Enigma (13 page)

They did, and not just the struggle to see who would wind up on top. Fast and slow, up and down, none of it was steady, a slow but sure path to a certain goal. Instead, they had…this.

Anna knelt behind him, slipped her arms around his neck and licked his ear. “If this were easy, you’d be bored as hell. So would I.”

“Damn straight.” He caught her right hand and bit the tips of her fingers, one after another. “Not knowing whether you’re going to cuddle me or break a lamp over my head gets me going.”

“Liar.” She knew what did, though. She nuzzled the spot behind his ear, inhaling his scent with a shiver, then drew her tongue over the strong line of his shoulder.

His fingers tightened as he moaned, but he tensed when her touch dipped a little too close to his back—and his scars. “Come here,” he rasped, tugging at her hand.

She resisted, but only for a moment. She had no right to push, to look at the scars he wanted to hide, not when she was doing the same damn thing. Hiding all the ugly things that could make him pull away.

Anna slid into his lap and balanced on his knees. “Like this,” she whispered, reaching for his belt.

“Perfect.” His fingers traced her spine, her hips and sides, worked their way down her thighs. “I’ve got a condom in my wallet.”

“Good, because I don’t.” She actually fumbled with the belt buckle, and she had to laugh at herself. “I’m not very smooth with you, am I?”

“Smooth’s just as boring as predictable.” He helped her with his belt, then shifted up to drag his wallet free. “I don’t want smooth. I want you.”

Seductive words. Dangerous words. They’d balanced on the edge for so long that tumbling off was both inevitable and terrifying, and maybe the only way to do it was to close your eyes and
fall
.

She opened his pants and eased her hand into his underwear to wrap around his dick. She’d seen him naked before, even turned on, but not like this, with no restraint. No plans to stop. He was hard, and when she tested his hardness with a firm squeeze, he growled and ripped his wallet open, spilling cash and fake IDs over the bed and floor.

But he found a condom and clutched it in one hand. “I need to be inside you ten fucking minutes ago.”

She’d lived so long with the hunger that actually having him still seemed unreal. The only way to prove she wasn’t dreaming was to kiss him, hard and slow, slicking her tongue over his. He closed his teeth on the tip with a rumbling groan that almost covered the sound of ripping foil. Then his hands were on her hips, guiding her up and over him.

He pulled back at the last second to lick the corner of her mouth. “Ride me, Anna.”

All she had to do was push down, lower her body onto his. Anna bit his jaw and moved, just a little, his sheer size motivating her to move more slowly than usual. She didn’t care if it hurt, but she knew he did, and she refused to do anything he’d feel sorry about later.

A scant inch, so many more to go, and already pleasure began to overwhelm her. She clutched his shoulders and fought for breath, for anything to center herself with control slipping away.

His lips tickled over her ear, followed by warm breath. Then a dirty chuckle. “Now you know the bike isn’t overcompensating for anything.”

She bit him with a growl. “Almost as big as your ego, McNamara.” Then she pushed harder, deeper, and clenched her muscles tight around him.

He bit off a curse as his fingers tightened on her hips. “
Fuck.
”

Move. She had to move. Her knees dug into the mattress as she shifted her weight and rocked up while sliding her hands down to his sides. “Can you still handle slow?”

He choked on something that might have started as a laugh. “No promises. Damn, you feel good.”

No matter what else happened, she could make him feel this way, put that expression of tormented pleasure on his face. She watched him, rapt, as she dug her nails into his skin and rocked down, hard and fast.

Patrick smoothed his hands up her back to tangle in her hair and dragged her head back. His mouth hovered over her throat, teasingly close, but only his breath touched her. “Harder. I like how your nails feel.”

“You like it a little rough?” She’d meant the words as a teasing accusation, but they came out tinged with breathless longing instead.

“A little.” He tugged at her hair, almost testing her. “Or a lot.”

She pulled against his grip, and her growl turned into a moan when he held tight. “I can take it.”

“That so?” He released her hair to loop an arm around her back as the world tilted, but he didn’t spill her to the bed. He lunged to his feet, and her back thumped against the wall next to a crookedly framed print of a cheerful seascape. “This is how I thought our first time would be.” He dragged her hands up and slammed them back against the wall, and the force of it shocked her into a shudder. “Against a brick wall in some dark alley because I couldn’t stay out of you one more goddamn second.”

The words scraped over her, lighting every nerve ending on fire. They should have done it, because denying themselves had been stupid. But when she opened her mouth to tell him so, all that came out was a desperate whimper.

Patrick bit her jaw. “Tell me how you want it.”

“Everything.” The only answer she could think of, the only thing that made sense. “I want everything.”

He dropped one hand to brace her hips and gave it to her. Hard, short thrusts that teased as much as they satisfied, and kisses that were just as rough but lasted forever. Anna wrapped her legs around his, his jeans coarse under her bare feet, and arched off the wall to chase the hot flame of pleasure that licked through her.

It couldn’t last long, not when she’d spent months craving his taste, the sensation of his skin on hers, everything that was uniquely
Patrick
. It couldn’t last long, but it still surprised her when the hunger began to gather into sharp pulses of release. She clutched at his hair and dropped her head against the wall, desperate to get closer before it ended, to be a part of him as surely as he was a part of her.

“I’ve got you.” He rasped the words against her cheek as he twined his fingers with hers, keeping one hand pinned to the wall. “Let me feel it. Let me feel you.”

She’d run from this moment, fought it like she’d fought little else. Not the sex, but the fact that this…

This was more.

Trembling, she opened her eyes, sought his gaze and found it. He was watching her like he already knew, and it dissolved the last of the distance she’d managed to maintain between them. “Yes,” she whispered. Over and over, until her voice caught on a sob. She couldn’t stop shaking, couldn’t control how her fingernails scratched over his back as the fire flashed, burning through everything except the two of them.

