Force of Attraction Read online

  Scott tried not to feel too happy about her news. But it had him grinning from ear to ear inside. “So, we’re free to exercise our options.”

  Cole ducked his suggestion. “You sure you don’t have any issues I should know about?”

  Just like that, all the issues Scott had pushed aside when he walked in on her in the bathroom came roaring back. Hell yes. He had issues.

  He had an ex-con on his tail. Had he forgotten? His parents were in a shaky situation, living in a motel until their home was redone. His father’s health was compromised and he didn’t yet know what the full ramifications of that would be. He was a task force leader with a mission barely under way. He had no damn business trading confessions with her while these things hung over his head.

  Panic stabbed his gut. He wasn’t ready.

  “Let’s get the fuck outta here.”

  His good mood gone to shit, Scott strode out of the restaurant, pushing past customers mobbing the bar while waiting for a table.

  Cole followed closely behind him, confused by his sudden mood swing and getting more than a little annoyed herself. Noel and Sam were on the town. She should never have dredged up the problems of Scott and Cole. Except that he had been the one to bring them up.

  Near the front door she stepped on someone’s foot and tripped. She would have fallen if she hadn’t been caught by strong hands grabbing her by the arms. She looked up into the face of a smiling man. “You okay?”

  “Yeah. Fine. Thanks.” Cole straightened up only to realize her purse had slipped from her shoulder and fallen onto the floor. She looked around. “My purse! Someone must have kicked it.”

  “Let me help you look.” Her savior craned his head to look around the crowded space. “What are we looking for?”

  “It’s brown leather with— Oh, there it is.” She reached between the legs of a customer and snatched it up.

  Her savior smiled as he helped her hoist the strap back onto her shoulder. “Can I buy you a beer to say sorry?”

  “Get your hands off my wife.”

  Cole looked up into Scott’s very angry face. He grabbed her arm. “Come on.”

  They were out on the sidewalk of the nearly empty street before he released her.

  As he expected, Cole swung around on him, spitting mad. “What the hell was that?”

  “That guy was hitting on you.”

  Her eyes narrowed at his words. “So what?” She flung her hair back from her face with a hand, fury glinting in her eyes.

  “Come on. You don’t need that kind of cheap thrill.”

  Cole marched up to him and poked him in the chest to punctuate her words. “You have no idea what I want, Lucca.”

  “Oh, I know. I know exactly what you want.” He grabbed her by the arms and hauled her to him until she was plastered to his body from shoulder to knee.

  There was no question in Cole’s mind that he was aroused. She braced a hand on his chest and pushed hard. “Let me go.”

  Scott’s usually mellow baritone was reduced to a dark hiss. “You came with me. You leave with me.”

  Cole looked into his angry face, her feelings too complex to pull apart. She lifted a hand to touch his hot cheek, genuine puzzlement in her voice. “Why? What is it you really want from me, Scott?”

  A few latecomers rushed into the alley, their laughter bouncing eerily off the brick walls of the narrow lane before they disappeared into the pizzeria.

  Cole didn’t hear them. She was locked in Scott’s arms and his mouth was on hers, lips and tongue explaining in explicit detail just exactly what he wanted.

  * * *

  Scott’s promise to himself that he wouldn’t touch her until she asked him to was shot to hell. Now, he’d probably made her so angry hell would freeze over twice before she forgave him.

  His closed his eyes, dragging his mouth away from hers. But his hands didn’t loosen their hold of her waist. “Bad idea.”

  “Really bad.” Cole’s whispered reply was almost lost in the folds of his shirt where she clutched it with both hands. But she had been miserable for so long, been lonely without him so long, that getting hurt again might feel better than feeling nothing at all.

  At the moment, nothing hurt. Kissing Scott felt like the most right thing she’d ever done. She wanted nothing more than to kiss him and go on kissing him until she was saturated with his taste and smell and touch.

  She lifted her head and curled a hand behind the nape of his neck.

