Power Play Read online

  Ryker grinned at me. “Darlin’,” he drawled, “if a funnel cake is what you want, a funnel cake you shall have.”

  That made me feel good. I liked the whole country-boy thing he had going on. I’d never been to a county fair, and now it seemed I’d picked the perfect person to attend my very first one with.

  The fair was teeming with all kinds of people dressed in all sorts of clothes. Denim seemed to be the preferred fabric, though the amount one actually wore varied widely. Some girls wore cutoff jean shorts that crawled so far up their rears I wondered how they could possibly sit down. These girls most often paired their outfits with cowboy boots.

  After seeing the tenth or twelfth pack of girls go by dressed like this, all of them taking a good look at Ryker as they passed, I leaned over and asked, “We are in Illinois, right? Not Texas?”

  He laughed. “You’re definitely a city girl,” he teased.

  “Hey, I just didn’t know there was a country-girl-hooker dress code for coming to one of these things,” I retorted.

  “You look pretty damn good to me,” he said, tugging on my hand so I lightly bumped into his side as we walked. He didn’t let up, his arm sliding behind my back and keeping me close. It was the kind of thing a man did with a woman when he had sex on the brain. I was flattered, and turned on, and was more than happy to sidle closer to him as we strolled through the crowds.

  Hanna’s face flashed through my mind and with an effort, I pushed it away. I couldn’t change the past, and Ryker was right. If I didn’t get my mind on something else for a while, my ability to cope would be even less than it already was.

  Ryker smelled fantastic. I could get just a hint of his cologne over the odors wafting through the air—kettle corn, freshly mown grass, and hot dogs. The bells of the carnival games were carried on the warm breeze, as was the sound of hundreds of people talking, laughing, and generally having a good time.

  True to his word, Ryker bought me a funnel cake buried under a snow-white mountain of powdered sugar. We sat at a picnic table to eat it, and I laughed as we both proceeded to get powdered sugar everywhere.

  “This is messy,” I complained, showing him my sugar-encrusted fingers. “Now how am I supposed to get this off?”

  He didn’t reply. He did something better. Taking my hand, he popped my index finger into his mouth.

  I drew in a sharp breath. The warm slide of his tongue against my finger made butterflies dance in my stomach. Then he lightly sucked and I felt it much lower than my stomach.

  Ryker was watching me from behind his sunglasses, but I couldn’t see his eyes, just my reflection in them.

  After a moment, he moved on to my middle finger, giving it the same treatment. I couldn’t look away from his mouth as he held my hand, the softness of his tongue against my skin making me think things that had me pressing my thighs together to ease the sudden ache between them.

  Finally, he slid my fingers from his mouth and rested my hand on his thigh.

  “Better?” he asked.

  In what sense? My heart was racing, my breath was coming way too fast, and my panties were damp.

  The curve of his lips was knowing and said he knew exactly what he had done—was doing—to me, and that he wanted to do more. I was suddenly all for that.

  “You have some more,” he said. Leaning forward, his mouth settled on mine.

  He tasted like sugar and spice and I decided that getting a funnel cake had been the Best Idea Ever. He was straddling the picnic bench and now slid closer to me, pulling me between his spread thighs.

  The kiss was slow and languid as though we were alone, the sun warm on my hair and shoulders. His hand cradled my jaw, slipping underneath my hair to cup the back of my neck. I suddenly had the thought that I might be sweaty—it was a little warm—but then he did something different with his tongue and my concern drifted away. The man had a talented tongue.

  “You and a funnel cake is dangerous territory,” he murmured in my ear.

  The heat of his breath and touch of his lips made a shiver run down my spine, which I knew he felt because his lips curved in a smile that could only be described as satisfied. On any other man, it would’ve looked incredibly arrogant, but Ryker could pull it off.

  His hand was on my bare thigh, his thumb lightly brushing my skin, while my blood thundered in my ears. The slow seduction thing was working almost too well.

  “I thought you promised me a tractor pull and Ferris wheel?” I asked, taking a swig of the cold beer he’d bought me. Ugh. Beer and powdered sugar did not mix.

