His palm filled with plump breast as he tried to hold her still.
"Gotcha," she whispered. Then, as suddenly as she'd wriggled, she went stock still. "Did you hear that?"
His mind wasn't thinking clearly. His hearing wasn't working at all. "Hear what?" he murmured without paying attention to anything other than the warm squeezable places his fingers explored.
"Mice?" she offered tentatively. "Really big rats?"
She wasn't cooperating here. Forcing his muddled mind back to her words, Axell tried to listen. There was a definite rattle of trash, and a footstep where there shouldn't be any. Every protective instinct he'd ever possessed leaped into action.
"Stay here," he ordered, shoving his shirt back into his pants and quickly fastening them. He couldn't believe he'd just behaved like some freaking adolescent. He hadn't done this kind of thing even as an adolescent. Sex in a public place. He had more sense than that.
"Let's just get out," Maya whispered, shimmying her dress back in position. "We can call the police from the restaurant."
"Whoever it is will be gone by the time the cops show."
He didn't give her time to protest again but moved deeper into the storeroom. Maya should never have left the back door unlocked. Vagrants could take up occupancy and burn the place down. It wouldn't be the first time an old building had gone up in smoke.
"Chill man, I hear something."
Axell dived for the sound of the voice, but it was too far ahead of him. A door slammed and feet clattered on what sounded like stone steps. Shoving boxes aside, he tried to locate any sign of a door in the darkness. He vaguely remembered one back here in the storage space Maya hadn't used.
"Axell! Axell, where are you?" Maya's anxious voice called from nearby.
"I thought I told you to stay put." He needed a flashlight. All he was getting out of this was bruised shins. "Isn't there another door back here?"
"To the furnace room."
He almost heard the shrug in her voice. "Furnace room? Below here?" In a building this old, that could mean almost anything. "What kind of furnace?"
"The kind that heats things," she said dryly, catching his arm. "The enormously expensive kind, if the bills we received last winter were any indication. I don't know why steam heat ever went out of favor. There are radiators all over that would have done a better job than whatever the modern version is. Why are you suddenly concerned by the heating system?"
Axell gave up the search and steered her toward the door to the shop through which they'd entered. With Maya beside him, he could probably generate enough steam to fuel every radiator in here. "Coal is scarce," he reminded her. "Steam requires coal. Chances are, your furnace room has a coal cellar."
She thought about that a minute as they worked their way back to the door. "Coal cellars have coal chutes, don't they?" she asked reflectively.
"You got it. I can't imagine how they get up and down it without a ladder, but chances are, that's what they're doing right now."
"Who?" she demanded. "What who's doing? This is a condemned building, for pity's sake. There's nothing here to steal."
"Tell me something I don't know." Axell jerked open the alley door and pushed Maya through. Then he firmly turned the lock and pulled the door shut. He wished he had the deadbolt key. "But the cops are looking for the place the dealer stashes his drugs. Empty buildings are ideal crack houses."
"Let's get back to the restaurant." Nervously, Maya tugged his arm.
He wanted to look for the coal chute. He wanted to know who was using Cleo's old building. And had they been doing so even while Maya lived there? That idea gave him cold chills. Maybe he'd better take Maya home first. They had some unfinished business, and he doubted if he'd catch the intruders at this late date.
Reason warred with lust and lust won. He wanted to see Maya spread-eagled across his bed wearing nothing but garters. He wanted to see if he could control the situation a little better next time, or maybe not. There was something exhilarating about utter mindlessness.
"We'll call the police from home." With sudden urgency, Axell hurried Maya up the street, toward the car. To hell with intruders. It wasn't his building anyway.
"Your place or mine?" she murmured provocatively as he helped her in.
Her room, with the possibility of kids and cats running in and out, or his, a million light years