Dead and Disorderly (Behind the Blue Line Series Book 2) (8 page)

She turned to face him, winding her arms around his neck as she pulled him down to kiss her. He touched her face, always amazed at how soft she was and wondering if she was that soft all over, tilting her chin up for a better angle as she offered him her lips.

Nico wound his fingers in her hair as their tongues teased and tangled, loving both its silkiness and its possessiveness as the strands curled around his fingers attempting to keep him in place as Nahia pressed closer against him. The hand he’d kept at her waist slid up, easily bypassing the bottom of her flowy black shirt and he felt her whole body surge against him as he spread his hand over the unbearably supple skin of her lower back.

His body reacted predictably, the feel of her against him sizzling through his nerves at lightning speed, and he did his damnedest to devour her with his kiss. When they parted, it was only for a moment of sweet oxygen before he sealed his mouth over hers again. Her taste robbed him of anything but a desire for more. More kisses, touches, and sighs, it was all he could do to keep them both upright and clothed since they were, in fact, in the middle of a public foot bridge in the middle of downtown.

He pulled back, resting his forehead against hers, his lungs burning and he could not be moved to care.

“I don’t suppose you live in one of those apartments,” she remarked around the tiny gasps that were making him nuts. She inclined her head toward the apartments behind her and beyond them on the other side of the bridge.

He shook his head and brushed the hairs back from her face that had been picked up and blown by a sudden light breeze. The moon was now bright and full, though her light showed the silhouettes of the heavy clouds that would eventually overtake her. “Your place?”

“10
th
and New Jersey,” she answered instantly. Her eyes glittered in the moonlight and she shook her head to release her hair to the breeze with a contented smile on her face. 

It was close, closer by several miles than his place, but before he started down that road, he had to know she was on the same page. “I don’t want you to think… It wasn’t my intention to…that is, I didn’t bring you out here to…” Every sentence he started was completely wrong, attesting to the blood and subsequent oxygen going other places in his body than his brain.

“Seduce me?” Her grin blossomed into the one he’d seen at dinner, a cross between amusement and devilish glee. “Fine. I didn’t want to have to do this, but you leave me no choice.”

Nahia pulled him down for a too brief kiss, her hand wandering from his neck down to his chest. He held his breath as her hand drifted lower and lower until it settled at his belt, hooking into the belt loop where his badge normally rode. She looked so serious as she followed the path of her hand’s caress with her eyes, until they, too, stopped at his belt. “Do what?” He was barely breathing, the idea of being with her overloading his brain.

“If you take me home,” she started, tugging gently with each word. Her eyes suddenly shifted to his, ensnaring him in their mysterious depths. “I can seduce you.”

He blinked at her, not able to form a cogent response, but he didn’t need to be told twice. They were off the bridge and heading back to the car at almost double time. Even in a rush, he still opened the door for her, more a curse than a benefit as she paused to pull him into another kiss as she raked her fingernails gently down his chest before she took her seat. She was going to be the death of him. If he needed any more proof, that did it.

The ride to Nahia’s house was completed with a speed that should have set records, and Nico’s hand on her knee. Not moving, just warming her through the denim, she lay her hand over his, gently running her nails up and down the sensitive skin of his inner wrist. They didn’t speak for the whole journey.

She actually appreciated the relative quiet, save the faint strains of music from the radio, because it gave her a chance to think. She wasn’t going to change her mind, nor was she unduly influenced by the fact that their date had ended in the parking lot of a nice hotel, but she wanted to work through her reasons in her mind so there weren’t any questions when she woke up the next day.

Maybe it was the moonlight, maybe it was the kiss on the bridge, hell, maybe it was the pasta, but the connection to him she felt was real and she wanted to explore it. Right now, and hopefully without clothing. The trepidation she’d felt after dinner was gone, evaporated in the face of the blistering heat between them. Maybe it was just a physical attraction, but everything about them, from the first encounter until now, felt different than anything else she’d experienced.