  “So I did,” he said, getting to his feet. I stood as well, dusting powdered sugar from my shirt. “Tractor pull doesn’t start until seven, so Ferris wheel first.”

  The air between us seemed charged with sexual tension and promise, the anticipation a prelude to what I hoped would be a night I wouldn’t soon forget.

  We stood in line for the Ferris wheel while the sun went down, talking and laughing as he teased me. His hands cradled my hips as he stood behind me, his chest pressed against my back. He was whispering something in my ear about where else he’d be happy to lick powdered sugar off me when I caught a woman staring at us, a disapproving frown on her face.

  I cleared my throat, my face getting hot, and stepped forward to put a little space between Ryker and me. Maybe it was the bruises still on my face that she was looking at. Sunglasses hid most of the lingering marks, but those had been put away when dusk had fallen. I turned my face away, but could see out of the corner of my eye that the woman still stared at us.

  It must have caught Ryker’s attention, too, because he leaned down to say to me, “Don’t worry about it. She’s just a little uptight.”

  Maybe. But I didn’t like getting public attention for all the wrong reasons, so I kept my distance from Ryker.

  “You two look good together,” the woman said, surprising me. Her eyes were a bit bloodshot and I had the feeling she’d been visiting the beer garden often today. “You are together, right?”

  Awkward.

  We weren’t officially dating, but we were on a date, I supposed. I opened my mouth to say no, we were just having fun, when Ryker piped in with, “You bet.”

  “I knew it,” the lady said, smiling with satisfaction. “I’m a bit psychic. I know these things.”

  My eyebrows flew up and I struggled to hide a grin. Psychic, eh?

  “You are?” Ryker said, and I could tell by his tone that he was amused and humoring her. “Well, are you going to tell us our future then?”

  She nodded. “I can see it. You’ll marry her. You two were meant to be together.”

  Of course we were. I stopped myself from rolling my eyes, but just barely. Ryker had asked for it, so I had no sympathy for him that the lady was now predicting our future state of matrimony. He could just squirm.

  “You see the future that clearly?” Ryker asked skeptically.

  “I see it better if I can touch you,” she said, reaching toward me. It was quick and I didn’t have a chance to step back before she clutched my hand.

  “I don’t really—” I began, but she was already talking.

  “It’s not as clear now,” she said, looking past us into the distance at nothing. She frowned. “It was so clear with the two of you, but now if I just look at you, it gets fuzzy.”

  Yeah. I bet it did. Good Lord, how much had this woman had to drink today? I tried tugging my hand away, but she held on tight.

  “There’s another man,” she said. “He’s very close to you. You care about him a great deal.”

  Okay, now this was awkward. I certainly didn’t want to talk about another man while on a date with Ryker, especially when I knew the “other man” she was talking about was Parker.

  I jerked my hand out of her grip and she seemed to regain focus, her eyes meeting mine. Her face had gone pale.

  “I saw heartbreak,” she said. “And pain.”

  And this had gone from funny to irritating to downright eerie. Li
ke I wanted to be told my future held more pain than I’d already endured, plus heartbreak.

  “What happened to the happy-ever-after with him?” I blurted, jerking a thumb toward Ryker.

  She shrugged. “I can’t explain what I see. The future isn’t set in stone. Different choices lead down different paths.”

  The Ferris wheel line moved and Ryker pulled me over to where it was our turn to get on.

  “I’m really glad we didn’t give her money for a fortune like that,” I groused. “She’s crazy.”

  We settled into the seat and the worker lowered the bar across our laps, then let off the brake. The compartment rocked gently as the wheel turned to empty the container behind us for new riders.

  “So who’s the other man?” Ryker asked. There was more than a little possessiveness in his tone.

  “I’m not dating anyone else,” I said, evading an actual answer, though technically a true statement.

  Ryker frowned. “You and Parker haven’t…” He let the sentence trail off.

