Goes down easy: Roped into romance Read online

  “Are you sure they’re not a problem now?”

  Men. So predictable. But with this one she wouldn’t change a thing, she mused, pulling her hands from his waistband to trace her way up his spine. She fingered the scar she found on his shoulder blade, a deep crescent carved into his skin, but stayed silent when he stiffened at her touch.

  He slid lower on her body, kissing the valley between her breasts, stopping just above her navel to ask, “You don’t mind if I get rid of yours, do you? They’re definitely in my way.”

  She nodded. She shook her head. She wasn’t sure which answer was the one he wanted, or even what she was trying to say. But when his hands gripped the fabric, she stopped thinking and willingly let him strip her bare.

  “Mmm,” he murmured, back to kissing her now. “I like the way you smell.”

  She closed her eyes, flexed her fingers into the sheet at her hips. She didn’t know if he was talking about her soap or her perfume or the scent of her arousal, so she didn’t respond. Except that wasn’t exactly true.

  Her hips came up off the bed, and her legs opened. She wanted him there desperately and was ready to beg, but he settled between her thighs before she had to, and kissed his way from her belly to her sex. His tongue was wet and warm, and she shivered.

  His hands were broad where he slipped them beneath her hips and squeezed. When he drew her clit between his lips, she gasped, shuddered and moaned from the exquisite sensation. She felt herself open, felt herself weep as her body grew ready to take him.

  He slid a finger inside her, added another, pushed deep while he slicked his tongue through her folds. He stroked, his fingers moving in and out. He sucked, the pressure of his lips light, the swirling teasing tip of his tongue an elegant torture.

  It was too much, and it had been so long, and she cried out, letting go. Spasms ripped through her, a sweet singing bliss, a release that swept through her like a flood after rain. He stayed with her all the way, fingering, kissing, pressing against her as she came.

  And then it was over. She was done, boneless and weak, exhausted and spent. Her body finished thrumming, the burning eased, and she settled into the mattress like a big fat cat taking a nap, barely aware of Jack settling in beside her as she slept.

  8

  THE NEXT TIME she opened her eyes it was eight o’clock. She wasn’t due at work until ten. For the first time in her memory, she considered calling in sick.

  She wouldn’t, of course. And she wasn’t. Unless too little sleep and an orgasmic hangover counted.

  She groaned as the guilt hit her, feeling the heat of a blush turn her skin what she knew would be a bright, splotchy red. She had fallen asleep on him. She, the female. A humiliating reversal of fortunes.

  Hiding in the closet until he left ranked at the top of her list of escape routes. But first she wanted to know about the scar on his back—where it had come from, how long he’d had it, why he’d turned to stone when she’d discovered it there.

  She knew nothing about who he was beyond his being an investigator from Texas. She wanted to know more. She wanted to know everything.

  Lying on her stomach and not wanting Jack to wake, she turned just her head—only to find that he wasn’t sleeping. And that he was looking at her.

  “Hi,” she said.

  “Good morning,” he responded.

  “I’m sorry. About last night. Er, about earlier. I went to sleep.”

  “So did I.”

  His lashes were so long it killed her. She rolled onto her side to face him. “I know. But I got…you didn’t…”

  “Don’t worry about it,” he said, understanding what she was trying to say, and also picking up on her angst. “No man ever died from a broken hard-on.”

  She couldn’t decide whether to smile or grimace, and ended up doing a bit of both. “That was horrible.”

  “I know. A girl I knew in high school used to say it all the time.” He reached up and tucked her hair behind her ear; his touch caused her to shiver. “She hung with me and three other guys, and got sick of hearing us complain about being left high and dry.”

  “I don’t blame her,” she said, sliding her feet between his. “And besides, she was right.”

  “She was right about a lot of things,” he said with a self-deprecating snort.

  Interesting—both how he could appreciate a teenage girl’s insight, and his own conceit. “You were close to her, then?”

