Page 11 of Edge of Secrets (The Edge Trilogy #2)

“I’m not going to invite you in,” I blurted out. “Not for coffee, or drinks. Or, ah, anything. Sorry. I don’t mean to be rude, but ...”

“Of course you won’t,” he said. “You hardly know me. I wouldn’t expect you to.”

But he did not make any leaving words, or moves, or noises. “So?” I prompted. “Then why are you still standing there? What do you want from me?”

“Something that I just can’t have, I guess.” He touched the end of a fuzzy ringlet that had escaped my bun and was now dangling at chin level. “I got this really strong feeling from you today. At lunch, in the restaurant.”

“Yes?” I felt my lips tremble. I pressed them sternly together.

“I got the feeling that you were trying to get my attention,” he said slowly.

Duh. I swallowed hard. “Well, yes. I suppose I was,” I admitted. “You were ignoring me so completely. I guess I sort of took it as a challenge.”

“Huh. Well. Whatever challenge you took on, looks like you definitely won.” He tugged the curl again, watched it rebound again. “I just want you to know that you’ve definitely got my attention now. All of it.”

“Ah. Well …” I laughed, a little nervously. “I’m not sure what to say, then. Now that I have it, I’m not quite sure what to do with it.”

“There’s a lot you can do with it,” he said. “It’s multi-purpose.”

“Um. Really.” The door pressed against my back. There was nowhere to retreat.

“Yeah. You’d be amazed.” He wound the curl around his finger, stroking the texture. “This is the thing—once you’ve got my attention, it’s really hard to shake. I can be like a dog with a bone, they tell me.”

“I noticed that,” I said. “The way you stared at that computer at the restaurant, a herd of elephants could have trooped by and you wouldn’t see them.

But I won’t be doing anything interesting or notable with your attention tonight.

Thanks again. For the ride, hearing me out, walking me up all those stairs.

It’s nice to have a sympathetic ear.” I hesitated, waiting for him to take his cue. “Good night,” I prompted, pointedly.

“Is your sister here now?”

I considered saying yes, just to defuse the tension, but I had a feeling that if I lied to him, he’d see right through it, as closely as he was observing me right now.

That would embarrass me to death. “No,” I admitted.

“She’s driving to Delaware right now. She designs jewelry.

Works the crafts fair circuit. She travels a lot. ”

“You and your sisters have a lot of nerve, wandering around all alone, just doing your thing like it’s no big deal while an unknown stalker is out there gunning for you.”

I bristled at that, since it hit far too close to the bone. “That’s not fair. We don’t have any choice. We both have to make a living.”

“Yeah, okay,” he soothed. “I get that. You do have an alarm, at least?”

“Absolutely. Top of the line,” I said promptly. That, at least, was true.

He lounged against the wall, still in no hurry at all. “A dog might be a good investment,” he commented.

I snorted. “Hah. Hardly. First off, I can’t afford it. It wouldn’t be fair to the poor dog, the way I work. And you have no idea how small my apartment is.”

“Nope.” His voice was a low, suggestive rumble. “And I guess I’m not going to.”

I shook my head, licking my lips before I could stop myself. “Nope. Not tonight.”

The words slipped out, and panic flashed through me, since the obvious corollary of my incautious statement was that he might well get lucky some other night.

The look in his eyes set off fireworks in my head, my chest, my thighs. He smiled as he pulled his smartphone out. “Let’s exchange numbers,” he said. “If you have any problems, anything at all, call me. Whenever. Any time of day or night. I mean it.”

“Ah, wow. Thank you. That’s very kind, but I’m sure it won’t be necessary.” I groped in my bag for the flip phone that Vivi and Nancy had insisted that I get, tapping around awkwardly until I opened up the address book function.

He smoothly took it from my hand. “Let me,” he said. “I’ll just put mine into your phone, and call my phone with yours.”

He entered the number swiftly, and listened for the buzz of his own phone in his pocket. “I don’t like to leave you like this,” he said, frowning. “I feel like you’re not safe here alone. I won’t be able to sleep tonight.”

I tilted up my chin. “Well, that sounds like a ‘you’ problem, Duncan.”

He grinned. “I guess so. Poor me. I’m just … it’s hard to leave. Goes against instinct. Leaving you unprotected.”

“I’m sorry for your instincts and your insomnia and all your various discomforts, but it’s late, and it’s been a long day for me. Good night.” I put all the commanding punch I could behind the word.

He still didn’t move. God, the guy was tall. And broad. And he smelled really good, even at this hour of the night, many long hours from his morning shower. It filled my senses.

“You’re not going,” I remarked.

“No,” he agreed.

I tried to look stern and forbidding. It was hard, with my lips trembling the way they did. “Why not?”

“Because you don’t really want me to.”

