New York City, October 12
MacKenzie Turner awakened wanting to take a bite out of the Big Apple.
It was one of those clear, brisk mornings in Manhattan. Even the sky was polished, and not a wisp of cloud or so much as a tinge of smog marred its perfection. But the weather had nothing to do with the way she felt.
That was entirely due to the method by which she was being awakened, surfacing from sweet dreams to an even sweeter reality by the delicious nibbles of her delicious lover, who had his mouth on one of her breasts and a hand down between her soft thighs.
"Mmmmm ..." Moaning dreamily and half smiling, she changed position without opening her eyes, her body, like a sunflower turning toward the sun, instinctively seeking the radiating warmth of his.
Between her legs, he gently worked two fingers up inside her.
"Mmmmm!" Her luminous amber eyes snapped open.
"Thought that might wake you up." He grinned raffishly.
"Never start a job you can't finish!" she said, narrowing her bright eyes challengingly. "So what are you going to do about it, buster?"
"How about this?" Even as his lips closed around her nipple once again, bringing it to its fullest and hardest, his eyes were upon her. Eating her up.
Although their on-again, off-again, no-strings-attached relationship had been sailing along for over a year now, he still couldn't help but feel slightly dazed whenever he was confronted by her mesmerizing, energy-packed reality. Everything about Kenzie Turner seemed to charge the very air around her.
Physical beauty had nothing to do with it. Kenzie would never grace a pinup calendar or Sports Illustrated's swimsuit edition—not with her sable hair, worn in a Louise Brooks cut, framing a mischievous elfin face with high cheekbones, winged brows, and small pointy chin. It gave her a vulnerable and gamine, somehow waiflike, rather than sexually smoldering, look.
But there was something definitely disturbing and at odds about that small, fine-boned face resting atop the ripe female phenomenon that was her body. For from the neck down, everything added up to just the right figures.
It was the sum of these disparate, individual parts which made men want to ravish her and yet at the same time protect her.
Her blissful smile widened as she lazily watched his tongue flick a moist, ticklish path over her sumptuous, blue-veined breasts, and down her latticed rib cage and softly muscled hollow of belly to the generous thatch of her sable-furred mound. A shudder rippled through her as his face disappeared between her legs to plunder her sweetness.
Her wetness spoke for itself, and it was all she could do to keep from going crazy. She absolutely loved his tongue—no one, but no one, could feast on female flesh quite like Charley Ferraro!
"Not now, Charley," she begged weakly, trying halfheartedly to push him from between her splayed thighs. "You know I've got to go to work ..."
His head popped up, black eyes shining. "Sure you do." Then, balancing himself on his forearms, he raised his hips high off the mattress and slowly lowered them, entering her just the way she liked—face-to-face and hip-to-hip.
She let out a whinny of triumph and wonder. Then, as he began to thrust with a very slow, very deliberate rhythm, she let herself go, giving in to glorious depravity as his tempo and breathing intensified.
"Faster!" she whispered eagerly, raising and lowering her pelvis to match his rhythm. Her eyes glowed like an animal's caught in the wash of sudden headlights, and she dug fierce fingers into his buttocks.
"Faster!" she demanded.
"Hey, take it slow, babe," he said softly. "We're not in a race, you know. Take it slow ..." he repeated. "Just lie back and enjoy the ride ..."
"Yes!" She inhaled deeply the heightened muskiness of his fragrant male flesh; shivered deliciously at each exhalation of his warm breath against the sensitive heated skin of her breasts. Slowly, the rhythm of his thrusts increased, and she matched them by thrusting her body savagely up to meet him. Greedily she contracted her muscles around him, grinding a circular motion before lowering herself again. Concentrating fully, she kept repeating the maneuver, gasping each time she held him captive. Filling her completely.
Possessing her.
Faster and faster they moved in perfect harmony, as if each of them were an intrinsic, indispensable part of the other.