He stopped in her designated parking space behind her building. It was a spot off a tiny street lined by a bunch of cars. No one really knew the postage stamp-sized lot existed unless they lived there, since the ground floor of the front of the building was a yoga studio and a relatively funky thrift store/café.

The engine died, leaving them in somewhat anxious silence. Nico turned to her, his hand on her knee moving only to lace with her fingers. “Um… Will your car be okay? I mean, we could—”

His voice died at her slow grin. “My car will be fine.” She reached over and pulled the keys from the ignition, depositing them gently on his knee. “I don’t plan on going anywhere else tonight.”

Nico watched her in the dark confines of the car, his eyes moving over her like a silent caress before he got out of the car and came over to open her door. They didn’t speak until she led him up two flights of stairs.

“Third floor walk-up? Damn, I feel like I’m back home.” He didn’t even sound winded.

She laughed, but didn’t comment, since it was taking all her concentration to get her keys in the lock. He never left her side, and she could feel his heat and presence at her back as she finally gained entry to her place.

Nahia didn’t even get a chance to hit the lights or hang up her keys, because as soon as the door closed and locked, he was there, in front of her, hands braced on either side of her head. He nuzzled her nose and softly brushed his lips back and forth over hers as her belongings slipped unnoticed to the floor of the entryway. She raised her hand to his neck to play in his soft black hair as he deepened the kiss inch by infinitesimal inch.

His hand moved from the door to her shoulder before gliding down to her waist to toy with the hem of her shirt. Her moan at the feel of his fingertips on the skin of her waist, their heat not stopping at her back this time, but lazily trailing up until he cupped her breast.

Nico swallowed her moan with his insistent kiss, their tongues dancing as his thumb skated back and forth across the stiff peak of her nipple. When they broke for air, he immediately began to kiss and nibble down her jaw to the sensitive spot just below her ear. His shaky, labored breathing matched her own, and the feel of his stubble scraping against her delicate skin made her knees weak.

When he raised his head to look at her, his dark eyes seemed to catch the faint streetlight from across the room and glitter dangerously, making her stomach flutter. His palm against her back was scalding as she walked them to her bedroom, beyond a set of French doors just inside the hallway to their right.

The combined light of the streetlight below and the moonlight cast the room in a silver glow as they paused to kiss again in this doorway. Nahia’s fingers started on the tiny buttons of his shirt, doing her best not to rend the garment in two, though it was a struggle around his attempts to deal with her shirt as well. When both finally hit the floor, they came together again in another scorching kiss. She bit his bottom lip, drawing a hiss of pleasure until Nico threaded his fingers through her hair and pulled her head back, exposing her neck to his attentions.

Dizzy with the sensations, she didn’t realize he’d walked her back to her bed until her knees betrayed her and her butt hit the mattress with a thump. Looking up from her spot eye level to his belt, across his ridged stomach up to his mischievous grin, she took her time appreciating the new view before she reached for his belt.

Nico found Nahia’s look of concentration adorable as she fought with the leather and stainless steel at his waist. Once she’d vanquished it, he stepped between her spread knees, taking her face in both hands as he sampled her lips again. Full and lush, her mouth was a source of endless fascination for him. As the kiss went on, he subtly moved over her, stretching her out beneath him across the wild-looking bedspread.

His suit pants had long since surpassed comfortable, and he was nothing short of grateful as her nimble fingers opened the fastenings. Leaning up on one arm, he looked down over her, from her black hair fanned out like a halo above her head, her luscious lips and graceful neck, across the vast expanse of creamy skin of her chest and stomach, bisected neatly by her black cotton bra. His mind was singularly focused on her, everything about her, and he had no words for what he was feeling.

Nahia’s eyes followed his every move as he trailed a single finger up from her navel to the clasp in the center of the bra. Nico liked the way her breath caught as he flicked it open, peeling back both cups to reveal her to him. Hers was the body he thought about late at night before he slept, and in the morning in the shower, though his imagination was a piss poor substitute for this moment.

