Baby Daddy (14 page)

I didn’t know if I moved toward him or he pulled me, but I found
my body pressed against the hardness of his chest.  I could feel his heart pounding against my breast even faster than my own.  Gently, as if giving me the chance to step away and break the connection, he tilted my face up.

His lips were close, so close I could feel the warmth of his breath.  At that moment, all I could think of was how much I wanted to
feel those lips against mine.  I stretched toward him, shortening the distance.

With a sigh
he lowered his head the final fraction of an inch until our mouths touched.

It was like a lightning bolt shot through me and I shivered
with excitement.  My arms twined around his neck as I leaned in, more eager to taste him than I had ever been before.  The tip of my tongue slipped between his lips and teased his.  He groaned and deepened the kiss as if he wanted to devour me.

His hands slid down to my back and spread against my ass, pulling me against the hard swell of his erection.  Just knowing how excited he was heightened my own reaction, and I felt
the curl of desire melt into a liquid heat that throbbed between my legs.

What the hell
are you doing?
a little voice in the back of my mind pushed through the fog. 
You have to work with this guy every day.  The last thing you should be doing is jumping his bones.
  But my raging hormones quickly silenced the voice.  I had been hot for this guy since the first minute I saw him.  And the reality of his kisses was even better than my imagination.  I suspected I would regret this tomorrow, but right now all I wanted was Christopher…inside me…putting out this fire he had started.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Christopher’s hands slid under my blouse and caressed
the bare skin of my back.  I shrugged out of my blazer and he lifted the blouse over my head.  The small fastener on my bra popped open under his fingers.  The straps slid down my arms and the piece of lace fell to the floor.  All of this, amazingly, was accomplished without his lips ever leaving mine.

The air conditioner chilled my skin, and I longed to feel the warmth of his.  My fingers unbuttoned his shirt and spread the front wide to bare his muscular chest.  My ni
pples, hardened from the cold and my desire, pressed against him, and for the first time in minutes he pulled away.

His eyes moved over me and glowed with appreciation.

“Nice,” he breathed, yanked off his shirt and threw it off to the side.  His hands moved up and cupped my breasts.  I wasn’t overly large, but my boobs more than filled his hands.  He lowered his head and ran his tongue around one pink nipple.  Every stroke streaked through me until I could feel my pulse throbbing in my crotch.

When he took my nipple into his mouth and suck
led it, my knees gave out and I almost collapsed.  My fingers tore at his belt buckle, fumbling with the metal until it released.  Christopher unfastened my slacks and pushed them and my panties down.  Absently, I stepped out of them and kicked off my sandals.

H
is trembling fingers brushed mine aside and I heard the scrape of his zipper going down and the jingle of his belt buckle as his pants dropped to the floor.

Christopher’s mouth returned to mine, hungrier now and more demanding.  My own desire was burning out of control and I kissed him back with an intensity I’d never
experienced.  I felt his hands on my ass, lifting me and I wrapped my legs around his waist.  He slammed my back against the wall, then let me slide down slowly until I felt the tip of his manhood pushing between my legs.

He was huge, much bigger than Brandon, but I was so turned on that I was wet enough
for him to easily slip inside.  He buried his face in the curve of my neck and his breath was hot against my hyper-sensitive skin as he savored the feeling of filling me.

Again, he
lifted me and let me ease back down.  Together we fell into a primal rhythm that pushed us deeper and deeper, higher and higher until the universe exploded inside my head.  I heard myself scream and felt Christopher’s body tense against mine as he pumped his heat inside me.

I lowered my legs and tried to stand, but I felt weak and drained by the intensity of our passion.  Christopher, too, didn’t appear able to
move as he leaned against me, pressing me against the wall.  We stood there, for almost a full minute, trying to catch our breath and let our hearts slow down to a more normal pace.  Then he lifted his hand and stroked my hair back from my face as he looked into my eyes.

“There are a million reasons why we shouldn’t have done that,” he whispered.

A million and one
, I said to myself.  Aloud I agreed with him, “I know.”

He kissed me gently, tenderly.  “I wanted to do that since the moment I first met you.”

I smiled up at him.  “Funny thing…I was hoping you would.”

He bent and gathered me in his arms.  What would have felt awkward with most men felt just right with him as he carried me to the small couch on the side wall of his office.  He laid me down on it and I scooted over so he could l
ie next to me.  The couch was much too short for us, so our heads rested on one arm while our legs hung out over the other end.  But neither of us noticed the discomfort as we snuggled, front to front, and bathed in the afterglow of some pretty amazing sex.

“So, what are we going to do about this?” he asked.

“Right now or long term?”

“I think we’ve taken care of right now…for right now,” his lips curved into a
sexy grin.  “I’m more concerned about how I’m going to have to work with you every day and not be able to touch you.”

“Is that why you were so mean to me?” I teased.

He had the grace to look apologetic.  “I’m really sorry about that.  As I gathered your information and collected the bits and pieces of your life, you fascinated me…and, I’ll admit…attracted me.  When I found out you were coming here, I was glad because I thought that you couldn’t possibly be the person I had made you out to be in my mind.”

He sighed and stroked his finger down my nose and around my lips.  I captured his fingertip in my mouth and sucked it.  I felt his immediate reaction as his penis swelled against my stomach.

“See what you do to me,” he moaned. 

“You have the advantage,” I told him.  “You knew me long before we actually me
t.”

“It was my job.  I know all the others, too, but I didn’t want to fuck their brains out.”

