Too Hard to Handle, page 20
“Shhh,” he told her, hooking his thumbs in the waistband of her panties and sliding them down her legs. “Step out of ’em,” he instructed. “And then lift your leg and rest your foot beside my hip.”
“Dan…” His name was a plea for mercy. A plea for more. Which was exactly what he planned to give her. So, so much more. Along with the burning desire that arced through his veins like electrical jolts, he now possessed a sense of rightness. This was right. They were right. And he was determined to prove that to Penni. With every touch. With every word. With every kiss.
“It’s okay, babe,” he soothed. “I’m gonna give you everything you want.”
A breath shuddered from her as she did what he asked. When she stepped out of one side of her jeans and panties and planted her foot beside his hip, he ran a hand up her long, slender thigh. The skin was creamy and smooth, the muscles beneath shaking delicately. He watched as goose bumps followed the path of his palm, waiting, teasing himself until finally, he allowed his eyes to drink in the whole of her. Save for the jeans and panties still pooled around her right leg, Penni was standing before him completely naked.
And she was glorious.
All sweet, delicate curves and inch after inch of smooth, tantalizing skin. He marveled at her beauty, everything that was hard and male in him responding to everything that was soft and female in her. And then, after a few moments, he glanced at the part of her that made her woman. At the part of her that held the secret of life, the core of mystery that men had been seeking to unravel since the beginning of time.
She was…shaved. Holy fuckin’ shit!
Except for a very small patch of hair at the top of her slick channel, she was completely bare. Which highlighted just how ready, how needy she really was. All swollen and pink. Her lips dewy and plump.
If he thought he’d been hard before, he was wrong. Looking at her now had fresh blood filling him, stretching him until he hurt. Until every breath was agony because it caused his turgid cock to brush against the fabric of his boxer briefs. Who the hell makes underwear out of burlap? He’d never really noticed the problem before, but it was beyond evident now.
And, oh! How he wanted to taste her. Put his mouth on her and suck until she cried out and unraveled against his tongue. But that wasn’t what she’d asked for. Those weren’t the words that’d tumbled from her succulent lips. And so, with a reverence born of eons of women letting men put their hands on them, of delicateness allowing toughness a chance at touching something sinfully soft, he flattened his hand against the gentle curve of her lower belly and let his thumb rest at the top of her channel.
She sucked in a breath, the leg supporting her trembling. “Easy,” he murmured his voice sounding like boulders rumbling from the back of his throat.
He was dizzy with want. Faint with desire. But he still managed to steady her by placing his free hand on her hip. Then, looking up at her, watching her intently, he slipped the callused pad of his thumb inside her slick folds. Finding the hard, swollen bud of her clitoris, he pressed. Just once. Just to test her.
Her eyelids fluttered. The muscles of her stomach quivered under his hand. And her head tipped back, exposing the length of her kissable throat.
He flicked his thumb, back and forth, back and forth, and gloried when her hips swung forward. She moaned. It was throaty and raw. He answered in kind. Only the sound that issued from the back of his throat was more growl than moan. The noise animalistic and hungry. Which pretty well summed up in two words the way she made him feel.
As for the way she felt? That would take a million words. But he’d start with scorching hot, decadently soft, wildly wet.
Roger that, that definitely described her. And all he could think was how good it would feel to release the button on his jeans, pull down his zipper, and impale himself into her wonderful, silky heat. But besides that not being what she asked for, he didn’t have a condom. At least he didn’t have one handy. There was a box in his backpack, but—
Why the hell didn’t you bring it with you, numb nuts?
Oh, right. Because when he’d come to check on Penni, the last thing he’d expected was to be pulled inside the tiny lavatory to have his wound cleaned one minute, and have her naked and panting and begging him to make her come the next. Although, come to think of it, he should have known better. They’d proved over and over that whenever they were alone together, they couldn’t keep their hands to themselves. The lust they felt—that intrinsic, elemental connection—always took over. And they always ended up here. Seeking pleasure from each other. Giving pleasure to each other.
