One major distraction, p.10
One Major Distraction, page 10
No, not just with someone—with Flynn. She wouldn’t have said so much to anyone else.
There were just a few teachers in the lounge this afternoon, as Tess arrived with a plate of brownies. Flynn was not one of them; he had World History this period, if she remembered correctly. Leon Toller was sitting at the table in the corner, his head bent over a large, slick art book. Stephanie McCabe was checking her makeup and Serena Loomis stared out the window, looking as if she’d lost her best friend.
Tess would have been happy to drop off the brownies and leave without engaging any of the teachers in conversation, but Serena Loomis homed in on her before she had a chance to depart.
“Brownies. Great. Just what I need, something else to go straight to my hips.”
Tess’s initial reaction was to snap back, You don’t have to eat them, but she kept the comment to herself. Besides, the woman barely had any hips at all. She could use a few brownies.
“They’re just too good to resist,” Serena said in a less-caustic voice, as she grabbed one square. A small one. “I can’t cook at all. Mr. Benning must be in hog heaven. I imagine he thinks he’s found the ideal woman.”
Tess’s eyes went wide. Yes, she and Flynn did spend time together, but he’d been careful not to reveal too much…especially the past few days.
“Don’t look so surprised,” Serena said. “The man is helping you in the kitchen, for goodness’ sake. He’s washing dishes and wiping down tables. A man like Flynn Benning doesn’t do things like that unless he’s in love.”
“You’ve made some wrong assumptions,” Tess said softly. Very wrong.
“Okay, he’s in lust,” Serena said. “Call it whatever you want, the man is obviously obsessed with you.”
Tess turned toward the door. “I have to go.”
Serena fell in behind her. “I have to see Dr. Barber this afternoon. Mind if I walk with you?”
Tess’s heart sank, but she answered, “Sure.”
March was coming, and Tess could almost smell it in the air. Spring. Life. That new green that was so fresh and fragrant. February was hanging on, but March was right around the corner. Tess normally loved March. She loved leaving winter behind for the gentleness of spring.
Serena waited until they were well away from the building before she spoke again, and she kept her voice low…as if she expected someone to be listening. “Be careful, Tess.”
Again, Tess was startled by the teacher’s words. “What do you mean?”
The usually caustic woman’s voice was almost wistful as she answered. “You think you can have a fling and it won’t mean anything. Sex is fun, right? And when a delicious man comes along and he thinks sex is fun, too, well…why not? The opportunity to have frantic, meaningless sex with a gorgeous man doesn’t come along every day. Especially not around here.”
“I’m not…” Tess began.
“And then one day you look at this gorgeous man and realize that it isn’t meaningless anymore. You like him. Maybe you even love him a little, and trust me, you can’t fall in love with a man who’s seven years younger, and has long hair and tattoos, for God’s sake, and works as a janitor. You can’t get serious about a man who thinks limericks are literature and that matching tattoos are a sign of commitment. Do you know what my father would say if I went home and introduced…” Suddenly Serena went quiet, and she picked at an invisible wrinkle on her spotless tailored white blouse.
“We’re not talking about Flynn anymore, are we?” Tess asked.
Serena sighed. “Get a clue, Tess. We haven’t been talking about Flynn since we left the teacher’s lounge.”
“About that matching tattoo thing…” Tess began.
Serena ignored her. “Help me out here. You’re a rational, down-to-earth, intelligent woman who just happens to make the best brownies I’ve ever tasted. Tell me what to do. Tell me how to make what’s happening to me revert back to meaningless, wild sex again. I’m a logical woman myself, and I like things to add up just so. Two plus two is always four, and numbers don’t lie. My personal life has never been so cut and dried, but I’ve always been analytical. I don’t get carried away. I don’t…” Again, Serena sighed. In the afternoon sunlight, with spring on her face and maybe even in her heart, the math teacher was prettier than usual. There was a flush to her cheeks, and a sparkle in her eyes—even though at the moment there was also a touch of panic in those eyes.
