Waking Evil 02 (33 page)
Authors: Kylie Brant
Knowing it was impossible only fanned the flames of need hotter.
She pushed his shirt up his chest, and obligingly, he lifted his arms so she could drag it over his head. Then he snaked an arm around her waist and hauled her closer so skin kissed skin. The sensation had them both hissing in a breath.
“I think we need to move this out of the kitchen.”
“Really?” With the nail of her index finger, she traced the seam of his chest where it met her torso. “What’s your hurry?”
“No hurry.” He leaned forward to worry the cord of her neck, nipping gently at it. “I got all the time in the world. And I find myself curiously turned on at the thought of strip-pin’ you bare and stretchin’ you out on the table.” A smile curved his lips at the thought, and he flicked one nipple with the edge of his fingernail. Felt her shudder. “I’d be lyin’ if I said I haven’t been thinkin’ of feastin’ on you pretty much since the first time I laid eyes on you.”
As if in response to his words, she placed her hands on his chest, gave him a light push. Obligingly he moved away a fraction. When her hands dropped to the hem of her top, his heart stuttered hard once before settling into a heavy thud.
Her eyes on his, she worked the material up her waist and over her head before discarding it. And the sight of her bare torso compelled him to touch.
He dipped to trace the hollow at the base of her throat with the tip of his tongue. Smoothed a hand over the satiny skin of her waist. Cupped her breast. The stark contrast between the softness beneath his hands and her inner toughness was endlessly fascinating. One he wasn’t sure he’d ever get tired of exploring.
The thought had him mentally backpedaling. Women didn’t come any more complicated than Ramsey Clark. It wouldn’t do to be thinking of more. This, now was likely all there’d be. All there could be.
Distracting himself from the stab of regret that observation brought, he cupped her butt, flexing his fingers over the firmness there. And drove himself a little mad just thinking of stripping the slim shorts down her long legs. Following each inch of bared skin with his mouth.
But Ramsey took that decision out of his hands the next moment when her fingers went to the fastening of her shorts and unbuttoned them.
His throat grew thick. The little smile on her lips was knowing. And he recognized that she’d just taken control of the moment. Because he wasn’t a man to miss an opportunity, he stepped back and let her. For now.
Her zipper was worked down with excruciating slowness. Dev could feel perspiration beading on his forehead. His gaze was arrowed on each inch of pale flesh revealed during the zipper’s descent. Whatever the outcome, he knew he’d remember this moment, Ramsey’s eyes dark and knowing, a seductive curve to her lips. Breasts bared and flushed. Nipples beaded with desire.
He curled his fingers into his palms to curb the need to reach for her. Instead, he backed up a few steps and propped his hips against the edge of the table, his gaze never leaving her figure.
She hooked her thumbs in the sides of the waistband and began to work the shorts slowly over her hips. It seemed to take an inordinate amount of time. “Need some help with that, sugar?” When she stilled, it was all he could do not to throw back his head and howl.
“Been undressing myself for a long time now.”
“Honey, if you’ve been doin’ it like that, I’m surprised you ever got another blessed thing done.”
She eyed him knowingly. “Criticizing my technique?”
He shook his head, willed her hands to start moving again. “Just makin’ an observation.”
“It occurs to me that this is the first time I’ve ever seen you in such a rush.”
“No rush.” Folding his arms across his chest, he willed the words to reach his brain. And lower. “Got all the time in the world here.”
After a pause that could only be considered cruel, she started inching the shorts down again. Low enough to reveal her flat belly. To show a scrap of lacy black panties he never would have guessed to find in Ramsey’s wardrobe.
Sending up a prayer of thanks to a gracious god, he swallowed hard and tried to call upon his flagging self-discipline. The shorts were to her upper thighs now. It seemed only gentlemanly to reach out and peel them down her legs before taking a long look at the picture she made clad only in the wisp of lingerie.
His blood pooled in his groin.
“You’ve got a streak of mean, sugar.” He nibbled her neck while sliding his hands over her silk-encased bottom. “But you have superb taste in underwear.”
His fingers skimmed under the elastic to touch the smooth rounded cheeks beneath. But when her hands dipped to his waistband, he thwarted her move by going down on his knees in front of her.
He used his grip on her butt to draw her nearer. Felt her hips jerk helplessly as his breath hit her behind the lace. And then he placed his mouth on the thin fabric shielding her moist heat from him. He dampened it with his tongue, his fingers stroking along the crease of her thigh.
Hooking a finger into the side of the panties, he drew them down her legs and pressed his mouth to the slick flesh he’d revealed. Felt her body shudder.
There was a rollicking in his system. A roaring in his ears. The taste of her, the feel, had nerve endings firing. His heart was leaping in his chest. And when he parted her slick flesh to send a finger deep inside her moist center, the broken cry she uttered had primitive satisfaction surging through him.
His tongue stabbed at her clit in rhythm to his stroking fingers. Her fingernails bit into his shoulders, and the sting of pain whipped his hunger to fever pitch. She’d seek to keep a part of herself back. Somewhere deep in the recesses of his mind, he knew that. Her hips began to move, faster and faster, to match the rhythm of his mouth. And when she shattered, the cry she made was drenched in shocked pleasure.
