The Distraction (25 page)

W
e ate leftover fajitas at three a.m. on a squeaky bed by the light of the pale yellow bulb over the bathroom sink. He wore lounge pants. I wore his T-shirt. We talked about everything from Jacob running away, to ambushing Amy with Mike's self-defense class. He kept the focus of the conversation on me with his thoughtful questions and comments, and when the focus turned to him he gently steered it back, as if he felt more at home in my life than his. Witness protection aside, it was the best date I'd ever had.

“Hope Tenner wasn't too rough on you while I was sleeping,” Alec said, pushing aside the empty plate. I was pleased to see he'd worked up an appetite.

“Are you kidding?” I teased. “He's a pushover. I fed him and he practically kissed my feet.” After three servings apiece, both agents had even offered to do the dishes.

“He better not be kissing any part of you, or else I'll break more than just his nose.”

After what had happened with Trevor outside the gym, we both knew he was more than capable.

With a growl, he pinched the ticklish spot on the top of my hips, and I stifled a giggle as I fell back onto the bed. Rather than climbing over me, he grabbed beneath my calves and pulled me closer, so that my thighs straddled his waist.

Smoothly, he lifted my leg so that my ankle rested on his shoulder, and planted a slow kiss on the sensitive place just on the inside of my knee. I bit my lip to hold back the gasp, but the soft tease of his tongue made my toes curl.

“I've missed your legs,” he said, studying the inside of my right thigh. I gasped as his fingers glided down my hamstring.

“Just my legs?”

“Is there anything else?”

I kicked him in the shoulder and he laugh-winced, and grabbed his injured side.

“Sorry!” I pushed myself up. “Let me kiss it better.”

His grip in my hair grew tighter while he watched as I licked the skin just beyond his bandage.

“Jesus.” His voice had become husky. “I missed that sexy mouth, too.”

I made my way up to his neck. “You should see some of the other things my sexy mouth can do.”

His hands felt their way down my back, then scooped beneath my butt and lifted me onto his lap. We were facing each other, our bodies closely aligned. The thin T-shirt seemed suddenly coarse as his chest pressed it against my hardened nipples.

“This is your favorite, isn't it?” he asked, circling his hips to show me what he meant. The motion caused my clit to rub against his erection, and I squeezed his shoulders and blinked, trying to focus on his question.

“You like being close,” he said. “No space between us. You like how it feels.”

He was right. I loved how it felt, how deep he could be, how tightly he could hold me. I loved the feel of his hard pecs rubbing against my breasts, and my arms around his neck.

I loved that he knew I loved it.

“What's your favorite position?” I asked. Not so subtly, I rubbed myself against his hard shaft, feeling the tension between us rise.

“All of them,” he answered, teeth scraping my jaw.

“Cheater.”

His chest rumbled with a low laugh.

“I like this.” We were moving together now, a slow prelude of what was to come. “I like watching your eyes when the pleasure takes you. I like feeling your back arch beneath my hands, and having you against the wall, bearing your full weight on my cock. How you submit when you know you can't get away.”

The images his words conjured stoked the fire, and I bit my lip to hold back the moan.

He shifted, moving slowly over me. His dark, silky hair fell forward, so much more like the old him than the Alec who had returned from prison weeks ago. I looked for any sign of pain in his eyes, but it was absent. “I love being over you, watching your eyelids get heavy when I kiss you. When you claw my back and dig your heels into my ass. And I like holding you here.” He lifted my knees and pressed them against my chest, and then ground his sheathed cock against my wet panties. “When you fight how good it feels but it takes you anyway.”

He moved down my body slowly, until his mouth was between my thighs. Pushing my bent legs up, he opened them so I was spread before him. On display. I trembled, a wave of self-consciousness battering the heat in my veins as he admired me hungrily. One finger brushed over the fabric, dampening it with my juices as he pushed it just a little inside. I gasped, the muscles in my legs flexing.

“Always so ready,” he murmured. “So perfect.” Then, he opened his mouth, and gently bit at my swollen lips. The sensation was so sharp and exquisite I bowed back, fisting the sheets.

