Red-Hot & Reckless Read online

  “Mmm-hmm.” She sucked on her index finger then played with his nipple again. “I’ve decided that this guy, you know, that I met? Well, he needs to learn how to loosen up a bit. Cut loose. Act on his impulses instead of analyze them.”

  She slipped her finger into her mouth again and twisted it around, getting it good and wet before focusing her attention on his other nipple.

  “You think so, huh?” Alex croaked.

  “Mmm. You analyze things to death.”

  Okay, so he did do that. He liked to think it was a Greek trait. One wasn’t raised knowing that the world’s first great thinkers were Greek without feeling obligated to follow in the tradition.

  But even as fire swept through his abdomen, Alex thought that his heritage wasn’t the only thing behind his actions. When he was five he would take his weekly allowance down to Old Man Mano’s corner store and spend half an hour trying to decide what he wanted to spend it on. Mano used to tell him that one day his head was going to explode from the effort it took for him to buy a piece of nickel candy.

  The only thing in his life he hadn’t been hesitant about was his decision to go into law enforcement, then take the position as an insurance investigator.

  Nicole wiggled her bottom so that she was closer to the area most in need of her attention. Alex’s hips involuntarily bucked from the mattress. She laughed quietly as she rerouted her damp finger to the middle of his chest then slowly drew it down his stomach. Alex drew in a ragged breath and he trembled at the power of the tension growing inside his body. Not just in his groin, but all over. He was afraid that if he held his hand out he’d find it trembling.

  “Nicole…”

  She brushed her glorious hair to the other side of her face, sweeping the fresh-smelling, silken strands across his bare skin. He caught his breath, mesmerized. “Hmm?”

  “Is your real name even Nicole?”

  She gazed at him. “No.”

  “What is it?”

  “If I told you then I’d have to kill you.”

  He started to chuckle then stopped as she tucked her finger into the waistband of his boxers and slowly tugged the material down until his erection sprang free. With the same finger, she began drawing lazy circles against his inflamed skin. He threw his head back against the pillow and gritted his teeth.

  He heard her small intake of breath. “Mmm…wow.”

  “Hmm?” He was finding it increasingly difficult to concentrate on verbal conversation, but her comment intrigued him.

  “Had many complaints?” she whispered.

  He didn’t understand. “Complaints?”

  “About how…big you are.”

  He watched as she wrapped her fingers around the width of his erection, covering the knob of his arousal, then drawing her hand down over the length of him.

  He honestly didn’t know how he compared to other men. He’d never been the type to engage in that kind of one-upmanship. And none of the women he’d been with up until now had mentioned anything about his size.

  “You look good enough to eat,” she whispered.

  Oh, yes, Alex thought in anticipation, pulling on the handcuffs, the thought of her wet, naughty mouth moving over him sending his blood pounding through his veins.

  She bent over him, her hair trailing over his thighs as she flicked her pink tongue over the top of his arousal, then curved it partially around the width, her fingers tightly holding the base.

  She slid her lips over the shiny dome and moved down over him, nearly sending him into cardiac arrest as her gaze rested solidly on his face, watching for his reaction.

  Sweet Jesus, but she had an incredible mouth.

  The hot texture of her tongue against his sensitive skin, the slick suction she applied and the squeezing of her fingers combined to send flames licking over every inch of his body.

  Then just like that, her mouth and hand were gone.

  Alex groaned, feeling his wrist growing raw from where he kept yanking on the cuffs. It was pure torture not to be able to touch her, not to be able to take control. Instead he was forced to lie back as she stripped off her skimpy panties then sat back down on his thighs, her skin nearly searing his.

  He’d never seen a shaven pubis before up close and personal. There wasn’t a lick of hair on her swollen flesh, nothing to impede his view of her engorged womanhood. And he found he’d very much like to return the favor of oral sex.

