Liberating Lacey (4 page)

“And that’s how I know you didn’t tell your friend anything.” She reached up hesitantly and touched the marks with one fingertip. “I’m sorry.” The look in his eyes was sheer heat and promise. “I’ll sacrifice a little skin to watch you come under me, beautiful.”

He didn’t have any trouble talking dirty. The words melted through her, leaving her throat dry and tight. She looked out over the enormous expanse of grassy hill that comprised Memorial Park. Children scampered after a small, yapping white terrier, the parents laughing at the antics of both offspring and pet as they tried to catch the dog. It was a perfect scene, the kind everyone kept insisting she could have, if she hurried.

When she informed her family she and Davis had moved from separating to divorcing, only a century’s worth of breeding kept her mother from saying, “You should have started a family earlier.”

She didn’t regret that. She’d thought she regretted not experimenting more, but maybe not. Her efforts to be fun, sexy and casual weren’t far short of a disaster.

“You look really pretty,” Hunter said, his voice softer. Intimate.

She hadn’t forgotten he was there. The electricity dancing along the entire right-hand side of her body prevented that. At his words she looked down at her flared white skirt and fitted rose-colored sleeveless blouse, then fiddled with one of the fabric-covered buttons. This outfit was more her usual style, the simple, classic, unobtrusive look of a woman who didn’t use the f-word or dig her fingernails into her lover’s shoulders. “Thank you,” she said. “I don’t usually dress like I did last night.”

“Sure,” he said, then waited another couple of beats. “I didn’t mean to embarrass you, Lacey.”

“I’m not embarrassed.” She crossed her legs and plucked at the embroidery along the pockets of her skirt. Claire said she wasn’t cut out for casual sex. Hunter thought she couldn’t talk dirty and this blasted skirt came to her knees! What on earth had she been thinking to plan and execute a hook up with a stranger? That wasn’t her. None of 29

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this was her and what had been fun now felt like she was trying to be someone she wasn’t.

“It’s getting late and I should go home,” she said, and stood up to put emphasis to the words. “I’m sure we both have a busy week ahead of us. Thank you for telling me about the Ultimate game. That was another first for me.” And her last with him. She smoothed down her skirt and resettled her sunglasses on her nose as she turned to walk away.

“Lacey.” His implacable voice halted her in her tracks as effectively as his command to not go back into Buff.

She turned to see him sitting forward, his forearms braced on his knees, sunglasses pushed up to the top of his head while he looked at her. “Any time in your busy week for me to take you to dinner?”

The sex had been mind-shattering, but she wasn’t so desperate she needed to accept a pity date. “Thank you, but that’s not…”

He interrupted her, in the same no-nonsense voice. “I
like
how you blush, beautiful.” He looked at his running shoes, then back at her. An emotion she couldn’t identify simmered in his eyes. “Can’t be done with your firsts, either.”
Oh. Oh oh oh.
“Dinner sounds lovely. When?”

“I’m off Friday and Saturday next week.”

She remembered his rotating schedule of four days on duty, followed by two days off. “I’m free Saturday.”

“You have a last name, Lacey?”

The words, echoing her question before taking him home, startled a laugh from her lungs and sent a tiny little spark of warmth to her heart. “Meyers.” She reached in her pocket for her Tiffany business card case and handed him a card. “My home and cell numbers are on that.”

He rubbed his thumb and forefinger over the thick linen stock. “You carry cards around with you?”

“I never leave home without business cards,” she said. Any entrepreneur worth the name always carried cards. Professionals did not scribble names and numbers on cocktail napkins, or worse, on the backs of hands.

“I didn’t get one at Buff,” he said, the corners of his beautiful mouth lifting in a grin. She was beginning to hope for that smile, the one that softened his often unreadable face.

“It completely slipped my mind,” she said in an effort to maintain some dignity.

And there was the smile. Hunter slowly shook his head then tucked the card in his pocket. “See you next weekend, beautiful.”

“I’m looking forward to it,” she said. Her heart tripped in anticipation of a simple dinner date.

30

Liberating Lacey

Apparently she and
different
were going to get much better acquainted.

* * * * *

Hunter held open the door to Burger King, automatically scanning the parking lot as two sleek-haired office workers wearing tight skirts and heels swept past him without a look or a word of acknowledgement. He caught up with his dad by the counter.

“It’s the dust, kid,” his dad said with a sidelong glance at the women.

The anonymity was a relief. The simplest way to attract attention from women was to put on a uniform and go out in public, something he did five days a week, minimum.

