Flirting With Disaster (23 page)

“
You
do.”

“It p-proves I’m not a geek.”

“No, it proves geeks run.” She cupped his face in her hand. “You have the best smile, you know that?”

He pursed his lips and cast his eyes downward, the fleeting moment of shyness catching her off guard and sending cartwheels tumbling through her heart.

“Can I tell you a secret?” she asked.

“Sure.”

“I like your smile.”

His dimple popped in this time. “I was hoping you were going to say you always had a thing for geeks.”

“Maybe, maybe not,” she said, twining her arms around his neck. “Why don’t you kiss me and find out?”

He kissed her slow and easy, his lips brushing softly over hers as his fingers played against the sensitive delta of skin at the base of her spine. When she’d gone to his room last night, everything about him had been hard and almost angry, but tonight he was someone else, a blend of all the different Seans she’d met so far, and it occurred to her as he nibbled her bottom lip and smiled, nudging her nose with his own, that the same transformation had happened in her.

Last night, she’d been Parisian Katie, fearless and bold, but tonight she was just herself. Plain old Katie Clark making out in the back of a car with Sean Owens, carrying all the scars of the decade between them on her heart.

She didn’t know if it was good or bad, what they were doing. If this was her best self or her worst, a pleasure she was entitled to grab or the sort of mistake she’d recognize tomorrow morning as reckless and completely asinine.

She didn’t know, but it didn’t matter.

Katie kissed him harder, pressing her stomach against his and wrapping her arms tight around his broad back.

“Mmm,” he said after a moment. “I think you need some geek lovin’.”

That made her laugh. “I think you may be right.”

He held her at arm’s length, looked her over with a sly smile, then glanced around the SUV as if it might have changed since he’d last inspected the space.

“Right,” he said. He lowered himself to the carpet, crossed his legs, and patted his knee. “Sit on my lap.”

She approached, putting her hands on his upper arms, but he stopped her with a shake of his head. “Other way around, sweetheart.”

When she hesitated, trying to see whatever it was he’d already figured out, he simply picked her up by the waist and rotated her, pulling her backward onto his lap. She laughed, starting to say something about how he moved her around like a rag doll, but then the whole length of her spine came into contact with his torso. He moved her hair aside and brought his
mouth to her neck as his hands smoothed over her stomach, and she didn’t say anything after all, because, well,
unh
.

“This works,” Sean said after he’d made himself thoroughly acquainted with the shapes of her hips and thighs, shoulders and arms, breasts and belly.

She arched her back, inviting his hands to linger where she wanted them. “No, it doesn’t,” she said. “You’re driving me crazy. You’ve been driving me crazy for a couple of days. Now you’re all pleased with yourself and happy to go slow, and I’m dying.”

“You’re not a very patient woman, are you?” he asked, hooking his hands behind her knees and spreading her legs so they were outside his own. His fingers returned to her nipple as one palm journeyed up her inner thigh. Then he began to touch her through the soaked cotton of her novelty panties, and she had to put her head on his shoulder and close her eyes.

“No.
Yes
. I mean, no. That ‘yes’ was not in answer to your question. It was in answer to your—”

“Shut up,” he said, easing his whole hand inside her panties. He stroked her with two fingers, groaning to find her already slippery. “God, you’re so wet.” His hips pushed up against her ass where she felt him growing hard again. “And hot, Jesus. You do terrible things to me, woman.”

“Sean,” she whispered, overwhelmed with an urgent need. “Please.”

He didn’t give her what she wanted. He played with her, his fingers sliding along the outer lips of her sex, dipping shallowly inside her and teasing her clit with glancing touches while his other hand toyed with the tight peak of her nipple until she thought she might lose her mind.

“I want to k-kiss you,” he said.

She craned her head around, and he found her mouth. As his tongue pushed inside her, so did his fingers, his thumb finally making solid contact with her clit. Katie moaned.

“God, you’re sexy. I love having you here like this, spread open on my lap. I wish I c-could taste you, though.”