  But all thoughts of that flew from his mind as she tore open a plastic packet then slowly, meticulously began rolling a condom down over him. Her dark eyes looked even darker as she finished rolling the lubricated latex down.

  She scooted until her thighs rested on either side of his hips. He groaned. Finally, finally, she was close enough to touch. And he did. Running his fingertips down the line of her swollen folds, he lightly dipped them into her wetness, then drew them up again, gently parting her to his sight.

  Beautiful…

  He heard her gasp as he flicked his thumb over her fleshy core. Then she was moving his hand away and maneuvering herself so that her bare womanhood hovered mere millimeters above his ramrod-straight erection.

  Then she was moving down over him.

  Shockwaves rushed through Alex. So tight. So wet. So…mind-blowingly phenomenal.

  He grasped the flesh of her hip with his free hand and held her still for a long moment, reveling in the feel of being buried deep within her. In the sweet sensation of Nicole Bennett connected to him in the most intimate way.

  She made a tiny sound of frustration. “Too slow,” she murmured.

  He blinked his eyes open to see what she was talking about, only to close them again as she began moving, stroking him with her slick flesh.

  Alex groaned as the momentum of her movements increased, then watched as her hands joined his above his head, her bottom slapping against his thighs as she rode him as if he were a galloping horse and she the jockey intent on pushing him to the finish line first. Her face was drawn in utter concentration, her gaze firmly on his as she went down again and again, her breasts swaying, her heat growing hotter still.

  His mouth watered with the desire to pull one of those breasts in his mouth even as his blood steam-rolled through his veins. The sound of flesh against flesh, harsh, labored breathing and his own quickening heartbeat filled his ears. Then Nicole moaned.

  The sound was soul deep and long, and wound around and around him, urging him toward a conclusion he didn’t want to reach yet. He stiffened and his hips bucked upward violently. Seeming to catch on to his condition, Nicole instantly removed her heat and sat back, staring at him in the dim light.

  Alex stopped breathing altogether as she grinned at him wickedly.

  “A lesser woman might, um, leave you hanging. Pay you back for having kidnapped me last night,” she whispered, appearing to have trouble finding air to fill her lungs with.

  Alex yanked so hard on the cuffs he was afraid he’d dislodge the headboard and the bed would collapse beneath them. “But you won’t,” he said quietly.

  She remained silent for a long moment, then shook her head. “Oh, no.” She slid the earring from her left ear, then within ten seconds flat had unlocked the cuffs binding him. “I want to see if my theory’s correct.”

  The words drifted through Alex’s mind, but didn’t register as he tackled her, pinning her against the other end of the mattress. She gasped, then giggled, then moaned as he pulled each of her breasts deep into his mouth and curved his hand down over her hip and under her bottom, parting her further.

  “Mmm, I guess—”

  The rest of her sentence exited on a ragged breath as Alex filled her.

  In his entire life, he couldn’t remember a time when he felt this way. He was consumed by his need for this enigmatic woman. This woman who alternately teased him and surprised him. This woman who stoked his passion to such a fevered pitch he wondered if he was too turned on to come.

  He slid into her to the hilt, then stopped.

/>   She made a sound of frustration. “Please…”

  “What’s your theory?” he asked, her words a moment ago finally taking root.

  She smiled up at him shakily, then smoothed her palms against his jaw. “That once all pretense is stripped away, we’re very much alike, you and I.” She swallowed hard, drawing his gaze down the length of her long neck to where sweat coated the skin of her chest. “What we feel, we feel strongly.” She moved her hands to his buttocks. “And when we have sex, it’s with no holds barred.”

  She ground her hips hungrily against his.

  Alex groaned then drove into her like nobody’s business, unsure how he felt about her words but knowing one thing as he dove for home. Sex with Nicole Bennett was out of this world.

  THREE HOURS LATER Nicole lay across the width of the mattress, stark naked, watching the sky outside the tall windows begin to lighten, the first birds offering up tentative calls. She was soaked with sweat, completely sated and wishing the loft had central air to help her cool off.

