Perilous Curves Collection (BBW Romance) (10 page)

No, his body pressed up against me was clouding things. I brought my palms up and pushed at his chest, but he was too solid for me to move.

His fingers threaded through my hair and he bent so that our foreheads were touching. "I tried to call you at the hospital when Tonio was still alive."

"I don't want to hear this!" I turned my head to the side, tried to squirm away. My shoulder and neck wouldn't allow any quick or forceful moves, so I just closed my eyes to shut him out.

"I can't not tell you, baby." His free hand cupped my chin but he didn't force me to look at him. His touch was careful as his lips brushed against my ear. "Everything happened so fast."

I shook my head as I whispered my accusation. "You had to wait ten days to marry her, and then you had two decades."

"I tried to sneak out before the ceremony to talk to you." His fingers caressed one cheek as his mouth caught a tear escaping my eye. "Nicole caught me -- busted a bottle and put it to her stomach."

I sucked a deep breath in, wishing desperately I could unhear every last word.

"I called again -- after the wedding to make sure Gabriella had told you. Your father…"

Dante trailed off. If he was telling the truth, if he had really called and daddy answered…

The breath I was holding in broke free. I didn't have the will to pull another one in. Gabriella had lied to him and me. Daddy had lied. I shook my head -- Dante still had almost twenty years of keeping his silence. If he had come to me after the wedding or Alex's birth, maybe we could have worked things out. But each day after that was another day of him rejecting me.

"Shh…" He kissed my cheek then closer to my mouth as his thumb started to tease my lips apart.

His other hand slid down, traced the push of my breast and then the heavy dip and curve of my stomach and hip. His hand slid behind me, his grip on my ass possessive as he slowly forced me to turn my face toward his.

He cinched me to him, our bodies touching from my breasts to halfway down my thighs. I could feel him through his jeans, his cock thick and long as it pressed against my lower stomach. I moaned, unable to stop the sound. The hand gripping my ass slid around front to rub a thick knuckle slowly up and down the center seam of my dress pants.

My head dipped back as a wave of need washed through me. His lips landed on my throat to lightly suck the flesh as his fingers became more insistent against my mound.

How many times had we started like this? Me pushed against something as I tried to deny my arousal while Dante drew it out stroke by stroke.

I reached for his hand, stopping him. My voice wet and raw, I tried to warn him away. "You're not getting me to stay on past the week, Dante. You can't seduce me into it."

"This isn't about the case, Livvy." A deft twist of his wrist and his palm cupped my pussy again. He gave a hard squeeze and tried to kiss me.

I turned my head. "Everything you or I do right now should be about the case."

"It's driving me crazy, Liv." He growled, no hint of retreat in the sound. "Don't tell me it's not doing the same to you."

He pressed on my chin until I was looking at him again. He dropped his hand to my throat, his thumb lightly stroking one side of my neck as my body started to take control.

"I know that face, baby." He kissed me again, slow and soft, his tongue making its own strokes inside my mouth as the hand between my legs started to rub little circles against the fabric covering my clit.

"I remember how wet you would get, love."

I gasped at the slide of my zipper then groaned as his fingers found me. I reached for him again, intent on pushing him away. My hands curled around his shoulders as my body started to vibrate.

"And that little shake before you surrender." He purred the words against my lips. His fingers moved up and down, in and out. My hips took up the rhythm, my pussy contracting when he entered to squeeze him tight.

Another kiss, rougher as we both started to grind, his hand trapped between our bodies as he worked the fingers deeper and thicker into my cunt.

I couldn't…

So wrong…I couldn't…

My body jerked. I rose up onto my toes. A groan clawed its way out of my throat. Dante kept rubbing and pressing, heightening my climax with sharp kisses and bites that I could feel from the hard peaks of my nipples down to the tips of my fingers and toes.

"You're still my girl, Liv," he whispered hot against my face. "The only one I've ever wanted."

Short mewling whimpers were my only reply. I was still coming. My pussy flooded his palm. I heard the squish of my juicy flesh as Dante found another sweet spot and attacked until a long shuddering moan left me.

"I want you, love." He kissed my neck, the hand wrapped around it dropping to knead my breast. He plucked at the nipple through the layers of fabric, his eyes riveted on the roll and bounce of my body as I drew his fingers deeper.

No control. Poof-gone-vanished. This was exactly what I had been afraid of.

I started to cry as another climax slammed through me, my tears a mix of pleasure and heartache. He tried to stop the tears, his hands slowing as he kissed my cheeks and mouth. Little breaks of
hush baby
splitting the space between kisses.

"Love--"

"No!" I pushed him away, my tears coming harder. Evading his attempt to hold me, I set my clothes straight. Moving to my desk, I shoved papers in my bag, then grabbed the phone off the charger.

"Olivia, baby…"

I stopped moving long enough to glare at him for a second then I threw my door open. I had been an idiot to let him in. He could stay -- I was leaving. And I'd be damned if I would be anywhere alone with him again.

He followed after me, making soft calming sounds as he tried to caress and arm or cheek. I didn't let him make contact again. Out in the hall, I locked the outer door. Pressing the elevator call button, I prayed the lift wasn't empty.

The doors opened and three people stared out at us. I could tell from their expressions I looked a mess. I could just imagine the streaked mascara. I stepped inside, shouldered pass them until I was tucked into the back corner. Dante slid in next to me, ignoring the people around us as he watched me.

The elevator stopped at the next floor and two more people got on, one with a stroller. Dante moved closer. The elevator bounced on restart. He curled an arm around my back to steady me.

