The Alibi
Page 56
Moments later she opened her eyes and saw him smiling down at her. “I’m sorry, sorry.”
“Sorry?” he repeated, laughing softly and kissing her damp forehead.
“Well, I mean… you…”
His lips barely grazed hers. His whisper was soft and urgent. “Don’t be sorry.”
He coughed a harsh sigh of surprise when she closed her hand around him. He almost protested, almost told her that she didn’t have to feel obligated, almost told her that reciprocation wasn’t necessary, that he couldn’t possibly get any harder than he was. But when she began to explore and massage, the only sounds he made were soft groans of supreme pleasure. Not fully aware of what he was doing, he folded his hand around hers and enhanced her motions.
She nuzzled his neck. She buried kisses in his chest hair and took love bites of his skin. Unintentionally—or maybe not—her erect nipple rubbed against his. It was exciting. It was goddamn erotic. And it nearly made him come.
When he removed her hand, she angled herself up and frantically kissed his jaw, his cheek, his lips, murmuring, “Let me touch you.”
But it was too late. He repositioned himself and sank into her. Withdrew. Pressed. Deep. Deeper. Then, resting his forehead on hers, clenching his teeth and squeezing his eyes shut, experiencing more ecstasy than he had in all previous sexual encounters put together…
“No, let me touch you.”
… he came.
The ringing telephone rudely jarred Hammond from his steamy recollection. He was embarrassed to realize that he had an erection and he was bathed in sweat. How much time had he lost to that particular memory? He checked the dashboard clock. Twenty minutes, give or take.
The phone rang a third time. He jerked it to his ear. “What?”
“Where the hell have you been?”
Irritably he said, “You know, Steffi, you need to get some new material. That’s the second time today you’ve asked me that, and in that same tone of voice.”
“Sorry, but I’ve been calling your house for an hour and leaving messages. I finally decided to try your cell. Are you in your car?”
“Yes.”
“You went out?”
“Right again.”
“Oh. I didn’t imagine you’d be going out tonight.”
She was hinting that he explain to her where he had gone and why, but he no longer owed her an accounting of his time. It probably stung her pride that on the night he ended their relationship, he wasn’t too despondent to go out.
It would really wound her to know that he was staked out on a dark street like a pervert, steeping in a sweat of sexual arousal, and waiting to see if Dr. A. E. Ladd was the woman who, about this time last night, had been stretched out alongside him naked—his sex cozily sandwiched between their bellies, his hands caressing her ass—asking if he was aware that his eyes were the color of storm clouds.
He had a mean impulse to tell Steffi. But of course he didn’t.
He wiped his face on his shirtsleeve. “What’s going on?”
“For starters, why didn’t you tell me that Mason gave you the Pettijohn case?”
“It wasn’t my job to.”
“That’s a bullshit reason, Hammond.”
“Thank you, Rory Smilow,” he muttered.
“He told me as a friend.”
“My ass. He told you because he’s no friend of mine. Now, are you going to tell me wha
t’s up?”