“Open a little wider,” he instructed. His nostrils flared as the scent of female need, of sex filled the small space when she let her bent knee fall wide until it was resting against the bulkhead. Her sweet, pink center and the swollen bundle of nerves beneath his thumb were revealed.
Is there anything in the world more beautiful than a woman’s body? If so, he’d yet to discover it.
Continuing to gently ply her, he moved the hand holding her hip until he was cupping her sex. The heel of his palm added pressure to the work his opposite thumb was doing, and his fingers were poised at her entrance.
“Yessss,” she hissed, her pulse beating heavily in her throat. It seemed to be racing in rhythm to his pounding blood. And when he pressed his middle finger into her, just the tiniest bit, just to the first knuckle, he thought he might explode in his jeans.
“More,” she demanded, her hips swinging forward to try to accomplish the feat themselves.
“How much more?” he asked, loving to hear the words on her lips, loving to push her to the brink of her comfort zone.
“All the way more,” she husked. “Until you’re inside me to the last knuckle.”
“Jesus,” he swore, even as he accommodated her, sinking his finger inside her, pumping gently.
She moaned, flinging her arms out to flatten a hand against each side of the lavatory’s bulkheads.
Soft. So unbelievably soft. Like satin. Like silk. Hot. Her inner walls were made of molten fire, burning the skin on his finger. Wet. She bathed his hand in her desire, making the gentle pumping motion slippery and wonderful.
And when he slipped a second finger alongside the first, all the while continuing to rub the little nub of swollen nerves, she hissed and encouraged him by groaning his name. He pumped two more times, stretching her, loosening her, and then he curled his fingers forward, searching, palpating, until…
There.
He found what he was looking for. That secret patch of swollen, slightly rougher skin. When he rubbed his fingers over it, she cried out and surprised him by immediately unraveling, her hips thrusting, her head back, her inner walls squeezing his fingers until his knuckles rubbed together.
“That’s it,” he encouraged her, continuing to use both hands on her. He was determined to make it last. Seeing her come, feeling her come, was more erotic, more sensual than he could ever have imagined and he wanted it to go on forever. His dick pulsed so hard that for a moment, he thought he’d come too. But then he continued to ache, to throb, to hurt, and he knew he hadn’t. Which was good. Because when he did come, he wanted to be inside her. He wanted to feel her walls closing, grasping, sucking along his shaft the way they were closing, grasping, sucking along his fingers.
God, she’s gorgeous. Completely abandoned. Completely wanton. Completely woman. And that she would give herself to him so freely, so totally, made every cell in his body swell up like a peacock strutting for its mate. He felt…possessive. Greedy. Totally gluttonous. And then it occurred to him…he’d given her what she asked for. Now it was his turn.
His turn to taste her.
So when the last tremors of orgasm shuddered through her and she lowered her head, her eyes hazy with spent lust, he carefully removed his fingers and lifted them to his lips. He sucked her passion from his skin, and her taste… Hot damn! Her taste was both wild and sweet. It exploded on his tongue and set off a chain reaction that went to his head, his heart, and most definitely his dick. Just pow! Sex. The decadent flavor of it. The musky smell of it. The soft, slippery feel of it. The total, incomprehensible want of it. It was on him, around him, inside him. And while he sucked his fingers, he watched her watching him…
* * *
“I called Morales on the sat phone,” Chelsea told Z, sliding into the empty pilot’s seat. There was something decidedly unnerving about being in the cockpit of a plane when it was thousands of feet above the ground. With all the knobs and switches and levers, she felt like any false move, any inadvertent slip, could flip something and they’d immediately plummet out of the sky. Not wanting that, she crossed her arms around her middle and tried to stay as still as possible.
“Morales?” Z asked, fidgeting with a knob. “I thought I heard you talking to your mom.”
“Well, I called my mom first and then I called Morales,” she said, narrowing her eyes when he slid her a knowing smirk. “Not a word,” she warned him.
“Okay,” he relented. “So then what did the mighty director of the CIA have to say?” He pulled off his headset and turned to give her his full attention. She didn’t like it. Partly because his piercing gray eyes were…well…piercing. And partly because, as Tattoo used to say on all the reruns she’d watched of Fantasy Island, De plane! De plane!
