Maximum Exposure (20 page)

She trusted him to handle things. And that was obviously all he’d been doing. She’d walked through the store twice and couldn’t find so much as a hanger spaced wrong.

The offices were locked tight, the alarm set. She was worrying for nothing, for no reason at all. She needed to stop being such a control freak, really.

“Stay there. Don’t move,” Finn said from behind her.

She was standing in the center of the boutique, directly between Splash and Flambé.

“What?” she asked, turning in time to be blinded by his flash. “Finn, what are you doing?”

“I want to shoot you here.”

“In the store?” she asked, and he shot her again. The man was nuts. And she was going to take great pleasure in crushing him if he did that again. “Blinded. I have been blinded by the light.”

“Talk to me, Olivia,” he said, climbing the two steps into the checkout kiosk. “Tell me about Splash & Flambé.”

Maybe
nuts
had been too nice a word. “What about it?”

“Where you got the inspiration. What it means to you.”

“And you’re going to take pictures while I’m talking? My big mouth wide open?” she asked, though she was intrigued by his not-so-nutty idea. This was one stage on which she’d have no trouble at all performing.

“I’m not after your mouth,” he said, with a wink, his hair falling into his face and begging for a cut. “I’m after your eyes. You should see them when you talk about this place.”

She laughed. Nuttiness really could be cute. “What? They glow yellow like a cat’s or red like a vampire’s? Or they burn like Peter Petrelli’s when he turned radioactive before exploding in outer space?”

Finn moved his camera to the side and stared at her as if she was speaking another language. “Who the hell is Peter Petrelli?”

“He’s in
Heroes.
That was the first season Don’t you watch TV?”

“No,” he said, snapping her randomly while she pranced and preened.

She had no idea where the burst of energy had come from. Adrenaline, maybe? Relief at having found the boutique all in one piece? “I’ll tell you about Splash & Flambé if you tell me about my eyes.”

He gave an indulgent shake of his head but moved his eye back to the viewfinder, adjusting the lens to zoom in. “Right now, they’ve got the deep shine of fresh-brewed coffee.”

“I know they’re brown. What else?” she added, suddenly more interested in how he saw her than in how she appeared to him in these photos.

“Quid pro quo,” he said. “Give me something about Splash, and I’ll give you more of what I see.”

She supposed that was fair enough and moved into the side of the boutique featuring women’s fashions. “I love clothes. I always have. The more obscenely wild, the better, and, no, I don’t mean indecent. Just…outrageous, I guess.”

She ran her fingers over a silk scarf in every imaginable shade of pink, so many that the end result was a riotous clash. “Your turn.”

“You’ve got the longest lashes I think I’ve ever seen, and don’t spoil my fantasy by telling me they’re fake. Makeup I get. Leave me with the illusion.”

She laughed. “You’ll have to take more notice in the shower. Or next time you’re beside me when I wake up.”

“Hmm. I’ll keep that in mind.” He took three shots in rapid succession. “You go.”

“Let’s see.” She thought back to those days in school before she’d been labeled a slut for what she wore, not for her behavior or even gossip. “I hated seeing girls hide in dowdy clothes, not wanting to call attention to perceived flaws with bright colors or loud patterns.”

“Maybe they felt more comfortable out of the spotlight.”

Shuck-shing.

Shuck-shing.

“Oh, no doubt. And I’m not saying they would’ve felt better for wearing them, just that I hated seeing the dull and drab, because it seemed to take over their lives.”

“Whereas bright colors would mean life was beautiful all the time?”

She glared at him. “I was eight or ten, okay? So, in my world? Yes. Back to you.”

“Just now, when you were talking about things being dull and drab, your eyes went flat.” He boosted himself up on the kiosk counter and sat cross-legged. “When you mentioned your age, they started to giggle.”

She finished straightening a display of ceramic charm earrings and looked up at him. “My eyes giggled?”

“Close enough. Just like right now they’re as soft and curious as your voice.” He tilted his camera to the right and got off several more shots while she thought about what he’d said and before he told her, “Go.”

“Did you see
Pretty in Pink
? The movie where Molly Ringwald makes her funky outfits from old clothes?” she asked, and he shrugged. “I did that all through junior high. Raided every closet and drawer in the house. My sisters tattled constantly.”

“But you were precocious and got away with it.”

She batted her eyes. “It’s a trait that comes in so very handy.”

“That batting eyes thing won’t get you anywhere with me, Miss Baby of the Family.”

“And telling me that doesn’t count as your turn,” she shot back. “Try again.”

He lowered the camera. “Do you still see your sisters?”

Her stomach clenched. This was drifting out of fun-and-games territory. “You’re supposed to be telling me about my eyes.”