I chuckled.  “That’s good to know.”

“
It’s going to complicate things.  You know how Roger felt about office romances.”

“Ironic since he was
sort of dating your mother.”

“Roger was a study of contradictions,” Christopher agreed.  “
And in our case, I don’t think he would mind.”

“I don’t have any expectations,” I hurried to tell him, not wanting him to think I was trying to push him into anything.

“This is new ground for me, too.  I think we should keep this quiet, don’t you?”

I nodded.  “It would be awkward if the others found out.  Besides, it might never happen again.  That might have been
a one-time, get-it-out-of-our-systems sexcapade.”

His hand moved down and covered my breast and gently
rolled my nipple between his forefinger and thumb.  “I don’t know about you, but I’m thinking we should make that two.”

I felt his erection harden against me as he leaned over and kissed me.  Just as before, the touch of his lips against mine sent electrical jolts
vibrating through me and I felt myself melt.  “Okay, one more time…then we’ve got to be good.”

“Oh, Killeen…you are very, very good,” he murmured against my lips.

I was ridiculously late to dinner.  Christopher and I had decided he should go directly to his place, and I could make a quick stop at the store to support my story that we had split up at the office, and I had lost track of time at the mall.  Hopefully, none of the others would put two and two together.

I definitely didn’t want to have to try to explain something I didn’t understand.

“Hi guys,” I said as I popped out to the pool.  My arms were full of shopping bags, loosely arranged to look like I had shopped my brains out and not that other brain-exploding activity that Christopher had initiated earlier.  “Sorry, I lost track of the time.  I needed a couple things, so I stopped off at the mall on the way home, and…”  I shrugged as if I hadn’t been able to resist.

“I put the leftover salad in the fridge,” John said, “and there’s plenty of lasagna.”

“Let me drop all this in my room,” I said before going back inside and running up the stairs.  I took an extra minute to glance in the mirror and make sure I didn’t have that freshly fucked look.

Everyone was still sitting around the
patio table next to the pool.  Reno and Tulsa had finished their food and were on their second or third beers, but Dallas had just gotten a second helping, so I wasn’t eating alone as I filled my plate and sat down.

“We were tossing around ideas for who might have killed Roger…,” Reno told me.

“
If
anyone did,” Tulsa interrupted, clearly not convinced anything suspicious had happened.

“What do you think?” Reno asked me.

I hadn’t actually spent any time thinking about it.  I’d been kind of busy.  I swallowed a bite of lasagna wrong and choked.  Tulsa pounded on my back and Dallas handed me a glass of water.  After a coughing fit, I dabbed at my watery eyes with a napkin and managed a smile.  Christopher had been so adamant that Roger hadn’t relapsed that I believed him.  Even before I had had blazing hot sex with him, he had earned credibility in my eyes because he was smart, logical and perceptive.

“I think Roger had a big target on his back, and it’s very possible someone wanted him dead,” I said when I was finally able to talk.  “Whether we find out he was murdered or that the coroner was right, working on this case will be a good test of whether or not we’ll like owning a detective agency.”

Tulsa actually smiled…well, sort of.  The corners of her black-lipstick-covered lips turned up a little.  “Blondie’s right.  This case seems open-and-shut.  If we can find a way to prove…or disprove what is commonly believed, we will see what it means to be a P.I.  We’ll get a taste before we commit.”

Reno nodded his agreement.  “It’ll make it real.”

John walked out of the house and set a yummy-looking cheesecake on the table, along with three bowls filled with toppings, one cherry, one blueberry and one whipped cream.

“How much did Roger weigh?” I asked.

John seemed startled at the question.  “About 175.  Why?”

“
I don’t know how he stayed so thin eating your cooking,” I told him.  “Another week and I won’t be able to fit into my uniform.” 
That and 30 pregnancy pounds…not John’s fault.

John laughed.  “There’s a gym next
to the pool room if you want to work it off.  But I suspect all of you have the metabolism of young lions.”

Reno roared in a very convincing imitation.  “I worked at the Siegfried and Roy sanctuary for a while,” he explained.

The conversation evolved into outrageous stories from our past experiences that had us laughing and drinking until after midnight.  We had lived such different lives that it was a fascinating and educational evening.

“Tomorrow at 7?” I asked as we headed off to bed.  “I didn’t want to be left behind again, even though I planned on driving my newly
claimed Mini.  Let everyone else fight over the Jag, the BMW and the Mercedes.

“I’ll knock on your door as I pass,” Tulsa promised.

We split in the upper hallway, all going in different directions to our rooms.

“Okay
, if Roger didn’t kill Roger, who did?” Reno asked the next morning as we sat around the conference table.

Christopher
picked up a marker and walked to the dry erase board.  He wrote down
CLIENTS
,
EMPLOYEES
and
UNKNOWN
.  “This is where we start.”

Dallas eyed the
row of filing cabinets with a skeptical frown.  “That’s a lot of suspects.”

“I’ve narrowed it down to recent cases that were particularly acrimonious and former employees who might hold a grudge,” Christopher said.  He indicated a pile of folders on the credenza.  “We can divide these up, go through them and maybe do a little follow-up investigation to see where all the parties were around May 1
st
when Roger was killed and again last Sunday.  As you come across a possible suspect, we’ll write their name on this board.  Then we can dig deeper into those.”

“Isn’t that like looking for a needle in a haystack?” Dallas asked, intimidated by the enormity of the task at hand.