Veiled Seduction (4 page)

“You did way more than your job, Sasha.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Stop being modest.”

“I’m not. Everyone’s going insane for no reason. If I’d had any idea what would be waiting for me when I got home, I might have stayed in the hospital. There’s the madhouse outside my door, my phones are ringing off the hook for interviews, suddenly everyone’s my best friend, the women—” He cut himself off.

Wait, women? She scraped off the last bit of pie and tried to sound casual. “What about the women?”

“Nothing. Anyway, I wish everyone would just leave me the hell alone, especially those reporters. I didn’t do anything special.”

“Nothing special? You didn’t have to respond to that call. You aren’t patrol.”

“I was in the area.”

“But you didn’t sit around and wait for backup. You single-handedly brought down an armed gunman while he was shooting at children outside a school. I’d say that’s pretty damn heroic.” As much as the thought of him in such danger made her stomach churn, she was equally proud of him. Along with the video, a still photo of him with his gun extended in front of him, narrow-eyed and intense, was a popular sight on television as well. Her heart beat a little faster every time she saw it.

The silence behind her made her duck her head. She’d been far too impassioned.

“How many of those kids are still in critical condition, Dr.? And the teacher?”

The water wavered in front of her eyes. How like him to think of the other victims. It had been popularly reported on the news that his first question upon waking up was to inquire about the children’s health, and she didn’t doubt it. She wouldn’t love him so if he was any other kind of person. “Two. The teacher was one of mine. I hear it’s looking good for her.” None had died though. Thanks to him, but she knew he didn’t see that.

His tone was soft and final. “Then I’d say I wasn’t anywhere near a hero.”

“If you hadn’t been the first responder, it could have been a lot worse.” She twisted the faucet off and turned around. And promptly swallowed her tongue. Sasha needed to give a warning and pass out oxygen masks before he went around taking his shirt off.

She’d never had a reason to see his chest. Usually when they were together, they were watching football or a movie or eating dinner. Shirts were generally the norm at those sorts of things.

He worked out like a fiend, and he had an amazing physique. His tan skin stretched tautly over his defined muscles. His chest was wide, his pecs sculpted, and he boasted a perfect six-pack belly. He had the perfect amount of dark hair on his chest, a trail leading southward to disappear into his pants. The sweatpants hung low on his hips, revealing the intriguing little dips at his groin.

The large, ugly contusion decorating his ribs caused her stomach to churn. She knew what would have happened had Sasha not been wearing a Kevlar vest, the kind of damage a bullet to the middle of a body could do. She visualized the suckers slamming into his torso, pushing past skin and muscle, hitting arteries, punching through vital organs. Puncturing his lung, his heart. Instant death or slow death, but dead all the same.

The world receded around her, each tick of the clock on the wall marking another second of their lives wasted.

Tick. Five years down the road and she was attending his wedding to another woman.

Tick. Twenty years after that and she was sending money for his child’s high school graduation.

Tick. Fifty years after that, frail and alone, she was standing in a corner at his funeral as his real family mourned.

God no.

“I’ve got clean T-shirts folded on the washing machine. Why don’t you change? That can’t be comfortable.”

His words seemed to come from far away and she stared at him. “What?”

He cocked his head and gestured at her shirt. “Your top. It’s a mess.”

She looked down at herself dumbly. Without thinking, she crossed her arms in front of her and pulled the tank top off.

His inhale of breath was the only sound in the room. She dropped the top to the ground. The ruined fabric plopped as it landed.

This…this was not what she had planned on. Granted, she hadn’t exactly planned any of this visit. On the contrary, she’d specifically avoided thinking of it at all, knowing it would only make her more nervous, more anxious. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she’d had some vague idea of dazzling him with her hidden looks, plying him with sweets, playing the sophisticate, slowly leading him toward the realization that they were perfect together.

Maybe this wasn’t the worst first step, though, she thought, a little hysterically. Nothing got a man’s attention like sex, right? It was like ripping a Band-Aid off. You do it fast and quick, get it all out there.

