Lie in the Moment Read online

  He held out the deck of cards. “Cut?”

  She did, choosing a place in the middle for him to split the deck. He tapped the cards on the table and began flinging cards with all the flair of a back-alley hawker. Where’s the lady? Where’s the lady? Find the lady. Double your money if you can find the lady.

  How much of your father do you have in you, Roland Chandler?

  “You’re staring,” he told her as he returned the favor, pinning her with his bright blue gaze. He had such a serious face; he could have been a judge or a politician or something, but she doubted that anyone really ever knew what he was thinking unless he wanted them to.

  “I know that technique. Staring usually makes people talk,” she said obliquely.

  He let his lashes drift downward. It wasn’t fair; he had long, lustrous dark lashes that any woman would kill to have. Only a small sliver of blue showed as he murmured, “I’d be happy to talk. I can talk about anything. Where shall I start? With your mouth? I’d like to see your lips around my cock.”

  Maura blinked. His mouth had taken on a devilish cast. She imagined going to her knees and unzipping the fly of his pants and doing exactly what he said, wrapping her lips around that cock and pleasuring him. He wouldn’t expect her to do it.

  With a determined glare, she leaned forward and got in his space, just as she would do with any suspect. One of his dark eyebrows went up, but she ignored it, and slithered out of the chair to her knees. The rug—soft as flour—felt just as good against her knees as it had against her feet.

  His hands—big hands with prominent knuckles and long fingers—tightened on the chair.

  “Maura—”

  “Shut up. Unless you’re going to keep telling me what I should do with my mouth.”

  He didn’t say anything as she unbuckled his belt and carefully unzipped the fly of his pants, revealing the massive package that he sported. The bulbous head of his penis escaped from the opening she’d made and when she’d gotten his zipper all the way open, the impressive breadth and thickness of him became immediately apparent.

  “Oh, my,” she said with a sigh, and slid a hand forward to cup his balls.

  He grunted and his head hit the back of the chair.

  She flicked a gaze up to his face. His eyes were blazing now, fixed on her even more fiercely, the skin around his eyes taut with arousal.

  “I bet women do this to you all the time,” she said coolly. She didn’t like the idea, didn’t want to think of herself as one of many women all too willing to service the great Roland Chandler, but she wanted her mouth on his dick, wanted to feel the thick earthy weight of him against her tongue, wanted to feel herself get wet at the idea of taking him inside her. She’d always liked giving head.

  “Shut up and press your face to it.”

  She obeyed, pressing her face against the thick length, feeling the smooth skin covering the hardness, the pulsing veins that throbbed with every beat of his heart.

  “Now slide your tongue underneath, from the bottom to the tip.”

  Her mouth open, Maura slid her face down his dick, nuzzling him, before she touched the tip of her tongue to the base, pressing, teasing. His hand came to the back of her head and tightened in her hair. Only then did she flatten out her tongue and give him a solid stroking from base to tip.

  The strong thighs beneath her forearms tensed, and she smiled as she lingered at the head of him, pressing openmouthed kisses to the smooth head, teasing him with subtle brushes of her tongue.

  “Take it in your mouth.”

  She couldn’t take all of him, not because she didn’t want to, but because he was just too big. She gripped the base of him with her hand instead and took the rest in her mouth, holding her lips over her teeth as she slid them downward over him, pressing firmly until she’d gone as far as she could. Then she slid back upward, tugging just a little and massaging the base of him with her hand.

  “Again,” he demanded, but she ignored him, bending so that she could get a good view of the balls beneath the heavy shaft, weighing him in her hands. His grip on her hair hurt a little, but she kind of liked it, especially when a strangled sound escaped his control. With a little hum of excitement, she leaned forward and tugged one of his balls into her mouth with gentle suction. All the while her left hand stroked his shaft and her right . . . her right snuck between the fabric of his pants and his open fly, and teased the taut flesh between his balls and his ass, pressing against it.

  “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck,” he chanted, hips rising up in the chair.

