Page 31 of The Princess and the P.I.

She could feel the heat of his body through the thin fabric of her dress, and her stomach was a fluttering mess of butterflies.

He sighed as if Fiona’s lap were a familiar destination, and by simply daring to be comfortable, he made it the truth.

If she were brave, she would run her nails through the spun-wool softness of his hair. But she kept them to her sides.

“They are handling the investigation all wrong. No wonder they haven’t found Jason.”

He flicked his wrist high, and a red ball materialized in the air nearly at the tip of her nose.

“They haven’t found Jason because Tony has already done him in. They are missing the real motive. Tony never wanted money,” Fiona said.

“I don’t think he’s dead,” Maurice said. The ball shifted to the other hand.

“That is the most optimistic I’ve ever seen you,” Fiona said.

“I agree. Tony’s goal isn’t to get rich. He needs information first.” The ball disappeared again.

As the podcast marathon continued, Maurice never got back to his work.

She must have been engrossed in the storyline for longer than she thought, because when she looked back down, Maurice was asleep, eyes fluttering and mouth agape.

She was struck with twin impulses: (1) wanting to draw a mustache on his face with the marker on the table, and (2) wanting to lean over and kiss his closed lids.

His eyes popped open seconds after she finished the first curl of the mustache.

He snatched the marker with a suspicious glare, and the couch groaned under his movement as he rose up to his knees.

He loomed over her, and for a split second she had no idea what he was about to do.

She was becoming addicted to that feeling.

“You should have finished while you had the chance.” Maurice’s hands, featherlight and dangerous, found her tender neck. His fingers danced expertly at her sides, finding every ticklish spot. He maneuvered between her legs, wrestling lightly to keep her from escaping his wiggling fingers.

Her dress crept up to the tops of her thighs. Fiona attempted to squirm away, but peals of laughter overtook her. “Stop, I wasn’t really gonna finish it!”

She was.

“Okay, okay, I’m sorry!” she gasped between laughs, trying to fend off his hands. Her dress was gathering at her hips now.

“No.” He laughed. “We’re going to be twins.” He held the marker over her face and grabbed her chin.

She cackled as the marker ran across her face.

Fiona arched her back, bringing her center flush with the zipper of his pants.

It was a lightning strike.

Maurice’s eyes on hers sucked the playfulness out of the room like an air lock. Her laughter stopped abruptly, replaced by a tight clench of her stomach.

Tickle torture was definitely over.

She lifted her hips again, and her dress rolled higher, revealing the wet line forming at the crotch of her blue panties.

She opened her mouth but lost her nerve.

“Tell me, Fiona,” he said, his voice thick and husky.

She held his gaze and arched her back. He wanted something intangible from her—was looking for something.

“Why don’t you wake me up when you come in?” Fiona asked. It wasn’t exactly what she wanted to know. How many nights had she lain with her heart beating, hoping his hand would roam farther north or south? How many mornings had she felt him hard and hot against her? Why not me?

It was Maurice’s turn to try to consider his words.

“Tell me,” Fiona insisted.

“I can’t wake you up.” He shook his head.

Eyes burning over her body. “I…um…If I wake you up, I might…” He stroked himself, staring down at her and straining out of the soft cotton pants.

His eyes flicked to her mouth, watching her tongue dart out and moisten her lips.

This teetered on the edge of the most dangerous game of chicken she had ever dared to play.

She wanted to assure him that she knew what she wanted.

Well, she didn’t know exactly what she wanted, but she knew the neighborhood.

“You might what?” Fiona pulled his shirt.

“I might push your gown up.” He reached to run his hands over the tops of her thighs. Fiona’s stomach exploded in butterflies. And she gasped.

Danger. This was what Maurice had in droves. A touch of the completely unhinged. She wanted a taste.

“I might whisper in your ear.” He bent down, his lips grazing her temple then earlobe.

“Shh…I know you’re sleepy but I need you to touch me,” he said.

Maurice took her hand and guided it between them to his hot hardness, throbbing through the cool cotton of his luxuriously soft pants.

