Liberating Lacey (12 page)

A wave of self-reproach rushed up from her belly and into her throat. She’d been so busy assuming he wouldn’t want to go to the party with her then so delighted that he did that it simply hadn’t occurred to her that he might not feel comfortable there.

Stupid, stupid Lacey
.
Stupid and thoughtless
.

“I quit smoking six years back,” he said when she drew too near for him to even pretend to overlook the swish of her skirt. “Nights like this I wish I had a reserve pack in the car.”

Oh, God. She looked at the big hands, still tightly balled in his pockets. A Lexus SUV loomed at her back, stirring memories of their first night together. Hunter stood so close she felt the wool of his pants leg against her calf, close enough to touch if waves of discomposure weren’t radiating from him.

Brainless. Naïve. Definitely obtuse. Sometimes a liberal arts degree wasn’t such a good thing. She had a substantial vocabulary with which to label her current sense of air-headed privileged ignorance.

“Hunter, Vince was completely out of line,” she began, keeping her voice soft, even.

“Vince. That’s right. Vincent James or Jameson, or something like that. Two first names and a world class prick attitude, that’s what I remember from the arrest.” Clearly whatever happened between the two men wasn’t a run-of-the-mill traffic stop.

He blew out his breath. “Shit. What did he say? I know he didn’t tell you the truth.”

“He said you arrested him on a trumped up charge. Something about a parking violation.”

Hunter laughed, then directed his stare at her, his normally straight shoulders hunched as he leaned against the car. His eyes seared into her, fury warring with something so painful she didn’t dare look away. “I arrested him in February for picking up a prostitute downtown. I watched him negotiate with the girl, who was a seventeen-year-old runaway, and followed them down an alley. She was on her knees, unzipping him when I hit the siren.” He let out an involuntary laugh. “Talk about deer in the headlights. The guy was fucking freaked.”

The image his words provoked was so vivid and ugly she did look away. Hunter’s tight voice broke into her thoughts. “Not exactly Oak Grove. He must have friends in high places because the prosecutor declined to press charges. Never made the paper, either.” He looked out over the roofs of the Lexuses, BMWs and Mercedes. “I should 85

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have stood my ground. Assholes like Jameson always back down. You just never know when. I didn’t want to make a big scene and fuck up your deal.” My God, he was still thinking about her? Lacey found her voice. “Hunter, I’m competitive but I don’t ever need a deal so badly you should back down from a confrontation with anyone.”

The sardonic look on his face told her he wasn’t convinced. “How do you know
Philip
anyway? He owns Western States, right?” The edge still wasn’t gone from his voice, or from the set of his shoulders, so she made light of the connection. “I worked in his bank after I graduated from college.”

“That’s not the whole story. Laetitia.”

Did
anything
get by him? “He’s my father’s godfather,” she admitted.

“Jesus Christ.” He shook his head. “Except for the baseball, most of that went right over my head. Mortgage backed securities and the derivatives market.”

“It’s an area of expertise. Doctors and architects look just as lost most of the time when Dan Brunhill gets going on the economy,” she said.

Several long moments passed. Finally he took a deliberate breath and blew it out as he pulled his hands from his pockets to run one palm over the bristly top of his head.

This time when he looked at her, he seemed to have come to terms with the night.

But she hadn’t. “I’m sorry, Hunter. It was inconsiderate of me not to think about how you might feel there. You just seem…indestructible to me. Like you can go anywhere. Do anything.”

“In uniform, yeah. In a suit…” He shrugged. “Why did you even want me there?” She fiddled with the beads on her evening bag, knowing there was no way to tell him the truth without sounding needy, or arrogant, or both. “I wanted you to see who I am. What I do. You see me in nice clothes for dinner and you see me…”

“…naked and begging?”

“I don’t beg,” she said primly. The look shot her was pure green-eyed devil, with a knowing smile to boot, so she hastily moved on. “I wanted you to see that I’m not just money and a nice house. I work hard and I’m good at my job.”

