If you smoke after sex, you’re doing it too fast.
“You forgot to lock the damned door!” Axell muttered as he staggered backward into the musty darkness and righted both of them before they could collapse into the chaos of old boxes left from the move.
“It’s a condemned building, let someone else lock it,” Maya sniped, more disgruntled by having the fieriest kiss of her entire life interrupted than worrying about whether or not she’d locked a door. Still, she shouldn’t have let him manipulate her like that. She was angry at him. Furious. She just couldn’t completely remember why.
“Proper civic attitude.” Slamming the door closed and casting them into total night, Axell backed her against the wall. “Now, where were we?”
“If you think you can...” she started to protest, but Axell’s mouth cut her off. His tongue took advantage of her parted lips and initiated an intoxicating foray that had her gripping his shoulders for support. Virgo’s avoided spontaneity. Surely he didn’t...
“Axell, we can’t—”
“We can.” He propped his hands on either side of her head and deepened the kiss.
The heated, masculine aroma of Axell’s skin and shaving lotion surged through Maya’s senses as his weight pressed her against the wall. She was piercingly aware of all the places they touched, of the way her breasts in their thin silk crushed against his suit coat, of the way his zipper ground into her belly beneath the pressure of his arousal. With what remained of her mind, she knew this was insane, but the insistent hollow in her lower parts had no mind, only needs, and her hips pushed up to find his.
“I’d meant to take you to a hotel and buy champagne,” he muttered in frustration as his hands located the curves of her breasts and crushed them in a desperate caress.
“The nearest hotel is in Charlotte and I hate champagne,” she protested without thinking, sinking her fingers into Axell’s glorious golden hair and pulling his mouth back to hers.
“Oh, God, yes,” he muttered hungrily against her mouth. “No kids, no cats, no interruptions...”
She couldn’t argue with any of that, especially with his hands unfastening the thin collar holding the top of her dress in place. She could see nothing in the darkness, but the lack of vision heightened her other senses. Axell’s fingers slid caressingly beneath the fabric of her dress, slipping the neckline down until he cupped her breasts with those big firm hands she’d admired from the start. She sucked in a breath as the callused roughness stroked her skin.
The urgent mouth plundering her lips suddenly lowered to suckle at her breast.
Given the freedom to scream, she did. The moisture of Axell’s mouth connected with the electric current already surging through her, jolting her into a different dimension. Maya arched higher, grasping his broad shoulders for support, pushing into him and demanding more. Axell obliged.
With a haste she’d never seen in him, he drank her deeper, harder, until she thought he’d sucked her inside of him and swirled her somewhere in the dark vortex of his soul. His other hand plucked the nipple of the breast his mouth had yet to claim. The twin sensations spun her into a spiral from which there was no return. Only the crush of his hips against her belly prevented her from elevating entirely from the floor.
Somewhere in the back of her mind, Maya knew what they were doing was ridiculous for two grown, married people, but she didn’t care. Releasing Axell’s shoulders, she wriggled her hands between them and sought his belt.
He groaned deep in his throat as her knuckles brushed his fly. “I’ve been wondering what you wore under this piece of nothing,” he muttered, lowering one hand to pull at her skirt while his mouth traveled from one breast to the other, via the hollow of her throat and by means of kisses so hot they left scorch marks.
Maya got his belt unfastened and started on his zipper. “Keep your romantic fantasies a little longer. Just help me with this damned...”
He obliged readily. Before she could exclaim over the size of the erection she brushed against, Axell had her skirt hiked to her waist, and his hot palm seared her flesh.
“Garters. Damn, you wore garters. I want to see...” He uttered a guttural groan as she stroked him. “Maya-a-a...ah-h”
She thought he tore her panties in two — her stoic businessman reverted to uncivilized Norse god.
She wasn’t in any shape for thinking. She only knew the moment when Axell’s fingers probed higher, stroking her to the brink with a rough caress. His finger wasn’t enough. Clutching his shoulders again, she shoved against him, demanding more, demanding what now rubbed against her belly, heavy and aroused.
A keening cry of ecstasy escaped her lips as Axell stroked her deeper, in just the right spot, instantly carrying her to the precipice and...over...
Maya shuddered and wept and fell against him as she lost control. It had never been this way before. Never. Men used her. She used men. Nothing like this had ever happened. She couldn’t stop. She needed more, needed it more urgently than ever. The tension spiraled up inside her so quickly, she gasped. It wasn’t enough.
Axell understood. Lifting her hips in his hands, he raised her to his height. Instinctively—because she was incapable of thought—Maya wrapped her legs around him and arched outward, demanding what she knew he could give.
He drove into her with a stroke so deep, he should have struck her backbone. Crying now, she rocked against him, taking him deeper, until he rubbed the mouth of her womb and the shudders rocked all the way through her.