  I raised an eyebrow. “Are you really asking me if I’ve slept with my boss?” I injected a lot of self-righteous indignation into that, though I could feel my cheeks burning. What I’d done with Parker was so embarrassing, I could barely admit it to myself. No way was I telling him that Parker had turned me down flat, then proceeded to kiss me senseless just minutes after Ryker had Friday night.

  “Pretty much,” he said, cocking an eyebrow. “Glad to know you’re not the type.”

  I smiled weakly back. If he only knew that my “type” was the kind of girl whose boss could get her to do just about anything, he’d probably want nothing more to do with me.

  He changed the subject, thank God, and I tried to shove the weird psychic lady to the back of my mind. It was all hokum anyway. I didn’t believe in psychics any more than I did ghosts or goblins.

  “Let’s forget about crazy drunk non-psychic lady,” Ryker said, sliding his arm across my shoulders. “And get back to what we were doing before.”

  I smiled. “And what was that exactly?” I teased.

  “You were having an awesome time with me, of course.”

  I laughed. I couldn’t help it. Arrogant? Check. A total player? Check. Incredibly hot? Double check. But I was having more fun on this date than I’d had in a longer time than I cared to remember.

  The last rays of the sun were just peeking over the horizon, the lights from the fair and carnival twinkling in the encroaching dusk. Ryker pulled me toward him and I rested against his chest, enjoying the moment as the wheel slowly turned.

  After the Ferris wheel, we bought hot dogs and more beer, then made our way to the grandstands for the apparently highly anticipated tractor pull. The stands were full of people, but we managed to squeeze in. It was a lot of noise and a lot of smoke, but after two additional beers, it seemed like fun to me, especially with the crowd so into it.

  It was late when it was over and Ryker pulled me into the beer garden where a cover band was playing.

  “It’s late,” I halfheartedly complained. “I have to work tomorrow.”

  “Just one dance,” he prodded.

  The band was covering Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ on a Prayer,” which was an old favorite of mine, and they were pretty decent. “All right, just one dance,” I agreed.

  His arms wrapped around my waist and he held me close as we moved to the strains of a Journey tune. One dance turned into two, then three, and pretty soon I’d lost count. Ryker was a good dancer, taking the opportunity to slide his hands places they hadn’t yet been, not that I was complaining.

  The heated look in his eyes made my skin feel hot, and it was by unspoken agreement when he pulled me off the dance floor and we headed for his truck.

  I was inexplicably nervous as we walked, his fingers interlaced with mine. It wasn’t like I was some easily frightened virgin, but I’d never slept with a man like Ryker. He was intimidating and I was positive he’d been with more attractive, more experienced women than me. Would he be disappointed? And why did I care if he was?

  I hadn’t wanted to sleep with Ryker last night, but tonight I felt way different. Between the baseball game, him being there for me when Hanna was murdered, to taking me someplace fun today, he’d done more for me in three days than Parker had in the past year.

  Maybe this relationship with Ryker wasn’t going to be long-term, but I liked him. A lot. And he liked me, too. I believed he wanted me, not just sex, and that made a world of difference. But was it still too soon? I wanted it to be about us, not about me still hurting because of Parker’s rejection. Should I wait? I didn’t want to wait, but maybe it’d be for the best…

  I’d worked myself up into quite a state, arguing with myself and changing my mind a dozen times, so that by the time we reached his truck my beer buzz had evaporated. Ryker reached around me to open the passenger door. I could feel the brush of his body against mine, then his hands on my waist, helping me into the cab. I settled into the seat; then he surprised me by leaning in and laying a kiss on me.

  It wasn’t the same slow exploration it had been earlier. This was harder, his lips moving over mine with purpose, the stroke of his tongue demanding and urgent. I lost my train of thought, the pros and cons of temptation versus guilt, the taste and feel of him overtaking everything else.

  I don’t know how much time passed before he eased back, leaving me longing for more. His mouth trailed along my jaw.

  “Don’t be nervous,” he whispered against my skin.

  The fact that he could tell how I was feeling should have set off alarm bells. Instead, all I could think was that if he was this attuned to me before we had sex, how much better would he be during? Maybe sleeping with Ryker wouldn’t be about Parker at all, but instead all about us.