Still, she couldn’t look at him. The cold air conditioning smoothed over her skin, leaving goose bumps in its wake. Her nipples were tight against the scratchy lace of her bra.

She kept her head bowed and studied the white tile of the floor. Her hair slipped down to shield her even further.

She counted his heavy, uneven footsteps as he limped closer to her. All of a sudden, she felt his fingers hard against her chin. With a slight jerk, he brought her face up to meet his eyes.

She’d expected shock, irritation, confusion, and dreamed of reciprocal lust. But all she could read in his gaze was anger and…disappointment? “What the hell, Maira?”

She trembled, wishing she could put her shirt back on, but at the same time relieved to finally have it all out there. Literally. “I-I want you.”

His hand moved from her chin to cradle her head. His grip wasn’t particularly hurtful, but she knew she couldn’t get away. His laugh this time wasn’t the slightest bit amused. “You too? This, I never would have expected.”

Some of the dazed fog cleared from her mind. “What?”

His smile was so hard, she blinked in surprise. She’d never seen this side of Sasha. He was intense, yes, but always friendly. “Do you want to offer to suck my cock like my neighbor did? Or perhaps you want to tell me I can tie you up? Or maybe you want to tell me how much you like threesomes and you’ve always had a thing for me?”

She didn’t know about the threesomes thing, but the first two scenarios made her knees weak—wait, his neighbor? It was as if he’d splashed cold water on her. She scowled. “Which neighbor is this?”

He shook his head, his eyes turning black. “You’d be surprised how many women would love to lay down for someone because the news calls him a hero. I just never thought you’d be one of them.”

“What? No. You’ve misunderstood…”

“No, you’ve misunderstood.” He pressed his lips to hers. The shock of him kissing her had her going still in his grip. Instantly, both his arms came around her, and she heard the clatter of his cane on the floor as he leaned more heavily on her. He deepened the kiss, taking advantage of her surprise to slip his tongue into her mouth. He rubbed it against hers, angling her head so he could taste her even better.

When he ripped his lips away, they were both panting. He stared at her with angry eyes. “You know, I turned the other women away, but I wonder if I should bother now. You’re clearly hot for this.”

She was hot for him. She had been since she first met him. “Sasha, we need to talk.”

He talked over her as if she wasn’t even speaking. “It’s been a while for me, so I might be a little rough. You may want to brace yourself.”

She opened her mouth, but before she could speak, he startled her by picking her up and spinning her around. The kitchen whirled, and then she felt the hard wood of the breakfast table against her ass. “Your leg…”

“My leg isn’t what’s hurting right now.” He silenced her with another kiss.

So this was what a punishing kiss was, she thought dazedly. Huh. Where was the punishment?

He urged her legs wider, crowding between them. Dimly, she felt his hand pushing her skirt up until it was crumpled around her waist. With one hand on her bottom he scooted her closer to the edge of the table. Through his sweatpants and her panties, she felt the thick length of his cock pressing against her, alternately relieving and building the ache she’d been carrying for years.

He left her lips to nip and lick his way down her neck, tilting her head to get better access to her flesh. When he opened his lips and sucked, she gave a little cry.

“Is that one of your sweet spots?” he murmured against her skin, and then repeated the action, drawing ever harder, not giving her a chance to respond verbally. Instead she wrapped her legs around him, locking them together at the small of his back. Her panties were already damp as her body readied in anticipation of taking that thick, hard cock nudging against the folds of her vagina.

He grunted, drew her even closer, and continued blazing a trail down her chest. His tongue came out to flick against the residual cherry filling on the upper slope of her breasts. “My favorite,” he muttered. With a hard jerk, he had her bra lowered, her breast spilling out. The nipples were already hard as stone. “More cherries.” He drew the bud into his mouth, his cheeks flexing as he sucked at it, lashing it with his tongue.

She moaned at the onslaught of sensation. God, it felt so good. This was what she had been missing. She lifted her hips, dying to just get a little bit closer, press against him a little harder. He scraped his teeth against her nipple and then sucked it again, soothing and inflaming her all at the same time.

