In Hot Pursuit (5 page)

He lifted his fingers to the mass of black hair and tunneled through the soft strands in a mad search for pins. He found a single smooth stick piercing the center of the knot and pulled it free.

A riot of silky black waves tumbled down to her
shoulders and spilled over her back and breasts, down to her waist. The scent of her shampoo wafted through the air.

“Wow.” He wanted to wrap himself in that hair, wrap her in that hair. Run his fingers over every last glossy curl.

She blew a stray strand out of one eye, pursing her lips in a pucker that nearly sent him over the edge.

“It's a little outdated, but I hate getting it cut.” She plucked the stick from his hands and tossed it to the floor, heedless of where it landed.

“I like outdated. Outdated is sexy.” Josh reached for the doorknob and turned it, backing them into her bedroom. All the while, he kept every inch of her sequined body glued to his.

He paused when the backs of his legs ran into her bed.

“Not here,” she whispered, leading them sideways. “The bed's a bit too personal, don't you think?”

He couldn't think. She had him so fired up, he'd settle for the kitchen floor if it would make her happy.

“Here—” She stopped in front of a monstrous reclining apparatus that looked like an adjustable bed in the partially upright position. “The chaise seems more in order for an anonymous…encounter.”

Every word she uttered shifted her breasts over his chest by a pleasantly torturous fraction.

“Is that what we're doing? Encountering?”

She wriggled her hips against his. “I don't know about you, but I'm encountering something pretty impressive.”

“Honey, you ain't seen nothing yet.” Tightening his hold around her waist, he lifted her straight off the floor, dragging her body upward along his and displacing a few of her sequins in the process.

He paused when they were eye to eye.

“Do tell, Detective.” Lexi eased the knot on his tie and unbuttoned his shirt just enough to slip her hands underneath the fabric.

Her touch sent him reeling in a way no street-fight punch ever had. Her little hum of approval made him want to protect and serve her all night long.

“I'm not telling you anything, Lexi. You're just going to have to see for yourself.” He set her down on the oversize chaise longue and sprawled out alongside her. “Besides, didn't we say anonymous sex meant no talking?”

“No talking?” She looked appalled, but a devilish light in her eyes told him otherwise. “But then, how could I tell you things like this…?”

She leaned close to him, brushing her breast across his upper arm as she cupped her hand around his ear. Her breathy words were soft and warm.

“I want to lick every impressive inch of you.”

L
EXI GUESSED HER WORDS
had the desired effect when a ragged groan ripped through the bedroom loud enough to set off her dogs' barking down the hall.

She couldn't help but smile. She felt less like a houseplant every second she passed in Josh's company.

“Still think we ought to impose that ‘no talking' rule?” she prompted, sliding his tie out from under his collar and shivering at the sheer sensuality of the sound.

“Did I mention I'm a big proponent of free speech?” Josh flicked one strap of her gown off her shoulder. “I think you ought to feel free to say whatever comes to mind.”

Josh's gaze did more than undress her. Somehow, those gray eyes invited her to share her secrets and dared her to bare her soul.

A risk she'd never afforded herself—not with anyone. Nearly two years had passed since her last one-night stand—a blur of awkwardness that hadn't aroused her half as much as Josh's single touch.

No way would she allow their impersonal sex plan to slip off course. She wanted the lights off, blinds
down. And all those too-tempting personal glimpses of Josh properly concealed, so she could enjoy her stolen evening revealing other parts of him.

“Say whatever I want? In that case, how about closing those blinds and then I won't hold anything back.”

“Whatever the lady wants.” Josh moved away from her, taking his searing gaze and his body heat with him.

Lexi watched him prowl about her bedroom, his feral grace not totally out of place in her room full of leopard-print pillows and tiger-striped sheets. Not that he would ever discover those sheets, because she drew the line at letting a stranger sleep in her bed.

Better to have a tryst in the comfort of the chaise longue.

The soft
snap
of the Venetian blinds sliding into place called her from her thoughts. She had a two-second view of Josh by the window before the room was plunged into total darkness. Not even the street-lights penetrated the custom room-darkening shades.

“Better?” His voice loomed closer than she would have expected.

Her heart picked up its pace. A shiver rippled over her skin.

“Better.” She wasn't about to admit there was something highly erotic about not being able to see him.

“Good.” The low rumble of his voice came from two inches behind her, lifting the hairs on her neck.

“You move pretty fast for a man in strange terrain, Winger.”

The chaise cushions shifted as he joined her on the lounger.

“Want me to slow down?” The words whispered over her shoulder seconds before his lips touched her skin there.

Warm, soft, deceptively lazy.