  Toying with her hair again, he nodded, his eyes an ever-deepening gray. “She was like family. Hell, she was family.”

  “How so?” she asked, wondering how long it would take him to cut off her prying.

  He blew out a deep breath, ran his knuckle over the skin beneath her chin. “During my senior year, I saw more of her and the guys than I did my father.”

  She heard the slight catch in his voice, was curious if he’d noticed that his armor had slipped. “Where was he?”

  “In and out,” he said with a shrug, toying with the swell of her breast. “He was supposed to be in Austin with me, but he spent most of his time in Baltimore with my mother. My sister was sick, and going through a trial program at Johns Hopkins. She died when I was stationed in Kuwait.”

  “Jack, I’m so sorry.” She reached over, caressed his face.

  He captured her hand, brought it to his chest and held it there. “Don’t be. It was a long time ago. Hell, sixteen years. It’s over.”

  She knew better. She’d lived through a similar blow. Nothing like that was ever over. She threaded her fingers through the hair on his chest and tugged. “Is that where you got the scar? The one on your shoulder? In Kuwait?”

  He took so long to answer that she feared she’d hit a nerve still wounded and raw. But then he said, “Actually, no. I was in international waters for that one.”

  “Oh.” Lame, but it was all she could think of to say. “I’m sorry.”

  His chuckle broke the tension. “You know, you’ve said that three times in the last thirteen minutes.”

  “No. I didn’t know.” She glanced over her shoulder at the clock, glanced back. “Are you timing something?”

  “Yeah. How long it’s going to take you to find the rest of my scars.”

  She waited…waited…until finally she bit. “That sounds like a challenge to me.”

  He rolled onto his back, punched a pillow beneath his head, lay propped on his stacked wrists like a king. “I’m all yours.”

  She pushed up onto her elbow, intrigued by what he was offering her, and nervous at the same time. “You’ll tell me about any scars that I find?”

  He nodded. “The one on my shoulder’s off-limits, but I’ll tell you about the rest. In fact—” he found her hand, guided it to a gouge on his side between two ribs “—this is the one from Kuwait.”

  She dipped her finger into the hollow there, felt the jaggedly healed pocket of skin. “A knife?”

  “A shiv, yeah. Hurt like a son of a bitch, and I don’t even want to think about where the blade had been.” He shuddered; it seemed an involuntary response. “We did what we could with field dressing and a shot of penicillin, but the damn thing took forever to heal.”

  She wanted to ask more—who had stabbed him, why he’d been in such a position, if he’d caught the bad guy, who he’d included in “we”—but he’d moved her hand lower by then.

  Sometime during the night, he’d managed to lose his boxers. His skin was warm, the muscles in his hips well-defined. She swirled her fingers there, where he’d left them, finally discovering the knot of puckered flesh that could only be one thing.

  Her heart raced. “A gunshot?”

  He nodded. “Chechnya. Uh, ’96? The one on my knee came from the Sudan, the year before.”

  But that was all he said. She sat up, found the gash on his knee, never asking a thing about what he’d been doing in all those places. The damage to his body told her the truth.

  Jack Montgomery was a dangerous man. He’d done things, seen things, tr
aveled to places she’d only read about.

  Yet here he was, naked and open, and giving without expecting to receive in return. She didn’t understand what seemed to be a contradiction. She didn’t understand this man, not at all.

  She slid her fingers from his knee up his thigh to his hip, the edge of her hand brushing his groin. He sucked in a sharp fizz of breath.

  “That thing you promised last night?” he reminded her. “About sitting in my lap?”

  She started to nod, found herself frozen.

  “This would be a really good time.”

  She closed her eyes, screwed up her courage, told herself that he wasn’t here to hurt her, knowing that if it happened then this was the path she had chosen to take. She leaned forward to kiss him just beneath his heart.

  He smelled wonderful, and tasted so good she couldn’t help it. She eased lower, feeling his erection bob against her chest as she climbed up and straddled his legs. Once there, she inched lower and took him into her mouth.

