Rachel Lee - Serious Risks

“It’s an old magician’s technique. Misdirect the attention of the audience. Works every time.” His smile broadened. “What about the inspection?”

“It never got anywhere near our section today. The grapevine didn’t even get the word to us until almost quitting time. The only thing different that I noticed was that the security stations were performing random briefcase checks for the first time in an age.”

Arlen nodded. “I expected that. Just like I expect that tomorrow you’ll have to show your ID to get past the front desk, even if it’s a security crew that knows you.”

He sipped coffee and let his head rest against the chair back. “This chair is too comfortable, Jess. You may never get rid of me.” Heavy lidded, his eyes watched her lazily. “I’ve got the fingerprint kit out in my car. I suppose I should get it.”

“There’s no rush,” she said. “I’m not going anywhere.”

They sat for a while in companionable silence, and he began to feel more relaxed than he could remember feeling in quite a while.

“Arlen?”

“Hmm?”

“How can I carry fingerprints out of the building tomorrow if they’re doing briefcase checks?”

He rolled his head a fraction so that he could look at her. “There’s no law that says you can’t carry fingerprints around with you.”

“But what if they ask?” Her small face was worried.

“Tell them your boyfriend’s a cop, and they’re his. Or tell them you’re taking a night school course in criminology. Relax, Jess. They probably won’t even look in your briefcase tomorrow, but if they do, they’ll know better than to bother you about things that are none of their business. They don’t want any trouble with their bosses.”

He spoke lazily, his eyelids still drooping, and Jessica’s wild imagination suddenly presented her with the image of a panther lazing in the sun, deceptively sleepy but very much alert.

“Where are you from originally?” she asked him abruptly.

Arlen heard the shortness of her tone and wondered if he’d said something to disturb her. No, he was sure he hadn’t. And then coiling through him like liquid heat was the memory of the way her lips had parted at his touch earlier in the day. Could she be bothered by the same impulses that were troubling him? Turning his head a little more, he looked at her fully.

“I hate to admit this,” he said, “but I’m a damn Yankee from New York.”

Jessica’s lips curved. “New York? Do you miss it?”

“Hardly. One of the Bureau’s rules is that you can’t be stationed anywhere too close to home. I knew when I signed on that I’d never go back.”

“How long have you been here?”

“Long enough to know you Texans have the same opinion about Yankees in general and New Yorkers in particular that the rest of the country has about Texans.”

Jessica laughed. “So you’re a big-city boy?”

“Oh, I’m not from the city,” he said. “I’m from a sleepy little dairy-farming community upstate. What about you? Did you grow up right here?”

She shook her head. “No, I’m a hayseed, too. From a little town in West Texas where we had a lot more dust storms than we had rainstorms. Let me get some more coffee.”

At the door she paused and looked back. “Are you hungry? I think I have some coffee cake in the freezer. It’d take only a minute to zap it in the microwave.” Actually, she more than thought the coffee cake was there. She had bought it on the way home this afternoon just so she could offer it to him.

“Sounds good,” he admitted. He’d stayed late at work tonight, and by the time he got away he’d decided on fast food so he wouldn’t arrive at Jessica’s too late. The food had been tasteless, though, so he’d ditched his dinner, stopped by his apartment just long enough to change, then dashed over here. Coffee cake sounded very good. In fact, relaxing sounded very good. It was Thursday evening, and so far he’d worked every night this week, not to mention last Sunday, when he’d had to help one of the agents iron out some wrinkles in a bribery investigation.

“Do you work all the time?”

The soft question caused him to look up at Jessica. She was standing beside him, holding out a plate with one hand and his freshly filled cup with the other.

“Thank you.” Smiling, he took both from her and set them on the coffee table.

“Do you?” she asked as she resumed her seat on the couch.

“Do I what?”

“Work all the time.”

He shrugged. “Sometimes it seems that way. Aren’t you having any cake?” His plate held a large piece. She had no plate at all.

“I can’t afford the calories. Don’t worry about me.”

She said it as if she’d been saying it for a very long time and had come to accept it, and somehow Arlen found that utterly intolerable. “Are you trying to lose weight?”

“Of course.” She smiled faintly. “All the time.”

“Why?”

She gaped at him. “Why?” she repeated stupidly. “Why?” Anybody could see that just by looking at her.

“Yes. Why?” And somewhere between images of pink satin skin on a white satin bed and the understanding that he was being driven out of his mind by the sexual appeal of a woman who believed she didn’t have any, Arlen lost the first iron layer of his self-control. Having been, for more than four years, unable to hold and love a woman probably added considerably to the stress of the moment. Since Lucy had become too ill to love, he hadn’t wanted to love. Not until this plump little partridge entered his life. And here she was trying to waste away the very charms that were driving him wild.

“You have no idea,” he said flatly, “just how beautiful your healthiness is. How attractive you are—just the way you are.”

Jessica’s hand fluttered to her throat, and she stared at him disbelievingly. “I, um, th-that’s very kind of you to say,” she squeaked. Her heart was hammering so hard there was no room in her chest for air. He was just being nice, she told herself. But, oh, how she wished…

The wish was plain on her face, and Arlen was just tired enough, just pushed enough, just frustrated enough, to forget he was an agent on a case. Rising, he walked with a deliberate tread around the coffee table and just as deliberately sat beside Jessica on the sofa. Her head had turned as her eyes followed him, and now she looked at him with wide, wondering brown eyes. Bright eyes, he noticed, that were far more hopeful than fearful.

“I’m going to kiss you, Jessie,” he said huskily as he reached up and removed her glasses, setting them aside on the table. She blinked uncertainly at him while he noticed that her eyes were even larger without the lenses in front of them. And her lashes were long and silky.

Gently, he cupped her face between his hands. “I’m going to kiss you because I’ve been wanting to for the last half hour,” he told her, stroking her cheeks lightly with his thumbs. “I’m going to kiss you because you’re so damn sexy, and because those soft pink lips of yours are just begging for it.”

She seemed to have stopped breathing, but now she drew a shaky breath and her eyelids fluttered down. Arlen smiled as he saw her consent. The hunger in him was strong, but gentleness tempered it. This woman needed gentleness as surely as she needed to be desired.

Bowing his head, he brushed his lips lightly against hers, gently questing like a bee seeking nectar, again and again, the lightest brush of lips against lips, his breath as much a caress as his touch. It had been so long since he’d kissed a woman for the first time that he wasn’t really sure he remembered how. He was coaxing because she seemed to be as uncertain as he was. His tongue touched her upper lip, stroking its length enticingly. Next her lower lip, a sweep to incite.