“I see that, Lacey,” he said, his voice gruff. “I saw that before this disaster.” Before she could reassure him again he reached across the small space separating them and drew her up against his lean, hard body to press a kiss into the top of her head. She braced her hands, one still holding her clutch, against his chest and tipped her head up in the universal attitude of asking for a kiss.

The one she got, slow, hot and possessive, completely disregarded their public location. He cupped her head above the knot of her hair and urged her lips open for the leisurely thrust of his tongue. Weak in the knees, her fingers curled into the crisp cotton of his shirt.

Laughter intruded into her awareness and Hunter tore his mouth from hers. “Get in the car, beautiful,” he growled before nipping her earlobe. Desire zipped through her, 86

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but the presence of several departing guests two cars down forced her to stand demurely while he unlocked and opened her door.

Silence reigned on the drive home, but despite the tumultuous evening, it wasn’t tense or unpleasant. As usual, Hunter kept his thoughts to himself as he drove. Perhaps the night had already been locked away in whatever compartment assigned to it in his brain. She would have danced naked on Mrs. Duffy’s lawn before she asked him what he was thinking.

She studied his profile, rhythmically illuminated by the passing streetlights. Certain moments in her life stood out in her memory. Graduating from Smith. Marrying Davis in a ceremony so beautiful and flawless she’d been sure the marriage would last forever. The moment he told her he was moving out. Signing the papers to close her first multi-million dollar deal. Signing her divorce papers.

And now this moment, in the dark interior of Hunter’s car, strips of white light and the green dashboard lights bringing his angular cheekbones and full lips into relief. A certainty, sure but not entirely welcome, stole through her soul. She was falling for this honorable man who protected her image at the expense of his own. Falling, and falling hard, despite all common sense and advice to the contrary.

At that moment she prayed he didn’t ask her what she was thinking.

He backed into her driveway, but Lacey was too preoccupied to wonder why as she got out of the car. Compounding the bewilderment of a soul-altering realization, her keys were enmeshed in the silk folds of her clutch. She nearly bumped into the back corner of the car before coming up short against Hunter’s big body.

“Oh!”

One hand wrapped around her upper arm, he opened the door and unceremoniously shoved her into the back seat. He climbed in and closed the door behind him. Her purse dropped to the floor when he shifted on top of her and claimed her mouth. When his hand stroked up her thigh she gasped, “I can’t wrinkle this dress!”

“Okay,” he said obligingly and pulled her up. Legs and arms bumped and tangled up as they shifted around, and his hand slipped under her skirt. When his fingers brushed her mound, his gaze flashed to hers, his eyes glittering in the near darkness.

“You’re not wearing panties. You’ve been naked the whole night?”

“You’re not the only one who can arrange a surprise,” she said with an arch smile.

“Is that a crime?”

Heavy-lidded jade-green eyes met hers while her flirtatious words echoed in the car. His breathing slowed. Suddenly he seemed two sizes larger again, making the space seem smaller, tighter and filled with Hunter. Seated in the middle of the wide seat, he reached for her left hand and put it on the back of the driver’s headrest. To maintain her balance she automatically reached for the passenger’s headrest with her right. He grasped her waist in a move reminiscent of shifting her so he could get to the bar at Buff, and before she knew it, she straddled his lap, her back to him. The position 87

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left her with a great view of her driveway and her neighbor’s dark house, but unable to see him at all.

His warm fingers brushed the bare skin of her shoulder blades, trailing over the acutely sensitive skin to find the zipper of her dress. Her inability to see him heighten the zipper’s rasp in the black quiet of the car, her own shallow breathing, the feather-light brush of his rough fingers as he placed both hands inside the loosened fabric and pushed it down and away, releasing her breasts into the rapidly warming air.

Leaning forward to lick a wet path up her spine to the nape of her neck, he reached for the sensitive skin at her elbows then trailed his fingers along the soft flesh of her upper arms and shoulders, then down to her breasts.

A frisk
, she thought as her heart rate went rabbity and her nipples hardened. It was a silent, teasing frisk, a playful response to her silly question, but there was nothing playful about his mouth, now sucking at her nape, or his hands cupping her breasts.

His thumbs brushed over her nipples until they ached for more.