  “Cole—” He sounded as desperate as she felt.

  “Shut up, Scott.”

  She lifted her face and brought his head down for another kiss.

  He moved a hand from her waist down over the fabric that covered her hips where he flexed it under her butt and pressed her sex hard against his throbbing groin.

  Yet the hunger building between them was more urgent. It blocked out light and sound as they concentrated on the warm sinuous play between them of lips and tongues. Kissing had never felt better, sexier, hotter.

  For two years Cole had been replaying over and over in her head the reasons she had fallen for him. And wondered, had her imagination played her false? First love was like that, swamping good sense with the ecstasy of the moment. He couldn’t have been as good as she remembered. They hadn’t been as happy as memory said. She just needed to be clear about what she had walked away from, to erase memory with reality. That’s all she wanted, a little hard evidence to counteract too many lonely, sweaty nights alone in her bed.

  She felt sorry for women who claimed no man had ever kissed them in a way that made them want to strip and get busy right then and there. She’d said as much once, and gotten a tableful of ugly female glares.

  All evening long she had been hypersensitive to Scott’s every move. He had sat so still as he drove, as if only a certain set of muscles were required while the rest of him remained at ease. As they had walked in silence to the pizzeria, his posture was militarily erect. It was as if he’d only trusted himself on a very short leash.

  She’d thought that his attitude was her fault; that he didn’t want to be here with her. But now his restraint was broken. Desire, liquid and molten, was surging between them, connected by soft damp lips and warm tongues. He wanted her. He was all but screwing her through their clothing.

  Suddenly she had a much bigger problem. She wanted to feel it all again. Everything she’d felt that night in the shower. Only she didn’t want this time to be a game between Noel and Sam. This was her very real life. She needed it to be about Scott and Cole.

  She breathed in a long shaky breath and tried to think. But his mouth was so warm and inviting, and the hands on her back were cupped and holding her body so perfectly against his that she couldn’t catch her breath. And she needed, badly, to do that.

  She pressed against him, trying to gain a little space between them, until finally he lifted his lips from hers.

  “Right.” He shook his head, as if to dispel a dream. She could feel the tension in him where his hands still held her. The breath he inhaled shuddered through his chest. He wanted her. But he was backing away from her. His fingers were flexing away from her body, one by one.

  In the space it took him to unhand her, she clocked about eight good reasons why this was insane before her mind sputtered to a stop.

  She reached out to—something, shove him farther away, out of her way, some decisive move that would end the madness. Instead, the moment her fingers touched his shirtfront they curled and grabbed, jerking him closer to kiss him again.

  Scott resisted her kiss, not quite trusting her lust. Yet there were no words for what he was feeling. A kernel of desperation struggled to life within him. At any second she could decide that this—that he—was not really what she wanted.

  He muttered something urgent against her lips but her overstimulated senses couldn’t work out the words.

  She did register the instant he tried to move away from her. Pride tossed aside, she grabbed on to him. “No. Don�
�t—”

  He looked down into Cole’s face, which expressed the sexual invitation he so badly wanted to see there.

  He smiled at her in perfect understanding. “I’m not going anywhere. We just need to get off the street, okay? Come on.”

  He scooped her about the shoulders and urged her across the street into an alley opposite the pizzeria. A few yards in from the street he guided her into the shallow dark alcove of a bricked-up warehouse entrance. He backed her up against the wall, his body blocking out all other impressions of the night. Bracing himself with a palm flat against the wall above her head he leaned into her until they touched everywhere from thigh to shoulder.

  His free hand moved from her waist to lift her chin as he dipped his head, blotting out even the distant light.

  She murmured something she thought would be a protest but in reality was relief as his lips settled over hers in slow but complete possession.

  Her mouth opened under his as he began a slow grind, his engorged cock rubbing insistently against her lower belly through the barrier of their clothing.

  She could not catch her breath but this time it didn’t matter. She didn’t need to breathe. She only needed to feel Scott inside her, as quickly as possible.

