Under the Surface (27 page)

She tried to hold the gaping fabric closed. “I'm not exactly quiet,” she said halfheartedly.

“It's really hot when you have to be quiet. Remember?” he said, and parted the flaps. His gaze flicked over her lace bra and thong. “Red. My favorite.”

“I know,” she said. Talking became impossible when he gripped the back of her head in one hand and her ass in the other, holding her to him for kiss after slick, hot kiss. He was notched between her spread legs, and she felt his cock thicken and grow hard as his tongue slid against hers. She hooked one heel behind his knee and reached for the button fly of his jeans, popping the first three buttons to reach inside and grip his erection.

“Jesus,” he said, and broke free. She knew how he felt. She was beginning to wonder if this would ever go away.

She skimmed her thong down and off while he opened his jeans and sheathed himself in latex, then, in one smooth, gliding stroke, in her. The thick shaft stretched her and she gasped, then whimpered as he pulled her to the edge of the counter. She wound her legs around his waist and her arms around his neck. Mindful of the foot traffic from the bar to the dish room, she buried her face in his shoulder to stifle her gasps. He stopped and pulled his Eye Candy T-shirt over his head and dropped it on the counter beside her.

“Makeup on my shoulder's a dead giveaway,” he muttered.

As if glassy eyes, a flushed throat, swollen lips, and a languid hitch in her walk wouldn't tell everyone who worked at the bar, and maybe some of the customers, exactly what had happened. She didn't argue with him because running her palms over his shoulders and down his ridged abdomen ratcheted up the anticipation, and when it came right down to it, she didn't give a damn. She needed this. So badly.

She expected hard and fast, but he braced one hand against the wall behind her and wrapped the other around her hips, holding her in position as he moved. Slowly. Achingly slowly, letting her feel every single inch glide in, pause, then withdraw. The head of his shaft caressed nerve endings aroused and desperate for heat and pressure. Her eyes closed, she sank into her body, the tantalizing rasp of lace against her nipples as they brushed his chest, the warm metal under her ass. The backs of his thighs flexed and released as he moved, denim between her bare legs and his. One red patent leather heel clattered to the cement floor, then the other, as she tightened inside and out, clinging to him, mouth open against the muscled curve where his neck blended into his shoulder.

“Oh God, Matt. More. Please.”

“Shhhhhh,” he said. She could have smacked him for the male amusement under the husky words, but another slick stroke ended all thought of distracting him. “Like you like this, boss.”

She couldn't hasten the pleasure building with slow deliberation inside her, like a fist tightening around her core. He was so hard, each stroke slick, unhurried, confident. She began to tremble, muscles quivering as molten pleasure coursed through her body, burning away muscle and bone. He took his time, drove her nearer and nearer the edge until she wasn't sure if she needed or feared the oncoming freight train of release.

She dug her nails into his shoulder, wound the other hand in the loose denim at his hips, and took it. Took him. Even with her face pressed to his damp skin, the cry that tore from her throat as the tight fist opened and flung her into oblivion echoed in the dark, still room. He gave an indistinct growl into her hair, thrust again, and again, then went rigid and jetted into her.

Moments passed. The thumping club rhythm seeped back into her consciousness as the tension eased from his shoulders and arms, then his back. The fingers gripping her hip twitched then went lax. Still deep inside her, he relaxed, letting her bear some of his weight. They were in the same position, her limbs entwined around the strong column of his body, but the attitude was completely different. He wasn't a figure carved from living granite but a man, sharing a stolen moment with her as the pleasure ebbed from their bodies.

And then she knew. Knew what she was feeling, the thing at odds with the stress and fear and helplessness. She was falling for Matt Dorchester, a man completely capable of acting the role of a lover while feeling nothing at all. He was inside her, his sweat salty on her lips, his body under her hands, and she was falling for him.

Unlike the sex they'd just had, she was falling hard and fast.

As if she'd shouted the words aloud, something changed in the air. He cleared his throat, stepped back, and turned to the trash can. Cool air sidled up her torso, making her shiver. She slid off the counter, pulled on her panties, kicked her shoes upright so she could step into them, and rewrapped her dress.

