Conduct Unbecoming (16 page)

Dante sucked in a shallow, hissing breath and lifted his hips, digging his wallet out of his back pocket.  He pulled out a condom and tossed the wallet onto the floor, tore the foil packet open with his teeth. 

And then the condom was on and he was levering himself up, shoving her silky panties out of the way to push inside her with a low groan and an almost,
almost
rough thrust that just about curled her toes.  Again and again he plunged, until his fast, fierce rhythm - along with a rerun of that trick he did with his thumb in Roxi's parking lot - sent her, sent them
both
, careening over the edge.

Chapter 20

The subtle whir of the ceiling fan cut through the quiet apartment, drying the sweat on Harley’s back and blowing her hair across Dante’s chest, into his face.  He smoothed his hand over the back of her head, down along her spine. 
“Soooo,” he said, drawing it out.

Harley leaned back to get a look at him, raised her eyebrows.  Except for the skirt twisted around her waist and the slightly-worse-for-wear pink panties, Harley was naked.  Dante, on the other hand, was still fully clothed. 
“Don’t you
dare
say you’re sorry.”

“
Sorry?”  Dante snorted, glancing at her bare breasts for a second - or twenty - before he looked back up into her eyes.  “
Hell
no, I’m not sorry.  I mean, yeah, for the lack of finesse maybe, but other than that?  No.  Absolutely not.”

Harley lifted her shoulders. 
“I’m not complaining.” 
Far
from it
.  The thought sent a wave of heat creeping up her chest, her neck.  She did her damndest to ignore it. 

“
Maybe you should.  Though in my defense,” Dante moved his hands to her ass, his fingers kneading at her flesh, “a lot of the... frenzy was really your fault.”

“
My fault?  How do you figure?”  His hands were still on her ass, and she had to really focus to keep from purring.

“
You overdid it on the hot quota, babe.”

“
Shut up.”  She laughed - something she would have sworn wasn't possible an hour ago - shook her head.

“
Well, I’m not gonna lie.”  He smiled back, slyly. “That probably wasn’t my best work.”

“
Hmmm.”  Harley put her hand on his chest, slowly brushed her fingertips back and forth over his skin.  “And I suppose you think you can do better.”

“
Damn right I can.  Well, at the very
least
I can promise you more... longevity.”  He shifted his hips, letting her feel that he was already hard again before he began to ease his hand back inside her panties.  “Shit,” Dante hissed, when his cellphone rang.  “I gotta take this.”  He made a grab for it.  “Might be the hospital.”

“
Um, sure.”  Harley climbed off his lap, feeling like an idiot.  God, what was it about being naked that automatically knocked at least twenty points off a person’s IQ?  She untangled her skirt as best she could and straightened her panties, went in search of the rest of her clothes.

Her bra turned up stuffed down between the sofa cushions, her T-shirt under the kitchen table.  It was silly, she knew - considering the circumstances - but she turned her back towards him while she put them on, watched him over her shoulder as he carried on his conversation.

She could just make out bits and pieces of it. 
Traumatic brain
something or other, and
impaired cognition
, something about
stabilization
or
rehabilitation
.  When he hung up the phone and turned back to face her she couldn’t decide if he looked hopeful, or resigned.

“
They say he’s stable enough for surgery.”  He dragged a hand over his face.  “I need to be there.”

“
Of course you do.  Should I... do you want me to come with you?”

“
Nah.”  Dante shook his head.  “No way of knowing how long it’ll be.” 

Harley walked him to the door, her hands clasped behind her back. 
“Will you call me?” she asked.  “Let me know how he does?”

“
How about if I come back?”  Dante shifted his weight from one foot to the other, lifted a shoulder.  “I feel like a real asshole running out on you now.”

“
I’ll be fine.”  She smiled up at him, melting a little inside, rocked up on her toes to kiss him again.  “But come back when you’re done.  I believe I’ve been promised longevity.”

* * * *

Harley groaned and leaned back against the apartment door, then whacked her head back against it with a resounding thud.  Longevity?  Oh my God, did she really just invite Dante back for
longevity
?

So apparently all it took to turn a somewhat uptight
brainiac into a blithering idiot was toe-curling, mind-numbing sex.  Who knew?

Determined to put it out of her mind, she showered and dressed in record time. 
Was still drying her hair when she scooped up her phone to dial Sybil.  “Harley,” her boss said before she could even speak.  “Talk to me.  Where are you on your piece?”

“
Well, I’ve got good news and bad news.”  Harley tossed the towel aside.  “Which do you want first?”

Harley could hear the faint, distant buzz of voices, the pandemonium of the city sidewalk.  She could picture Sybil, standing right smack in the middle of it, a scowl on her face. 
“Give me the bad,” she said, “and give it to me fast.”

“
The lead on the brother dried up.  There’s just... nothing there.”  Harley winced.  She hated lying to Sybil, hated it.  The fact that it seemed so
necessary
didn’t make it any easier.  “Total dead end.”

“
Shit.  Maybe if you-”

“
Seriously, Sybil,” Harley cut her off.  “It’s a dead end.  But the
good
news is that there’s definitely a story here with Lorenzo.  He’s in surgery now, so I guess, theoretically, I may even be able to talk to him tomorrow.”  Totally pulled
that
one out of her ass.

“
Do what you can, girlfriend.”  Then Sybil was on the move again - Harley could tell by the subtle change in her breathing - hanging up before Harley could say good-bye.

