Liberating Lacey (8 page)

“I’ll ruin your sofa.”

“Body oill is good for leather.” She tugged at the Velcro and heard the distinctive rip of the material separating.

“All right…wait! Not that way. I’ve got those straps tightened just right.” He leaned forward and she helped him shrug out of his shirt. It pooled around his waist, caught by his belt. With deft movements he unfastened the Velcro holding the sides of the vest together and pulled it away from his body to drop on her antique Persian carpet.

His white t-shirt fit snugly to his chest and was indeed soaked with sweat. Her mouth, on the other hand, went dry at the sight of his carved musculature under the clinging wet T. She took the damp fabric in either hand, tugged the shirt free of his pants and pulled it over his head to land on the floor next to his vest.

Gingerly he leaned back into the sofa, relaxing only when she pushed on his shoulders. Small, tight masculine nipples, darker brown in the tanned expanse of his chest, tempted her to taste. Lapping at the tiny buds made his grip on her hips tighten.

In response her own nipples began to throb against the lace and silk of her bra.

“Your turn, beautiful,” he said, his voice a dark rasp.

The heat and strength of his erection, pushing firmly against the zipper of his navy pants, made it very hard to lift her head and focus, but she reached into the bag and pulled out her calculator. “It runs complex financial calculations. Your turn.” He removed a black cylinder from his belt. “OC spray. You know it as Mace.”

“Claire carried that on her key ring until she sprayed herself in the eye one night at a bar.”

“It burns,” he said matter-of-factly.

“You’ve been Maced?”

“In the Academy.” He reached for another device on his belt. “Tased, too. The department won’t let you carry a Taser unless you take the class and you can’t take the class unless you agree to be Tased.”

“My God.” She handled the pepper spray gingerly and declined with a shake of her head to touch the Taser. “Did they shoot you, too?” she asked, only half-joking.

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He took both items from her and set them in the growing pile of gear on her end table, next to her pretty Wedgwood plate and her Tiffany lamp. “You’re down two, beautiful.”

“I don’t carry anything else in my bags. Just project files.”

“So let’s talk about your uniform.”

Her brow furrowed. “What uniform?”

He traced one finger up the buttons holding her jacket closed, then gently touched her grandmother’s emerald brooch nestled in her left lapel. “I’m not the only one wearing a uniform. Mine says I’m Officer Anderson, no stripes, no clusters, no bars, just a guy working the street.” He retraced his path, flicking open the buttons from her breasts to her waist. “Yours says you’re Ms. Lacey Meyers, successful businesswoman.” She hadn’t thought about it that way. She was about to stop thinking at all as she watched his dark hands spread open her jacket to expose her blouse.

“Tell me about this suit, Lacey,” he said as he slid the jacket off her shoulders. The heat of his palms seared through the thin white silk at her shoulders, his hands large enough so his thumbs almost touched at the hollow of her throat.

“It’s Oscar de la Renta,” she said as he began to stroke her collarbones, the silk quickly warming as it rasped ever-so-gently against her sensitized skin. “Houndstooth.

Alpaca and wool.”

“Doesn’t mean anything to me,” he said. She watched his fingers move to the bone buttons of her blouse and begin to undo them, one by one. “But you look gorgeous in your businesswoman’s uniform. Sexy and untouchable all at the same time.”

“I could say the same for you,” she said, the words coming out as the merest whisper when he pushed the blouse down her arms. Four delicate, fabric-covered buttons held the cuff snug against her wrist. She waited docilely as he deftly unbuttoned first one sleeve, then the other. Dressed in what was left of his uniform she caught a glimpse of how the cop informed the man; he handled her body with a presumption that sent jagged shards of heat flashing through her.

“I look sexy and untouchable?” His eyes were teasing, flashing green as he studied her breasts, supported by taupe silk and ecru lace.

“Police officers always look untouchable to me, distant and authoritative,” she said.

“We’re supposed to.” He stretched his arms along the back of her sofa, his eyes heavy-lidded and promising. “For you, beautiful, I’m touchable, too.” It was the invitation she’d been waiting for. She leaned forward and kissed him.

Their mouths melded with a raw, embarrassing lack of finesse and when she broke away Hunter’s lips was swollen, wet. His eyes still closed, he leaned forward, as if tracking her withdrawing mouth.

