Worth Any Price Page 6
But before he could put his plan into action, she wrapped her hand around his penis and led him to her. The boss part of his body, which right now certainly wasn’t his brain, obviously liked this plan better and before he could do otherwise, he was positioned at her opening, and practically sucked inside. He gritted his teeth and hissed at the intense pleasure of being inside her. As he dealt with his guilty conscious, his body savored the sensations. God, this was incredible! She was tight and hot and pulsing around him. His body took control while his mind staged a futile battle. He finally forced himself to slowly retreat and plunge, reseating himself tightly against her several times before he noticed her movements were matching his. She should hate this, but her hips arching off the bed told him a totally different story. His irrational mind tried to convince him that she was just eager to get this over with, but her body was responding in ways that were exciting him beyond his power to control.
His hands fisted in her hair as his large body pummeled her petite one, and as her hands came up to clench his shoulders, her nails dug into his straining muscles. There was no way, even if she had been in the frame of mind to receive it, that he could last long enough for her to reach climax this way. He moved his mouth from her neck, where he had been alternately kissing and licking her, to her ear. “Nggnh. Uhhh. Tell me to pull out! Damn it! Tell me now!” he hissed low and with great urgency.
“You have to pull out! You can’t come inside me. I’m not on the pill!” she called out and the panic in her voice was very real.
“Nngh!” He moaned, followed by a loud, “Shit!”
He immediately pulled out and flipped her over, purposely causing the pillows blocking them to fall down and opening the view for the camera. He pulled her bottom up, causing a long sleek sway to her back, then he reinserted himself. He gave a few good, hard thrusts for the camera then pulled out and held his penis in his hand as he pumped his seed in the curve of her backside where her cleft started. His roar was guttural and anguished; every cell in his body had wanted to stay inside of her for this, yet he knew he could not. His ejaculate pooled in the little hollow at the small of her back and he knew without a doubt that the camera trained on them could see it.
Deliberately flattening his hand, he coated his palm with his ejaculate and rubbed small circles at the base of her spine. Then he wrapped an arm around her waist and lifted her higher off the bed. With his other hand he reached under her and caressed her smooth, flat stomach with his slick, coated palm.
It was the most erotic thing he had ever done. He had taken his seed and symbolically placed it over her womb. It spoke of how cherished she was to him at this moment. And how taken he had been by her. He smeared the proof of his climax on her belly to comply, to make sure they met the requirement, but the gesture was more his way of communicating to her his extreme pleasure. As a man, she had satisfied him wholly, to his very core. She had to know that, he was telling her so by this most intimate gesture. He sure as hell would never be able to tell her any other way.
After a few moments of leaning over her, he nipped her on the shoulder, grabbed the bed cover and flipped it over onto her, ostensibly so he could reach for the sheet under it to wipe at himself.
The note had said belly, or the crack of her ass, surely that would do. After all, the man wasn’t supposed to have read the note, as he had. He stood up and leisurely strolled across the room. Then he stood right in front of the TV, his backside almost up against it. He smiled at her as she lay on her belly looking at him with a questioning frown. He cocked his head and told her with his eyes to get up and get out of camera range while he was shielding her.
Immediately she scrambled out of the bed, and taking the sheet with her, she made her way to the bathroom. He moved around the room picking up their clothes then he cracked the bathroom door and tossed hers in. He sat on the edge of the bed dressing, shaking slightly as he fastened his belt. His nerves were frayed and he was upset about his performance. She had shattered the rigid control he always managed to maintain. He had never felt so drained in his life. But this wasn’t exhaustion; it was dealing with the aftermath of the stormy electrical charges that had consumed him as he’d pulled out of her, and then sprang erratically from him, as he had emptied himself on her pale, smooth skin.
His eyes drifted over the rumpled bedclothes as he recalled everything they had done on the faded, threadbare sheets. A small, light blue scrap of ribbon caught his attention and he reached over to pick it up. He recognized it as one of the tiny bows from her panties. He sat fingering the soft symmetrical loops, letting his thumb graze over the smooth satiny knot in the center, then he carefully tucked it into his jacket pocket with the palm tree stirrer.
When she came out of the bathroom, everything was back in place and except for her reddened eyes, she looked fresh and untouched. In his put-on drawl he said, “Hope you don’t mind me running out on you like this. But I told my wife I was going to the bar for a quick one. This wasn’t exactly the type of quick one I’d had in mind though, or I’d have angled for more time.”
“Wife!” She didn’t have to feign being indignant. She was truly mortified.
“Yeah, I never said I wasn’t married.”
“How could you!”
“How could I what? This?” he asked nonchalantly, waving his hand toward the bed. “She’ll never find out and you were just too beautiful to resist, babe. When can I see you again?”
“Never! You’re married! Ugh!” she said as she stomped across the room, making her way to the door.