“Your eyes sparkled like the sky over Disney when you mentioned your sisters, begging the question.”

“I don’t see them often, holidays usually. Caridad lives in Tampa, and Marisol in Augusta.”

“Are they married? Do they have kids?”

She shook her head, reached for one of Freeman Stone’s ties, and ran it through her fingers, soothed by the smooth, even feel of the fabric. “No, they’re both still single.”

“And your parents?”

“They’re still here in Miami.” She walked toward the kiosk, setting a display of bracelets chiming with a sweep of her hand. “Are you done now?”

The shutter clicked, though his gaze followed her approach. “With the photo shoot? Or with the interrogation?”

“Either. Both.” She stopped in front of the kiosk, looked up where he hovered over her on the chest-high counter. “I should probably get home.”

“You should probably come up here and tell me why you don’t see your sisters more often when thinking about them makes your eyes sparkle.”

She had her life. They had theirs. It wasn’t any more complicated than that. Why was he pressing? “Look close, Finn. What do you see in my eyes now?”

“I see the fire you inherited from your Cuban mother.”

That took her aback. “How do you know my mother is Latina?”

“Your last name is Hammond, and unless you’re divorced, that would be your father’s name.”

She moved up and onto the kiosk’s first step. “Or my parents were never married, and my mother gave us her name after having wildly passionate affairs with a string of Latin lovers.”

Finn unfolded himself from where he was sitting and dangled his legs from the counter. “I might buy it if there wasn’t a Professor Tab Hammond at the University of Miami or an attorney named Marta Diego-Hammond, who’s a partner at a South Beach law firm, and if I wasn’t a PI.”

Livia took another step, wondering what else he’d discovered while digging into her life, wondering why she wasn’t more put off by his nosiness. “You’re awfully cocky for a dick.”

“Two of my favorite words in one sentence.”

And that right there was why she wasn’t. Put off. He did what he did, said what he did, because of who he was. And smart or not, she was crazy about him.

She looked down at the last step that separated them. “If I come up there, it’s not going to be to talk about my sisters, my parents, my love of clothes, or the man who tried to get me out of mine when I was fourteen.”

He didn’t miss a beat. “As long as you take them off for me, I can live with that.”

Her skin grew warm. Her pulse began to race. “You want me to take them off for you? Here? Now?”

He nodded, brought the camera up, and focused. “And I want you to start with your top.”

Her top was a formfitting bodysuit with boy-cut bottoms; the wide neckline was the only way in or out. She took the last step, which brought her into the kiosk, but kept to the far side of the circle and out of his way.

“I think I’d rather start with my skirt. Unless you have some objection to the order in which I shed my clothes.”

He shook the shaggy strands of hair from his forehead and, smiling, brought the camera up to his face. “My only objection is that you’re taking too long.”

She peeled apart the long strip of Velcro that held the scarves at her waist and dropped the skirt to the floor. “Is that better?”

Of course, there was always the possibility that Olivia had agreed to get physical because doing so kept her from having to come up with answers to his hard questions and exposing herself that way. That was fine. For now.

He was a private investigator. He had the patience of ten thousand saints. And he never gave up digging when there was something he was after. But Olivia’s secrets could wait. Right now, what he was after deserved his full attention.

She looked like a dancer. She was wearing a leotard sort of thing, long sleeves, big scooped neck, ending in bottoms that were more short shorts than panties.

And the shoes. Closed toes, straps across her feet, heels that were sturdy without being clunky or thick. A flamenco dancer’s shoes. That was what they looked like.

And she didn’t have on anything else besides the gold hoops and chains.

He had died and gone to heaven. Who knew it existed in the middle of Splash & Flambé? He got off a succession of shots before she responded.

When she did, it was to say, “Cat got your tongue?”

“My tongue, your fingers.”

“My fingers?”

He nodded. “Fingers, hands. Unless there’s a magic word that will get rid of the rest of your clothes.”

She stood with her arms stretched out, her hands on either side of her on the counter, one ankle crossed over the other, one brow arched. “Isn’t there a magic word that covers just about everything?”

That was it? She’d give herself to him so easily? Yeah, he’d never get enough, and he’d get back to thinking about what that meant, but for right now…

“Please?”

And just for good measure, when she reached up and lifted her top from one shoulder, he snapped a shot.

She hesitated briefly, then slid the neckline down, saying, “If you do this, these pictures go nowhere, understand? No one sees them. Ever.”

That wasn’t a problem, because he had grown territorial these last couple of weeks, and he didn’t want anyone else seeing what he’d decided was his.

He was selfish like that. “Not a problem.”

