone, are you?”
He would have been offended, but he was way too happy with the world. “I don’t kiss and tell,
mi corazón
. Your secret is safe.”
“You promise?”
A surge of irritation pierced his good mood. Who did she think he was? “I promise,” he ground out.
Relief flooded her face. “Oh, good.” She blinked at him, as if surprised to find him still naked. For a second, her eyes glazed a bit as they followed the path of his tattoos. Then she visibly pulled herself together. Still a bit flushed, she averted her eyes. “You need to get dressed. We’re already late.”
Rodriguez sighed and obediently walked toward the bedroom to grab some clothes. So much for his idyllic afternoon boinkfest.
Chapter Twenty—Chopsticks, Ghosts, and Quickies
Happiness, Brittany discovered, was not actually the same thing as blind optimism. She’d been cheerful, good-natured, enthusiastic and a positive thinker for her entire life, but she could probably count the number of times she’d been genuinely, truly, decadently happy on both hands.
The four days since the pipe had exploded had been an endless string of decadently happy moments.
Sitting on the floor of the Karmic Consultants reception area, eating take-out Chinese straight out of the cartons with Jo and Lucy as they brainstormed possible locations for the wedding reception, Brittany felt happiness tingling through every pore of her body.
And only part of that happiness was due to afterglow from Luis cornering her in the copy room for a quickie earlier.
He’d taken off to follow up on the possibility of tracking the wedding demon’s energy signature—whatever that meant—leaving her at Karmic for lunch with the girls.
She had a job she loved, friends she adored, and a man… Well, he was pretty darn fantastic, and if she wasn’t already in love with him, she was definitely en route.
Brittany snagged a piece of chicken out of Jo’s carton of Kung Pao while the punkette ghost exterminator was distracted by her ringing cell phone. Lucy munched on beef broccoli, her eyes distant. She periodically perked up and blurted out the name of some location that could possibly cater to two hundred guests on short notice before shaking her head and drifting back into her own musings.
Lucy and Jo were both a little offbeat, just like her. It couldn’t have been easy growing up as the girls who talked to ghosts. Jo had told her she’d starting exterminating rogue spirits at the age of six, while Lucy, the late-bloomer of the family, hadn’t developed her affinity for counseling the recently deceased until her teen years. The ghost shrink and the ghost exterminator. Most people just thought they were nuts.
Brittany loved how easily they had fallen into a comfortable camaraderie. She’d never really clicked with the girls at school, who tended to be preoccupied with who was dating the boy with the biggest trust fund. Her parents’ rigidity hadn’t helped any either. Being the girl with the EMT-chauffeur-bodyguard who couldn’t go to parties didn’t exactly make her Miss Popularity. And even if she had been allowed to do the normal teenage things, Brittany had just never quite fit. She had a thousand acquaintances, thanks to her parents’ money and connections, but real, close friends were a new experience. And she was loving it.
She loved having friends, she loved sitting on the floor, and she loved Chinese food.
Brittany popped the spicy chicken into her mouth and closed her eyes in bliss.
It had been four days of bliss with Luis. Four days of smoldering glances and stolen kisses. Four days of sneaking back to his house for a nooner or a few hours after work. Four days of nonstop fizzy excitement and a feeling of delicious naughtiness that rose up every time she thought about her secret office romance—which was more or less constantly.
“Are you pregnant?”
Brittany jerked and nearly bit off her tongue. Her eyes flew open. “What?” She couldn’t be pregnant. Could she? They’d been careful. Hadn’t they? And why would Jo ask that anyway? Did she look pregnant? Was she glowing? Isn’t that what pregnant women did? Maybe she looked too happy. Should she try to look less happy? Was she being conspicuous?
“Of course not.” Lucy calmly crunched another broccoli floret. “Who said I was pregnant?”
Brittany felt a rush of relief. She didn’t look conspicuously glowy. Lucy did.
Jo shoved her phone back into her pocket, eyed her Kung Pao carton and then the pair of them, as if she knew one of them had filched. “Mom said your registry had all sorts of diapers and onesies and stuff on it. The family gossip mill is going hardcore on when Jake knocked you up and why you haven’t told your parents.”
Lucy straightened, coming alert. “We didn’t register for diapers and onesies.”
Jo shrugged. “Mom must be mixed up,” she mumbled around a mouthful.
“Or the wedding demon switched your registry with a baby shower one,” Brittany suggested. She pulled out the Murphy’s Wedding Checklist and circled
registry
. “I’ll look into it. Which store was it?”