“Matters of the heart aren’t logical,” Tess said, and she immediately thought of Flynn and her confession, and the fact that she liked him so much when she shouldn’t like him at all.
“This fling with Dante isn’t so much fun anymore,” Serena said. “I mean, it is, but…I’m scared about things I haven’t even thought about for a very long time. Does he love me? Will my father like him? How many kids will we have? Will he be here next week? I feel like I’m fifteen again, and it’s not any more pleasant now than it was then.” She sighed. “I love him, and I know he’s going to hurt me, somehow. They always do, you know.”
“Yeah, I know.”
As they reached the main building, Serena opened the door for Tess. “You’re not going to be any help at all, are you?”
“Sorry. I don’t know what to tell you.”
“Well, my original warning still stands. Be careful.”
“I always am.”
But lately, had she been careful enough?
Something was wrong with Dante, no one had been in the storeroom since that first day, which made Flynn think his suppositions about Austin’s plan might’ve been wrong, and he thought about Tess far too often during the day. In other words, his normally well-ordered world was screwy as hell.
Even when he was caught in the middle of a difficult job, certain things were a given. His team was reliable, his hunches were right-on, and he didn’t indulge in distractions.
Screwy.
He was down to two and a half days before parents’ day got underway, and he was beginning to agree with Tess about one thing; he couldn’t allow any of the girls to get caught in the crossfire. Moving them quickly and quietly would be a problem, especially since only those teachers who had been cleared of suspicion could be allowed to know that the kids were being moved. Most of the teachers had been cleared, thanks to fingerprint analysis and hair samples, but that wasn’t enough anymore. If Austin was working with someone, as Flynn suspected, then they had to start all over. Anyone was fair game.
He’d ordered Lucky to look into everyone’s past again, organizing a new team and interviewing neighbors, coworkers at past jobs, old lovers. For now, no one was entirely free of suspicion.
If they could manage it, when the time came, they’d move kids only. He wouldn’t take the chance of putting a killer on the bus with those girls.
It was possible Austin had been spooked, and the plan had been neutralized. While it meant missing the bastard, this time, Flynn didn’t mind that possible scenario so much.
He’d fiddled with the rabbit ears on the small television in Tess’s apartment, and he’d added some aluminum foil. The picture was crap, but he’d found a basketball game that gave him an excuse for staring at the screen. He’d already checked the perimeter of the building once, and an oddly moody Dante and a grumpy Cal—who was missing his wife—would patrol during the night. Maybe Austin would see what was going on and know that his plot had been discovered, and he’d be scared off.
Just as well. Another time and another place would suit Flynn just fine. A school was not the place for this showdown.
He was surprised when Tess sat next to him on the sagging couch. Not at the far end, as she had in the past few days, but right next to him. He was just as surprised when she reached for the remote on the coffee table and turned off the television.
“We need to talk.”
“No good ever followed a woman uttering that sentence,” he said. “Ever.”
Tess actually smiled, a little. “Well, I won’t be breaking the rules, then. I don’t think you’re going to like what I have to say.”
“Uh-oh. Are you kicking me out?” Odd, that being thrown off her lumpy couch was the worst scenario he could think of, at the moment.
“No. I want you to send Mangino home.”
That was not what he’d expected to hear. “I can’t do that.”
“At least tell him that sleeping with Serena is not part of the job, and he needs to find a way to end it so that it won’t turn ugly,” she said almost sharply. “She likes him, Flynn, she likes him a lot. And when this is all over and she realizes that getting close to her was a part of the job, it’s going to break her heart.”
“Loomis doesn’t strike me as the kind of woman whose heart is easily broken.”
“Looks can be deceiving,” Tess said softly, not quite as frantic as she had been, but not pacified, either. “Really, Flynn. I can’t believe you had one of your men seduce a woman just to…”
“Whoa,” he interrupted her. “That was not part of the plan. I never told Dante to sleep with Loomis, and I don’t believe it was part of his plan, either. It just kinda happened.”