A rattle of the doorknob, then a knock over Natalie's voice. “You naughty kids, I know you're both in there. Eve, an unexpected bachelorette party just arrived. We need you out front, sweets. You too, handsome. There's a blonde looking for her Chad special, whatever that is.”

A distraction from her distraction. Eve looked at him, lifted an eyebrow and her hand to his mouth. “A Soul Kiss,” he said after she wiped lipstick off his mouth and neck with her thumb.

“A little more subtle than asking for Sex on the Beach,” Eve said as Matt unlocked the door and hauled it open.

“Well, hey, sugar,” Nat said sweetly. “Make yourself useful?”

Matt ignored her, but Eve saw a muscle jump in his jaw before he disappeared into the bar.

“The things you put up with for your job,” Eve called after his departing back, then stifled a hysterical giggle.

Natalie peeked in the door. “You decent?” she asked, then added, “You okay?”

No.
She had to start thinking through her decisions. Helping the investigation wasn't an impulse. Tempting Matt into sleeping with her was, but she wasn't trained to work as an undercover agent. She didn't have an alter ego or a cover identity; she was just herself, mightily attracted to Matt Dorchester and acting on that attraction.

“I'm fine,” she said. “But if people don't stop asking me that, I won't be. Let's go.”

*   *   *

She walked into a nearly full house, music rolling through the crowd like waves after a storm. Natalie directed her to the bachelorette party. She smiled, complimented outfits, laughed, congratulated the bride-to-be, bought the first round, and took picture after picture as the maid of honor passed phone after phone from group members to Eve.

“Thanks for doing this,” Miranda said, handing over another smartphone.

“My pleasure. Thanks for celebrating at Eye Candy.” Eve shifted the lens so Matt's face wasn't included in the shot. She'd done her best, but a few pictures ended up on the web. It couldn't be helped. “On three. One, two, three.” The flash went off.

“We booked a couple of tables at Miss Martini but the vibe sucked, so we left early,” Miranda explained as she exchanged phones with Eve. “My cousin had a birthday party here last month, and my office is thinking about moving into the East Side business park. I wanted to check out the neighborhood.”

“That's great,” Eve said.

“Quite a few employees live across the river. The location's great, but there hasn't been the … infrastructure to justify the move. The business park would change all of that.”

“You should try Cindy's cupcakes,” Eve said. “They're sin in a small package. So good.”

“As soon as I'm done dieting for this wedding. Fucking mermaid dress,” she said conversationally.

Startled into laughter, Eve asked for one more for the Eye Candy Facebook page. iPhone in hand, she backed up to get a little more of the bar in the shot and bumped into a warm male body. She turned around to apologize.

Lyle stood right behind her.

“Oh my God!” she gasped. Her hand flew to her chest and she dropped her phone. The hard shell case cracked open and it and the phone itself skittered in different directions. One of the bridesmaids nearly put a stiletto heel through the phone.

“You okay?” Lyle asked.

She swallowed the hysterical laughter. “No. You scared me half to death!”

Miranda, the only remotely sober woman in the party, gave Lyle an appraising look, one he returned, with interest. Eve took advantage of Lyle's distraction to look for Travis. He seemed to be alone.

Helpful patrons found the shattered shell and handed it and the phone to Eve. The phone had a couple of new scratches but appeared functional. The case was a total loss.

“I need to talk to you.”

It was the peak of a Saturday night. “I'm a little busy at the moment,” she said. It took everything she had not to look in Matt's direction to see if he'd noticed Lyle. She was sure he would have. All she needed to do was act natural. “I'm a little busy … but I've always got time for you. Let me just take one more picture,” she said to the party, and held up her phone. “Great. Thanks so much! I'll check in with you later. The next round's on me.” Then she turned to Lyle. “What's up? I haven't seen you in a while.”

“Let's talk upstairs.”

She looked at him and saw a man who wasn't her friend, who wanted her dead, the reason why she was living with a cop and going out of her mind. “Fine. Give me a second,” she said, and hurried toward Matt. She strolled around the end of the bar, stepped into his warm body.