Wearing the paint-spattered, drywall-dust-covered, shapeless jeans and t-shirt of a construction worker gave him a chance to just do his thing.

His father ordered, then turned to him. “What are you having?”

“I’ve got it,” Hunter said as he dug in his front pocket for his wallet.

“Your money’s no good here,” his father said, elbowing him in the ribs. “Give him a veggie burger,” he said to the teenager behind the counter.

“Whopper with cheese and onion rings,” Hunter said hastily before the kid, who bore a strong resemblance to the cocker spaniel owned by an ex-girlfriend, could follow through on his father’s order. “Thanks, Dad.”

“Thanks for the help today,” his dad said. “Andy couldn’t make it. His wife was up all night with the sick baby then started throwing up herself this morning.”

“No problem,” Hunter said and picked up their tray of food.

“You don’t have much of a life,” his dad observed on their way to a booth. “You didn’t have any plans?”

Fixing a rattle on his bike, washing the car for Saturday since the weather forecast looked clear until then, paying bills, going to the gym and he was due for a couple of hours at the range. “Nothing I couldn’t put off,” he said.

His dad shot him the look he perfected when Hunter was in high school and started fabricating in-service days to help with a behind-schedule job. “No girlfriend?” Hunter slid into the plastic seat and unwrapped his Whopper, giving his father his own narrow-eyed look.

“No girlfriend.”

“What about that girl you were dating, the one who worked the night shift at the casino? That worked out good for both of you.”

It was hard to find a woman who didn’t end up bitching about his hours. He had enough seniority to bid for a day shift if he wanted to, but he didn’t. Days were boring.

Overnights had the most action, but Hunter really liked the four-to-midnight shift because it was usually the busiest. Afternoon commute, events downtown at the convention center, then the harder action when criminal activity heated up around 31

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nine-thirty, ten at night. Plus he didn’t have to worry about staying awake in the car.

Slow nights were worse than slow days.

He sucked down some Coke to clear the dust from his throat. “Shari? We broke up in the spring.”

“The nurse? Missy? Chrissy?”

“Alyssa. Broke up earlier in the summer.” She’d dumped him flat when a neurosurgery resident asked her out, but his dad didn’t need to know that detail.

“Anyone else your old dad should know about?”

Hunter peeled back the cover on the chipotle sauce and dipped an onion ring. “I’ve got a date Saturday. You might remember her. Lacey Meyers.”

“Real nice Colonial in Oak Grove,” his dad said, swiping a napkin at the mayo in the corner of his mouth. “I priced a kitchen job for her last year, February. She went with Walker. Her husband was in a real hurry to get the job done.” Hunter didn’t miss the emphasis on
her husband
or his dad’s raised eyebrows. “The husband’s out of the picture.”

“Just keeping an eye out for my boy,” he said, amusing the hell out of Hunter. He was two inches taller than his dad, outweighed him by twenty-five pounds and a uniformed cop, but his father still looked out for him. “She didn’t seem the type to fool around, either. Nice lady. Very apologetic when she called to tell me Dan could get her in right away.”

“She is nice,” Hunter said.
Polite as hell, in fact, all please and thank you and excuse me
right up until she was dying to come. Then the demands and the claws came out.

“How’d you meet her? On the job? You didn’t give her a speeding ticket, did you?”

“The bar last weekend,” Hunter said.

“That lady was in a bar? The time I met her to talk about the job she looked like Jackie Kennedy without the hat. Same smile, same type of suit.”

“She was at a bar,” Hunter confirmed. The grilling from his father had become pretty standard in the last year or so. His dad thought Hunter was alone too much.

Hunter thought he was just fine.

His father chewed for a minute. “The suit surprised me. I expected her to be wearing what every other doctor’s or lawyer’s wife in Oak Grove wears, those matching sweaters and slacks. I got the impression she made more money than the husband did.”

Hunter’s head came up. He’d figured out Lacey wasn’t like the rest of the women in Buff, but he’d assumed her house and her lifestyle were courtesy of a shark of a divorce lawyer and a part time job in real estate, to keep busy. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. He said something when I told her the cabinets would be thirty grand, minimum. ‘Your money, your house, your choice’ or something like that. She didn’t bat an eye at the price or his attitude. Cool as a cucumber, she was.” 32

Liberating Lacey

So Lacey’s house and money didn’t come from a great divorce settlement. Trust fund? Family money? “It’s not my business anyway,” Hunter said.

“Kind of looked like that kid behind the counter,” his dad added. “Lawyer. Not a hair out of place, spit-shined shoes, kept checking his thingamajig—“

“BlackBerry.”

