Beck & Call (13 page)

“That’s a security thing,” Jake said. “Probably only Ms. DeWinter knows what he’s got scheduled.”

“Really?”

“Really. Call is a well-known wealthy person, a corporate celebrity. If just anyone could predict his movements, he’d need bodyguards to go with him everywhere.”

Mia hadn’t thought about this aspect of Damien’s life. “He wouldn’t like that.”

“No, he wouldn’t. Not a privacy freak like him.”

“Jake,” she said, suddenly overwhelmed by doubts. “How are we going to find out if he has Raeburn’s plan? His company is huge, and this is only one part of it. The special navigational system Zoe supposedly stole from Genbolt was for aircraft. What if Damien took it to Arizona, where his aviation operation is headquartered? It’d take me a week just to search the file room here.”

“You shouldn’t search it,” Jake cautioned. “You’d risk raising suspicion for no reason. Call won’t have stuck the thing in a drawer where anyone can find it.” He tapped his fingers on the wheel as he thought. “His research guys will have seen it, but they might not know its origin. Our best hope is that he kept the blueprint for the microchip or whatever it is where he can study it in private. I’m no techie, but from the look I got, I don’t think you could build a system based on that single page. The specs seemed pretty complicated. And how crucial were the mathematical formulas? Would the variables be obvious to an engineer? If not, you’d have to figure out what the drawing was getting at.”

“Raeburn claimed Call is pitching a prototype to the government.”

“That doesn’t mean it’s finished. Just that he’s made a start. Bottom line, we have to get closer to him. We need him to give away where it is. And in that vein …” Jake’s profile grew more reserved. “Call invited us to join him at Diogenes tomorrow night.”

“Tomorrow.” Mia’s heart immediately beat faster. “That’s soon.”

“I’m surprised he didn’t make it tonight. He seems to want us to stay worked up.”

“What do you think he’ll ask us to do?”

Jake was changing lanes to get around a double-parked bakery truck and didn’t look at her. “I think we need to take the reins from him—and by ‘we,’ I mean me.”

“You’re worried.” She twisted around on the seat.

Jake rubbed the groove between his lower lip and chin. “Not about him. He’s secure on our hook for now. You and I— We’re doing this for the job, but it’s still real in a lot of ways. I think I need a better handle on how to master you.”

Mia’s mouth fell open. She shut it when he glanced at her. He did look concerned. His dark eyebrows had scrunched together. “You haven’t had any trouble doing that so far.”

“I want to stay at your place tonight.”

“My place.”

“It’s the outward expression of who you are inside.”

This was not a phrase she expected to hear from him. “You sure you want to risk it? The last time we were alone together things … got heated.”

A muscle bunched in Jake’s jaw. “I’m a grown man. As long as we don’t tie you up, I think I can handle it.”

MIA’S
living space was just as she’d left it that morning. Fancy coffee cup in the sink. Delivery boxes flattened in a pile for her to take to the recycling dumpster when she felt ambitious. She tried to remember when she’d last cleaned her facilities. Not recently enough, she suspected.

“You hungry?” Jake asked as he locked the deadbolt. “I’ll call for Indian.”

He didn’t appear to feel weird about being there.

“Sure,” she said. “Indian’s good. I’ll just …” She waved vaguely toward her apartment’s most disreputable area.

“Take your time,” he said, his face amused. “I can guess what you want to eat.”

She nodded, tossed her new jacket on the couch, and went to give her bathroom the quickest scrubbing of its life. Since she was there, she washed off her work makeup, including the concealer that had hidden Jake’s hickey from yesterday. She touched the spot carefully. The telltale bruise had almost disappeared.

Jake is spending the night,
she told her bemused reflection.

She shook herself, not wanting to think too hard about that in case she got more uptight.

The way his forehead furrowed when she came out didn’t lessen her self-consciousness. “Are you wearing your new wardrobe? Why is it so baggy?”

“It isn’t baggy,” she said, wondering why everyone felt the need to critique her clothes. “It’s comfortable.”

“My eighty-year-old granny wore shorter skirts.”

“I’m supposed to look professional.”

Jake rolled his eyes. “Have you seen the female execs at Call’s office? They dress like they all want to seduce the boss.”

