Unspeakable (24 page)
“I’m not sure.” Another sip. “Probably something. Oh, yeah. Public indecency.”
“What if you own the beach?”
“Do you own this beach?”
“No, just hypothetically.”
“Then it wouldn’t be a good idea,” she said.
“It’s a great idea. It feels good. You should go sometime. Hell, go now if you want to. I won’t tell anyone.”
“Really?” She grinned. “Would you go with me?”
Would he go skinny-dipping with her? She didn’t even have to ask. But he looked at her, smiling at him in
the dimness, and he realized just how very,
very
inebriated she had to be right now. Time to take her inside and tuck her in on his couch with a glass of water nearby. And he knew that was the dead last thing he was going to do.
“Never swim alone,” he said. “That’s my motto.”
“Oh, you’re not serious. I can tell.” She poured another shot of tequila into her glass. Troy watched her, and something tightened in his gut.
Her gaze met his as she brought the glass to her lips.
“Better watch it, Elaina.” His voice was low and dark now, and her eyes widened slightly.
“Why?”
He eased closer and watched the uncertainty flicker over her face. He nodded at the bottle. “You think you drink enough of that tequila, I won’t touch you?”
She put the glass down. “No.”
“Don’t mistake me for a nice guy.”
She gazed up at him, her eyes big and luminous in the moonlight. “I know you’re not a nice guy.” She swigged the rest of her drink and plunked the glass down defiantly. “This is for me.”
“How’s that?” He put his hands over hers, trapping them against the railing as he eased his body against hers. A taunt. A threat. A promise. It was up to her.
“It’s my liquid courage.” She gave him a cautious smile, and her voice was barely a whisper. “The way I feel around you scares me to death.”
He stared down at her but didn’t move. Finally, she rose up on her toes and kissed him. That was all the invitation he seemed to need, and the next instant his mouth was on hers—hard and taking.
His hands moved into her hair, holding her head in place while he opened her up to him. He tasted like the tequila they’d been drinking, and her tongue started to tingle. She curled her fingers around his neck and just tried to keep up. He was an amazing kisser. She had a faint thought that he was probably much better at sex than she was, and she was way out of her league. And then his hands were on her hips, gripping them, pulling her up, off her feet, and planting her on the railing. She wrestled her mouth away and glanced back and felt woozy.
“I got you,” he said huskily, and took her mouth again and his fingers dug into her hips, and she knew that he did have her and she wasn’t going anywhere except where he wanted her to. He pushed her knees apart with his body and settled into the space between and turned
his attention to planting kisses in a line down her jaw and her neck.
She hooked her ankles behind him and tipped her head back. The breeze wafted over her and she was basking in moonlight and it felt wonderful and she breathed up at the sky.
“Hold on,” he whispered, securing her thighs tight around his sides as he let go of her hips and slid his hands to the back of her neck. A little tug at the ties of her dress, and the fabric dropped to her waist. Her gaze met his as she felt another tug and her bikini top fell, too. She saw his eyes heat and she shivered, more from the way he looked at her than from the breeze tickling over her skin. And then his big, warm palms slid around her back and pulled her closer at the same time his mouth found her breast.
She closed her eyes. She let the sensations wash over her—the night and the cool air and the hot, delicious suction of his mouth. She’d never felt this way, like she could just float away and let sensation take over, and she gave into it and tilted her head back and used her legs to hug him closer. Through the fog, she heard laughter and then a
whoop
from the beach below.
He picked her up and set her on her feet, and she grasped for her bathing suit and the fabric of her dress.
“What?”
“We got company.” He took her hand. He grabbed the bottle of tequila with the other hand and pulled her toward the house.
His house. She looked at the house now. She looked at him. He must have seen her hesitation, because he pulled
her close and gazed down into her face and asked her a question with his eyes.
She answered by kissing him, still holding her clothes to her chest, and even though their hands were full, the kiss went on and on, and finally he stepped back and gave her a little yank toward the door.
Inside, the air was cooler. He put the tequila down on a table inside the door, and she paused to let her eyes adjust to the gloom. He pulled her through the living room, and she watched his tall, dark shadow and her heart did a little jump.
This man. This beautiful, sexy, fascinating man wants me.
She stumbled behind him toward the bedroom wing, and her mind started to swim again, and she knew it was the liquor and the dizzying prospect of what they were about to do together. That low, deep throbbing that had started outside intensified now as he pulled her down a narrow hallway. And then they were in the dark cave of his bedroom and his hands were on her again, tangling in her hair as he kissed her and walked her backward across the room.
She reached for his jeans, pulling him closer and loving the feel of the denim under her hands. Her top was gone now—lost somewhere along the way—and the hardness of his chest pressed against her bare breasts. She wrestled the shirt off him, greedy to touch him now, like he was touching her. She wanted to feel his skin and the solid contours of his body. He lifted his arms to help her, and the shirt disappeared. She paused and blinked at him. The outdoor light seeped through the blinds and cast pale lines across his body. He could have been an ad for jeans or cologne or sex, and just looking at him made her breath back up in her lungs.
He smiled slightly, as if he heard what she was thinking. She knew he’d had many other women before her, and something twisted inside her, but she ignored it and let him pull her into his arms. He guided her back until her thighs bumped up against his bed. He stopped kissing her long enough to push the dress down her legs until it was a heap on the floor. And then she was standing there in only her yellow bikini bottoms, and he was kissing her and murmuring things as his tongue explored her mouth and his hands explored her breasts and hips and thighs.