  With an evil chuckle, Maura released him, removing his hand from her hair and standing over him. “Win and you can finish in my mouth.”

  He was breathing hard, his cheeks flushed and his expression incredulous. For a long moment, she thought she’d judged incorrectly and that he’d be furious, but then his eyes crinkled at the corners. “You are one evil woman,” he said with admiration.

  “Thank you,” Maura agreed primly, and took her seat as demurely as an eighteenth-century spinster. She picked up her hand. “So what are your stakes, handsome?”

  ROLAND HAD GOTTEN more blowjobs than he could reasonably count, but he didn’t think any would be quite as memorable as this one. While she examined her cards, he carefully returned his pants back to some semblance of decency. He wasn’t entirely sure why he bothered. It would serve her right to play with his hard cock staring her in the face, but he couldn’t do it, not with her looking so sweet and innocent. Innocent, his ass.

  “How about this: clothes or information?”

  She thought about it. Thought about it carefully. He was glad to see that it was at least something of a dilemma for her. “Deal,” she said finally. “Winner of the hand picks. We’ll go best of five.”

  He agreed. His first hand was nothing spectacular, a pair of sevens, but he could tell by her face that she didn’t have anything to speak of, and he won the first pot.

  “Clothes,” he said immediately.

  She removed her watch, which she set aside on the table. She dealt the second hand and won.

  “Information,” she said just as quickly.

  His eyes narrowed, but he answered. “I’d ask what topic, but I think I can guess. Twelve years ago, at MIT, I knew Keenan was dangerous, but I made the mistake of trusting him again. I hadn’t seen him in almost eight years.”

  She listened intently, her whole body moving forward, and he cursed himself for giving her even a sliver of hope that he’d actually include her on his hunt for Keenan.

  “Why not?”

  “I’m sure your father would be happy to tell you, but the truth is that I was arrested, along with Keenan, only instead of jail, my stepfather made a deal with the prosecutor. I was sent abroad.” He clipped off the last sentence before he explained any further. She didn’t need to know about the “service” he’d provided to his country in return for being let out of a jail sentence.

  “So that’s why you started MIT so late.”

  Since she didn’t ask what he’d been arrested for, he figured she probably knew from his father’s files. He nodded. He’d been twenty-four before he’d managed to escape the clutches of the U.S. government, though no one ever really escaped, not all the way, not even him.

  “And when you got back, Keenan was out of jail as well?”

  “Yeah.” Roland nodded. “I thought that what had happened to get us arrested was an accident. I thought he was just as changed as I was, that going to prison had made him realize his mistakes.”

  Her eyes had softened as she listened, not a reaction he’d been expecting. “He was your cousin,” she said without malice. “Your friend.”

  Roland gripped the cards in his hand so tightly that they began to bend slightly. “I still should have seen what he was capable of. At that point, I should have known.” For someone who’d been trained to ferret out secrets, he’d been remarkably stupid. He’d hidden most of his experiences abroad from his friends back then. Even now, neither Nick nor
Milton knew what he’d done in the years between high school and when he’d started MIT, and he intended to keep it that way.

  “You think what happened to my family is your fault,” she concluded, eyes wide with realization. Somehow, she hadn’t considered that Roland Chandler would concern himself with her family. He hadn’t known them.

  “Don’t forget Blake,” he confirmed wryly. “It is my fault.” Her family’s death, Blake’s near strangulation ten years ago and her kidnapping in March, and the deaths of thousands of men and women who’d been killed in terror attacks that Keenan had instigated. All his fault.

  Frowning, she started to ask another question, but he looked away from her and started dealing the cards in his hands with unnecessary briskness. “And that’s more than enough information.”

  She picked up her cards with a bland expression. He couldn’t quite tell what she had.

  “I’ll take two,” she murmured.

  He dealt the cards fairly and waited. She didn’t look pleased or displeased, but beneath the table, he heard her feet rubbing the carpet in anticipation. She had a good hand, then. He had a pair of twos. Not enough to beat her unless he happened to get another pair of twos, and that was impossible with this deck.