  “Please,” she whispered raggedly as she clutched the powerful muscles of his upper arms.

  Scott was exerting too much control on his body to answer. If he didn’t get inside her sweet body and soon, he would explode in his jeans.

  He shucked her short skirt up to her waist. Using both hands, he ripped off her lacy panties and tossed them away. He slipped up between her soft thighs and her moan made him growl in response. She was moist and warm. As he parted the wet silk of her lower lips with a finger she whimpered in response.

  Cole did a little dance on the tips of his fingers, grinding her sex against his hand, frantic for release and afraid it would once again be snatched away. In spite of where they were, in an alley in sight of anyone who might come their way, she could only urge him on.

  This was wild. This was madness. Someone might see them. She didn’t care.

  She lifted her leg and hooked her heel behind his thigh.

  Scott used the advantage of her parted thighs to slide two fingers deep into her sex. Sighing, she pressed her lower body into the push-pull of his fingers. But that was not how he wanted to be inside her. He wanted to cram the full length of his rigid cock into her.

  He unhooked his belt buckle and reached for his zipper as the sounds of music and laughter burst from the opening door of the arcade opposite them on the street.

  Scott stilled and swung his head in that direction, ever alert to danger.

  Cole grabbed his neck. “Please don’t stop.”

  “The hell I will.” A fire hose couldn’t get him off her now. But he watched, his pulse pounding in his cock, until the gamers moved on down the street.

  He had her pinned to the wall so tightly the bricks dug into her back. There’d be scrapes and bruises in the morning but she didn’t care. She was about to screw Scott Lucca, right here, right now.

  She pulled his shirt from his waistband and ran her hands up under it, exulting in the heat of his skin and the solid ripple of muscles on his back. He grabbed one of her hands and pushed it down to his zipper. She didn’t need any more encouragement.

  She jerked it down and then her hands were inside his waistband pushing jeans and shorts down over the rock-hard contours of his butt.

  He grabbed her by the waist and hoisted her up off the ground. His lips directed his quiet words right into her left ear. “Hold on tight, Cole. I’m going to give you all of me. As much as you can stand.”

  She kicked off her sandals and wrapped her legs around his waist, locking her hands behind his neck.

  He reached between them to direct his shaft at the right angle, felt the slick heat of the outer folds of her sex part against its head, and shoved toward the goal.

  A faint cry escaped her as the fat head of his cock entered her. At this angle, he felt even bigger than she had expected.

  “Shhh. Take it slow.” His whisper was thick with a sex-drugged urgency.

  “Slow?” she responded, sounding offended at the idea. “I need fast.”

  Gritting his teeth he took her firmly by the waist, and drove her hips down on his swollen shaft with an upward thrust. A series of little inarticulate cries began erupting from Cole as he slid home.

  The sounds exploded in wonder by Scott’s ear as the ripples of her climax massaged the length of his cock.

  Damn. She was so responsive he almost lost control and he hadn’t even begun to move. She might need only one thrust, his body demanded many more. Now. While her body was sucking him in.

  He bucked under her, pounding into her hot wet darkness like a jackhammer. The old Scott Lucca finesse deserted him. He was running hot and wide open. She was so wet, and felt so right. This was how it had been with them from the first. It shouldn’t feel like the first time after all this time. But even the miracle of it was losing fascination to the seeping urgency of sensation that locked their bodies together.

  He felt her climax rising again and she was calling his name in little breathless whispers that feathered his ear. A second later she gripped him hard, her fingers digging into his shoulders as he continued to pump her. Afraid she would cry out loudly, he reached up and stuck his thumb in her mouth to distract her. Her lips clamped down on his thumb as she began sucking it like it was a lollipop.

  Her second climax went on much longer than the first. The clutch and caress of her sex echoed by her firm sucking of his thumb finally wrung from him a helpless “Holy shit.” She really was going to be the death of him.

