Hard Target (16 page)

When the water ran cold, she struggled to her feet and shut it off. Steam covered the mirror over the sink. She wiped the moisture away and stared at her blotchy complexion. If she went out there he’d know she’d been crying. If she didn’t go out he’d probably come to check on her. Sighing, she found her brush and began the process of untangling her hair then pinning up the wet and heavy mass.

Wisdom said love and hate were only a hairsbreadth apart. She’d crossed that infinitesimal divide with Simon a long time ago. Bridge long burned, there was no way to return and she had to accept that. She had to go on. Dressed, she lifted her bag and squared her shoulders before returning to the gymnasium.

Simon, still barefoot, wearing only his exercise shorts, waited for her outside the shower room.

“Ready,” she said, unable to meet his eyes, her voice almost inaudible even to her own ears.

They made it as far as the weight benches before she took a deep breath and faced him.

“I know I said it before, but I just want you to know I’m sorry I hurt you.” The words rushed out, tumbling over one another in their haste to be out of her mouth and into the open. “I was wrong. You’re innocent. I don’t need to examine the laptop to know it. I’m sorry I let them convince me. I don’t know why…” She shook her head and avoided his stony stare. “I wish I could…” She made a small choked sound and gave up. There were no words—nothing she could say—to make this right. “I’m sorry. Just sorry.”

“What will they do to you?” His question stilled her hand on the knob.

“Does it really matter?” she asked, knowing she’d already lost the only thing she truly cared about.

He didn’t respond and she pulled the door open and stepped over the threshold. “Goodbye, Simon.”

“Stop!” Simon’s command and the sound of his long strides approaching froze her mid-step. He rested a hand on her upper arm and pulled her backward into the room.

“I’m not going to steal the potted palm. I can see myself out.” Ire snapped to life. Wounded pride and a battered heart made her jerk her arm away.

“I changed my mind.” He tugged her against his chest and wrapped his arms around her middle, securing her from behind.

“Changed your mind about what?” She didn’t dare allow herself to hope she’d interpreted his statement correctly.

He slid his hands up her ribs to cup both her breasts as he kissed her temple. “My prize.”

“Simon…” The plea in her voice said everything she didn’t know how to say. If he kicked her out after they had sex, she’d be irretrievably broken. “I can’t…”

“I said I changed my mind.” Kissing her temple, he flicked his thumbs over the peaks of her nipples and explained, “You. I want you. You’re my prize.”

Arching her back, pressing her breasts into his hands, she had only enough common sense left to be able to ask, “Even if I don’t…do this? You’ll work with me?”

His tongue traced the ridge of her ear and flicked inside. Hot breath rushed against tender skin as he answered over her shoulder, “Yes.”

Still cupping one breast, he used his other hand to remove the pins from her unsophisticated updo. Her hair loosened and fell past her shoulders, the perfume of shampoo and moisture permeating the air.

Simon brushed his nose against the freed tresses at her temple. “I love the way you smell.”

Though he hadn’t said he loved
her
, her still-bruised ego latched on to the
L
word and held it close. Alex twisted her head up and to the side to offer her lips for his kiss. Stubble abraded her cheek as Simon met her mouth with a tentative, exploratory series of nips and suckles.

“Taste good too,” he said against her mouth.

Back still to him, she pressed her palm at his nape to hold him in place. Encouraged him to kiss her deeper, harder. A shift of her jean-clad derriere into his groin forced a growl from his throat. His left hand tightened on her breast, his right skimming lower to cup her sex over her pants.

Pressure and heat suffused her core as he lifted upward with his palm. Moisture pooled in her panties, slicking them so they slid easily along her folds. Alex tightened her grasp at Simon’s neck and held on as she rode the first swells of pleasure.

“Want more?” His voice had taken on a darker quality. Its graveled thickness sent a shiver down Alex’s spine.

“Yes. More. Please fuck me,” she answered, breathless.

