Handcuffed

JC wondered if it was the moon or just plain bad karma. He and James were just not friendly of late – almost like she couldn’t stand the sight of him. Every little thing he did seemed to annoy her – and that was so not the James he knew – before or after the shooting. Even-tempered James never found things to nit pick about. This woman did.

Why was he hovering? James grumbled to herself. Why wouldn’t he just go play one of his games or listen to his discman or something? Just get the hell away from her! Where was Kevin? Shouldn’t he have returned by now with lunch? She needed a break from JC for a few hours or she was going to snap him in half.

“What are we doing this afternoon?” JC asked as he watched James pace. Damn, if she wasn’t a nervous cat!

“Nothing on your agenda?”

“Nothing.”

“You can take a nap.”

“Maybe I don’t want to take a nap.”

She glared at him. “Very well. Whatever you want to do.”

He wiggled his eyebrows. “You can take a ‘nap’ with me.”

“Not even a remote possibility, Chasez.” Where was Kevin?

She went to her handbag. Her cellphone...where in the hell was it? Why did it sink to the bottom? Oh, hell! Up ending the bag on the table, she watched the contents spread.

She carried some serious stuff. JC noted the handgun and handcuffs along with her wallet and cellphone. He watched as she snatched up the phone and skittered off to a corner to make a call. Handcuffs...

“Where the hell are you?” she snapped at Kevin as her call went through.

“About five minutes away. Got stuck in traffic. Loverboy getting to you?” he asked clearly amused.

“I want the afternoon off.”

“Okay, chica. Just hold on.”

“Kevin...”

“I’ll be there, James.”

James went back to repack her purse – where the hell were the handcuffs? Looking under the table and around, she didn’t spot them. Hmm...She trailed JC into the bedroom. There were the handcuffs. He was inspecting them with great interest. “I believe those are mine.”

JC looked up. “Ever use them?”

“A few times.”

“Ever use them...not for work?” He had a wicked grin on his face.

She knew what he was thinking but wasn’t about to let him lead her down that particular path. “I have no idea what you mean.”

“Bullshit.”

“Mr. Chasez...”

“What stick is up your ass, James You aren’t a prude and you aren’t that innocent.”

“Do I look like I’d be into bondage?” He grinned again. “Don’t answer...”

“I can see you as a dominatrix.”

“And you want to play my submissive?”

His naughty grin grew wide. “I know how good it can be when you’re aggressive.”

“Okay...” She took the cuffs from him and slapped one ring around his right wrist. She lowered her mouth an inch from his. “You sure about this?” she asked huskily.

If James would make love with him again, he’d do just about anything. “Yeah, baby.”

Luckily this hotel had actual headboards with posts. Urging him back, she fastened his other wrist so he was held prisoner on the bed. Then she straddled his waist. “Comfy?”

“Not terribly, but I’ll live.”

“Good.” James leaned forward to share a tantalizing hungry kiss with him.

JC pushed his hips up. “Yeah, baby...”

She moved off the bed and headed for the door.

“James!” he called irritably. “You can’t do that.”

She turned at the door and gave him a satisfied smile. “I just did.” She went to the living room to collect her bag.

“James!”

The moment Kevin arrived she was ready to leave. She tossed him the keys to the cuffs. “When you feel like dealing with him you can uncuff him,” she told him as she departed.

“Dammit, James!” JC bellowed from the bedroom.

Going to the bedroom, Kevin shook his head at the sight of their client bound to the bedpost. “Pissed her off, did you?”

JC wasn’t about to say he’d been lured by the promise of sex. “I guess.”

“You and I need to have a little talk about James and when not to piss her off.” Kevin went to release him from the cuffs.

“There’s a good time?”

“No, but there is a really bad time.”

“Like now?”

“Like now.”

JC rubbed his abused wrists. “Why is now different?”

“It goes by initials – PMS.”

Kevin and JC discussed James over lunch.

“You know she isn’t always this way.” Kevin told JC. “It’s once or twice year. I learned the hard way...” He sighed. “Maybe I need to start at the beginning.”

“When James was 22 fresh out of college, she was approached by a government agency that doesn’t even really have a name – just code names. Seems they had been watching her with great interest for some time. Her dad was CIA before he was killed. Her mother was an FBI profiler. So she had a background...Anyway, they recruited her. After training, they sent her to Iraq. Seems they wanted their top scientist to defect to the US – and he had a weakness for American girls. Look at James. I mean, who could resist her for long?”

“Sure as hell not any red-blooded male,” JC answered.

“Well, Sadik El Bashir couldn’t. Back then James was innocent and even naive. El Bashir was worldly, older, sophisticated. He swept her off her feet and into his bed. Not only was he James’ first lover, he was her first love. And because he adored her, he began to make covert plans to defect. That’s when it all went wrong.