The sound of it sent razor-edged desire sawing through him. Her body was boneless, and he rose, supporting her with one arm around her back. Her eyes fluttered to half-mast, looking drowsy and drugged. And the sight of her had his control fraying dangerously.
Desperation raced through him. He toed off his sandals and shucked his pants, his movements jerky with tension. At the last moment, he remembered to retrieve a condom from his pocket. Then all conscious thought drained out of his head when Ramsey shoved down his briefs and took him in her hands.
Her touch was sure and knowing as she stroked him. Her eyes were slumberous and aroused as she watched him try to summon his rapidly diminishing restraint. He clenched his jaw against the pleasure roaring through him. Every clever clutch and slide of her fingers drew him closer to a shattering response. One that was going to have him embarrassing himself if he didn’t end this soon.
He pushed her hands aside and sheathed himself in the condom with more haste than grace. Then he reached for her, his heart hammering so loud he was certain she could hear it, and turned her to lift her to the table’s edge. Nudging her knees apart, he stepped between them, and her legs climbed to his waist.
“I thought you were kidding about the—” she gasped as he worked the tip of his cock just inside her opening—“table.”
“Next time, I offer you a bed . . .” He entered her with one long stroke, stopping only when he was buried deep inside her. Conscious thought fragmented. He could feel the delicate pulsations of her inner muscles working against him. His vision graying, he withdrew almost completely, only to seat himself inside her again, in a movement that had them both groaning.
The hunger burst through him then, a fierce savage beast intent on release. Her arms twined around his neck, and he gripped her hips as he thrust into her with a brutal greed that wouldn’t be denied. There was no thought of control, no thought of holding back. Sensation slammed into sensation in a blinding kaleidoscope of pleasure. He heard her moan as she crested, and need turned to madness. His face buried in her hair, he thrust harder and deeper inside her until he felt surrounded by her. Entwined in her.
And when his own climax ripped through him, catapulting him over the edge, he thought of nothing but her.
The mattress moved, and Dev came instantly awake to see Ramsey heading for the bedroom door. “Where you goin’?”
“I told you, I have an early day tomorrow. Make that today. Go back to sleep.”
Like hell. He rolled from the bed to follow her out the door, down the hall, and to the kitchen, where she was gathering up her clothes and quickly pulling them on in the dark.
Dev backed up, rested his bare ass against the oven door, and folded his arms across his chest. “C’mon, honey, let’s go back to bed.”
“Uh-uh.” She held up a warning hand. “That only works once. Okay, twice. But now I really have to go.”
He flicked a glance at the clock face on the stove. Three A.M. Dev couldn’t think of a blessed reason she needed to leave at this time of night, regardless of how busy her day might be.
But he suspected a woman as guarded as she might want to regain a bit of distance after spending the last several hours wrapped around a man. Or, to be more exact, over him, under him, and several positions in between.
Ramsey wasn’t leaving on account of work. She was
running
.
running
.
“You should try sleepin’ sometime,” he suggested blandly. Reaching down, he scooped up one of her sandals near his bare foot and held it out by its strap, letting it dangle from one finger. “That’s what most folks do this time of night.” He couldn’t shake the suspicion that had he not wakened, she’d have snuck out like a thief.
“I sleep.” She grabbed for her shoe. Slipping it on, she looked around the room. He wondered if it was his imagination that her gaze skirted the table. “Do you remember where I left my purse?”
“In the car. Do you remember how you got here?”
Given her stricken expression, he figured she’d forgotten. “If you’re that intent on run—goin’ home,” he amended, “give me a second to get dressed. I’ll drive you.”
“Shit. Now I feel guilty.”
“I sincerely hope so.” He began searching for his own clothes on the kitchen floor. It was doubtful that guilt was the primary emotion she was experiencing. It was panic.
The sort of panic a person like Ramsey would feel from letting someone too close, too fast. Understanding that almost made it easier to allow the night to end like this.
Almost.
Chapter 16
Matthews strode alongside Ramsey toward the front of 24 Hour Fitness, a decidedly sullen expression on his face. “How come you get to play bad cop?”
“Because I’m not playing.”
“You’re also not a cop. Not anymore.”
She stopped, one foot on the first step, and looked at him. “If you’ve got a problem with the strategy, take it up with Powell. This is how he laid it out.” Digging her cell from her navy suit jacket pocket, she extended it to him.
He glanced at it, then away. “I’m the one who’s been busting my ass running all over the state getting these interviews.”
When he made no move toward the cell, she put it away. He had a legitimate complaint, so she nodded. “But in doing so, you’re familiar to all the interviewees. It’s better to bring in a stranger, one Sanders has no rapport with, when we hit him with what we’ve got.”
“Yeah. Still . . .”
“I haven’t exactly been vacationing in the Jamaican isles in your absence.” She restarted her ascent up the steps.
“Jamaica’s an isle. I don’t think it has other ones.”
“Whatever. Sanders has been lying through his teeth about this whole thing.” And why would anyone be surprised at that, since his lying started while he was still engaged to Cassie Frost? Ramsey looked at the TBI agent, her hand resting on the front door’s handle. “So let’s go nail his ass to the wall.”
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