Grim Shadows (Roaring Twenties #2)(62)

“Oh, God,” she murmured.

“No skin,” he assured her, sounding almost gleeful with victory as he came to the rubber garter clamp holding up the top of her stocking. He slowed there and walked his fingers up the narrow garter, chuckling low when she meeped in distress. Then he found what he’d been hunting. Over her tap pants, he cupped her and slid a finger over the silk between her legs.

She lifted off his lap and cried out, her back bowing as she shuddered in pleasure. He kept a steady arm around her waist, holding her in place.

“Soaking wet. My, my,” he whispered, slowing rubbing the damp fabric back and forth over her clitoris. “Right here?”

Her head fell against his shoulder. “Yes.”

“Mmm. I feel it through the silk. Think you’re almost as hard as I am.”

Good God. No one had ever talked to her so candidly. A shaky inhalation was her answer.

“Want to know a secret?” he whispered, changing the direction of his fingers, side to side. “I stroke myself to sleep every night thinking of you.”

His words sent an electric bolt of pleasure through her center. She rested her brow against his. “God . . . Lowe.”

“You feel marvelous. So damn marvelous.” Fingertips slid farther back, and even with the barrier of her tap pants limiting his explorations, he did his best to dip into the wetness pooling at her center. Nice, but not as nice as what he’d been doing.

“Please don’t stop.”

“Yes, ma’am, so sorry,” he said, not sounding sorry at all, but returning to his previous ministrations and rubbing her sensitive bud. “I couldn’t help myself. Better?”

He knew it was. She bowed her head, cheek against cheek, and moaned.

It had been so long since she’d been touched this way. So very long.

And it felt so spectacular and new that she wondered if she’d ever been touched at all—everything in the past was a dream and this was her new reality. The standard by which any other touch should be measured.

“Tell me how it feels,” he demanded.

“So good” was all she could manage, but he made a pleased noise in the back of his throat, as if it were exactly what he wanted to hear. So she repeated it like a mantra between hard breaths until—

What was that noise?

The door. The door!

“No, no, no!” She jumped off his lap to pull her dress down before moving in front of the chair, as if she could block the view of a six-and-a-half-foot-tall Scandinavian with no shirt and an enormous erection.

Keys jingled as an elderly woman with white hair stepped into the apartment. She looked up and stopped dead in her tracks, eyes big as dinner plates.

Hadley straightened her posture and pasted on a smile. “Good evening, Mrs. Wentworth.”

TWENTY-ONE

LOWE PRETENDED TO LEAVE. He parked the Packard across the street and sat in the driver’s seat half the night, watching Hadley’s apartment building to make sure they hadn’t been followed. No flaming lioness goddesses, no suspicious cars. The lights in Hadley’s windows flicked off. Maybe she was in bed now. After conjuring the memory of her moaning on his lap, he unbuttoned his fly and pleasured himself in the darkened car until he came on his hand, hoping she was doing the same, nine stories above him. When the milkmen began making their rounds in the wee hours of the morning, he finally went home and slept.

The next afternoon, he headed into the Fillmore District and stashed Lulu in a new hiding place. Then he walked a meandering path to ensure he wasn’t being tailed. Along the way, he smelled something achingly familiar and stopped in front of a florist. Wooden buckets of greenhouse tulips and daisies lined the sidewalk, but he looked past them and spotted the star-shaped Siberia lilies. A middle-aged blond woman brushed off her hands. Norwegian, he guessed, from the flag in the window. “Like a bouquet for your sweetheart?” she asked.

“Not a bouquet, but I do have something in mind.”

“Anything you want, we can do,” she said, waving him inside.

Fifteen minutes later, he emerged from the shop and headed down a side street to Adam’s. Stella looked up from her doll party and spied him at the back door before running to greet him.

“Hello, Miss Goldberg,” he said, hauling her into his arms as Adam appeared.

“Found another piece to that amulet, did you?” Adam said with a grin. “Let’s see it.”

After returning Stella to her dolls, Lowe gave his friend the second crossbar and inspected the finished copy he’d made of the base. An exact match. Even Hadley might be fooled, though this particular thought made him feel a little guilty. More than a little, truth be told.

“What’s the matter with you?” Adam asked after the pieces were stashed in the vault.

“Had a long night, that’s all.”

“Are you sure? Because the way you’re smiling and frowning at the same time, it looks like you’re either ill or doped up. Maybe both.”

Lowe slouched in his chair. “How did you know Miriam was the one?”

Adam stared at him for a long moment. “Oh, no.”

“Look, I’m not saying I have feelings for anyone.”

“For Hadley,” Adam corrected.

Lowe groaned. “I’m just saying I think there might be the chance that what I once thought was just lust could be something more. Maybe. Possibly.”