“James was pregnant, so El Bashir decided to speed up his plans so their child would be born on American soil. Somebody got careless because the authorities got wind of it. One day while they were shopping at an open air market, they were arrested and taken for interrogation.”

“My God!”

“They didn’t dare do much to James, being an American citizen, but they made her watch as they tortured El Bashir. I guess it wasn’t pretty. They like all the nasty primitive tortures like beating the soles of the feet with switches until the skin comes off and ripping out fingernails. Then they beat him until he was unrecognizable. But still he claimed he was defecting because of his pregnant girlfriend. Then they put electrodes on his dick. He pretty much confessed to anything after awhile. Then they shot him in the back of the head.

“Damn...”

“Meanwhile, a horrified James miscarried. Lost the baby on the cell’s cement floor. Instead of getting her help, they merely released her. She passed out on the street. Luckily, somebody got her to the hospital. She was eventually sent home. She quit the agency at the same time Robert and I had started our venture. So we signed her up.”

“Poor kid went through hell.”

“Yeah, but it made her a fighter.”

“You said you knew first hand...”

“I was pretty much in love with James from the get go, but she wasn’t encouraging. Then about a year later we were sent to Cancun on assignment. It was over the Christmas-New Year’s holiday. We were lonely and miserable about missing the family time. Then she got an attack of raging hormones.” Kevin shrugged. “I didn’t know that was all it was. I thought she’d finally seen the light. I loved her that weekend like nobody’s business. She confessed I was the first guy since El Bashir. I was ready to propose to her when we got back. Instead she apologized for ‘using’ me.”

“Ouch.”

“Damn straight. I swallowed my proposal, my pride and learned not to love her that way. We’re good partners – sex just messes that up.” Kevin looked JC straight in the eye. “If I’m not mistaken, you’re only number three. She doesn’t take sex lightly. It’s real personal and intimate with her. She might joke about ‘recreational sex’ but she’s never indulged in it. If she’s had anyone else, it’s been so QT that I don’t even know it. And that’d be damn hard to get passed me since we live in each other’s pockets.”

James had said something about quality versus quantity when it came to lovers. She must have meant it!

“I know you guys hit the sheets like right now when you connected...but she must think an awful lot of you to still be smarting from your loss.”

“I don’t see where it’s bothering her a whole helluva lot.”

“Because she knows how to hide things. If you’re gonna win her back, better make it while she’s susceptible.” With that, Kevin rose from the table leaving JC to ponder all he had just learned about the secretive woman he loved.

JC woke to the feel of someone, a very gentle someone, stroking his hair. Without opening his eyes, he recognized her scent, James. Turning his face into the caressing hand, he nuzzled her palm. “Hey, baby.”

“Josh, I’ve got something I need to discuss with you.” He didn’t miss the slightly agitated edge to her voice.

“Sure, baby.” Opening his eyes, he found her sitting on the edge of the bed in the nightgown he had bought her.

“I—I don’t know how to put this...First, I guess I apologize for this afternoon. It was childish of me to cuff you like that.”

“I was goading you.”

“Yes, you certainly were, but I am better than that.”

“Bruised my ego some, but I’ll live. Forgiven.”

He had startled her; she had expected forgiveness to come at a steep price.

“What’s second?” He pushed himself into a sitting position, noting her eyes were riveted to the muscles in his arms and chest as he moved. She had the look of a starved jungle cat and he was dinner. He swallowed hard.

“It would mean nothing...It’s either you or Kevin. I thought you would prefer I came to you first...”

“Okay...” Man, she was twitchy, not meeting his eyes and twisting the fabric of her gown with her fingers. “James?”

“I—I have an itch I need scratched,” she blurted out. “It’s either you or Kevin. I want some hot nasty sex...”

“Come here, baby.”

She looked up to see his arms out to her. Eagerly, she moved to sit astride his hard thighs, her gown bunching around her legs. “It’ll mean nothing,” she repeated.

“If you say so, James.” After his talk with Kevin, JC knew she didn’t take sex lightly. There was no way in hell she would have been his lover for months without emotional attachment. She was running scared.

“It may not be fair to use you...”

“Use me, baby.” With his hands behind her shoulder blades, he urged her closer, his lips against her vulnerable throat. “I will so scratch your itch.”

The stiffness flowed out of her. “Thank you.”

“Not a problem.”

James kissed him hungrily. “I thought it would be harder than this.”

“Only the superstar will be hard,” he mused.

She chuckled at his use of her nickname for the showiest part of his anatomy.

“But before we get started don’t we need to lock the connecting door. We don’t want Kevin walking in on us if we sleep in.”

