An extra large ice-cream cone.
Possibly his irreverent thoughts kept him standing there a little too long. Or maybe it was the way Vanessa caressed him with her eyes. Still, he hadn’t meant to suggest she take him deep into her mouth and stroke her tongue over every inch of him.
But who was he to tell her that she shouldn’t?
Heat blasted through his veins, burning away intelligent thought until nothing remained but her warm, wet mouth and a pleasure so deep, so all-consuming he counted himself about five seconds away from losing it.
“Wait.” He wanted to get inside her again. Take her places no other guy had.
Four…
But she didn’t show any signs of stopping. Instead, she hummed a little sigh of pleasure while she licked him, the vibration of the sound making his eyes cross and his knees damn near buckle.
Three seconds…
He forced himself to scramble back, his brain barely functioning but still he knew he wanted a full-out connection with Vanessa before their time together disappeared. He didn’t know what exactly he wanted from her, but some basic function of male ego urged him to make as much of a lasting impression on her body and mind as she had on him.
“What?” She looked dazed for a second, worried maybe, that he’d stopped her.
Could that be right? She seemed too damn self-assured ever to harbor those kinds of insecurities.
Unequipped to think right now, Alec settled for finding the condom he’d stashed when he’d dressed earlier. He rolled it on as he covered her, drawing her down to lie on the couch with him.
“I just want to get inside you.” He pushed her thighs apart, fingers taking sweet liberties with the slick heat he found there. “Make you remember me long after you’re safe and sound in your police precinct again.”
He wrested a long moan from her lips as he edged two fingers deep inside her. She was incredibly hot. Tight.
“I think I’ll—” a gasp cut her words apart as he crooked his finger forward to massage her deep inside “—remember.”
He could have taken her over the edge with just a little more pressure. A little more angle of his finger, maybe. But selfishly, he wanted them to hurtle into that sexual abyss together, to reach completion when he was buried to the hilt in her.
Molding his mouth to hers he kissed her, teased her, kept her on that pleasure precipice as he entered her. Slowly. Fully.
Vanessa arched beneath him, her limber body determined to torment him. He wanted to control this moment, to draw out the pleasure for both of them. But her hips wouldn’t rest, her abs crunching as she lifted herself with him, making it impossible for him to withdraw. Her hold on him tightened, pulsed with wet heat. Alec knew he didn’t stand a chance of holding back, not with her squeezing him, enveloping him until he had no choice but to lose himself.
He drove into her, gripping her with a fierceness he couldn’t keep at bay any longer. Later he’d figure out what it was about Vanessa that called him to put his guard down, to sacrifice a small sliver of control. In his world that kind of lapse could have dangerous consequences, possibly fatal. Whatever was happening between them, Alec needed it to stop. Soon.
Right after he recovered from sex that wrung him dry, robbing him of the most rudimentary thinking capabilities.
He just hoped Vanessa understood. Because even though he needed to distance himself from her to stay focused on keeping them both safe, instinct told him she wasn’t the sort of woman who would take kindly to the notion of being protected.
As if.
“I don’t know if you should answer it.” Alec appeared in the doorway, phone in hand as he studied the caller ID window. “What if they’re trying to track you?”
Vanessa snagged the ringing phone and saw Wes’s cell number on the display.
“Not a chance.” She pressed the answer button, trusting her partner completely. Wes might give her a hard time about keeping her location secret, but he’d never try to find her without letting her know first. She didn’t waste any time cutting to the chase with him. “You find out anything?”
Self-conscious about talking to Wes while naked, especially since Alec’s eyes burned into her with frank possessiveness, Vanessa yanked the covers up to her chin.
“Some guys showed up at a bar on Tremont Street last night with cash to spare and talking smack about landing a primo car,” Wes said. “The local cops haven’t done squat about it yet because the Raven Club falls on the line between precincts and—”
“And no one ever thinks it’s their territory. Trust me, I know the place.” The worst crap always went down there. “It’s totally lawless. The Wild West of the South Bronx.”
“You can’t go there alone, Vanessa.” Wes’s tone meant no argument allowed—something pretty rare for her loner partner who appreciated their loose collaboration as much as she did. “And judging by the plate number I ran, I have a damn good idea who you’re with. Are you sure you know what you’re getting into?”
“Don’t worry about it.” Vanessa’s eyes flicked over Alec as she wondered what Wes thought of her joining forces with a guy whose allegiance to the law was questionable at best. She had no doubt he could hold his own at the borough’s most notorious bar, however. If anything, his bad-guy reputation would probably help them. “I’m not going alone.”
She disconnected before Wes could argue. The last thing she wanted to do right now was try defending Alec to a detective, not when she hadn’t really gotten a handle on him herself. She trusted Alec on a gut level she couldn’t quite explain. But even to her own ears, that sounded like a flimsy justification.
“You found out something.” Alec’s stare remained hard and inscrutable, nothing like the hot looks he’d just been giving her.
“The guys who took the car went barhopping to brag afterward.” The thought pissed her off more than she cared to admit. “Or at least, some guys were talking up a big score at the Raven Club. My guess is your Mercedes was the prize in question.”
“You’re not going to the Raven.” He didn’t even blink at the news they might be able to find the carjackers.
“Actually, I am.” She’d be damned if he would pull some archaic he-man rescue BS with her. “And I’m counting on you to back me up.”
“The place is a powder keg on a good night.” He leaned a shoulder into the door frame, not even bothering to enter the room to have an argument with her. “And when confrontational cops show up asking questions, the whole bar can erupt with violence. All the craziest bastards in town hang out there, just waiting for an excuse to go ballistic.”
