Barefoot with a Stranger (Barefoot Bay Undercover #2)(63)

“You made me come in the car,” she said, pushing him onto his back.

“That was different. I don’t want to be done…yet.” He bit the last word, fighting the urge to just give in and let her stroke and…oh, kiss him. Down his stomach, her tongue flicking, her hands caressing…her mouth on him.

“Francesca.” He dug his fingers into her hair, holding her head, guiding her…just for a second. A few seconds. A minute. He rocked into her kisses and let her suck lightly, then harder. “Stop it.”

He pushed her head away, so close to coming he could barely see her through eyes he had to squeeze shut.

“Condom,” he muttered, reaching toward a nightstand like one would magically appear.

“In my bag.” They both said it at exactly the same second.

He laughed softly, rolling to grab whatever bag was closest. “We both brought them.”

“Talk about hopeful.”

He grabbed the box and tossed it on the bed. “Don’t talk at all,” he ordered.

She held his gaze, long and hot, and he could read everything in her expression, as clear as if she said the words. This isn’t hopeless. He should have known.

He should have known because he felt the same way. Damn it.


Kneeling over her, silent, he tore the box, grabbed a packet, and started to slide it over his engorged dick, refusing to look at her while he did, hating that his hands didn’t feel steady.

But then she reached out and touched him, taking over, rolling the condom down.

“C’mere,” she said huskily, drawing him down. As he got on top of her, she wrapped her legs around his hips and met his gaze. “I can’t wait anymore.”

He closed his eyes and found his way into her, arching enough to watch her face as he entered her body, holding back before he plunged in. Pleasure swamped him, silencing everything. She was hot, tight perfection. Beautiful and willing and warm and wet.

And he was so lost he couldn’t have remembered his name if he’d had to.

This didn’t need a label, but it had one. And it sure as hell wasn’t “hopeless.”

Not when she murmured sexy words and scraped her nails over his back. Not when she bowed her back and invited him deeper inside her. And when she bit her lip and cried out and a climax clawed at his conscience and crushed his senses…it was full of hope.

Fucking overloaded with hope.

He silenced that by listening to the sultry sounds of her orgasm. She moaned and whimpered and fought for control, losing it as completely as he did until they both collapsed in a heap of satisfaction and, damn it, hope.

It was Chessie’s secret power, and he was drowning in it. And all he wanted in the whole world was more.

And more and more.

“We’re not done yet,” he whispered huskily in her ear.

“We have all night,” she agreed.

But that wasn’t what he meant. Not what he meant at all.





Chapter Twenty





The municipal finally opened mid-morning the next day, along with the palms of the three people who showed up for work. Mal greased them liberally, making slow progress until they were finally allowed into a file library.

He hadn’t been kidding about the paper.

Chessie turned slowly, blinking at boxes upon boxes, file cabinets, and loose papers piled on the floor. She felt a slow burn of frustration roll through her—the first time she’d felt anything other than satisfaction since they’d fallen asleep together, woke up in the middle of the night for another round, and repeated it all at dawn.

That whole no-strings thing? It sure felt like it was getting a little stringy. But she couldn’t think about it today, not now that she’d gotten what she wanted most: access to real information.

Sort of real. Sort of information. Regardless, she threw herself into the process of finding a trail that would lead to a four-year-old boy who would call her Aunt Chessie.

The man who’d brought them into the room pointed to a stack of cheap cardboard file boxes stuffed with blue, pink, green, and goldenrod papers. “Registros de nacimiento. Diez a?os.”

“The last decade of recorded births,” Mal explained as the man left the room without a good-bye.

“Are you kidding me?” Chessie dropped on to one of two chairs next to a folding card table. “We have to go through every one to find a birth record for a child named Gabriel Winter?”

“We know the year.”

“It’ll take a year.” She pulled out a bunch of the tissue-thin papers from a crate. “Crap, it’s all in Spanish.” Chessie fingered one of the bright orange sheets, transported back to her childhood when she’d tag along with Mom and she’d file papers in Dad’s law office. These were carbon copies, right out of another century. She hadn’t known they even made that stuff anymore.

She dropped the pages on the card table and started to read.

“Did you bring that rosary?” Mal asked.

“Prayer isn’t going to make this go any faster.” She gestured toward her bag. “It’s where you put it last night.”

He dragged it out. “I was thinking about something in the middle of the night.”

She gave him a look. “A rosary?”

“A message. I’m wondering if Ramos really wanted to give you a message.”