She lifted her hand to press down on his lips with her thumb. His eyes slid open, intent desire evident in the darkening irises. When his gaze met hers she passed the same thumb over her lower lip, felt the heat, a slight tenderness from the pressure of his 57

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mouth. His hands tightened the tops of the sofa cushions, strong muscles clenched with restraint. She bent to nibble on the hard curve of his biceps, felt the muscles tremble, then go hard under her lips and teeth. With a groan his head dropped back. She took advantage of his exposed throat and sucked on the heated, salty skin covering his pounding pulse as she teased his nipples between her thumbs and forefingers.

His growl, low and rough in his throat, sent electric heat flashing through her.

Closer. She needed to get closer, now, so she hiked up the houndstooth skirt to the tops of her thighs and pressed her wet, aching sex to the rigid length confined in his uniform trousers. She slid up and down the hard bulge once, twice, each motion chafing her silk panties against her swollen clit.

Hunter lifted his head, looked over her breasts, her hiked-up skirt now exposing the lacy tops of her thigh-high stockings. “Fuck,” he muttered and cupped her bottom, sliding her skirt up over her hips. Matching silk and lace covered her mound. He hooked his fingers in her panties and tried to tug them down.

Equally determined, Lacey scooted back and reached for his zipper, but was quickly stymied by the complicated tangle of gun belt, regular belt, button and zipper.

Their hands fumbled together for a moment before he gripped her wrists and lifted her hands.

“Condom,” he said, his voice a low rasp in the still air of her living room.

She left him to his zipper and reached for her purse. Never in her life had she carried condoms with her, but Hunter seemed like a man she needed to be prepared for.

She tore a single packet loose from a strip and ripped it open. He gritted his teeth as she helped him roll the thin latex down to the base of his shaft.

His hands went back to her panties. “Gotta get these off, beautiful,” echoed faintly in her head but the words made no sense. She leaned over to kiss him, rubbing the silk against his erection again. Another groan, then a twist of his fist and her panties dropped away from one hip.

She was melting desire held up by bone-deep lust, and just when she thought things couldn’t get any hotter, he gripped one hip hard, urged her up, then wrapped the other hand around his shaft to lift it away from his abdomen. She caught her bottom lip between her teeth and looked down at her black and white checked skirt rucked up around her hips, at his cock jutting from his open navy uniform pants, at her trimmed auburn curls, at the scrap of lace and silk now sagging against her taut thigh. His fist engulfed the lower half of his cock as the tip disappeared into her swollen folds, probing for entrance.

The sting of penetration made her gasp, then gasp again when her wet folds came to rest against the thumb and forefinger encircling his straining shaft. As she slid down he caressed her stretched opening with a finger on either side of his cock, an intimate, possessive touch that rocked her world as she took him all the way inside her.

Her palms flat against his bare, damp chest, she took a measured breath, then another. She rose, the head of his cock dragging against her swollen inner tissues, and 58

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slid back down, her body now adjusting eagerly to his. Two more strokes and a light sweat broke out all over her body.

Hunter reached around and unhooked her bra, then pulled it down and off. “Do that again,” he said, focused on the gentle bounce of her breasts when she came to rest against his pelvis.

“You are the hottest fucking thing I have ever seen,” he muttered, then caressed her breasts, squeezing gently before he pinched her nipples with a firm touch that made her eyelids droop. “Stockings, heels and that skirt looked so prim on your sweet little ass outside.”

She looked down at his big hands, so dark against her pale skin, and watched a pink flush move up to her collarbone as she rode him. “Not so prim now, am I?”

“No, ma’am,” he drawled, his clever fingers rolling her nipples with a sure, sexy touch.

“You do that to me.”

The words made his eyes turn jade-dark, sending a surge of gratification through her. She spread her thighs a little wider to get that much closer, her clit now rubbing against his ridged stomach with every increasingly heated downstroke. Her stockings snagged on something on his belt, but she didn’t care, simply didn’t care because he was letting her find her own rhythm and pinching her nipples in time to her movements. Pushing his broad, damp shoulders back into the cushions, she tossed her head back, the pressure growing, each engulfing movement stroking his shaft against nerve endings that tingled, then burned, then burst into flames. The firm grip of his hands sent achingly delicious rivers of molten pleasure streaming through her belly to coalesce in her clit.