  He arched up, groaned, held her shoulders while she wrapped her fingers around his shaft and plied her tongue over and around the ripe head of his cock.

  She toyed with the slit in the tip, licked her way along the seam beneath, circled the ridge above the ring of her fingers where she held the top of his shaft. He was smooth and salty, and she loved the sounds he made, the deep throaty moans and primal growls.

  But then he stopped her, lifting her away, reaching for a condom and putting it on. Then he dragged her up his body so that his sheathed erection throbbed between them, before he kissed her full on the mouth. He gripped her bottom, kneed apart her legs, pushed her up and positioned himself to thrust.

  Before he did, however, he paused, pulling free from her mouth to tell her, “As much as I love you having your way, that tongue of yours was about to do me in, and I’d really like this to last more than ten seconds.”

  She smiled. She couldn’t help it. He was so cute and so miserable all at the same time. “Don’t get your hopes up. I’m not exactly a paragon of patience.”

  “So I noticed last night.”

  He was being such a good sport that she didn’t take offense. What she did was plant her hands on his chest and push upright, lowering herself slowly as his cock slid deep and pulsed inside her, as she clenched and squeezed.

  For several seconds, she sat there, breathing hard, searching for her control and trying to ignore the way he filled her. An impossible task, of course, and so she began to move.

  She dug the heels of her palms into his shoulders, pushing down as she rotated her hips. He held her there, just above her thighs, his fingers digging in as he thrust up to meet her downward strokes.

  She laughed. This was breathtaking, being with him, being filled by him. She didn’t think she’d ever had it so good; making love meant so much more than just having sex.

  “What’s so funny?” he fairly growled, grabbing her harder.

  “Not funny. Glorious. You feel so amazing.” He surged up, captured her nipple and sucked. She hissed back a breath. “And that feels like I’m not going to last.”

  He let her go and growled, saying, “Good. Because I’m right there with you.”

  She felt him heat, felt the tightening between her legs, felt the surge of sensation spiraling. She gave in, came apart, cried out as she shuddered, as even her shoulders shook.

  He waited until she was done, but just barely. He drove deep, thrust hard; she fell forward onto his chest and rode the wave.

  Afterward, he held her close, eventually rolling them both to the side. She needed to get up. She didn’t want to get up. With his arms wrapped around her, their bodies still joined, she didn’t want to move at all.

  She didn’t want anything to break the spell of this magic that felt like the heaven of forever.

  HAVING HER WAY nearly killed him. Either Jack was more exhausted than even he had realized, or Perry knew every trick in the book about draining him dry. She’d left him five minutes ago, groaning as she climbed from the bed, mumbling something about getting ready for work.

  He needed to do the same. To steam the sludge from his brain. To put a call into Cindy Eckhardt and ask her if she was familiar with Dawn Taylor. It wasn’t a lot, but it was a start.

  He swung up into a sitting position and scrubbed his hands over his face. He pushed to his feet, stumbled over his own freaking shoes, shirt and pants as he headed for the bathroom—and toward the woman who’d just upended his life.

  Best he could tell by the morning light sneaking in through Perry’s drapes, her bedroom was the same riot of colors and clutter as the living room, dining room and kitchen. And when he pushed open the bathroom door, he got hit with more of the same.

  Red and yellow wall tiles, candles, flooring and towels. The space was small and steamy, and it smelled like spices that had nothing to do with a restaurant kitchen or holiday baking, and everything to do with a palace harem in Istanbul. Spices that were heavy and rich, and put him in mind of sex.

  Not that his mind had been anywhere else for hours, but he wondered if she chose the scents she did—the candles, the soap, the shampoo—because it put her in mind of the same. Or if it was more a case of her not having a subtle bone in her body.

  The colors, the fabrics, the scents, even the earrings she wore, and the way she kissed, and her wild cloud of hair. All of it was big and vibrant and involved, and got his juices flowing.

