That got his attention. He sucked in a breath and leaned back. She lowered her head and drew him into her mouth, flicking her tongue over the ridge she knew was especially sensitive. His thigh muscles tightened beneath her palms and his moan came out a strangled cry.
“Wait,” he said, his breathing labored.
She shook her head and sucked him in deeper.
“Dallas. Please.”
She smiled and ignored him.
“Dallas.”
She had no intention of stopping, and he must have gotten it because he lay back and moaned, his thigh muscles bunching beneath her right hand. He was so big and hard, she had trouble manipulating him with her tongue, but that didn’t seem to faze him. He threaded his fingers through her hair as his entire body shuddered and he cried out her name.
Never had she experienced such a rush of power and excitement. And satisfaction. Contentment. The whole thing scared her to death. This was only supposed to be about sex. Fulfilling a fantasy. She wasn’t supposed to want to crawl inside him and stay forever.
CHAPTER TWELVE
“YO, DALLAS, YOU READY FOR LUNCH?” Tony stood on the scaffolding two stories above her, clearly not giving a damn that all the other guys heard him cavorting with the enemy. God bless him.
She shaded her eyes to look up at him. “Give me ten minutes, okay?”
“No problem. It’ll probably take me that long to clean up Buddy’s mess.”
“Screw you, St. Angelo.” Buddy threw down his work gloves and grabbed his lunch pail.
“Have a nice lunch,” Tony called after him. “Don’t hurry back.”
Several feet away from Dallas the new guy doing the finishing work on the lobby banister started laughing. Nobody else did. At least not out loud. Most of them at one time or another had been the target of Buddy’s vicious temper.
Not Tony, though. For some reason Buddy steered clear of him, even though Tony sometimes goaded him mercilessly. No one knew why, and Tony wouldn’t say. The funny thing was everyone figured Buddy had some connection to either one of the higher-ups or the union bosses. His work was sloppy and his attendance poor. He should have been fired years ago.
That’s the kind of thing that really infuriated Dallas. Most of the women she knew worked twice as hard so they weren’t singled out. And then jerks like Buddy skated by for years.
Yesterday and today had been good days. No traffic duty, and Dallas had gotten to work indoors. It helped, too, that she spent most of the time daydreaming of Eric. Twice she’d had to jerk herself back to reality to keep from sanding off the rest of her pathetically short fingernails.
For the first time, she’d forgotten to bring her work gloves. Hardly a surprise considering she hadn’t gotten home until four in the morning. Amazing she wasn’t a wreck. Sure made concentration difficult.
“Ready?”
She looked up at Tony. “Has it been ten minutes already?”
“Twelve, and I’m starving.” He handed her Aladdin lunch pail to her and inclined his head toward the unfinished railing she’d been sanding. “This will be here when you get back.”
She sighed. “Much to my delight.”
“Where are your gloves?”
“I forgot them.”
He frowned at her hands. “You should keep a spare in your lunch pail. I have one but it won’t fit you. Especially not for this kind of close work.”
“Not a big deal,” she said, shrugging and heading toward the door that led to the park where they always ate. Well, not really a park—more a triangle of grass with two trees and a couple of benches where mothers stopped with their strollers to chat over a cup of coffee.
Tony followed, saying nothing, until they got to the park and sat on the grass under a pine tree. Then he took one of her hands and inspected it. Lots of skin tears, and two knuckles on her right hand were scraped and bleeding a little.
She winced. Damn it. They looked like hell, and it was a big deal. Eric would… She put the brakes on her wayward thoughts. This wasn’t about Eric. If he wanted someone more glamorous, that was his problem. She couldn’t mold herself according to someone else’s plan.
But her nails and hands did look like hell.
“Hey.”
She looked at Tony.
He smiled. “It’s okay to be a girl, you know. I actually like them.”
“Don’t be a wiseass. This isn’t about that.”
He removed his hard hat and raked his fingers through his dark wavy hair. “I’ve never asked you questions, right?”
“Oh, God.”