Jo said something that vaguely resembled “Macy’s” through another mouthful of Kung Pao.
Brittany nodded and made a note, feeling very wedding planner-ish. “I’ll check into all the places you’ve registered. Just to be safe.”
“Thanks.” Lucy sighed. She set down her carton, drew up her knees and wrapped her arms around them. “It would be nice if just one thing would go as planned without having to be fixed twenty thousand times. At first it was funny, but now…”
“Told ya you should have eloped.” Jo wagged a chopstick at her cousin. “Any luck yet figuring out who might have sicced a demon on you?”
Lucy shook her head. “Neither Jake nor I could think of anyone who opposes the wedding. It’s not like we have a lot of enemies.”
“What about that mobster guy you put in jail?”
Brittany glanced back and forth between the two of them. “Mobster guy?”
“Luce put Big Joe Morrissey in the slammer.”
Lucy made a face. “Long story. But we already checked him out. He’s still in the maximum-security psych ward, insisting the ghost of his accountant tried to kill him. He doesn’t have access to the resources necessary to summon a demon or the energy to keep one on this plane.”
Jo threw an arm around Lucy’s shoulders. “Don’t worry, Luce. We’ll catch the demon and banish his ass back to hell. Or rather, Rodriguez will.”
Brittany got a little thrill just hearing his name. When Lucy and Jo’s heads turned toward her in unison, she wondered if she’d made an audible sound of want. Lucy’s eyes were wide and curious. Jo’s were speculative.
“So, Brittany,” she said, “you’ve been spending a lot of time with our mysterious exorcist…”
She was not going to blush. “Have I?” Not blushing. Not one little bit.
“No one really knows anything about him.” Lucy casually snagged a potsticker, but her eyes never left Brittany. “We’re lucky if we can get two full sentences out of him…”
“But he can’t seem to stop talking to you,” Jo finished for her. “So dish. What’s the real deal behind Mr. Mysterio’s smoldering eyes and sexy tats?”
Brittany felt an irrational stab of jealousy at Jo’s use of the word smoldering. Those were
her
smoldering eyes. She didn’t like the idea that they smoldered for anyone else.
“I bet he’s just a big ole pussy cat,” Lucy postulated. “Jake looks all big and tough, but he’s nothing but a softie.”
Jo eyed her cousin skeptically. “You are the only person on the planet who would call that man soft.”
“What? Doesn’t Wyatt have a softer side?”
“Wyatt has two modes. Corporate takeover and sex. Luckily, I like sex and I can send him to the office when he’s in corporate takeover mode.”
Lucy turned to Brittany and said in a mock whisper, “She doesn’t mean that. They’re totally gone for one another. Secretly she’s all gooey and gaga over him.”
Jo rolled her eyes. “Lucy’s delusional and we’re off topic. I wanna know about Rodriguez. What’s he like? Besides the obvious profound hotness.”
Brittany took a bite and pretended to mull over the question as she chewed. She didn’t want to tell them anything about Luis. She liked them, but she wasn’t ready to share him yet.
He was devoted to his family and owned a sweet little house that made her think of lazy Sunday afternoons and decorating nurseries. He drove his motorcycle like a bat out of hell and danced in ways that made her tingle in unmentionable places. He was matter-of-fact about everything from exorcising demons to teaching her to cook. And just one look from him could get her so hot her brain just plain shut off and she turned into a rampaging nympho.
She loved every little detail she had learned about him in the last two weeks and she didn’t want to give away a single one of them. So she just smiled vaguely and said, “He’s nice.”
Jo groaned. “
Nice
? Oh, that is so disappointing. Can’t you do better than nice?”
“Do you ever just want to pounce on him?” Lucy asked, surprising her. Lucy was usually the more tactful of the two.
Brittany wasn’t ready to admit that she thought about little else but pouncing on him—and not just because she was sitting in Karma’s reception area and her boss could walk out at any minute and hear her describing her insatiable desire to lick Rodriguez’s tattoos.
“He’s very attractive, but extremely professional,” she said instead.
“Professional?” Jo made a face. “Damn. I owe Lucy ten bucks. I was sure you were banging him.”
Lucy smacked her cousin. “Ignore her. She’s just a sore loser. We weren’t trying to pry. We just like you and we want to see you happy. He seems like a good guy, in addition to being a hot one. But if the zing isn’t there, it isn’t there. Definitely hold out for the zing. It is
so
worth it.”
Zing wasn’t a problem. Brittany had so much zing she could barely function. But right now, she just wanted to get the conversation away from her and Rodriguez. “You and Jake sound like you have zing to spare.”
