Page 16 of Dirty Gambit

“Will be fine for another two seconds while you give me the keys.”

To her credit, she never batted an eye when she replied, “I don’t have them.”

Jaxon clicked his tongue. “I know that’s not true, Lena. I saw you put them in your pocket. Now, I can search for them, or you can hand them over.”

She said nothing, which he had expected. What he hadn’t counted on was the shiver of excitement that passed over him at her lack of cooperation.

“Tell me something.” He lowered his face to the cloud of dark, damp curls over her ear. “How much of what happened in the office was a lie?” He allowed his lips to graze the curve of her jaw. “How far were you willing to go if your friend hadn’t shown up?”

Listening to the steady increase of her every breath and thriving on the tremor that passed through her, Jaxon let his hand slide along her side. It paused at the opening where her top had ridden up, exposing a patch of smooth, tanned flesh. The skin was warm and soft beneath his fingertips, but all he could focus on was the hitch in her lungs.

“Just how good of an actress are you, Lena?”

He worked his fingers lower, slipping beneath the elastic waistband of her tights to the first knuckle.

The woman beneath him gasped. “Jaxon…”

The material gave no resistance. It didn’t even try to stop the invasion of his hand pushing in. Neither did the woman who only turned her face into the pillow and moaned. He wondered if she even realized her hands were free, that she could easily get out from under him. She didn’t seem to the way she was gripping the pillow and holding her breath.

Smooth skin paved his journey to the neat patch of hair coating a set of soft, wet lips. He imagined they were as dark as the lush curls spilling across his pillow, but that would have to wait to be confirmed another time. His only interest was parting the lips and finding the hard switch nestled in between.

She cried his name again. Her thighs shoved apart wide around his hand, granting him a free pass to her most intimate places. Her lack of hesitation combined with the burst of heat drifting over his knuckles confused his intentions. No way he forgot why he had her or why he was furious as fuck with her, but one skim of his finger from wet opening to throbbing clit and his mind only knew one thing: how badly he fucking needed her. It was all that registered, that and the knowledge that she wasn’t stopping him. She wasn’t saying no. Her jaw was locked tight, but her body shuddered under his touch.

“You’re so wet,” he taunted, circling her opening with the pad of his middle finger for emphasis. Then he eased in, each knuckle driving the words from his throat. “So. Fucking. Wet.”

Lena cried out, face planted in the pillow, hips rocking, pulling him in deeper. The walls around him rippled, a tight, moist suction begging for more.

He obliged, forcing a second finger to join the first.

The woman swore vehemently and gasped. Hot liquid rushed from her over his finger. Her back arched with a violent shudder and a guttural plea that broke his sanity: “Don’t stop.”

Jaxon lost it. All thoughts of freedom and the key faded with the first hard shove of her ass against his cock in invitation. He could feel her coming apart, could almost taste it. It was so close, she was barely making any sense.

Mindless himself, he plunged inside her. Her scream sang through him. It spurred his senses into overdrive. His cuffed hand yanked and jerked, needing to be free, needing to rip her clothes off, needing to flip her over. He couldn’t do it all with only one hand.

“Pull your fucking pants down!” he snarled, not oblivious to the raw madness in his voice.

Lena didn’t hesitate. There was no pause to reconsider. She was fighting under him, fighting against her own clothes, hooking trembling fingers into elastic and working it over the curve of her ass while he finger-fucked the shit out of her pussy.

But it never happened. The moment shattered with the crack of the toilet lid falling and Jessie’s wail. Both Jaxon and Lena scrambled apart in a panic. He didn’t stop her when she tumbled off the bed and dashed into the bathroom.

She returned a second later with Jessie in her arms. The girl’s face was splotchy from crying and her brown eyes were bright with tears. She saw Jaxon and her little arms sprang up, begging for comfort.

He struggled to push upright, to get a better look. “Is she okay?”

Lena nodded, refusing to meet his gaze. She hurried to the other side of the room, ignoring Jessie’s whimpers.

“We need to leave.” From her purse, she unearthed the gun and faced him once more, jaw clenched. “And you’re not going to give me a hard time, do you understand?”

There were a million jokes he could have made about giving her a hard time, but all he could think about was the stickiness smeared across his fingers, the hard throbbing of his crotch, and the way she hadn’t pulled her pants back into place and her hipbones were visible where the hem of her top didn’t fall all the way down. But it was the dark patches of arousal riding high on her cheeks, the swirling hunger in her eyes when they finally met his, and the slight tremor in her voice that assured him he hadn’t imagined it. What more she was as shaken as he was by the undeniable fire that blazed between them. It made him think of something an old friend had once told him in college about how Jaxon always found women who bored him. He’d accused Jaxon of intentionally attracting bland women, women he knew were safe. He didn’t have any crazy ex’s, or relationships that ended badly. His heart had never been broken because the women he chose were safe. No ripples, no disruptions. Simple.

Everything Lena wasn’t. She was chaos and fire. She was gasoline to his open flame. She was wild and disruptive, and maddening. Nothing about her fit any part of his world, yet, when he had her, when they touched, it was nuclear and dangerous. She was dangerous, and it had nothing to do with the gun hanging at her side. So, why the fuck did he want her like he had never wanted anyone ever? Why did his body refuse to acknowledge the threat? Why her?

He watched quietly as she placed Jessie down, shut the bathroom door, and made her way to him. She undid the cuffs carefully, gun hand never wavering. The steadiness unnerved him. Not that he let on.

He rose when she told him to and shuffled to the door when she motioned. She took him to the car, the only one in the entire parking lot, and once again cuffed him to the door handle, but not before she allowed him to slip his rumpled dress shirt on. She even waited until he’d fastened every button she’d undone the night before she left him there and ducked back inside.

The motel was a stone’s throw away from the highway, a two-story structure painted a faded white. He tried to make out the name stamped into the side of the building, but they were parked too far.

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