“Relax. I’m not gonna get too personal.”
“Good.” She opened her lunch pail and got out the waterless hand wash.
He stared at her with an amused look on his face. “I had this neighbor in Queens. She moved in next door when I was about ten and she was maybe twelve or thirteen. Jenny was so damn cute. Long blond hair about your color. Blue eyes, too. And dimples…” He shook his head, smiling. “She wore her hair in braids all rolled up and tucked away because her mother wouldn’t let her cut it. And she always had a baseball cap on. Never once saw her in a dress. I doubt she owned one.”
He paused and stared at two kids playing ball. Tempted to tell him to shut up, Dallas took out a green apple and bit into the tart fruit. Obviously he was using the story as a parable because he thought it somehow applied to her. Which it clearly didn’t.
“I wasn’t interested in girls yet,” he continued, “but some of the other guys in the neighborhood kept sniffing around her. She’d get so mad, she’d call them out to the park and threaten to whip their asses. If you treated her like one of the guys, she was fine. But if—”
“Tony?”
“Yeah?”
“Shut up and eat your lunch.”
He laughed. “I’m just saying—”
“Don’t, okay. Besides, you got it all wrong.”
“Go ahead, straighten me out.”
She sighed. “Why do you do this job?”
He snorted. “Why do you think? Number one, I hate wearing a suit and tie. Number two, I don’t know how to do anything else.”
“Don’t give me that. How much money did you make off the last two brownstones you refurbished?”
He grinned, shrugged.
“That was a rhetorical question. I know damn well you had to have made more than five years’ salary working here.” She sighed and put down her apple.
“So? Why you bustin’ my chops all of a sudden? I’m on your side, remember?”
“I know. Really I do.” She and Tony were a lot more alike than she’d thought, she just realized. Both restless. Both wanting something a little more but not ready to cave in or sell out.
He was much more ambitious than he’d ever admit. She was probably the only one who knew, but four years ago he’d bought a foreclosed brownstone, lived in it while he’d renovated it and then sold it for a hefty profit before moving on to the next one and starting over.
Shaking his head and frowning, he unwrapped his sandwich. “I think you need to get laid.”
A strangled laugh escaped her and she punched his arm. If he only knew… “Now you sound just like the rest of them.”
“That was low, Shea, really low.”
“You asked for it.” She stared at her half-eaten apple, tempted to tell Tony about Eric. But really, what kind of advice could Tony give her? Besides, then she’d have to confess her lie. No, not a lie. Her pretense. She winced. Fantasy had a better ring. Either way it sounded awful.
Besides, there was more on her mind than Eric lately. Like how tired she was getting of the job, of having to wash her hair three times every night to get the dust out. She’d made her point with her parents by now. And she’d paid off most of her debts and started saving some money. Maybe it was time to start looking for something else. Possibly even put her business degree to some use.
Of course, her restlessness had nothing to do with Eric and the fact that he most likely came from some upper-crust Philadelphia family who’d expected more of their son than to date a construction worker. Nor did it have anything to do with how much she’d been enjoying the dressing up and evenings out. It was just time to move on. That’s all. Nothing more.
Tony grunted. “Quit with the long face. Let’s move to neutral ground. Tell me about the meeting.”
She looked blankly at him. “That was Tuesday.”
“Yeah, so? We didn’t talk yesterday. You skipped lunch so you could knock off early. Must have had a hot date or something.”
She looked away. Hard to believe is was only Thursday. That meant she’d met Eric five days ago. That didn’t seem possible. So much had happened. She felt so much more than she should. Feeling the weight of Tony’s stare, she glanced over at him and mentally flinched at the fascinated curiosity in his eyes.
She cleared her throat. “That was only the second meeting. We have a long way to go. We didn’t even have that good a turnout.”
“They’re afraid of losing their jobs. Can’t blame them.”
“I don’t. Believe me.”
“Yeah, I know. So what are you gonna do about it?”
“Me?”
He snorted. “Yeah, you. Who else has the smarts and the guts to get changes made?”