He was glad she insisted then rather than later, because after that? He didn’t have a functioning brain cell to respond. He was all instinct, all body, all sensation. He ceased to exist as anything but what he had growing hard and thick between his legs.

Or so it felt, when he knew the truth was that he wouldn’t be feeling half of what he was if this had been another woman…another woman easing first one arm, then her other, from the sleeves of her top. Another woman sliding it down, over her breasts, to her waist and pausing there.

Another woman letting him look his fill, mentally lick his fill—her tits, they knocked him breathless every time—before pushing the garment to her hips and over her belly, where she wore a small diamond stud.

But this wasn’t another woman. She was his, the one he wanted, and when she shimmied her hips and worked the fabric down her legs, kicking free of the only thing that had covered her, he didn’t think he’d survive.

She stood in front of him, naked save for her shoes, her hands at her hips, one leg cocked to the side, her chin held high, and her eyes hot.

He jumped down from the counter—he didn’t jump as much as ease his way off for fear of injury to the goods—and toed off his shoes as he walked toward her, clicking the camera’s shutter all the while. Once he reached her, he wrapped her in his free arm and pulled her close.

She met his gaze, crushed against him as she was, and went to work on his fly with nimble fingers, freeing the row of brass buttons before reaching inside, lifting his package from his shorts with great care, then lifting one leg and using her shoe to push his jeans to his feet.

When she followed, when she knelt on the floor in front of him, when she took his balls in one hand, his cock in the other, when she wrapped her lips around the full head and teased him with her tongue, yeah, she held his gaze then, too, and it made it really hard for him to remember to lift the camera and focus it on her face.

But he did. He shot frame after frame of her taking him into her mouth, of her tongue flicking over the head of his cock, laving the underside with long, flat strokes. His legs shook; his abs shuddered; his pelvic muscles went all liquid and rubbery. And he shot frame after frame of that, too.

Of his cock bobbing up when she released it. Of the sticky, slick moisture he released, which she spread around and around with her fingertips. It was surreal, seeing everything he was feeling, detached yet involved, observing while experiencing.

And, goddamn, but Olivia Hammond was a gorgeous woman. He could see her eyelashes flutter in half-moons against her cheeks. And her cheeks, the way they moved in and out as she sucked him. Her fingers were hot and the color of brown sugar against his skin, which was flushed to near purple. Her tongue was even hotter.

Suddenly, taking pictures was the last thing on his mind. He closed his eyes, flexed every muscle he could find to control. It was put up or shut up time, and he wasn’t ready to be done. So, he wrapped his hand around the base of his shaft and, with more regret than he could voice, pulled out of her mouth.

He got his bearings as she got to her feet, and he snapped shot after shot of her breasts, framing them so her areolae edged either side and her nipples, with their rings and gold chains, filled the screen.

He moved lower, following the thin line of links where it lay against her belly before looping through the hoop piercing the top of her clit. She was gorgeous, her skin glowing, her intimate flesh glistening.

He could smell her, and he wanted to taste her, that salty, musky marine essence that had grown so familiar. She thwarted him by turning around, and by bending over and spreading her legs.

And what he wanted to do then didn’t require his mouth at all.

Her forearms were crossed on the counter, her forehead resting against them. He moved in behind her, rubbed the head of his cock up and down her slit before sliding inside her, stopped, caught his breath, started again, pausing when she groaned.

“You all right?” he asked.

“Better than.”

“Good.”

“You?”

“Better than better than.”

“I can tell,” she said and wiggled, lifting her head, turning it to the side, and giving him a hell of a come-hither smile.

His eyes rolled back until he couldn’t think. When they returned to front and center, he brought his camera up and held the shutter down, sliding his cock all the way out.

He repeated the process while sliding it all the way in, then found her face, her half-mast eyelids, the O of her parted lips, the tip of her tongue against her teeth.

It was when she began to move that he had to let the camera go. He managed to get it onto the counter behind him without dropping it, a minor miracle, and then he grabbed her hips, gave up watching, and took up feeling for what, he hoped, would be the rest of the night.

He drove into her, and she drove right back, thrusting her hips against his groin and grinding herself tight. And her laugh. God, her laugh. Deep throated and lusty and raw. The sound of pure sex and pure fun. He would’ve laughed, too, if his chest wasn’t aching beyond belief from the strain of holding back.

And then he gave it up. He couldn’t wait any longer. She followed, her laughter turning into a cry of release so powerful, he swore he lost his mind.

He pounded her, buried himself deeply, stopped, shuddered, feeling her convulse and contract and go just as mad as he did, both of them nothing but creatures of sex, one with the other, complete.