by Nora Roberts
“You gonna take that last step now?”
Ripley drummed her fingers on the table, then sighed. “Let’s say I’m going to takea step and see what happens next. Can I use the phone?”
“What for?”
“I need to call in a pizza order.”
It took Macmost of the day to fix the sensor, and even then it was only jury-rigged. It would take a day or two to get the replacement parts, and with Friday looming, he was in a crunch.
I’m not sure what to expect on Friday,he wrote.It’s better that way. It’s a mistake to go into an experience anticipating specific results. Closes off the mind to possibilities. I do, now, have a theory on the events in the Logan cave. The Gaelic phrase carved into the cave wall translates to “My heart is your heart. Ever and always.” While it will take time to ascertain the age of the carving (send rubbing and scraping to lab, ASAP) I continue to believe it was made within the last twenty years. Based on that, the location of the cave, and Mia Devlin’s reaction to finding me and Ripley there, it’s a logical assumption that the cave has particular and personal meaning for her. The carving, I believe, was done by her or for her.
The Logans had a son, Samuel, who was raised onthe island. No one speaks of him in connection with Mia. It’s a studied, deliberate omission, which naturally leads me to conclude that he and Mia Devlin were involved, most probably were lovers before he moved off-island.
This, in turn, may be the foundation for the last step of the legend, which is mirrored by the descendants of the original sisters.
Nell to Zack being the first, and hypothetically, Mia to Logan being the last.
Which leaves Ripley in the middle. Ripley and . . .
His fingers fumbled, so he stopped, sat back, rubbed his eyes under his glasses. He reached absently for his coffee mug and knocked it off the table. The obligatory cleanup gave his system time to settle.
I’m connected to the pattern,he continued.I sensed it before I came here, and with the documents I’ve yet to share with the others, I’ve formed certain theories. But theories and reality are different matters, with different effects on those involved. On me. It’s more difficult than I’d imagined to maintain objectivity, to stay in the role of observer, documenter when . . .
I can’t stop thinking about her. Trying to separate feelings from professional judgment is hard enough, but how can I be sure those feelings don’t stem from professional interest?
“And glands,” he muttered, but he didn’t write that down.
Does Deputy Ripley Todd fascinate me because she has a preternatural gift that has come down to her over three centuries? Or because she’s a woman who has managed to attract me on every possible level?
I’m beginning to think it’s both, and that I’m already in too deep to care where these feelings come from.
He sat back again, and as his concentration level dipped, he tuned in to the beeps and buzzes of his equipment in the living room. He shoved away from the little desk, rapping his knee sharply on its underside, then limped cursing out of his office.
Ripley stood inside the door, scowling at his machines.
“Don’t you ever turn these things off?”
“No.” He had to resist rubbing his stomach. It ached, just looking at her.
“I knocked.”
“I was in the office, working. Didn’t hear you.”
“You’re lucky I’m persistent.” She held up the cardboard box she carried. “Pizza delivery. Large and loaded, as requested. In the mood?”
His mouth watered, and his belly tightened. “It so happens I’ve been craving a pizza for weeks now.”
“Me, too.” She set it down, on top of what happened to be a machine that cost in the high six figures. She shrugged out of her coat and let it fall on the floor. She pulled off her cap, tossed it in the general direction of her coat as she walked toward him. “Hungry?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“Good. I’m starved.” She leaped, hitching herself up, wrapping her legs around his waist and crushing her mouth down on his.
He stumbled back two full steps. Every rational thought slipped out of his brain and drained out of his ears.
“Sex now,” she said, breathless as she raced her lips over his face, bit his neck. “Pizza later. Good for you?”
“Excellent.” He staggered toward the bedroom, made it as far as the doorway before he had to brace her against the jamb. “Just . . . let me . . .” He changed the angle of the kiss, sinking deep until her moan echoed his.
“I taste you all the time.” He scraped his teeth along her throat. “All the time. Drives me crazy.”
“Me too. I want you naked.” She began to tug at his sweatshirt.
“Wait. Slow down.”
“Why?” Laughing, she did tormenting things to his ear with her tongue.