He withdrew and plunged again, took her all the way up, then teased her by drawing back some more. Maya screamed, then cursed, then buried his throat in kisses. He didn’t even have his shirt off. She pawed at the cotton, but she couldn’t reach his chest. He pounded her back against the wall again, protecting her hips with his hands, driving her back into that spiraling vortex that swept them both into its center like leaves in the wind.
“Now, Maya, now...”
And at his command, she broke, splintered into so many pieces she’d never recover them all. She was aware of Axell’s shout of release, of his powerful surge deep within her, of the rush of hot liquid filling her as he shattered along with her. All their atoms and particles twinkled and twirled in a cosmic dance in the darkness, combining them as no piece of paper or human words could ever do.
Speechless, they panted in each other’s arms, ignoring their surroundings, wrapped up in the physical bond they’d just forged. Anything else would be an intrusion, and they’d had far too many intrusions in the past.
“My God, Maya, I never thought...” Axell lowered her carefully to the floor, not releasing the smooth skin of her buttocks. She had such delectably soft skin, skin that wafted a scent of roses as he stroked, skin he couldn’t stop touching if his life depended on it. Maybe if she would let him, just one more time…
He must be mad. They were in a condemned building, no doubt surrounded by rats. He’d meant to give her champagne and a honeymoon suite.
“Could we do that again?” she whispered breathlessly somewhere just below his ear. “So I could know it wasn’t just a fluke?”
Axell laughed helplessly against her fallen stack of curls. Even her hair smelled of roses. No complicated chemical scents for his Maya. The ache inside him right now was all her.
He lifted his head and finally releasing her tempting skin, smoothed her hair. “Let’s test it out in bed, all right? I’m afraid that next time, the walls will tumble down with the vibrations.”
“I’m still furious at you,” she reminded him.
“I want to see what you look like with all the lights on,” he countered, pulling up the neck of her dress and reluctantly trying to fasten it.
She wriggled beneath him, inflaming his senses instantly. He didn’t do things like this. He never lost control of a situation. He’d never tried to control Maya. His palm filled with plump breast as he tried to hold her still.
“Gotcha,” she whispered. Then, as suddenly as she’d wriggled, she went stock still. “Did you hear that?”
His mind wasn’t thinking clearly. His hearing wasn’t working at all. “Hear what?” he murmured without paying attention to anything other than the warm squeezable places his fingers explored.
“Mice?” she offered tentatively. “Really big rats?”
She wasn’t cooperating here. Forcing his muddled mind back to her words, Axell tried to listen. There was a definite rattle of trash, and a footstep where there shouldn’t be any. Every protective instinct he’d ever possessed leaped into action.
“Stay here,” he ordered, shoving his shirt back into his pants and quickly fastening them. He couldn’t believe he’d just behaved like some freaking adolescent. He hadn’t done this kind of thing even as an adolescent. Sex in a public place. He had more sense than that.
“Let’s just get out,” Maya whispered, shimmying her dress back in position. “We can call the police from the restaurant.”
“Whoever it is will be gone by the time the cops show.”
He didn’t give her time to protest again but moved deeper into the storeroom. Maya should never have left the back door unlocked. Vagrants could take up occupancy and burn the place down. It wouldn’t be the first time an old building had gone up in smoke.
“Chill man, I hear something.”
Axell dived for the sound of the voice, but it was too far ahead of him. A door slammed and feet clattered on what sounded like stone steps. Shoving boxes aside, he tried to locate any sign of a door in the darkness. He vaguely remembered one back here in the storage space Maya hadn’t used.
“Axell! Axell, where are you?” Maya’s anxious voice called from nearby.
“I thought I told you to stay put.” He needed a flashlight. All he was getting out of this was bruised shins. “Isn’t there another door back here?”
“To the furnace room.”
He almost heard the shrug in her voice. “Furnace room? Below here?” In a building this old, that could mean almost anything. “What kind of furnace?”
“The kind that heats things,” she said dryly, catching his arm. “The enormously expensive kind, if the bills we received last winter were any indication. I don’t know why steam heat ever went out of favor. There are radiators all over that would have done a better job than whatever the modern version is. Why are you suddenly concerned by the heating system?”
Axell gave up the search and steered her toward the door they’d entered. With Maya beside him, he could probably generate enough steam to fuel every radiator in here. “Coal is scarce,” he reminded her. “Steam requires coal. Chances are, your furnace room has a coal cellar.”
She thought about that a minute as they worked their way back to the door. “Coal cellars have coal chutes, don’t they?” she asked reflectively.
“You got it. I can’t imagine how they get up and down it without a ladder, but chances are, that’s what they’re doing right now.”
