Disclaimer: The characters of the Stephanie Plum Series belong to Janet Evanovich and are used here without permission. No copyright infringement is intended.

Challenges: 100_Prompts challenge –Prompt 067 Lipstick and Rena’s Bored Challenge

Rating: Suitable for people over 13

Pairing: Stephanie/Ranger

The Lipstick Did It
By TT

I had to suppress my grin as Stephanie wiggled in her seat again. I know she can’t stand stakeouts, but the intimacy spending so much time close to her involves is something I relish. Each time she moves, it reminds me of what she felt like skin-to-skin that night we were together. It helps me get through the long hours of watching and waiting.

Though I’d never admit it, I get bored just as easily as everyone else on a stakeout.

Normally, I take the night shift on stakeouts since, my daytime hours, especially recently are devoted to paperwork, meeting with clients and other necessary business needs.

Due to a huge takedown yesterday in conjunction with the Trenton Police Department, many of my guys were off today and I decided to do the stakeout myself, especially since I needed to call in contract workers.

Of course, Stephanie isn’t technically a contract worker. She doesn’t know it, but she’s been on my payroll for a while now as a part-time employee. Of course, come year-end when we send her W-2 to her, she’ll figure it out. Hopefully by then, I’ll have her voluntarily working at Rangeman again, or at least acknowledging she works there.

For now, she looks at the jobs she does as favors for me, for her friend. It means a lot to me that she’s willing to do that for me, so, I’ve let it go. After all, Stephanie’s not the only one who can do denial.

That’s one of the problems, though. I’ve lived in denial for so long that, now that I’m finally ready to do something about this thing between us, I don’t know how to go about it. Not only that, now that I’m finally ready to offer what I can, I’m not sure it will be enough to keep her, to satisfy her. One of the fears that’s led me to keep her at arm’s length emotionally, is that I’ll finally get her and she’ll leave me when I can’t give her enough.

I’m not sure if I could survive it if she left me after she was mine.

Why is this even an issue? She and Morelli broke up four months ago – for good.

Once up on a time I told her she had about thirty-percent of the cop. I’m not sure I could offer her any more than that. My lifestyle really doesn’t lend itself to relationships. I put in long hours at the office, am on-call 24/7/365 (366 in leap years) and fly out of town for several weeks each month to check up on my other offices.

What could I promise her?

My love. A monogamous relationship. Anything my money can buy – within reason, I’m no Bill Gates, after all.

Marriage, kids and a white picket fence are off the table, though, no matter how much she tempts me to it. They’ll never be part of my life. Not only would a wife and kids make far too tempting targets for any psychos who come after me – and given whom I deal with, they’re all psychos, but also, I have this weird holdover guilt about my divorce.

Yeah, I know. Most people look at me, at the life I live and think I’m about as far from religion as Pluto is from Sirius, but my parents and my abuela brought me up a good Catholic boy. No matter how much I ignore it, how many times I’ve done unforgivable things, those early lessons nag at me. It’s one of the reasons I know Stephanie will only really be happy when she has what I refuse to give her. Guess there is some truth to the verse “Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old he shall not depart from it.” (Proverbs 22:6)

Of course, I’m not that old and I’ve ventured far from the moral path my family tried to set for me. I’ve seen what horrors man had wrought against man. Mercy, peace and goodness have very little to do with what I’ve seen.

It’s also one of the reasons I can’t let Stephanie completely go and one of the reasons I can never have her close.

Of course, that begs the question why I torture myself by sitting next to her for several hours at a time. I’ve done less watching and more wanting this stakeout than ever before.

And that’s saying something.

Normally, it would be a time of titillation for me, a time of what-ifs and a chance to daydream about her a little. This time, knowing she was free, I was aching.

My attention diverts to her again as she begins digging through her purse again. She’s already eaten enough sugar to send a healthy man into a diabetic coma and enough fat to bring about a heart attack in the healthiest of specimens. I really hope she’s not about to eat something else.

