And he did like her. Even before they’d shared the most intense kiss he’d ever experienced.
He liked that she was wearing his clothes. He liked the way the lithe muscles in her thighs disappeared under his shirt, hinting at what lay farther up. He even liked the way she was glaring at him right that second, mad instead of scared, a hint of residual passion evident in the way her lips stayed slightly parted and the way her gaze kept flicking between his eyes and his own mouth.
Beautiful, resilient, strong and smart.
His like was making it hard to see her as a threat, and he really needed to overcome that. Somehow.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she snapped.
“Did you know I was here?” he replied softly, ignoring her angry question. “Or did you just get lucky?”
“I wouldn’t call this lucky.”
Keira pulled emphatically on the rope around her arms, and Graham winced. Coercion didn’t suit him, and in spite of what people thought, he wasn’t a violent man. Not habitually anyway. He just did what he had to do, when he had to do it.
“If you’re not going to answer my questions,” Graham said, “then I’m going to go back to our previous arrangement.”
“What previous arrangement was that?” she replied, just shy of sarcastic.
“The one where I don’t speak at all.”
He started to turn away, but she snorted, and he stopped, midturn, to face her again.
“More of the silent treatment? What are you?” she asked. “A ten-year-old boy?”
For some reason, the question annoyed him far more than her lack of candor. Graham strode toward her, and once again she didn’t cower. She raised her eyes and opened her mouth, but whatever snarky comment had been about to roll off her tongue was cut off as Graham mashed lips into hers. Uncontrollably. He kept going until he’d possessed her mouth completely, and when it ended, Keira was left gasping for air—gasping for more. For good measure, he dug his hands into the hair at the back of her neck and trailed his lips from her chin to her collarbone before he stopped.
“When you’re ready to talk—with some honesty—I’ll be just over there, waiting,” Graham growled against Keira’s throat.
Then he stood and moved across the room to dig out the things he needed to prepare breakfast.
Just a morning like any other, he told himself.
Except that he needed two plates and two forks instead of the usual one of each. And twice the amount of pancake batter and extra coffee. Oh, and there was also the faint feminine perfume that somehow managed to override the scent of fire that usually dominated the air in the cabin. Those things, coupled with the way her heated gaze followed each of his movements while he stoically ignored her presence, left no doubt that the morning wasn’t anything like any other.
Why couldn’t he have rescued a hideous beast of woman with no spark in her whatsoever? Why did it have to be a girl who so thoroughly piqued his interest and so easily distracted him from finding Mike Ferguson? He should be trying to think of a way to get her out of his house as quickly as possible so he could get back to his mission. Not standing there daydreaming about her. He could barely blink without seeing her enticing form on the back of his eyelids.
“If I answer your questions, will you answer mine?”
Keira’s voice startled Graham, and he spun toward her. The pan went slack in his grip, and the golden breakfast item flew right past both it and him, and landed on the floor at his feet. They both stared at it for a moment before Graham bent to snatch it up.
“Well?” Keira prodded.
Graham shrugged. “Depends.”
She blinked, looking surprised. Had she just expected him to agree with no further terms? Not a chance in hell was he giving her the freedom to ask anything she felt like.
“It depends on what?” she asked.
Graham took a breath, popped the floor pancake into his mouth, then chewed it slowly and deliberately before swallowing it and answering her puzzled question. “On whether or not I think you’re telling the truth. And whether or not I think giving you an honest answer will put you in danger.”
“Shouldn’t I be the one who decides if I’m in danger?” she countered.
Damn, he liked her stubbornness. He ran his fingers over his beard to cover his smile.
“Not today,” he told her.
“Listen to me, Mountain Man. You might have saved my life—” Keira paused when Graham raised an eyebrow, and quickly amended, “You did save my life. But you also lulled me into a drunken stupor with your liquored-up cider, then crawled into bed with me, and now you’ve tied me up, and—”
He cut her off. “I also stripped you down, searched your body for signs of any other deep cuts or contusions, or internal bleeding. Then I stitched you up as best I could.”
With each word, Keira’s face grew redder, and by the end of Graham’s speech, she was nearly purple.
“You stripped me?” she asked, her voice a squeak. “Why would you strip me? And then tell me about it?”
Graham shrugged. “I thought it best that I get that out of the way now. And it would’ve been hard to be thorough if you’d been clothed. That’s two questions you owe me now, by the way.”
“I don’t owe you anything,” she almost yelled. “You cannot touch me or kiss me, just because you feel like it. You cannot carry me around, just because it’s easier than asking me nicely.”
“You think I did all that for me?” Graham argued.
“I’m sure it was horribly inconvenient for you to get me naked.”
Graham bit back an admission that it had actually been damned inconvenient. He’d covered her body carefully while searching for anything more serious than the slice in her thigh. For the first time in his life, he’d been barely able to keep his professional detachment in place, and the guilt of it had made him want to perform the careful examination of her body with his eyes closed. Except the thought of a hands-only exploration brought with it a whole host of other, far from clinical, ideas to mind. He had never been so happy to finish an exam.
