Jinxed!

6

AH,HELL, IAN HAD TIME TO think as Chloe’s soft lips touched his. The kiss, her kiss, felt better than anything had in a damn long time.

He’d been working around the clock, neglecting pleasure for so long that it whipped through his veins, demanding more, more, more.

Never mind that he shouldn’t.

They shouldn’t. She was a possible suspect, a definite witness, and hell, he couldn’t take his hands off her.

With Chloe, he had no resistance, not when her curvy body had shrink-wrapped itself to his, not when she’d slid her warm, sweet tongue inside his mouth…

At this rate, he wouldn’t survive if they stopped. “Chloe…” His fingers sank into her hair, gently tugging her head back so he could look into her eyes, but instead he pressed his mouth to her bared throat and made his way along her wet skin, to her jaw, her ear.

She let out a shaky exhale and held on. “Ian…why were you really in that office?”

He’d expected the questions. What he hadn’t expected was to be so completely blindsided by needing her that his guard was down. Down, hell. It was flat-out gone.

“For a case, I’m guessing. Right?”

He sank his teeth lightly into her earlobe, then soothed the spot with his tongue.

“Ian.” Her voice was wobbly, her free hand clutching at him, as if she was having trouble standing. The handcuffs clanked, reminding him again of their presence. They were a tool of his job, not a sex toy. He’d never really been into bondage. Yet he couldn’t have begun to explain how unbearably erotic it felt to be handcuffed to her.

“Are they in trouble?” she asked. “The guys?”

It took a moment to get past the sexual haze and be able to talk. “Guys?”

“Steve and Al? I do their books.”

Against her deliciously wet, warm skin, he sighed.

And she went still. “I suppose you probably already know that.” Lifting her head, she stared at him. “Talk to me, Ian.”

He knew the regret was all over his face. “I-”

“Can’t.” Her worried smile broke his heart. “Or you’d have to kill me, right?” She lifted their handcuffed wrists. “Key?”

“Yeah.” He backed her to the countertop and opened a drawer at her hip.

“Um…” She rocked her hips to his, making his eyes cross with lust.

“Chloe,” he said on a low breath. “You’re killing me.”

“It’s like we were never apart. Do you remember?”

He looked into her eyes. “Everything.”

“Our first time…?”

Especially that. He’d driven them through the Angeles Crest forest, to an overlook where they could see the lights of sprawling Los Angeles far beneath them.

Neither of them had noticed the view. Instead they’d ravaged each other in the front seat of his truck, and then the bed of his truck, stretched on a blanket beneath a sky littered with a million stars… “I remember.”

He’d had plenty of sex since then, some really good sex, but looking into her eyes now, he knew the truth-nothing had ever quite lived up to his time with her.

No one had ever come close to touching his heart the way she had.

How to explain that to her, much less to himself, he hadn’t a clue.

“Today, it was like you appeared out of thin air.” She leaned in close as he searched the drawer. She brushed a wet strand of hair from his temple, letting her fingers linger on him.

His gaze locked on hers as his fingers closed over the key.

She smiled and somehow the simple gesture warmed him. “You grew into your skin quite nicely, Ian McCall.”

“Not nearly as well as you…” Straightening, he ran his fingers over her bare shoulders, playing with the spaghetti strap of her very wet tank. “You’re wet.”

Her eyes widened, maybe wondering if the double entendre had been intentional, which actually it hadn’t, but now he could think of nothing else.

“So are you,” she whispered, running her free hand over his shirt, then under. Her fingers brushed his nipple, and he actually dropped the key.

The pulse at the base of her neck was racing. She wasn’t breathing all that steadily either, but then again, neither was he.

Neither of them bent for the key.

Send her home, his brain ordered. He had to, before he did something stupid.

She was still touching his chest, sliding her hand back and forth over him, lingering. “Chloe-”

She shivered.

He could see her white lace bra-it was playing peekaboo with the wet cotton of her tank, blowing his mind. So were her nipples, pebbled to two hard points, clearly outlined and defined, making his mouth water. “You’re beautiful, Chloe,” he breathed. “So damned beautiful.” His finger slid beneath one of her straps, and then, oops, look at that, it fell to her elbow.

Stop, he told himself. Seriously, stop.

But then Chloe lifted their joined hands and slipped the other strap off…and then the top slid down so that it was just barely, oh, God, barely covering the very tips of her breasts. “Chloe-”

“That’s my name,” she said in a soft, whispery voice that reminded him of long, achingly deep, toe-curling sex. She tugged on the hem of his shirt, leaving him no choice but to lift up his arms and let her pull his shirt all the way off.

No choice at all.

Now his shirt hung between them, caught on the handcuffs. And then she was working on the button fly of his jeans, and he was trying to find the zipper on her skirt, but their hands were getting tangled up. Breathless with anticipation and with a hunger so all-consuming neither of them could talk and make any sense, they fell back against the counter, mouths fused, bodies still damp from the rain and practically steaming they were so heated up.

Unable to get her skirt off, he bunched the light, gauzy material in his fingers. She broke off the kiss to drag hot, wet openmouthed kisses down his throat and over his chest.

He found her panties.

She got his buttons undone.

Being with her like this felt like a homecoming in ways he couldn’t really wrap his brain around, except that stopping was no longer an option-

And then he heard something that snapped him out of it like nothing else could have.

“What?” she murmured, her mouth on his pec.

“I thought I heard something-” His brain had gone hazy. “I heard-” She sank her teeth into him and his knees nearly buckled. “Hold on-”

She slid a hand into his pants. “I am.”

His head came up as he realized two things at once. One, he loved feeling her hands on him again. Two, someone was in the house with them. And he was standing here with his hand down the back of her panties, more than half-undressed himself, still handcuffed to her, and shockingly, frustratingly helpless. “Be very quiet,” he said in her ear. “I’m going to-”

That’s when the lights went out.