Private Investigations Read online

  He offered a grin, then dragged his fingers along the length of her size-eight foot. Ripley gasped as a shiver wound up and around her, seeming to touch every one of her nerve endings.

  “What’s the matter, Ripley? Are you ticklish?”

  In all honesty, she couldn’t have said. No one had tried to tickle her before. Her parents hadn’t been the touchy-feely type. And certainly none of her boyfriends had ever gone near her feet. But given her response to Joe’s touch, she’d have to say that she definitely was ticklish, even if laughing was the furthest thing from her mind right then.

  She swallowed hard. “Half the grime from Memphis’s streets is down there. Doesn’t that, um, bother you?”

  He slid her other sandal off and worked her foot around and around. “What’s a little grime between friends?”

  “Friends?”

  “Yeah. I’d like to think you’re my friend.”

  Friends.

  Ripley sat completely still, staring at him, mesmerized. “Aren’t you, um, going to make another crack about what happened back there?” she asked, not liking the thickness of her voice. She sounded too near to tears for her liking. And the last thing she wanted to do was cry. So, all right, she’d mucked up her first case as a private detective. That didn’t mean she should throw in the towel, did it?

  Or maybe this was one of those signs, like the ones she’d used to change her life around to where it was now. Her meeting Nelson Polk in the park and lapping up his stories about what his life had been like as a P.I. The flyer for a gun range she’d found stuck under her car’s windshield wiper. The offering of employee severance packages where she worked. She’d grabbed onto all those signs tightly, telling herself that she was meant to be a private investigator and this was the Fates’ way of telling her that.

  So what were the Fates trying to tell her now?

  “You’re wound up tighter than a shoestring,” Joe murmured.

  “You would be, too, if you just found the person you’d been looking for then lost her again.”

  She stared into his eyes, finding them bluer than she remembered, darker, somehow, now that they weren’t full of irritation or amusement or both. “At least you found her.”

  She nodded. Yes, she supposed that much was true. She had found Nicole Bennett.

  A bit of Nelson Polk wisdom echoed in her mind. “Missing persons cases are the toughest, especially if the missing person doesn’t want to be found. Accept that you’re lucky to find half of the people you go after. And make sure you get paid up front.”

  Ripley smiled. If someone as successful as Polk had a fifty percent average, then she supposed she wasn’t doing too badly. The smile slowly vanished. Of course, she’d been so excited about landing her first real case that she hadn’t followed his second piece of advice. Yes, she’d gotten a two-hundred-dollar retainer, and one fifty toward travel expenses. But the way this case was going, she would be in the hole in no time. And seeing she had no means to contact her client, there was little hope she’d ever see more money. In fact, it was looking like she no longer had a case.

  She swallowed hard. “Who am I kidding? I’m not meant for this. I should just pack it all in and go home.”

  “Home?” Joe asked.

  Ripley blinked at him, only then realizing she’d said her thoughts aloud.

  “Where’s home?”

  “St. Louis.” She cleared her throat and slid her foot from his grasp, not comfortable with showing him her weak side, even if he did work miracles on her feet. “And you?” she said, trying to steer the conversation away from herself, afraid that if she discussed the possibility of her returning home—giving up before she’d really started—it might become reality.

  “Minneapolis,” Joe said.

  Well, that was a revealing scrap of information, wasn’t it? Ripley pulled her bare feet on top of the mattress and wrapped her arms around her knees. Joe sat back against the bed, still on the floor.

  “Do you really want to give in?” he asked. “Go home?”

  She shrugged, not really sure what she wanted to do just then. And despite her fears, she found she needed to talk about the situation. “It seems the only reasonable, logical thing to do. I mean, the woman who hired me to find a missing person has gone missing herself. Meaning that if I can’t find her, too, there’s no money…and no client, for that matter.” She laid her cheek against her knees, gazing at him. “Then there’s the tiny fact that I have no personal interest in finding Nicole Bennett. I mean, even if I had caught her outside the pawnshop, what would I have done with her?”