He came over to stand beside her. Suggestively, he pulled her pelvis into his hips several times. She could feel that he was either still hard or hard again.
“It doesn’t make any difference to me, so it shouldn’t to you.”
“Well it does! Get the hell out of here!”
“Whatever you say, little lady. But my, you are one fine piece of ass, sure you won’t reconsider and give me your number, I know you enjoyed my tongue.” He stuck the pointed end of his tongue out and let the tip slide suggestively around his lips.
“Not on your life. I don’t do married men.”
“Well don’t look now, darling, but ya just did. And ya did me mighty fine. ‘Course you had some fun there, too. Good God you taste good! Had me worried at first though, I thought you was crying for a while there.”
“Get out! No, on second thought, I’ll get out!”
She picked up her sweater and purse where she’d left them on the chair, shoved her sunglasses in place, and after unlocking the door, she jerked it open. He could hear her take a deep breath as she crossed the threshold. He followed behind her, firmly closing the door in their wake. She stalked over to her car and after watching her ass wiggle for a few moments, he sauntered like the prick he was pretending to be, to his.
Neither said a word. She walked briskly across both parking lots to her car and never looked back as he walked behind her then veered off to hop into a nondescript sedan. He followed her for several blocks then turned into a parking lot in front of a grocery store when she turned in. He pulled his car alongside hers and his breath caught when he saw the tears streaming down her face. He got out of his car and walked over to hers as she rolled down her window. And of all the things she could have said, she shocked him with, “You’re not really married are you?”
He smiled down at her, put his hand over hers where it rested on the door frame, and squeezed it. “No. Not married. Not engaged, not attached in any way.”
“You scared me there.”
She had just gone through probably the most traumatizing hour of her life, yet her first thought had been of him and how his marriage would hold together after something like this. Her humility almost brought him to his knees.
“Would you have done this anyway if you were?” she asked.
“Thank you, Detective. Thank you, very, very much.”
“I think you can call me Kel, now. We certainly know each other well enough to use first names.”
She blushed crimson from the base of her neck to her temples. “Yes, well . . . .”
“The clip could be uplinked to the website within minutes so Kayla could be released anytime. You go home, I’ll go to the station and wait to hear from you. I’ll have people patrolling the mall in case he releases her there. He did that once before.”
“Yes. I know.”
“See if she’s hurt, but don’t take off her clothing. Don’t clean her up in anyway. It’s important, Laura. We need to catch this bastard, and we’re going to need every clue we can get from her and her clothing.”
Her worried mother face was back. He bent and kissed her softly on the cheek then walked back to his car. He waited for her to pull away, all the while looking around for anything unusual. Nothing. The parking lot was packed with tourists and locals hurrying to get either their milk and bread or their beer and pretzels. He drove to his office reliving segments of the last hour in his mind while continually fingering the palm tree stirrer and ribbon rose in his pocket. It had been the most unusual hour of his life. And damn! He’d have given a year’s pay to have done it differently. To have been able to come inside her warm, soft body and whisper words of encouragement for her to come with him.
Chapter Five
Laura pulled out of the busy parking lot and made her way across town trying hard not to let the tears falling from her eyes blur her vision. Her body shuddered as she sobbed, and she recognized the utter fatigue flagging her system. The last two days had been hell. Since finding Kayla missing she hadn’t eaten and she definitely hadn’t slept.
Her days had been filled with worry. Worry so pervasive she thought she would drown in it. And pretense. All the time pretending things were all right when they were really the worst they could possibly be. Then the embarrassment and the humiliation. God, dealing with humiliation. And there was plenty more of that still to come. The anxiety over that alone would surely keep her from sleeping for the rest of her life!
She swiped at the wetness pooling at her chin and could smell him on her hand, the sex of him. She had held him and led him into her. Oh good God, how was she going to deal with all this! Well, soon the hard part would be over. The worry. Kayla would be home soon. She had done everything asked of her. Every . . . despicable . . . thing.
At a stoplight she closed her eyes and stared at the bright stars bursting against her tightly closed lids. Things that were despicable, degrading, criminal, and all irreversible. She could never undo the damage from all this. She would have a felony record for the shoplifting unless her lawyer had some favors to call in; she would have to go into seclusion for who knew how long—people just didn’t forget the kind of thing that happened at The Hilton all that quickly. The snide comments would never die, men would always look at her differently and she would wonder, had he been there that night? Had he seen her bared breasts? People who didn’t know about the event would be told, even years from now the gossip would still linger. Christ, she still heard stories of the caught-in-the-act, clubhouse locker room trysting between Babs Sherland and the new Australian tennis pro. And they’d been caught in flagrante delicto eight years ago! This year’s topless fashion show would be fodder forever. She groaned out loud and then jumped as a car behind her honked its horn.
