Page 44 of Devil's Marker

“Two years,” he repeated with the proper inflection of incredulity. “Truthfully?”

“Yeah.”

“How’s that even possible, Arcy? You’re sex walking.”

She smiled awkwardly. “You think I’m sex walking?”

His answer was to take her hand and drag it down the front of his body until it made contact with his raging erection. He molded her hand to the shape of him and squeezed lightly before stepping back and saying, “Find me a drug store in a neighborhood where bikers aren’t likely to see us. Fast.”

She nodded and backed away still looking a little shaky, like the anticipation was making her hum from head to toe. “You ever done this before, Arcy?”

“By this, you mean a random hookup?”

“I stopped being random when you rearranged my face. But yeah. I mean takin’ somebody home you don’t know well.”

“Then, uh, no. I haven’t ever done this before.”

All of a sudden he understood the pull. She might not know it yet, but he wasn’t a hookup. He was just figuring out that she might be more than that to him.

He got Trojans at Walgreens then went to the bathroom and put them in his pocket so he wouldn’t be seen leaving with a plastic bag. He kept the receipt just in case they tried to stop him on the way out. These days there was no telling where cameras could be found and who was watching.

They pulled into R.C.’s underground parking after she talked to the guard who operated the gate. They took the elevator up to her place on the ninth floor.

He walked inside and looked around. It was Architectural Digest-worthy, but he didn’t want to talk about decorating.

As soon as she turned the key in the lock, he spun her around and pressed her back to her front door as she dropped her purse to get her arms around his neck and pull him closer. When he lifted her to be eye-level with him, her legs came up to hug his waist.

Putting a big hand on her right thigh, pulling it in tight, he was feeling very grateful for the benefits of short dresses. His thumb caressed the smooth skin with little mindless strokes that caused her spine to go liquid the way women’s vertebrae do when they’re excited. She angled her pelvis upward so that the most sensitive, hungry part of her rubbed against the hardness he’d shown her with his own hand earlier.

When he broke the kiss, she grabbed his face and pulled him back. He chuckled. “You like my kisses, Arcy?” Her answer was a series of moans. “I need you now. Here or bed?”

“Bed,” she whispered.

He carried her, still wrapped around him, toward the hallway that looked like the likeliest place for a bedroom, and found gold.

“King-sized bed?” he asked.

“I like to spread out.”

He grinned salaciously. “Lucky coincidence ‘cause that’s exactly what I had in mind.”

She giggled breathlessly as he set her down. Her hands immediately went to the hem of the storm blue shirt he’d bought while she waited. As she shoved upward, he let go of her long enough to pull the tee over his head and drop it on the floor. While she admired the smooth skin covering the mouth-watering results of his everyday workout ritual, his hands went immediately back to getting her undone. As he’d been imagining since the first time he’d seen her.

The dress was sleeveless with a shirt collar, held together with little buttons and a thin belt at the waist. Starting at the top where a hint of cleavage was visible, he undid the buttons one by one gathering all the patience he could to stop himself from simply ripping the dress open.

While he was focused on carefully undoing buttons that were tiny under his fingers, she was undoing his belt, unzipping his jeans and plunging her hand inside his boxers because she couldn’t wait any longer to wrap her hand around his cock. She was rewarded with a thrill of satisfaction when she heard his almost strangled, knee-weakening moan. Smooth velvet over steel. She withdrew her hand so that she could get the rest of his clothes off and let her eyes feast on what she was touching.

With the last dress button freed, Win pushed the airy green silk over her shoulders and let it fall to the floor. She was wearing the kind of lingerie a girl wears when she thinks she’s going to get lucky. Knowing that just added to the surge of arousal he felt at the sight of her beautiful body.

“Arcy…” His voice had gone low and gravelly. That one utterance communicated more than a thousand expressions of flattery.

Of its own accord his hand reached up so that his thumb could travel over the bottom lip of her kiss-swollen mouth.

She raised hooded eyes to meet his as she tugged on his jeans. “Get these off.”

“Yes ma’am,” he drawled, smiling and thinking he wouldn’t mind taking orders from R.C. Greer if what she wanted from him was mind-blowing, life-altering, spirit-liberating fucking. Her answering smile said she liked the sound of his compliance and she rewarded that by lightly dragging her nails down the center of his torso from neck to naval.

When he sat down on the edge of the bed to remove the lace-up boots, she surprised him by kneeling and doing it for him. He leaned back, propped up by his hands and watched. Her eyes were constantly moving between his face and the task at hand and he told her, without words, that there were other things he could imagine doing with her in that position.

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