  “Summer’s my favorite time of year,” Alex said quietly from where he lay next to her staring at the same sight.

  Nicole turned her head to look at him. “Yeah? Mine, too.” She looked at the sky again. “That and winter. You can have spring and fall. Too tame for me. I like the extremes.”

  She felt his gaze on her, but didn’t acknowledge it.

  She was happy that her theory about the uptight Alex Cassavetes had been correct. In her twenty-eight years she’d come to understand that most people lived behind various types of masks. The skill lay in looking beyond those masks and seeing the people underneath. She’d sensed from the first time she’d laid eyes on Alex outside that Baltimore pub, then later when he’d knocked on her door instead of going into his own room, that he was a man just itching to step outside of his stale box. That he was a man capable of great passion and fantastic sex.

  Still, not even she had been prepared for his stamina, his sheer strength of will, that allowed him to hold off his own climax so that he could give her orgasm after glorious orgasm. It made sense that someone in law enforcement would value control. She’d had no idea that control could manifest itself in such a way, though. She couldn’t remember a time when she’d gone that long with a guy. Couldn’t remember when she’d felt her thighs ache, her stomach tremble, her limbs go limp from overactivity.

  “Water,” he said. “I need some water.”

  Nicole opened her mouth to ask him to bring her some, too, but was surprised when no sound came out.

  Wow.

  Imagine. Her. Rendered completely speechless.

  She shifted slightly and squeezed her thighs together, causing a shudder to travel over her skin.

  “Open,” Alex said, blocking her view of the morning sky then nudging her feet with his knee.

  She squinted at him then stretched one foot until it rested on the side of his knee, positioning herself so that she lay wide open to him.

  He pressed a cold, hard water bottle against the swollen, overheated flesh between her legs. She gasped and came up off the bed, both shocked and turned on by the unexpected move. Alex grinned as he uncapped the bottle then took a long drink from it.

  Nicole licked her lips, waiting for him to offer her some. He didn’t. Instead he motioned her hand away and gestured that he’d like to hold the bottle for her.

  Nicole lifted herself to her elbows with some effort and pursed her lips. He put the bottle to her mouth then tipped it. Half the cold liquid trickled down her chin onto her chest. He removed the bottle then joined her on the bed, licking the cool liquid from her skin, including her aching nipples.

  After a few moments, he collapsed back to the mattress next to her. Nicole smiled. “At least you were able to get up and get water. I don’t think I could move if I tried.”

  Alex stared at the ceiling. Nicole turned her gaze to the sky outside the windows. A girl could get used to this view.

  “My mother used to say that you could tell what kind of day it was going to be from the sunrise,” she said quietly.

  She heard Alex shift but he didn’t say anything.

  “Unfortunately I never paid close attention, so I can’t remember much of how, exactly, you went about doing that.” She looked down at her chest, feeling a sudden, inexplicable desire to cover herself.

  “Red sky at morning, sailors take warning. Red sky at night, sailor’s delight,” Alex said, reaching over her and tugging the sheet to partially cover them both across the hips. “My yiayia used to say that. I guess it’s an old fishermen’s saying.”

  Nicole pulled the sheet up to cover her breasts.

  “Does your mother live in the city?” he asked.

  “My mother doesn’t live anywhere. She’s dead.”

  A pause, then, “I’m sorry.”

  She swallowed and rested her hands on her stomach. “Don’t be. You didn’t kill her.”

  “She was murdered?”

  “Yes. By cancer.”

  She fell silent, remembering the apartment in Brooklyn Heights where she and her family used to live. How, day by day, her mother grew weaker. Lost her hair during chemotherapy sessions. But not even a disease like cancer could keep her down. She was always smiling. Always asking her and Jeremy questions, reading to them at night, as if she was trying to cram a lifetime’s worth of love into a few short months.