Patrick groaned and hiked her higher as his pace took on a desperate edge. “One more time. One more—”

She couldn’t come again because she hadn’t
stopped
, and maybe she never would. Maybe she’d be like this forever, suspended between the fire he’d shown her and the ice she’d always known. Caught, caged—

His teeth closed over her pulse with enough blind possession to do any alpha proud, and Anna shrieked. He’d bruise in her grasp, but she was helpless to release him. All she could do was hang on as pleasure crested,
hard
this time, harder than anything she’d ever felt.

Better.

With one last thrust he followed her, snarling his release against her throat where his teeth still dug into sensitive skin. They stayed that way, unmoving, both struggling for breath.

The first thing to break through the haze of pleasure was the jagged corner of the cheap picture frame, now broken, poking into Anna’s shoulder. She wiggled away from the wall, and the frame fell to the floor with a thud.

Patrick hauled her back, staggered to the bed and dropped onto it with a groan. “Shit.”

“Mmm.”

“How much of the room did we wreck?”

“I don’t know,” she mumbled. “Don’t really care.”

He pulled her closer to his chest. “Think they’re going to come and arrest us?”

“Because we had dirty sex?”

“Because it probably sounded more like we were trying to kill each other. Like most good dirty sex does.”

“Let them show up.” She couldn’t tear her lips away from the crook of his shoulder. “I’ll answer the door naked and tell them I wore you out. They’ll go away.”

“Wouldn’t be a lie, would it?”

The same old banter. For a moment, Anna almost believed that nothing had changed. Tomorrow, they’d get on with their investigation, minus the sexual tension, and everything would go on the way it had. No big deal.

But she’d never been good at self-delusion. She’d struggled too hard to survive, and every lie you let yourself believe, even the ones you told yourself, made you weak. Left you open to being wounded.

Everything had changed. Worse, she couldn’t even bring herself to regret it.

Chapter Ten

Patrick woke with Anna draped across him in almost the same position she’d fallen asleep in. A few nights of sharing cheap motel rooms had shown him that, more often than not, she slept as poorly as he did. Guilt made him wonder how much of her current peace could be credited to the comfort of a trusted partner at her back, and how much was just relief that he wasn’t twisting her in frustrated knots anymore.

His own restful sleep could have been either, and was probably a little bit of both.

He tried to ease from the bed without waking her, but Anna locked her arms around him. “Uh-uh. Too early.”

Patrick stilled and stroked his fingers down her bare spine. “Hey, sleepy.”

She growled, then gentled the threat of the sound with a kiss to the center of his chest. “Hey.”

There were worse ways to wake up, and he’d seen most of them. “Sleep okay?”

“It was awesome.” She stretched through a yawn. “I’m going to cuddle up on you all the time from now on.”

“Sounds cozy.” God help him and his too-eager dick, which was more than ready for another round of sweaty fucking. The damn motel room might not survive it.

“Mmm.” She propped up her head and traced her fingers through the hair on his chest. “I could go back to my own bed, if you want.”

He couldn’t stop his hands from tightening. “No. I can’t remember the last time I just…slept.”

“Me neither.” Her gaze softened. “It doesn’t have to change, right? The stuff that’s good between us?”

“Hell no. We make our own rules, don’t we?” He only had to tug her up a little bit to plant a teasing kiss on the bruised part of her chin. “I bit you a little too hard.”

“I think I did everything too hard.” She touched a finger-shaped bruise on his shoulder and sat up. “What are you going to do about the magic?”

Patrick froze. “The magic?”

“If you’ve got a ton of it bouncing around inside you like Violet said, don’t you think you should try to use it? If nothing else, just to see if you can.”

He sat up against the headboard and rubbed at his arm as he considered the words. The last time he’d had magic to burn, there’d been too much of it. It had flamed bright and fast enough to fill him with rage.

He hadn’t had the time or opportunity for training then, or the knack for controlling the power. Now, he’d be twenty years behind on the training a spell caster should have already had. “I guess I could try, but I wouldn’t know where to start. I don’t cast spells. I never have.”

“Well, you don’t
have
to.” Anna climbed from the bed, walked to the bathroom and turned to eye him expectantly. “You coming?”

He didn’t bother choking back his response—or his suggestive grin. “Only if you make me.”

Instead of answering, she vanished through the doorway. A moment later, water began to run in the shower.

It took him less than five seconds to join her.

When he climbed into the shower, he found Anna rinsing her hair, already wet from head to toe, wearing a naughty, seductive smile. “See? Shower and breakfast—we’re covering half my morning wish list already.”

He traced a drop of water down her throat to where it slid past her nipple. “I could be convinced to give up food, I think.”

“I’m good, but I don’t know if I’m
that
good.” She passed him the soap and turned away. “Wash my back?”

“Liar.” The hot water sluiced down her back and over his hands as he soaped her skin. Her wet, slippery skin. “You’re a dangerous woman, Lenoir.”

“Anna.” She turned again, tugged the bar of soap from his hand and slid it over his chest. “My name is Anna.”

He closed his eyes and savored the slick brush of her fingers. “What’s my name?”

“Patrick.” Her voice came in a whisper as her hands slipped lower. “Patrick.”

If his cock hadn’t already been hard, the way she wrapped her voice around his name would have had him raging in seconds. “Say it again.”

“Patrick.” Her lips touched his skin, following the water that rinsed him clean—down past his stomach, until she was on her knees, blinking up at him through the spray.

He pressed both hands to the tiles and bent his head, deflecting the water that pounded down from the showerhead. Anna, on her knees. Anna Lenoir, getting ready to blow him.