Lexi suspected this man was as ready as she felt inside. Yet he lingered, his kiss thorough and deliberate.

“Slow is good,” she admitted. She didn't realize she was edging back toward the hard length of his body until her sequins snagged one of his shirt buttons.

The absolute dark hid him from her, made her feel free to be bold. She reached backward to palm his thigh, running her fingertips over the lightweight gabardine of his trousers.

She hadn't thought it possible for the man to be any harder, but his whole body took one more step toward petrifaction beneath her questing hands. He imprisoned her wrist before she could fully explore the effects of her touch.

He hissed out a breath between his teeth. “Do you ever sit still?” he asked, tugging aside the veil of her hair from her back.

It wasn't the first time she'd been asked that particular question, but the way Josh said it made her perpetual motion sound more like a blessing and less like a curse.

Or maybe she was just in a receptive state of mind, given that he was licking a circuitous path between her shoulder blades.

“Sometimes.” She found it difficult to concentrate on his question as he started sliding her zipper down her back. “But only if you make it worth my while.”

“Are you challenging me?”

“Definitely.”

He edged the material of her dress away from her skin, held to her body by a lone shoulder strap. Her back exposed to Josh's touch but not his gaze, Lexi waited breathlessly for that first caress.

“I wouldn't want to disappoint you.”

He breathed the words over her spine, surprising her with the proximity of his mouth and not his hands.

She trembled, anticipating his kiss.

Finally, his lips brushed over her spine between her shoulders, a fluttery kiss that teased more than it satisfied. Heat spiraled through her, flooding her limbs and pooling in her belly.

She moved to turn and face him, to wrest what she needed from him, but he held her hips in place with his hands.

“Wait.” He pulled her back against him, allowed her to feel the spectacular length of his body again. His mouth hovered near her ear, mingled in her hair. “Wait one more minute and then I promise I will make you want to be absolutely still.”

His hand dipped into her dress, cupping the curve of her hip and skimming the satin of her panties for one heart-stopping minute before he traced a slow path up her spine with his fingers.

Lexi decided she could wait. She could definitely wait.

“I want to at least see you with my hands.” Josh
explored the curve of her waist, the soft skin under her arm.

Lexi thought she couldn't be any hungrier for him, until he found the hooks of her strapless bra and popped them free. As her bra slid into the folds of her gaping dress, leaving her breasts bared, she realized she'd been dead wrong.

Slipping the remaining strap of her dress down her shoulder, Josh slid her dress all the way to her feet. Wearing only her panties, she wriggled backward to indulge in the feel of Josh against her naked back.

To find he wasn't there.

“Josh?” Maybe she'd be able to hear him move around the room better if her heart wasn't thundering in her ears.

“Over here.” His muffled voice called to her from somewhere in the room near the chaise.

He was obviously standing again. “I think I need to shed at least some of these clothes before I touch you, because I don't think I'm going to be able to stop once I get started.”

Her disappointment vanished, transformed to a sense of feminine power.

She reached a hand upward in the darkness, desperate to find him and to ease the longing ache that plagued her. Fingertips moving through the inky blackness, her ears straining to catch any telltale sounds, Lexi yelped when Josh caught her hips and dragged her to the edge of the lounger.

“Can you see me?”

“No.”

His voice rumbled above her as he climbed back
onto the lounger. “I can tell when you get close because of your perfume.”

His hands slid down her thighs and up the insides of her legs.

“And I can feel your heat.” His fingers paused at the juncture of her thighs.

“Oh.” She grew very still.

Just as she found his shoulders in the darkness, his lips found her breast and tasted her with a thoroughness that had her panting. He'd ditched his shirt and tie, leaving him clad only in his trousers.

Lexi explored the bare muscle of his chest and shoulders, marveled at the silky texture of the hair on his chest and the well-defined abs just above his waistband.

His smoky whiskey scent mingled with her floral essence, the heat of their bodies intensifying the effect. They fell back into the sea of leopard-print pillows, the faux fur cushioning them as they tumbled onto each other.

Josh's mouth never strayed from her breast. He smoothed his cheek against her nipple, tempting her with the soft rasp of a jaw in need of another shave. He licked a path from one nipple to the other, his fingers playing along whichever one he had left in need.

Lexi wriggled her way on top of him, fitting herself over his erection despite the layers of clothes still between them. Josh groaned his encouragement.

When her hand dipped into the waistband of his pants, however, he flipped her onto her back again.

“That's a risk I'm not willing to take just yet.”

“No?” How interesting. She liked thinking her touch was that potent to him.

“No.”

He pinned her legs to the chaise with his body. She could tell his head was about level with her abdomen, judging by the way his breath fanned out over her bare belly.

