Chapter Twenty-Four
A tangled heap would best describe her piled on the floor like an unbelted accident test dummy, after being slammed into a wall at 50mph in a Mini Cooper. Of course, test dummies had clothes. Or at least, she thought they did.
Her humiliation was complete.
“Jess!” Sam scrambled to the edge of the table and looked down. He reached for her. “You okay?”
“Other than a sore tailbone and being naked on a sketchy floor, I’m fine.” She untangled herself and took the hand up, rubbing her butt. “So much for post-coital snuggling and sharing our feelings. I don’t think I could get back on the table if I tried.”
He rolled off the table. “Good, because I’m only up for forty-seven seconds of snuggling before I need a beer and pork rinds to refill my man tank.”
Trying to squelch a laugh, her jiggling body ached with the effort. “Don’t make me laugh,” she pleaded.
He smiled and led her around the table, lifted her up, and deposited her on the surface. “Lie on your stomach.”
She groaned and rolled over. At this point, he could ask anything and she’d agree as long as she didn’t have to walk anywhere for the next few minutes. He moved beside her and gently pressed down on her lower back with his fingertips. “Let doctor Sam do his magic.”
“I thought you already showed me the magic a few minutes ago. I’m sure I got a thorough examination.”
Sam chuckled and started a massage that was part therapeutic and part erotic. The man was shameless.
“You can never have too much magic,” he said as his hands kneaded her lower back and buttocks. Then he moved lower. Her legs parted of their own volition. The detective was a sex master. What could he do in a bed?
“The pain is in my spine, not between my legs,” she scolded without heat while he teased her clitoris. Damn, it felt good. “Ahhhh.”
“Like that?” He leaned to nip her left cheek. “How’s your back?”
Feeling somewhat exposed, she was surprised to realize that she’d put her trust in this man, a near stranger. Then again, they’d crossed a boundary once tonight already. He wasn’t as much of an enigma as before. Getting naked with someone shifted any relationship, even a non-relationship.
“What back?” He deepened the pressure and she had her second orgasm, face down, on the massage table. When she could breathe again, she rolled over. “You are some healer, Dr. Wheeler. My painful tailbone is cured.”
Jess reached for his erection and gently pulled him close. “Come here,” she ordered. “I’d like to cure what ails you.”
And she did.
* * *
Later, when they returned home, showered, and made love one more time, Sam felt her warm breath on his chest as Jess slept like the dead beside him. He played with her hair, the spikes sticking up at crazy angles. He normally liked longer hair, but on her, the cut was sexy-as-hell. Of course, everything about her was sexy. She resembled Kate Beckinsale in Underworld, without the sprayed on leather pants or vampire teeth.
Hot.
Maybe they should go shopping. He’d love to see her in black leather from head to toe.
“What are you thinking?” Jess lifted her head and blinked sleep from her eyes. He’d wanted to have her in his bed, if only to get his yen for her over with. Now that he had her there, he couldn’t imagine going back to a professional relationship. She was fire and silk and strength, all wrapped up in a sexy package. And she had him hooked.
“About Kate Beckinsale,” he admitted. “She’s my crush.”
“Interesting,” she said. “She’s my girl-crush, too. Anyone who can kick butt in skin-tight leather deserves my vote.” Sliding up, she kissed him. “I have those pants.”
Sam leaned back. “Are you serious?”
“Yep. Taryn, Summer, and I watched Underworld during a late-night horror movie marathon. They teased me about looking like Kate so the next day we went out and found a reasonable facsimile of her leather pants. I wore them for one girl’s night out, and then stored them away after four guys on the dance floor asked me to bite them.”
“Did they burn up in the fire?”
She shook her head. “I think I’ve found your fetish. And, no, they’re in storage.” Kissing him again, she climbed up and over him. “If you ask nicely. I’ll dig them out just for you.”
Sam grinned. “Please?”
* * *
It was almost eleven when Jess dragged her aching body out of bed, showered, and took Spike for a long walk. Sam had gone into the office to catch up on other cases. Since it was Saturday, he said he liked the quiet and wouldn’t be long. Jess had a case to close out and decided to take Spike with her.