With a nod, James rose and went to the door between their suite and Kevin’s room and twisted the lock. She turned in time to see JC shed his pajama pants. God, he was more gorgeous than she remembered – or were her hormones doing all the thinking? “I see a superstar on the rise,” she said as she moved towards the bed once more.

“He’s eager to show you his talents.”

Sliding one strap off her shoulder, then the other, the gown pooled at her feet with a single shimmy.

JC’s mouth went dry. Damn, she was perfection. Then she was in his arms and it was more than perfect; it was heavenly. He pressed soft kisses on her lips, coaxing her to open for him as if she were a new lover. She always did like the care he took, not rushing her. This wasn’t strictly hormones or she’d want to just get it over with. She was asking for attention and affection – and he was willing to give both. “Do I need to get the condoms?” he asked, realizing this was a risky time of the month for her.

She shook her head slightly. “I’m on the pill.”

He nodded. “Alrighty then.” She wasn’t putting any barrier between them; she could have. One more hole in her ‘just hormones’ theory.

The scar from the bullet she’d taken in the arm caught his eyes. It as puckered and still pink. A tender fresh scar. He bent his head to bathe it with soothing, healing kisses. With that one bullet, his blissful ignorance was stolen. James had been taken from him. But most of the pain had been hers – physically – from the wound and emotionally – she’d had to adopt a mask of indifference when it came to him.

“Joshua, it wasn’t your fault,” she whispered.

“Our lives changed forever that day.”

“Eventually you would’ve known.” Something in her own heart wept for his loss of innocence that day. “Joshua...” she brought his mouth back to hers. For this night, it could be as it had been before. Lustful caring.

Tonight, he would remind her what she had been missing in the past weeks: tender lover, affectionate friend, and soul mate. Laying her back on the pillows, he began to show her in earnest. Taking her mouth, he slowly built an inferno that left her gasping, then he moved to her neck and all the little hot spots he knew lay there. He had her whimpering with pleasure. “Baby,” he whispered in her ear before he moved to her shoulders and below. He took his time courting her beautiful breasts with his hands and mouth. Delicate caresses. Teasing licks. Hungry sucking. He had her squirming beneath him.

“Easy, baby. It’s been a while. I’ll get you there.” From her breasts, he moved down her torso with more opened-mouthed kisses, pausing to tickle her navel with his tongue, making her writhe even more. He skated his mouth along her trembling thighs – then settled in to love her the way she liked it most.

“Oh, Joshua, yes...” she purred when his tongue parted her feminine petals. He was so good at this...

JC smiled before he started to love her in earnest. James always did like this part. He licked around but didn’t touch the little jewel begging for his attention.

“Don’t tease,” she commanded breathlessly.

Flicking his tongue at her pleasure pearl, he felt her shudder with delight. He continued to stroke it with his tongue until her hips began to buck up, demanding more. Wrapping his lips around it, he sucked gently.

“Ahh!...”

He alternated between nibbles, licks, and sucks until she was delirious with pleasure.

“Joshua...ahh...yesss!” James was swamped with sweet, hot bliss as she shook with the force of her rapture.

JC drove her up the peak twice more before he moved up to enter her slick, welcoming heat.

“You are the best at that,” she murmured as he thrust into her repeatedly.

“I’ve missed you too, baby.” he grunted as he kept up a pounding pace. She was already tightening around him – which was good. He didn’t think he’d last long after their extended drought.

“Josh...I’m...”

“Just come for me, Lady J,” he urged softly. “Let me feel you do it for me, baby.” Her nails were digging into his back, but he didn’t care as he watched her come apart beneath him.

“Josh-ooh-ah!” she cried before she shook with the force of her ecstasy.

“That’s my baby girl,” he crooned just before he lost himself in the same white heat. “James!”

After a long moment, when they both regained breath, James stroked and soothed JC’s hair, neck and back as he rested heavily upon her. She had missed this. The closeness of the aftermath almost as much as she’d missed the lovemaking.

JC lifted off of her to bring the covers up and then settled to her side. With an arm around her shoulders, he brought her against him to sleep.

“Joshua...”

“Just sleep, James. If you want more, just let me know.”

She relaxed against him, letting fatigue and satisfaction take her down.

At her even breathing, he murmured, “Tell me that meant nothing, lady.”

In the middle of the night, James woke to find herself wrapped in JC’s arms, one of his legs thrown over hers to pin her down. Her body felt loose and well loved. She had missed him as a lover. But most of all, she missed the friend he had become. She didn’t know if she could keep up the facade of professional disinterest much longer.

JC woke up to find her hungry, sad eyes on him. “More?” he asked.

“Yes, please.”

Giving her a sleepy smile, he started with soft kisses.