G-Men: The Series (46 page)

He was grinning at me, giving me a wink. It was obvious he regarded me as some immature, giggly teenager.

“Hardly,” I said, my tone having a hint of annoyance in it. “I haven’t done celebrity crushes since sixth grade.”

“Ohhh—my bad there, sweetheart. Didn’t mean to piss you off.”

He was still fucking with me in his teasingly, big brother sort of way.

“Actually, for the record, Shemar Moore, a.k.a. Derek Morgan is more to my liking, as hotties go.”

He stopped sipping his coffee and looked over at me, a smile playing on his lips.

“So, when and where do you go to school?” I asked.

“I do evenings at Georgetown,” he said.

“Hmm, impressive,” I remarked.

A couple of my local friends attended Georgetown. It was a prestigious school, every bit as impressive as Cornell had been for me.

Taz had finished his breakfast and started clearing the table.

“Here, let me,” I said, taking the dishes from him. “You’ve been the perfect host. Let me clean up in here.”

“You won’t get any argument from me on that,” he said. “I need to make a couple of phone calls, then I’ll run you home, how’s that?”

“Fine,” I said, rinsing the dishes and preparing to load them into the dishwasher.

I was flustered. Why was I flustered? It was just Taz; the same Taz that I’d seen more than a dozen times over the past year. Why was he suddenly having this effect on me? Part of it was the fact that Taz seemed to regard me as some type of a college co-ed, which of course I was…but more like someone in a different generation than him.

So what? I was eight or nine years younger. That was nothing from my perspective. Maybe he’d lived longer than me, had more life experiences than I’ve had, that didn’t mean he could disregard the fact that I was a woman, not some drooling teenager, for Chrissake.

He reappeared in the kitchen just as I’d finished up. He was watching me closely now, as if maybe he was seeing me differently than he had before.

“You ready?”

“Yep,” I answered. “Let me grab my stuff.”

“Oh, your dress is in a garbage bag out back, you know, the smell and all.”

I felt myself wince.

“You can just put it out with the trash,” I said, turning to walk down the hall. “It’s not like I’ll ever wear it again.”

The twenty-minute drive to Mom and Slate’s was mostly spent in silence. His truck had been thoroughly cleaned. I noticed some Febreze air freshener clips had been attached to the vents on the dashboard where the heat came out.

“So, what happened between you and Adam?” he asked, obviously uncomfortable with the silence.

“It just didn’t work out,” I replied. “We’re still friends. We talk now and then. He’s moved on, but it’s okay.”

“Ahh,” he said with a nod, “he found another chick, huh? That’s rough I guess.”

“Not really. He found another dude,” I clarified, watching for his reaction from my peripheral vision.

I saw his head turn quickly to look over at me.

“Really?”

“Yep. He said he’d been in denial. I guess being around me sealed the deal, prompting him right out of his denial.”

“Oh shit, Lindsey. I’m sorry for nosing into your business. I didn’t mean to.”

“It’s fine,” I said. “In some ways, I guess I almost feel better that it wasn’t another chick. I can’t blame myself.”

“Why would you ever do that? You’re a cute kid. You must know that.”

Shit! Did he just refer to me as a ‘kid’?

“It’s fine, Taz. I’m not fishing for compliments from you.”

He patted my knee, as if consoling me.

For the love of Christ I’m getting tired of this.

I smiled over at him, biding my time.

We pulled up in front of the house several minutes later. It was certainly not the mansion we had lived in while in Indianapolis, that was for sure. Mom loved it, though. It was what she’d dreamt of, she told me, complete with a white picket fence around the front.

It was a large cape cod with a full basement. It had a nice-sized yard, a bit less than an acre. It was just outside of the city limits. We could see our neighbors down the road on both sides.

My grandparents’ car was pulled up in the driveway. It was not quite noon. Even they didn’t treat me as if I still needed a curfew. Taz put his truck into park and looked over at me.

