Impossible Dreams (32 page)

“Those kind never give straight answers.”
Undeterred by Axell’s insult, the detective got in his parting remark.
“Heard that musician staying at the shop is working at a club downtown
that got raided. You might wanta be more careful who you associate with, Mr.
Holm. Tar sticks.”

For a woman who detested confrontation, Maya certainly put
up a struggle as Axell grabbed her arms and physically held her in her seat,
clapping a hand over her mouth as the detective walked off. She bit his fingers
as savagely as she could and dug her fingers into his arm. He was damned glad
he wasn’t wearing just a T-shirt. She’d had her nails done, and
they cut like miniature knives.

“You have no right—” she sputtered as the
door closed behind the police and Axell released her.

“I have every right,” he returned coldly,
dragging her from the booth and toward the door. “This is my place, and
I’ll not have the local cops on my back. They just don’t like
outsiders, and Cleo and Stephen,” he glanced down at her briefly,
“and even you, are outsiders. It’s much easier to pin bad things on
people they don’t know. They’re human. Hell, I’ve met your
sister and Stephen, and I still don’t trust them. So let it go.”

“You don’t trust them?” she asked
incredulously as he pushed her into the alley. “You think I would leave
the kids with anyone I didn’t trust? What kind of person are you? Would
you leave Constance with someone you think deals drugs?”

“I’m trusting your judgment in leaving them
there, and that’s all I’m trusting. And there are times I wonder
why the hell I’m doing that.” Axell could see all his plans for the
evening going up in a tower of flame. If he’d thought Maya capable of
planning anything, he’d blame
her
for the evening’s fiasco.
He was in dire need and she was no less attractive for being furious. He had to
hold on to her arm to prevent her from slapping him. He could think of a lot
better things his hand could be doing right now.

“Right. I’m an airheaded idiot too naive and too
stupid to know if someone’s doing drugs. What do I know about people,
anyway? They all look alike to me.”

She was on a real roll, Axell realized as he tried to steer
her toward the car. He’d married a spacy pacifist, and she’d
emerged from her cocoon as a Valkyrie, prepared to defend those she loved.
He’d always detested scenes like this, but the earlier adrenaline rush
had combined with too much testosterone, and his lust not only took on new
proportions, but entirely new perspectives. The heat of her in his arms baked
his brains.

“Why don’t you take away my license and keys and
keep me at home, where I can’t hurt myself?” she taunted as he
tried to drag her toward the car. “That’s what you’d really
like, isn’t it? Complete control. Well, dammit, I’m not one of your
little tin soldiers.”

To Axell’s surprise, she jerked her arm from his grasp
and ran down the alley in those ridiculous strapped high heels. He’d
never seen Maya in high heels. She had ankles halfway up to her knees. Shaking
his head at his wayward thoughts, he waited for her to discover she had nowhere
to run.

He figured she’d give it up before she crossed the
street to the next block, but she didn’t. Cursing at making a spectacle
of himself, Axell chased her across the street and down the alley behind the
town’s oldest stores.

Stumbling over a garbage can, he caught up with her before
they could both break their necks. Grabbing her arm, he pulled her hard against
him, despite her twisting protest. To hell with arguing. He was ready for the
next part. Past ready. “Yell at me if you want, but don’t run away,
dammit!”

Holding Maya’s squirming curves tight with both arms
wrapped around her, he dived down to claim the lips he’d coveted for too
long.

In seconds, they were both going up in flames. Gasping for
air, Axell leaned back against the door of Cleo’s old shop.

The door opened, and they fell in.

If you smoke after sex, you’re doing it too fast.

“You forgot to lock the damned door!” Axell
muttered as he staggered backward into the musty darkness and righted both of
them before they could collapse into the chaos of old boxes left from the move.

“It’s a condemned building, let someone else
lock it,” Maya sniped, more disgruntled by having the fieriest kiss of
her entire life interrupted than worrying about whether or not she’d
locked a door. Still, she shouldn’t have let him manipulate her like
that. She was angry at him. Furious. She just couldn’t completely
remember why.