Mia put her hands on her hips. “That’s a sexist thing to say.”

“Okay, maybe only half want to sleep with Damien.” Mia frowned and he grinned unrepentantly. He picked his phone up from the counter. “I’m calling Hillary Sweets. She can send one of her seamstresses over to nip and tuck.”

“Jake—”

“No arguments. You’ve got a nice figure. You’re not going to embarrass yourself if those suits fit the way they should.”

Mia saw she wasn’t going to dissuade him. “I think Ms. DeWinter might have added a size to Damien’s guestimate.”

“Or two. That woman is determined.”

Jake started dialing and then stopped. He cocked his head to consider her. “Those romance novels … The ones stacked beside your bed. They’re all historical, aren’t they?”

Mia ordered herself not to flush. She’d been hoping he hadn’t noticed them. “What if they are?”

“Just having a thought. I might need to put in an extra order when I speak to Hillary. Why don’t you change into whatever you wear at home while I talk to her? Shoo,” he added when she resisted.

She shooed, despite her annoyance at being bossed around. Retreating to her room gave her a chance to compose herself. As she pulled on a T-shirt and jeans, she admitted another truth.

She liked being the center of Jake’s attention.

~

Mia survived Hillary’s seamstress’s house call. She was an older woman who didn’t speak much English. Somewhat to Mia’s surprise, Jake was fluent in Cantonese. Whatever he said to the seamstress as she chalked and pinned had her giggling uncontrollably.

Before she left, the woman piled all but one of Mia’s new outfits across her arm.

“You see knees,” she said to Jake. “I promise.”

Mia found this so charming she couldn’t be sorry Jake called her.

Dinner was a surprise as well. In the year they’d been at Discreet, they’d become more comfortable with each other than she realized. They talked about work and Curtis and assorted casual things. She washed the plates and glasses while Jake took out the trash. They watched a little TV together on her small couch. She was very aware of him beside her, of how tall he was and how warm. He wasn’t wearing aftershave and smelled mainly—and rather deliciously—of soap and man. He was restless, she thought, shifting now and then on the seat cushion. Overall, though, hanging out with him was easy.

That, of course, was before bedtime.

Her pulse began to skitter when he clicked off the news. He looked at her, the blue of his eyes suddenly hotter. “Do you shower in the morning?”

“Night,” she said, willing him to ignore the involuntary jump in her voice’s pitch. “I’ll just … go do that now.”

He nodded. “I’ll poke around. I snoop better without an audience.”

“Right,” she said. “Because that’s why you came over.”

He smiled and she knew she’d sounded like an idiot. She got up from the couch before she could make it worse, her lips clamped firmly together.

Maybe she could shower forever and not come out again.

~

Mia’s old-fashioned, no-frills bath had a shower and tub combo. The water pressure was chancy but the heat was plentiful. She didn’t sing like she usually did. Her voice wasn’t really suited for any ears but hers. She was rinsing the last of the shampoo from her hair and face when someone with bare feet stepped into the tub behind her.

Though she knew it had to be Jake, she squeaked like Norman Bates had joined her.

“It’s me,” he said.

“I know it’s you.” She refused to turn around. In her opinion, her rear view was enough of an eyeful. “Get out of here. This shower isn’t big enough for two.”

“I didn’t come to shower.”

Crap. The sensual growl he put in his voice got to her. She shivered and went liquid at the same time.

“Mia,” he crooned teasingly. “Turn around and look at me.”

She wedged her hands beneath her armpits and debated. “Are
you
wearing clothes?”

His chuckle was devilish. “As it happens, I am not.”

Seeing Jake naked
might
be worth turning around for. “Promise you won’t laugh?”

“Mia,” he said, something tender in the sound. “I swear you don’t need to worry about that.”

She turned and put her arms down with more defiance than she felt. She knew she wasn’t ugly, but still it was difficult. Naked meant vulnerable and gave people things to judge. Who knew what Jake thought was attractive?

He scanned her unhurriedly from head to toe, like he wanted to memorize every inch of her. She was so nervous she forgot to look at him. Finally his eyes returned to her face. His expression was serious.

“You make my heart stop,” he said.

Her heart felt like it had stopped too. “I’m nothing special.”