"Alex," I said, keeping my voice low but firm.

"I don't need reminded." He lowered his head and breathed the words against the side of my face and neck, reigniting the flame that had been burning through me minutes before.

One person got off and three on at the second floor, pushing Dante even closer against me. I could smell his cologne and feel his body heat and the possessive grip of his hand around my hip.

When the doors opened to the ground floor, I shoved my way past everyone else and onto the street where my car was parked. Dante stayed right behind me every inch of the way. I clicked the door unlocked but he beat me to the handle, holding it as if he was either going to open it or keep me there all night.

"You have to think about Alex," I hissed. "Not...the past."

Or five minutes ago when I was creaming in his hand.

"I am thinking about Alex." His free hand curled around my shoulder. "I'm thinking about Alex, you, and the future, Liv."

My back was to the traffic, the rush hour commuters speeding past me as the office buildings around us emptied for the day. Dante let go of the handle and pulled me closer to the car and his body.

"It's a public street, Dante."

"I know, baby--"

"Stop it." I tried to squirm free but he kept me drawn tight to his body.

"No." He dipped his head until we were face to face. "I'm not going to stop calling you baby or love, not when you're this fucking close." He took a deep breath, his head lifting and turning as he brushed his lips across my forehead. "I can think about you
and
Alex. I've done it every day of his life. I won't ever stop thinking about you, Liv, and there's not a thing you can do to change that."

His speech finished, Dante lowered his mouth to mine for a final, light kiss that still managed to sear my lips. He was restraining himself, only barely, but I knew he wanted more by the way his hand danced against my side and his slow, reluctant withdrawal before he finally opened the car door.

He tucked me, still reeling from the last half hour, into my car and then he walked away.

Chapter Ten

I waited in my car for my head to stop spinning before I pulled into traffic. My heart threatened to override my mind. Little flushes of heat broke out across my skin and large sections of flesh rippled with goose bumps as I remembered what Dante had just done to me.

My need to find the killer had magnified. Dante had no intention of letting me go -- not while Alex was still in jail. Different story, I was certain, once the case was closed.

So close it!

Right -- find the killer and then watch Dante walk away again before the hurt was too deep to heal.

With my hands too shaky to even fit the key in the ignition, I decided the car was as good a place for a strategy session as the office. Leaning my head back, I closed my eyes. Maybe the vertigo I felt would help me see what I hadn't been able to see at either of the crime scenes or with the witnesses.

I imagined Max, remembered his worried gaze when he asked if I was on the pipe. He didn't like the pipe and I hadn't smelled any other drug on him. So why was he at the shelter? And why had he gotten caught outside it after curfew? My mind drifted across the street from Arby's. I had the vague memory of a liquor store there. Was Max's vice alcohol? Had he shuffled and hacked his way from the shelter to the liquor store, had a pint and fallen asleep in the alley, waking up after curfew?

I needed to go back to Arby's, to the liquor store and the other surrounding shops. I grabbed the phone and dialed Ivy.

After four rings, the wrong voice answered. "Hello?"

"Momma, what are you doing answering Ivy's phone?"

"Ivy?"

"Ivy, momma, she's spent all day with you."

"You mean the maid?"

I groaned. At least momma still had no trouble remembering me. "Just call Ivy's name for me, I need to talk to her."

She complied, giving such a loud, good ole Southern come-to-dinner call without taking the phone away from her mouth that I felt my eardrum retreat. I yanked the cell away from my face and waited until I heard Ivy take the phone.

"This is Ivy."

"Hey, do you think you can stay late?" Ivy was married with two teenaged kids and a husband, so I hated asking. "Don't know how late."

"Only if you tell me you have a hot date with a rich man."

I sighed, half wishing it was true. Instead, I was trying my best to disentangle myself from a hot, rich male who still knew how to deliver mind blowing orgasms even if he was faking it to get his son out of jail. "Best I can offer is overtime and something from the liquor store."

There was silence on the other end as Ivy evaluated her bargaining position. "Jack Daniels, single-barrel. Ed'll expect me to put out if he has to cook dinner for the kids tonight and..." she dropped her voice to a whisper, "If I have to sleep with my husband, he better have whiskey dick."

I laughed, thinking about all the Amish and other inspirational romances on momma's bedside table. "I'm not sure you have to whisper that. Momma sure knows what whiskey is, but you might as well be speaking Spanish for the other."

Ivy laughed. "So it's a deal?"

"Deal," I laughed back and said good-bye. Hanging up, I called Craig while I pulled into traffic.

"Where are you?"

"Just finishing up my beef and cheddar, which you're paying for since the manager wouldn't let me stay without buying anything."

"Can you see across the street?"

Craig gave me a cheddar clogged, "Yes."

"What's there other than the liquor store?"

"An out-of-business bookstore and," he paused, his gaze jumping to the next shop. "An out-of-business jewelry store."

That two out of the three storefronts across the street were empty didn't surprise me. I'd taken a small start-up loan for my business coming home. The lender had given me an ugly set of statistics about failure rates. In return, I gave him an even uglier set of statistics on rising crime rates in Masonville and the rest of the state.

"Well, finish your sandwich and meet me at the liquor store."

"Liv, you don't have to get me drunk if you want to tango," Craig cracked.

I rolled my eyes, even though he couldn't see it over the phone. "I assure you, my intentions are professional, although hopefully video will be involved."

"Fuck," Craig growled, more at himself than at me. "Yeah, he's got a fish bowl outside the door. Sorry Liv, I'm getting a little nine-to-five in my mentality."