“What do you call tonight?”
“Making an exception.” She was attracted to him. There was no denying it. Just as there was no denying the guy oozed a kind of brain-numbing sexual appeal. The kind that could have a girl naked before she remembered that she was supposed to “Just say no.” They walked from beneath the bright light on the corner, and Lucy stopped by her car.
“Make another exception.”
Feeble light from a closed printer’s shop spilled across the sidewalk and onto the bottom of Quinn’s pants and the toes of Lucy’s shoes. She shook her head and opened her purse. “I don’t know you well enough to make another exception for you.”
“I can solve that problem right now.” He took her purse, snapped it closed, and tossed it on the top of her car.
She looked up into the darkened shadows of his face. “What are you doing?”
He slid his hands up her arms and across her shoulders. His fingers plowed up through her hair, and he held the back of her head. “Something I’ve wanted to do all night,” he said just above a whisper as his mouth descended toward hers. She put her hands on his chest, meaning to stop him. Then he said, “The second you walked into the bar, I wanted to kiss you,” and she forgot about stopping. He gently pulled her head backward, and her lips parted. “Starting right here. With your mouth.”
Lucy’s hands opened and closed on his sweater, over the hard muscles of his chest. His lips pressed into hers, a warm, irresistible possession. Her palms slid to his shoulders and she held on as his slick tongue entered her mouth, teasing and coaxing a response. He tasted a little like the beer he’d drunk, but mostly like a man with sex on his mind. She should have been alarmed, and she was. But mostly because she liked the taste in her mouth. Like something hot and delicious, it poured through her and warmed the pit of her stomach. Her toes curled inside her Donald J. Pliner pumps, and her fingers dug into the weave of his sweater. His hands never left the back of her head. His mouth never left hers, yet she felt the kiss everywhere. His wet mouth ate at hers, devouring all rational thought and turning on every cell in her body. She hardly knew him, but she didn’t care much as he fed her kisses that left her feeling consumed, burned alive right there on the sidewalk of downtown Boise. She moaned and leaned into him.
He lifted his face and spoke just above her moist mouth. “See me again.”
It wasn’t a question, and she nodded. “Okay.”
“Monday.”
“Okay.”
He dropped his arms and took a step back. Dazed, she stared into the variegated shadows of his face and raised a hand to the tender skin below her bottom lip where his chin had abraded her. She wondered if he’d left a mark.
“Did I hurt you?”
The little patch felt raw to the touch. “I’m okay.”
He placed his fingers beneath her chin and tilted her face toward the streetlight. His thumb brushed her jaw, and he leaned forward to lightly kiss just below her bottom lip. “I’m sorry.” She felt his whispered breath on her skin. The warmth of it brushed her chin and slid down the side of her throat. “I got a little carried away.”
She closed her eyes and waited for the return of his mouth to hers.
“Lucy.”
“Yes.”
“Either you leave now, by yourself. Or you leave with me.” He stepped back and cold air separated his chest from the front of her coat but did little to cool her heated cheeks. “What’s it going to be?”
Lucy opened her eyes and cleared her throat. “I’m leaving.” She did not believe in love at first sight. “By myself.” She left that up to romantics and romance writers like Clare. But lust…lust was different. Lust at first sight was something that Lucy did believe in. She was staring it right in the face. It heated her blood, pooled in the pit of her stomach, and made her want to follow wherever Quinn might want to take her. Instead she turned and reached for her purse.
One kiss had sucked out her rationality and reason. She was going to see Quinn again. She hadn’t meant to say yes when there were so many good reasons to say no. She didn’t really know him and didn’t know if she believed half of what he said. There was something about him that was just a little too intense. Something that told her he was moving too fast. There was something wrong. Something she just couldn’t see, but for some inexplicable reason, none of that seemed to matter.
“Good night, Quinn,” she said and moved around to the other side of her car. She glanced across the roof of her BMW at his outline against the soft glow of the printer’s shop behind him. He was tall and dark and absolutely gorgeous. With one kiss, he’d turned the “curiosity thing” into a real date.
“I’ll get in touch with you about Monday.”
With her car separating them, her thoughts cleared a little, and she recalled her Monday night plans. She’d been given two tickets to a hockey game as a thank-you for speaking at a Writer’s League meeting. She’d been meaning to ask Adele to go with her, since Adele loved hockey as much as Lucy. “I forgot that I have tickets to the Steelheads for Monday night,” she said. It was a perfect excuse to get out of the date. Instead she asked, “Want to go to the game with me?”
“Dinner first?”
“Sure.” She’d had the perfect out, but she hadn’t taken it. She was going to see him again, and God help her if he ever touched more than the back of her head.
Chapter 5
Storyteller: Seeks Smooth Talker…
Monday morning, Quinn walked into the briefing room and shot the shit with a few guys from the crime lab. While they talked about old cases, his gaze took in the marker board. Lucy’s name was still at the top in bold red, and two lines were drawn to the second and third murder victims.
He grabbed a cup of coffee and took a seat. He opened his notebook on the table in front of him to the notes he’d written about Lucy. Everything he had was circumstantial, but when put together, it painted a fairly damning picture. He ran a hand down his gold-and-blue-striped tie and wondered how long it would take before someone mentioned the kiss he’d put on Lucy the previous Friday night.
“You sure didn’t kiss Maureen like you kissed Lucy,” Kurt managed through a huge grin as he entered the room and sat next to Quinn.
“Jealous?” Quinn asked through a smile as he pulled back the cuff of his dress shirt to look at his watch. One minute after eight. Kurt had waited a whole minute. If anything, Quinn was surprised that Kurt hadn’t razzed him about it Saturday night when they’d met before his setup with Maureen.
“Not jealous. Impressed by how fast you work.”
“I had to convince Lucy she needed to see me again. Maureen didn’t need convincing.” He turned a page in his notes. If his date with Lucy had been a real one, he’d have used more finesse. He would have taken his time and asked for her phone number. If he’d had time, he would have charmed her into giving him what he wanted instead of grabbing her and kissing her into submission. When given a choice, Quinn always preferred to take his time, although he had to admit that grabbing her up and getting to it hadn’t been too bad. Not at all. In fact, it might have been a little too good.
“By the sound of Lucy’s moan, that was some convincing.”
“It’s a dirty job, Weber.” He hadn’t expected it to be so easy, either. He’d expected Lucy to pull back and slap him.
“But somebody’s gotta do it. Right?”
“Right.” Instead of slapping him, she’d done the unexpected and melted into his chest. Her response had surprised the hell out of him, and for a moment, as he’d tasted her mouth and felt the warm pull of desire, he’d forgotten who she was and exactly why he’d been standing there kissing her on a downtown street. For a few moments, she’d been just a beautiful woman and he’d been just a man. He’d let the heat of her response go straight to his head, and lower. For a few moments he’d forgotten that he’d just been doing his job.