Chapter 21

Dante was exhausted, he was
beyond
exhausted.  There was a word for that, wasn’t there?  That level of weariness where your vision blurred and you felt like you might throw up, where your head spun hard enough that you had to brace yourself, just to stay upright?  He knuckled his eyes hard enough to see spots and tried to think of it, but kept coming up empty.  Shit. 

Whatever it was, that’s what this felt like, what
he
felt like.  Which probably meant he ought to be somewhere else.  Somewhere where it didn’t matter that he couldn’t function, let alone think straight. 

Because on the other side of this door was that thin ice people always warned you about, the tightrope just begging to be walked, the fire that no one in their right mind would touch.  And here
he
was, a total idiot, just dying to stick his hand into the flames.

He shook his head and
laughed, a quick, disparaging burst of air.  Reached out a hand, knocked.

She answered within seconds, like she’d been waiting for him.  Wearing a familiar pair of old boxers with the elastic rolled down to hip-level, the equally familiar ribbed undershirt scooped low in the front, at the arms.  It left her chest and shoulders exposed, not to mention crescent-shaped slivers of the sides of her breasts.  He could see the outline of her nipples through the threadbare cotton, too.  It took every ounce of fortitude he possessed to tear his eyes away from them.

Her cheeks were rosy with sleep, her pale eyes drowsy, heavy-lidded.  She smiled up at him, took his hand.

“
How is he?” she asked, pulling him inside.

“
They said it went well.  He’s still unconscious, but his vitals are good.”  He shook his head, lifted a shoulder.  “Whatever that means.  So now we just... wait and see.”

“
Can I get you anything?” she asked, glancing back over her shoulder as she lead him to the sofa.  If she’d noticed him staring at her ass, she didn’t say so.  “A beer?  Iced tea, maybe?”

“
I’m good.”  He sat down, stretched his legs out in front of him, sighed.  They’d had sex on this very sofa just hours ago.   The memory made it necessary to adjust his jeans a little.  

She turned to face him, angling her knees in his direction before she tucked her feet under her butt.  He'd never thought of feet as being pretty before, but hers were.  Long and narrow, with bright, candy apple red toenails.

“I did a little research on Bobby Vega while you were gone.  Apparently he-”

  
              He lay his head back and turned to look at her, cutting her off before she could finish.  “Can we... not talk about it right now?”  He dragged his hand over his face, closed his eyes.  “I’m just so fucking tired.”

             
They sat there for a moment, neither of them speaking, before Harley took his hand and pulled him off the sofa.  “Come with me,” she said quietly, lacing her fingers with his, tugging him behind her.

             
“Where are we going?”

“
To bed.”  When she glanced back over her shoulder at him he could have sworn he felt something loosen in his chest.  He let out a slow, ragged breath, nodded.

The place wasn’t big, but she kept his hand in hers while she
lead him through it, a subtle reminder that he wasn’t alone.  At least not tonight.

She closed her laptop, flipped off lights.  Even stopped to scoop food into Tolstoy’s dish, but she kept her fingers still entwined with his.  When they stepped into the bedroom and she finally let go, he felt the loss of it.

“You okay?” she asked.

“
Uh huh.”  Curious, he glanced around the room.  A bed and a couple of dressers, a nightstand.  Big enough for the basics, but cozy.  Girlier than he would have expected, but it suited her.  Pale, barely-pink walls and an intricately carved wooden headboard, layers of crisp, white bedding neatly folded at the end of her bed - in deference to the heat, most likely - and a rumpled sheet that looked like she’d just crawled out from underneath it.  It smelled good, too.  Like her perfume, clean and fresh and vaguely citrusy.

She lowered the blinds before she climbed into bed, rolled up on one elbow to pat the spot next to her in invitation. 
Watched him take off his shoes, his T-shirt.  Fanned her face with her fingers when he shucked his jeans, making him laugh for what seemed like the first time in weeks, even months.

He climbed in next to her and pulled her into his side, tucking her head against his shoulder. 
Kissed her hair, breathing in the smell of her shampoo.  “This is nice.”

“
Mmmm-hmmm.”  The sound she made was more purr than sigh, and quite possibly the hottest thing he’d ever heard in his life.  He was already feeling the affects of it when she scooted closer, executing a clever move that positioned her thigh over his.  To make matters worse - or better, depending on your point of view - she ran her hand down his chest, gliding slowly towards his briefs.

He groaned, snagging her hand to slow her progress. 
“Uh uh,” he murmured.  “We were gonna take it slow this time, remember?” 

“
Right,” she said, her voice nowhere near steady.  “I believe you mentioned something about longevity?”

“
I did.”  He lifted the bottom of her undershirt, just a little, pressed his mouth to her belly button. “But for longevity,” he said, levering her torso up for a second, long enough to peel the undershirt the rest of the way off, “you have to be completely relaxed.”  He tossed the shirt over his shoulder.  “Better?”

“
Yes,” she whispered.

“
Good.”  She arched her back prettily, and he moved his hands over her skin, his mouth.  Touching her everywhere, her breasts and ribs, the long, graceful column of her throat, the sweet, subtle curve of her waist.

When he rolled a rosy, pebbled nipple into his mouth, she moaned.  And it wasn’t one of those dainty little lady-like moans, either.  It was a
fuck me, fuck me now
moan, and the sound of it nearly did him in.