“Because . . . Jesus. Because I’ve been thinking about this a while.” His fingers dug into her hips as he started toward the bed. “Feels like centuries. I don’t want to rush it.” He managed to get a handful of her hair, to draw her head back until their eyes met. “I want to savor it. Savor you. I want . . .” He leaned in, nibbled at her mouth. “To take years to make love with you. To touch you,” he continued as he lowered her to the bed. “Taste you.” Gently, he lifted her arms over her head.
She quivered beneath him. “You talk a good game,” she managed, “for a geek.”
“Let’s see how it plays.” He traced the exposed line of her belly when her sweater rode up. “With a little teamwork.”
He lowered his head, and at the last instant angled away so his lips rubbed over her jaw.
Her body was taut under his, pumping off energy in almost visible waves. He wanted that, all of that. But first he wanted her limp, weak and stunned from pleasure.
Her hands flexed under his, but she didn’t struggle. Her heart pounded against his, and her lips yielded when he asked for them. That alone was arousing, knowing she would let him set both pace and tone.
She was strong enough, what she felt was strong enough, to give him that gift. Now, he would show her he treasured it.
She’d never known a man who could light so many fires with his mouth alone. Even as she yearned for his hands, her bones, her muscles, melted under the heat. She sighed, and surrendered to it.
Her pulse thickened. Her mind blurred.
When he released her hands, her arms felt soft, heavy. She lifted them, slipping off his glasses, tossing them aside so she could frame his face to bring his mouth back to hers again.
He touched her now, a skim and glide of fingers as he inched her sweater up, off. A lazy journey over her breasts just at the edge of her bra, then a teasing dance over the center clasp.
She tugged his sweatshirt off, let her hands roam in turn.
Then his mouth came to hers again and brought out a quiet sound of pleasure. Weightless, she floated on the kiss. She nuzzled, stroked, contented as a cat when his mouth skimmed the curve of her shoulder. Shivered lightly in anticipation as his tongue trailed down the side of her neck. Moaned when it dipped under cotton to tease her nipple.
Then cried out, arching helplessly as his mouth closed, hot and hungry, over her breast.
She fought for breath, for balance. Her fingers dug into the bedclothes as her system was plunged abruptly from contentment to desperation.
It was like throwing open a door to a furnace, he thought. A man could be consumed by all that heat. Still he craved more. He snapped open her bra, found flesh. He felt her gather beneath him—storm clouds merging into one electric mass—and shuddered at her strangled cry of release.
As she went limp again, he moved down her, down the lean, taut lines of disciplined female form. Angles and curves, dips and lovely, lovely lines. He wanted to wallow in them, exploit them, absorb them. The jump of her pulse here, then here, matched the leap of his own. And the taste of her grew warmer. Stronger. Until he wondered how he’d ever lived without it.
She was helpless. H
ad never been helpless. Had never been taken with such ruthless patience. He owned her, and there was a thrill in it. In knowing she would let him do anything he pleased. In knowing she would enjoy it.
Her skin was damp, hot. It seemed he knew every nerve in her body and would send each quivering, one by one. She reached for him, opened to him, gave to him with a freedom she’d never felt for another.
Every move seemed impossibly slow, as if they swam through water. His body trembled for hers, his heart raced. She felt it all, and the tensing bunch of his muscles under her stroking hands.
When his senses were full of her, the scent, the flavor, the texture, he rose over her. Waiting, waiting until those eyes, clouded now with pleasure, opened.
He slid into her. Deep, deeper.
He took her, long, slow thrusts until her breath began to sob and his blood to pound. He watched the pulse in the lovely line of her throat rage as she came again.
Her arms slid bonelessly from around him. “I can’t.”
“Just let me,” he replied as he pressed his mouth to hers again. “Let me.”
As if spellbound, she rose with him, fell with him, and felt the impossible need build yet again.
“Go with me.” She gripped his hips, groaned as she felt herself being swept up one more time.
He already was. His world wavered. Burying his face in the dark spread of her hair, he lost himself.
She felt . . . perfect.As if her skin had turned to velvet dusted with gold. Every ounce of tension had drained away. In fact, she didn’t see how she could possibly worry about anything ever again.
