Crossing the Line Read online

  Explicit pictures flashed through her brain in a montage of moving snapshots. His naked body, stretched out over hers. His penis big and hard for her. She, helpless and vulnerable and writhing with pleasure.

  She wanted him so badly it terrified her.

  Her fingers were tangled in the silk of his hair and she was holding him in place, loath to let him go, her heart pounding in a brilliant timpani of sound and color. Yes, color. The beat of her heart was pink and fresh and new. The taste of it like cotton candy mixed with sin. She could feel her pulse, hear it, see it, taste it and smell it in a strange kaleidoscope of sensation.

  She had no idea how this was possible. It was as if Dante’s mouth was some kind of mind-altering drug and she was helpless to resist.

  Obviously something was wrong with her. She wasn’t thinking straight. Her brain was askew, her conscience and common sense washed away by the rush of adrenaline pushing through her veins.

  Dante shifted, changing the tilt of his head. He lightened the kiss, turning it into a seductive tease, using the suction of his mouth to tug at her bottom lip. His tongue flicked tenderly against hers. A shower of hot, soft kisses trailed from her lips, down her chin to the underside of her throat. And when he moved up to nibble her earlobe, her entire body shuddered against his.

  She heard a soft sound of pleasure escape her lips as she sighed into him.

  He slid a hand up her spine until his palm grazed the bare skin exposed by her halter dress. His fingers fanned.

  She shivered against him in spite of the warmth his hand generated. Shivered from delight and anticipation. She’d been lusting after him for weeks and secretly fantasizing about such a moment as this. She never wanted it to end.

  And they were just getting started.

  Her hand trembled, drunk and woozy, and she was grateful to have him to lean into. Chest to chest, thigh to thigh and every glorious body part in between.

  This wasn’t her. This wanton feeling of free fall, but she loved it, reveled in it. What was happening? She didn’t know. Didn’t care that her head was spinning and her heart was chugging and her lips were burning.

  He increased the pressure, his tongue hungry and insistent.

  She moaned again, an urgent, helpless sound that shocked, delighted and escalated her arousal all at the same time. She was electrified.

  Oh yes, yes, this feeling…this…this…She had no word for what it was. She’d never felt it before. Every muscle in her body was outrageously alive, every square inch of her skin crying out for more, more, more of his touch.

  Then Dante pulled back.

  Elle whimpered. “No.”

  He stared into her eyes.

  Their gazes locked and they were both breathing in rapid, rhythmic gasps.

  Slowly he reached out to run a knuckle over her cheekbone. His eyes were murky with desire. His body was tensed as if he was barely able to control himself.

  “What is it?” she whispered.

  He swallowed. She could feel the steel of his erection straining the zipper of his chinos.

  “Are you sure you really, really want this?”

  “I’ve never wanted anything more.”

  The words, spoken in the quiet of the garage, sounded certain but strangely vulnerable. She felt it in the very core of her body. She was vulnerable. Vulnerable and desperate and hungry for masculine attention. And she wasn’t one bit ashamed of her need.

  This was pathetic.

  She should tell him no, that she’d changed her mind. But her body was tingling and her blood was churning and she wanted him so very, very badly, and the moist aching between her legs was almost more than she could bear.

  He took her at her word and before she even knew what he was doing, he’d scooped her off her feet and carried her over to the pool table. His strength, the lusty look in his eyes, left her feeling utterly feminine.

  She was on her back on the green felt. On the wall to one side was a rack of pool cues. A batch of colorful balls encased in a beige plastic triangle rested on a nearby credenza along with several little cubes of chalk. An oblong florescent light hung suspended over the table.

  Dante was climbing up beside her, kicking off his shoes and wrestling off his jacket as he went. He tossed it off into a corner.

  Elle looked up into his eyes and the room spun like a warm, beautiful carousel.

  He planted one knee on either side of her hips, loomed over her, and looked down at her. He was pure animal.

