“I’ll take the risk.”
“When we return,” Marcus said slowly and distinctly, “if the two of you wish to examine your mother’s car more closely, as it seems to be in a private garage, I would be happy to divert any searches for either of you.”
Luke turned and regarded the man. “That’s very kind of you.”
“Tell me, Miss,” Marcus asked Dani. “How much did David charge for a similar service?”
“A dollar.” Dani smiled. Luke’s face reddened; he’d apparently thought he was being quiet. She poked him, hard, in the ribs. Right where she’d gotten him before. “Well, pay the man! One dollar!”
Luke dodged out of the way, and looked between the two of them as though trying to judge how serious they both were. Marcus held out his hand. Luke shook his head and pulled out his wallet and looked. “I don’t have anything smaller than a five.”
Marcus slowly extracted the five-dollar bill from the compartment, leaving the rest.
“That’s quite all right,” he assured Luke as he folded the bill. “I don’t mind.” He walked past a bemused Luke and nodded once to Dani. “Pardon me.”
Dani started giggling. She couldn’t help it. The look on Luke’s face was absolutely priceless. “I like him,” she said between breaths as Marcus slowly walked away.
Chapter Five
Dani waited until she figured Marcus was out of earshot. It was tricky, he’d been a good several paces behind, but she swore he could still hear everything. She turned to Luke who was still trying to get his wallet back into his pocket. She moved in front of him, choosing to walk backwards, hands behind her back, trying her damnedest to look innocent, though she couldn’t quite hold back her smile.
“I think I was just conned,” he said, coming to a halt in front of...whoever’s house that was. Elaina had told them, she was sure, but who really cared? Let the window curtain twitch, let whatever old biddy there spread the word all over the neighborhood. Dani was alone with her man.
Luke crossed his arms, but a corner of his mouth was quirked. Dani was relieved to see that; even a half-smile was good. She placed her hand on his and got in close. He’d been tense since they’d arrived.
Maybe that was what had thrown her. He’d been Mr. Calm when Marcus landed a helicopter blind, at night, in an area the size of a shoebox. One misstep and they would all have gone up in a fireball, but leave it to Luke to be unfazed. Even escaping from a shoot-out, in a near riot with burning buildings and bodies strewn everywhere hadn’t left him so much as shaken.
But get the man around his mother and the little veins in his head start taking mambo lessons. Not that he really seemed to see his mother at all. She was surrounded by wealth, she was still a young, beautiful woman, in her mid-fifties, not old by anyone’s standards who had gone through puberty, but he had her wasting away in a “nursing” home somewhere as the years piled onto her sweet, gray head.
How did he not know about the money? Was it that new, or that old? The longer they lingered here, the more questions she had. And she wondered just how much she’d ever learned about him at all. Which hardly seemed fair when he knew enough about her family to write a Master’s thesis on them. She wanted to change that. Their relationship couldn’t be just about sex.
Not that sex didn’t have its place.
She tugged at his hands, disentangling his arms until they hung at his sides, no longer creating a barrier between him and her. One palm flat on his chest, she stepped in as close as she could, lifting her chin that she might nuzzle his neck. Dang, he was tall. His arms came around her, cradling her against him as he bent his head to meet her lips lightly, in the most fleeting of kisses. It seemed like forever since they’d touched like this, tender and romantic.
She rubbed her leg against his crotch and smiled. “Well, we’re going to have to make sure you get your five-dollars’ worth, then, won’t we?”
“Drafty old musty garage...” Luke’s hands drifted down her waist, and grabbed her butt and squeezed, lifting her to her toes so he could cover her lips with his. Her hand dug into his side and held on, her other hand braced against his back, her leg rising around him.
She could feel his arousal, the bulge in his jeans growing larger and harder as she rubbed against him. It was almost enough to rub against, but the thickness of her shorts and his pants conspired to thwart them. Still, she kept the pressure of contact until he groaned in frustration and his hand went from her butt cheek, sliding up her back before coming around to grasp the side of her breast, fingers splayed against the tender flesh. Dani gasped against his mouth, forgetting little old ladies hiding behind lace curtains, the sound of traffic, or a million other distractions. The world faded, and it was only the two of them.
His mouth dropped to her neck and he inhaled deeply, as though the scent of her skin and the smell of her hair were the most intoxicating perfumes in the world. She arched her neck like a cat, reveling in the touch on her neck, and her hand grasped his shirt, fingernails digging into the cloth. Her leg wound around one of his, knee wrapped around his buttock, and she nibbled fiercely on his earlobe.
“Fuck, I need you,” he murmured, hands now under her shirt in the back, reaching up past the strap of her bra, then under it. “I need you now.”
“We can’t have sex on the street.” She laughed breathlessly, and for one wild, crazy instant she wondered if they could.
Apparently, he thought the same thing. “Watch me.”
She grabbed his head between her hands and smothered his protests with her lips. Not that he was protesting. Her hand pulled up his shirt and found the rough, curly hairs on his chest. She grabbed a handful, alternating between stroking the fur and pulling on handfuls as her passion waxed and waned.
The press against his jeans must have been becoming unbearable, it was as bad as she’d ever seen in him, but he just kept on as though she was the only food, the only salvation, for a lost and starving man.
She felt the same. It was one thing to lose yourself in a lover, but when he was lost in you it became an entire world, a separate and distinct reality where no one else existed. Sadly, they were standing on someone’s front yard, and the reality of other existences pressed through her passion and hunger for him. Of course, it didn’t help that the old lady behind the curtain had started to knock on the window and make shooing motions with arthritic and twisted hands, the way one would try to scatter stray cats or approaching door-to-door salesmen.
“I like garages,” she managed to say as he worked his lips down her neck to the hollow of her throat.