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“Before I got to you…” He paused, went still around her—as if the next question was hard for him to get out. “Have you been assaulted?”
Grabbing hands. Buttons popping. Pushing her down in the seat. “I heard you did it for all the boys in Dahlia. Let’s see those tits.”
“Shh. Easy.”
Something in Alex had gone rigid, defensive. But his mesmerizing voice calmed her into breathing easy again.
Alex answered. “I was on a blind date. There was a little miscommunication. I thought he’d be interesting—he thought I’d put out.”
“I’m sorry.” He adjusted his stance, pulling the prop of his leg from between hers, relaxing the intimacy of his hold on her without releasing her entirely. “Did he force you?”
Alex squirmed in his grasp, wanting to turn around and ease away the concern—or was it fear? Anger?—that eroded the seductive timbre of his voice into a predatory growl. But she was at his mercy, and all she had to give him were words. “No. I wasn’t raped if that’s what you’re asking. But his plans for the evening didn’t match up with mine. When I got out of the car, he drove off with my purse and sweater and cell phone inside.”
He cursed. Apologized. “And you’ve been walking ever since?”
“Yeah. It’s been a long night.”
“And I thought I was having a bad one. Sounds like yours might have been worse.” He adjusted his arms around her, softening his hold. Though there was still little chance for Alex to escape, it felt more like an embrace rather than a takedown maneuver. “Sometimes, it’s hard to get it all right.”
Alex nodded. “Sometimes, it’s hard to get anything right.”
“Sometimes.”
This man made it so easy to sink into his strength. He was still pressed against her, his cheek to her ear, his chest to her back, his…Alex’s cheeks colored with warmth. There was something more than his belt buckle pressing into her bottom. But he wasn’t rubbing himself against her or demanding she do something about it. His restraint, despite the hell she’d given him, created a whole new world of confusion inside her.
But oddly enough, this felt right.
Even though she was the one being held captive, he was letting her be the one in control of the unexpected, yet obvious, attraction simmering between them. Control was a whole new experience for Alex. And she was beginning to think she wouldn’t mind if the handsome detective asked for something more than answers from her.
She tried to ignore the strange impulse and explain what had led her to this moment—pinned against a truck by what had to be the sexiest man who’d ever had a hard-on for her. “I swear I haven’t committed any crime. Although, if Dawson Barnes complains that he can’t father children for a couple of weeks, then I’ll argue it was self-defense. And I’m sorry that I kicked you and hit you. I didn’t mean to flake out like that.” She squeezed her eyes shut and sent up a quick prayer. She might have really gotten herself into some trouble here. “Are you hurt?”
Laughter danced against her ear and vibrated from his body into hers. “By a little bundle of dynamite like you?”
“Is that a yes or no?”
“Relax.” His lips brushed against her nape as he pushed her hair out of his face. “I’ll heal.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m fine.” He exhaled slowly, tickling the fine hairs on the back of her neck. A riot of goose bumps rose on her skin, despite the heat from his jacket and body. “Now. If I set you down, nice and easy, will you tell me your name?”
No. No name. Alexandra Morgan was a failure when it came to men. And she was feeling something, wanting something so badly with this man that she didn’t want to blow it. Maybe anonymity would give her a safety net, confidence she normally lacked. And maybe a man with no preconceived notions of who she was, a man who saw her as a desirable woman and nothing more or less, could give Alex what she wanted—a chance to be a normal, sexual, cherished woman.
Even if it was only for one night. Or one hour.
Or one kiss.
“Just like you said, Detective,” she finally answered. “It’s Trouble.”
“I believe that. Okay, so no names. Are you flirting with me, Miss Trouble?”
“Would that be a crime?”
“Depends on if you’re playing me or if this is really going somewhere.”
Alex breathed out the last of her doubts. She might not know exactly what she was doing, but she understood exactly what she wanted. “I don’t like playing games.”
“Then this is definitely going somewhere.” He let go with one arm to feather his fingers into her hair and lift the curling strands to his nose. “You smell so good. Like gardenias carried on a distant breeze.”
Alex’s breath locked in her throat as the atmosphere around them grew heavy. This man could read a grocery list and make it sound sexy in that voice. A compliment like that was pure poetry.
“You…smell good, too,” she whispered. Ugh. Not so poetic. What was she supposed to say?
But the words didn’t matter. He angled his head and pressed a hot, openmouthed kiss against the nape of her neck.