  His big size made her feel small but not delicate. In fact, she felt empowered. She had reduced this big man to this. She’d claimed his control.

  His smell was spicy and masculine—the zestiness of soap, the woodsy scent of pine, the richness of leather. She wanted to bury her nose against his salty skin again and inhale him.

  A thrill unlike anything she’d ever experienced galloped through her. She moistened her dry lips with a flick of her tongue. All these years and she’d never felt so desired.

  He leaned down. Slowly.

  Her heart thumped.

  He dipped his head lower and pushed it to the throbbing, flushing pulse at the hollow of her neck. “How’s that feel?” he asked.

  With his hot mouth against her bare skin, she could scarcely draw in air much less speak. “Awesome,” she managed to whisper.

  He chuckled and the sound filled her with a soft, round pleasure. She realized then she’d never heard him laugh. She had made him laugh. Elle felt at once both powerful and incredibly sexy. It was an unaccustomed feeling.

  Dante kissed her on the forehead, sweetly, tenderly. Why was he kissing her on the forehead? She wanted him to ravage her with his tongue. Wanted him to take her down to depths where she’d never been before. Wanted it dark and hard and dirty.

  Then his naughty hand was slipping up her inner thigh, reaching for her thong panties.

  Elle arched her hips and stared up into his eyes, reached out and took hold of his shoulders with both hands. He peeled off the thin strip of silk and lace, slowly dragging it down her legs, the material rubbing erotically over her skin as he skimmed the panties past her knees and down her calves.

  He tossed the panties away. They landed in the nether-world with his jacket. To Elle, anything beyond the pool table no longer existed.

  His fingers were back on her thighs. His thumb gently tracing circles.

  A new sensation gripped her. Her body twitched involuntarily and she dropped her knees, giving him easier access to the most sacred, secret part of her.

  She hadn’t been with a man since her divorce. Hadn’t wanted to be with one until now. And somehow, he had washed away the memories of her mistakes and Elle felt as if she was starting out bright and shiny new.

  Madonna’s “Like A Virgin” ran through her head, because that’s what it was like, as if she was being touched by a man for the very first time in her life.

  Unfurling, opening, blooming, blossoming, the past was gone. There was only now. Only Dante.

  He pushed the hem of her dress up to her waist and kneed her legs apart.

  She gasped at the suddenness of it, at the coolness of the air against her heated skin.

  He rocked back on his heels, dropped his gaze and an incredibly sexy noise slipped from his lips. She felt her nipples tighten at the sound of it.

  “Beautiful,” he murmured. “So beautiful.”

  “My turn,” she said, surprised at her own boldness, making demands. “I want to see something beautiful, too.”

  She sat up and reached for the buttons of his dress shirt. She worked them open one by one, revealing more and more of him.

  He was as gorgeous as she’d anticipated. Hard-muscled chest. Flat, taut abs. Not the body of your average surgeon. Much more like a warrior or a cop.

  The thrilling sight of his bare chest raised chill bumps up her forearms.

  Dante finished the job for her. Tugging his shirt from his waistband, unbuckling his belt, shucking off his pants like a man on a serious mi
ssion.

  Then something fell from his shirt pocket and hit the table with a soft plop.

  Both their eyes tracked the movement. Elle saw the condoms and she looked up to meet his gaze. His manly chest exposed, knees dug into the pool table on either side of her. She was sitting up between his legs, her dress hiked to her waist, panties missing. Talk about a compromising position.

  Elle arched her eyebrows. “Looking to get lucky tonight?”

  “No…I…”

  “Do you always carry condoms in your shirt pocket?”

  Damn if his cheeks didn’t tinge pink. He was blushing. She found it endearing. Elle smiled. “It’s okay. I’m glad that you’re prepared because I’m not. I’m out of my head and I’m glad for it.”