She sucked in a breath as his fingers slid in and out, finding a counterpoint with the strumming of his thumb on her clit that strung her tight and connected every part of them, the brush of his chest hair against her back to the denim under her thighs, his hand on her nipple to his fingers between her legs to his mouth kissing her neck and murmuring in her ear. She didn’t
know what to do with her hands. She didn’t know what to do at all.

“C-come for me,” Sean said. “I want that so bad.”

She would have told him she wasn’t going to come yet, not until she had him inside her, but he changed what he was up to with his fingers, and the orgasm snuck up on her.

“Oh, no,” she said, much too late. She was already way past controlling it, everything clamping down and tightening around his hand as he held her in place and pulled her against him and the rush of it, the sheer overwhelming
rush
of pleasurable sensation, pushed her over into a place where she couldn’t think, couldn’t care. She could only feel. As she surrendered, a car passed by the window, the snowfall and darkness making it seem a hundred yards away. But it wasn’t far, not at all, and she saw what she must look like, flushed and wanton and totally abandoned to her pleasure.

Sean groaned his approval and bit her neck. The firm, direct strokes of his thumb drew her climax out until it became unbearable and she squirmed away from his hand, collapsing bonelessly onto his lap.

“Oh my
God
,” she said, head dropping onto his shoulder.

He chuckled and kissed near her ear.

“I probably just scarred some stranger for
life
,” she said.

“Yeah, but you liked it.”

“You liked it too, pervert.” She wiggled against his erection.

Sean sucked in a breath. “Don’t tease me.”

“Who’s teasing?” she asked. “I want that inside me immediately, and if I don’t get it, I’m going to sue.”

“For what?” Sean asked, leaning over to grab the condoms.

“Breach of contract. Reckless endangerment. I don’t know, I’ll think of something.” She reached behind her, hoping to take him in her hand, but he pushed her away and up onto her knees.

“All fours, ssweetheart.” Paper tore.

Just the idea of it thrilled her. The mental picture of Sean entering her from behind.

“You had this whole thing planned out.” She dropped to her hands.

“Mmm.” He palmed her butt with appreciative languor. “It’s what I do.”

“Plan things?”

“I solve problems.”

“How romantic.”

“Okay, how’s this? I make magic happen.”

She laughed again, and then his hands were on her hips and he slid against her, hard and hot and blunt against the swollen lips of her sex. The head of his cock brushed her clit, and when she moaned, he did it again, and he kept doing it until she was pushing her forehead into the carpet and saying “please.” Then, finally, he moved inside her, a few experimental strokes followed by a deep thrust that made her gasp.

“Oh my God,” Katie said to the floor. He was deep. So deep, and so hard, she could feel him in her toes.

“Good or bad?” he asked, lowering his hands on either side of her shoulders.

“Good. Ohmigod, good. Definitely good. Definitely—” He withdrew and thrust again. “Gooooood.”

“Thank
God
,” he said with another thrust. “I was afraid—you were going to say—‘bad,’ and I’d have—to stop.” He’d found his rhythm, slow and steady and deep enough to make her fingertips go white from clutching ineffectually at the short nap of the carpet.

“
Could
you—stop?”

“I don’t think so.” He groaned and kissed the juncture of her shoulder and neck. “Fffuck. No way.”

She couldn’t talk anymore. His hand eased down her stomach and between her thighs. He stroked her slippery, sensitive flesh as he pumped inside her, his straight arm a tense column of muscle beside her head, his fingers relentless and knowing just what to do to make her tremble, his cock filling her up as they came together with one wet smack after another. It should have felt dirty, illicit, but it only felt right. Familiar. Fantastic.

She urged him on, meeting him eagerly on each stroke, wanting him to know what he did to her. How badly she needed him. How intensely she wanted him, wanted this, wanted them. Whatever they were. For however long it lasted.

He knew she was going to come again before she did. “That’s it, baby,” he said in her ear. “That’s it. Let it happen.” So she let it come, she welcomed it, and she thought another car went by but she couldn’t be sure, because the whole damn Macy’s Parade going by couldn’t have distracted her from the orgasm he gave her. She came, and she cried out, and Sean clutched
at her hips and groaned and pumped into her harder until he went rigid and came, too.