Her startled gasp tensed through her body. But when she exhaled, any surprise flowed away and settled with a purr of contentment in her throat. “That was…nice. Better than nice. I didn’t know there was a bundle of nerves back there.”
“You like that?” he whispered, warming the same spot with his tongue.
She trembled. Nodded.
“You want me to stop?”
They were strangers. She was needy. He was willing. And he was being so…patient. Such a gentleman. And yet, this gentleman’s erection was nestled in the seam of her bottom, telling her she wasn’t the only one interested in exploring whatever was happening between them. It was damn crazy to want a man so badly. A stranger, no less. But when had an opportunity like this ever landed in her lap? Or rather, when had she ever landed in Detective Opportunity’s lap?
“Don’t stop.”
He nibbled the sensitive spot on her neck gently, making her jerk in his arms. Then he worked his way down her spine to the collar of his jacket, discovering nerve after nerve that leaped to life beneath his warm, moist touch.
Alex squirmed between the man and truck, trying to free her hands to grab on to something to steady herself—to try to take part in the embrace. But all she managed to do was work her dress up even higher—exposing more bottom, more damp, slick heat that desperately wanted to feel the press of his leg again.
“Careful,” he warned. His arm constricted around her ribcage. His fingers clenched in her hair, pulling slightly at her scalp. But the pinpricks of pain quickly blended in with the pleasure of his moan vibrating against her skin, his teeth nipping at the taut muscle where her neck and shoulder joined. His thumb inched higher, testing the weight of one breast, hooking around the taut nipple that strained against the band of her dress. He flicked the tender nub once, twice, a third time, forcing Alex’s mouth open in a gasp of need and want that matched his own. “I’m not getting my signals mixed up, am I, Trouble? Tell me what you want. It’s yours. Or tell me to stop.”
She’d come to Nashville, expecting to learn a thing or two about this man-woman mystery that other women her age seemed to enjoy. She was looking for the good part of sexual experience that had been frightened out of her by a cruel act, denied her by a small town that would never let her forget her mistake. She’d thought she’d failed in her quest.
Maybe she’d just been looking for that experience with the wrong man.
“I want you to kiss me again. Really kiss me.”
Her request seemed to open up a throttle, turbocharging the leisurely, languid connection between them. Without ever letting her feet hit the ground, he turned her—using the truck and the friction of her curves bunching against his harder angles to keep her suspended in the air and aligned against him in a way that was sending every red blood cell in her body charging hard into the tips of her aching breasts and down to her full, weeping center. And then he kissed her. And kissed her. His kisses consumed her.
His jacket fell away from her shoulders as her fingers crept around his neck, then raked up the back of his head, tugging his short, silky hair into her greedy grasp. His tongue reached into her mouth, caught hers in a twist and pulled it between his lips for a light nip between his teeth.
Alex returned the bold move, his groan of approval matching the restless cries in her throat. There was nothing soft about this meeting of lips, nothing reticient about the deep, ragged breaths that moved their bodies against each other. He slid one hand down to her bottom, slipped his fingers beneath the elastic band of the cotton and squeezed, branding her, skin to skin. Alex hooked her heel behind his thigh, instinctively opening her body to the hard, thrusting need of his. The truck rocked as he pushed his body closer, drove his tongue deeper.
A wolfish whistle from the entrance to the alley was the first glitch in Alex’s mindless need to fulfill tonight’s quest. A familiar panic button tried to break through the haze of passion. She should reconsider this impulsive encounter.
But the dectective had other ideas.
“Stay with me, sweetheart.” He kissed away her doubts, turned and carried her to the cab of his truck. With an unceremonious shifting of grips and digging into pockets, he unlocked the door, opened it and dumped her inside. “Move over,” he commanded. As soon as Alex scooted backward across the bench seat, he started the engine and took off. “We need some privacy.”
His growly pronouncement spoke not only of his need, but reassured a bone-deep fear inside Alex that this was a good choice. That he was a good choice. This man would save the night—he’d save her lovelife—for her.
Alex held on tight as they jerked around corners and sped on a straightaway. Then they squealed through a parking lot and swerved into an alley where the neon lights and music and crowds of Broadway couldn’t reach. About the time she’d worked her arms into the sleeves of his jacket and had pulled her dress down to a relatively modest level, he stomped on the brake, killed the engine and turned to her.
“You still game?” he asked. The glow from the dashboard shadowed the rugged lines of his face, but his eyes reflected a need, an intent, that rivaled her own.