“Would you like for me to go in and explain to your grandparents what happened last night, and that you were safe with me? I hadn’t thought about calling them earlier. I probably should have.”

“I. Don’t.
Think.
So,” I snapped, unbuckling my seat belt and opening the door to the truck. “Jesus Christ, Taz, I’m not a freaking child.”

I jumped down from the cab of his truck. It would’ve been a great exit had the strap of my purse not gotten caught around the gear shift on the center console.

Crap.

“Hold up,” he said, smirking.

He lifted my purse strap up and over the gear shift and picked it up, getting out of the truck to come around to my side and hand it to me. I grabbed it from him, turning to head up to the house.

“Thanks for the lift,” I called back to him.

“Whoa, wait a minute,” he said, calling after me.

I felt his hand on my shoulder, gently pulling me back so that I would stop.

“Lindsey, what the hell? I didn’t mean to insult you, sweetheart. I know you’re not a child. I just wasn’t sure if you’d catch shit from your grandparents. You know how old people can be.”

“Unfortunately, I’m finding out,” I said, with a smirk of my own. “I’m almost twenty-one. When my mother was twenty-one, she was raising a four-year-old. Would you’ve treated her like that?”

“So, what’s your point?”

I actually had no clue as to what the point of that was. I just knew that he needed to put it into perspective. I may not be the mother of a four-year-old, but by God, I wasn’t a child either.

“I guess I would just prefer that you recognize that I’m a woman,” I replied simply. “I appreciate everything you’ve done for me. I know that I should’ve behaved more maturely at the reception.”

He was studying me now with those gorgeous, green bedroom eyes of his. His lash line was so dark, his eyes looked as if they had mascara on them. I knew that they didn’t. He simply had eyelashes that any woman would die for…eyelashes undeserving of a man.

I wasn’t sure what prompted me to do what I did next. I didn’t stop to think about it, or to debate it before I did it. I walked closer to him and stood on my tip-toes. I wrapped my arms around his neck, pulling his head down towards my face.

My lips found his and I kissed him. I prayed he wouldn’t pull back. He didn’t pull back. He stood there for a moment statuesque-like.

I worked harder. I might still be a virgin, but by God, I’d learned some things along the way. Kissing was one of them. I’d been told by a few guys that I was a great kisser. We would see.

I moved my lips on his, my tongue lightly traced his bottom one. His lips started responding to mine, first slowly, then very sensually. I parted my lips and his tongue found mine. He pulled me in closer now, planting his fingers into my short, spiky hair.

Our kiss grew more arduous. I lowered my hands to his muscular back, digging my long fingernails into him. I felt his hardness against me.

Dear Lord.

I moaned softly with the realization that yes, this man was affected by me and I was totally affected by him.

“Mmm,” he moaned, finally pulling away from me. “Lindsey, I don’t think this is a good—”

I gave him a sparkling smile as I threw my purse over my shoulder. “Thanks again for the lift, Trace.”

My eyes lowered to his very stiff hard-on, then flickered upward to his face. I gave him a wink then turned towards the house. I traipsed up the sidewalk to the front door, trying to make sure his too-large sweats didn’t fall to my ankles while I wore the only shoes I had: my four-inch heels from the wedding.

I could feel his gaze burning a hole through my backside.

Mission accomplished.

^{chapter 3}

~ TAZ ~

Jesus Christ! What the hell was that? The whole way back to my place, I tried like hell to push the vision, the feel, and the scent of Lindsey from my mind. My hard-on was making that very difficult to accomplish. What had she been thinking coming on to me like that right there in the front yard of her home?

Shit!

Her grandparents had probably been watching out the window. They probably thought she’d spent the night with me. Technically, she had, but not in the way that their dirty minds would be playing it. Hell, they were probably grilling her right now about it.