  Then he lost control.

  He buried his head deep in her neck to keep from shouting in relief as he flooded her with his climax.

  For a moment the world stopped. When it came back it was distant, shadowy, muffled, a dim shadow beyond the vivid touch and scent of their coupled bodies.

  Scott threw back his head and sucked in a breath. He felt as if he’d run a marathon—no, a hundred-meter sprint—and won the race.

  Finally he looked down at her, still wrapped tightly around him by her arms and legs. Her forehead had fallen forward against his chest. Her shoulders were quivering and he thought he heard little sobs. He lifted her face up to his. Her cheeks gleamed with tears.

  “No, now. Tears? Did I hurt you?”

  “No.” She looked up into his shadowed face, a smile quivering on her kiss-swollen lips. “You’re just so … intense.”

  He grinned. “You’re the one. Damn, Cole.” With his thumbs he swiped the tears from her cheeks. “You’re sure you’re okay?”

  “I—” She shook her head. Even now, trembling from the backwash of desire, she hesitated to admit her weakness for him. “I’m okay.”

  He took her by the waist as she slid off his body and then held her against him a moment, as if to absorb the last of her ecstasy.

  Finally he leaned a little away from her, but not enough so that she felt in any way abandoned.

  She saw him check the street again, ever the police officer, as he hoisted his jeans back up over his hips and quickly fastened them. He didn’t bother to button his shirt. He helped her pull her top down from where it had rolled up her torso as they coupled and smoothed her skirt back over her hips.

  Cole let him do most of the work. She was too spent to do more than sag against the wall.

  The sudden roar of motorcycles into the alley from the opposite side they had entered sounded like a helicopter landing overhead.

  Two riders rolled to a stop just yards away from them, their headlights throwing a glare that blinded them.

  Fear, bright and icy cold, splashed through Cole. It was as if her skin had suddenly been ripped off.

  “Oh God, oh God, oh God.”

  Even as Scott moved in against her to shield her, she was already backing into the wall, flattening herself as if she might be ab
le to slide between the bricks. The police officer in her had fled, leaving behind a trembling and vulnerable woman.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  “Don’t move.”

  Scott’s whisper wasn’t necessary. Cole was too frightened to do more than shake. She heard the motors die and then sounds of jackboots scrape the pavement.

  “What have we here?”

  “Pussy on the half shell. Served up and waiting.” The second man dismounted.

  Scott made a move with his hand, an action that was hidden by his body. “Don’t move, I’ve got this.”

  “Come on, bitch, let’s see what you’re giving out in the alley.”

  Cole felt him work to free his weapon but the holster tucked into the small of his back had been dislodged by their lovemaking. She heard him swear softly as the men neared them, two chilling silhouettes backlit by their headlights.

  “Cole.” His breath feathered across her face as his hand slid up and gripped her shoulder hard. “When I turn around, get my weapon free.”

  Before she could answer he turned toward the men and took a step, completely blocking her from view, and raised his hands. “We don’t want any trouble.”

  “Shit. He thinks we want trouble.”

  The second man chuckled, spacing himself in case they needed to tackle Scott. “Don’t try to be a hero, friend. It’s just a bitch. Back off and it’ll be like you were never here.”

  “You don’t need a knife. And I’m telling you, you don’t want to start anything.” Scott’s voice was calm, his words a signal to her that this wasn’t going to go well unless she did something. Fast.

  Heart pounding so hard she could scarcely breathe, Cole slid a hand under the tail of Scott’s shirt and slowly moved it up until her fingers closed over the butt of his gun. The holster had gotten twisted. She needed both hands to free his weapon, and she was going to get only one opportunity.

  “Let’s see her, junior. We want to play, too.”

  “Sure.” Scott took a step forward as she jerked hard. His gun came free.

  “Hey. What’s going on?”

  The sound of more male voices was the last thing Cole thought she wanted until she heard them say, “Stop. Police.”