“Yeah, while I was there,” his dad said.

Hunter finished his sandwich and balled up the wrapper. If Lacey had been separated or divorced for fifteen months, a February meeting with his dad would have happened just before the separation, so maybe the ex was a prick because things were strained between him and Lacey. It was also a reminder of how little he really knew about the woman he was taking out.

“She’s older than me,” he said as his dad dipped the last of his fries in ketchup.

His dad’s eyebrows, the tips white with drywall dust, went up. “I figured as much.

That’s a problem?”

He shrugged. “She’s thirty-six.” The eight-year span wouldn’t be shrinking.

“Last time I checked, women didn’t come with expiration dates.” Hunter huffed in amusement, not all that surprised by his father’s take on the situation. By the time he was Hunter’s age his father was raising an eight-year-old and taking over his own father’s construction business. That forced maturity left him with no time or patience for bullshit.

When you weren’t looking for a relationship, the age difference, salary, cars, freaking roses in fireplaces, all of it was bullshit. If you were seeing someone for a good time, the only compatibility that mattered was sexual. He and Lacey were good there.

Real good. A week of thinking about her and he was ready for more.

So compatibility wasn’t an issue, but dinner was. He needed to work on that. Where the hell did you take a woman who dressed like Jackie Kennedy when she wasn’t wearing fuck-me shoes and ass-hugging jeans?

33

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Promptly at seven p.m. Saturday Lacey opened her front door and sent up a silent prayer of thanks. A black car, low-slung and freshly washed, sat in the driveway, the engine popping as it cooled in the shade of her big oak tree. She turned her attention to Hunter.

“Hi,” she said, too speechless to smile. The man standing in front of her was yet another incarnation of the player and the athlete. Tonight he was dressed in khakis and a green button-down Oxford, with brown Doc Martens on his feet. He looked not all that different from any business casual banker she met while brokering a deal.

Except he radiated something indefinable she could only label as
presence
.

Underneath the “man picking up his date” surface simmered an awareness somehow sexual, protective and alert, all focused on her.

One eyebrow quirked up over the sunglasses. “Worried I’d pick you up on the bike?”

“I didn’t know if you drove anything else, which is silly in hindsight because you wouldn’t ride a motorcycle in the winter and—” She stopped herself and put on a welcoming smile. “Do you want to come in for a drink before we go?”

“Soda sounds good,” he said.

She halted her progress toward the liquor cabinet and made for the kitchen instead.

“I only have diet or iced tea.”

“I’ll take the tea,” he said. He closed the door behind him and removed his glasses.

“You look really nice.”

Pleased by the compliment, she smoothed down the softly pleated fuchsia silk skirt drawn in by a wide, braided brown leather belt at her waist. A crisp white cotton sleeveless shirt, flat brown sandals and her grandmother’s gold hoop earrings completed the ensemble, which wasn’t sexy by any stretch of the imagination. “Why, thank you.”

In the kitchen Lacey poured out two glasses of tea from the pitcher in the fridge. “I make it sweet,” she said. Hunter declined the sugar bowl. She opened the back door.

“Let’s sit on the deck. It’s warm in the sunroom this time of day.” He braced himself against the railing, his eyes heavy-lidded and intense as he watched her kick off her sandals, settle herself onto a chaise and tuck her feet under the folds of her skirt. She offered him a quick smile, then felt the blush bloom on her cheeks at the frank interest in his eyes. “When you look at me like that I wonder if we’re going to make it to the restaurant.”

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He set his glass on the railing and straddled the middle of the chaise, trapping her between the back and his big body as he reached for her bare, pedicured foot. “Would you mind?” he murmured, looking up from her instep as he asked, his thumbs digging rhythmically into the sole of her foot.

She rested her head against the back of the chaise and surrendered to the thick, sweet tendrils of desire sliding along her nerves. As the week passed she convinced herself that her memory played tricks on her, because the sex could not possibly have been as good as she remembered. The image of his face, savagely taut with restraint as he pounded into her, would eventually not send a jolt of anticipatory lust crashing through her pelvis. She’d done without for over a year. As she let more men into her bed the memories that dampened her panties daily would fade.

But the desire was back, thumping and surging. Each slow, attentive stroke of his thumbs made her pulse pound in all the places she’d applied perfume before he knocked on her door. Behind her ears. The hollow of her throat. A light touch of the crystal bottle stopper between her breasts.

“You’ve been on my mind all week, beautiful. Not good for my concentration.

Dangerous, in fact,” he said, his voice low and rough.