Alex reached for him. “Yes.”
As he wrapped his arm behind her back and laid her down on the seat, the truck plunged into darkness.
Perfect.
For a brief moment, his shadow loomed over her. But Alex felt excitement, not fear. She felt his palms on her thighs, his thumbs sliding up beneath the elastic of her panties. The heady weight of his body pressed her down into the upholstery as he sought out her bruised, swollen mouth for a tender kiss. “I can’t believe I’m making out in my truck like some kind of randy teenager.” His beard stubble abraded the underside of her chin. His kiss followed. He blazed a trail down her neck, arousing, soothing. “God, I need this, sweetheart. I need this.”
And then, there really wasn’t much talking.
Driven by instincts, directed by his responsive moans, sometimes guided by the instruction of his hands and mouth, Alex became more powerful, more certain of herself, more demanding.
He pushed the jacket off her shoulders. The straps of the dress followed. The strapless bra offered no resistance. When he closed his mouth over the throbbing peak of her breast, she moaned. When he blew softly across the damp tip, she twisted. And when he pulled the straining nipple into his mouth and suckled her with the rasp of his tongue she bucked beneath him.
Her fingers flexed convulsively in his hair, wanting to pull him closer, wanting to share his attentions with the other breast. As frantic as they’d been outside his truck, he seemed to be taking his own sweet time transforming her into a heavy, quivering, raw nerve of pure desire. He brushed his rough jaw over the other nipple in a caress that made her cry out, yet savor the healing touch of his tongue against her all the more.
She wasn’t sure which happened first, the mindless panting or the fist of pressure building up between her thighs. She snatched at his T-shirt, tugged it from his belt as his kisses moved lower. She was desperate to touch the warm skin and the hard muscles underneath, but he moved beyond her reach. She was sitting half upright again, leaning up against the door. He shoved her dress up and kissed her belly, nuzzled her belly button, traced the sensible waistband of her panties with his chin, making muscles clench and stretch and contract. Before she could steady herself, his hand was inside her panties, cupping her bottom, lifting her to drag the underwear completely down her legs and toss them to the floorboards.
And then he was back, his kisses moving lower still. He brushed his lips through the thatch of golden curls and pressed a kiss to the swollen mound beneath. Alex dug her fingers into his shoulders and heard him laugh. The sound vibrated against her inner thigh.
“Easy, sweetheart.” He stroked his thumbs along the seams where her legs joined her hips, each stroke getting longer, opening her wider and taking him closer to her slick, pulsating center. “I’m just thinking about how good you smell. All over.”
Back home in Dahlia, she would have frozen up at the wanton intimacy of their position. She would have second-guessed. She never could have relaxed enough, felt safe enough, to lose her inhibitions like this. She would have failed to know and give pleasure.
But this wasn’t Dahlia, she reasoned. She wasn’t Alex Morgan, pariah of gossip turned extreme tomboy. Tonight, she was this man’s mystery woman. And she was all woman—all whole, sexually confident woman.
“What are you waiting for?” she gasped into the darkness. And then she tunneled her fingers into his hair and pulled his mouth against her.
Alex’s head fell back and she cried out almost instantaneously as he ran his tongue between her folds and thrust inside her. Wave after wave of sensation rolled down to her core and blossomed back like shock waves through her body. He gently bit down against the hard nub, stroked his thumb along her aching crevice, kissed her and licked her and made her come again and again with just his mouth. Alex bucked and moaned and clutched him against her, her body weeping at the newfound experience of having a man bring her to orgasm.
When he was done, when she was spent, he pulled away, crawling up over her body to reclaim her mouth in a full, deep kiss. She inhaled her own release on his skin, tasted it on her tongue. Alex Morgan had never had a night like this. “You’re good.”
She felt him smile against her lips. “I kind of got that idea. Thanks.”
But she wasn’t done. She pushed against his chest. “Your turn.”
He gave her one last kiss and pulled away. “You’re sure?”
“You’ll have to arrest me to stop me.”
He pulled off his badge and gun and set them on the dashboard.
While she hurriedly redressed, he gingerly dropped one foot to the floor and stretched his other leg out behind her, opening himself up just as she’d offered herself to him. His deep voice coaxed her across the seat. “However you want.”
Alex curled her legs beneath her and scooted closer. The jerk of his leg when she braced her hand against his knee told her he might be as primed for this forbidden encounter as she’d been. “Do you have protection?”
“Shit.” She’d take that as a no.