Heat gathered between her legs and the room started to spin and his hands were on her and she felt like she was in the center of an erotic dream. She knew it would end tomorrow, but right now all she wanted was for him to keep touching her and making her feel this magnetic
pull
of desire, stronger than anything she’d ever felt.
I’ve never done this.
“What’s that?”
She opened her eyes and gazed up at him and realized she’d spoken out loud.
“This,” she whispered.
“Huh?”
“A one-night stand.”
He stared down at her in the dimness. “Guess we better make it count, then.” He pulled her against him and kissed her roughly until her lips were numb and her legs started to quiver. And then he leaned her back onto the bed, and she felt the cool slide of the bedspread beneath her skin. He pinned her to the mattress, and the hard, heavy weight of him settled right between her legs. She whimpered and tried to roll her hips. He moved down her body, licking a path to her navel as he went, and she
felt his thumbs slide into her bathing suit. He peeled it off, and it landed with a
swish
somewhere on the floor, and she lay there, holding her breath. The room started to spin, and her mind registered his hand cupping her heel and the light kiss against the top of her foot—first one, then the other. Her body felt tingly everywhere. She heard him shucking off his jeans. She felt his skin against hers and the rasp of his stubble over her body as he made his way back to her mouth. And then he was
in,
without warning, and she cried out.
He went still. He brushed her hair out of her face and rested his forehead against hers and it was damp with sweat. She clutched him to her, felt the tension in his muscles. And then he pulled back and braced his weight on his hands and started the long, powerful strokes she’d been craving since their very first kiss. She moved under him. She tried to keep up. But she was swimming in water that was much,
much
deeper than she’d ever imagined. Her mind was reeling, and her nerves, and her
heart,
and she wrapped herself around him and tried to hold on. Her muscles burned. Her vision blurred. She clung to him and tried to make it last and last and last, and she never wanted it to stop.
“Now,” he said against her ear, and then the wave broke, and she arched against him, and he made one final, powerful plunge and collapsed on top of her.
Mia was fantasizing about a glass of wine and a hot bubble bath when she whipped into the parking lot of her apartment building. She gathered the groceries off her front seat and immediately sensed that she wasn’t alone.
She scanned the lot, searching for any sign of trouble. Nothing. No shadows between the cars. No quiet grumble of an idling engine. She slung her purse over her shoulder and told herself she was being paranoid—an occupational hazard given the amount of time she spent around blood stains and rape kits.
She pulled her Mace from her purse as she strode purposefully toward the stairs leading to her one-bedroom apartment.
The hair on the back of her neck stood up. She darted her gaze around. Something moved in her peripheral vision. She glanced at the pickup parked closest to the mailboxes.
Inside the truck, an arm reached up and adjusted the mirror.
She halted.
The door swung open, and the light inside the cab came on. Mia’s heart lurched as a man climbed out. He slammed the door and moved straight toward her in the darkness.
She hurried for the stairs.
“Mia?”
She glanced over her shoulder.
His strides lengthened. “Hey, wait up!”
She lifted the Mace. He lunged out of the shadows and ripped the tube from her hand.
She shrieked to wake the dead.
And realized it was Ric Santos standing in front of her. He smiled. She swung back her bags and knocked him in the ribs with a week’s worth of Coke Zero.
“You
jerk
!”
He laughed.
She hit him again, harder, eliciting a curse in Spanish this time.
“What are you doing skulking around out here? I nearly Maced you!”
“I know.” Another lady-killer smile like the one she remembered from the bar.
She stalked off toward the stairs. She’d stomped up half of them when she heard his footsteps echoing on the metal below.
He caught up to her and took the plastic bags from her hand. Now she was totally disarmed, so she shot him a venomous look.
“It’s nearly midnight. You should know better than to creep up on women in parking lots.” She stopped in front of her unit, and he propped a shoulder against her door frame as she fumbled with her keys.
“In my defense, I didn’t creep,” he said.
She glanced into his laughing eyes and felt her cheeks warm. He was right—he hadn’t really been creeping. And she’d left a message for him earlier, so she shouldn’t have been that surprised to see him. But then, she hadn’t expected him to show up at her home.
She opened her door. He followed her inside, and she flipped on the light switch in the foyer.
“Some people use the phone to communicate. You should try it.”
But he was too busy glancing around her apartment. She remembered the mess she’d left it in this morning and decided not to turn on any more lights. She also decided not to be embarrassed that she’d spent her evening working and grocery shopping.
He walked into the kitchen and flipped on a light switch, then set her groceries on the counter. He plunked her tube of Mace on the bar dividing the kitchen and living room.
“You’re worried about security,” he said.
She tossed her purse on the sofa and walked over. “So?”
“So that’s good. You ever thought about getting a handgun?”
“How do you know I don’t have one?” She slid a six-pack of soft drinks into the fridge and looked up at him. He was in her kitchen. She’d never expected to be standing in her kitchen talking to this man tonight.
“Do you have one?” he asked.
“God, no.”
“Why not?”
She snatched a grocery bag off the counter and put some Lean Cuisines in the freezer. “Same reason I don’t have an iron.”
His eyebrows lifted.
“If I had an iron, I might actually iron something.”
He leaned back against her sink and watched her. She tossed the empty bag on the counter, and his gaze dropped, and in that brief instant, she discovered two things: Ric Santos was a breast man—not that she’d met many men who
weren’t,
but she definitely noticed his look of male appreciation at the sight of her snug-fitting T-shirt. She also discovered he had either manners or self-control, because he refrained from staring. An amazing number of men didn’t, which was why she wore a lab coat practically every second she was at the Delphi Center.