After Hours: Midnight Oil / Midnight Madness / Midnight Touch

6

HAD SHE LOST her mind? Peggy dropped the sheet as if it were scalding and backed away. “No,” she said out loud. “I cannot be doing this, and especially not here.”

On the table, Troy closed his eyes. “Okay. I can respect that,” he said, then grinned. “But I sure don’t have to like it.”

She stared at him with something like despair. “Do you have to be so reasonable and calm? Why can’t you be a total jerk and call me a cock tease or something? Give me an excuse to kick you out of here?”

Troy sat up again, propping himself up on his elbows, and smiled at her. “Do you want me to leave, Peggy?”

She swallowed. “No.”

“Do you want me to stay?”

“No.”

He laughed and swung his legs over the side of the table again, dangling them with his knees apart. Thank God the sheet was still in place. “What do you want? C’mere, babe.”

She shouldn’t have gone anywhere near him. But his eyes drew her, moth to flame. He grasped her hands and pulled her to within six inches of his chest, so that she stood intimately between his knees. They touched her hips.

She could smell the faint musk of his skin, see every bit of stubble on his face, the slight circles under his eyes and the laugh lines at the outside corners. He had heavy, lazy lids and lashes any woman would kill for. His jaw stretched wide and stubborn, his nose curved, slightly Roman, and his lips…God, those lips. They were parting, tilting and coming toward hers.

They took her mouth gently but firmly, not asking permission. He poured his desire into her and sought hers, licking it out from between her teeth and nipping it out of her lower lip. He sucked on her desire, pulling it from her until she gasped and tried to snatch it back, hide it again in all her secret places.

They wrestled over her attraction to him as if it were a live thing, but he finally took it hostage and she was forced to admit defeat—for the time being.

Satisfied, he relinquished her mouth, took her face between his big hands and dropped a kiss on her forehead. “It’s gonna be okay, Peggy. It really is. Better than okay.”

It was his kindness, his reassurance, his understanding that weakened her resolve again. He turned her hesitation into something charming instead of irritating and embraced it.

When he took her mouth again, the room seemed to drop away and she melted into him, conscious of nothing but his tongue stroking hers; his hands warm on her scalp, sifting through her hair; and the press of her breasts against his naked chest.

Soon his hands left her hair and he parted her lab coat, spanned her waist and then moved up to cup her breasts. The heat of him burned through her shirt and bra. She wanted desperately to feel his hands on her bare skin, and strained against them.

Troy tugged her blouse out of the waistband of her skirt and unbuttoned it, making a guttural noise of satisfaction when he discovered that she wore a front-clasp bra underneath. He made quick work of this, too, and her breasts were suddenly bare to his gaze, his hands and his mouth.

He held them with something close to reverence, rubbing his thumbs lightly over her nipples, and she almost came on the spot when he licked one and then finally, gloriously, fastened his mouth to it. She felt the pull of response at her sex, deep in her uterus and even in her veins as he triggered a flood of sensation with the one simple act.

Soon he’d moved to her other breast, and he squeezed them together, taking both peaks into his mouth. Her legs turned to rubber.

He pulled her against him so that she was caught between his powerful thighs and could feel his desire, pressing like a rock against her diaphragm. A series of sexual flashes tore through her, rogue electricity looking for an outlet.

Troy groaned softly, cupped her breasts in his palms and traced the inner rim of her ear with his tongue. His breath warmed and titillated the hundreds of tiny nerve endings there and seduced her utterly. She was his for the taking, and when he issued a command in the guise of a request, she obeyed.

“Lock the door, Peggy.”

She stumbled back from him, her hair in her face. With one hand, he caught her upper arms to help her balance. With the other he tenderly tucked the renegade strands behind her ears. “You are so gorgeous.”

She swallowed, caught her upper lip between her teeth, and somehow the door loomed in front of her without her being conscious of taking a single step. She saw her fingers turn the lock as if they were somebody else’s, and then she was back against him.

Troy was standing now, naked and proudly, hugely erect. The sheet lay in disarray on the floor and he stepped on it as he turned her, slid his hands under her skirt. She felt his hands on her bare bottom, fingers sliding under the elastic of her panties, exploring her secret crevices. He brushed, featherlight, against her sex and she gasped for oxygen against his seeking mouth, hoping she hadn’t robbed him of his breath.