  He shrugged out of his shirt, leaving him in just a white tank—the holster still holding his gun at his side—climbed in the cab, and fired up the engine. I watched him unabashedly as he drove back to his house. His sunglasses were hooked on his shirt and with one hand he pulled me toward him. I slid across the seat, forgoing the seat belt (I’m such a rebel). His hand settled on my leg, his fingers sliding between my bare thighs.

  The anticipation of what was to come was giving me a whole different kind of buzz now. Here was this incredibly good-looking man, a cop no less, who appeared very attracted to me and wanted to have sex with me as soon as possible.

  My fingers were practically itching to touch him, and I didn’t think he’d mind, so I slid a hand underneath his tank as he drove. The warm skin of his abdomen met my fingers, the muscles there hard and lean. He sucked in his breath at my touch, which encouraged me. Stretching up, I fastened my lips to his neck and lightly sucked.

  His skin tasted slightly salty and smelled like cologne mixed with the outdoors—pure man. My hand crept farther up his chest underneath his shirt as I licked and sucked his neck up to his jaw. The hand on my leg tightened and I noticed his arm wasn’t lying casually on top of the steering wheel anymore. Instead, it was gripping it tightly.

  The ride back to his house was quick, though I thought he might have been speeding, and then he had me out of the truck and inside fast enough to make my head spin. One word barked at McClane and the dog disappeared into another room. Then Ryker had me pinned to the wall, his mouth on mine and his hands tugging my T-shirt free from my shorts.

  I was just as frantically trying to get his shirt over his head. He pulled away enough for both of us to accomplish that goal; then his arms were around me and his skin against mine. In the next moment, he’d lifted me and was carrying me to his bedroom.

  His chest was warm and smooth. There was a fine sprinkling of hair across it and his dog tags rested against his sternum. I stared at his biceps as I lay against him, the curve of the muscle so defined I wanted to trace it with my fingers.

  Ryker was still kissing me when he laid me on the bed. He sat down and I straddled his thighs. It wasn’t elegant; we were both too desperate for that
. His tongue slid against mine as he deepened the kiss. I held on to his shoulders, solid and massive underneath my palms. His lips were soft, a contrast to his jaw, roughened with whiskers. The abrasion against my skin wasn’t unwelcome. It was masculine—a reminder of the differences between our bodies—the hard planes of his chest against the soft curves of mine.

  I moaned as his hands curved around my rib cage, his thumbs brushing against my nipples with delicious friction.

  Ryker’s mouth moved down my throat, stopping to suck lightly underneath my jaw, and again at my collarbone. I gasped as his hands skimmed down to my hips and his mouth settled over one breast. His tongue flicked at the sensitive point; then he sucked and I felt it all the way to my core.

  His hands locked around my waist, pushing me onto my back against the pillows. My thighs fell open and he settled between them, his mouth moving to my other breast. My fingers combed through his hair, the strands soft, and my nails scraped lightly at his scalp. I felt a shiver go through him.

  The denim of his jeans was rough against my inner thighs, but I didn’t care. He alone filled my senses—the feel of his skin against mine, the wet heat of his mouth on me, the grip of his hands on my hips.

  I felt him tugging at my shorts and I lifted slightly so he could slide them down my legs. He sat back on his haunches, allowing me to bend my knees enough for him to pull the fabric off.

  I reached for him but he caught my hands in his, raised them over my head, and wrapped my palms around the bars of the headboard, like I was supposed to keep them there. He was looking at me—at my body—and I saw his Adam’s apple move in his throat when he swallowed. My legs rested atop his thighs, waiting for him to settle between them again, but he didn’t. Unsure, I opened my mouth to say something, I didn’t know what, but then he touched me and the words died on my tongue.

  Ryker’s palms rested on my inner thighs, skating slowly up to my hips. His hands curved, fitting my flesh to his palms, then drifted farther up my sides to my breasts. His touch was electric, making my breath hitch in my chest. His gaze lifted to mine, the blue of his eyes silvery in the darkness, and I couldn’t look away.