As he resumed glaring at the floor, he could feel her staring at him across the desk.
Abruptly, she picked up the one living thing in the room: a small plant in a green-colored plastic pot.
“You see this?” she said. “You know who gave it to me? A nice guy named Detective de la Cruz. He paid me a visit here a little while ago, and you wanna know whose health plan he’s on? The CPD’s. Again, nice guy. But I didn’t want this fucking plant, and I reallllly don’t want him to come back—most certainly not because we had bodily damage of a permanent variety happen in one of my fucking bathrooms by one of my cocksucking bouncers.”
“I can keep it together.”
She put the pathetic ivy or fern or whatever it was back down. “It’s my own damned fault. I didn’t realize this, but you’ve worked the last twenty-five nights that we’ve been open in a row—I shouldn’t have asked you to come in last evening. You’re just too dependable, and frankly, too good at your dumb-ass job. Unfortunately, you’re also getting burned out. It happens. Those idiots out there will drive you demented.”
He opened his mouth, but she cut him off. “This is not subject to compromise or discussion. At all. You either do what I say, or, as much as it pains me to say this, I’m going to fire you.”
Duke felt his temper flare even higher … but he knew better than to argue. She was holding all his cards, and she probably wasn’t being all that unfair. Damn her.
“Can I finish out tonight?”
“As long as you relax? Yeah. But then it’s two shifts off.” Duke turned to go. “I didn’t say I was done with you.”
“What,” he asked the closed door.
“You have a visitor. I put her down the hall in the interrogation room.”
Duke cranked around. “Visitor?”
Alex offered a sly smile. “Blond. Five-eight. Looks out of place here—which I can’t help but think recommends her. In fact, maybe if you spend a little time with the female? You’ll get in a better mood.”
Duke blew out of the boss lady’s office and strode down that corridor. When he got to the door of the room they “talked” to people in, he didn’t knock, just opened wide.
And there she was, standing in her sensible shoes, hands in the pockets of her jeans, eyes shooting over like she was out of her element, her comfort zone … and her mind.
At least in her opinion.
Duke would beg to differ, however.
Dropping his lids, a sense of purpose calmed him out so much better than the chain-yanking of his boss.
As he shut the door, she lifted her hand awkwardly. “Hi. I…”
He put his finger to his lips and shhh’d her. Then he went over to the monitoring equipment in the far corner and reached waaaaaay up, disconnecting the unit that was mounted on the ceiling.
Facing off at her, he drawled, “I’m assuming you don’t want this recorded.”
“Ah…”
As she clearly searched for words, it was obvious she hadn’t been playing when she’d said she didn’t do shit like this.
No problem. He was going to take care of everything.
Closing in, he already had her naked in his mind, naked and up on the table in the middle of the room, her legs spread for him as he kissed her so hard, she fell back on the scratched surface.
He didn’t say anything as he reached for her, slipping a hand around the base of her neck and pulling her forward by the throat.
She put her palms out to his chest and held him off. “Don’t you want to…”
“What? Talk?” His eyes locked on her mouth. “That’s not why you came. That’s not why I asked you here.”
In the recesses of his mind, he found it strange that he was so sexed up over this female. But he wasn’t wasting time on that one. She was here. She was not going to say no. And he needed this with a desperation he not only didn’t understand, but knew better than to question.
He wanted her willing, however.
And that meant he was going to have to seduce her into the fucking.
He moved his hand up so that it plowed into her hair, and then took her by the waist. “I saw your car earlier. You came by the front of the club, didn’t you.”
She swallowed hard. “I wanted to see…”
“Me.” He leaned in, putting his chest against her breasts and his mouth next to her ear. “You wanted to see me again, because you couldn’t believe you were thinking about meeting me here. You couldn’t believe that while you were watching that singer … I was the man on your mind.”
He moved his hips in, brushing his erection against her before he backed off to measure her reaction.
Oh, yeaaaah. That’s what he wanted: Her lids closed briefly and her lips parted—so she’d definitely felt what he’d wanted her to.
“I knew you were going to come,” he said, “for me.”
That was when he kissed her, shifting fast and taking over, gathering her hard and bringing her in tight to his body as his mouth found hers. She was stiff against him, but that didn’t last. As he licked his way into her, she went loose all over, and man, that was good—just as good as the way she tasted.
Talk about transformation. All that pent-up frustration he’d been riding got rechanneled into lust for her, and the heady surge of erotic power was his first clue that this casual hookup was going to be different. But then he didn’t think of anything much else. She was the perfect receptacle for his burn, her tongue meeting his, her spine arching her forward, her arms shooting around his shoulders to hold him in return.
When she pulled away briefly, he knew what she was worried about.
“No lock on the door,” he told her. Because the last thing the club needed was an accusation of false imprisonment. “But the thing opens inward, so if you want privacy, I can fuck you up against it.”
Her eyes widened, as if she were trying to figure out whether the coarse language offended her or turned her on even more.
When she brought his mouth back down to hers, he took that as a “wow, what a great idea to body-block everyone out of our little piece of privacy.”
Roger that. Duke maneuvered her against the panels and went for her turtleneck, yanking it free of her waistband so he could slip his palms onto the smooth, warm skin of her torso. In response, she put her arms up, and he didn’t wait for further instruction; he swept the shirt up and over her head, tossing it aside.
Nice bra.
Little girlie for his tastes, but he so didn’t mind that lace on her in the slightest—through the peekaboo weave, he could see her tight pink nipples, and as much as he was enjoying what was going on with her lips, he wanted at all that, too.
No reason to bother removing those fragile cups. He nuzzled his way south, kissing her throat, her collarbones, the smooth plane of her sternum—and then going on to her breast. Extending his tongue, he went for that nipple, licking at the tip of it, sucking it in, running his lips back and forth against the combination of lace and flesh. And she liked the attention he was paying her. Her hands dug into his hair and tugged at his head—not to push him away, though. Hell, no. She was holding him to her.
He didn’t need the encouragement.
Man, he loved the way she smelled—as well as the fact that she’d showered before she came to him: The undercarriage of her hair was just a little damp, and on her skin, a faint fragrance lingered. No heavy lotions and stuff for her, not like the working girls here at the club. Delicate soap, something natural and clean.
Looks out of place here—which I can’t help but think recommends her.
At least he and his boss could agree on one thing tonight.
Easing back, Duke hooked both of the straps at her shoulders and braced himself to see her properly. Pulling downward and caressing her upper arms as he went, he revealed what he had been attending to.