And now her latest stunt. Kel had been wonderful, but there would still be a lot to see if anyone cared to look, and she was sure that the prurient interests in this city were no different from any other. Sex scandals of this magnitude were what spiced up the monotony of life. And she could laugh and titter like the best of them—when it wasn’t her life that was being shattered.
Kel . . . God, he was sweet. What a very, very nice man. And oh, how he had stirred things in her that had been simmering on the back burner for years. He had taken her to full boil when he shouldn’t even have been able to warm her up. She recalled the touch of his lips on her nether ones and unbidden, a shimmer of pleasure went through her at the recollection. Ironically, she had just had the best sex she’d ever had, on one of the worst nights of her life.
She pulled off the main road and onto her long private drive. As soon as her headlights flashed on the house she noticed the light in Kayla’s bedroom window. Not bothering to drive to the garage, she pulled abruptly up beside the steps leading to the front door, shifting into park so hard that the car lurched before settling. She pulled the keys out of the ignition, all the while keeping her eyes on the light in the window as she tried to remember whether she had left it on or not.
No, she was pretty sure that she hadn’t. She quickly threw open the car door and ran up the brick steps. Fumbling with her keys, she tried to unlock the door but her hand on the knob opened it before she had turned the key even part way. It was unlocked. She had left by the garage, but she knew for certain that the front door had been locked. She had locked it when Detective Vain left that morning, and she hadn’t opened it since.
Fear unlike any she’d ever known raced up her spine but then she thought of Kayla, and hope surged. She remembered the other children that had come home and she pushed open the door and ran through the entranceway to the stairs. She took them two-by-two, heedless of where she’d thrown her keys and her purse but aware that things were clattering down the heart-of-pine wooden stairs. Reaching the top, she grabbed the newel and used it to reverse her direction towards Kayla’s room. She ran into the room, and instantly fell to her knees when she saw Kayla in her bed, tears streaming from under an opening in the dirty duct tape that covered her eyes and running onto the tape that covered her mouth.
With one trembling hand covering her own mouth she sobbed her relief, with the other, she reached out as if blindly feeling for her daughter as she crawled on her knees over to the bed. Reaching Kayla, she gathered her into her arms and rocked her as she cried and sobbed out her joy.
“Oh, my baby! My baby!” she sobbed as she stroked Kayla’s grimy, matted hair. Then she held her own tear-filled face away from her daughter’s as she gingerly tried to pull the duct tape from her eyes and lips. Kayla’s nose was running with mucus and was so caked with it underneath that it was a wonder she could breathe, but the full rise of her chest and the pink color of her skin showed that she was breathing. Kayla’s pitiful moans stopped Laura’s plucking fingers. She wasn’t making much headway with the gooey mass and she decided to take Kayla into the bathroom where she had some baby oil that she thought might help. It was then that she saw the note pinned to Kayla’s tattered overalls.
Congratulations Laura. You passed the test. It seems you love your daughter more than yourself. So few do. I will enjoy my memories of you, clothed or naked you are a very beautiful woman. And now, a proven mother.
There was no way, even before reading the note that she was going to leave Kayla, not even for the scant time it would take for her to run to her bathroom and get the oil. But now, after finding the note, she was afraid to leave her alone for even one moment.
She lifted Kayla into her arms and carried her into the adjoining bathroom where she attempted to sit her on the toilet. But Kayla would not let go of her. The tiny arms wrapped around her neck were pinching like a vice and Laura was fearful for a moment that her own daughter was going to choke her to death.
“Not so tight honey, Mommy’s here. I’m not going to leave you. Ever, ever again. C’mon honey, loosen up so I can get the tape off your mouth.” She was frantically searching the cabinets for the baby oil she kept there while holding the ful
l weight of Kayla against her side.
Then the phone rang. She turned her head to listen but made no attempt to run for the extension in her room. Whoever it was, it was certainly not important enough for her to stop attending to her daughter. It finally stopped ringing as her hand found the plastic bottle it was seeking under the cabinet.
Pulling a washcloth from the towel rack she slopped the mineral oil on it and coated the area around Kayla’s mouth and forehead. With diligent care she was able to slowly peel the offending gag and blindfold from her daughter’s face. She watched her daughter’s eyes cloud from the unavoidable pain when she was finally able to pull the last bit from the skin around her mouth. The word she was rewarded with as soon as the gag was completely removed from Kayla’s lips was a heartfelt, albeit croaky, “Mommy!”
Her arms went back around her mother’s neck and she sobbed into the hollow at its base. Her words were indistinguishable through the harsh sobbing. Laura, on her knees in front of the sink, held her daughter tightly then slumped to the floor, taking Kayla with her onto her lap. She rocked her as she held her and crooned soft words while Kayla continued to sob heartbrokenly as only children feel free enough to do.
“It’ll be okay baby. It will be. You’re gonna be just fine. It’s all over now. You’re home. You’re safe again. Shh. Shh, now.”