“Shouldn’t you be paying attention to the controls?” she demanded, trying to become even smaller. She didn’t like the looks of a blinking red light on the console. At all! “Like that one in particular.” She motioned with her chin toward the distracting, angry-looking flicker.
“The plane is on autopilot,” Z said, one corner of his mouth quirking. “And all that light tells me is that the door to the lavatory is locked.”
“Oh.” She nodded, sighing and allowing herself to settle a little more fully into the seat. “Dan and Penni are in there, uh, well…”
“I figured,” Z said.
“Yeah,” she agreed, then sighed again. The way Dan and Penni were together, hot to trot for each other while still completely at ease, made her wish for…so many things she didn’t have. So many things she might never have.
“What?” Z cocked his head. In the dim light of the instruments, she saw how the move caused a mink-colored curl to hook around the top of his left ear. Which was a weird thing to notice but was par for the course, really, considering that everything about this day had been a little twilight zone-y. “Why are you wearing such a hangdog expression? I’d think you would be jumping for joy. You helped catch the CIA’s most wanted man, something your colleagues couldn’t do after months of trying. You’ll probably get a commendation or a promotion for this.”
“Bah.” She waved a hand through the air, wincing when it came within inches of the yoke. She tucked her arm back around her waist. “I don’t care about any of that.” She realized how that sounded and was quick to clarify. “I mean, I care that we caught Winterfield, but I don’t care about the other stuff. Besides, I didn’t do much. You guys were the ones who managed all the heavy lifting.”
“Oh, come on, Chels.” He turned to face her more fully. His shoulders seemed too wide for the small space. She eyed the distance between his calf and that panel of knobs. “You did great back there and you know it. From interrogating Kozlov to hot-wiring the van to laying down cover fire…we couldn’t have done any of it without you. And in case everyone else forgets to say it, thank you.”
Thump! That was the sound of her jaw falling into her lap.
“What?” He lifted a brow.
She was able to reel up her bottom teeth. Barely. Shaking her head, she said, “It’s just that you’re not usually one for doling out praise.”
He made a face. “I dole it out when it’s warranted and deserved.”
“Maybe so,” she allowed. “Um…thanks then. I guess.”
“You’re welcome.” He winked.
And there went her jaw again, falling into her lap. Dagan Zoelner never winked. And especially not at her. Does he have something in his eye?
Well, regardless of whether it was an intentional or unintentional wink, there was no denying his praise had been real. And she hadn’t felt such a sense of accomplishment, such a sense of joy, since she won her eighth-grade spelling bee. A warmth spread from her stomach into her chest and further, into her cheeks.
“Well”—she played it off so he wouldn’t know how much his words meant to her, how much he meant to her—“truth is, I think I prefer my tidy little cubicle and my endless lines of Intelligence to actual fieldwork.”
“Not as fun as you thought it would be?”
“Ha,” was all she said, which expressed what she was feeling precisely. “You know, I once heard a field agent tell another field agent that there’s nothing more exhilarating than being shot at and missed.”
“You think he was wrong?” Z asked, his eyes blazing through the low light in the cockpit to burn across her face. She always felt his stare like a physical touch. A hot physical touch.
“It was a she,” she corrected, pushing her glasses up her nose. “And I don’t think she was wrong. I think she was cah-razy.”
He smiled. An actual, factual smile. The sight of his white teeth in the middle of his tan face was so sudden and blinding she almost lifted a hand to shade her eyes. She hadn’t even been trying to make him grin, which was probably why his smile had caught her so off guard. And then it was gone. As quickly as it had appeared. And he was back to being Sourpuss Face Dagan Zoelner.
Damn. She blew out a disappointed sigh. “On the subject of being shot at and missed, who do you suppose that guy was at the airport? One of Kozlov’s cronies, maybe?” she asked. “Kozlov could have been yanking my chain when he told me he was working alone.”
