Trouble (20 page)

Yet her body seethed with unfulfilled desires, unspoken words and unfinished business, and she felt like her too-tight skin was suffocating her by slow degrees.

She fished the bobby pins out of her hair until it fell down around her shoulders, resisting the urge to scream only because it was nearly midnight and her neighbors probably wouldn't appreciate it.

Her hands, she noticed dully, were unsteady.

Knock-knock-knock
.

Startled, she wheeled around and listened hard, the last of the pins slipping out of her fingers and clinking on the floor. For an arrested beat or two, all she heard was her heart's relentless pounding, but then:

Knock-knock-knock
.

The second she heard the quiet rapping again, she flew to her front door, knowing it was Mike.

“Who is it?” she called breathlessly anyway.

“You know who it is.”

She opened the door, something inside her soaring wild and free, and there he was in his shirtsleeves with his bow tie undone and dangling on either side of his collar, several inches of his shirt open to reveal a snowy undershirt and his hands shoved deep in his pockets.

There was no greeting. Just a hard and lingering once-over as he brushed past her and walked into her apartment.

Dara
fumbled with the door, taking two tries to swing it shut because all her attention was focused on Mike. It didn't help that the unsteadiness in her hands had graduated to trembling. Her control slipped another few notches when they faced off in her tiny foyer and he pinned her in place with a narrow-eyed glare.

A chill shivered down her spine, but her blood ran hot. Nerve endings danced to life beneath her skin. All the tender places in her body—belly, sex, breasts, nipples and lips—tightened with delicious expectation of things she didn't dare allow herself to consider.

Yeah, she was in big trouble—the kind she could no longer weasel her way out of or ignore. Her back was, literally and figuratively, up against a wall, and there was a healthy portion of relief swirling around in her cocktail of emotions.

This was Mike as she'd never seen him before, teetering on the edge of his control with one foot already off the precipice. A dangerous Mike who seemed to think she'd committed some heinous offense and was here to demand justice, if not extract revenge.

She waited, the trembling inside her jumping from her hands to her knees.

“I asked you the other day,” he began, his low voice as seductive as a Barry White song and as dangerous as a hissing cobra. “Do you remember? I said, ‘What are we going to do about this, Dara?' Remember that?”

Some primitive survival instinct told her not to answer, to be still and forget about blinking, moving or doing anything likely to enrage him further, which was everything.

His cruel mouth twisted. “And you said, ‘Nothing.'” He paused, his tone raspy. “Is this ringing a bell, Dara?”

Too impatient to wait for answers she wasn't about to give, he paced away. Came right back. Crept closer, deep into her personal space.

Standing her ground was one of the hardest things she'd ever done.

“You stood there and you told me, ‘
Nothing,'
like we could ignore it.
Ignore it
. Just like
that
.” He snapped his fingers and laughed, a humorless bark that ricocheted off the bare walls. “That was like saying we could ignore a hydrogen bomb detonating in the backyard, don't you think?”

She kept her mouth shut.

Sneering at her continuing refusal to engage, he pulled one of his hands out of his pocket, shoved it through his hair and rammed it back into the pocket.

The movement drew her attention to his heavy arousal.

She gasped helplessly, trying not to stare and staring anyway.

This seemed to set him off.

“Does this
look
like I'm doing a good job ignoring you?” He grabbed himself, rubbing her face in what she'd done to him, but it was as though his fingers had found the slick cleft between her thighs and stroked her there. A moan rose up her throat and lingered in her mouth, waiting for the second she relaxed her vigilance so it could escape.

Frozen, her back still glued to the door, she closed her eyes so she could block out his sensuous mouth and raw intensity, so she would no longer see the evidence of the way his body strained for her.

But closing her eyes didn't stop the lurid images from dancing through her brain:

Mike naked in her arms, the two of them tangled together in her bed;

Mike inside her, endlessly thrusting, finally easing the insistent ache in her sex whenever she thought of him;

Mike on top of her, his heavy, sweat-slicked body owning hers, his taste saturating her mouth.

Mike. God,
Mike
.

When she raised her heavy lids again, he was still there, closer than ever, his eyes a watchful glitter, and her passion for him was no longer anything she could keep at heel on a leash or blocked behind a wall. Her need for him escaped its iron lockdown and streaked out, into the world, before she could capture it again.

“Mike
.
”

The husky caress in her voice gentled him; she saw it in the way his expression softened and the tension eased out of his shoulders.

“You need to understand, sweetheart.” The velvety murmur—so close now, so insistent—was as seductive as the endearment. “It's all
you
. I can't see straight. I can't sleep. I can't eat. I can barely work.” Shaky laugh. “And I can't stay away from you. Do you get that?”

This time, for once, there was no hesitation.

“Yes.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes.”

He crept close enough for her to see the fine sheen of perspiration across his forehead as his gaze dropped to her mouth.

“So I'm asking you again, and I want a real answer this time. No more mixed messages. Don't look at me like I'm crazy. What. Are we going. To do. About
this
?”

Dara hesitated.

Even now he was leaving it entirely up to her. The ball was in her court, and hers alone. If she told him no, he would leave and that would be the end of the matter.

But she did not want him to leave. The thought of him touching her was terrifying, but the thought of him leaving was infinitely worse.

As if in slow motion, she peeled herself away from the door and crept toward him.

His eyes widened. His breath hissed with surprise.