Now he was sorry he’d brought it up.
“You were asleep,” he growled.
“And sleep made me what? Unwomanly? Unattractive?”
Hell. No.
“High on yourself, aren’t you?” Graham asked, his voice just a little too dark to be called teasing.
“What does that mean?”
“You clearly think your nudity is enough to turn a man into nothing more than a slobbering sex-crazed maniac,” he stated.
“That’s not what I said!”
“That’s what I heard.”
Keira’s face was still pink. “It’s just that that stuff makes it a little hard to trust that you’ve got my best interests at heart.”
He had done all of those things she’d mentioned. He’d also covered her each time she kicked off her blankets in the night, panicked each time her breathing changed and had his own night thoroughly ruined.
Ruined? he thought. Or made more worthwhile.
He growled at the voice in his head and pushed it away.
“You’re welcome,” Graham said.
“You’re—I’m—what?”
Ignoring her incomprehensible, sputtering reply, Graham walked over to Keira and unfastened the rope. Then, in a quick move that made her squeak, he scooped her from the bed, carried her over to the little table and secured her to one of the chairs.
“I’ll let those first two questions go, and even let you ask another. In the name of chivalry,” he said, and raised an eyebrow expectantly.
Chapter Eleven
If her hands hadn’t been tied together, Keira would’ve crossed her arms over her chest in indignant frustration.
“You think you’r
e chivalrous?” she demanded.
The big man grinned smugly. “Yes.”
“You may want to buy a dictionary.”
“Either way...it’s my turn. You’ve asked three questions, and I’ve asked none.”
“I haven’t even asked my first question yet!” Keira protested. “And you said you were going to let the first two go.”
“Changed my mind. My house, my rules,” he replied.
“You are an infuriating man.”
He nodded. “I’m also loyal, thorough, a tad controlling and a damned fine cook. Are you hungry?”
“Is that your question?”
“As a matter of fact...it is.”
Keira rolled her eyes. “No, I’m not hungry.”
“First question and already you’re telling me a lie,” Calloway said and he pushed a plate of pancakes toward her.
She shoved it back. “It’s not a lie.”
Calloway gripped his fingers on the edge of the plate and pushed it across the table. When it reached Keira, she tried to send it back again, but he didn’t let it go.
“I’m not going to eat just because you tell me to,” she informed him.
In reply, he dragged the pancake away.
Ha, Keira thought triumphantly. Take that.
But he wasn’t letting her win. He was just upping his game. He smiled and began to cut the pancake into bite-size pieces. Then he scraped his chair over the floor so that he was right beside her. He jabbed a fork into one of the pieces and held it up to Keira’s mouth.
It smelled damned good.
She turned her head away anyway.
Calloway exhaled, clearly frustrated.
Keira tipped her face back in his direction, prepared to snap something mean and clever at him. But the second she opened her mouth, his fingers were there. A piece of pancake slipped into her mouth, and it was syrupy and sweet and so soft it practically melted away when it hit her tongue.
Oh, my God.
It was the best pancake Keira had ever tasted. Maybe the best food she’d ever tasted. All thoughts of ropes versus chivalry went out of her head. When Calloway lifted another piece from the plate, there was no hope in hell she was turning it down. She opened her mouth eagerly, and he popped it in. Keira couldn’t even act embarrassed as her mouth closed quickly and she nipped his fingers. It really was that good.
A little noise—just barely shy of a yum—escaped from her lips as she swallowed.
Calloway raised an eyebrow.
“Fine,” Keira relented. “I take back the breakfast thing. But on the other one, I stand firm. No touching.”
He smiled as if he didn’t believe her, lifted another piece of pancake from the plate, raised an eyebrow and held it out. After the briefest hesitation, Keira opened her mouth, and Calloway popped it in. He let out a deep laugh, and the fourth piece he offered to her a little more slowly. When Keira parted her lips eagerly, he drew the pancake away.
“Hey!” she protested.
Graham leaned his elbows on the table. “You ready to answer another question? Truthfully, this time?”
“I wasn’t lying,” Keira argued. “I just didn’t know I was hungry.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Besides which. I’m pretty sure it’s my turn to ask a question.”
“We both know that’s not true,” Calloway said, and grinned again.
He held the pancake positioned between his thumb and forefinger, just out of biting distance. Keira bent forward to grab it. This time, when he tried to tease her, she jerked her bound hands up, and just barely managed to get enough slack that she could close them on his forearm.
Calloway chuckled, but he let her take the pancake. She made an exaggerated mmm noise as she sucked it back, not realizing that she wasn’t nibbling on just the pancake. Calloway’s fingers were still sandwiched between her lips, pleasantly smooth and soft on his calloused skin. Heat shot through her, and when she relaxed her jaw to release his fingers, he didn’t pull away. Instead, he swiped his thumb over the corner of her mouth, collecting a drop of syrup. Then he pushed it back to the tip of her tongue, and Keira gave his thumb a little lick, relieving it of the wayward syrup.