Riding him hard now, her hair clung to her cheeks as she dug her fingers into his shoulders, each impact forcing a soft exhalation from her throat. Pressure, unexpected and all-consuming, built behind her clit, spread in a thick ache through her body to her nipples, her fingertips, her swollen lips, sparking like flint against rock each time they brushed his. Wild with need, each long, sweet, grinding thrust brought her closer to the imminent heart-pounding release.

“Hunter?” she gasped. Good, so good and she couldn’t leave him behind.

“I’m there, beautiful,” he growled, his face etched with agony. His shaft thickened inside her just as the crest slammed into her. Wave after wave of hot, syrupy pleasure swamped her, heightened by Hunter’s final thrusts into her convulsing flesh. His release pulsed inside her as his head dropped back, the tendons standing out in his throat, then softening as the tension slowly ebbed from his body.

Tick-tock-tick-tock
. A few moments later he slid his hand into her hair to pull her to him and kiss her with a satisfied thoroughness. Then he looked at his watch. “I’ve got ten minutes.”

Raising herself up on quivering thighs, she disengaged their bodies. Her torn panties clung to one thigh, so she pushed them down.

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“Sorry I ruined your underwear,” he said.

“Don’t worry about it.” She’d bought it for Davis, in an effort to entice him into spicier sex, then more sex, then any kind of intimate contact at all. It hadn’t worked, one sign of many that something was seriously wrong with their relationship. If Hunter wanted to rip it off her, she wasn’t going to stop him.

She shimmied her skirt over her hips. Silence reigned as she stepped out of her heels and pulled her blouse back on. Her fingers trembling, she fastened buttons at random, unable to stifle a shudder as the cool silk caressed her thrusting nipples.

“What?” she asked, intrigued by the amusement in his eyes as he sprawled on her sofa in the shambles of his uniform.

“You were pretty sexy in your suit, beautiful, but you’re even sexier well fucked.” He needed to be kissed again, no doubt about it, so she leaned over and sampled his lips. “Go take a quick shower while I make you something to eat. What do you want?” she said.

“I’ll take another lemonade.”

“Lemonade? You must weigh two hundred pounds. You want lemonade for dinner?”

He shot her a look. “Two-twenty, beautiful. It’ll remind me of you when I leave.

Sweet, but just a little tart.”

Her swat at his naked shoulder missed as he bounded upstairs, shirts dangling from one hand.

“I can cook,” she called after his disappearing back.

Minutes later he stood in her kitchen, buttoning his shirt over the vest. His pile of gear lay on the granite-topped island. As she poured fresh lemonade into an insulated travel mug he clipped everything back into place with practiced ease. His close-cropped hair was a little damp, but the only other visible sign of their interlude was a slight dark flush receding from his cheekbones.

“Restored to order,” she said as she pushed the mug across the island to him.

“What were you going to do before I showed up?”

“Make lemonade and sit on the porch to go through the mail.” A grin flashed across his face. “What about now?”

“Shower, then make dinner, sit on the porch and go through the mail.”

“Glad I wasn’t too much of a disruption.”

“You can disrupt me like that any time,” she said and meant it. “I thought you didn’t take meal breaks.”

“I don’t usually. It’s a pain to eat somewhere because people stare. Half the time I finish my food in the car because I get a call.”

“But how did you know you wouldn’t get a call tonight?” she asked, remembering how he’d silenced his radio.

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“Another officer’s covering my sector. Gotta go, beautiful.” He kissed her, hot and slow. “See you later,” he said as he turned up the volume on his radio and patted each item on his belt in an automatic, reassuring way.

A small smile touched her face as she closed the door behind him and went upstairs to take a shower. The suit and blouse went in the dry cleaner’s bag, the ruined panties in the trash and the bra in her mesh lingerie bag. Before turning on the water she stared in the mirror.

Her figure was good, her waist narrow from a careful diet and regular yoga classes, but her hips were a little fuller than she’d like and her breasts were beginning to lose the firm lift of youth. She pressed the pads of her fingers to her lips, still pouting pink from his hard kisses. She was no expert in these matters, but Hunter seemed to find her more than sexy enough.