Vengeance to the Max (11 page)

How had Bud Traynor known she was out of town? How had he known that she worked for Sunny? What he did want? Part of her longed to open the door and tell Witt about the call. Another part knew it would only fuel his belief that she was obsessed with Bud Traynor. The questions tumbled around in Max’s head deep into the night, as had some obvious answers. The man might be following her, staking out her apartment. He could have asked questions about her when they first met two and a half months ago after his daughter Wendy’s murder, a murder Max still believed he had a hand in no matter what anyone else said. He could have found out about Sunny Wright’s agency then. After all, he’d known she’d taken over Wendy’s job through a temp agency. But none of that reasoning answered the big question—why?

It was dark in her room and cold outside. And the night was so terribly quiet. Max climbed from her bed and crawled on her hands and knees to the connecting door separating her from Witt. She’d thought after what they’d shared during the day, he would have asked her into his bed tonight. Or maybe it was the specter of Bud Traynor that gave her the craving for human warmth, arms around her to chase away the chill even the man’s name instilled in her bones. But Witt was behind his own door, and even Cameron hadn’t whispered to her in the dark, soothing her, comforting her, and sending her to sleep with the sweet sound of his voice.

She almost laughed. Since when had she started
needing
so badly? Before Witt came into her life, she’d been fairly self-sufficient, despite what Cameron said to the contrary.

Hunkering down by the door with her back to the dresser, Max pulled her knees to her chest and strained to hear a sound in Witt’s room. Any sound. Even a snore. Something so that she would know she wasn’t alone.

“I can hear you breathing, Max.”

She almost shrieked when Witt’s voice slipped through the crack along the bottom of the door.

“You’re supposed to be asleep.” Talking through the door felt oddly erotic, as if they were having phone sex.

“Time zone’s whacked me out.” He chuckled, as if thinking about the thing he’d done with her this afternoon. “Can’t sleep.”

Her obvious answer was that they should not-sleep together. She needed to feel arms around her, Witt’s arms, his warmth to burn away the chill in her bones that Bud Traynor left her with.

“Open the door.”

Max looked up. The connecting door wasn’t tightly closed. To come to her, all he had to do was give it a tap. “It’s already open.”

“Not enough.”

What more did he want? She’d left the door unlocked and unlatched. Yeah, it was sort of passive-aggressive. She didn’t have to commit herself to action. She always forced him to make the move, always put the ball squarely in his corner.

“Open up,” he whispered again when she didn’t answer.

He was asking a lot from her. She put her hand on the knob. She’d said she’d trust. She’d said she’d try.

She reminded herself of that old commercial with the pitiful woman outside a department store window saying, “Open, open, open.” That was her, wanting inside, but not knowing how.

No more! Pulling her legs aside, she eased the door open, a crack, a hand’s breadth, all they way, until she could see Witt’s seated bulk. Legs stretched out in front of him and crossed at the ankles, he leaned against the doorjamb on his side.

“What’d you want, sweetheart?” In the gloom of his dark room, his teeth gleamed in a Cheshire Cat smile.

“You were the one who asked me to open the door.”

“Yeah.” Unspoken was the fact that he’d only gotten her to do what she wanted to do.

She wriggled her lips against her teeth. “I didn’t want to be alone.” She didn’t want to face the specter of Bud all by herself.

“Where’s your husband?”

“Visiting graveyards or something.” Her heart twisted with the flippant reply. She hadn’t even thought to call out for him. She’d only thought of crawling into Witt’s bed and having him hold her until the quaking in her bones stopped.

“So you couldn’t find him and came to me instead.”

She huffed a great gulp of air. Then gave him the truth. “I came to you first.”

“That’s nice.”

He was on his side of the door and she on hers. The next move belonged to her. On all fours again, she crossed his threshold and plopped next to his out-stretched legs, her hip bumping his calf.

“Make love to me,” she whispered.

He sat still for a long minute in which she couldn’t read any expression at all with his face completely in shadow, then he rolled to his feet and held out his hand. When she took it and let him pull her to her feet, he said, “Not
to
.
With
.”

“With,” she echoed.

He led her into the intimate confines of the bathroom and flipped on the light. She winced against the brightness and the disheveled state of her hair in the mirror. Standing behind her, he melded his body to hers. In the mirror, the top of her head reached his shoulders. Usually she wore a decent pair of heels, but with her barefoot, he rested his chin on her hair. She felt surrounded. And safe. A trickle of warmth spread from her heart to her belly, and his hands on her shoulders shot bolts of heat down her arms. But her hands were still cold.

She met his hot blue gaze in the mirror, then pulled his hands down to wrap them around her waist below her breasts. She concentrated on the sight, as if seeing them together, really
seeing
it would chase the chill away.

“We’re gonna make love here. In front of the mirror.” He was hard against the small of her back.

“That’s sort of kinky.” Nice. Sexy. But she wasn’t sure about having the cold counter against her belly.

“I want you to know who’s inside you.” He tipped her chin up with his thumb and forced her to meet his gaze. “It’s me. Only me.”

She’d never imagined that he was anyone but himself.

He peeled off his T-shirt and tossed it out the open door. Then he reached for the hem of her nightshirt. Cold air seeped between them, but he extinguished it almost immediately with hot, naked flesh to her back.

“My breasts are too small,” she whispered. Her shoulders appeared bony, and the overhead lights cast shadows between each of her ribs. “I’m too skinny.” She’d never looked this closely. Cameron was right.

