You can handle this, Sam told himself. He cranked off the shower tap and reached for his towel. You can keep things together.
His brother Jack was ensconced in the nearest motel, a few miles down the road in Port Lavaca, available by phone or modern if Sam felt they needed backup.
Wiley and Rae-Anne had gone back to Austin, but not before Wiley had taken a lot of very detailed notes about Susan and Jon Gustaffson, and promised to do some digging that Sam and Kelley couldn’t do on-site.
It wasn’t getting any easier to be around Kelley, but Sam was finding ways to cope. Showering in the morning, for example, had come to seem too suggestive. He couldn’t deal with the thought of stripping his clothes off and standing under the hot shower while Kelley was still in the bed just a few feet on the other side of the door. So he’d taken to cleaning himself up whenever she wasn’t around— and this evening, that meant while she was over at the Gustaffsons’ cottage checking on how Susan Gustaffson was feeling.
Things were progressing, he told himself. Things were under control.
Then why did he feel as restless as the wind howling outside the cottage? Why had his mind been filled with a steady parade of erotic imaginings even while he’d been trying his hardest to focus on this case? Kelley in that outrageously sexy blue bathing suit of hers… Kelley in the shower with him, slick and warm and willing…Kelley looking into his eyes with a sea blue gaze that was as close to paradise as anything Sam could imagine…
He growled at himself as he toweled most of the water out of his hair. This part of the job wasn’t under control at all. He dried the rest of his body with fierce energy and stepped back into the bedroom, where he’d left his clothes at the bottom of the bed.
And almost ran right into Kelley.
Sam stopped as though he’d hit a brick wall. For a moment he wondered if he was still just fantasizing about her. Her shining eyes and the soft disarray of her fair hair made her look like something out of a dream.
But then she threw the canvas jacket she’d been holding onto the bed, and Sam heard the rustle of fabric as it fell. He groaned inwardly, still not daring to move.
She was real. She was here.
And he was stark naked and already half-aroused by the racy visions that had been keeping him company in the shower.
Shoot, he thought. He’d gotten himself out of a lot of sticky situations in his thirty-six years, but he’d be damned if he could see a graceful way out of this one.
Kelley cleared her throat.
“I—just came back to get my raincoat,” she said. “And my gun.”
That should have done it. If she wanted the gun, it was because she thought she might need it. And that should have been enough to get Sam’s overheated mind back on track.
But it wasn’t.
“What do you want the gun for?” He got the words out, but it was like speaking from underwater. His mouth felt slow and reluctant.
He knew why that was. He didn’t want to talk business. He wanted to be kissing Kelley Landis, every inch of her. He wanted to feel his lips against her skin, to curl his tongue around the taut buds of her nipples, the seductive indent of her navel, the soft curve of her belly.
She was wearing her plain white shirt underneath the jacket she’d just taken off. And Sam could see those tightened buds under the smooth white surface. He felt himself growing a little harder at the sight of it, and cursed his body for its instinctive, undeniable response.
“I just ran into Wayland Price.” Kelley was speaking slowly now, too, holding her eyes level with Sam’s as though after her first long look at him she didn’t dare let her gaze wander any lower.
“And?”
“He invited me to join him for a drink. He seems to have something on his mind.”
This was all wrong, Sam told himself. He was having to struggle just to remember who the hell Wayland Price even was. On the other hand, the memories of how Kelley’s mouth had felt under his, how her soft moans of need had filled his senses, were achingly clear.
“The gun…” He tried to make it into a sentence, and couldn’t.
“I just thought—” Kelley seemed to be having the same trouble. The thought didn’t do anything to steady Sam’s nerves. “He was asking me some questions about Steve Cormier this morning. As if he knew something he wasn’t saying. I don’t know what it is, but it just seemed like a good idea not to meet him alone without a weapon. That’s all.”
The last two words sounded absentminded, as though she’d tacked them on without realizing it. She glanced over her shoulder, toward the open bedroom door, and said, “Wayland said he was just going to secure the boat. The weather’s getting rougher. I told him I’d meet him at the bar—”
This time the sentence ended abruptly, and Sam knew why.
She’d looked back toward him, and this time her gaze was explicit and direct. Sam felt his skin start to heat up all over again as she took in the whole length of his body with her blue-eyed stare. He’d let the towel drop to the floor in the surprise of finding Kelley in the bedroom, and there wasn’t a thing in the world he could do to disguise the state he was in.
And suddenly he didn’t want to disguise it.
He’d done his best to avoid this moment. But it had snuck up on him anyway. He couldn’t deny that he wanted Kelley Landis, and he couldn’t for the life of him force his thoughts back to the case they were working on. Even the little warning bell that jangled in his consciousness at the mention of her meeting with Wayland was lost now in the clamor of remembered sensations and all-too-present longings.