But not as a never mind. Alex slid her hand along his thigh, crawling closer, massaging away any noble instinct to stop her wandering hands. His shoulders were broad enough, near enough, to blot out any light from her vision. But her sense of touch worked just fine. She palmed him through his jeans and she heard the creak of leather where he squeezed the seat back in his fist.
Interesting. Alex’s pulse kicked up a notch in anticipation. Maybe there were other ways to feel the strength of her femininity that had nothing to do with her own release. She rubbed her palm down the length of his zipper and traced the seam of denim that ran between his legs. He groaned. “There are ways, right? Safe ones?” she asked.
His deep breath stirred the hair beside her ear. “Don’t you know?”
All the innuendoes over the years didn’t mean she knew what she was doing. But she was a quick study when given the chance. She dragged her hand up, tracing the same path. “I’m learning.”
His shoulders rose and fell in the shadows. “You weren’t a virgin. Were you?”
Unfortunately, no. That honor had been stolen from her long ago, trampled on, laughed away as meaningless.
Tonight had meaning. Alex pressed her fingers to his lips, easing his distress as well as her own. “Shh. Enough about me. Talk me through this.”
“You are one serious package of trouble, aren’t you.” He made it sound like a good kind of trouble. An irresistible kind of trouble. He pulled her fingers from his lips and guided her hand down to join the other one. For several moments, he simply cupped her hands over the bulge in his jeans and rocked against her. Her breathing quickened along with his. And then he gave her a command. “Unzip me. Careful. That’s it.”
The trembling of her fingers lessened with each hint of praise or pleasure. She unhooked his belt buckle, slid the zipper gently downward. He shifted slightly to help her ease his jeans off his hips. She smiled at the bright white cotton that poked through the opening they’d created.
Plain white cotton? A kindred spirit. The detective was the right man for the job tonight.
“Pull it out.” She did as he asked, stroking his length through the tight tent of cotton, then reaching inside to capture the hot, pulsing hardness of him in her hand. “Oh, yeah.” His hand tightened around her wrist, holding her still while he thrust inside her grip. The moisture at the tip caught in her palm and smoothed the friction between them. With a gasp that sounded like a tight breath through clenched teeth, he released her. “You do it. Just like that. Don’t stop.”
While Alex slid her hand from tip to base and back again, he framed her face with his hands, sifting his fingers into her hair, holding her as tenderly as he’d been firm with her a moment ago. “I want to kiss you,” he whispered at the corner of her mouth. “I can’t seem to get enough of kissing you.”
And then he seized her mouth with the same vigor that Alex used on him. She braced her hand against his shoulder and worked him as his tongue thrust into her mouth. The harder he kissed, the firmer her touch. He went deeper; she stroked harder. He gentled the brush of his lips across hers; she lightly teased the ridge of skin beneath him.
He was pulsing, throbbing, driving into her grip, mimicking the same rhythm with his tongue in her mouth. As she continued to caress his silken length, something deep inside Alex began to pulse in response. He moaned into her mouth, reached down and wrapped his fingers around hers, squeezing tightly as he came up off the seat and pushed himself one last, long time into her hand.
The power of his release triggered an answering satisfaction in her own body and Alex collapsed against him. For several long, timeless minutes, he wrapped his arms around her and she burrowed against his chest, marveling at the warmth, the exhaustion, the contentment she felt.
No encounter had ever been like this for her. She felt safe. Satisfied. Serenely pleased with herself and grateful to this man. Her night in Nashville had turned out to be a success, after all.
As she became aware of the soft, patternless lines he was tracing against her back, Alex noticed the time on his dashboard clock: 2:14 a.m. Her brother would be worried about her by now, her father up, pacing the living room, trying to decide whether to call the sheriff or get into his own car and drive into Nashville to search for her.
And with those concerns, the first frissons of worry marred her contentment.
“Restless?” the detective asked.
Alex pushed away from the tempting haven of his chest and slid back to her side of the seat. She pulled his jacket more tightly around her, but couldn’t seem to ward off the chill of reality that had wormed its way into her thoughts. “I’m just remembering that I’m stranded, that I don’t have any way to get home or even call there.”
He sat up straight, pulling up his jeans and tucking everything back into place. He reached for his gun and badge. “I’ll take you.”
“No.” Alex shot her hand out to touch his wrist. An armed man would hardly reassure her father and brother. She pulled away just as quickly, distracted by the warmth of his skin. “I don’t usually do anything like this.”
