What she needed was a glass of wine and a cold shower to get her mind off the dark-haired, dark-eyed Karev. What she needed was a tangible lead, and fast, to assure her that the case was moving forward, and that she wasn't just burning time and federal dollars enjoying the proximity of a man who had no choice but to act close to her.
As she turned away from her reflection, she was forced to acknowledge for the first time that maybe-just maybe-it wasn't her entrance that had inspired the other women to leave.
Maxim filled the doorway to the women's washroom, his towering height and broad shoulders ensuring none would dare attempt to slide past him-and that went as much for entering as exiting. Savannah twisted the tap off and straightened, folding her arms beneath the ridiculous pronouncement her push-up bra made of her breasts. Breasts that Maxim couldn't bring himself to look away from earlier, she reminded herself. If it hadn't been for the appearance of the other man, she didn't know what might have happened between them, had they been left alone for a second longer in that booth-
"Did you get lost?" she asked, but thought the irony in her question lacked some of its usual bite. She hated the way her voice trembled as he strode toward her. "Maxim? What's the matter? Is everything-?"
He reached for her before she could think to move. His strong, proprietary fingers grasped her around her wrist; in the next moment, she was nearly yanked off her toothpick-thin heels as Maxim pulled her against him and crushed his mouth to hers.
He tasted as sharp and heady and immediate as the top-shelf vodka they had been served already. Savannah wrapped her arms around his shoulders to stabilize herself, sampling as much as she could as he backed her against the wall. Her shoulders struck the tile, but the force of the blow hardly registered to her on a conscious level; she felt as if she was being devoured whole by the man she had secretly longed for, day and night, the man she couldn't allow herself to have yet was having her anyway.
She tried to muster up his name to speak it, to wake them both up like a splash of cold water delivered from the sink, but his lips were relentless. He kissed her as if he knew what she was about to say and do and needed to silence her, and she found her willpower to refuse his advance suddenly vanishing beneath the onslaught. She gripped the muscles that bulged in his back, desperate to know them as she had earlier that day. Clothing had to be the worst invention of the human race, she decided. She tugged at the collar of Maxim's shirt and managed to get it halfway up over his head before he pulled her away from the wall and herded her back into one of the bathroom stalls. She heard the door bang closed behind them, heard the latch shoot into place, but she was having trouble distinguishing how he did it when he had his hands full of her.
She yanked his shirt over his head, freeing his dark curls and everything else that followed. The shirt dropped, and her stomach twisted with a desire so deep-seated it felt almost painful as his angular face came up to taste her again. They clashed in a tangle of lips and tongues and teeth, and Savannah brought her hands up between them, desperate to explore every newly-bared inch of him. Maxim's body was as smooth and hard as marble beneath her questing touches; she could hardly believe the man was real.
There was scarcely enough room to accommodate them both inside the stall, and Savannah soon found herself shoved back against the wall again out of necessity. She could not find it in her to care about the time or place this was finally happening-all she cared about was that Maxim had finally given his hands free rein to explore every inch of her. She lost herself in the sensation of calloused fingers working their way beneath her dress, dragging the ink-black fabric upward over her waist, her heaving breasts, and eventually over her head. He dispensed with it as carelessly as she had stripped him seconds before; then he reached around behind her back, as much to offer his arm up as a buffer between her and the wall as it was to seek out the clasp of her bra. Savannah felt the constricting fabric give way, and shimmied her shoulders to get out from underneath the straps. The pushup fell away, and the cold air hit her exposed breasts like the ghostly breath of a lover. Her nipples tightened in aroused response.
They hadn't broken apart from one another all throughout this risky operation; in fact, she realized distantly that she couldn't recall a moment since his entering the women's bathroom that Maxim's lips had not been upon her. Anyone watching might have thought they had stolen a hundred moments together, just like this one. Their chemistry was through the roof.