He wasn’t sure which of them moved first. One moment they were at arm’s length from each other. And the next moment they were a whole lot closer than that.
“Sam—”
Her voice was rough with unexpressed feelings. Sam groaned again—out loud this time—and pulled her into his arms.
The metal button on her jeans was cold against his skin. And the feeling of denim and rayon was such an intrusion that he shook his head and drew back slightly. It was Kelley’s satin skin he wanted, not the barrier of her clothing.
“Do you think we should—” She didn’t finish the question.
Sam shook his head. “Sweetheart, I’ve spent too much damn time thinking. About all of this.”
And now he didn’t want to think about it anymore. He didn’t want to talk about it, either.
“I know.” Kelley seemed to hear his unspoken thoughts. “Sometimes I get tired of thinking, too.”
She lifted a hand and smoothed it over his newly shaven jaw, and Sam gave up trying to force any of this to make sense. What did sense matter, when instinct was telling him so clearly what he should do?
“One of us seems to be overdressed,” he murmured.
She smiled at him, and he could feel her yielding to the same overpowering pulse of longing that was throbbing through him now. “I can take care of that,” she said.
How did she still manage to sound so elegant when her honey-rich voice was overlaid with such pure and earthy sensuality? Sam chuckled and gave in to the temptation to kiss her—once, briefly, almost teasingly.
He shook his head and felt his hair, still heavy and damp from the shower, settling itself over his forehead. “Allow me,” he said, and reached for the top button of her shirt.
Her pleased gasp when she understood what he meant jolted through Sam like a shot of pure moonshine. He’d worked so hard at trying to forget the way Kelley’s passion had always matched his own, the way they’d met each other in desire and delight, time and time again.
He’d tried to tell himself she didn’t want him anymore.
But now he knew it wasn’t true.
The pulse at the point of her collarbone was beating to the rhythm of a dance Sam had never been able to forget. And her eyes were shining with a sapphire glint that Sam had seen only when they’d been making love.
It suddenly seemed like forever since he’d caught that reflected gleam of pass
ion in Kelley’s blue eyes.
The sight of it now made him want to rip the obstructing clothes from her body, to tear them aside with all the force of his own long-forbidden hunger. But he made himself move slowly, circling her slender waist with his left arm as he skillfully flicked the button open and moved on.
“You haven’t lost your touch.”
“I guess it’s just something you don’t lose the knack of.”
Sam lowered his head and kissed the maddeningly delicate tip of her chin. And then the classy slant of her jaw. And her earlobe, half-hidden in the flyaway tangle of her hair.
He’d thought it wasn’t possible for him to grow any harder, but when he finished with her buttons and tugged the soft white shirt free of the waistband of her jeans, the snowy expanse of her skin—her shoulders, her breasts in that lacy white bra—made him ache even more potently to be inside her, moving with her.
And the way he was moving against her now already seemed to be reaching places deep inside her. Sam heard her moan and saw her gleaming eyes darken as she met his. Her breathing was quick and erratic, just like his own.
He dropped her shirt to the floor and reached behind her shoulders, searching for the clasp of her bra. It gave way under his fingers without a struggle, and suddenly Sam was drowning in the sweet sensation of Kelley’s breasts against his torso, touching him so intimately, so familiarly, that he thought his head might spin loose with the sheer pleasure of it.
“Sam, please.” It was halfway between a demand and a question. Her hands had been clasping his shoulders, gliding seductively over his skin, but now he realized that she was zeroing in on her own waistband, heading for the metal clasp that had now turned as warm as the blood in his own veins.
“I said no.”
He caught her wrists as she lowered them against his chest. The thought of Kelley wrapping her soft palms around him was almost painfully sweet. But he knew that the moment she touched him, his resolve about taking things slowly would disappear. And he didn’t want that to happen. Not yet.
So he unsnapped her jeans himself and slid his hands flat under her waistband, reveling in the impossible softness of her skin under his palms and the tantalizing, lacy edge of her underwear at the tips of his fingers.
Their bodies remembered this slow dance so well, Sam thought, as he pushed Kelley’s jeans toward the carpeted floor and felt her hips align themselves against his. Her arms twined around his torso again, holding him close, wrapping him in a sea of heavenly possibilities.
She must have kicked her shoes off without him realizing it. Her jeans followed, until she stepped free of everything that had covered her and joined Sam in an embrace more gloriously intimate than anything he’d allowed himself to dream about for the past three long years.
It was getting more and more difficult to remember that he’d intended to take things slowly.
Kelley gave a delighted half laugh as Sam bent his head and kissed the inner curve of one of her breasts, then the other, recapturing the caress that had been interrupted by Helen’s presence the day before. Her skin under his lips was like cool silk. He shifted his grip and captured one tight nipple between his teeth, astonished at the high-voltage jolt that shot through him as he swirled his tongue around the small bud.