Rather than intensifying his ministrations, Simon scooped her into his arms.

Carrying her to an inclined weight bench, he set her down in one fluid motion, treating her with all the tender care she’d longed for and missed. When they’d come together in the museum it had been an explosion of lust long denied. Now he commenced a languid exploration of her body.

Leaning over her, he traced his thumbs along her cheekbones and cupped her face. A lingering kiss sent Alex into a drifting, languid sea of desire. He pulled away and she blinked her eyes open to catch him haloed in the overhead lights.

“I’d never just fuck you, Alex.” He skimmed fingers over her collarbone, down the side seam of her shirt, to her hip. “With you, it’s always been more. No matter what.”

His admission, so different from the animosity he’d displayed only twenty minutes before, made her frown and tug her lip between her teeth. Afraid she’d wake up and find this dream of Simon vanished along with all of her other dreams for the future she clung to his wrist. “What changed?”

“You walked out.” His voice lost some of its power as he continued. “I can’t let you go. Not yet.”

Not yet.

It wasn’t a
not ever
, but she’d take what she could get and ask for nothing more so long as he loved her in the here and now. Reaching down, she grasped the bottom of her shirt and sat up a fraction to pull it over her head. Dropping the material to the floor, she laid back once more.

The lacy black demi she wore caught Simon’s attention the moment she revealed the lingerie. He played his fingers along the edge of her bra before dipping inside to cup her naked flesh. Rolling, tugging and flicking, he abraded her nipple with one calloused finger until she arched and wordlessly pled with him to focus his attention lower.

Alex gasped at a harder pinch of his thumb and forefinger. She grabbed the top of his exercise shorts to yank him toward her. Stumbling, he caught himself on the top of the bench one-handed.

Peeling the stretchy black material, she revealed the glistening tip of his cock. The constriction of the waistband pressed his member in a diagonal line across the happy trail of red-gold hair on his lower abdomen. Simon withdrew his hand from her breast and braced himself with both palms along the inclined edge at the top of the bench.

Alex blew along the exposed flesh. Simon’s cock jumped against his shorts, undulating the material. She moved closer, inhaled his musk. Darted her tongue to taste the salt of his pre-cum. Simon sighed. A happy sound. One of his hands bunched her hair against her skull in a deep, massaging motion, urging her to continue.

Tucking her fingers into the material at either side of his thighs, Alex rolled the tight shorts lower. The length of him jutted toward her and she steadied the shaft with her palm. She sucked him between her lips, drawing him into her mouth, and Simon shifted his hips to give her better access. Widening her throat, Alex bobbed low, taking him as far as her palate and long-unused skills allowed. Cheeks hollowed, she built pressure and pleasure until he clutched the sides of her head with both his hands. A jerk of his hips said she’d brought him to that place where only sensation existed. No job. No emotion. Only physical desire and a deep-seated need to release the pressure building in a primal part of his being. She knew that place because he’d brought her there so many times before.

Fisting his cock, Alex squeezed downward and took him deeper. As deep as she dared. Then lifted her head again. They developed a rhythm—her sucking and bobbing, him advancing and retreating—until his breath came harsh and his movements grew a little wild. Though she knew she played with fire, she lifted her head to let him fall from her mouth with a satisfying popping sound.

He drew her up by one hand and tugged at the top button of her pants. The metallic disk popped free and skittered across the room with a noise like a rolling quarter. With sharp, jerking motions, Simon lowered her pants. Jaw hard, eyes glittering with a promise of animal sex, he seemed to dare her to look away. Meeting his challenge, she never wavered in her attention or her intent to have this man any way and every way she could.

“Take them off,” he said, and Alex shimmied out of her pants.

She fingered the lace of her panties suggestively.

Simon shook his head. “Those stay on.”

