Fuck. She'd come back of her own accord. She'd cooked me dinner. Was she planning to sleep on the couch again tonight? Was she really that desperate for a place to stay, or did she maybe want me, too? Usually I could tell when a girl was hot for my cock, but Rory was still a mystery to me.
Jeez. I was beginning to obsess about her. Which was crazy. We had hardly anything in common and we spent most of our time together bickering.
“What's your deal, Rory? You know a lot about me now, but I don't know much about you. Who the hell are you, anyway?”
She bristled. “I told you.”
“So you're really a senior in college?”
She shrugged, looking defiant, which made me doubt it.
“What's your major?”
“Math. And computer science.”
Figures. She had to pick something I didn't know much about. I tried anyhow. “What kind of math?”
She rolled her eyes as if to say, what the fuck would you know about it? “Applied. Algorithms, cryptography, stuff like that.”
Okay, that was over my head. I'd been hoping to do well enough to get into some crappy law school someday, and that didn't require advanced math. As for cryptography, I guess that explained how she'd been able to break into my computer so easily. “What college?”
She glared at me for a moment, hesitating. I didn't think she was going to answer. But at last she looked away and muttered, “MIT.”
I'd thought I was beyond surprise, but this was a zinger. “M. I. Fucking T?”
“Told you I was smart.” Smug.
I tried to decide whether I believed this. Maybe it was time I looked her up on the internet. I couldn't mine web data the way she could, but if she went to an elite university, there must be traces of her out there. “So what were you doing in the slums last night?”
“Research.”
“Research?” This sounded totally bogus. “What kind of research were you doing in such a bad part of town? You told me you were on spring break.”
“Some kids head for the beaches, but me, I go to the projects. I figured I'd visit Mom, and check out the sex worker lifestyle. Not such a good choice, obviously.”
“The Negotiable Pleasure Engineer?”
She grinned, probably because I recalled her terminology. “LaVerle's okay, even if she is a whore. My real mom has been pissing me off lately. She doesn't understand why I don't want to spend all my time with her.”
“So you'd rather hang with an accused killer?”
She shrugged. I still didn't like her story. She was lying about something, but I wasn't sure which part.
“Who was the guy with the shotgun?”
“I told you. He's LaVerle's boyfriend.”
“You mean her pimp?”
“Nah, she runs her own business. Ray's a guy she's been hooking up with. I think he helps out with the rent. She claims he's not so bad, but sometimes he forgets to take his meds, or maybe he takes too many, and then he's liable to freak out.” She paused, not looking quite as confident as usual. “He scares the shit out of me.”
“You should stay away from him,” I said, as if I had any right to give advice.
She shivered. “Believe me, I intend to. I wish LaVerle would dump the guy. I worry about her.”
And I'd thought my family had it bad, living in a college town where taxes were high and my mom had to struggle to make ends meet as a hairdresser. “What does your actual mom do for work?”
An odd gleam showed up in her eyes. “Let's just say she gets paid to show off her boobs, bounce her long hair, smile, and sway her hips for a lot of admiring males.”
“So she's, like, an exotic dancer?”
I noticed she was avoiding my eyes, but I had no idea what that meant. “Something like that.”
I was trying to get my mind around the idea of somebody's mom being either a prostitute or a stripper. As far as I knew, it had been a long time since my mom had shown her boobs to anybody. Gross.
“Well, it sounds like you've come from a tough background.”
She burst out laughing. I guess she saw disapproval in my expression because she controlled herself and said, “Sorry. Not laughing at you. Something just struck me funny. But yeah, I guess there are some things about my background that were tough.”
Even though she pissed me off, at the same time I was feeling a kind of reluctant admiration. I tended to feel sorry for myself because I'd grown up poor in a rich town. I'd always been envious of the kids in my school who had more of everything than me and my brother had.
But we'd gone to good schools and our mom had always provided for us, even when she'd had to work two jobs. She hadn't had to sell her body or take on crazy, whacked out boyfriends to make the rent.
Rory had pulled herself out of her environment—which had been real sketchy if that place where she'd jumped into my car was any indication—and set herself up at one of the best universities in the country. Unlike Hadley, who'd been given a fancy new car on her sixteenth birthday and whose daddy was probably a billionaire, Rory was more like me. Worse off than me, in fact.
