Actual Stop (Agent O’Connor #1)(63)
“Do you mind if we walk?” Allison wanted to know.
“No. It’s a nice-enough night, and it’s not that far.”
“Will you be okay in those shoes?”
“If I’m not, will you carry me?”
“Maybe. If you’re good.”
She started ambling down the street. The expression in her eyes—what I could see of them—seemed distant and vaguely troubled. She had something on her mind, but I’d need to wait it out. Pushing her to talk before she was ready had never gotten me anywhere. So I tried to examine my surroundings and simply enjoy being with her rather than obsess over whatever could possibly be occupying her thoughts to this degree.
After a few minutes, she took my hand with trembling fingertips. The sweetness of the gesture tugged at me, and I brought her hand up to my lips and dropped a gentle kiss on it.
Allison inhaled sharply and studied me out of the corners of her eyes. The longing reflected there made my joints all wobbly, and I was thrilled when she didn’t pull her hand away. I hadn’t thought about the action before I’d performed it, but once upon a time it would’ve gotten me into trouble. Though her holding my hand at all signaled she was okay with a little PDA.
Always one to push any envelope presented, I held her gaze and brushed my lips along her knuckles once more. I took my time, drawing out the kiss, teasing her. Her breathing was shallow and quick, and her tongue darted out to moisten her lips as her eyes dropped to focus on mine. My heart might’ve momentarily ceased beating, but I hardly cared.
Still gazing at her eyes, I deliberately grazed each knuckle lightly with my teeth. Then I turned her hand over and nipped at the inside of her wrist, at the skin over her pulse. I could feel it pounding when I pressed my lips against it and couldn’t help smiling. Absently, I traced small circles in the palm of her hand with my thumb.
“You’re driving me crazy.” Her voice was a low, warning hum, and her eyes flashed dangerously.
“Good.”
All of a sudden, on the heels of that declaration, all the reasons why we shouldn’t be doing this paraded across my mind and made me pause. But then Allison tugged me to a stop in the middle of the sidewalk and brushed my cheek with the fingertips of her free hand. Any thoughts I might’ve had about anything else completely dissolved as the raw desire in her unflinching eyes pinned me.
My head started to spin, and a fissure shot up my spine, slamming against each individual vertebrae. I couldn’t think about anything else. How could I? Allison was everything, and satisfying her longing was paramount. Nothing else mattered in that moment. Not yesterday, not tomorrow, not next week. Now was everything. And now it was imperative that I kiss her.
I leaned in, determined to capture those luscious lips with my own. She was gravity itself, and I was helpless against her pull. Allison smiled coquettishly and leaned back, shaking her head a bit. I huffed and rolled my eyes but couldn’t help smiling.
“Guess I’m not the only one who’s going crazy,” she said lightly. Her eyes glittered, and she resumed walking, swinging our hands between us.
I pulled her closer to me and threaded my arm around her waist and under her jacket. Before she could protest, I slipped my hand under her tank top, tracing designs on the soft skin of her lower back. She stiffened and gasped. Both the feel of her beneath my fingertips and her little sighs caused my entire body to ache and a flood of moisture to pool between my legs. As far as I was concerned, we couldn’t get to the hotel fast enough.
The rest of the walk was a blur of sights, sounds, and sensations, which served only to stoke the embers of my arousal until they burned with the intensity of a four-alarm fire in an oil refinery. I was so hot by the time we walked into the lobby I was ready to come in my pants. The elevator ride was pure torture as Allison snuggled up behind me and rested her chin on my shoulder, scarcely nuzzling my ear. She might’ve been speaking to me, but I couldn’t hear over the roar of blood pounding in my ears on a fast track straight to my throbbing center. The feel of her arms around my waist, her hot breath in my ear, the sensation of her breasts pressing firmly into my back, her hips pushed up against my ass—all of it led me further and further astray from the bounds of propriety, and I craved to take her in the elevator. Too bad she’d already nixed the live sex show.
Finally, finally we reached her room. Her attempts to insert the key card into the lock with trembling hands took way longer than I wanted, and I let out a low moan of impatience. That slip only made her hands shake more and delayed her progress that much longer. When we stumbled into her darkened foyer at long last, I was so happy I wanted to cry.
Allison slammed the door shut behind me the second I was inside and flipped the deadbolt, her movements quick and jerky. She shucked her jacket and tossed it to the floor in a careless gesture, then wasted no more time on foreplay or preparations.
She pinned me forcefully to the door, and I let my purse fall to the floor. Her hands went around my waist and pulled me tight against her. She gazed into my eyes for a heartbeat or two, and all the air in my lungs whooshed out of me as I tried to make sense of the emotions I could see crackling and snapping behind hers. When her lips descended possessively over mine, my attempts to decipher what I’d seen in her eyes scattered along with my thoughts.
Holy f*ck, she’s an amazing kisser. That was my first coherent notion after who knew how long. Better than I remembered, actually. Time had blunted the memory of how exquisite it felt to have her lips pressed against mine. I was so caught up in the sensation and reeling at how incredible, how right, it felt that it took me a moment to remember I could participate in other ways. Warmth flared in my chest and slowly radiated outward as I tangled one hand in her thick, black hair while I moved the other lower to palm her ass through her jeans. I gave the cheek in my hand a firm squeeze, and Allison let out a low, guttural groan and rocked her hips against mine. I nearly came on the spot.