Her arms gave out. Katie fell to her elbows and giggled. Out of breath, undignified, and happy.

Sean leaned down and bit her earlobe. “You’re not supposed to laugh afterward. It’s bad for my ego.”

“Honey, if your ego or any other part of you needs stroking after that, you’re way too high-maintenance for me.”

Sean withdrew and moved to the side, then pulled her down onto the floor and curled around her. “Don’t stroke me. I think I’d d-die.”

She smiled. “That’s more like it.”

“K-kiss me, though, huh?”

So she turned her head, and he kissed her, sweet and undemanding. She smiled up at him. “You’re all right, you know that?”

“You’re juh-just now figuring that out?”

She shrugged. “You take some getting used to.”

Smiling, he tucked her body against his, and they lay there for a while in the dark, teasing and joking until they got cold. He helped her into her clothes, and he put his sweater on, and they sat up together. Sean turned out the light so they could look out at the storm. There wasn’t much to see. Just blackness, and wet, dark snow hitting the windows.

When she yawned, he put his arm around her. She settled her head against his shoulder.

“You’re tired,” he said. “Go to sleep.”

“You sure?”

“I’m sure. I’ll t-take the first watch.”

When she looked up, he was smiling down at her. It was the image she saw behind her eyelids as she drifted off.

No one came to dig them out for hours. Not until the first streaks of dawn showed above the horizon line.

Katie spent Monday in a haze of sex chemicals and happiness. She hadn’t slept much, but it hardly mattered when all she could think about was the way Sean had kissed her goodbye and his promise to call her as soon as he was done with the program.

Sure, he had disappeared into his mom’s house and almost immediately sent Caleb a report that revealed, among other things, what they’d learned about the threats against Judah. Sure, she’d emailed him the results of all her research and had gotten a two-word reply.

Good work
.

Be still, her heart.

Sure, sure, Caleb had read the report and subjected her to a long lecture about trust, responsibility, and not taking stupid risks. That hadn’t been a ton of fun.

But she felt so fantastic every time she thought about what had happened in Sean’s SUV, it didn’t matter. She listened to her brother, nodded when she was supposed to nod, and counted down the seconds until she’d be alone and she could moon over Sean again.

Then it was Tuesday. Caleb remained mad at her. Work remained tedious. Sean remained absent, but that was fine. It was too early. She sent him a text reminding him to eat and called her oldest friend, Cassie, who coaxed her into confessing what had happened on the way home from Buffalo. Just as Katie had pretended not to know she would.

Describing it all to Cassie, it didn’t sound quite as good as it had felt. It sounded kind of seedy and poorly thought out, actually, and Katie’s stomach started to churn when Cassie began asking pointed questions. Did she know what she was doing? Had they used protection? Why hadn’t he called her? What was he doing in Camelot, and when was he leaving?

Katie managed to dismiss all the deepest worries that her conversation with Cassie called up, but the price she paid was the loss of her bliss. Part of her started to wonder whether she’d been entirely in her right mind the other night.

If she could just see Sean, she might have reassured herself, but that wasn’t an option, which made it hard to remain confident. It made it hard not to think of him every moment of the day, and hard not to feel as though she’d made the whole thing up. That he’d never really smiled
at her like that, or laughed with her, or given her grief for calling herself stupid. That he hadn’t been as wonderful as she remembered, and he wasn’t thinking about her as much as she was thinking about him.

On Wednesday morning, she woke up in a foul mood, then made it worse by cutting her thumb while slicing a piece of cheese. It throbbed all day. She spent eight hours in the office furious with herself for reasons she couldn’t quite specify and furious with Sean for reasons that didn’t make any sense. Judah called, surly about something, and Katie refused to rise to the occasion and cheer him up. She wasn’t his performing monkey. He hung up on her after a few minutes, and then she felt even worse.

With her bandaged thumb resting awkwardly on the keyboard, she typed up her notes from the various interviews she had conducted in Buffalo and tried to turn them into some kind of useful report for Sean and Caleb, but the longer she looked at the screen, the more it all just looked like a bunch of crap. She was a third wheel on this case. Sean was wheels one and two, and he hadn’t even returned her text.