But she was on her way up and out. I could respect that.
“How the hell can you afford MIT?”
She shrugged, still avoiding looking directly at me. She seemed furtive. Was she lying about the MIT thing? “Scholarships. Loans. The usual.”
“Do you have a job lined up for after graduation?”
Her features had settled into a “bored now” expression. “What is this, show and tell? I've answered your questions. Can we please return to clearing your ass of murder?”
“I want to know why you came back. Why you're even interested in my ass.”
“I'm not interested in your ass.” She stopped short. She met my eyes for a moment, and I could see her blush, which seemed to happen often.
I wondered how much pinker that blush could get. I decided to find out. “You're not, huh? You sure about that?”
The blush grew rosy and spread up to her hairline and down over her throat. But she didn't look away. After a moment, her engaging grin was back, and this time it had a more sensual quality. “Okay, maybe I am interested in your ass.” Her brows rose in a dare. “How about you stand up and let me check it out?”
Griff
Now that was more like it. It was the first come-on signal she'd given me, and I wasn't about to let it slip by. Still, if she hadn't been grinning up a storm and running those big eyes all over me, I don't think I'd have done what I did.
But, what the fuck, I was in my own living room, in my own house. So I stood up, unbuckled my leather belt, ripped it out of its slots and whipped it down against the bare floor with a crack that made her jump.
“Whoa,” she said softly.
“Shall I go on?”
“I'm all eyes.”
I unzipped and pushed down my jeans. Rory was watching me, her eyes big and blue and round. She was staring hard enough to send all my blood rushing to my genitals. By the time I had shoved my underwear down my hips and stepped out of all that lower body clothing, my dick was rock hard.
Rory swallowed, her face now bright red. Her smile didn't falter, though. She made a circular motion with her hand. “Impressive. But that's not your ass. Why don't you do a 360 so I can get the full effect?”
I was through playing. “Get over here, Rory.”
She rose from the sofa, and my heart-rate doubled. She took a couple steps toward me, then stopped. The look in her eyes hardened. “I want to. Okay?” She was still blushing as she said, “I mean, I even wanted to last night.”
“Yeah?” I was surprised by this. She hadn't given any indication of sexual interest in me last night. So I hadn't been the only one tossing restlessly in bed?
She nodded. “As soon as we got in here where the light was good and I could actually
see
you...I wanted to.” She smiled as she added, “I expect you already know you're panty-dropping hot.”
Wow, now I was probably blushing a bit, too. No one had ever put it quite like that before. My brother Sean had had the perfect body—tall, honed, and handsome. Even though I'd never had any trouble getting laid—well, until recently—I'd always compared myself unfavorably to him.
“Drop the panties, then.”
Maybe that was a dick response to her compliment, but when I get turned on, I'm not so good with the small talk.
She squirmed, her face going soft, and I knew, I just knew we were going to be good together. She was aroused—I could feel it. Hot for me. Sweet and wet and slippery.
But she didn't drop any items of clothing. “Can I ask you something first?”
I was tempted to say no, or just shut the fuck up, Rory, but this was going well enough that I didn't want to blow it. So I nodded. What I wanted to do was scoop her into my arms, carry her straight to my bed, toss her down, and bury myself inside her.
“It's just that—” She hesitated. “When I ask you this thing, I'm afraid it's gonna kill the mood.”
My lust was boiling so hot that I didn't think anything could kill the mood. It was going to take more than her stupid questions to distract me from what I wanted here.
But Ms. 204 IQ Girl turned out to be right again.
“The forensic examination of your computer showed that you'd searched for information on strangling, suffocation, ligatures, and how long you can cut off someone's air before they die. You researched it a lot. Like what kind of rope to use and stuff.”
Fuck. Was nothing private around her? How the hell had she found out what I'd researched online?
“Why was that, Griff? Why d'you look that stuff up? I don't think you murdered Hadley, but...are you into that erotic asphyxiation shit? 'Cause I’m cool with some of the kinky stuff, but breath play is way beyond my limits, you know?”