Taking a step forward, and then another, he compelled her retreat until her back pressed against the cold mirror bolted to the wall behind her. One forearm resting against the wall by her head, Simon slid his opposite hand beneath the band of her satin panties. He played with her clit, pressing and circling. Wet, sticky sounds accompanied the slip of two digits between her labia. He thrust his fingers. She pumped her hips, encouraging the attention, wordlessly begging him to enter her. To fuck her. If only with his fingers.

Just when she thought she’d have to wrap her legs around him he relented and plunged two fingers inside her, the motion ending with his palm pressed hard against her clit. Arms fluttering upward, Alex tangled and fisted fingers in her own hair as she struggled to maintain a hold on her sanity.

Simon slid her panties off. Cupping one of her thighs, he leveraged her leg and placed it around his hip. Gravity worked on Alex’s arms, settling her wrists over his shoulders. He toyed with her, positioning his cock and sliding the satin head along the seam of her sex—dividing and conquering the flesh—until she wailed in need.

Then and only then did he lift her ass in both his hands and thrust. The jar to her womb and clit, the sudden stretching of her walls, and the insistent nudge of the head to her G-spot combined, and she cried out as light and sound collapsed in on themselves in the formation of her own personal cosmic cataclysm.

Simon caught Alex as she sagged against the mirror and threatened to bring them both to the floor.

“Oh no you don’t.” A wicked sense of power and glee bubbled from deep within as he widened his stance to better support her. “I’m not finished with you yet.”

“So good. I’m done.” Her head lolled to one side.

He reached between their bodies and pressed his thumb over her clit. The contact made her hips jerk and her pussy flutter around his shaft.

Smiling into her hair when she cried out, he said, “I haven’t nearly fucked you yet.”

Besides, hadn’t she made some smart-assed comment about him being too quick the night she arrested him? The thought of the moment that brought them to this reminded him he was sleeping with the enemy. Whether it had been her tearstained face as she’d apologized or the forgiveness she hadn’t begged to receive that had broken him, he’d never know. All he knew now was that he couldn’t let her go tonight.

Pumping his hips, he fucked her with quick, jostling thrusts that bounced keening cries from her throat. Those cries turned into a lovely panicked wail as her fingernails dug into his shoulders. His flesh slapped against hers, the resulting sound sharp and wet. He felt a burn in his glutes and the vibration of muscle fatigue in his triceps and quads before he slowed his pace.

“Simon…” His name became a prayer and a plea, a confused come-hither that said she both wanted and dreaded the entropy of another release.

Going to his knees, he let her slide down the mirror before rolling backward and bringing her with him to the floor. For a moment, he allowed her to sit astride him. She gazed down at him with lust-glazed eyes and deeper emotions he hesitated to contemplate. Sliding his hands to her hips, he steadied her and thrust upward.

“Lift your breasts over your bra. Let me see them.” His throat felt raw as he made his request.

She complied, freeing first one and then the other pink-crested mound from the feminine bondage of satin and lace. On his next thrust, sharper than the first, she swayed forward. Her breasts bounced in abundant display. Mesmerized, he cupped her lightly. Set free, she rode him in a galloping rhythm that jounced her flesh against his hands. She arched and cried out then fell forward on her hands, surrounding him with the curtain of her hair.

Simon waited until she opened her eyes and met his gaze before he began to move again. She shook her head and attempted to raise herself off him. Quicker than she could move in her lust-soaked state, he rolled her beneath him.

She shuddered around him again, the supple flesh of her pussy tightening and releasing in an involuntary attempt to milk an orgasm from him. Simon gritted his teeth and didn’t dare close his eyes.

“I’ll give you a choice,” he said.

Forearm hooked under her knee, he pressed her right thigh along her torso, angling her to receive his deep downward thrust. Alex clutched at his shoulders. Her hands fluttered over his skin when he repeated the motion.

“I’ll do this—” Another thrust. “For a long, long time…” And again, two piston-like thrusts, rapid and hard. “Or I can tongue you until you come again.”