Tara Janzen - Loose And Easy

“Look,” she said, a bit of an edge coming into her voice. “I really don’t need help delivering the property. I appreciate everything you’ve done, but all I really need is a cab. I can take it from here.”

“Where’s your partner?”

“On his way up from Colorado Springs.”

“You sleeping with him?” That was the question, rude or not. If he was in, he was in, and he wanted to know where all the lines were. A few thin bricks of cash delivered to Bleak? Hell, he could do that in his sleep. Esme didn’t have to be part of it at all. Duce could grab a couple of his crazy spider boys out of the alley, his elite Arañas Locos, and the four of them could go over and visit Mr. Bleak. The whole damn thing wouldn’t take more than five minutes. Johnny knew how the street worked, and whatever beef Bleak had with Burt Alden wasn’t going to be worth pissing off Baby Duce, not once the bookie got his money.

And Duce owed him. Duce would always owe him, until the shot caller pulled his last breath. There was no walking away from the places they’d been together.

“No,” she said. “Not that it’s any of your business.”

She was right. It was none of his business.

“Are you sleeping with anybody?” That wasn’t any of his business either, but the question stayed where it lay.

“I don’t see what that has to do with anything,” she said, giving him a look that said he was way outside the bounds of propriety.

She was wrong. He and propriety had reached a truce a long time ago-and the question still stayed where it lay.

“Yes, you do,” he said.

And she did. She knew exactly what it had to do with everything. It was why he was sitting here in the dark with her, instead of back on a barstool at the Blue Iguana with a shot and a beer in front of him. It was why at five A.M., no matter how she answered the question, he’d be staring across the table at Franklin Bleak with the bookie’s cash lying between them.

“I don’t think… well, think that…”

Yes, she did, and he could prove it.

Without moving from his side of Solange, he lifted his hand and gently cupped the lower part of her face, spreading his fingers across her left cheek and letting his thumb rest on her lips.

Softly, ever so softly, he brushed his thumb across her mouth-and watched her grow still.

He could have stopped there, could have stopped with her eyes darkening under his gaze, with the heat rising between them at his touch. But she was the impossibly not-so-easy Easy Alex, and for this one moment, he literally had her in the palm of his hand.

So he kissed her, simply leaned forward and opened his mouth over hers-and she let him, exactly as he’d known she would. Nothing had ever been finished between them, and God, her mouth. She had the softest lips, the slightest overbite, and a taste that went straight to his groin. She didn’t move away, not so much as a millimeter. She held so perfectly still, her breath seemingly caught somewhere between them, her lips parted just enough to allow him entry, a hesitant welcome that warmed with every slow thrust of his tongue into her mouth.

She was sweet, and hot… and careful, exactly as she’d always been. He almost grinned. Somehow, somewhere, sometime tonight, the carefulness had to go. But for now, he’d take her careful kiss. He’d take the soft, hesitant giving way of her tongue to his, take her gentle exhalation inside himself, and imagine what it would take to make her groan.

Not much, he decided, when she made a soft sound deep in her throat and turned into the kiss- but not all the way, still holding back. Still keeping her hands to herself. Still not committing, not submitting-and that’s what he wanted, what he needed. Submission. He knew how incredibly sweet it could be, and he wanted it from her.

God, she’d made him work for it the last time they’d been kissing in a car, too, never giving away too much, until toward the end, when she’d been so close to giving it all up for him.

So close… so close… but then no closer.

Tonight would be different. He hadn’t chased her down to lose out in the end. And that’s exactly what he’d done-chased her down, hooker skirt and all. He’d been sitting in the Blue Iguana, checking out the women, wondering about them, idly fantasizing about a couple of them, and wondering why the old “threesome in the back of the bar” fantasy never seemed to happen to anybody in real life, and at the same time he’d been wondering why he wasn’t putting more effort into at least saying hello.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained in the pickup game. One of the women in the bar had definitely noticed him, smiled even, and still he hadn’t made a move, just watched the crowd, and waited, and wondered what in the hell he was waiting for, an engraved invitation?

No, he realized now. He’d just been waiting for something more, anything more than what he’d seen and felt in the bar. So he’d left and gone out onto the street, and there on Seventeenth, with her ass peeking through torn fishnet and her hair ratted up into a blond pile on top of her head, he’d finally seen something he wanted, and he was making his move now.

Slipping his hand around the back of her neck, he opened his mouth wider over hers, pushed his tongue deeper, and let her know he wanted her, pulling her tighter and sliding his other hand up her thigh, under her skirt, but stopping short of the red lace panties. Her skin was satin smooth beneath his fingers, her half slip a silky drape across the back of his hand.

And she was trembling, ever so slightly, but he could feel it.

Good. That’s all he’d needed to know.

He slowly broke off the kiss, taking his time, breathing her in and letting his mouth rest on hers, before he finally pulled away.

“Stay put,” he said, opening the car door and swinging his feet out onto the pavement. “This will only take a minute.”

In whole, it took more like five before he was settling back in behind the steering wheel.

“ Genesee Park?” he asked.

“Yes.” She nodded. “And, well… whatever you’re thinking… well, it’s probably not…I mean I just wanted to say, uh…well…”

He turned in his seat, and with one arm draped over the steering wheel, gave her his full attention.

“Well, what I wanted… to, uh, say, I guess… was, that, I, uh…”

She was stumbling over her words and having trouble meeting his gaze, and yeah, he remembered her doing that before when he’d kissed her. It was sweet. But she needed help here.

“Yeah, me too,” he said, hoping that would clear up any confusion she might have. He’d loved it. She’d loved it. And trying to play it any other way wasn’t going to fly, not in his car.

Reaching for the ignition, he gave it half a twist, and the beast that was Solange fired up, all eight cylinders of pure Cobra Jet.

Genesee Park, a cold-cash deal in exchange for an undisclosed piece of property “recovered” off a seminude German, and Esme Alden sitting in his Cyclone, looking downright dumbstruck-the night was looking up, even if they were in a back alley in RiNo, surrounded by crazy spider boys, with a pimp trolling the streets looking for a Dixie impersonator who looked just like her, and a bookie and his goons looking for Burt Alden’s daughter and the guy in a Cyclone who’d saved her.

Was he willing to stick with her with that kind of night stretching out in front of him?

Oh, hell, yeah.

Lieutenant Loretta Bradley of the Denver Police Department surveyed the scene in room 215 of the Oxford Hotel with a jaundiced eye. Friday night was definitely getting off to a strange start.

Damned strange.