“Get them whatever they want, sweetheart,” she said as she laid her hand on Matt's hip, making sure to look over her shoulder as she spoke. Lyle's face tightened. Then she turned back to Matt. “He wants to talk in private,” she murmured.

“He doesn't get what he wants,” Matt said, and he didn't need volume to convey utter authority. The absorbed, attentive lover was gone, replaced by a cop. Had the lover ever really existed?

She slid her hand under the hem of his shirt and looked up into his face. “I'm checking in with you so he thinks you're a domineering asshole. Now I'm going upstairs.”

“Goddammit, Eve!”

She slipped from his grip and hurried around the end of the bar, deep into the crowd. Lyle followed her up the staircase, into her office. Eve closed the door and pulled out her cell phone.

“You don't need your new boyfriend?”

“Who? Chad? Why would I? Just a second,” she said, not giving him a chance to respond. “I need to post those pictures to Instagram.” She swiped to the app she wanted, tapped it, then set the phone down and went on the offensive. “We've got a problem. Someone shot out my windows last week. Talk to whoever you have to and make that stop. It's bad for business.”

Lyle settled into one end of her sofa and smiled that dark-eyed smile. Eve smiled back, studying his face. To her, he didn't look any different, but Matt had been closer, able to see Lyle over the roof of the Jeep. Or maybe her new “boyfriend” landed a little farther down the paranoid spectrum. “I didn't hear anything about it.”

“Then I'm telling you now. Someone shot out the windows to my apartment last week. I wasn't hurt, thank God, and neither was Chad. It sure as hell killed the mood.”

That got her a smile, the small one she remembered best. “I'm surprised, Eve. He's not your type.”

“He'll do for now,” she said, giving him her best sexy cocktail waitress glance to cover her pounding heart, her stomach's roller-coaster ride from her throat to her knees.

Lyle threw back his head and laughed, the sound unforced but with an edge she'd never heard before. It made the hair stand up on the back of her neck as some primitive part of her brain recognized the kind of threat that made animals everywhere go wide-eyed as they hunched in fear. “You haven't changed a bit, Evie.”

She gave a nonchalant shrug. It was a struggle to confide in him as she would have when they were teenagers, to act like she hadn't caught on. “I needed something different from Caleb's lawyer friends.”

He glanced out the floor-to-ceiling windows. “Your parents can't be happy about that.”

She had to assume he knew she'd taken “Chad” to Monday dinner. “I didn't exactly ask for their permission,” she said wryly. “They'll just have to get used to him.”

The smile didn't change, a little smug, a little cold. “There's the bad girl I remember,” he said. “And how's business? Your new man getting involved?”

She let out a laugh that trilled through the octaves, and winced as she heard it. “Never mix business with pleasure. I need a ring and a prenup before that happens.”

“You don't see him much on the Facebook page. I had to search to get a good look at the man who's captivated our little Evie. It's like you're hiding him.”

Something like that.
She looked at the iPhone. “He's not the best-looking guy behind the bar. I don't choose what customers post or tag. Look, Lyle, it's a Saturday night and I've got a full house. Did you want something?”

He kept that unreadable dark brown gaze fixed on her. “Have you heard anything from the city about the property behind you?” He looked over his shoulder to indicate the alley and the vacant building behind the apartment.

He had her attention now. The deadline for bids passed the prior … Wednesday? No, Thursday. She'd assumed the city assessor called Caleb with the news, and Caleb, in the middle of a trial, had forgotten to call her. “No.”

“An associate of mine won the auction.” He all but sprawled on her sofa, completely relaxed, at ease. “Told you I was interested in investing in the East Side.”

Her blood turned to ice water in her veins. She'd lost the biggest space standing between Eve and SoMa, between Eye Candy and the rest of the existing East Side businesses and the East Side Business District. With the property in someone else's name, even if the police caught Lyle the forfeiture laws wouldn't apply.

The only way for her to get that property was to deal with Lyle.