I watch from the corner of my eye as she pulls out a small bag and opens it.

It’s a makup bag.

I woke her up early enough this morning that she was too tired to put on makeup before we left.

To tell the truth, I did it partially on purpose, no only because she’s really sexy when she’s only half-awake, but because I far prefer her face make-up free than hidden away under powder and paste.

She flips down the visor to look in the mirror.

“Babe,” I protest.

“What?” she asks. “I’m paying attention.”

I can’t help the small smile that curves my lips. She’s always so defensive when she knows she’s doing something she shouldn’t. It’s a trait I hope she never outgrows.

Shaking my head, I continue to look at the skip’s house, taking the time to visually sweep the neighborhood every ten seconds or so.

And, I continue to watch her out of the corner of my eye.

The tank top she’s wearing is a little loose on her and the armholes are a little large.

In the back part of my mind, I’ve been aware the whole time that she’s not wearing anything under that tank.

When she lifts her left arm to hold a curl off of her forehead while she pats some powder on it, the shirt gaps and I feel the tenuous hold on my control slip. In fact, I’m pretty sure I dropped a reign.

Stephanie is a beautiful woman. Physically, she’s not all that out of the ordinary, pretty, but not stunning. But her beauty comes from inside. When you get a glimpse of her heart or soul or whatever, she’s breathtaking.

Right now though, I’m perfectly happy with her physical appearance.

As she drops her arm, I slowly release the breath I wasn’t aware I was holding.

Of course, now that I’ve seen that gentle swell of fair skin, all of my attention is fixed on her.

Whether she’s aware of my eyes on her or not, apparently her body is because I see her nipples harden as I continue to watch her chest, hoping for another peak. After all, the woman’s had me no less than half-hard since I dragged her out of bed. I need her.

Allowing my eyes to slide upward, I see a gentle flush on her cheeks. It’s not from blusher since I have yet to see her retrieve that.

I watch as she puts away her powder and pulls out her mascara.

Opening the tube, she pulls the brush part way out before pushing it back into the tube. She does that two or three times before removing it entirely and coating her lashes.

Taking a slow, deep breath, I remind myself that we’re on a stakeout and I should be watching the target house.

When she repeats the in and out move again before coating her other eye, I know my control is just about to snap.

I want her. I want to kiss her, hold her, caress her, take her, make her mine in every way I can think of and then let her do the same to me.

The arguments about not being able to give enough of my self are so far from my mind right now they might as well belong to someone else.

When she drops her mascara in the bag and pulls out her lipstick, it’s the final straw.

I’ve watched her before as she smoothes the paste across her lips and have long desired it to be my tongue instead.

As she takes the top off of this latest tube, I feel the last threads of resistance begin to break as she turns the base to expose the lipstick.

The last thread breaks and the irrational thought that I’m jealous of a tube of lipstick runs through my head.

Reaching out, I grab the makeup bag and lipstick, toss them in the back seat and crush my mouth to hers in a searing kiss.

When I finally ease up, I gently caress her now-swollen lips with my tongue, pressing them just as the lipstick would have done before sucking her bottom lip between mine and nipping it gently.

With one last kiss, I pull back slightly and ask, “Do you want this?” I may be a mercenary, but I don’t do non-consensual.

“Yes,” she breathes before her hand comes up, tangles in my hair at the back of my head and forces my mouth against hers.

A few minutes later, we break apart again.

“Good,” I say, my voice low and rough, almost a growl.

“What about the stakeout?” she asks.

My rational mind curses my distraction from duty and my non-rational mind curses my rational mind for caring.

Glancing at the clock, I see that it’s 10:48. Two minutes before the next shift shows up. “Two minutes, Babe,” I tell her.

She lets out a whimper, but turns to look out the window.

It’s the longest two minutes of my life.

As soon as I see the next shift pull up behind me, I turn on the car and peel out a little faster than necessary.

“Where are we going?” she asks.

I have only one response, “Batcave.”

End

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