Trust Me on This - Jennifer Crusie [46]
This was the rat who had planned to arrest her even while he was kissing her on her own bed. No-good rat.
He looked really good for a no-good rat.
Dennie walked toward him, trying very carefully not to be unsteady. “Stop looking at me like that,” she told him when she reached him. “I know he’s awful. I’m just trying to find out about this swamp he’s trying to sell you. Although you’re such a rat, I should let him sell it to you.”
Alec perked up a little and took her arm to steady her. “You have no taste in men,” he said. “Also you’re drunk.”
“Right both times,” she said. “I think I’ll go back to my room and pass out.”
“I’ll come with you,” he said. “You need somebody to chaperone you back to your room in case you decide to pick up a bellboy.”
“And the chaperone is you?” Dennie shook her head. “I don’t think so.”
“You don’t think at all.” Alec steered her to the elevator bank and punched the button for her floor. “I can’t believe you actually touched that guy with your mouth.” He looked at her as if waiting for a reaction, and she stuck her tongue out at him. “You got any mouthwash?” he said.
“He has a tongue like a raw oyster.” Dennie’s mouth scrunched up at the memory.
The elevator doors opened, and Alec gave her a gentle shove. “That I did not need to know.”
“You can’t imagine how awful it was.”
“I don’t want to imagine. Could we change the subject?”
The elevator doors had closed, and they were leaning against the red velvet back wall when Dennie realized that she had only half the story, the Bond half. To get the whole nine yards, she needed Alec’s side too. She looked at him out of the corner of her eye. He looked relaxed. What the hell. After all, her technique had worked beautifully on Bond. She turned her head and looked deep into Alec’s eyes. “At least Bond told me what he does for a living. You’ve never done that. What do I have to do to get that out of you?”
“Oh, yeah, he told you what he does—” Alec began, and then she stretched up and kissed him.
Her neck felt boneless, partly because of the multiple daiquiris and partly because kissing Alec always made her feel boneless. And since kissing him was at the moment a professional obligation, she put her back into it, arching and sliding against him with a liquid grace that made him first clutch at her, and then slide his hands down to her rear and pull her close to him while his tongue stroked her mouth and she drowned in his kiss.
“God, you kiss beautifully,” she said, moments later, trying to remember why she was playing with fire. “Is that what you do for a living? Kiss?”
“No,” Alec said, dazed. “Although I’m considering it now. This is great.” He bent his head to her again, and she ducked gracefully away.
“So what do you do?” she asked, struggling to get her breathing under control.
“I—” Alec began, and then stopped, a grin breaking slowly across his face. “Please, God, let this be happening. Don’t let it be a lie.”
“What?”
Alec cast a fervent gaze at the elevator ceiling. “Please let her be trying to seduce information out of me. Please let it be true.”
“Oh, very funny.” The elevator doors opened at the seventh floor, and Dennie walked out carefully.
“Wait, don’t give up.” Alec followed her out. “You can do it. Kiss me again.”
“Drop dead.” Dennie fished in her purse for her room card and jammed it in her door. Then she stepped inside, trying to shut the door in Alec’s face, but he slipped in behind her while she was turning around.
She had to give up daiquiris as part of her investigative technique. They made her slow. And evidently stupid. Trying to seduce Alec for information was definitely stupid. Trying to seduce Alec at all was a waste of time; he came preseduced anyway. Like a microwave entrée. You pressed his buttons, and he got hot.
Well, she had work to do. And great kissers were … well, not a dime a dozen. But not on her agenda.
Right. She had an agenda.
“Leave,” she said, but Alec was already stretched out on her bed and reaching for the phone.