“Oh God,” I said. “Oh my God.”

“I love your sweet little cunt, Anna,” he murmured. He nuzzled my pussy and then kissed me, openmouthed. Never in my life had I hated underwear so much.

I nearly begged him to finish, but he wasn't done.

With more power than I'd expected, he flipped me over onto my belly, and, sliding a hand beneath me, hoisted my hips up to meet his.

One hand trailed lightly, lovingly, down my back, into my hair, and he pulled it—not hard, but enough to tell me who was in control. The agents were nearby, just down the hall, but I couldn't stop the moan as my fingers splayed over the pillow.

“I love this,” he said. “Driving deep inside you, and when you push back and fuck yourself on my dick.” He was tugging me back to him, and each time his cock scored my slit, battering my senses with a new jolt of pleasure.

“I love your ass.” His open palm came down with a shock, and he soothed the heated skin with a soft caress. “Spanking you. Fucking you with my fingers.”

He stilled, and his thumb drew a line down between my buttocks, over my underwear, to a place that made me buck hard against him. I shivered, uncertainty clouding my desire. He was huge, and I'd never done that before.

“Just your fingers?” I asked.

The pressure increased, heightening the need, but also my apprehension.

“I'm not built for more,” he said, relieving me of my worries. He sat, and laid back on the pillows, then turned me so that I was riding him again.

“And I love you here,” he said. “When you take what you want. Touch yourself and close your eyes and bite your sexy little lip. I could come just watching you.”

“Alec, I . . .” I was flushed and aching. My thoughts were scrambling.

He twisted his hand in my shirt and pulled me down to him.

“What do you need, right now?”

But he had to know. I was rubbing myself against him like I had no pride, no self-control. His jaw clenched, and his eyes were deep and intense. His knuckles skimmed the sides of my heavy breasts. I longed for him to knead them, cup them and take the aching peaks in his mouth.

“I . . .”

“You know what I like,” he said. “Tell me what you want.”

“I need to come,” I admitted, cheeks flaring. I tried to turn away, but he grabbed my face in the palm of his hands.

“How?”

“I don't know.” But the change was already taking me. A dark, wild need began coursing through my veins. It made me move. Sweat. Speak. “Your mouth. Your fingers. Then your cock.”

For a moment there was only his harsh breathing.

“Good girl,” he said. Then he reached beneath my thighs and pulled me up. I scrambled over his chest, until my knees were on both sides of his head, and my pussy was hovering over his mouth.

I made the mistake of looking down; I could have kept some dignity if I hadn't. But he was looking up at me with such savage hunger, I was lost to everything but my own lust.

I grabbed the bed frame and dipped down. My thighs trembled as the last of my inhibitions went up in smoke. He held me in place, even as the rasp of his tongue ignited my senses. He licked me, kissed me, nipped at me, until the bands within me snapped and sent me careening over the edge.

Only then did he use his fingers.

One, then two. Twisting. Rubbing. Three fingers, fucking me hard while his mouth softened and sucked my clit.

I nearly fell, but he held on until I came again, and until that orgasm melted into another.

Then he pulled me down over his body, directed his cock into me, and held me against his chest while he destroyed us both.

*   *   *

The next time I woke it was to a loud banging against the cardboard-thin bedroom door. I jumped up, doused in adrenaline as the memories of Reznik flew back to the front of my mind. My gaze shot around the room, to the clothing strewn on the floor and the empty dinner plates on the bathroom counter, finally resting on the man sitting on the edge of the bed, reaching his hand toward me.

“It's all right,” Alec said quietly.

He was as perfect as he'd always been, and the sight of him stole my breath in a different way. The low light of the room darkened his skin, and made the cuts of his body more defined. Even the wound, still somehow covered after our night together, made him appear more savage and dangerous. My gaze lowered down his naked chest, to his growing erection, and I snatched my—or his—shirt off the floor and pulled it over my head. His flawlessness reminded me what a train wreck I must have looked like. My hair was a bird's nest, and I needed to brush my teeth. I would have killed for a little eyeliner.