He bit her lower lip gently and rucked her skirt up around her waist. Then he lifted her and set her down on her own massage table, legs spread to accommodate him. He snugged his heavy cock against her damp panties.

She pushed against it, feeling it twitch with urgency as Troy kissed her again, flattening her breasts against his naked chest.

He withdrew from her mouth and placed his hands on her thighs, thumbs inward. He flicked them up and down over her mons and drew teasing circles with one, then the other, around her clitoris.

Her breath coming in shallow gasps, she convulsed helplessly when he took a nipple into his mouth, too. Just as she quieted, he ripped her panties in two and slid the head of his penis against her. She came again instantly with glad shock, her eyes flying open as he drove deep into her. She clung to his shoulders for dear life, impaled, and his eyes seemed to pour into hers, drowning any trace of resistance she might have had left.

For a long moment he was content to simply rest that way, buried to the hilt in her. Then he moved, slowly and languorously pulling out, sliding in the slick honey of pleasure.

Troy’s eyes went blind for a moment and then focused again on hers. “Condom,” he groaned.

She didn’t want him to go anywhere, do anything but what he was doing to her at that moment, but logic and responsibility prevailed. She swallowed and nodded. “I don’t have one. Do you?”

He nodded, moving within her again. Then he kissed her and reluctantly pulled out. “Anybody in the locker room may be in for a rude shock,” he said, his voice rough. Then he grabbed the spa robe off the hook on the back of the door and slung it around his body. He went off in pursuit of what they needed.

Peggy pulled the edges of her lab coat together and huddled on the massage table in the full knowledge that she’d lost her mind. What in the hell was she doing, having sex with a client on the job?

Troy didn’t give her much time to think about it, though. He returned almost instantly. Seeing the look on her face and reading her body language easily, he took her clenched hands from her lap and kissed each white knuckle before unfolding them and giving her palms the same treatment.

His tongue slicked along her lifeline and told her exactly what his intentions were: pleasure and pleasure alone, no embarrassment or regret allowed. She melted into the moment, didn’t resist when he spread the edges of her lab coat wide and slid her arms out of the sleeves, pushed her body back on the table and eased into the delta of her thighs once again.

She stared up at his chest and a ripple of a coming climax spiraled through her just at the sight. There was something about his sheer masculinity that melted her. She felt the pressure of his cock against her, seeking penetration. Shamelessly she lifted her bottom, spread her thighs until they ached and met the smooth, slick head of him. His blunt, thick penis sank into her and a streak of pleasure rippled through her to her midsection, eddying outward throughout her body.

She welcomed the sensual invasion and moved with him as he slid in and out. He toyed with her nipples as he set the rhythm, and nothing had ever felt quite so good.

A slow, liquid pressure built within her as she met him thrust for thrust, the root of him stimulating her outside while he stroked her inside as well. But what excited her most was his simple desire for her. She could read it in his touch and his gaze.

Footsteps and voices traveled through the hallway outside and kicked her former anxiety into play again, but Troy just grinned, laid a finger on her lips and pushed deeper, cupping her bottom to brace her.

“I’m gonna come, babe,” he whispered. “It feels too good and I can’t hold on anymore….”

She grabbed his butt and wrapped her legs around him until she could cross her ankles, holding on to him as if she’d never let go. A glow began to surface from some primal place within her, and it grew brighter and brighter.

Perhaps it was the possibility of discovery that sent them both flying over the precipice at the same moment. Troy opened his mouth in a silent curse, arched his back and impaled her in one sudden motion. She exploded with a cry that he smothered with his lips and echoed with a groan. They lay like that for a long moment, their hearts beating wildly against each other.

Oddly enough, it was the supposedly calming music that brought Peggy’s anxiety back in a wave.

She felt pinned by his big body, and put her hands against his chest as if to push him off. He seemed to note the change in her mood immediately, and pulled out, his gaze assessing her face.