The client was the owner of a small boutique lingerie store. She was being sued by a woman who tried to fit a pair of EE breasts into a C cup bra because the item did not come in her size and she just had to have it. The clasp, under the weight of her pendulous breasts, popped open and hit her in the eye, causing a tiny scratch.
The resulting injury claim was paid out by the insurance company—although sighting the temporary visual damage was caused by the plaintiff—but Mrs. Johnson wanted more than her doctor visits paid for. She claimed that she suffered the loss of marital relations due to the four days she had to wear the eye patch and therefore was entitled to 4.5 million additional dollars.
The lawyers tried to point out that not one part of her body that would be involved in said marital relations was harmed by the injury that could only been see through a high-powered microscope, but Mr. Johnson tearfully claimed that the unsightly eye patch had caused him severe and permanent erectile dysfunction.
Nancy Dorset of Nancy’s Naughty’s, hired Brash & Brazen, Inc. to prove Mrs. Johnson was nothing but a scammer out for a big payout. The case would be heard in two weeks. Jess was on a deadline.
She already spent two days following the couple around, hoping they were the types that liked sex along a walking trail or in a public bathroom, somewhere where Jess could snap a photo. So far, all she’d gotten was them on a trip to a Mercedes Benz dealership and a walkthrough of a million-dollar mansion with a pool, built next to a fancy golf course.
Since the Johnson’s were both unemployed and liked to sleep in, she found them home with their gold colored Ford Focus parked in the driveway. She rolled down the windows and waited a few doors down the street. And waited. For three hours.
When the couple finally emerged just after four o’clock, Mrs. Johnson was sporting a skirt too short for anything but clubbing—or anyone over twenty—five-and a coat that appeared to be made of rabbit fur. Her husband had on a pressed pale blue suit of a style that was stolen from the seventies.
They got in their car and took off, their exhaust pipe coughing out black smoke all the way down the street.
The sexually deprived duo ended up at a high end jewelry shop on Packard. “They’re confident of a win,” Jess said and parked across the street. The couple vanished inside the store for an hour while Jess and Spike discussed bushes and fire hydrants, and the pretty pug that trotted by.
Well, she talked. He licked the windows.
The mutt needed therapy.
“There they are,” Jess said and straightened on her seat. The Johnson’s exited the building and the missus paused, holding her hand up to the sunlight. Light beamed off the ring, temporarily blinding Jess, and the astronauts in the International Space Station.
“Wow.” Jess snapped a picture. Even from there, Jess suspected that the ring cost more than she’d make in a year. Mr. Johnson slapped his wife on her bodacious butt and hurried her into their car. Before the woman got her seatbelt on, he had her in his lap and his tongue down her throat.
Ick. It appeared that diamonds were indeed a girl’s best friend. And Mr. Johnson’s, too.
After a couple minutes of that, they made it half a block when Mrs. Johnson dropped her head out of sight. Jess clicked the camera to video.
Mr. Johnson managed to steer the car into an empty parking lot behind a closed restaurant with his eyes half closed. Jess gave them a minute and got out. They were both so focused on overcoming his erectile dysfunction that they didn’t notice Jess. She filmed for a minute, getting nothing but heavy petting, thankful that she hadn’t had lunch, then got back in her SUV when they fired up their car. For the next three hours they shopped and finally got it on in the car, wedged between a panel truck and a Yukon. Just when Jess couldn’t take any more of their antics she finally had enough footage for an X-Rated film festival.
It was the loud shrieks and moans that she knew she’d still remember when she was a hundred years old and toothless. Mrs. Johnson didn’t hold back on her enthusiasm.
She forwarded the digital file to Nancy and needed a hot shower. Maybe two. This was the worst day of her three years as a PI. Nancy texted her back five minutes later:
You are the best!!!!!
Happy for her client, Jess looked for the nearest store that sold bleach and a wire brush. And a new life.