“Slender. That’s what you are.” His hands crept up her abdomen to cup her breasts. “More than a mouthful’s a waste, and you have great nipples.”

Each grew stiff as he rolled them between his thumb and forefinger. Nerves connected to her clitoris made it jump.

His face disappeared as he bent to push off his sweats. He trailed rough fingers up the back of her legs and her butt as he rose again. His cock rested once more against the base of her spine. Hot and wet, he rubbed the tip against her skin. The blue flame leaping in his eyes set her on fire.

“Am I bigger than he was?”

“Yes.” In every way, he was larger than Cameron. Right now he was larger than death, and she couldn’t recall Cameron’s face or the lilt of his voice.

Skimming down her belly, he pulled her hard against him and dipped beneath the elastic of white cotton panties. With a knee, he spread her legs, then plunged into her hot, very moist center. Finding her clitoris with the greatest of ease, he rubbed light circles.

With his other hand, he held her chin aloft, nipped her neck, then watched her in the mirror. Beneath the sweet onslaught of his fingers, her lids drooped to half-mast but didn’t close, and air puffed from her lips.

“Does this feel better than him?”

He said it almost as if he knew that Cameron visited her in the night and filled her in her dreams, even now, long after his death. “You don’t need compare yourself to him.”

“I don’t. But you do. You need to decide which you prefer.”

A man. Or a ghost. Solid male. Or a crutch. With Cameron she had to close her eyes to feel him. With Witt, she could watch and feel, a beautiful, wonderful, terrifying sensation. “I want real.”

He slid his thumbs to sides of her panties and rolled them down her legs. This time as he rose, he swiped his tongue along her flesh, leaving a trail of shocks and shivers.

He bent and rocked himself in the crease of her butt. “Ready?”

She pulled his hand between her legs and forced his finger deep inside. “What do you think?”

His eyes glowed blue in the mirror. “Think you’re more than ready for a dose of reality.” Then he reached into his shaving kit and pulled out a little foil packet. They’d had sex once without a condom, in an extreme circumstance, but Witt was a protector, always taking care of her even when she didn’t need it. She watched as he ripped it open, tipped the condom into his hand, felt the sensuous glide of his fingers against her flesh as he rolled it on.

“Like a boy scout, aren’t you, Detective, always prepared.”

He eyed her in the mirror, and his lips tilted in a smile. “A man’s got to be fully prepared around you.”

“Then make love with me now.”

He twitched against her spine, then pushed her forward to lean on the counter. The fingers of one hand sliding into her hair, he bent at the knees and pushed his cock slowly inside.

Oh God, the fullness of hard heavy meat inside her. Real. Solid. Warm.

He leaned back. Concentration furrowed his brow as he surveyed the slow penetration.

“Do you like watching yourself?” Max definitely liked watching him.

“Don’t think a woman can fully understand the power a man feels when he takes.”

So Witt wasn’t above wanting power, too. Her body contracted around him. His muscles bunched and played deliciously along her thighs. There was something about shared power that turned it sweet and heady without the stain of shame.

“Deeper.”

“Don’t rush me.”

He held himself just inside, rotating his pelvis against her. She pushed back, taking him deeper. Hands gliding down from her neck to her waist, he held her by both hips and plunged.

“Ooh.” Her gaze locked with his. His eyes ate her up. He rocked back, thrust again. Stretching out, she braced her hands against the mirror’s bottom rim and ground into him. The cold against her belly and the heat inside clashed. He wrapped his arm around her waist and hauled her closer.

“Yes. Please.” She moaned for him, groaned, pleaded, told him how perfect he was, how real.

“Touch yourself.”

Pushing back, she gained enough room to fit her hand between her legs. While he worked her on the inside, she worked herself from the outside. She never closed her eyes, but drank in the sight of him covering her, the sheen of sweat on his forehead, the smile, almost a grimace, on his lips.

“I want to watch you come,” she told his mirror image.

She wanted to see it, record in her memory, a moment she could drag out, play over and over again in her mind’s eye.

She circled her clit, but not hard enough or fast enough to build to orgasm. She didn’t want to lose a second of the sight of him, even if it meant waiting to climax. She’d wait forever for the expression on his face.

He pounded against her butt. The muscles of his throat strained, veins at his temples bulged, and he groaned, the sound vibrating against her back. Knowing he was close, she removed her hand and covered his fist on the counter with her palm.

“Jesus.” Then he hit home once more, hard, ramming her up against the edge. Squeezing his eyes shut, he pulsed inside her, quaked against her. His arms shook, and his breath came in great gasps. Then he buried his face between her neck and shoulder and passed his shudders through her body.

He held her that way until her legs started to shake and her back cramped from arching into him. Her toes twitched. She’d stood on them too long trying to give him a better angle.

He looked at her reflection. “You didn’t come.”

She’d gotten so much more. What was a mere orgasm compared to the beauty of his face when he came? “I don’t care.”

“I do.”

Easing back, he slipped away from her to take care of the condom. Once done, he turned her to face him, stroking the hair off her forehead with a warm palm. “I wanna watch you come. Bad.”

He lifted her onto the counter, stepped between her legs, and pulled her bottom to the edge. Wrapping his big arm securely across her back, he dipped his head to take her lips and slid his fingers into her curls. He didn’t let go of the kiss even as he swirled his fingers in all her juice. She moaned against his mouth and tightened her arms around his shoulders. Her legs seemed to circle his waist of their own accord, opening her fully to him.