Great sex, she decided, was the best of all possible drugs.
She wasn’t much of a cuddler afterward, and had never been big on pillow talk. But here she was, wrapped cozily around Mac, snuggled in because it felt exactly right. Her legs were tangled with his, her head cradled on his shoulder, her arm hooked around his neck.
What made it even better was the way he held on to her, as if he was just as content to stay there for the next two or three years himself.
“Did you learn some of those moves by studying the sexual habits of primitive societies?”
He rubbed his cheek against her hair. “I like to think I put my own spin on them.”
“You do good work.”
“Right back at you.”
“I threw your glasses on the floor. You want to watch out you don’t step on them.”
“Sure. I meant to tell you something before.”
“What?”
“You’re beautiful.”
“Get out. You’re in a sexual haze.”
“You have all this dense, dark hair. And I keep wanting to bite that heavy top lip of yours. Add that really swell body, and it’s a great package.”
When she tipped her head up and stared at him, he blinked until he had her in focus. “What?” he asked.
“I’m just trying to think when’s the last time I heard anyone use the word ‘swell’ that way in a sentence. You’re really weird, Mac. Cute, but weird.” She lifted her head just enough to nip at him. “Need fuel,” she said. “Want pizza.”
“Okay, I’ll get it.”
“Nope, I brought it, I’ll get it. You just stay where you are. And stay naked,” she added as she rolled over him and off the bed. “By the way, you’ve got a really swell body, too.”
She strolled into the other room, stretched luxuriously. Limber and naked, she went into the kitchen for a couple of beers to go with the pizza. She grabbed a pile of napkins, then did a quick spin.
Could she feel any better? she wondered.
Not just the sex, she thought with a dreamy sigh that would have embarrassed her if she hadn’t been so loose. It was Mac. He was so sweet and smart, so steady without being boring or stuffy about it.
She loved listening to him, watching the way his mouth quirked just a little higher on the left corner than the right when he grinned. And the way his eyes got all blurred and unfocused when he was thinking. The way his hair, all dark blond and thick, was never quite tidy.
Then there was all that fascinating intensity balanced by the easy humor.
He was the first man she’d ever let herself be involved with, she admitted, who had so many layers. He wasn’t simple, and didn’t expect her to be.
And wasn’t that lovely?
With the bottles clanging cheerfully together, she wandered back into the living room to retrieve the pizza. Happiness soared through her, and before she realized what was happening, her heart did a slow turn, a kind of waltz, then suddenly fell.
Her eyes popped wide. “Oh, my God!”
Before she could react to the abrupt and slightly terrifying realization that she’d fallen in love, every machine in the cottage went into action.
Her head rang with the sound of them. Beeping, squealing, buzzing, humming. Needles whipped, lights flashed. And she stood frozen in shock.
Mac gave a shout and leaped out of bed. He sprinted toward the living room, tripped over a pair of sneakers and went sprawling. Cursing, he scrambled up and ran naked into the room.
“What’d you touch? What’d you do?”
“Nothing. Nothing.” Ripley gripped the bottles like lifelines. Later, she told herself—much later—she would look back at this and it would all be so ridiculous she’d crack a rib laughing.
But for now she could only stare as Mac rushed from machine to machine, calling out readings, actually patting his naked body as if he might find a pocket in his skin where a pencil was hiding.
“Man! Man! Would you look at this?” He pulled up sheets of paper, holding them almost to his nose as he scanned the printout. “Major events. The first one nearly an hour ago. I think. I can’t read the time. Can’t see a fucking thing on the graphs. Where the hell are my glasses? Holy cow, fried another sensor. This isgreat !”
“Mac.”
“Yeah, uh-huh.” He waved a hand at her as if she were a vaguely annoying fly. “I just want to rewind the video-tape, see if there were any visible manifestations.”
“You’d better put some clothes on because you’re a little . . . vulnerable to injury at the moment.”
“Hmm? What was that?” he asked distractedly.
“Why don’t we both get dressed, and I’ll let you get back to your work.”
Only an idiot, he thought, would turn a naked woman away to play with toys. Especially when the woman was Deputy Ripley Todd.