“I grew up in the Bronx.” The Torres sisters carried the physical and emotional scars to prove it. “I know better than to stir up trouble in that kind of no-man’s-land. I’m a professional, remember?”
He stayed silent so long she debated launching another argument. What she wanted to do was get up and get dressed, but somehow it seemed too awkward to stomp around the room naked while she recovered all her clothes.
“I lost my gun in the carjacking.”
After all that silence, that’s what he came up with?
“So use another one.” She would remain calm. Reasonable. Talk her way around his worries. “I promise I won’t ask you to show a license or anything, okay? I just need you to cover me in there or else I’ll have to get my partner involved and I thought you didn’t want—”
He cursed in at least two languages, one of which she recognized as Spanish since her Nana had used those words often enough. As for the other, she guessed maybe Italian.
Surprised at the outpouring of frustration from a guy who seemed extremely controlled, Vanessa waited. Letting him vent.
“Shit.”
Make that three languages.
When he was finally done, he moved quietly into the room to sit on the edge of the bed.
“I respect that you’re a cop and you do this kind of thing for a living.” He laid his hand on her knee through the layers of white bed linens. “But someone wants me dead, Vanessa. I can’t afford for you to get wrapped up in that because that’s my problem, not yours.”
She hadn’t been prepared for him to speak that bluntly. But the sheen of urgency in his eyes reinforced his words.
“You’re trying to keep me safe.” She turned over the idea in her mind, identifying with the need to protect someone. Still, she wasn’t any anonymous someone. She’d been certified lethal in kendo, her fighting style of choice. And when they went to the Raven Club, she’d be packing a weapon. “Tell me this, Alec. Did you really have any evidence to show me last night, or did you just make up the whole tale about the accounting disks to be sure I didn’t leave the rec center alone?”
Suspicion turned her skin cold, her leg tensing beneath his touch. What if she’d slept with someone who’d played her for a fool?
“No.” He squeezed her knee as if he could impress the answer on her. “Hell no. We could go to my real apartment right now to retrieve other copies of the disks, but returning to any of my old haunts is risky.”
Logically, she understood his point. Still, the cop in her couldn’t help be suspicious. Wary. Sure she trusted him enough to come home with him last night. But that was because he’d risked his own neck to stay with her when the carjackers had dragged her out the Mercedes’s door. He could have floored the gas then and there and left her to her own devices, but he’d stayed.
The very incident that made her trust him then, made her leery now. What other lengths would he go to in order to keep her safe?
Would he lie to her?
“Risky or not, I need to see the evidence if I’m going to jeopardize my neck and my professional reputation to help you.” She knew it wouldn’t be easy to give him that kind of ultimatum, but she hadn’t been prepared for the sharp sting of loss she felt when his hand moved away from her knee.
“And if somebody’s watching my apartment building?”
“You’ve been in hiding for months. Do you really think your defection is so important to your uncle that he could spare enough manpower to put your apartment on full-time surveillance?”
“More likely he’s paying off someone in the building to keep an eye on my door.”
“Then all we need to do is make sure that person doesn’t see us.” Clutching the sheet to her breasts, Vanessa mourned the absence of the rapport they’d shared last night. The touches. Still, she’d never help Alec out of this mess if she didn’t start doing what she did best— the cold, hard investigating.
“If I agree to secure the disks for you, then you can at least let me ask the questions at the bar.” Rising off the bed, he stalked toward the door. “Fair enough?”
“Hardly.” She wouldn’t give him an inch on this or he’d think he could call all the shots. “We work together to get into the apartment and then it’s another team effort at the club to find out who hauled me out of your car by my earlobe. You can’t turn this into your show after you convinced me to help you.”
Pausing in the door to the living room, he seemed to consider her words.
“Fine.” He held up his hands in surrender, giving in too easily and making her suspicious all over again. “We go together.”
“No arguments?”
His eyes narrowed as his gaze swept over her. “I make it a habit not to argue with naked women.”
“Really? Well I have no intention of ripping my clothes off every time I need you to back me up, so forget it.” She reached for her shirt on the floor beside the bed. “I’ll be ready to go in five minutes. Why don’t you start thinking about how we’re going to get into the building without anyone seeing you?”
“We need a distraction.” He didn’t seem in any hurry to leave as he reached behind a picture frame on the wall to reveal a small metal safe.
More secrets. More surprises from Alec.
“A distraction makes sense.” She scooped up her bra and slid into the straps as she watched him dial the safe combination, his back to her.
“And as I watch your reflection in this mildly shiny metallic surface, it occurs to me that it would be a hell of a distraction if we send a stripper to the doorman.”
“Very original.” She made an obscene gesture in the direction of the safe, where he watched her, then finished dressing as he pried open the vault. No sense being sly now.
The unmistakable click of a gun being loaded made her forget all about zipping her pants.
Looking up, she found Alec checking the safety on a .357. A lean, mean weapon very capable of backing her up at the Raven Club or anywhere else they went in the pursuit of justice today. What might have happened if Alec Messina had been on the corner of 172nd Street with her five years ago?
“If you’ve got a better idea how to create a distraction, I’m all ears.” He tucked the .357 into his belt to rest at his hip. Right where a jacket would cover it.
His ease with the weapon concerned her even as it comforted.
“As a matter of fact I do.” She figured this was the perfect time for her to roll out a few of her less orthodox ideas for battling crime. After her past and her present had collided in a night from hell yesterday, she didn’t have any intention of solving this one by the book. “And it doesn’t involve any strippers or guns.”