She moved her hand up and then down the shaft, and he grunted encouragement.

Lifting himself up slightly, he pressed her lush lips open with his thumb.

She sucked on the tip of it. Fiona felt like her stomach was caught in a vise.

Desire, joy, and, yes, a deep-seated fear of the unknown all mingled together like a hot soup.

But he looked so cool, so utterly in control of himself, pushing his thumb past her lips, then drawing it out slick.

She tried to steady her breathing, but she arched her back, and this time he pushed back against her.

The thick ridge of his arousal dragged against the soft wetness of her underwear.

Whoa. Something hot and fast zipped up to her navel.

Each breath was a struggle, as if she were breathing through a straw instead of her nose.

He was thick and full, and Fiona moaned with the pulsing intensity of him.

“I would ask you to touch me back,” she said, and she didn’t know where this boldness was coming from other than the desperate need to keep his eyes hot on her.

Fiona bit her lip and continued to stroke. It was powerful. His thrusting into her palm, his soft moans. He was giving in to her. Maybe now when he came to her room at night, they could comfort each other .

He clapped his hand behind her neck, and Fiona saw what was coming. Maurice Bennett, dazzling, mercurial, secretive, wanted her.

“I would tell you that you are so fucking beautiful,” he muttered at the corner of her mouth.

He kissed her, hot and tight. Nothing soft about his mouth.

Nothing sweet, and Fiona sent up a silent thank-you that this man knew what she needed right now.

There would come a day when she wanted Roberta Flack and chilled wine.

But she would have died if he backed down from the power of this kiss.

He was always telling her to say what she wanted.

Fiona thanked the Lord above that in this moment they wanted the same thing—a tiny domination.

With his tongue, he pushed into her mouth with enough intensity to release pure liquid heat at her center.

He gripped her dress collar and ripped at the top buttons.

They strained and popped and rolled like loose change on the floor.

He slipped his thumb across one pebbled nipple through her bra.

Fiona squeezed him between her thighs, arching her back under his touch.

“Is that all then?” Fiona said, half-dazed, but still managing to fake a wide yawn. “If that’s all I’m going back to sleep.”

He laughed, a high incredulous thing, and kissed her breathless, squeezing her hips into him. Grinding his hardness into her hot, wet center. She closed her eyes and bit her bottom lip.

“Mmm,” he murmured, lips dragging along her jaw, down the curve of her neck, voice rough. “Take your ass back to sleep then. I’ve been dying to wake you up with my tongue. Do you let those church boys taste your pus—”

That was it. She didn’t let him finish. She pulled him to her and tried her own passionate kiss on him, sucking his lip and grinding her hips into him.

She was messy and sloppy wet and impatient to see what the whole thing was about.

She hoped that was an answer. She watched with delight as his eyes widened.

He looked drunk. “Where’d you learn to kiss like that, Church Girl?” His voice broke on the question, disbelief and hunger. He had thought—no, assumed—he’d be the one with control, the one holding all the power, but it was slipping from him.

“Take these panties off…” he said.

He said it with such a snap of command in his voice that Fiona pulled at his waistband instead of hers.

His arms trembled where they braced against the couch cushions, a fragile cage around her, and the softness that had lingered in his eyes was gone now, burned away by need.

When he kissed her again, it wasn’t playful.

It was ravenous, reckless, like he’d been starved too long.

Should she tell him that she hadn’t really been around the block or gotten out of her own front porch with the whole sex thing?

Or would it ruin the perfect rightnowness of his mouth on hers?

“God,” he whispered into her mouth, his breath hot and shaking. “I’ve been so desperate for this—for you.”

She tried to remember the date—October something or other? When Fiona Addai loses her virginity.

She was fighting, trying to get off her clothes, which suddenly clung to her like heavy ropes, when someone slapped the door.

Fiona pulled Maurice closer. Willing him to ignore it.

“Fiona! Are you in trouble?”

Esi, her sister, had come to Maurice’s storefront.