  “I don’t want you to think that…”

  “Don’t think,” she said. “I don’t want to think. I like this not-thinking thing. Let’s not think together. Let’s just feel. Come on, get naked.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Just do me, Dante.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  While he disposed of his clothes, Elle reached up to undo the tie of her halter dress. It fell open, revealing that she was braless.

  He took one look at her breasts and growled.

  She lay back and he was upon her. Kissing her more furiously than he’d kissed her before. He kissed her lips until they stung with urgency and then he moved on, down her chin to the sensitive underside of her jaw, to the hollow of her throat until he ended up at her aching, swollen breasts.

  Her body quivered.

  “I’ve wanted you from the minute I stepped into your emergency room,” he whispered.

  “Really?”

  “You doubt this?” He took her hand and guided it to his stiff erection.

  She smiled.

  “See what you do to me.”

  “But you never flirted with me.”

  “Okay, so I’ve never been good at the foreplay stuff,” he admitted.

  “I think,” she said, “you underestimate yourself. I’ve been wet for you all evening.”

  “I think you don’t know the truth of it.”

  “What does that mean?”

  He got a strange look on his face, as if he’d said too much, stepped over some kind of boundary and Elle was suddenly so afraid that she’d lost him and he wouldn’t make love to her. Reaching up, she wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him down flush against her.

  She slipped her fingers through his hair. Held his head still and kissed him with all the fervent intensity she had inside her.

  Her body was slick for him and his body was hard for her. They just needed to get together to make this happen. To salve and soothe each other.

  Elle wriggled beneath him. Dante groaned.

  His penis was so big, so hard. She licked her lips. “Condom,” she gasped. “Where’s a condom?”

  He fumbled on the table, found it.

  In her desperation to have him, she snatched the condom from his hand, ripped it open with her teeth and with trembling fingers, pushed him back just long enough to roll it on for him.

  “Take me now,” she demanded, the lust and the urge more than she could possibly tolerate for one more minute. She had to have this man or die. The desire was in her veins, in her blood, in her brain.

  Now, now, now.

  He pushed inside of her. A rush of heat so overwhelming she could not breathe suffused her feminine core. Her muscles tensed around him, drawing his hard shaft in deeper.

  “You are so tight.” He groaned. “It feels righteous.”

  She couldn’t answer. She’d always dreamed of sex like this. Wild and hungry and brilliantly good. But this was so much more than she’d ever bargained for.

  The hard glide of his penis, his big, hot body pressing into her was a marvelous tension. With each fevered thrust she wanted more. Wanted him deeper.

  Their simultaneous sounds of pleasure merged in the air.

  Dante twisted his hips, rocking deeper and deeper into her softness. Her mind was mush. Images flashed through her head. Colors, sounds, sensations. Nothing had ever felt like this before. Certainly not with Mark and not with the two other lovers she’d had before him.

  This was unique.

  This was Dante.

  It felt right. It felt perfect. It felt like the missing piece of the puzzle.

  Her body tingled from the top of her head to the tips of her toes. She bucked her hips up to meet his thrusts, ran her hands over his sweat-slicked skin, dug her fingernails into his muscles.

  He grew inside her until there was no space unoccupied by him. She was owned, claimed, possessed.

  Yes.

  Every other thought left her head. There was only room for him.

  She wrapped her legs around his waist, miraculously pulling him deeper into her body. Blindly she grabbed for something to hold on to and her hands found the pockets on either side of the pool table. His fierce, insistent thrusts pushed her to the limits of her endurance. The green felt of the pool table burned her back. She didn’t care. She relished the burn.

  How could this be so glorious? This amazing? What made him so special? What made it so good between them? She felt as if she had found the golden key to the universe.

  They were perfectly in tune. Linked. Locked. As if they’d known each other for centuries instead of for just a few short weeks. It was as if she’d been waiting for this man her entire life and her marriage to Mark had been nothing but a weak dress rehearsal for the real thing.