“Just kinda happened?” she repeated in disbelief. “Give me a break. They have been involved almost since the moment y’all arrived, and they haven’t slowed down yet. You expect me to believe it just happened?”
He was a heartbeat away from losing his temper, and from telling Tess that Loomis had been the one to seduce Dante, not the other way around. That didn’t much matter at this point, anyway. Didn’t she get it? “Sometimes things don’t go the way you intended, no matter how careful you are. I didn’t intend to like you, but here I am sleeping on this damned couch because I don’t want you to be here alone and you won’t leave, as any woman with a lick of common sense would.” Flynn leaned closer to Tess, intent on intimidating her. “Let me tell you how screwed up this job is,” he said softly. “It’s not just Dante’s love life that’s twisted. I’d rather let Austin go than take even the remotest chance that you or one of the kids would get in the way. I’m sitting here trying to figure out how to get all the girls and you away from here before Saturday morning, and even if it means scaring Austin away, I’ll do it. I should be sitting in front of a computer analyzing data I’ve already seen a hundred times just in case I might see something new, and instead I’m here, watching a basketball game when I freakin’ hate basketball, and wondering if there’s any chance…any chance at all…that one of these nights I’m going to end up not sleeping on the damned couch!”
When he stopped to take a deep breath, Tess laid one soft hand on his cheek. The hand stopped everything else he had to say, just like that. She drifted in and up, slowly moving to him, and then she kissed him. It had been days since she’d kissed him, and dammit—he’d missed it. He’d missed it more than he’d imagined he could miss anything.
The kiss deepened, Tess’s arms snaked around his neck, and he held her close. For a moment he was caught up in the sensation of falling—falling hard, falling head first into a place he had avoided for a long time. Her mouth was so sweet, and it opened to him in a way he had not expected.
She kissed like a woman who was scared but ready.
Her body fit against his just so, small and curvy and soft, as if it had been made to be right here, right now. He did what he’d been thinking about for days; he tested those curves with the palm of his hand. There was something so delicate and rare and beautiful about a woman’s curves. Her hip, her waist, her breasts. While he touched he drew in Tess’s heat and her softness, he breathed in her scent and tasted her mouth with his lips and his tongue, until she moved that mouth from his, slow and easy.
Tess rested her forehead to his shoulder and ran her thumb along the side of his neck. “Still sore?”
“No.”
She shifted a little, moving in closer. “It’s sleeping on the couch that did it, you know.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t sleep on the couch anymore.”
He nodded slightly, and thrust his fingers through her thick, auburn hair to hold her more tightly against him. He had a hard-on that wasn’t going away anytime soon, thanks to that kiss. Staying here, close to Tess, was going to be torture.
“The floor’s not so bad,” he said. “I’ve slept in worse places, believe me. I can always move back into the hall, if this is getting too weird for you. Or I can get out of here and have one of the guys on patrol in the hallway. We can make it work, somehow, so I’m not underfoot. I’ll just…get out of your hair.”
Tess lifted her head and looked him in the eye. Well, he’d been wrong about one thing; she wasn’t scared.
“Or not,” she whispered, and then she kissed him again.
She liked the way Flynn made her feel when he kissed her, or held her, or let it slip that he cared about her in a way that was not at all meaningless or casual. They didn’t have a future. Until she knew what was going to happen with Laura she couldn’t plan any kind of future with anyone. But she wanted this, for tonight.
Coming to Flynn, sitting beside him and making it clear what she wanted, hadn’t been easy for her. But it had felt so natural. So right.
“I don’t have any kind of…” she paused and took a deep breath. She wanted Flynn, and she was letting him know it, and still she couldn’t say the word “condom.”
“I do,” he said. “Two.”
Two. Good. She still wanted kids, one day, but not with a man who wouldn’t be here a week from now, casual or not, and not until she was settled in another place…with Laura or without her.
