“I want to see you,” he said, then reached up and lifted her br**sts from the confinement of her bra cups without removing the flimsy garment. The globes of her br**sts spilled over and her n**ples jutted into the cool air. “Wonderful.” He covered her br**sts with his hands, groaning and prodding her lower back with his erection.
Electric jolts shot through her as he thumbed her n**ples, tweaking them to full attention. She laid her head back and rolled her shoulders, feeling beautiful and appreciated. Wanting him to feel equally satisfied, she planted her hands on his chest and lifted her hips, then lowered herself onto the tip of his sex, teasing, testing.
He gasped and pulled her forward to take one of her n**ples into his mouth, flicking the sensitive round with his tongue. She moaned and undulated down his shaft another inch before retreating, feeling like one long live wire, every nerve ending alive and pulsing.
After a few seconds of mutual sweet torture, a muted growl tore from Carter’s throat. He clasped her h*ps with both hands and impaled her with his entire length. The sudden and complete fullness stole the breath from her lungs, and for a few seconds she was unable to move. He was still, his teeth clenched, allowing her to adjust. When she could no longer be still, she began to move up and down, releasing him, then taking him into her body again with exaggerated slowness.
They locked gazes, and her doubts about whether her technique felt as amazing to him as it did to her were erased when he breathed her name with reverence. She smiled, feeling heady with sexual control, but her smugness dissolved when she felt another orgasm begin to flower in her womb. At his urging, her rhythm increased.
“Come on, sweetheart, let me hear you.” He tensed beneath her.
The sweet but searing hum deep inside her surged in intensity…unbearable ecstasy.
“Hurry, sweetheart…hurry.”
The sound of his hoarse urgency sent her over the edge. She cried out his name and contracted around his rigid maleness, but realized pure fulfillment when his muscles bunched and he cli**xed with her. “Faith…Faith…Faith.”
Once the spasms had subsided, she lowered herself to his chest, weak with satisfaction. His arms came around her back, stroking her shoulder blades to ward off the room’s chill. When questions and qualms threatened to descend, she banished them to the far corners of her mind. They were together now, and now was all that mattered. At least for now. With her cheek pressed against the coarse hair on his chest, she listened to his heartbeat and breathing return to normal. After a few minutes she thought he had dozed, but he began to stroke her hair. “That was…amazing.”
She was afraid to speak because suddenly she was feeling “susceptible.” She’d promised herself she wouldn’t expect his feelings to change suddenly just because they were good together…just because they shared a powerful physical connection…just because she cared enough for both of them. But a small part of her had hoped that he would undergo some sort of transformation, that he would realize he couldn’t truly love one woman and have this kind of experience with another woman.
Could he? He’d said that Trudy was “independent.” Was she somewhere tonight expressing her own independence? Did they have an open relationship? She swallowed hard, giving in to a few seconds of panic that she might have misjudged his character so terribly.
She pushed up and gingerly disengaged their bodies. He grunted, but he didn’t protest when she pulled away. She shivered in the cold air and crawled around, gathering her clothes. Her knees stung and she realized with mortification that she had carpet burns. She breathed deeply, trying to calm her pulse. She wasn’t a coed; their lovemaking aftermath needn’t be a dramatic episode. They were consenting adults who’d practiced safe sex. They would simply get dressed and maybe try to sleep and wait for help to arrive in the morning and…pretend as if nothing had happened.
She stood on wobbly legs to don her lacy underwear, but the sight of Carter, big and bare, rising up to reach for his clothes sent a dizzying array of emotions to her empty stomach: desire, satisfaction, sadness. She turned her back to him and stepped into the pink panties, but her gaze landed on the blue ring box from Tiffany’s sitting on the file cabinet. As she adjusted the scalloped waistband of her frilly underthings, Faith added guilt to the disturbing emotional soup.
Yes, they would simply pretend as if nothing had happened.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Monday afternoon, February 10, 2003
“AND THEN WHAT HAPPENED?” the wide-eyed newspaper reporter asked. He was young, and a feature on the bungled burglary of the Valentino diamond would be a great human-interest scoop for the week of Valentine’s Day.