  A few minutes later, she laid a pretty little flush down, jack high. “Your shirt, Mr. Chandler.”

  He stood, pleased when her eyes fell immediately to his erection beneath the fabric of his pants. He jerked off his shirt and tossed it aside.

  Maura glanced at the windows, at the lights in the building across the street. Other than the small automatic lights from the floor, the only illumination from his office was from the bright glow of the moon peeking through the clouds and its reflection on the snow. If someone were across the street, they wouldn’t see more than shadowy figures, but that might be enough to guess what they were up to. Prurient excitement filled her liquid gaze.

  Smiling to himself, he took his seat again, and on the next deal, despite a full house, she lost. She removed her shirt.

  Then her bra.

  Only minutes later, she was sitting demurely in her panties, and he was sliding her cards across the polished surface of the table. She looked at the cards and her eyes rose to his. “I thought you agreed not to cheat.”

  With his most innocent expression firmly in place, he asked, “What do you mean?”

  She turned the cards around to show him. “I’m pretty sure there aren’t five aces in a deck of cards.”

  Her breasts were beautiful in the soft, shadowed light coming in from overhead.

  “Guess I’ll have to forfeit.” He shook his head, as if sad about the outcome, and stood, reaching for the button of his pants.

  Rolling her eyes, she tossed the cards down on the table with a sigh. “I said that you could come in my mouth if you won.”

  “I’m counting on you not being able to resist,” he taunted, and lowered his zipper an inch at a time, watching her eyes follow the motion.

  “I never back down from a challenge,” she warned him, but her eyes were smiling.

  He let his pants fall to his ankles so she could get a good look at the erection he was sporting. He never backed down from a challenge either, and she was a challenge from head to toe.

  Umm . . . hello. Maura didn’t think she’d ever seen a more beautiful man in her life. He wasn’t bulky, but every line and curve spoke of training, of constant effort, of hidden strength. The rippled muscles of his stomach tugged the eye downward, the sharp cuts of muscle above his hip bones arrowing directly to the turgid erection that arched upward toward his stomach.

  He stroked himself, once, solidly, and Maura felt herself grow damp again—she was going to have to throw these panties away. Shit. God, she wanted that heavy weight between her legs. She wanted him to squeeze it inside her, inch by inch, until she was full of him.

  “You sure you want to do this?” He was staring between her legs, at the green fabric offering her a last bit of decorum. She squeezed her thighs together, feeling damp below her underwear, down to the middle of her thighs. She was sure. God, was she sure. Nodding curtly, she straightened her shoulders and started to walk toward him.

  “No,” he said, shaking his head. “Bend facedown over the table.”

  Maura gasped. She couldn’t help it. No one had ever ordered her to do something like that. A mental picture of herself, bent over the conference table next to the enormous windows, open and exposed to him, made her bite her lip. She wanted to be vulnerable like that, wanted him to take her like that. With stilted, jerky movements, she turned and braced her hands on the satiny wood, lifting just enough that her hips were at the edge, and then bending forward.

  The shiny wood table was as slick as a polished gem, inlaid with obsidian and polished quartz. She was short enough that her toes dangled just shy of the floor. Keeping her legs together, she eased her hands forward, balancing with her hips, until they were level with her shoulders, allowing her to keep her breasts from being completely crushed against the cold, hard surface. She hung for a moment, then glanced back at him. He was staring, his face intense, his hand gripping his dick. Maura breathed in and out of her nose to keep from panting in anticipation.

  “You are so beautiful,” he murmured, “but look away for me. I want you to just feel this.”

  Maura licked her lips and turned her gaze back to the surface of the table. The obsidian inlaid into the natural grooves and knots in the wood looked like a river of black lava, flowing toward her, as hot as the blood in her veins. She didn’t hear him move, but a swirl of cool air against the overheated skin on the back of her thighs told her he was close. Her legs tensed in anticipation.

