Rarities Unlimited 02 - Running Scared

speakerphone and slid his newly freed hand under Dana’s skirt. She gave him a look that promised she would get even when he least expected it.
    He smiled.
    “Risa went to UCLA,” Niall continued. “Challenged most of the undergraduate courses at the end of the first year and passed. Two years total for a B.A.” His fingers traced lazy upward circles on Dana’s thighs. “A few more years for a combined master’s and Ph.D. Top one percent of her class. Worked at the L.A. County Museum as an intern—”
    “And the museum loved her like a little flower, did handsprings to bring her along, and wept buckets when I stole her away,” Shane interrupted. “Tell me more I don’t know.”
    Niall’s finger slid beneath delicate underwear, found sultry heat waiting, and he barely managed to bite back a husky sound of satisfaction. “That’s just it, boyo. Once Cherelle blew out of town, there’s nothing you don’t know about Risa. After age eighteen, everything we found and everything Risa volunteered on our employment application match. It adds up to a checkered childhood and saintly adulthood. She pulled herself out of poverty with raw intelligence and will.”
    “Okay. What about the lovely Ms. Cherelle?”
    “Ah, yes.” Niall slid one finger in beneath the lacy underwear, felt the helpless clench of Dana’s response, held her close, hard, deep, withdrew, returned, and smiled as she arched to drive him deeper still. He wanted his dick where his fingers were, but he wanted to torture her more.
    “Niall?” Shane prompted.
    “Just checking something.”
    Dana bit back a sound and tried to squirm off Niall’s lap. He didn’t let her. He simply kept her pinned between his chest and his hands, pleasuring her.
    “After Cherelle left Arkansas,” Niall said, “she was picked up for vagrancy, small shoplifting, hooking, underage drinking, petty grifts, that kind of thing.”
    “Drugs?”
    “Never made it stick. She took up with several men, one at a time, mostly, and—”
    “Pimps?”
    “Unknown.” Slick fingers probed, plucked, teased, until Dana gave up trying to get away and settled in to finish what she had started. “I’m guessing not. Cherelle only got busted for hooking once. If she’d been a full-time pro, she’d have been busted more often.”
    “What’s she doing in Vegas?”
    “Ask Risa.”
    “What do you think Cherelle is doing in Vegas?”
    With one arm Niall lifted Dana off his lap so that he could reach his zipper. “At best, she’s borrowing money from an old friend.”
    “At worst?” Shane asked.
    “She’s a petty thief, a grifter, and a part-time whore. You do the math.”
    “Risa seems pretty tight with her,” Shane said neutrally.
    “Question is, how tight?” Just bloody perfect , Niall thought as he filled Dana.
    “The kind of friend you do things for?” Shane asked.
    Fiercely Niall held himself still, held Dana still, felt their mutual pulse beating thickly. “Are you saying you don’t trust Risa?”
    “I’m saying Risa might have her loyalties divided between her childhood pal and her adult responsibilities.”
    “I’m voting for the adult to win that race.”
    “So am I,” Shane said. “But the child can trip you up every time. Dump the stuff in my file.”
    “It’s done.”
    Shane disconnected.
    Niall didn’t bother. He just started driving into his lapful of woman until they were hot and slick and came in a wild kind of silence that was filled with the hammering of their hearts.
    “Bloody hell,” he said against her neck when he could talk again, “what got into you?”
    “Besides you?”
    He started to laugh, then groaned as she clenched around him, released, and sighed in the aftermath of climax.
    “The Kama Sutra ivories arrived,” she said, shivering. “Exquisite. Simply exquisite. As soon as I cataloged them, I knew I had to . . . tell you about them.”
    “I’m all ears.”
    “Not quite,” she said, clenching around him again.
    His breath broke. “Learn anything new?”
    “Did I mention that each position is demonstrated not by a single carving of a man and a woman but rather by interlocking carvings?”
    “Interlocking?” He smiled slightly. “How?”
    “Guess.”
    He moved.
    “Good guess,” she said. “Now let me show you an interesting variation on that theme. First I turn this way.”
    “Here, let me help.” He lifted her just enough to give her wiggle room.
    “Perfect,” she said, half facing him. “Now