“Who?” she demanded. “What who’s doing? This is a condemned building, for pity’s sake. There’s nothing here to steal.”
“Tell me something I don’t know.” Axell jerked open the alley door and pushed Maya through. Then he firmly turned the lock and pulled the door shut. He wished he had the deadbolt key. “But the cops are looking for the place the dealer stashes his drugs. Empty buildings are ideal crack houses.”
“Let’s get back to the restaurant.” Nervously, Maya tugged his arm.
He wanted to look for the coal chute. He wanted to know who was using Cleo’s old building. And had they been doing so even while Maya lived here? That idea gave him cold chills. Maybe he’d better take Maya home first. They had some unfinished business, and he doubted if he’d catch the intruders at this late date.
Reason warred with lust and lust won. He wanted to see Maya spread-eagled across his bed wearing nothing but garters. He wanted to see if he could control the situation a little better next time, or maybe not. There was something exhilarating about utter mindlessness.
“We’ll call the police from home.” With sudden urgency, Axell hurried Maya up the street. To hell with intruders. It wasn’t his building anyway.
“Your place or mine?” she murmured provocatively as he helped her in.
Her room, with the possibility of kids and cats running in and out, or his, a million light years distant from Alexa or childhood nightmares. Cursing as he started the engine, Axell decided not to think about that either. They still had to get through the twin tempests of Cleo and Stephen. Why had he ever thought life with Maya could be handled in a rational manner?
“Told you so,” she mocked through the darkness, apparently reading his mind. “Ready to throw me out yet?”
“You’re just waiting for that, aren’t you?” He understood her that much, anyway. “One wrong word, and you’ll be gone. You’re not a kid anymore, Maya. You can stand up to the grown-ups on equal terms now.”
“Equal.” She snorted inelegantly. “Like you don’t have it all. There’s nothing equal about this relationship. Once the sex grows boring, what will you do? Run for governor and live in Raleigh?”
“Don’t start, Maya,” Axell warned. “I’m not in any humor to handle your baggage right now. I’ve got enough of my own to deal with. Just concentrate on how quickly we can get Cleo and Stephen out of the house.”
“One thing at a time,” she said, her humor restored if the amusement in her voice was any indication. “Sometimes life doesn’t let you do things the way you like them done.”
“Well, until that happens, I’ll do things my way, thank you.” He already had the plan formulated. Get rid of nuisances, check on kids, seduce Maya. Worked for him.
Every light in the house blazed as they turned up the driveway. Axell cursed under his breath. Maya remained blessedly silent. The kids should be asleep by now. Lights were not indicative of sleep.
“It’s still sort of early,” Maya said carefully as they pulled into the garage. “The kids were probably just overexcited.”
“If hyperactive kids are all I have to handle, I wouldn’t be worried.”
The instant they walked through the door into the kitchen, a babble of excited voices greeted them.
“Muldoon scared Kitty!” Matty shouted.
Looking more like a harassed mother and less like a dispassionate murderess, Cleo grabbed his pajama shirt. “Matty, get back to bed. I told you we’d take—”
“Right, like pulling down the drapes helped. The damned cat will come down when it’s ready.” Obviously steaming, Stephen strolled into the kitchen pressing a wet cloth to cat scratches on his bare arm.
“Daddy, he’s been saying dirty words. And Alexa spit up all over Mommy’s rug.”
Taking a deep breath and counting to ten, Axell thanked God there were no police or fire engines involved, fixed a glassy gaze on Maya’s beaming, expectant face, and exhaled. He could deal with this. Months of sexual frustration had finally found a divine source of release, and he hadn’t had his fill yet. He could move the Great Wall of China right now if it meant landing in Maya’s bed. He’d been rude, crude, and uncouth the first time, and he desperately needed to make it up to her. He didn’t want her getting any more strange ideas than she already had. He didn’t do things like that.
“Constance, back to bed! Matty, take your cat and get back to your room.” Axell swept the rest of the room with a look that he used to clear brawlers from the bar. “Out! The lot of you. Visiting hours at the asylum are over.”
Belatedly, as everyone scrambled, Axell wondered what they’d done with his reliable baby-sitter.
***
July, 1946
As you may have heard, I have been visiting in the country with cousins. I wish you well with your new bride, although I do hope you’ve developed a taste for sheep since sticking it up her ass is about the best you can hope from her. Her type certainly would never welcome you with open arms.
Be that as it may, your daughter was born July 1st. She will stay with my cousins where she cannot cause you undue embarrassment, or I cause her the same. Should you wish to contribute to her upbringing, you may send what you will to my cousins at the enclosed address. As she reaches the age of understanding, I will refrain from telling her of her origins for fear she will recognize how very small a man her father is.