I laughed right in his face. The nerve of him. “Oh, no. Are you one of those guys who’s going to tell me that you know better than I do what I want and need? Please, Burke. Don’t be that guy.”

“I’m sorry, but I can see it,” he said, his tone utterly unapologetic.

“So you’re a mind reader now?”

“Not minds. I read faces and bodies. Yours is saying something different.”

I was blushing again. “You can read my face and body all you want, but keep in mind, buddy—my face and body do not make the executive decisions around here.”

“Of course not.” His voice was a velvety, rumbling caress against my skin, making me shiver as he leaned closer. “They have better things to do.”

I was still groping for a comeback when he leaned forward and kissed me.

The wild rush of feelings that released took me by surprise. The startled heat, unfurling instantly through my body, the sense of sudden, voluptuous opening inside me, like a flower blooming wide. It spread out—sweet, fragrant—a feeling too delicious to resist.

I rose up on my tiptoes and leaned hungrily into his kiss, and that added fuel to the fire.

I felt the very instant that it spun out of control.

I was spinning in a vortex of pure sensation, pinned to the wall and writhing, kissing him back madly, greedily, my fingers clutching his coat, his shoulders, my nails trying to dig in.

Forgetting everything except for how sweet it was, how good it felt. How much more I wanted.

Right … freaking … now.

He hooked my knee with his hand and pulled it up, inviting me to clasp his muscular thighs with my legs, leaning against me so that the big, hard bulge at his groin pressed right at that melting, aching spot between my legs, rocking with a slow, skillful, deliberate pulse that made me ache and squirm and gasp for breath.

His tongue slid inside my mouth, commanding and directing the kiss with relaxed, implacable skill.

His hands cupped my bottom, stroking, lifting me up to just the angle I needed for …

I wasn’t even quite sure what yet, but I started to shake, disoriented, as the energy changed, sharpening to something almost agonizing.

Something was happening inside me and I couldn’t … I didn’t … oh God.

The heat, the light, the sweet ache—it was all coalescing, swelling into something huge and bright and terrifying.

It burst through me, and my startled cry was smothered against his mouth. He held me tightly while shudder after shudder of unbelievable pleasure wrenched through me.

My eyes fluttered open as reason returned, but it found no place to land. I did not recognize myself. Not in this undone, confused state, his gaze burning into my face.

My eyes were wet and my throat couldn’t stop shaking.

My heart still galloped wildly. I could barely breathe.

I could not believe what I had just done—and with a virtual stranger, too, in my own stairwell .

Any one of my neighbors could have come up the stairs at any time and seen everything. I had completely lost my mind.

My gaze slid away from his. I was too overcome to meet his eyes. So that was what an orgasm felt like on the far end of the scale. I’d thought that I knew, but this experience was infinitely more intense than anything I’d ever experienced. Overwhelming.

He stroked my cheek with a gentle fingertip. “Amazing,” he whispered. “So. Any new executive decisions coming down the pipeline?”

Oh, that opportunistic bastard, messing with my head.

I wanted to yank him inside my apartment and eat him alive, and he knew it.

If this is how he could make me feel fully clothed, in my public stairwell, with nothing more than a hot tongue-kiss and some dry humping—well.

I didn’t dare to imagine how it would be in private, in the dark.

Naked. With him all over me. Beneath me. Inside me.

But not tonight. I was too fragile, too compromised, unsure of both myself and him. I shook my head, and mouthed the word.

No. I didn’t have the breath to actually say it.

“Got it,” he murmured. “There’s just one more little thing I really need to know.”

I blinked at him nervously, still breathing hard. “Um. And what might that be?”

He reached down, pinched my skirt, and tugged it up just a couple of inches over my knees. Then he looked at me and smiled. “Mmmm,” he said. “Dimples. Cute.”

“What the hell?” I slapped his hand sharply away. “Stop that!”

He stepped back. “Sorry,” he said. “I’m overdoing it, huh?”

“Yes!” I snapped. “Back off!”

He started down the stairs, walking backward like he didn’t want to take his eyes off me. “You’re sure you’ll be okay alone?”

“Me and my chubby knees will be just fine,” I said tartly. “Good night.”

I stayed there until I heard the downstairs lobby door click closed behind him, far below. Then I fumbled with my keys.

Once inside my apartment, the alarm armed and blinking an angry red, I sank down onto the couch without turning on the light, still shaking. My throat ached and burned, as if a tuning peg were ratcheting the tension relentlessly tighter and higher.

I was so angry at myself. Not for kissing him, or for letting him make me come, but for depriving myself of the rest of the experience. Because I was chicken-shit.

As usual, there was always a compelling reason not to reach out and grab something good when it was offered.

I could have been stark naked, being pounded deliciously against the wall by the hottest man I’d ever fantasized about, right now.

But no. I was all alone, shivering in the dark, feeling sorry for myself.

Like a pussy-footing coward.