And then…then it was all gone. She lay there, panting, the air wafting over her damp nipples. She opened her eyes, confused.

Sasha stood between her spread legs, looking down at her. His face was expressionless, belying his obvious signs of arousal: the red cresting his cheeks, the hard brown points of his nipples, the baseball-bat-hard length of his cock tenting his pants. “I’m giving you one last chance to say no. Otherwise we can finish this in my bed.”

She could have sworn she heard her heart cracking, fracturing in her chest. Suddenly she felt naked and exposed and…ashamed. God, so ashamed.

What had she been thinking? That sexing him up would really lead to him realizing they were perfect for each other and should live happily ever after?

Sex cures all. News at ten.

He didn’t want her, really want her, not the way she wanted him. Sure, he might have sex with her right now, but he was so inexplicably furious with her it would mean nothing to him. And in the end, it would destroy her.

She shook her head and raised her body off the table. Without looking at him, she adjusted her bra. She heard him walking away and then back. When he extended the crumpled cotton of his shirt, all she could do was stare at it. “It’s cleaner than your shirt,” he said gruffly.

Of course. She couldn’t walk past the reporters with the wet and filthy silk of her tank top underscoring her vulnerability. Facing them at all should have been abhorrent to her, but even that gauntlet didn’t seem that challenging right now. It would get her out of here, right? She took the T-shirt with shaking hands and drew it over her head, uncaring of the smear of cherry across the front.

He held out his hand to help her off the table and she almost laughed at his misplaced chivalry. Instead of taking it, she hopped off and steadied her knees to keep from buckling to the ground.

It took every ounce of dignity to lift her chin and look him in the eyes. She nodded once. “I’m sorry.”

She was almost out of the kitchen when his whispered reply reached her ears. “Me too.”

When Sasha heard the closing of the front door, he turned around, lifted his good leg and rammed his foot into his breakfast table. The little wooden dinette slammed over, one of the legs breaking off. He staggered, his balance off, but managed to steady himself.

Satisfying, but not nearly as satisfying as listening to what his brain and heart were telling him to do—chase down Maira and ask her what the hell she’d been thinking. The only thing that stopped him was the show it would put on for the news crews outside.

Damn her to hell.

Sasha’s chest rose and fell as his disillusionment threatened to overcome him. The throbbing in his leg and ribs was incidental. He didn’t care what other women did, but Maira…he’d thought Maira was special.

He studied the food on his island, her cheerful basket nestled amongst the foil-covered pans. In reality, she was no different from the other women who’d come crawling out of the woodwork to throw themselves at him as soon as he’d become mildly notorious.

He’d thought the hospital had been bad enough. He hadn’t been left alone for a minute. Not that he hadn’t entirely been shocked by that. When a cop went down, every available hand came running. It felt like everyone from the captain—who surprisingly enough, had not reamed him out for his reckless actions, but instead shook his hand and told him they would talk later—to beat cops had stopped by.

It had been the odd reactions of some of the women, from the nurses to coworkers he’d barely ever spoken to, that had surprised him and made him long to escape.

Of course, then he’d had to deal with the neighbors and downright strangers who had come by, offering food and…more. The casseroles they came bearing were accompanied by naughty words whispered in his ear. After the first couple, he’d stopped opening his door. That hadn’t stopped the ones who had snuck around to his back door. And the messages on his voicemail. He blew out a breath. The reporters and news stations were only part of the contingent hassling him. Strange women had also taken to calling him and propositioning him with things he hadn’t even thought were physically possible.

Other men might have found it titillating. But he wasn’t other men. He’d never found cop groupies particularly sexy, and he couldn’t find anything appealing about a hero groupie either.

How could Maira, of all people, be just like them?

Lavender and capable hands, soft kisses over his face, her voice tenderly murmuring…

Sasha set his jaw. That had been a hallucination, maybe a dream brought on by stress and longing. There had been nothing tender or loving about her stripping her clothes off for him out of nowhere.