If Wishes Were Horses (7 page)

If it was an  act on his part, it was one of the most well done she had seen.  Herne looked genuinely attentive and focused on both women, pleased to have them there,not just to shop, but for the opportunity to meet them.

Good Lord, did the man splash himself in  pheremones before he went out in the morning? Over several moments she watched his  mouth curve in a near smile, straighten in  attentive silence, then  part in an offering of wisdom that gave her a flash of tooth and tongue. Her  senses drowned out translation with the  memory of that mouth on her breasts, her pussy, her own lips, and the thrust of that tongue into her body. Themusic of his voice was the sensual soundtrack against which she replayed the memory

and imagined even more. She imagined  herself lying unrestrained, twining and tightening her legs and arms around his lean  and elegant body, instead of thrashing  against her  cold and unrelenting headboard railings.

She pushed away the fantasy and tuned in enough to listen to him encourage the  bride to look at other options for her wedding night.

“Your first night of intimacy as man and wife should be given the same attention to detail you’re giving to the more public aspects of the wedding,” he said. He smoothly  led them from the discussion of their original  goal, the purchase of a suitable bridal nightgown,  into decorations her attendants  could take to prepare the bridal chamber.  Rose petals, pillar candles, the proper music.  He asked quiet, thoughtful questions that addressed the groom’s as well as  the bride's  sexual likes and dislikes, the things they enjoyed in scents, music, intimacy. Sarah  listened as  an innocuous discussion of the  bride’s husband-to-be and his  favorite choice of sweets led to Justin’s recommendation  of a smooth glitter body lotion that tasted like sugar cookies.

Jesus, women were as frank with him as  their own doctor, telling him about their  lover's preferences and interests. Like a physician, he prompted them in a professional,  caring and yet authoritative manner, as if he  had every right to know such things. Sarah  could not help but be amazed at how he skillfully gleaned as much about the young  woman’s desires as her groom’s by asking  the right questions, and making the right  comments at the appropriate times.

“Your likes are very important, Janet,” he  said, touching the woman's knee as she  and her aunt sat in a pair of chairs in  the boudoir around a hope chest fanned with  catalogs of special order items. “A man truly in love will be most aroused by whatever arouses his lover. Men are voyeurs, and we love to watch a woman become aroused by  the things we do to her.”

“I told you he was marvelous.” Her aunt nudged her and grinned at Justin. “Coming here to shop is as much  fun as a full bridal shower.”

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If Wishes  Were  Horses

Sarah decided she would just go ahead and  move onto the next room to get a senseof the whole place before she found herself as  mesmerized by the store’s proprietor ashis besotted clients. Her body tightened involuntarily as he chuckled at something the woman said, the sound stroking her like his  fingers in her most sensitive areas.

Possible. Murder. Suspect.
 
Sarah ground the three words  out in her mind, forced her uncooperative body to listen. Man who trespassed in her home. Arrogant son of a bitch.  Guy who provided her the best sex she'd ever had in her life.

Immaterial.

A plaque over the next doorway announced she was entering the playroom. There were no child-sized tables and chairs, or murals on the wall featuring trains and crayons, but there was play equipment. Sarah's fingers trailed over the rich red upholstery on a spanking bench,  and she examined the  restraint system on a chair that came with the option of several fittings  to  insert pleasurable objects into the body of the person reclined in it.

A double rack of costumes made  up one  whole wall. On an antique coffee table large books with glossy photos  of role-playing suggested what costumes a  client  might choose. There were old style photos, like Rudolph Valentino with  his  harem girl, and modern day professional erotic art photography showing an impertinent maid over her  Victorian master's knee. There was a female cop, well endowed,  leaning in the car window of an appreciative though nervous male. Her fingertips wrapped around the head of her baton in a suggestive manner that made Sarah's lips curve up.