  “Good point.”

  “Yeah, but not very satisfying.” She sighed, then turned her head the other way, away from him, and closed her eyes. “I don’t know. Maybe this whole thing, my becoming a P.I., is just pie in the sky. Every day I’m getting closer to the big three-oh. The only thing I know how to do with any amount of success is answer phones and type others’ expense reports. My computer science education is probably even obsolete now.” She caught her lip between her teeth and bit down hard. “What was I thinking?”

  She felt the mattress shift and guessed that Joe had sat on the bed next to her. “Interesting that you should use the word satisfying,” he said quietly.

  Ripley didn’t move, didn’t say anything, merely sat there staring at the hotel room wall, trying to ignore that there was a gorgeous, nearly naked man sitting next to her.

  “Recently I’ve been thinking I haven’t been getting a lot of satisfaction from my own life.”

  Fingers slid onto her shoulders. Ripley shivered, realizing he was not beside her, he was behind her. And he was touching her.

  “I don’t know. I suppose I’ve been charging full steam ahead for so long that I never stopped to ask myself whether or not I was happy.”

  She nodded slightly, knowing exactly where he was coming from. That kind of talk was what had gotten her into so much trouble to begin with.

  The fingers slid from her shoulders to her back where they kneaded her muscles through her T-shirt. “Mmm, that feels good,” she murmured, and closed her eyes.

  He didn’t respond to her comment, merely continued working his magic with his hands. “I know I’ve made some cracks here and there about your abilities as a P.I., Ripley,” he said quietly, gently moving her hair out of the way and pressing his thumbs to the base of her neck. “But the truth is I admire what you’re doing.”

  She twisted her lips. “Yeah, right. I’ve done a lot for you to admire. What is it that did it for you? When you caught me hiding under the bed? Or when I practically swallowed a good chunk of pavement when I tripped over my own feet?”

  He squeezed her shoulders, and she said, “Ouch.”

  “Just be quiet and let me finish, will you?” he murmured, his mouth close to her ear.

  Air was suddenly at a premium. “Okay.”

  He continued working the kinks from her muscles. But while the tension eased from certain areas, a different kind of tension began to wind low in her belly.

  “Think about it, Ripley. You’ve done something that a lot of people would never have the guts to do. You took a look at your life midstream, found it lacking, then completely shifted tracks. You quit your old job—”

  She made a sound. “I was offered a severance package.”

  He squeezed a little too hard again, earning a yelp. “I’m talking here, remember?”

  She nodded and bit her tongue to keep herself from offering further comment.

  “You quit your job—” he paused, waiting to see if she was going to say anything “—and followed your heart.”

  Yes, she supposed that she had.

  “You did something I would never have had the balls to do.”

  Ripley’s heart tripped into a higher gear. She turned her head so she could watch him from the corner of her eye. His expression was thoughtful, intense as he continued his massage. She squinted at him. “But you’re successful in what you do—very, if I’m not mist
aken.”

  He grimaced. “Successful doesn’t equal happy.”

  She let go of her legs and sat up. “Do you mind if I take off my T-shirt?” she asked, then went ahead and did it before he could respond.

  She was very aware that she wasn’t wearing a bra underneath. She wore the torturous contraptions as seldom as she dared. Of course she’d had no way of knowing that while she was reviewing her case in her old hotel room she would be taking a dip in the pool soon. She drew her knees up and waited. After a moment, she felt Joe’s fingertips on her exposed flesh. She shivered at the heat of his touch.

  “So, tell me, Joe Pruitt,” she said, her voice soft, “what would be the one thing you would do if you could choose anything in the world?”

  No immediate response except for the hesitation in his hands. “Is that the question you asked yourself?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Dangerous question.”

  She smiled. “Yeah. I’m proof positive of that.”

