Page 24 of Baby One Last Time
He stood, leaving a few inches of distance between us, and held my gaze with a look that was so much deeper than lust. “Now tell me you want me, you need me. Me and only me.”
“I do. I need you, Derek.”
He grasped my thighs, so close but not where I needed his touch so badly. “Tell me you don’t want anyone else,” he growled.
“I don’t want anyone else. There hasn’t been anyone else since you.”
He nuzzled against my throat and skimmed it with his teeth while his fingers traced up the insides of my thighs. “Tell me more, baby.”
I knew this game well. The way he liked me to talk dirty to him while he drove me mad, drawing out his own need, delaying his own pleasure until he couldn’t bear it anymore and lost himself deep inside me.
“I don’t want any other man, any other dick. Just yours. Your thick, hard, perfect dick. Filling me.” His fingers slid inside me and I gasped. “Pounding me.” He stroked his thumb over my clit and I moaned. “Fucking me better than I’ve ever been fucked in my life.” He sucked a nipple between his teeth.
I bucked. Rocked against his hand and mouth. Clenched down on his fingers. Twisted and spun out of control. Chased a wild wave higher and higher—hot and wet and panting and craving—until I hit the sky and shattered into a million shiny pieces.
I wasn’t even finished when he pulled my hips to his and plunged into me. I grabbed his shoulders and rode him, another orgasm chasing fast on the heels of the first. He ran his tongue along the edge of my ear and whispered to me, but I was too far gone to decipher words. We rocked together, over and over, grabbing skin, hair, muscle. Scratching and bruising as we crashed against each other. The waves churned again in my core and spiraled out in hot streams to my fingers and toes and back again. He tightened inside me. Groaned in my ear. Gushed deep within me and shattered me all over again.
We slumped together until we caught our breath.
A minute later, he whispered in my ear. “That one was because we needed it.” He pulled out of me, then slid his hands under my ass and hauled me against his chest. He carried me to the only other room in the suite and laid me on the bed, my limbs akimbo. “This one is for fun.”
We started the sensuous dance all over again. This time we went slowly and explored each other’s bodies with eyes and hands and mouths. Something was different, not just from the earlier explosion in the kitchen, but from every other time we’d been together. Somehow more intimate, more private. Almost sacred.
He hadn’t shared his secrets, but I’d get them out of him soon. I had time, now that we were back together after being torn apart by the job. He sank into me again. I arched to meet him and clung to him. We were a team again, the only team I needed.
Chapter 7
When I’d madea date to go holiday shopping with my temporary partner, I hadn’t considered she was one of those weirdos who got up at the crack of dawn, even on days off. Waking up at 7 was made worse by the fact that I hadn’t crawled into my own bed until 4 a.m., and was in the middle of a vivid dream replaying last night’s highlights when my alarm buzzed. Next time Derek and I had mind-blowing sex, which I hoped would be tonight, we’d start earlier.
At 7:30, I met Mai in front of the building, just in time to catch the cab she’d ordered. She texted our itinerary to me while we sat in the back of the car, which moved at a snail’s pace through morning traffic. At 8 a.m., our first appointment was a trip on an open-air Hollywood tourist van.
“No,” I said when I saw it.
“Yes,” she said.
If it meant that much to her, I’d concede. Besides, Derek’s outstanding performance and attention to detail into the wee hours of the morning had left me in an extremely generous mood.
I googled the tour company website to get up to speed. “Hey, this says the first tour doesn’t start until 10.”
She shrugged. “I called in a favor.”
I didn’t ask, because another of the unwritten rules of HEAT is no snooping around your colleagues’ personal bank of favors, owed or up for collection. There were a few exceptions, of course, like double-dealing with targets, but as far as I knew, none of our rigorously vetted agents had crossed over to the dark side.
By a few minutes after eight, we’d met Jack, our private tour guide, and settled into an attention-hogging vehicle that opened halfway up the sides and had no roof, thus no protection from prying eyes or the gusting Santa Anas. I huddled under an itchy blanket that smelled like alpaca ass. At least, that’s how I imagined an alpaca’s ass would smell. The winds were frigid, although the temperatures would never drop low enough for snow. In my book, that made them a waste of cold air.
I switched my iced coffee back and forth between my hands because I’d stupidly thought a sunny day in LA called for starting my day with freezing caffeine. “So, is this like a lifelong dream, to see how Hollywood royalty lives?” I asked Mai.
“Yes,” she said. It was a testament to how little I knew her that I had no idea whether she was serious. “My father saw Bob Hope in a USO show while he was stationed in the Persian Gulf. Hope made lots of jokes about the ridiculous lifestyles of himself and other celebrities, and my father always wanted to see for himself. My mother refuses to come here with him, and he won’t take a vacation without her, so when I told him I’d be stationed in LA for a few weeks, he sent me a bucket list.” She held up her phone, which I hadn’t realized had been recording our entire tour.
“You’re doing this for your father’s bucket list?” I gave a low whistle. “That’s dedication.” I leaned close to the phone. “She loves you, Dad!” I leaned back and looked at Mai. “Is it everything you imagined?”
“Eh.” She shrugged. “I thought the yards would be bigger.”
“Some of them are,” I said, remembering the well-manicured expanse of green grass and imposing shade trees surrounding Leary’s mansion, and the two days I’d spent working with the team on her landscape decorations. And those damn flamingos. Even after another shower this morning, I was still sporting parts of that stupid pink bird on my hip.
Mai watched the passing streets and houses outside the open-air window as Jack rattled off names of and details about stars I hadn’t known existed. Mai lifted her phone to catch the angle of one of those distant specks owned by yet another unknown-to-me person.
Armed with the news that our ridiculous tour was for Mr. Lee, I tried to be appreciative of the opportunity to learn meaningless facts about flavor-of-the-month stars. I did go off-topic for a few minutes with attempts to pump the driver/tour guide for information about whether his business model could really generate enough income to sustain an entire company, which earned me a swift elbow in the gut from Mai. I stood by the validity of the question. I thought it was important we know whether we were aiding and abetting a money-laundering front. I mean, how many people can possibly be clamoring to sit through LA traffic jams and ride through narrow, winding streets, looking like gawping idiots, for glimpses of backs of houses or worse, distant specks across canyons, just to say they saw some rando celebrity’s home?