The next room was a combination movie theater and art gallery. Movies had beengrouped on the open,  deep cushions of display sections of movie seats. Other DVDs lay at the base or propped against an old fashioned projector. More were stacked in a pyramid on a counter that displayed candies  beneath the glass that apparently were as much for sale as anything else in the room.

The framed erotic art dominated every available space on the walls, sponge painted in a soft green as a non-distracting, tranquil  background. The art came from all different historic periods, from the Renaissance to modern day.  She studied the subject matter, intrigued with Renaissance nudes as much as she was the modern day artistic renditions of the erotic. She cruised through some of the movie titles and found Sondergard, Fellini,  Zalman King, Candide Royale, all apparently reputable cinematographers intrigued with the erotic.

There was another bathroom, laid out much  like the first, and she was impressedthat he would have thought to provide two  areas, since the offerings in the  bathroom would be popular but cramped to look over  if too many customers were in the store. A second bedroom focused on the décor choices for the room in which lovers could get lost in one another for  hours. Incense, bed  linen choices, pillows, art, musical selections and a quality audio system to try out the different CD's. Sarah gave herself a shake to keep from getting absorbed in ideas for her own still relatively sparse bedroom.

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Joey W. Hill

This bedroom had a  second door  that gave  her a partial view back to the lingerieroom where he stood now, half turned away from her,  talking to his two seatedcustomers. Despite herself, Sarah's gaze lingered over him from her relatively screenedposition. His lower body, outlined so well in  the dark  pleated slacks, the lean muscles ofhis arms defined by their casual crossed position. His long fingered, clever hands folded against him. That sculpted face and hair soft  to her touch. He had a shadow  on his jaw, giving her the intimate knowledge that he had not had time to shave since he left her.  She wondered what time he had left her and realized the dual implication of thatimportant question.

A true cop, she let the scent of coffee draw  her back to reality. The last room beforeshe completed the circle back to  the foyer was a kitchen and sunroom. As Eric had described, Herne had turned it into a cozy place to take a cup of coffee and a homemadesweet and look through other product catalogs or coffee table books. There was abulletin board here and she noted he was offering Tantra classes and sensual massage, a lingerie fashion show and a creative cooking class, all about using food to enhance sexual interaction. There was a basket of brownies and jar of biscotti next to the fullcoffee urn. The wicker furniture in this room  was grouped together in a cozy fashion and had bright print patterns on the cushions. The arrangement invited clients to stay and converse. There were other sale items in  here as well, a selection of artwork, a rotating rack of more erotic romances and videos. A hallway tree draped with silk scarves in deep, sensual colors subtly implied that the scarves  could be  bought in groupings of four to use as restraints, or  individually to decorate a lover’s body.

With the full sunlight of this room, she recognized that each room she had visited had used light to create a mood. There had  been filtered colored light from windows with stained glass, candlelight in the bathrooms, and dim light from elegant buffetlamps to create a relaxing and yet stimulating mood in each area.

Sarah suppressed a sigh. She  was an astute  cop, and she  could not deny the obvious evidence. Everything here catered to a woman's desires. Eric was right. This wasn't a sex shop. It was a sensuality boutique.

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If Wishes  Were  Horses

Chapter 5

Justin was not irritated to have Laura  Crittenden and her niece interrupt hisinteraction with Sarah Wylde.  It gave Sarah ample time to wander through his store, see what he was offering, form her impressions. He was certain she was carrying somefairly  strong  ones  from  last  night,  ranging  from  apprehensive  to  downright  hostile.  Ifshe had been wearing a suit of armor when  she stepped over his  threshold, she could not be more obviously guarded against him.

He wondered if she knew how mesmerizing she was to watch. Like something magic discovered in a forest, and  so she had been. Her face was reminiscent of a fairy creature, the skin stretched to almost transparency over her bones. Instead of making her look skeletal, the fineness of the bone  structure was marvelous to study, invitingtouch like the smooth curves of a work of sculpted art.

Her hair was a glorious tangle of  white-gold, highlighting the soft mouse brown original color. It was full and fine  at once, delicately wisping around her face and downher back when it wasn’t pulled back for work.