He picked up the sheet from the floor and wrapped it around his waist as she struggled up and pulled her skirt down again. She slid off the table, and an awkward postcoital moment ensued as she snapped her bra back together and buttoned her blouse. What could she possibly say?

Thank you, Troy, for the three orgasms?

I’m really not this kind of girl?

So, do I tip you thirty percent this time?

She backed away from him, her heartbeat thudding in her ears. “Troy, I just want to say…I’m not a groupie. I’m not a bimbo.”

“I know that,” he said, putting on the spa robe and tying the belt.

“I shouldn’t have done what I just did. I’m at my place of employment.”

He moved toward her, gathered her hair in his hands and kissed her nose, of all things. “Will you have dinner with me later?”

Peggy froze. The sexual encounter was bad enough, but to actually follow up on it? Act as if this was all in a day’s work? She licked her swollen, thoroughly kissed lips. “I don’t date football players, not ever.”

“Why not?”

Her three reasons were years in the past, but she wouldn’t talk about them. Not to him, not to anybody. “I just don’t.”

“That’s ridiculous.” He crossed his arms over his chest and squinted down at her. “And a guy buying you dinner once doesn’t mean you’re dating him. Besides, as long as we’re splitting hairs, you should keep in mind that I’m no longer a football player.”

She stared at the floor and then her shoes, which were scuffed on the toes.

“Fine,” he said. “It doesn’t have to be dinner, just a drink. One. That’s it. If you still feel the same way after that, I’ll leave you alone.”

She hesitated, then capitulated. “Okay.”

“What time do you get off tonight?”

“Ten-thirty, after my last appointment.”

“I’ll pick you up then. I assume that you don’t want to finish our session at the moment, since you’re uncomfortable.”

I want to finish it, all right. But not in any way that’s decent or professional. “At this point, there simply isn’t enough time—I have another appointment at 9:15. Do you mind rescheduling?”

“I don’t care, as long as it’s you who does the massage.” And with a last kiss, Troy disappeared into the showers.

LATER, AS PEGGY CLEANED UP after Pilar Morales’s seaweed wrap, she felt like a time bomb. A bomb in a too-tight bra, with no panties on. She’d buried the ripped ones in the trash long before Pilar had arrived.

She still couldn’t quite believe that she’d allowed Troy Barrington to seduce her on the job! She could sterilize and disinfect the place to her heart’s content, but her actions didn’t change the facts.

It’s been a year since Eddie, she told herself. I have a right to a normal libido, especially when a man who looks like Troy comes on to me. Any other woman would have done the same thing….

But it didn’t square her conscience completely. She’d failed miserably at impulse control, yet again.

Peg finished work by throwing the sheets and towels into the wash. She tossed in some soap and started the machine, which made a groaning, churning noise—exactly the way she felt inside. If only she had a rinse cycle to filter out her emotions and fears.

Troy Barrington was probably waiting for her outside already, so they could go have that drink. But after she ditched her white lab coat and threw it into the machine, too, she grabbed her tote bag and ran for the bathroom. Peggy splashed cold water on her face, brushed her teeth and fixed her hair.

She cast a last dissatisfied look into the mirror, pinched her stupid pug nose in a futile attempt to make it narrower—why had he kissed it?—and slung the tote over her shoulder. She took a deep breath and marched out of the bathroom, hoping Shirlie would be gone.

She was, but Marly pounced on her before she could get out the door. “What’s going on, Peggo? Troy Barrington left two hours ago, but he’s now waiting for you outside.”

Peggy became fascinated with the array of nail polishes on the wall behind Marly. “I’m, uh, going to have a drink with him.”

Her coworker stared at her. “What happened to inner balance and a year alone and Peggy Power?”

“It’s just a drink.”

“Uh-huh.” Marly smirked. “Then bottoms up, hon! But I want to hear all about it tomorrow.”

“Just do me a favor, will you? Don’t tell Shirlie.”

“Shirl has a nose like a bloodhound. She’ll sniff it out within seconds.”

“Well, try to keep it from her as long as possible, okay? I think she has a crush on Troy.”

Marly nodded.

“And it’s just a drink.”

“Right.”

“It’s not even dinner.”

“I hear you.”