Flynn didn’t jump off the couch and lead her into the bedroom, as soon as she made it clear what she wanted. Instead he kissed her again, as he held her close against his hard body. She allowed herself to touch him, in a way she had not been able to before. She pressed her palm to his chest, his arm, his side. He was solid, the muscle tight and ridged. He was constructed of angles and sharp edges, instead of gentle curves. But he was warm, and his heart beat fast and strong.
He touched her while they kissed, slipping one hand beneath her blouse to caress bare skin. His fingers worked against her flesh, his thumb raked along a rib as if he were memorizing it. A rhythm set in. The sway of his fingers, the motion of his tongue, their breathing, their heartbeats. Deep inside, where she had been sleeping for so long, something came to life. It fluttered and grasped, demanding more.
She slipped her fingers beneath Flynn’s shirt to stroke bare skin, and she felt his response, as muscles tightened and the kiss deepened. He wanted her—he had always wanted her, in a very basic way. She’d seen it in his eyes, and now she felt it.
When he took his mouth from hers and moved the kisses to her neck, she tilted her head to give him better access, closing her eyes and drinking in the sensations. Beneath her ear, along the column of her throat where neck turned to shoulder, he tasted it all. She melted beneath him, she breathed differently and reached for more and savored every new sensation.
And then it was her turn, and she twisted into a new position where she could suck gently against Flynn’s throat. He tasted like a man, of sweat and soap and skin. While she kissed his throat, he caressed her breasts through the thin blouse she wore, then with nothing between his hand and her skin but a plain bra. She pushed his shirt up and laid both palms against a tight stomach, where muscles rippled and she felt the occasional quiver that matched her own. She lowered her head and kissed that hard stomach, and felt the rippling against her lips as he reacted.
Her blouse came off, quickly and efficiently whipped over her head, and Flynn kissed the swell of her breasts. Those lips against her skin made her shake, and that was before he unfastened her bra and tossed it aside to lay those lips over the sensitive nipples.
Her reaction was unexpectedly intense, and her back arched to bring Flynn closer. He responded by suckling one nipple deep into that warm mouth and unfastening her jeans. His tongue flickered against a nipple while he slowly lowered her zipper. Her insides clenched, and a small, unintentional sound escaped from low in her throat.
She was stretched out on the couch, with Flynn’s mouth on one breast and his hand slithering down her unzipped jeans. Tess held her breath, waiting for him to touch her. Waiting and shaking and flying.
Her jeans slipped lower, and then his hand was there, between her legs, finding and caressing the nub at her entrance, stroking in a rhythm that matched the way he suckled her nipple. She wanted tell him to stop, to undress, to take her into the bedroom where a big, soft bed waited. But she was incapable of saying a word. Her hips rocked against his caress, and she couldn’t think of anything else.
He urged her legs farther apart, and then his fingers were inside her. A sharp sensation knifed through her body, and she swayed into him. And then she came so hard she cried out loud and held Flynn’s head in her hands while she quivered and lurched.
Flynn kissed her on the mouth, almost gentle once again as he eased her into a sitting position. She felt boneless and shaken. Half-dressed and contented and decadently happy.
And not yet finished.
“Can we go to bed, now?” she whispered.
“Whatever you want, Red.” Flynn stood and helped her to her feet, and then he lifted her straight off the ground, carrying her that way toward the bedroom.
“I want to see you naked,” she said with a smile.
“You got it.”
“I want to make you as crazy as you make me.”
“Already there,” he said as they entered the darkened bedroom.
“No, I don’t think so.”
He set her on her feet beside the bed, where he kissed her again and slipped his hands into the loosened waistband of her jeans and panties, pushing them both to the floor in a long, gentle motion. She stepped out of them, so that she stood naked before him. She had always been shy, but tonight she wasn’t. She didn’t know why, and didn’t care. Maybe because Flynn so obviously liked what he saw…whether she was wearing a shapeless white uniform or nothing at all.
