Then looked up at him.
She didn’t have to say thank-you. He’d remember that look, too, for the rest of his life.
She ran her hands over it, as if to check for broken bones.
“How did you find it?”
“Put out a bulletin on John-Mark’s car. A deputy friend of mine pulled him over on his way to Black Oak for a minor infraction. She called me and held him there until I showed up. Guitar was in the backseat. I took it from him and he knows why. He felt so guilty, Glory. He almost cried. He was so scared of Cameron—she can be tough, believe me—that by the time I got there he just looked like a skinny, quivering kid. I tore him a new one, anyway, one he isn’t going to forget. I told him if he needed money he could get himself some better skills and a better damn job. I’ll see about helping him however I can. I think he has it in him to make it.”
Glory was listening to this as if it was now her favorite bedtime story. “But... wait. Didn’t you have to be somewhere today, Eli? I called your office yesterday. They said you were going to be gone all day.”
He didn’t even hesitate. “I had to be here with you.”
She stared at him and frowned a little, but he met her gaze evenly.
It was only the truth. Or at least one part of it. He didn’t need to burden her with the rest.
“Want me to put it back in its case?” he asked. “We wouldn’t want to jounce it off the bed.”
“If you would.”
He settled it tenderly back in and locked it up. And he sat down across from her.
“You look like a czarina,” he said softly.
“In all the excitement earlier, I may have forgotten to tell you how hard and thoroughly I blew off Franco Francone.”
“So I gathered,” Eli murmured. “But say it again, because it’s making me hard.”
She laughed.
He leaned forward and kissed her softly. Then traced her lips delicately with his tongue. Then parted her mouth with his lips, and took that kiss to dizzying, spiraling depths, savoring the sweet hot satin of her mouth. He slipped the furry throw down from her other shoulder and dragged the fur lightly, deliberately, to and fro over her nipples.
She moaned softly against his mouth. “You are a mad genius,” she whispered.
“You have no idea what I know,” he whispered by way of reply. “In my hands, everything is a sex toy.”
“Even me?”
“Especially you.”
She wrapped another little section of the fur throw around the head of his cock and stroked hard, letting her fingernails drag lightly behind to cup his balls.
She did it again.
He hissed in a breath.
“I’m a quick learner,” she said.
“Holy...” he breathed, impressed. “Don’t stop.”
She did it again, then bent to close her mouth over the head and suck.
He groaned, and threaded his hands in her hair.
“Don’t stop...”
She dragged her tongue up the shaft, then closed her hands over it and stroked hard, and leisurely and skillfully, and sat up again to cover his lips with hers.