His fingers began to roam, up her calf, between her toes, but always returning to the arch of her foot and pressing hard enough to make her moan. She shifted her weight from her hip to her bottom and he took advantage, parting her legs to set one thoroughly massaged foot against his muscular thigh before picking up the other foot.

“I’m not that memorable,” she demurred. Even smart, professional women traded on their looks, but Lacey knew her best asset was in her skull. Aside from her auburn hair, nothing about her physical appearance was anything more than tastefully elegant.

“That little noise you made when I hit your sweet spot was pretty memorable.” The sweet spot fluttered to life at his very specific words. She remembered how shocked she’d been when she made that noise, how he’d throbbed inside her in response. She was watching his hands, but at this her eyes flickered up to see intent desire in his face.

“Very distracting,” he finished.

It was so sexy to know he wanted her badly, yet held back. “It’s up to me?”

“If it was up to me, beautiful, you’d be bent over the back of the sofa right now.” His voice, still low and rough but now promising, added color and texture to the image his words conjured and sent a thrill skittering through her, hardening her nipples, softening her spine.

“Admirable restraint,” she said. She might not know his middle name but she knew when he was utterly serious about taking her. The last time, in her bed, she’d been on her forearms and knees, trembling and awash on waves of pleasure as he covered her and single-mindedly used the knowledge accumulated during three hours of sex to drive her to insanity and back. At the end of her last orgasm, he’d flipped her onto her back, braced his hands on either side of her head and surged into her. The unforgettable 35

Anne Calhoun

intensity on his face as he let go and ruthlessly sought his own pleasure mesmerized her…and it wasn’t there now.

“Heroic,” he agreed. His hands stilled for a moment at the very tops of her thighs, his thumbs brushing rhythmically against the damp lace covering her swollen folds.

“This is a difficult decision,” she managed to get out. The tease, his hands retreated to explore the sensitive skin behind her knees. She focused on his tanned fingers, long and rather deft despite their blunt tips, the nails trimmed almost to the quick. His caresses slowed and lengthened, massaging her calf and inner knee, hinting that with the slightest encouragement he’d go higher again.

“Why’s that?” he asked, his gaze focused on her face.

“Dessert now,” she began.

With the words, his hand did stroke up the inside of her leg, stopping just before the edge of her damp lace panties, then retreating down to safer territory.

This wasn’t normal. She’d been on several dates since her divorce was finalized and none of them began with anything other than a drink and casual conversation before going to the restaurant or the theater. Yet in mere minutes Hunter had his hands up her skirt and every nerve ending in her body jumping in anticipation of more. No other man handled her so assuredly.

Different
felt very, very good.

“Or?” he said, amusement flickering in his eyes.

What? Or what? Oh. “Dessert later. After dinner.” His eyelids drooped as his index fingers traced the elastic stretched over her hipbones. “No rules, beautiful. You can have
dessert
before, during and after dinner.” Her skirt now rode the tops of her thighs, his hard forearms dark against her pale, soft skin of her thighs. The position felt deliciously wanton, but she was, after all, in her backyard and while the dense summer foliage of the hundred-year-old oak trees obscured her rear neighbor’s house, anyone watching from windows on either side would see Hunter seducing her on the chaise. She slid her hands down her legs to push her skirt into a more respectable position.

His hands, now covered by her skirt, stopped hers just above her knees. The heat and strength of his hands radiated through the material. “Dinner first?” Her gaze flickered upward, through her lashes. “Dessert first, but inside. I have no desire to put on a show for my neighbors.”

“Having second thoughts after your parking lot debut?” He stood and held out a hand to help her to her feet. The silk of her skirt swished gently against her legs as she led him toward the door, her hand still clasped with his. He opened the door for her.

“No second thoughts, no regrets. I’m just not doing it again,” she said as she stepped through, then gasped in surprise and delight when he slammed the door closed. The sheer white curtains slid between her body and the window when he hoisted her to waist height and pinned her for a long, molten kiss.

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Liberating Lacey

This heat, this shocking, thrilling heat was impossibly better than she remembered, as was the overwhelming urge to rub her breasts against his hard chest, her pelvis against his harder erection. No teasing or tantalizing in this kiss, seducing her into taking a risk with him, just pure, demanding male lust in the hard pressure of his mouth on hers, the thrust of his tongue.

Hunter pulled out one of the chairs neatly lined up under her kitchen table and spun her into it.

“Oh!” she said, but then his mouth was back on hers, taking advantage of the shocked sound to flick his tongue over the sensitive roof of her mouth. He knelt in front of her and shoved the fuchsia silk of her skirt to her hips.