“You are. You’re amazingly beautiful. If it weren’t for that stupid contract, I’d be all over you right now.”

She caught her lip in her teeth. His mouth hooked upward at one corner. “Don’t you want to look at me?” he joked.

She did, but she didn’t want to rush. She studied his face, the same handsome lines and planes she saw everyday at work. The steam from her shower had beaded up on its surfaces, the heat bringing extra color into his skin. This late in the day stubble shadowed his strong jaw. She looked at his Adam’s apple, at the hollow between his clavicles. His shoulders were broad and beautifully shaped, his arms hanging gracefully from their joints. He had lovely muscles: distinct but smooth—not like men got from gym workouts. Jake used his body. To fight. To move. Maybe to kill, in his former profession.

It was hard to think of him doing that. He stood there patient and relaxed, letting her study him. Beneath his ribs, his diaphragm went in and out slowly.

“You have good legs,” she said—and he did. They were long and well developed, with what seemed to her the perfect covering of dark hair.

“Are my legs all you like?” he asked huskily.

She let her eyes rise to the spot they’d wanted to focus on. The shower spray spattered down her back and spine, incapable in that moment of distracting her. Nothing obscured her view but the vaporous air. Jake was erect, rising thick and long from the patch of fur at his groin—a good deal bigger than her last boyfriend. Up and up his phallus stretched, to the broader, darker knob of the tip. A little bead welled from the center slit, ready for action. Moved by that, Mia couldn’t stop her tongue from sweeping across her upper lip.

“Your legs aren’t all I like,” she admitted.

“Do you want to stroke my cock like you did before?”

“Jake.”

“Just answer,” he said. “You don’t have to do it.”

Her pussy pulsed with desire. “This is playing with fire.”

“
I
want to touch you,” he said. “Kiss you. Stroke you. Run my tongue in circles around your nipples until they get even redder than they are. I want to suck them while I shove my cock deep inside you. I want to grip your gorgeous ass in both hands while your thighs tighten around me.”

The pictures he was painting undid her. There was hardly any room to retreat. She stumbled back against the faucets behind her.

He caught her forearm, maybe afraid she’d fall. Mia tugged away from him.

“You made your point,” she said as sharply as she was able when she was so short of breath. For a second, he seemed surprised by her reaction. Then he recovered.

“What point would that be?” he asked.

“That you—” She waved at him. “Find me attractive without my clothes. That you don’t need to tie me up to get hard.”

“That was never in doubt. You’ve been making me hard since the day Curtis hired you.”

“I haven’t!” she denied.

“You have,” he insisted. “Every day. Every night. And right now I’m going crazy from wanting you.”

She gaped as he slid his hand down the front of his own body. His fingers strafed through his chest hair, skimming over his abs and navel, until he reached low enough to give his ball sac a squeeze. He let go while she was still blinking, wrapped his grip around his rod, and started wanking right in front of her.

His stroke was slow, the way he handled himself uninhibited. His bicep did bulge then. He wasn’t stroking his penis straight. Instead, he forced it to bend slightly. Waves of nuclear heat rolled through her as the walls of her pussy clenched.

She concluded he liked extra pressure on his right side.

“Daffodil,” she blurted.

The motion of his arm faltered. “What did you say?”

“I’m using my safe word.”

Now he gaped at her. “I’m not doing anything to you.”

She knew she was blushing crazily. “I want you to stop doing that to yourself. It makes me want to touch you too much. You know how this will end if I do.”

He laughed, no doubt because she’d sounded like a schoolmarm.

“All right,” he said, forcing his hand away, his breathing not quite even. “You got me. I can’t ignore that command.”

~

If Damien’s contract didn’t drive Jake insane, Mia and her safe word would. He brushed his teeth, peed, then left Mia to finish showering in peace. To his dismay, when he examined her slipcovered couch he discovered it wasn’t convertible.

Well, shit,
he thought. Mia only had a double bed. She’d sleep out here, he was sure, but he wasn’t going to ask her to.

This lumpy-ass secondhand couch wasn’t big enough for her either.

He rubbed the back of his neck. They’d share then. Tonight was about bonding and building trust. What better way than to sleep together in close quarters?