  “Relax,” he murmured, and his strong, wide-palmed hands stroked from her shoulders down her back to the string of her thong. He stroked along it slowly.

  The air stirred again—she thought he might be kneeling—oh, Lord help me—and then he was nuzzling her lower back, the rough surface of his five-o’clock shadow pleasantly abrasive against the sensitive skin. His fingers slid to the cheeks of her ass and tightened, squeezing and separating the cheeks of her ass. She felt his teeth scrape the top of one butt cheek and then the other. Blatantly panting now, Maura concentrated on the table, feeling like she was falling into the obsidian, drowning in a moment of pure lust.

  His teeth caught her thong and tugged, pulling the scrap of fabric over the cheeks of her ass and down, his breath hot on her ass, her thighs, the back of her knees. He released the scrap of fabric at her ankles, and it hung, suspended, for one brief moment before falling away entirely. She was blushing—heat everywhere, including the cheeks of her ass.

  He chuckled softly. Maura hung her head.

  His hands slid up her thighs, cool compared to the heat of her blush, and he stroked her ass.

  “Spread your legs for me, Maura,” he murmured, and she shivered as his dick brushed the crack between her legs, asking for her to open.

  Using her palms, she lifted herself up a little higher and spread her legs as wide as she could, surrendering everything, even arching back a little.

  “Yeah, baby,” he whispered, “just like that.”

  His fingers probed between her legs, dipping into the abundant moisture before sliding roughly inside her. “God, you’re wet and tight.”

  His voice, a low growl that dragged along her nerve endings, made her writhe against the hard wood beneath her, the smooth surface already warm against her body, as supple as honey.

  He removed his fingers and gripped her left hip firmly. “Pinch your nipples,” he ordered.

  Maura obeyed immediately, balancing on her right arm and using her left to brush and then pinch both of her nipples, gasping when the aching sensation between her legs increased. He reached for something—she heard cloth rustling and then the subtle sound of foil tearing.

  Moments later, the head of his penis slid wetly across her opening and down to her clit, and she jerked. He moved it up and down again, wetting it th
oroughly before pressing forward into her opening.

  She tensed and caught herself on both arms again. She couldn’t help it. At first it felt like enormous pressure, like there was no way he could possibly fit inside her, but he used his strong fingers to stretch the skin on either side of her opening and slowly rocked, inching forward with forceful nudges that made ridiculous “Oh, oh, oh,” sounds escape her lips.

  He fucked her; there was no other word for it, stuffing that massive cock into the tight grip of her pussy.

  When he was all the way inside, he removed his hand and placed it next to hers on the table, his watch gleaming. Bending over her, he slid his right hand around the top of her right thigh and opened her, supporting her with his hips and thighs as he ground into her, stretching her further.

  “Okay?” His voice sounded tight, as if he had something wrapped around his throat . . . or his cock, as the case may be.

  Maura honestly didn’t know. She’d never felt so close to the edge of pain and pleasure. He was so big.

  “Uh . . .” she managed. “I’m not sure.”

  He chuckled and nipped the back of her neck. “It’ll feel good. I promise.”

  And there was the devil that lived inside him, using that voice and the soft motion of his lips to make promises. Maura knew it was a mistake, giving in to the promise of pleasure, but she wanted it, wanted him.

  Turning her head to the side, she bit his bicep in retaliation, and he moved, dragging out of her, almost all the way, and then squeezing himself back inside, the heavy slickness of him penetrating deeply.

  “Fuck,” she moaned. Her skin had grown slick, sticking to the table, but that didn’t stop her from arching back as he withdrew again, trying to keep him inside. He grunted and thrust forward. She resisted, making him work for each inch, pleasure exploding inside her as they battled, her body pushing at him as he thrust forward and trying to keep him as he pulled away. Here was the battle of wills that existed between them. Surrender and domination, entwined in transcendent pleasure that had her forgetting everything but the steady drag of him in and out of her body, the drum of her heart in her ears, and the heat of him behind her, taking her.