Sometimes women in her line  of work downplayed their  femininity. While hers was so blatant he didn’t think she could do it  even if she tried, she didn’t. Her nails were

professionally manicured and painted a pale  pink that matched her lipstick. Her jewelry was expensive and subtle. Small hoop earrings with a diamond and onyx inlay, and a slim gold bracelet watch. Her clothing folded against her shape and curves with the  warm precision of a painting. Though the jeans and placket shirt were the casual  uniform of the Lilesville police, he suspected all her clothes would have the simple,  well-cut lines that neither added nor subtracted  from the perfection of the female form.

She hadn't bothered with eye makeup this  morning, but eyes like hers were strong enough to bring a man to his knees without  enhancement. Her thin, sharp face had been blessed and enhanced by the deep set of a pair of large blue-gray eyes. He’d seen her picture in the paper when she was hired. She had worn a small amount of makeup, and it made those eyes even more startling and potent.

She wore one of those bras  that made more of her  bosom than was there,  but he remembered her breasts quivering beneath his palms, and had been surprised at their fullness, given her build. He wondered how she would look in some of the nipple jewelry he had in the front foyer case. It brought an instant vision of her standing in the moonlight of her bay window, naked except  for a silver serpentine chain and thesapphire beads strung on it to weight it,  stimulating the nipples. Her breath wouldquicken as he drew the slack out of the chain,  holding her still as he brought all that glorious hair tumbling over her pale, slender shoulders with his free hand.

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He knew her to be more angular than curved, with a ridiculously tiny ass, and ribs he could feel under his palms. Despite that,  everything about her screamed feminine,the way a willow tree did with its elegance and sweeping limbs.

He liked imagining her having  those highlights put in her hair, having her nailsdone, adjusting her bra as she put it on in  the morning so her figure was curvy and attractive, even as she then holstered her gun and that worry line marked her forehead between her brows as she considered the  business of the day. A warrior goddess.

It wasn’t just the gun that told  him her nature. He knew something of her background, and  in the dim light of her bedroom, he had seen the two places, felt them, his fingers tracing the  shiny worn round scars  over her kidney and next to her spine.  Two bullet  entry wounds that could have killed or  permanently crippled  her. Hewondered if that was why she was here, then discarded the idea. If Sarah Wylde  ranfrom anything, it wasn't physical  danger, it  was emotional pain. Even against that, he suspected she'd strike back as she had with  him just now in his  doorway, rather than

retreat.

Maybe she didn't retreat enough.

She looked breakable,  and yet there was strength in those eyes, the set of her jaw.  She had a small mouth, and the way she held it  closed and rigid reflected her stance to perform her job. Perhaps that was the way she was getting through this particular phase of her life.

Oh, he had the strongest case  of instant attraction in his life since he had been in third grade and fell in love  with his English teacher. That had been a mixture of physical and emotional attraction, mother and lover both. There was some of that here, too. This was more than physical. She was so touchable, tastable. He wanted  to suck on each finger, kiss the skin of every crease of  her, press his nose hard against all her parts, just to inhale her.

Great Lord, but she was one of the most beautiful women he had ever seen, and it was not an easily recognized or ordinary beauty. It called to him as strongly as the call between lifemates in the wild. This was something he wasn't going to leave alone, as much as he was sure she wanted him to do so.

Justin Herne revered  women. He knew  without any arrogance that he couldsexually possess almost any woman whose heart was unclaimed. He knew how to touch them, how to listen without guile, and he  had a pleasing face and form. He didn'tuse it unless it was for honest purposes. But what had happened in that small cottage

on the  edge of a dark forest defied anything  he had ever experienced. He wanted to feel  remorse or shame. That  would be less disturbing  than  this drive to do it again,  take her, hammer into her, overwhelm her defenses  again and again until she accepted it,  accepted him. He wanted to lose  himself in  her, in that sexual mystery that was this particular woman.