  Dante seemed to know everything about her body. Where she ached to be stroked. How she liked to be kissed. He seemed to have an unerring sense of direction when it came to mapping out her erogenous zones. He heightened her senses. Left her writhing and gasping and whimpering. Yearning for more of him in wordless hunger, whimpering in a voice she barely recognized as her own.

  Dante dipped his head, took one straining nipple into his mouth as he thrust relentlessly into her, giving her more of him than she could possibly stand. Her womb tightened. Her breath flew out of her.

  Every ramming stroke took her higher and higher toward her ultimate goal. It was fierce, extreme, flawless. He pinned her to the pool table with his arms. Holding her, driving into her. She cried his name over and over, until tears rolled down her cheeks and sensation surmounted her.

  “You’re crying,” he whispered and stopped moving. “Am I hurting you?”

  “No, no.”

  “Why are you crying?”

  She shook her head, unable to speak.

  Dante flicked her tears away with both thumbs. “Talk to me, Elle. What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing…it’s great,” she wrenched the words from her mouth. “Or at least it was until you stopped. Don’t stop. Please don’t stop.”

  “Tears of pleasure?” He seemed confused by that. “Is that what it is?”

  “Yes, yes, now come on before I stop crying and I lose the feeling.”

  He made a noise low in his throat and kissed the tears from her cheeks as he began moving inside her again with soft, determined strokes.

  “Ah,” she murmured. “That’s it.”

  He quickened his pace, determination on his face. She watched him watching her as he filled her up all the way to her heart.

  And then she just fell.

  Rolling into the orgasm as if it had always been her fate. She saw stars and moons and rainbows.

  She heard his groan and knew he was following her into the abyss, rocking and pumping and thrusting. He called out her name and the sound of it changed something deep inside of her forever.

  DANTE LAY TREMBLING on the pool table beside Elle, his muscles spent, mind numb.

  What the hell have you done?

  He couldn’t look at her. Couldn’t speak. Not just from breathless exertion, but from the heavy guilt weighing down his tongue.

  “Dante.” She sighed and rested her forehead, damp with the sweat of their joining, against his bare ches
t.

  Instinctively he wrapped an arm around her and she curled her body into his. His heart beat like jungle drums and his conscience ate him clean as a cannibal. How could he have let this happen?

  She asked for it. You wanted it. It felt so damned good, you just went for it.

  He clenched his right hand into a fist. No, no. This was all wrong. He should not have done this. He should not have made love to her while under the influence of Mark’s mind-altering drug. It skewered everything. He could not trust what he was feeling. It was all a deception. He couldn’t trust her, but most of all, he couldn’t trust himself. He was dangerously close to jeopardizing his investigation.

  Already he was feeling tender, vulnerable feelings he should not be feeling.

  Fool.

  Dante stared at the ceiling and then closed his eyes against the sweet pressure of her head on his chest. He wanted to thread his hands through her hair, lift up her face to his and kiss her again. He wanted to trace his fingers over her face, memorize every detail for future reference when he thought back on his moment. But dammit, he had no business thinking about her at all, much less making love to her.

  But somehow Elle had wound her way inside his head and he didn’t know how to get her out. He’d never met a woman who gave herself so fully to sex.

  But it didn’t feel false.

  It felt stunningly real.

  Hey, it’s not real. Don’t fall for the trap. That’s what this drug does. Sucks you in. Deceives you. Makes the impossible seem possible.

  So here was another unexpected dangerous side effect of Rapture, inexplicable feelings that didn’t actually belong to him, feelings that confused and distorted reality.

  Feelings that scared the hell out of a man who’d tried his damndest for so long not to feel anything more than anger and determination and revenge.

  He’d screwed up.

  Big time.

  If he told Briggins what he’d had to do to gain Mark’s trust, his boss would go ballistic. Taking illegal drugs was not what he’d signed on to do. But he’d had no choice, and he hated the circumstances that had forced him to lower his standards.