~*~
Suzannah was nowhere in sight when Quigg let himself back in the house, but he could hear Mark Knopfler’s lazy vocals emanating from the living room. “Suzannah?”
“In here.”
The volume of the music dropped. He unleashed Bandy, who shot off to find his newest friend. Stashing the leash in its customary place, he followed in Bandy’s footsteps.
He expected to find her sitting on his aunt’s flowered sofa sipping tea, but instead she crouched by the mantle, scratching Bandy’s ears. She stood, but this time, stepped back out of reach before the dog could register a complaint about the cessation of petting.
“Quick study,” he observed.
“He made quite an impression.”
She picked up an old-fashioned glass from the mantle, took a healthy sip, then cradled it in her hands. Judging by the amber contents, she must have found the bourbon in the cupboard.
“I see you found yourself a drink.”
“Umm. Jack Daniel’s. My favorite. I hope you don’t mind.”
“Of course not.”
“Care for one?” She gestured toward the coffee table, where the bottle sat.
Strong drink with Suzannah under his roof? A Suzannah who herself had been drinking strong drink? Bad idea.
“Nah, I think I’ll have a beer. Be right back.” Heart thumping, he retreated to the kitchen. Twisting the top off a Moose Dry, he took a swig, then set it down on the counter. Keep it cool, old man. She’s tired, she’s scared, and she wants a drink to unwind. Big deal.
He went to the cupboard, extracted a small bag of dog chow and shook some into the empty dog dish. Bandy immediately came running.
She’d also given him the look.
Oh, hell.
He grabbed Bandy’s water dish, rinsed it under the tap and refilled it. “There you go, buddy.”
Okay, no more procrastinating. Suzannah Phelps was sipping bourbon in his living room, waiting for him to rejoin her. And she’d given him the look. The green light. The all systems go.
At least from any other woman, that’s how he’d interpret it, but who knew with Suzannah? He had no experience of a woman in her league. Hell, apart from an ill-advised engagement when he was too young to recognize good old-fashioned lust for what it was, he had limited experience of nice women.
Christ in his high chair! He’d just mentally characterized the woman his friends referred to as She-Rex as nice.
Okay, not nice, then. Respectable. Socially upstanding. That better described his experiential deficiency. When he did indulge his libido, his style was more the women who hung out at the local watering hole. With them, you knew the score. It was about the badge, and that was quite all right with him. It made it that much easier to gather his clothes in the grey light of pre-dawn and get the hell out of there.
“John?”
Whoops. Time out was over. “Be right there,” he called. Then, to the dog, he said, “’Fraid you’ll have to stay here, Bandy Man. The lady will probably have to wear slacks for a week as it is.”
Closing the kitchen door on a disappointed Bandy, Quigg snagged his beer and walked back to the living room where Mark Knopfler was now husking his way through “Are We In Trouble Now”. You and me both, buddy.
She smiled when she saw him enter the room. He shot a look at her glass. Eek! Nearly empty.
“This is a great song.”
“Yeah.” He took a swig of beer. “The whole CD is great.”
“Umm,” she agreed, depositing her glass on the coffee table beside the half bottle of JD. “Dance with me.”
He gripped his bottle tighter. “You think that’s wise?”
“Probably not.” She strode over to him and plucked the beer from his hands, plunking it on the coffee table beside her drink.
Instant arousal. Just like that, he was hard. She was barefoot, which left her several inches shorter than him. For a moment, he mourned her loss of height. He liked her mouth at the level of his, her eyes able to look right into his.
She moved into him, soft against hard, and his arms went around her. She linked her arms around his neck, the loose embrace somehow effectively cutting off the supply of oxygen to his brain as she swayed against him. Or maybe that was being accomplished by the rush of blood to another part of his anatomy.
“You’re not moving,” she pointed out.
For pity’s sake, he didn’t trust himself to move. In the background, Mark Knopfler crooned that it wasn’t the music or the wine sending those shivers up his spine. Suzannah swayed against him again, her breasts under the sexy halter dress brushing his chest. Beneath his hands, the bare skin of her back felt like fine, warm satin.
Her hand came up to touch his face and he was lost. Groaning, he went for her upturned mouth, covering it hotly.
She threw herself into the kiss. There was no other way to describe it. Even as he plundered that lush, bourbon-ripe mouth, she plundered right back, giving as good as she got. And all the while, her hands slid through his hair, shaping his skull, pulling him closer.
He lifted his own hands to her hair, finding and releasing the clasp that held it. Then her hair was free, sliding around her shoulders like fragrant silk. He fisted his hands in it and pulled his own head back far enough to break the kiss. She mewled a protest at the loss of contact, but he held her there with a gentle tension on her hair, nipping at her lower lip, grazing her throat, her ear, the corner of her lip. Lord, it was good. He wanted to hold her that way for hours, days, weeks, torturing himself and her with almost-kisses and nibbles, but she was too far gone for that. Using considerable force, she pulled his head down for another hot, open-mouthed kiss.
Any thought of slow, prolonged, torturous kisses was instantly obliterated. He dropped his hands to her breasts, kneading them beneath the slippery material of her halter dress. One tug, he knew, and the whole thing would come off.
Not yet. Slow down. Savor this.
He tried to pull back to look at her, wanting to see the thrust of her nipples through the fine material, but she held him fast. She was like a freight train that wouldn’t be slowed. Sweet heaven, she was ravenous. Starved. Wild.
Finally, an alarm bell went off in his head.
Oh Jesus oh Jesus oh Jesus oh Jesus.
He had to stop.