She stopped right in front of him, where the scalding heat from his body pulsed over her. Watching his eyes darken, she moved half a step closer, so her entire body pressed along his, breasts to chest, belly to groin, thigh to thigh.

Mike stiffened.

Dara crooned as she reached for his body, which felt strange and new, but also familiar and comfortable. Thrilling. She planted her hands on his sides beneath his jacket and slid them up his chest, where his heart thundered under her fingertips. Her lips found the hollow in his neck beneath his jawbone and nuzzled him, soaking up his delicious, just-showered scent.

Mike gasped.

Finally, she stroked his hard jaw with both hands, savoring the prickle of his five o'clock shadow beneath her fingertips.

His face twisted as his eyes rolled closed.

She tipped her chin up, pulled him down, and slowly, painstakingly, fitted her lips to his.

She brushed her mouth over his … once … twice … three times.

He never moved, although she could feel his gathering energy, as if something deep within was sprinting toward a critical mass.

But when she touched her tongue to his lips, he sprang to frantic life, crying out. She laughed with triumph as he pulled her into his crushing embrace, too feverish to be gentle. A large hand closed over her sensitive nape, anchoring her, pulling her closer, and she went eagerly. His mouth—hot, wet, and demanding—slanted over hers, insisting on complete surrender. She gave it. She parted her lips and greedily sucked him in, savoring the flavor of wine in his mouth. Her hands went to the back of his neck, then into the coarse silk of his hair. Every new taste and texture stoked the fire in her blood until she felt she was burning alive, melting inside her skin. Tormented, she pressed her body against his until every part of her was hermetically sealed to every part of him.

And still she couldn't get him close enough.

Mike's frenzied hands roamed her body the whole time, his fingers first twining in her hair, then massaging her bare shoulders, then dipping to the small of her back. He cupped her ass, his hands strong and insistent.

Love words poured out of his mouth in an endless flow. “You feel so good, angel. I want you so much. I want you—”

“I want you. I want you.”

He gripped her butt and, lifting her on her toes, insistently rubbed his raging erection against her sex. His hard, demanding body found the place at the top of her thighs that answered his touch and begged for more.

“Mike.” The tension spiraled inside her until she thought she'd explode and shower to the floor in a thousand shimmering pieces. “I need you, Mike. Please.
Please
.”

With an animalistic sound that was purely male, he backed her against the wall and stooped to press his lips to the valley between her breasts, his hands squeezing them together.

“Ah, God,” she cried.

His hot breath singed her skin. His mouth found her nipple and bit gently, sending a piercing jolt of pleasure directly to her sex.

“God.”
She tightened her arms around his neck, holding his head in place.

Straightening and murmuring incomprehensibly, he rubbed his lips all over her face before finding her mouth again. Rough and greedy, he consumed her in insistent nips and licks.

She reveled in it.

Sliding her hands over his shoulders and beneath the heavy silk of his jacket, she pushed it down his arms and out of her way, but his shirt, crisp with starch, blocked her. Dara had never been so frustrated. She wanted to rip his shirt open down the front and hear the satisfying skitter of his buttons on her floor. She jerked the undershirt down, clearing a patch of smooth brown skin that her mouth and tongue could reach.

Ecstasy.

God, his skin was luscious. Smooth. Warm. Salty-delicious.

When she slid her open mouth up the side of his neck to his ear and sucked his lobe, he made a noise that was half groan, half choking laugh,

“You were made for me, Dara.” His hand found hers and fitted it to the hard, hot, heavy ridge in the front of his pants. “See what you do to me?”

She gripped and rubbed him eagerly, desperate to explore.

He gasped, stiffening.

A wondrous sense of power ran through her.
She'd
done this to him. She rubbed him again. “Do you like that?”

Without warning, he hit his limit. His eyes glinted dangerously.
“Don't
.
”

He grabbed both her hands and slammed them over her head, pinning them to the wall.

Dara frowned. She didn't like being interrupted but, on the other hand, his power and strength—his domination—thrilled her. She tested him anyway, trying to break free.

“Let go.”

Mike ignored this, switching her wrists to a single-handed grip Houdini couldn't have escaped. His other hand, meanwhile, slid down her side to her thigh, finding the slit in her dress.

She tensed, all the breath whooshing out of her lungs.

A wicked light flickered on in his eyes.

“Mike,”
she tried.

He didn't pay her the slightest attention. His fingers glided slowly … slowly … under her dress and up the inside of her thigh, stopping at the edge of her panties.

A strangled sound erupted from somewhere inside her. “Please,” she said, panting.

He stooped until they were face-to-face, close enough for her to see how primitive and merciless his expression was.

“You like torture?” he demanded quietly. “Is that it?”

His fingers inched under her panties and skimmed her flesh. Barely.

She whimpered, a needy little sound far beyond her control.

“Do you like that, Dara?”

His fingers touched her again, firmer now.

She cried out, squirming.

“I asked you a question.” His thumb found the center of her very existence and rubbed it, circling. “Do you like that?”

“Yes!”

“Should I stop?”

The tension grew and grew. She pumped her hips, following where he led.

“Please, Mike—”

“Should I stop?”

“No! I …”

She shattered, crying out his name over and over again as the pleasure ripped through her with no beginning and no end. Her knees weakened, but he let her go and caught her around the waist before she could collapse in a puddle on the floor.