“Fuck if I know.” Z shrugged. “I didn’t get a good look at him through the pouring rain.”
“Neither did I,” she agreed.
Then, for a few seconds they sat in silence, Z flicking his gaze over the control panel, her flicking her gaze over his handsome profile. She didn’t like the idea of having to shrug and say whatever when it came to the guy at the airport, but there was nothing to go on and no way to investigate while she was twenty-something-thousand feet in the air. So she shoved it all aside and tried to clear her head. When she did, her mind wandered back to Dan and Penni, to the affection the two seemed to share, and before she even knew she was going to ask the question, she blurted, “Did you know Dan’s wife?”
Z turned to her. Slowly. Then he sat perfectly still. Eerily still. Which is how she knew she’d touched on a subject he in no way wanted to discuss. His words confirmed it. “One sentence in and I’m already hating the new direction of this conversation.”
Still, she’d already broached the topic. In for a penny, in for a pound. “Did you?”
“No,” he admitted after another long pause. “She died before I joined BKI.”
“Oh.” She nodded, then ventured, “Do you supposed Penni knows about her?”
“I have no idea.”
“I don’t think she does,” she said contemplatively.
“What makes you say that? Do you read minds? Is there a crystal ball hidden somewhere in your giant purse?”
“She didn’t know he was an alcoholic,” she said, ignoring the jab at her satchel. “So I suspect she doesn’t know he’s a widower.”
“Why would one have anything to do with the other?” he asked, frowning. “Dan’s ashamed of being an alcoholic. So maybe that’s why he kept it from her. There’s nothing shameful about being a widower.”
“Not shameful,” she said, her brow wrinkled in thought. “But…I don’t know. I think Penni would act differently if she knew.”
“How so?”
“I don’t know. I just think loving a widower would be hard to handle. Not knowing if you were second best. Not knowing if—”
“You think she loves him?” he cut her off.
“Yeah, maybe,” she allowed. “Did he…love her, do you think?” she asked. “His wife, I mean.”
Zoelner blew out an exasperated sigh. “Where are you going with this? And how can I make sure to go the opposite way?”
“It’s not like I’m sticking my nose is someone else’s rose here, but—”
“Could’ve fooled me,” he said.
“I keep thinking about her,” she continued as if he hadn’t interrupted. “I keep thinking about her and about Dan and about Penni.” She turned to blink at him.
“Your words form a statement, but your face forms a question,” he grumbled. His usually stoic expression was anything but. He actually appeared discombobulated. Imagine that. Dagan Zoelner feeling awkward. It was such a novelty she knew she just had to keep pressing.
“My question is, do you think Dan loved his wife?”
“Yes,” he ground out. “I think he loved her. And I know her death nearly killed him.”
“Mmm. The drinking?”
“Yes, the drinking,” Z confirmed.
“I figured as much,” she said a little sadly. That a man such as Dan, a loyal man, a courageous man, a good man could be brought so low…it didn’t bear dwelling on. Yet, dwell she did until the silence in the cockpit grew, until the hum of the engines seemed to fill the space inside the plane and all emptiness inside her chest. “You have to be really brave,” she finally said, almost to herself.
“What do you mean?”
“To be in love. Knowing that something terrible can happen and your heart can get smashed into a million tiny pieces. Knowing that you’re giving someone that kind of power over you. Knowing that you have that kind of power over another.”
For a few seconds, Z said nothing. Then he admitted, “I…think you’re right.” He waited a beat before adding, “You do have to be brave. Braver than I’ve ever been.”
She searched his face and wondered why she should feel both thrilled and saddened by the knowledge that he’d never been in love.
“Me too,” she murmured, swallowing and glancing out the window. A million stars dotted the black fabric of the sky overhead. A soft bed of clouds spread out like a quilt below them. “And to experience that kind of heartbreak and then have the courage and fearlessness to open yourself up to it again…” She trailed off. She wasn’t sure exactly what it was she wanted to say. Whatever it was, it felt big. Too big to put into words. So she ended with, “I really admire Dan. I think he might be the bravest man I’ve ever met.”