“Proper civic attitude.” Slamming the door
closed and casting them into total night, Axell backed her against the wall.
“Now, where were we?”

“If you think you can...” she started to
protest, but Axell’s mouth cut her off. His tongue took advantage of her
parted lips and initiated an intoxicating foray that had her gripping his
shoulders for support. Virgo’s avoided spontaneity. Surely he
didn’t...

“Axell, we can’t—”

“We can.” He propped his hands on either side of
her head and deepened the kiss.

The heated, masculine aroma of Axell’s skin and
shaving lotion surged through Maya’s senses as his weight pressed her
against the wall. She was piercingly aware of all the places they touched, of
the way her breasts in their thin silk crushed against his suit coat, of the
way his zipper ground into her belly beneath the pressure of his arousal. With
what remained of her mind, she knew this was insane, but the insistent hollow
in her lower parts had no mind, only needs, and her hips pushed up to find his.

“I’d meant to take you to a hotel and buy
champagne,” he muttered in frustration as his hands located the curves of
her breasts and crushed them in a desperate caress.

“The nearest hotel is in Charlotte and I hate
champagne,” she protested without thinking, sinking her fingers into
Axell’s glorious golden hair and pulling his mouth back to hers.

“Oh, God, yes,” he muttered hungrily against her
mouth. “No kids, no cats, no interruptions...”

She couldn’t argue with any of that, especially with
his hands unfastening the thin collar holding the top of her dress in place.
She could see nothing in the darkness, but the lack of vision heightened her
other senses. Axell’s fingers slid caressingly beneath the fabric of her
dress, slipping the neckline down until he cupped her breasts with those big
firm hands she’d admired from the start. She sucked in a breath as the
callused roughness stroked her skin.

The urgent mouth plundering her lips suddenly lowered to
suckle at her breast.

Given the freedom to scream, she did. The moisture of
Axell’s mouth connected with the electric current already surging through
her, jolting her into a different dimension. Maya arched higher, grasping his
broad shoulders for support, pushing into him and demanding more. Axell
obliged.

With a haste she’d never seen in him, he drank her
deeper, harder, until she thought he’d sucked her inside of him and
swirled her somewhere in the dark vortex of his soul. His other hand plucked
the nipple of the breast his mouth had yet to claim. The twin sensations spun
her into a spiral from which there was no return. Only the crush of his hips
against her belly prevented her from elevating entirely from the floor.

Somewhere in the back of her mind, Maya knew what they were
doing was ridiculous for two grown, married people, but she didn’t care.
Releasing Axell’s shoulders, she wriggled her hands between them and
sought his belt.

He groaned deep in his throat as her knuckles brushed his
fly. “I’ve been wondering what you wore under this piece of
nothing,” he muttered, lowering one hand to pull at her skirt while his
mouth traveled from one breast to the other, via the hollow of her throat and
by means of kisses so hot they left scorch marks.

Maya got his belt unfastened and started on his zipper.
“Keep your romantic fantasies a little longer. Just help me with this
damned...”

He obliged readily. Before she could exclaim over the size
of the erection she brushed against, Axell had her skirt hiked to her waist,
and his hot palm seared her flesh.

“Garters. Damn, you wore garters. I want to see...”
He uttered a guttural groan as she stroked him. “Maya-a-a...ah-h”

She thought he tore her panties in two — her stoic businessman
reverted to uncivilized Norse god.

She wasn’t in any shape for thinking. She only knew
the moment when Axell’s fingers probed higher, stroking her to the brink
with a rough caress. His finger wasn’t enough. Clutching his shoulders
again, she shoved against him, demanding more, demanding what now rubbed
against her belly, heavy and aroused.

A keening cry of ecstasy escaped her lips as Axell stroked
her deeper, in just the right spot, instantly carrying her to the precipice and...over...

Maya shuddered and wept and fell against him as she lost
control. It had never been this way before. Never. Men used her. She used men.
Nothing like this had ever happened. She couldn’t stop. She needed more,
needed it more urgently than ever. The tension spiraled up inside her so
quickly, she gasped. It wasn’t enough.