"Oh, God," she moaned. "Oh, it's so good! So good, Charley, so—"
Abruptly his hands gripped her buttocks brutally, and he half lifted her off the bed. She gasped in surprise. He was jackhammering now, relentlessly speeding up his pounding.
Faster, faster! His tempo was increasing, his testicles slapping against her.
Harder, harder! Her every nerve ending sang hosannas until, suddenly, the world tilted and went topsy-turvy and she was flying off over the edge—cartwheeling out into a whole new dimension, where up was down and down was up and inside was out and outside in and—
Her face contorted in agony and her scream was primordial as the first spinning wave of orgasm came rushing.
"Oh, God! I'm coming!"
Suddenly she tensed and arched herself half off the bed.
And then he, too, was unable to hold back any longer. Tightening his arms around her, he reared up and drove himself into her as deeply as he could.
Sensing his climax, she clamped herself even tighter around him. Inside her, she could feel him twitch as his own circuits blew, and the orgasm burst out of him in an explosion as they came together in a mind-blowing, body-wrenching, thundering climax of magnificent release.
Her fading scream became a long, drawn-out sigh of marveling wonder. "Oh, Charley!" she whispered breathlessly. "Charley ..."
He shuddered once more as the last of his juices drained into her, and then, together, they collapsed on the bed. Between drawing deep, ragged lungfuls of air, he managed a lopsided grin. "Good morning," he croaked.
Her eyes were wide. "I'll say it is!" She kissed him and ran her hands through his rumpled thick tangly black hair which, despite his droopy Sam Elliott of a mustache, gave him a sheepish, almost boyish look.
For a while they lay quietly, still joined. Then suddenly her eyes widened in horror. She had spied the alarm clock.
"Shit!" she exclaimed, and shoved him away. He rolled off her, his limp penis slipping out.
"Now what the hell's the matter?" he demanded.
"The damn alarm didn't go off!" she shouted, yanking fistfuls of her hair in frustration.
"I know." Stretching out, he laced his hands behind his head and smiled smugly. "I shut it off."
"You—you ... what?" She stared at him.
"I told you. I shut it off so it wouldn't disturb us."
"You shithead! You pig! You ... you ..." She grabbed a pillow and began beating him over the head with it.
He raised his arms to protect himself. "Hey!" he shouted. "Hey, relax! I've got the day off."
"Well, I haven't! God, now I'm going to be late."
The worst of her fury vented, she tossed the pillow aside, launched herself out of bed, and made a mad dash for the bathroom.
"What are you so worried about, anyway?" he called after her. "Can't you phone in sick?"
Her head popped around from behind the bathroom door. "Have you forgotten, or is your brain between your legs? This morning marks the first official day under new management!"
He looked at her dumbly.
"Gawd!" She rolled her eyes in exasperation. "The corporate takeover I told you about? With the new major shareholder? Well, today's the day the SEC granted approval for it to take effect, you Dummkopf!"
She glared at him.
"Well? Don't just lie there like God's gift to women! Get moving, man! Put on some caffeine! And hurry!" She clapped her hands briskly.
Crossing his arms behind his head, he stretched out lazily and wiggled his toes. "Aw, come on, Kenz. You know I'm no good in the kitchen."
"Well, ex-cuuuuuse me!" She rolled her eyes again, growling, "Cops!" in disgust. "Guess I'm doomed to grab a cup on the run. Why, oh why," she demanded beseechingly of the world in general, "did I have to fall for a too-macho-to-even-make-a-cup-of-coffee Italian cop? Would someone please give me the answer to that?"
"Maybe because I'm so good in bed?" he suggested with a leer.
"Too bad you aren't as useful around the house." She eyed him suspiciously. "Say, don't you have somewhere you've got to be? Work you've got to catch up on or something?"
"Naw. No work until tomorrow, sweetums, when I hitch up with my counterpart from Interpol. I told you how I'll be working with him in the art theft squad—"
But she didn't hear. She'd already slammed the door and started the shower, and water was crashing down full blast.