My anger rose up the same way it had with the killers-get-me-off chick. Fuck. Had she really checked out every dark alley the cops had ever wandered down? She'd been at it for less than 24 hours, and she knew every bizarre secret of my soul?
“What makes you think I give a shit about your limits?” I strode over to her. She was shorter than me and had to tilt her neck to meet my gaze. I grabbed hold of her and slid my hands up her bare arms. The feel of her silky skin was intoxicating. “I've told you before—I'm not a nice guy. Don't think for a moment that because you can stoke me up, I'll treat you well. I won't. I use women. Use them hard.”
She didn't flinch. Her mobile mouth twisted in a smile that was warier than usual. “That might be okay if I knew you better. Could even be hot. But if you're not a limit respecter, then we're going to have to forget the whole thing.”
She tried to pull away from me, but I held on tight. I knew she wanted me. I could feel it, smell it. But she was going to refuse out of caution. She wasn't quite as much of a crazy bitch as she seemed at times.
I didn't have a problem with that. Or with her fucking limits, whatever they were. I liked to dominate my partners and control sex, but I could negotiate. I'm not a complete dick.
No, the problem I had was with the way she'd invaded my life. Ignored
my
limits. Pushed me to the brink of—I wasn't sure what. Twenty-four hours ago I hadn't even known her. She'd come upon me like a whirlwind, and my emotions had been tossed all over the damn place.
It struck me that I
could
get rid of her. Stop this invasion of my privacy. Stop these constant questions. Stop her forcing me to relive the worst days of my life.
I knew how to do it. How to send her screaming from my place. Oh yes, Hadley had taught me well.
I slid my hands around her throat. Her flesh felt so fragile under my fingers. The rapid throb of her pulse was palpable. She was scared. She began trembling, but her eyes did not look away from mine.
“What if I am into that breath play stuff?” I let her think about it for a couple seconds. “Hadley was. She loved it. Being deprived of oxygen, she used to say, brings on an amazing high.” I tightened my grip, squeezing carefully. Not too hard. Just enough to make her worry that I might be serious about this. “She used to have mind-blowing orgasms.”
“Don't,” she whispered. Her hands came up to grab my hands, but she could barely get her fingers around my stronger, thicker wrists. She couldn't pull them away.
“Hadley was a risk-taker. She liked living on the edge.” I squeezed a bit harder. “How about you, Rory? Do you like to slip out on that edge, too?”
The tip of her chin rose, and her intelligent eyes appraised, considered. There was a long silence, then she smiled at me. Her fingers stopped clawing at me. The girl had a habit of grinning or even laughing at the oddest moments.
“You're trying to scare me off, aren't you?”
I switched to one hand only on her throat and let the other drop to her ass. I jerked her against me, letting her feel my erection stabbing into her belly. As for her neck, it was so small, so slim. I could have throttled her with one hand.
If I'd been the throttling type.
I gave her my nastiest look. Hadley used to tell me I was good at looking cruel. She’d loved it when I was cruel and she’d given me a taste for it. A taste I hadn’t indulged in quite some time.
“Okay, the scaring off thing is working,” Rory said, no longer quite so cocky. “I know you don’t mean it, but please stop it, Griff.”
It was something about her voice—quick and breathy. A pleading quality to it that I wouldn't have imagined coming from this tough hacker chick. But she still didn't panic. She didn't struggle, and she didn't lose her pride. She didn't act as if some psycho monster had her in his grip. She was still addressing me as a human being, the way she had from the start. Even with my fingers closed around her throat, she didn't believe I was a killer.
I loosened my grip, but I didn't release her. I shook her a little. “I don't get you. I don't fucking understand you, Rory.”
She reached up and stroked my cheek with the tip of her fingers. A subtle touch, a tentative caress—the kind you give to someone you might actually care about. It felt good, but it just confused me more. Who was she? What was she doing in my life?
Other things had begun to intrude—the feel of her skin, her scent, her breasts through the thin top she had on. Damn, but I wanted to fuck her. My naked cock was out in the open, declaring itself loud and clear. Touching her was just making it throb all the more. I needed to slide myself inside her, and quickly. I hadn't felt this much sheer, crazy lust for a woman since I couldn't remember when.