Faith shifted on the stool at The Red Bean, took a drink from her coffee mug, and let Jamie take over. She was tired of repeating the details, but her friend was still caught up in the drama.
Jamie leaned forward and paused for effect. “Then when I came in early Sunday to tackle some paperwork and found the lights on and the door open to The Diamond Mine, I knew something was wrong. I called the police and when Faith didn’t answer her home phone, I called her brother. When the police arrived, we opened the vault to find Faith and Lieutenant Grayson alive and well, thank God.”
Poor Jamie—she had been frightened out of her wits. Faith smiled into her coffee. It was a good thing that Dev had been there to comfort her.
“Ms. Sherman, what was it like to spend the night in a locked vault?”
Faith felt Jamie’s curious gaze on her as well as the man’s. Her friend had done everything but come out and ask her if she and Carter had “done it.” Had Jamie picked up on the faint scent of sex in the air and seen her rug-burned knees, or was it perhaps the telltale look of remorse on her face? Regardless, Faith had decided to keep mum about her tryst with Carter.
“The temperature was a little cold, but I knew we were safe, so I didn’t worry.”
The man pushed up his glasses. “How did you keep warm?”
Faith hesitated and glanced at Jamie, who had one red eyebrow arched. “We, um, tried to move around as much as possible.”
“Calisthenics?”
“Er, yes.”
“And the Valentino diamond was in the vault with you all night?”
“That’s right.”
“Tell me about the legend surrounding the stone.”
Faith repeated the story from the brochure.
“And have you ever seen the two hearts that are supposedly suspended in the Valentino diamond?”
She ran her finger around the rim of her cup, suddenly ill at ease. “Well…I did see a shadow in the stone…that resembled…two hearts intertwined.”
“You never told me,” Jamie said, her tone mildly accusing.
“It was right after the robbery,” Faith said. “In the vault, when I was making sure the diamond was okay.” She smiled sheepishly. “More likely it was my imagination, or a trick of the light.” Or her emotional state.
The reporter was scribbling away. “Where is the diamond now?”
“Understandably, the company that owns the Valentino diamond took it back for a full inspection.”
Of course that meant that Carter was no longer needed, which was best, considering what had happened between them. Amid the hoopla and milling uniforms Sunday, she had performed some online research, phoned a couple of trusted gemologist associates, and determined that his family heirloom was indeed an original Tiffany’s six-prong setting, and worth the hefty sum that she’d surmised. She’d delivered the good news and returned the ring to him, expertly cleaned and polished, before he left that afternoon. The moment had been awkward, so she’d thanked him for…everything, and shaken his hand.
“Good luck on Friday,” she’d said.
He’d frowned. “Friday?”
“Valentine’s Day,” she’d reminded him.
“Oh. Right.”
“Ms. Sherman?”
She jerked her attention back to the moment and to the reporter. “I’m sorry—what were you saying?”
“I asked what happened to the jewel thief.”
“Ben Sills is in jail, waiting to be arraigned. Apparently he’d been waiting for an opportunity to steal the diamond. Chicago afforded him access to an international airport—the police found fake identification and a plane ticket to South America on him.”
“I understand he’s being charged with attempted armed robbery and attempted murder.”
“That’s right.”
He frowned. “That’s not a very romantic wrap-up. I don’t suppose you and—” he consulted his pad “—Lieutenant Grayson fell in love while you were in the vault all night?” He grinned, hopeful.
Faith bristled and refused to look in Jamie’s direction. “No, I don’t suppose we did.”
The man’s shoulders fell. “Too bad. Would’ve made for a happier ending to the story.”
CARTER STRUGGLED to keep the frustration out of his voice. “But, Captain, my doctor just released me to return to work.” He shook a sheet of yellow paper as if the man on the other end of the phone could see it. “I have the release form in my hand.”
“Good for you, Grayson. But I’m not about to put you back out on the street until we’ve had a chance to talk.”