Her head dropped back as she lifted her hands to cover his with her own and urge him to harder caresses. Quick as lightening he slapped his hands over hers, the clap of flesh against flesh flashing out into the car as he pushed them back to the headrest.

Hands where I can see them.
He didn’t say it, not with words, but the message came through loud and clear.

A moan Lacey knew she must have made because it was entirely too breathy and aroused to be Hunter echoed in the hot air. Satisfied with her compliant position, Hunter’s hands slid over her ribs and down the groove of her spine to grasp her skirt and tug it up. Moving with authoritative slowness he exposed her ass, unhurriedly tucking the silk fabric under itself to catch at her waist.

His breathing came more rapidly as he kneaded her bared buttocks, scraped his fingernails over them, then urged her up and forward. The brush of his knuckles against her soft wet folds made her whimper, but she heard the rub of a button against gabardine, his zipper, more metallic than hers, the rustle of soft cotton against hair-roughened skin. He bumped up against her, the heat of his shaft a tantalizing pressure against her ass while a slipping sound meant he was withdrawing his wallet from his pocket. Then, the distinct rip of a condom wrapper tearing.

And there she waited, docile, poised above him on the car seat, her thighs spread, the long muscles trembling. Waited while he rolled the condom down while undoubtedly staring at her bare bottom. The sultry air inside the car wrapped around them in a thick, erotic fog while her nipples and clit throbbed in anticipation of his touch.

His blunt shaft nudged a couple of times, the angle unfamiliar, until he found the right, yielding spot. Then both hands wrapped around her hips in a no-nonsense grip and pulled her down, seating himself to the hilt inside her. The action was slow, sure, flush with male prerogative and a dark, enigmatic air of control that wiped all thought from her brain.

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“Like that,” he said. When she dutifully repeated the exact pace, her hands braced against the seat backs, her entire attention focused on the stroke of his shaft inside her and the mysterious way the air trembled in anticipation of his voice, he added in an authoritative rumble, “Good girl.”

Molten desire streaked through her body as another sound, too soft to be a groan, too deep to be a whimper, rent the air. The undercurrent of the pleasure building between her thighs surged along every nerve as she moved, carefully maintaining his exact tempo despite a building need to hasten the rhythm. He left one hand on her ass while the other cupped her breast, the fingers alternately pinching and plucking her nipple. She tossed her head back and felt her carefully styled hair come loose from its knot, tendrils caressing her back.

His breath caught, then his hand gripped her hip and urged her faster, harder. The orgasm built and built and built, fragments of thought fueling it. Her submissive position. The silence, punctuated by the soft grunts now coming from his throat, her own pleading gasps. Her hands, firmly gripping the headrests. The way he’d handled her. The terrifyingly arousing way he’d handled her.

With no warning his fingers trailed up her thigh, making her shudder. When they found her clit a lightning flash of lust speared through her and within moments intense, orgasmic waves radiated from her center to her skin.

She came back to herself to feel insistent thrusts before his last soft grunt melted into a stuttering groan. Glancing over her shoulder, she watched as his features softened from tense anticipation into release. He dropped his head back, his fingers tightening on her hip in time to the pulses inside her.

His chest rose and fell at a slowing pace, his muscles relaxing under the layers of fabric—jacket, shirt, tie. He lifted his head, then reached forward to tuck one loose strand of hair behind her ear. “Damn, beautiful,” he said.

Together they shimmied her dress back into place, then he zipped her up and reached for the door. A chorus of crickets and the wind in the leaves greeted her when she climbed out, awkward and stumbling on jellyfish legs. Inside the car Hunter dealt with the condom and zipped up.

“Coming in?” she asked when he got out and closed the rear door.

“Can’t,” he said ruefully. “I’m working overnight.” She gaped at him. “But it must be after eleven…you’re not…you came to the party with me.”

“You wanted me there. I was there.”

The chasm that opened on the way home yawned at her feet again. To cover emotions she didn’t want him to pick up on she scolded him gently. “You should have been sleeping.”

“I caught a couple hours’ before I picked you up. I’ll be fine.” 89

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