“Thank you,” she said softly. “For helping me and fixing me up.”
“Anytime.”
There was a weight behind his tone that didn’t match the typically dismissive expression. As if he meant it literally.
Anytime.
Keira’s pulse raced, and her heart swelled pleasantly at the thought that Calloway would drop everything just to help her. That maybe he had already dropped everything to help her.
In the soft, wintry sunlight filtering through the cabin, there was no mistaking the want in his eyes. A matching one flowed through Keira.
Slowly, he loosened the rope on her wrists. And when she was free, she didn’t make a run for it. Instead, she let him twine their fingers together, then lift their joined hands to her cheekbone. He ran them across her skin. She leaned closer. Her mouth was so near to his that she could already almost taste him.
At every turn, she wanted him more and cared less about what had brought her there in the first place. Two more seconds of his knee pressed between hers under the table, and she was going to be insisting that he take her back to that lumpy bed in the corner.
“You okay?” he asked.
The question threw her a little.
“Am I okay?”
His shoulders went up and down. “Give me a sliding scale? One through ten.”
He really did sound serious.
“My head aches. So three out of ten for that. You untied me, so five out of ten for that. And I’m not dead. So I’ll concede a ten out of ten for that.”
“So...an overall of about six out of ten. Sixty percent isn’t too bad.”
“It’s not exactly A material.”
“Maybe you could bump it up to a C+ if I lent you some pants?”
The burn of desire, just under Keira’s skin, came back, full force. Her legs were bare. And they were wrapped around one of Calloway’s denim-clad ones. Put that together with the way his beard was close enough to tickle, the deep rumble of his voice making her chest vibrate, and Keira knew she was in a completely different kind of trouble. One that had nothing to do with Calloway’s secrets or the armed man with whom he was acquainted. That stuff—that dangerous stuff—seemed ridiculously far away at the moment.
But she needed to remember it. And to do that, she needed space. Reluctantly, she pulled away.
Forcing a measured tone, Keira whispered, “Pants don’t outweigh the left-me-tied-to-a-bed, rifled-through-my-purse creep factor. Can I ask my question now?”
“Can you...” Calloway trailed off, looking at her as though he couldn’t quite understand the request.
Then he cleared his throat and shoved back his chair, irritation making his eyes flash as he stood up and yanked away the nearly empty pancake plate.
Guilt tickled at Keira’s mind, but she pushed it down.
“Can I ask my question?” she repeated.
With a coolness that didn’t match the burn of his gaze, Calloway replied, “I think you’re still in the red, as far as questions are concerned.”
He crossed his arms and glared down at her.
Refusing to be intimidated, Keira jumped to her own feet and opened her mouth to argue, but an abrupt wave of dizziness made her head spin.
Immediately, Calloway seemed to sense the change. His eyes filled with concern. And then his hands were on her, easing her close with a gentleness that contrasted dramatically with his bulky form. He lifted her from the ground and cradled her to his wide chest.
Right away, Keira felt better. Sleepy, but better. Almost content.
He brushed her
hair back from her forehead, letting his palm rest there for an extra second.
“Overdid it,” he murmured.
His apologetic tone made Keira want to absolve him of responsibility. It had been her careless disregard for that weather that had led to the accident. Her attempt to come after Calloway with the fire iron that made her arms ache.
But she couldn’t form the words.
After a moment, she gave up trying and pushed her face into the soothing firmness of his body instead. She could hear his heart. It was beating loudly, and she liked its steadiness. Appreciated its strength. Appreciated his strength.
A little sigh escaped Keira’s lips as she let both him and his heartbeat surround her.
As Calloway moved across the floor, she noted that his pace matched the thumps. And in a light-headed way, she wondered if the blood rushing through her was going to match it soon, too.
But in a few steps, he reached the bed, drew back the blankets and laid her down, and Keira realized she wasn’t going to get a chance to find out.
Regret made her heart ache.
Why was I arguing with him?
Keira couldn’t remember.
Using the last bit of her strength, she reached for him.
“Stay,” she managed to whisper.
Keira knew the muddled way her head felt was what made her say it. Or what let her say it.
But she didn’t care.
He met her eyes, and some undefinable emotion brimmed over in their silvery stare, and he peeled back the blanket and slid into the bed, and Keira didn’t just not care that reason had slipped away...she was glad.
* * *
GRAHAM WOKE ABRUPTLY, inhaled deeply, then froze as Keira’s scent filled him.
What the...
Then he remembered. She’d looked up at him with those half-closed eyes, issued the one-word plea, and he’d been unable to do anything but indulge her, crawling in beside her and cradling her close until she was sound asleep.
She wasn’t the only one being indulged. You could’ve at least tried to resist. Would have, if you really wanted to.
That was the truth.
Trusting a Stranger Page 7