“I coach his nieces, so we’ll probably just talk about them and how I can help improve their game.”

“Peggy, just shut up already and go meet the guy? He’s right outside the door.”

And he was. With her heart sitting on her tonsils, Peg opened it, walked out tentatively and said, “Hi.”

He seemed amused. “Hi.” Then he reached out and took her hand. “Do you want to go to a bar?”

“We could. Or we could just go to my place or yours and get this out of our systems.”

7

TROY’S JAW DROPPED OPEN. This woman was nothing if not direct. “Get it out of our systems?”

“You know,” Peggy said, “this lust thing. We both want to act on it. So we should just get it out of the way and move on, don’t you agree?”

Troy stared at her. “No, I don’t agree. I’d like to get to know you.” The words surprised him as much as they seemed to surprise her.

She stared back at him, seeming perplexed, while he felt the same way. This obviously wasn’t the answer she’d expected—and quite frankly it wasn’t the answer he normally would have given. Wasn’t no-strings-attached sex every guy’s fantasy?

“But it’s easier this way,” she argued. “You don’t have to struggle with the first, second, third and fourth down. You just score.”

Troy said, “Where’s the fun in that? It’s like the opposite team handing you the ball and inviting you over the goal line. There’s no game. That sucks.”

“You didn’t seem to object to scoring a couple of hours ago.”

“I certainly did not, but that was a surprise outcome. I didn’t expect that you’d—”

“Be that easy?”

“Don’t put words in my mouth, Peggy. I don’t think you were easy at all. I sensed there was a real struggle going on inside you. It made me want you even more.”

“Oh, but now that I say I’m ready to jump you, you lose interest. See, it’s all a game. A mind game.”

“I’m not here to play a mind game, and who said I’ve lost interest? You’re being extremely difficult. In fact, most guys would take off at this point.”

“No, they wouldn’t.” Peggy stuck out her chin. “Most guys would take me up on the invitation to my apartment.”

He blew out an exasperated breath. “Okay, you have a point,” he conceded. “But consider the possibility that I might see more in you than a one-night stand, okay?”

Her eyes flashed provocatively. “What if I don’t see the same potential in you?”

Troy stopped and pulled her to him so that their bodies touched. He felt her heartbeat accelerate and smiled. “Then I’ll just have to change your mind, won’t I?” He angled his head toward hers and noted that she raised her mouth for his kiss. Instead of delivering on her expectations, he left her wanting and walked in silence to his car, where he opened the door and turned to hand her in.

She’d stopped, and now she stared from the car to him. She put a hand over her mouth. “You’re the stalker!” She backed away.

Oh, hell. Not this.

“I recognize the car now. I couldn’t figure out why you looked familiar….”

“I’m not a stalker. I was sitting in the parking lot because I’d just come out of Benito’s,” he lied. “And I got a call on my cell phone. Then I saw you notice me, and I was afraid you’d think just what you thought. So I ducked down.”

“Why am I not believing this?”

“Because you have a suspicious nature?” He stared her straight in the eye. “Look, if I were some kind of perverted creep, don’t you think I’d have been more aggressive with you before?”

She chewed her lip. “Well, I did make it pretty easy for you.”

Troy sighed. “Fine. I’m a weirdo and a stalker. I have piano wire, a shovel and a bag of cement in the trunk.” He popped it for her, and she could see that there was nothing there.

“Why did you leave when I told you I’d called the cops?”

“Because I really didn’t want to get into a conversation with them, or be written up for something I wasn’t doing!”

“Oh.”

“Would you like to have that drink now?” He patted the door. “The salon has my name and number, remember.”

She clearly felt foolish now, but still she struggled for the upper hand, like the scrapper she was. “You don’t have to do that,” she told him, finally getting in. “Open doors and put on the gentleman show for me.”

It’s just a stalker thing, honey. She didn’t know it yet, but she was going to lose. “I want to do it. And it’s not a show.” Troy shut the door and walked around the front of the Lotus.

He opened the driver’s-side door and slid in next to her. Peggy’s hair smelled sweet, like jasmine and honey—in marked contrast to her sharp, cynical words. It was yet another contradiction about her that intrigued him.