Dr. MacAllister Booke was no idiot.
“No. Let’s have pizza.” He picked up the box, and the scent of it, of her, stirred his appetite again. “I’ll go over the data tomorrow. It’s not going anywhere.” He went to her, skimmed his knuckles over her cheek. “I don’t want you going anywhere either.”
Fair enough, she decided. She would go over her internal data tomorrow, too. “Watch your step this time. I don’t want you falling on the box and smashing dinner.”
Ordering herself to settle down, she walked with him back to the bedroom. “How’d you get the scar on your butt?”
“Oh, I sort of fell off a cliff.”
“Jesus, Mac.” They settled on the bed, the pizza between them, and she handed him a beer. “Only you.”
She hadn’t meantto stay. Sleeping over was entirely different, in Ripley’s view, from sleeping with. It added another layer of intimacy that, too often, got sticky.
But somehow, without her being entirely sure how he managed it, she ended up squeezing into the tiny shower with him the next morning.
He proved to be very adept in tight places.
As a result she was feeling loose, a bit muggy in the brain, and vaguely embarrassed when she let herself into her own house. Her hope was to sneak upstairs, change into sweats for a run on the beach, and act as if nothing much had happened. That hope was dashed as Nell called out from the kitchen.
“Is that you, Ripley? Coffee’s fresh.”
“Damn it,” she muttered under her breath and reluctantly changed directions. She wa
s mortally afraid there was about to be a girl talk and hadn’t a clue how she should handle it.
There Nell was, working in the kitchen that was alive with the homey scents of baking, looking daffodil-fresh as she filled another round of muffin tins.
One look and Ripley felt bedraggled, awkward, and ravenous.
“Want breakfast?” Nell asked cheerfully.
“Well, maybe. No.” She sucked it in. “I really want to get a run in first. Ah . . . I guess I should’ve called last night to let you know I wouldn’t be home.”
“Oh, that’s all right. Mac called.”
“I just didn’t think . . .” In the act of reaching into the fridge for a bottle of water, she froze. “Maccalled?”
“Yes. He thought we might worry.”
“He thought,” Ripley repeated. Which made her, what? An inconsiderate idiot. “What did he say?”
“That the two of you were having hot monkey sex and not to worry.” She glanced up from her muffins, dimples flashing as she laughed uproariously at the horrified shock on Ripley’s face. “He just said you were with him. I inferred the hot monkey sex.”
“Aren’t you a laugh riot in the morning?” Ripley countered and twisted the top off the water bottle. “I didn’t know he’d called you. I should have done it.”
“It doesn’t matter. Did you . . . have a good time?”
“I’m walking in at, what, seven forty-five in the morning. You should be able to infer something from that.”
“I would, except you seem a little cranky.”
“I’m not cranky.” Scowling, Ripley glugged down water. “Okay, it just seems to me that he could have told me he was going to call you, or suggestedI call you, but either way that would’ve been assuming I intended to stay the night, which I didn’t, but which he obviously decided I was going to, which is pretty pushy if you ask me because it wasn’t as if he actuallyasked me to stay in the first damn place.”
Nell waited a beat. “Huh?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know what I just said. God.” Irritated with herself, she ran the cold bottle over her forehead. “I’m just weirded out over stuff.”
“Over him?”
“Yes. I don’t know. Maybe. I’ve got all these feelings piling up and I’m not ready for them. I need to run.”
“I’ve done a lot of running myself,” Nell said quietly.
“I mean on the beach.” At Nell’s sympathetic nod, Ripley sighed. “Okay, I get you, but it’s too early for metaphors.”
“Then let me ask one straight question. Are you happy with him?”
“Yeah.” Ripley’s stomach tied itself into slippery knots. “Yeah, I am.”
“It wouldn’t hurt to just go with that for a while, and see what happens next.”
“Maybe I would. Maybe I could. But I’ve figured out that he’s always one step ahead of me. Sneaky bastard.” She gave up, sat. “I think I’m in love with him.”
“Oh, Ripley.” Nell leaned down, took Ripley’s face in her hands. “So do I.”