Faux fur caressed her on one side, warm muscle on the other side. A heady combination.

“Ladies first.” Josh trailed his finger along the lace edge of her panties. “I'm a gentleman at heart, Lex.”

His use of her name called her from her sensual reverie for a moment, reminding her this night was probably getting far too personal, despite their best intentions. How would she ever forget Josh Winger after this?

But then his lips lowered to her navel and she put all thoughts of tomorrow aside. She wouldn't allow herself to miss out on tonight, not when Josh was touching her as she'd never been touched before.

His tongue flicked over her belly and down to her panties, snaking beneath the hem to tease her beyond reason.

She'd never committed the bold act that she suspected Josh was about to. In her world of stringent personal boundaries, that sort of intimacy seemed even greater than straightforward sex.

But tonight didn't follow her rules, and she didn't want it to. Sensual greed had taken hold of her, right about the time she'd first handcuffed herself to this
man, and she intended to follow wherever that delicious hunger might lead.

Just as soon as she indulged in one final round of tonight's game of hot pursuit.

 

J
OSH COULDN'T
fill his hands with enough of her. Lexi's lithe little body slid around the chaise longue, disappeared into the mountain of pillows, then resurfaced at newly enticing angles.

She wriggled and trembled, shivered and shimmied her way away from him, then sighed and moaned her way back again.

He flung two pillows away and slid her thighs closer to him. By now he was starving for a taste of her.

“Woman, holding you still is like chasing quicksilver.”

“Are you having a hard time holding me down, Detective?” she whispered, that throaty voice alone enough to send him over the edge.

“I'm having a hard time all right,” he growled. He'd been so careful not to use the wrestling approach on her, but he'd never needed a leg lock so badly.

He heard a jingle a few feet above his head.

“Then, why don't you show me how a real jailer uses these?”

Her words teased him to outer limits of control he hadn't known he possessed. He knew what she was holding in her hands, damn it. He didn't need the light to see those handcuffs in his mind.

“You're kidding.” He held himself very still so as
not to snap that taut leash on his restraint. If anyone ought to be wearing cuffs, it was him.

“I assure you, I'm very serious.”

Her voice wrapped around him like a seductive devil on his shoulder, the voice of everything wicked he'd ever wanted to do. “You don't know me well enough to let me do that.”

Damn but it was hard listening to the good half of his conscience.

“I saw your badge with my own eyes. Besides, they're not real. I could free myself if I really wanted to…although I have the feeling I won't.”

The smile in her voice was obvious. She jingled the cuffs above him.

She was enjoying every minute of his torment.

So much for adopting the good cop act tonight. That had never been his style, anyhow.

“You're playing with fire, Lexi.” Following the jingling sound, he snatched the cuffs unerringly out of her grip.

“Don't I know it.” She shifted her thighs underneath him, moved her body restlessly against his. “I'm loving every minute of it.”

Her words chased away any hesitation in Josh. If the lady wanted to play, who was he to spoil her fantasies?

He located one of her fidgety arms and smoothed his hand up and down its silky length. She was toned and trim, supple but delicate to the touch.

On his final sweep down the length of her arm, he slowed his touch to gently massage the skin around
her wrist. With his thumb he located her leaping pulse and soothed the throbbing vein.

She practically purred at his ministrations, her whole body humming with contented sighs.

Until he tapped one cuff into place around her wrist.

Her breath caught on a gasp and then released in a slow hiss between her teeth.

He waited, gauged her reaction, weighed her response.

Soon, she flaunted her free hand by walking her fingers right up the middle of his chest.

“Not so fast, sister.” He captured the free hand and chained it to its partner. “You're not the one calling the shots here.”

The sound of her breathing dominated the dark room, coming in quick, shallow pants.

“No?”

The quiver of excitement in her voice ignited his desire, robbed him of the last shreds of his self-control. “Definitely not.” He proved the point by looping her arms over her head to rest on a hill of pillows.

Finally, she remained where he had put her.

Naked but for a scrap of soft satin, Lexi lay before him handcuffed and breathless, yet because of the anonymous sex rule, Josh couldn't witness any of it with his eyes.

He vowed then and there to recreate this scenario one day when he could have the pleasure of seeing it.

For now, his imagination did a credible job of providing him with visuals, while he counted himself lucky to be here with wild-woman Lexi at all.

“So how does it feel to fall from mighty jailer status to helpless captivity in the course of an evening?” He eased away from her to shove off the rest of his clothes. The next time he touched her, nothing would hold him back.

“Don't be so sure of yourself, sweet lips,” she purred back. “I could turn the tables at any moment and make you my love slave—no matter how many chains you clamp around me.”