Her skin was warm, and smelled of the same citrus and jasmine of the night before, with a playful touch of whiskey, and her breasts were damn near perfect. Their gazes locked, he slowly lowered his mouth to one tight little peak, almost losing his mind at the way her body arched into him and her fingers drove into his hair to keep him in place.

He lavished the other one with the same attentions, loving the way she squirmed and wriggled beneath him, clawing at his pants and bare back, and grinding against him. It was driving him crazy that they were still both overdressed.

He shifted to the side to tackle the button on her jeans, along with her zipper, delighted to watch the heavy fabric part and give way to a pair of fancifully patterned panties that probably cost more than the total fabric present. A kick of her legs sent the pants flying across the room, leaving her stretched out like a nymph out of a Romantic painting, only hotter.

Nico sat up, quickly toed off his shoes, and shucked his pants, completely uncaring of their rumpled state on the floor. When he turned around, Nahia had moved up and was reclining on the pillows, watching him with a sexy kind of possessiveness, a languid desire that flowed from her to him and back. Her sexy bottom lip held captive between her teeth, she reached out for him, pulling him over to lie next to her.

On their sides, eye to eye, she ran her fingers over him, tracing the lines of his face to his neck and shoulders, leaving nothing but fire in her wake. He wanted so desperately to reach out and pull her beneath him, but he held back, seeing in her exploration a kind of communication, understanding. The idea of a certain sense of rightness passed through his mind again, though the sensations she caused chased the thought right back out again.

Her hand, so small and delicate, starkly lighter than his darker skin in the moonlight, continued its lazy descent, over his stomach quivering from the effort to restrain himself. Right before she moved south of his bellybutton, he grabbed her wrist to still her progress. “I can’t take it.” The voice, so rough and unfamiliar from his throat, practically begged her to stop, to continue.

Nahia’s hand fell away and he missed it immediately. Nico brushed her hair out of her face, moving it behind her ear like he’d seen her do countless times. She touched his hand and he pulled her close in a kiss of possession, branding. He couldn’t remember how he’d moved her, how their limbs became a torrid tangle of push and pull, confession and absolution, but as he slid into her for the first time, the choir singing was a harmony for two as they both sighed at the intensity of the moment.

He moved within her, around her, covering her mouth, neck, and chest in open-mouthed kisses of worship and adoration. Her legs moved higher on his hips as her pleasure increased, her nails scourging his back, and he moved a hand between them to rub her most sensitive spots until he felt the moment when her world shifted. She shattered beneath him, his name torn from her lips in a guttural groan, arching and writhing on the pleasure as he worked to prolong it, his only gift to her, an offering to a goddess from one most unworthy. And when he followed her into oblivion, it was her name on his lips, a blessing, a curse, a permanent scar he would treasure always.

Nico collapsed, rolling to his back and taking her with him, draping her about him like a favorite blanket. For a long time no one spoke, just the sound of their breathing as it moved down the scale from urgent and labored, to serene and perfectly calm. Sometime in that journey, he’d drifted off, only to wake, feeling her fingers, her eternally curious and questing fingers, playing with the chain around his neck that was so much a part of him that he never thought about it.

“Saint Michael?” she asked, sounding sleepy and sated, he noted with masculine pride as she fingered the tiny silver medals on the chain.

“And Saint Dominic.” He’d gotten the medals from his Nonna at different times in his life, at his graduation from college, and again from the police academy, and he wore them with pride as symbols of his place in life. Saint Michael the protector, and Saint Dominic the scientist, both of them on his neck, an explanation of his basic nature displayed in holy jewelry.

Nahia hummed in understanding and then yawned. “I’ll ask you about it when we wake up.” She then pulled up a sheet to drape over them before snuggling closely into his side.

He smiled and tightened his hold on her, pressing kisses to her forehead and the crown of her hair before succumbing to a yawn. “I’ll hold you to that.”