“Lift,” he demanded, then slid her cream lace panties down to the floor.

Lacey widened her knees and reached for the buttons on his shirt while he dug in his pocket for his wallet and searched for a condom. His normally deft fingers fumbled while she quickly unfastened each button. She tugged his shirt free from his pants, spreading it wide to reveal the hard planes of his chest, then went to work on his belt buckle and zipper.

“Oh my,” she said when his erection sprang free, thick and demanding. She reached out to stroke it slowly up and down. He was steel covered in hot silk, the shaft a dark red, the tip wet in the late afternoon sunlight streaming into the kitchen. Lacey stroked and tugged, watching his face darken, his lips swollen and wet from her mouth.

“Slow up, beautiful,” he said, forcibly removing her hand.

“But I want to—“

“Later,” he said. “I need to be inside you.”

The words came out almost unwillingly. He didn’t look at her as he said them, focused as he was on rolling the condom down his shaft. She didn’t think she could get any wetter or more eager but her body responded to the suppressed urgency in his voice. She scooted forward to the very edge of the seat, the chair’s smooth oak now warm under her bare bottom, and gripped the wood with both hands.

He undid the buttons on her sleeveless blouse, flicked open the front catch of her bra and took her nipples between his thumbs and forefingers, applying just enough pressure to send sensation coursing along her nerves and make her mouth go dry. His eyes roamed over her and for a brief moment, Lacey was aware of her provocative look.

Blouse open, Hunter’s hands possessively caressing her breasts. Skirt to her hips, legs wide, the trimmed curls covering her mound a poor defense against the tanned, hard muscles of his torso, the bold thrust of his shaft.

Then he settled his mouth over hers. No teasing now, no patience either, just hard, hot kisses that spoke of a shockingly raw need. With one hand he nestled the tip of his cock in her folds and pushed. The slight sting of his penetration made her gasp. He stopped immediately, the head of his cock clasped just inside her channel, stretching her deliciously. Her eyes closed, her attention focused on the insistent pressure, the tingling nerves snapping and popping as she adjusted to his girth. She let her head drop 37

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back, then shuddered as she felt his open mouth against her exposed neck and his tongue stroke along her pounding pulse.

“Ready for more?” The words came slow and hot in her ear.

She nodded.

“Show me. Put me in you.”

Now he’s got all the time in the world?

She braced her weight on one arm and reached out to trail her trembling fingers along his finely honed pectorals, down, down. Waves of heat and male musk radiated from him, his scent plain soap, no cologne. The muscles in his abdomen tightened, flexed as his breathing quickened under her touch. When she found his hipbone she gripped it and pulled him forward, inch by slow inch, until her nipples brushed his chest. Seated to the hilt, he pressed up against her clit and a firestorm ripped along her nerves.

A stifled, high-pitched whimper echoed in the stillness of her kitchen.

“Oh, fuck. That sound.”

He withdrew, stroked over that eager, sensitive spot inside her, and she made the sound again. He slid his hands between her wrists and her hips, finding his own purchase on the sturdy chair’s seat as he set an unrushed, firm rhythm that quickly had her quivering and grinding against him. Her hand fluttered up to the back of his neck, clasped his loose shirt, but she couldn’t find solid ground. He was moving as much as she was so she gave up, dropped her hand back to the chair’s seat and wantonly arched against him.

But even in the sharpest ecstasy she couldn’t keep herself from looking down at the erotic sight of his shaft gleaming with her juices as it plunged in and out of her sex. At Hunter’s sharply indrawn breath she looked up to catch him watching her as she watched
them
.

“Jesus, beautiful,” he muttered.

Lacey pressed her breasts to his chest, her clit to his pubic bone and sank into the riptide of pleasure drawing her into dark ecstasy. Hunter slid one hand into her hair to hold her open mouth to his, capturing her soft sobs as she hurtled to the edge of oblivion and over. Moments later he joined her, a guttural groan rumbling up from his chest as his cock throbbed and pulsed inside her.

She tore her mouth from his and gasped in air, her eyelids at half-mast as she stared into space. Her vision cleared, focusing on the tumble of fresh daisies in the fireplace.

Hunter’s breath came rough and fast in her ear as he rested his forehead on her shoulder. Slowly the tension eased from both their bodies.

“I wanted that,” he said, raw and rough.

“Me too,” she said. Her mind hadn’t been playing tricks on her. She’d felt consumed, desperate for his body and more than a little shocked. Never would she 38

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