Lucy dimpled. “Oh yeah. He’s a keeper and then some.”
“Now if only you had somewhere to hold the wedding reception,” Jo said dryly. “I still say you could use Wyatt’s Victorian. It’s totally renovated now, but the Grand Opening isn’t for three weeks. It’s just sitting there being picturesque…”
“And haunted,” Lucy pointed out. “By a pair of pranksters. You aren’t just my maid of honor, you’re my ghost enforcer. I would rather have you focused on transcending any stray ghosts who pop in on the reception rather than worrying about whether your delinquents will make an unwelcome appearance.”
“I can handle ’em,” Jo said. “And prankster ghosts or not, it’s a venue. We’re T-minus eight days. If nothing else pops up, I say we go with the Vic.”
Brittany listened, fascinated by the calm way they discussed ghosts and haunting. At first, they had been tentative around her, but as soon as they figured out she didn’t scare easily, they’d talked about their medium work in front of her as if she were one of them. She’d never been one of a
them
before.
It was just one more thing to add to her happy list. Her life was filling up with joy.
She was happier than she could ever remember being. As if her entire life to this point had been frothy whipped cream and this was chocolate—rich, decadent, and lingeringly sweet. It was a whole new tier of emotion.
Now all she had to do was pin down a new venue for two hundred people next Saturday afternoon, get the programs reprinted with the
correct
name of the bride and groom, and have the wedding bands resized so they wouldn’t slide right off the happy couple’s fingers. No problem.
And then, when she was done with all that, she would think of a way to be with Rodriguez that didn’t involve violating Karma’s intra-office dating policy.
“Would you guys ever quit a job for a guy?”
Brittany winced. She hadn’t meant to say that out loud, but she couldn’t stop thinking about it. How were she and Luis supposed to have a future if they couldn’t be seen in public together without risking their jobs?
It was, Brittany decided, an idiotic policy. There should
clearly
be lots of dating in this office. People in love were happy. Happy employees were productive employees—when they weren’t sneaking off to the copy room for a quickie. So why was Karma so against it? Brittany and Luis would probably be much more professional about their affair if they didn’t have to hide it.
“Depends on the guy,” Lucy said. “Is someone asking you to?”
Jo wagged her chopstick aggressively. “Any guy who wants you to quit your job for him has an incurable case of douchebaggery. Dump his ass.”
Brittany munched on a potsticker as she thought it over. She didn’t think dumping Luis was an option anymore. She wasn’t sure it ever had been. What had started out as adventure was now somehow more.
Was Karma against romance entirely? Had she been burned by some guy and turned into the Love Grinch? Brittany’d never heard anyone talk about a Mr. Karma.
“Does Karma date?”
It wasn’t until Jo and Lucy suddenly fell silent that Brittany realized their conversation had continued while she was lost in her thoughts.
They didn’t seem annoyed by the interruption, more like confounded. Like the thought of Karma with a guy was deeply puzzling. Jo turned to Lucy. “Well? You’ve got the inside skinny with Jake. Does our fearless leader ever consort with the opposite sex? Or her own sex?”
Lucy shrugged helplessly. “Beats me. Jake says her love life is her business. He isn’t even curious.”
“How can he not be curious?” Jo exclaimed. “I’d be dying to know. I
am
dying to know. Would he pry if you asked him to?”
Brittany glanced at her boss’s door. It was firmly shut. “We should find her someone.”
Lucy froze with a chunk of broccoli suspended an inch from her mouth. She and Jo looked at Brittany with identical expressions of shock.
“What?” It was a good idea. If Karma had someone, she would be happy for Brittany and Luis. She wouldn’t fire them. It was a good plan.
“Karma is the puppetmaster,” Jo said. “We don’t meddle in the life of the puppetmaster. The puppetmaster meddles in our lives. That’s how it works.”
Brittany shrugged. “Even the puppetmaster gets meddled with eventually.”
Rodriguez watched Brittany reach under her desk to shut down her computer, wondering if anyone shutting off a computer had ever been quite so sexy. It was almost as bad as the filing, which was downright tormenting with the bending and stretching.
She straightened and shot him the same little look out of the corner of her eye she’d been shooting him all week. The one that said she knew he was watching her, she liked it, and she was going to reward him for being so observant as soon as she had him alone.
He loved that look.
“Do you have any big plans for the weekend, Mr. Rodriguez?” Brittany said pointedly as one of the accounting clerks waved on her way out the front door.