  He didn’t respond with words, but his hands seemed somehow hotter, more probing, rubbing her muscles with the skill of a pro, working away the last of her tension and making her feel far too relaxed. Far too turned on.

  “So?” she murmured.

  His fingers grazed her back then slid to tickle the underside of her breasts. Ripley caught her breath, suppressing a whimper of protest when he returned to her back.

  “I don’t know,” he said finally, thoughtfully. “I’m past my prime for sports to be an option. If they were. And they’re not. Not with this knee.”

  “And I’d like to be a model but, gee, I haven’t worn a size two since I was two.”

  His chuckle tickled her skin.

  She felt something wet and hot against her back and realized he was kissing her there, right in the middle near her spine. He drew back and blew on the area he’d kissed. She shuddered, and her nipples hardened where she had them pressed against her knees.

  “I can tell you what I’d like to do now. Right this minute.”

  Ripley found her voice. “What?” she asked, though she was pretty sure she already knew the answer.

  “Order up room service. I didn’t get a chance to finish my lunch.”

  Ripley threw her head back and laughed so hard she nearly fell off the bed. Joe caught her around the middle, turned her and pressed her into the mattress. Ripley instantly stopped laughing. Her heart thudded unevenly in her chest. The tension in her belly had moved lower, making her throb with want for this man who made her feel like hitting him one minute and kissing him the next.

  “Liar,” she said.

  He stretched out next to her, propping his head on his hand. “Not a liar. A wiseass. There’s a difference.”

  “Oh?” Her gaze slid to the towel he still wore, then her bare midriff. She thought about covering herself with her arms, then stretched her arms out above her head instead, arching her back. She watched his eyes darken as his gaze slid from her eyes to her neck, then finally rested on her bare breasts.

  He reached out with his free hand and caught the very tip of her nipple between his thumb and forefinger. He rolled the sensitive stiff flesh then gave a gentle tug. Ripley’s back came off the mattress as a rush of heat flooded her inner thighs. He moved his hand to her other breast, using the same massaging technique he’d used on her muscles to bring her nipple even more erect. Then he caught the tip of the breast closest to him in his mouth, and Ripley was sure she had died and gone to heaven.

  Suddenly it wasn’t enough to be receiving. She wanted to take. Hectic energy filled her to overflowing as she caught his shoulders and pinned him to the bed, straddling his hips. She kissed him restlessly, her hands fumbling for the towel that covered the area she was most interested in.

  Joe chuckled softly. “This would work a lot better without the shorts.”

  Ripley rolled off him, stripped off the shorts in question and followed with the borrowed briefs while he did a search for something on the nightstand table. His wallet for a condom, she realized, her heartbeat kicking up.

  This was really going to happen. Here. Now. She was going to have sex with Joe Pruitt. The mere idea was enough to send her lunging for him again.

  Since the first moment they met, skin against skin in his hotel bed, she’d felt an electrical shock of attraction. The kind of pull that drew people to rubberneck at car accidents or stare at dead bodies. A dangerous appeal that made you stick around just to see what happened next. Usually nothing did. But Ripley got the distinct impression that something very definitely was going to happen here. And it was going to be damn good.

  “Dear Lord,” Joe murmured, dragging his mouth from hers and gulping deeply. Ripley felt a thrill that his reaction was due completely, totally, one hundred percent to her.

  She smiled at him. “Do what you gotta do, because I’m not waiting anymore.”

  He squinted at her, the action making his eyes even darker, then scrambled to put on the condom. But when Ripley would have slid down over him, he rolled her over instead so that her back pressed into the soft mattress and his erection pulsed against her slick, swollen flesh.

  Oh, boy. Ripley wasn’t quite ready for the gaping need that opened in her lower abdomen. A burning ache that begged, yearned to be filled, that she feared might never go away. She wriggled against him restlessly. He smiled at her, spreading her thighs with his knees, then finding the source of her agitation with his fingers. Ripley instantly stopped moving, the breath rushing from her body with that one simple, beautiful move.