“Beautiful,” Alec murmured, sensing my insecurities. “Come here.”

I did as he asked, sliding into his lap as the beating on the door continued. He kissed my collarbone, oblivious to the urgency right outside.

“In the kitchen in five,” came Janelle's crisp, no-nonsense voice. The banging ceased, and her footsteps could be heard retreating down the hall.

“I can do a lot with five minutes,” whispered Alec. He walked two fingers up my thigh, beneath the hem of my shirt, but I swatted him away.

“Sounds like we're in trouble,” I said with a smirk.

“She always sounds like that.”

But though his arms were safe, and the dark, heady scent of him was still on my skin, our stolen time was up. Reality was waiting just beyond that door.

“Alec?”

“Hmm?”
He nuzzled his face against my chest.

“How rough has it been trying to keep me clear of the trial?”

He stilled, just for a moment, before wrapping me up even tighter in his strong arms.

“You don't have to worry about that.”

I tilted his chin up, forcing him to meet my gaze.

“Do you love me?”

He brushed my hair behind my ears, a fierceness in his eyes. “More than you know.”

The gentleness in his touch made me feel light, and his confession chipped away at my fear.

“It's new to me,” I said. “Feeling like I deserve it—like I deserve you. It's such a big feeling, sometimes I don't know what to do with it.”

I wished I had better words, but he nodded in understanding. My fingers drew a slow line over his collarbone, then up the cords of his neck.

“It scares you,” he said.

I nodded. “Before I'd just move on. I'd find a new town, and a new job, and a new apartment. New people that didn't know me. It felt safer that way—not really knowing anyone. But now, with you, the one thing that feels safest is the one thing that scares me the most. And I'm not even thinking about running.”

His lips parted, stormy eyes reflecting my own vulnerability.

“Anna,” he whispered.

“I'm not running,” I said again. “But I'm waiting for you to realize the same thing I have. You deserve this, too. And you don't have to shelter me, because I'm standing right beside you.”

His Adam's apple bobbed. I kissed him as he struggled against my words, as they rooted in his head and heart. And then I stood up, got dressed, and made my way to the kitchen, leaving him staring after me.

The two male agents looked like they'd been on an all-night bender. Matt rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand and blinked, while Tenner rested his forehead on the card table.

“Somebody get me some coffee,” he moaned.

“What happened to Mr. Nice Guy?” I asked. “Is it time to feed you again?”

“What
happened
?” He sat up. There was a red mark on his forehead from the table, and his eyes resembled a raccoon's. “What happened is you two kept me up all night fucking like bunnies.”

I chewed the inside of my cheek.

“It wasn't
all
night,” I said.

Alec came into the room, still looking a little shell-shocked. One glance at the agents and his arms came around my waist. I leaned back, loving the feel of him, even if his body language was shouting “mine” loud and clear.

“He's counting the time he put in afterward jacking off,” said Matt.

Tenner glared at him. “Speak for yourself, fuckwad. Least you get a room with a door. I just have the couch.”

“Aw, come on,” said Matt, who glanced around us to the sofa, as if expecting to see a bottle of lotion and a wad of tissues.

“If it bothers you so much, maybe you should separate them.” Janelle swept in from the room with the video monitors, carrying an armful of file folders. She was dressed differently today, in light-washed jeans and a soft blue T-shirt. Her hair was down, and her makeup was even less severe than usual, making her pretty, even sort of striking. She didn't glance our way, even when Alec said good morning.

I remembered the way she'd looked at him last night when I'd been examining his wound on the couch, and how icy she always was toward me. I wondered if she had any idea how she felt about him.

Gently, I pulled away, watching as he inhaled slowly, and sighed. He knew, even if she didn't.

I wasn't sure how I felt about all that.

“So what's on the agenda?” I asked, feeling the weight of the sudden silence. “Swimming at the lake and then crafts in the lodge?”

Matt chuckled.

Janelle's cold stare locked on mine. “Is this funny to you?”