Then there was the matter of Slate. He was like a brother to me, but I knew damn well he wouldn’t appreciate me so much as thinking the wrong thoughts where Lindsey was concerned. He was taking this whole step-parent thing very seriously.

I thought back to the previous night when I had to strip her naked to get her into the shower and clean her up. I was thankful in her drunken state she hadn’t seen just how hard my cock had been for her then.

I imagined she was getting plenty of that college-cock, considering the way she looked. Perky little ass, nice full tits, her pussy shaved except for a narrow little landing strip. I knew what I’d wanted to land there last night. I thought about my tongue tracing that strip and then going into a full dive.

Get your shit together, Taz, my inner voice said. Despite the difference in age, she’s not your type of chick.

She eventually would settle down with a nine-to-fiver that left for work in an Armani suit every morning, played golf on weekends at the club, and gave her suburban sex two to three nights a week.

I chuckled out loud as I pulled my truck into the garage at home. Little Miss Co-ed would definitely not be into the type of play that I enjoyed. Not one little bit. Still, it might be fun to have a tussle with her just once to teach her a lesson about randomly kissing a dude she knows nothing about.

I needed to brush all thoughts of sweet, sexy little Lindsey from my mind. I had three chapters to study this afternoon for a major exam tomorrow night at school. I hadn’t cracked a book in several days. It wasn’t like me to backburner my studies. They were important. They were going to get me where I wanted to be within the agency.

As I came around the side of the house from the backyard to the front porch, I suddenly realized I wouldn’t be cracking that book for at least a couple of hours.

“Hey, Taz,” Roxie greeted me, perched up on the railing of the porch seductively. “I was beginning to think you’d never get home. Rough night?”

“Nothing I couldn’t handle, babe,” I said, giving her a smile.

Perfect timing.

I’d been fighting off this hard-on since Lindsey kissed me and pressed that sexy little body of hers up against me. I unlocked the door, and Roxie followed me inside.

She was the perfect chick for me. There was nothing high maintenance about Roxie. She worked as a nail technician at the mall. She loved sex—every kind of sex. She didn’t whine about where “this or that” was going, or when I was going to call next. We just took it as it came.

Roxie was a few years older than me. She was probably around the same age as Slate. I’d known her since right before I graduated from the academy in Quantico, which was five years ago. We’d met at a night club called “Run Amuck” in Quantico. Roxie had a thing for “G-Men” as she called us.

Slate had done her first. Naturally, all the chicks gravitated to Slate with his dark, rugged looks. They liked his swagger is how Roxie explained it to me.

After that, Slate wanted no part of her. He claimed that she fucking “howled” like a coyote when she came, and it drove him nuts. I had no particular problem with that, being as vocal as I tend to be. In fact, I kind of like novelty shit like that.

I met up with her a couple of weeks after that at the club. We drank, danced a bit and then headed to her place. I typically don’t like chicks knowing where I crash until I’m certain they aren’t bona fide sociopaths. I’ve had my share of run-ins with crazy bitches that like to stalk.

Roxie and I’d pulled a pretty interesting all-nighter at her place. The howling wasn’t enough to turn me off. I liked the assortment of toys she liked to bring to the bed. I made damn sure none of them went into me, though. I don’t take those kinds of risks with my health.

Roxie loved the fact that my cock had never been circumcised. She said it had a more threatening look to it that way. She sure as shit knew how to suck it. And to swallow? (For me, there’s nothing sexier than a chick who’ll swig my cum. Especially if she makes no boners about enjoying it.)

I looked at her now, taking her jacket off and tossing it on the chair in the living room. She wasn’t half as sexy as Lindsey, but she’d do.

“Ready?” I asked as I kicked my shoes off onto the living room floor.

She nodded and followed behind me to my bedroom. I hadn’t bothered to make up my bed yet. The sheets, blankets and bedspread were still all tangled in knots from my restless night. I hadn’t been able to get the vision of Lindsey out of my mind after I’d tucked her safely away in the guest room.