  “God, are you hot,” Joe murmured, running his open mouth down her neck and to her shoulder.

  He flicked the hooded bit of flesh at the apex of her thighs with his thumb, and Ripley gasped, automatically thrusting her hips up, seeking a firmer, more satisfying touch.

  “Lie still.”

  That was like waving a tenderloin in front of a hungry lion and telling him to sit. Ripley reached for his hips, wanting to have him inside her…now. Needing him to satisfy the ache growing with every leap of her pulse.

  “Stop it,” he murmured, nipping her ear.

  She shuddered and tried to turn her head into his kiss. He grinned and pulled back to gaze into her face.

  “You’re cruel,” she whispered.

  “You’re hot.”

  She slid her hand between them and grasped his erection, marveling at the length and width of it. “You’re…big.”

  She’d meant to say that he was hot, too, but the other word slipped out. He kissed her then, deeply, hungrily. “You’re good for the ego, you know?”

  “Shut up and let’s have sex.”

  He chuckled, and Ripley laughed, then gasped as he slid two fingers deep inside her. He kissed her open mouth, dipping his tongue inside. “Wow. You’re so…warm. So tight.”

  Ripley caught her bottom lip between her teeth and bit hard, trying to keep herself from flying apart right then. “Joe, if you don’t—”

  Then he was inside her. All of him. Filling every last inch of the emptiness she’d felt a moment before. “Oh,” she murmured, although the word came out as a long moan.

  Then he moved. Slowly. Deliciously. As if afraid he might lose the control she was even now frantically holding onto with her fingernails. The friction of his flesh inside hers made her tremble all over, made her thrust her hips up to meet his rather than allow him escape. He groaned and sank deep into her again, robbing her of breath, of movement, rendering her incapable of anything but feeling the sheer ecstasy pounding through her veins, skittering over her skin, hardening her nipples. She curved her legs around his hips and squeezed, holding him tight against her, not caring about the world beyond the bed or the really crappy state of her life right now, only wanting the feelings raging inside her to stay there forever.

  Then he withdrew nearly all the way and rocked against her again and the emotions expanded to the tenth power. The next time he withdrew, she let him go without resistance, deciding that, boy, did he k
now what he was doing. He rolled into her again…and again…and Ripley found his rhythm, clenching her leg muscles then unclenching them, her fingers digging into the taut muscles of his shoulders, her mouth mindlessly seeking and finding his as his arousal reached pleasure spots she didn’t know were there.

  “So…good,” she whispered against his mouth, the tips of her nipples brushing his chest.

  Then he murmured something, curses, she thought, and he increased the speed of his thrusts. Ripley gasped and grabbed the blanket on either side of her with both hands, seeking a levity she was quickly losing, trying to stop the world from spinning.

  Too late. The explosion in her belly was so overwhelming, so beautiful, her back came up off the mattress, meeting Joe’s suddenly still form, straining against him.

  Minutes later, Ripley’s heart still felt as if it might beat straight out of her chest. She tested her legs by tightening them around Joe’s waist, gasping as another spasm ripped through her. He lifted his head where it was buried in the pillow beside her. His grin was all too enticing.

  She cleared her throat. “Had I known that was what I was missing, I would have let you have your way the first time I crawled into your bed.”

  He kissed her. “No, you wouldn’t have.”

  “You’re right. I wouldn’t.” She ran her fingers lazily up and down his back. “But it’s nice to think about, isn’t it?”

  She felt his erection twitch inside her, and his grin told her it wasn’t involuntary. “Oh, I think actually doing it blows that one right out of the water.”

  Ripley threaded her fingers through the damp hair on his head and ground her hips against him. His eyes darkened, all laughter gone. She smiled. “I think you’re right.”

  He tilted his head and kissed one side of her mouth, then the other. “I knew you’d come around to my way of thinking sooner or later.” He began to withdraw, and she thrust upward again. “Am I ever glad it was sooner….”