  “I was seven when she died,” she found herself saying. “My brother and I just came home from school one day to find her gone. No hospital visits. She was just gone.”

  She lay there, a part of her surprised she had shared what she had. Another waiting for Alex’s response.

  “What did she look like?” he murmured.

  In all her imaginings, she would never have guessed he’d ask that. She rolled onto her side and gazed at him, her head propped up on her elbow. Then she smiled. “Beautiful. She had this soft brown hair. And big blue eyes that sparkled when she laughed.” She moved her hand to rest against his chest. “She used to love going for long walks. We’d leave Jeremy home with my father and she and I would walk up and down the street, talking to the neighbors, asking the butcher how his wife was doing, the bookstore owner what was new on the shelves.” She sighed softly.

  “It must have been hard losing her at such a young age.”

  Nicole lay her head against her arm and idly moved her fingertips over his chest. “It wasn’t easy.”

  She remembered months of silence, her father’s long absences when the neighbor would come to look after her and her brother. Then, finally, the curtain had seemed to lift and she and Jeremy learned what their father did for a living. He wasn’t a used-car salesman like the guy across the street. Or a stockbroker like Johnny’s father down the block. He was a thief.

  And it wasn’t long after that that she and Jeremy had found themselves following in their father’s footsteps.

  There had never been a time when guilt was associated with what they were doing. Oh, they’d known it was illegal. And that if you got caught, you got in trouble. But their father had carefully begun to school them. Where other families went to Central Park for picnics, they’d gone under the guise of sharing a picnic, when what they were really doing was practicing for what would come later. A filched picnic basket here. A borrowed set of car keys there. They’d always given the items back in a way that didn’t implicate them. After all, their father explained, these were practice runs, not the real thing. When you did the real thing, you went for larger items. Like pricey antiques, which were what he targeted.

  “And your brother?”

  Nicole blinked to stare at Alex. Had she really just said all that aloud? Really shared with him what she had never told another individual? She felt suddenly antsy, uncomfortable.

  Alex curved an arm under her head and pulled her closer.

  “Anyway,” she said, reaching for the water bottle. “Enough about my boring life. Tell me about your family.”

  She made the mistake
of meeting his gaze as she swallowed water. The intense, questioning expression on his face made her heart beat a little faster.

  “Are you sure you want to hear it?” he asked, grinning.

  She settled back in next to him, her hand idly reaching for his groin. “Oh, yeah. I want to hear everything that went into making this virtual sex machine.”

  He chuckled. “There will be plenty of time for that later,” he said and turned her over onto her back, letting her know exactly what he had in mind for now.

  And Nicole wasn’t about to argue with him….

  7

  MUCH LATER that morning, Nicole sat alone sipping latte at a restaurant across the street from the auction house. There, they would sell off the collection of valuable paintings to the highest bidder in four days. Despite the fact that she’d gotten very little sleep last night she felt energized, refreshed, her muscles seeming to sing a tune she couldn’t quite place but she hummed to anyway.

  She took a long pull off her latte then leisurely licked the foam off her top lip. Amazing what a little great sex could accomplish.

  A little? She propped her elbow on the table then planted her chin in her hand. Alex would have knocked her socks off had she been wearing any. As it stood, nearly every muscle in her body ached, her thighs still felt on fire and she was sitting there thinking about how very hard it had been to leave him sleeping a few hours ago. Especially when she knew a couple of light, naughty touches could get a rise out of him while he was still asleep.

  Someone sighed. With a start, she realized it was her.

  She snapped upright. She never sighed. At least not in that wistful, first-blush way. It was just something she didn’t do. Not as a high school freshman when she’d set her sights on the senior captain of the varsity football team. Not even when she thought she was in love about five years back when she’d hooked up with a French sculptor who’d known exactly what to do with his hands. Sighing just wasn’t something she was given to doing. Not in exasperation. Not in disgust. And certainly not in a mushy, longing way that made her seem like a dreamy-eyed idiot.