“Okay, so now that we’ve established that I’m not a stalker,” he said, “why are you trying to sabotage this thing between us before it even gets off the ground?”

“Hey, I’m just trying to cut through the dating bullshit, you know? I’m so sick of it.”

He shook his head at her. “The ‘dating bullshit,’ as you call it, can be fertilizer. Something extraordinary might bloom from spreading it around.”

She laughed. “You have a refreshing perspective on all this, don’t you, Troy?”

“Your own perspective is certainly unique—though I won’t call it refreshing. I call it downright cynical.”

“C’mon, I’m just brave enough to verbalize what we’re all thinking. How many times have you sat opposite a woman and thought, Christ. I already know I can’t stand her but I have to sit through two more hours of this and then pay for her dinner and drive her ass home.”

Troy couldn’t help but laugh.

Peggy continued in a parody of a man’s voice, “And I probably won’t even get a good-night kiss for my trouble, much less get laid.”

This went so far as to get a pig snort out of him while he tried to catch his breath. Finally he said, “You are not a nice woman.”

“I agree. But am I accurate?”

“Maybe.”

“So why don’t we have that drink at either your place or mine and not play the games?”

“All right, all right. We’ll go to yours. Mine is a wreck, since I’m in the middle of remodeling.”

“Great. Take a left up here, and then an immediate right…. By the way, I’m not a slut. It’s just that you’re…different.”

He hooted. “If I only had a nickel for every time I’ve heard that line from a woman.”

Peggy seemed nonplussed.

“What, no caustic comment? As long as we’re being up-front and not playing games, darlin’, I’m fully aware that it was my wallet and my job that were ‘different,’ not me.” But those days are gone, Troy thought gloomily. Now I’m chopped liver.

“I’m not impressed by money,” she said stiffly. “And I’m not impressed by your former football stardom, either. I made my college team and started, too.”

Silence fell in the car.

“You what?” Troy asked. “Was it a women’s college?”

“No,” she said icily, “it was not. It was Bryce University.”

After a stunned moment he said slowly, “I remember reading about it. How a girl fought her way onto the team, a placekicker. That was you?”

“That was me.”

He looked at her with new respect. “I’ll be damned. What was it like for you? To be the only woman in that sea of testosterone?”

She avoided his eyes. “Let’s just say that I had my highest highs and my lowest lows during the season I played.”

“Why didn’t you go back?” Troy pulled the Lotus into the parking lot behind an apartment building. He was pretty sure he already knew the answer to that question. The guys would have made it miserable for her, and even male placekickers weren’t viewed with respect. They weren’t considered “real” players, didn’t go through the same drills or practice plays.

She avoided the question by getting out of the car before he’d cut the engine, not waiting for him to open her door. Her hair fell down her back like a coppery waterfall, ending just above a neat little waist and a spectacular ass. Those legs were solid with muscle, only the inner thighs soft and welcoming.

Troy liked the way the moonlight softened her, bathed her in a gentle glow. He tried to divert himself from the thought that she was bare to the air under her black cotton miniskirt. He’d ripped the panties off her, after all. She couldn’t possibly have salvaged them.

Peggy tossed him an impatient glance over her shoulder, unaware that despite his words about getting to know her he’d have loved nothing better than to bend her over the hood of the Lotus, soft and willing and even begging for the release he could bring her.

He groaned inwardly as he imagined her spread-eagled on the car, lush breasts flattened against the warm metal, hair tumbled over her naked back and that sweet ass, among other things, bare to his gaze. He’d wanted to do all kinds of dirty things with her, ever since he’d seen her from the parking lot that first night.

Obviously, something about her just brought out the pervert, if not the stalker, in him. He’d better get a handle on his fantasies.

He caught up with her in three long strides and reminded himself that he couldn’t get involved with this girl. What was he thinking? Hadn’t he been delivered a four-inch stack of city regulations? Didn’t he, right at this very moment, have notes in his pocket on possible violations After Hours had committed?

He felt sleazy. Yeah, you’re some gentleman, big guy. No doubt! You seduce her on her own massage table while you’re planning to kick her off the premises. Nice.