Axell understood. Lifting her hips in his hands, he raised
her to his height. Instinctively—because she was incapable of
thought—Maya wrapped her legs around him and arched outward, demanding
what she knew he could give.

He drove into her with a stroke so deep, he should have
struck her backbone. Crying now, she rocked against him, taking him deeper,
until he rubbed the mouth of her womb and the shudders rocked all the way
through her.

He withdrew and plunged again, took her all the way up, then
teased her by drawing back some more. Maya screamed, then cursed, then buried
his throat in kisses. He didn’t even have his shirt off. She pawed at the
cotton, but she couldn’t reach his chest. He pounded her back against the
wall again, protecting her hips with his hands, driving her back into that
spiraling vortex that swept them both into its center like leaves in the wind.

“Now, Maya, now...”

And at his command, she broke, splintered into so many
pieces she’d never recover them all. She was aware of Axell’s shout
of release, of his powerful surge deep within her, of the rush of hot liquid
filling her as he shattered along with her. All their atoms and particles
twinkled and twirled in a cosmic dance in the darkness, combining them as no
piece of paper or human words could ever do.

Speechless, they panted in each other’s arms, ignoring
their surroundings, wrapped up in the physical bond they’d just forged.
Anything else would be an intrusion, and they’d had far too many
intrusions in the past.

“My God, Maya, I never thought...” Axell lowered
her carefully to the floor, not releasing the smooth skin of her buttocks. She
had such delectably soft skin, skin that wafted a scent of roses as he stroked,
skin he couldn’t stop touching if his life depended on it. Maybe if she
would let him, just one more time…

He must be mad. They were in a condemned building, no doubt
surrounded by rats. He’d meant to give her champagne and a honeymoon
suite.

“Could we do that again?” she whispered
breathlessly somewhere just below his ear. “So I could know it
wasn’t just a fluke?”

Axell laughed helplessly against her fallen stack of curls.
Even her hair smelled of roses. No complicated chemical scents for his Maya.
The ache inside him right now was all her.

He lifted his head and finally releasing her tempting skin,
smoothed her hair. “Let’s test it out in bed, all right? I’m
afraid that next time, the walls will tumble down with the vibrations.”

“I’m still furious at you,” she reminded
him.

“I want to see what you look like with all the lights
on,” he countered, pulling up the neck of her dress and reluctantly
trying to fasten it.

She wriggled beneath him, inflaming his senses instantly. He
didn’t do things like this. He never lost control of a situation.
He’d never tried to control Maya. His palm filled with plump breast as he
tried to hold her still.

“Gotcha,” she whispered. Then, as suddenly as
she’d wriggled, she went stock still. “Did you hear that?”

His mind wasn’t thinking clearly. His hearing
wasn’t working at all. “Hear what?” he murmured without
paying attention to anything other than the warm squeezable places his fingers
explored.

“Mice?” she offered tentatively. “Really
big rats?”

She wasn’t cooperating here. Forcing his muddled mind
back to her words, Axell tried to listen. There was a definite rattle of trash,
and a footstep where there shouldn’t be any. Every protective instinct
he’d ever possessed leaped into action.

“Stay here,” he ordered, shoving his shirt back
into his pants and quickly fastening them. He couldn’t believe he’d
just behaved like some freaking adolescent. He hadn’t done this kind of
thing even as an adolescent. Sex in a public place. He had more sense than
that.

“Let’s just get out,” Maya whispered,
shimmying her dress back in position. “We can call the police from the
restaurant.”

“Whoever it is will be gone by the time the cops
show.”

He didn’t give her time to protest again but moved deeper
into the storeroom. Maya should never have left the back door unlocked.
Vagrants could take up occupancy and burn the place down. It wouldn’t be
the first time an old building had gone up in smoke.

“Chill man, I hear something.”

Axell dived for the sound of the voice, but it was too far
ahead of him. A door slammed and feet clattered on what sounded like stone
steps. Shoving boxes aside, he tried to locate any sign of a door in the
darkness. He vaguely remembered one back here in the storage space Maya
hadn’t used.

“Axell! Axell, where are you?” Maya’s
anxious voice called from nearby.