  He shut the door behind him, the sound of the latch clicking loud enough for her to hear above the running water. He didn’t want to frighten her, and an invitation wouldn’t be a bad thing. Who knew what went on with women and their showers?

  He’d barely finished the thought when the frosted door slid open on its tracks and there Perry stood, naked and dripping and a contrast in colors. Her hair hung in wet hanks to the tops of her breasts. It was jet black, the same color as her big bright eyes and the thatch of hair between her legs.

  Her skin, on the other hand, was lily white, a delicate porcelain pale, the only color that of the dark cherry centers of her breasts. He’d tasted her, made love to her, had her mouth on him, but there was something about seeing her like this that wound him up hot and tight.

  He thought about moving, thought about standing where he was and enjoying the view for as long as he could, ended up licking his lips and laughing when Perry rolled her eyes.

  “I want to know something,” she said, backing up when he started toward her.

  He climbed into the tub, slid the door closed behind him, breathed deeply of the spice and the steam. “What’s that?”

  “Well, actually, a couple of things.”

  He put his hands on her shoulders and switched their positions so that he stood under the spray. “I can’t answer if you don’t ask.”

  She crossed her arms. “The case. What are you going to do next?”

  It was hard to take her interest in his business seriously when they were both naked and wet. “More interviews. Friends of the Taylors. I want to find out what the couple was feeling about Dayton Eckhardt before and after the company’s move. Then I’ll talk to ex-employees who worked with Taylor specifically.”

  “Okay. Good.” She swiped wet hair out of her eyes. “You’ll let me know what I can do to help?”

  Yesterday, she didn’t want a thing to do with him or his case, and now she counted herself involved. He ducked under the spray to wet his hair, sputtered when he came up for air. “Sure. If that’s what you want.”

  “It is.” She nodded vigorously as if making sure she had his attention.

  “Well, there is one thing…”

  “What?”

  It was off the cuff, as were many of his best ideas, but he still wasn’t sure he could make it work. “I thought if she’s up to it, I’d like to take your aunt to the old Eckton warehouse. See if she might pick up any vibes.”

  Perry stacked her hands behind her on the wall and leaned against them, her expression less curious than it
was smug. “Does that mean you’ve changed your mind?”

  “About?” he said, reaching for her shower gel and sponge.

  “Her gift.”

  He shook his head, admitting to nothing, soaping his armpits and his chest. “It’s not that so much as the fact that I’m running low on options.”

  “Hmm.” She canted her head to one side. “I thought it might be about what Della saw when she touched you.”

  Suds fell from the sponge to his feet. “Who said she saw anything?”

  “No one.” She paused, screwed her mouth to one side as if the movement helped her concentrate. “It’s just that I can’t think of any other reason you’d have changed your mind.”

  “Who said I’ve changed my mind?” he asked, tossing her the sponge and turning around.

  She scrubbed the width of his shoulders, circled her way down his back, across his hips, up his arms. The pressure was perfect, the massage soothing, the sponge soapy soft and damn arousing.

  “Why are you so hardheaded?”

  “I can get harder.”

  “Get as hard as you like.” She shoved the sponge between his legs, and he jumped. “I think Della did see something. And you not wanting to talk about it is proof.”

  He turned around before she did any permanent anatomical damage. “Proof that I don’t want to talk about it. That’s all.”

  “Why won’t you tell me?” She asked the question with such petulance, he expected to see her stomp her feet.

  “There’s nothing to tell.” Though he wondered what would happen if he did tell her, what she would do if he counted up the number of men he’d killed and laid it out—the truth, in stark black and white.

  “Is it because you don’t trust me?”

  “No,” he said, steeling himself against her pleas.

  “You do or you don’t?”

  “Doesn’t matter.” He shook water from his face. “That’s not the reason.”

  Her chin went up. “Then just tell me the truth.”

  He felt a big, fat Jack Nicholson moment coming on and had to stop himself from blurting out, “You can’t handle the truth.”