His self-control was unraveling by the moment. Kelley’s hands, tangling themselves in his still-damp hair, seemed to be setting off sparks inside his head. He could feel them shooting into every corner of his body.
He’d slid to his knees without realizing it, intent on the small, pinpoint pleasure of Kelley’s nipple in his mouth even while his hands were rediscovering the other hidden pleasures of her body.
She cried out loud when he slid one probing finger between her legs and penetrated the moist core of her. And Sam heard himself gasp in answer, astonished as ever by the openness of her passion, by the way she seemed to meet his own hunger halfway and impel him to find even more tantalizing levels of intimacy.
Sam felt as though the whole universe had narrowed to this one supercharged place, this small circle of heat and light where he and Kelley rocked in each other’s embrace.
He probed her more deeply and felt her knees buckle against his chest.
He smiled as he kissed her gently rounded belly, and the soft nest of curls between her legs, and then moved lower yet.
He groaned against her as he kissed her into mindless satisfaction, easing her back onto the bed, caressing her with intuitive expertise until he heard those soft moans of pleasure turn to something different, something urgent and primitive and electrifying.
Her voice seemed to be connected directly to Sam’s spinal cord. He felt as though she was singing through him as she arched her back and cried into the night on a long note of surprise and ecstasy.
Sam laughed out loud with the delight of it. The sound was ragged with need and welcome and a hundred other long-suppressed emotions. He joined her on the bed, sliding over her still-quivering frame without breaking contact with her, gazing down at her half-closed eyes with a lover’s satisfaction.
She felt warm and pliant under him, soft and strong at the same time. Sam gathered her into his arms and propelled both of them into the center of the big bed, pausing only briefly to reach into the back pocket of the jeans he’d tossed there—had it been just a half hour ago, or a lifetime already?—when he’d stepped into the shower.
Kelley’s eyes flared open at the crinkling sound of the plastic wrapper as he discarded it, but he shook his head, not wanting to talk, to explain how spooked he’d been the first night they’d been here to find himself responding to Kelley just as wildly, as naturally as he ever had.
He’d visited the little drugstore in Cairo the next day, foreseeing this moment but still not willing to take a chance that their unhappy past might repeat itself. And now—
Now it didn’t matter. He’d protected Kelley this time, and he didn’t want to think about it anymore.
He wanted to concentrate on the way her face changed when he lifted himself up and slowly moved inside her. Sam could see the astonishment, the wonder in her eyes, mirroring the way he felt himself.
It had always been this way, he remembered with sudden, blinding clarity.
It had been as though both of them had witnessed a miracle, every time they’d ever come together.
“Sam—”
“I know, sweetheart. I know.”
He bent his elbows again and buried his face in her neck, loving the way her baby-fine hair swirled itself around him. Her hands on his bare back were gentle but insistent, and the way her hips rose to meet his thrusts was making Sam’s head reel.
He heard her cries spiraling upward again, a long series of amazed exclamations that ended in a drawn-out Ohh as Sam gave up trying to hold himself back and finally buried himself in her so deeply he felt as though they had just fused and become one body.
He was aware of the slender length of Kelley’s legs sliding up over his hips, drawing them even more closely together. He closed his eyes and felt himself being borne away by the perfection of the way they were moving against each other, by the almost painful pleasure that was humming in every part of him.
He’d thought he was far beyond any kind of thought at all. But as all the desire in his body began to collect itself with unstoppable strength in the very center of his belly, he had a revelation so clear he could almost see the words written on the dark, dazzled sky behind his closed eyelids.
I want you back.
He hadn’t even known the notion was there.
And suddenly it was consuming him, gathering all his hopes and fears and desires into one overwhelming torrent.
I want you back….
The phrase rolled through him as he moved faster and faster in unison with Kelley, reaching for so much more than just the physical satisfaction that was spurring them on. If he could somehow undo what he’d done wrong in the past, if he could just erase all the old hurt, all the old uncertainties…
<
br /> He felt his whole body contract and explode into release without warning. And even in the midst of the shuddering pleasure of it, the ache in Kelley’s cry, the sweet sense of deliverance, he clung to the words that had come to him out of the darkness.
I want you back. He was reaching far beyond pleasure, far beyond passion, as he held Kelley close and eased with her into the silent peace following the storm they’d just shared.
He was reaching for something he knew he didn’t deserve, something he’d never been able to hang on to for more than a fleetingly short time.
But he was holding out his hand for it again anyway. And if it was to be found anywhere, he knew it would be here, inside the soft circle of Kelley Landis’s arms.
What he was reaching for, awkwardly, tentatively, hardly daring to believe it might be his again, was pure and simple hope.
Chapter 11
“Sam, I’ve got to get up.”
Her words reached him from a long way away. At first he couldn’t make sense of them.
He didn’t know how long they’d been in each other’s arms, still wrapped in the aftermath of their loving. It had been long enough that Sam’s skin was starting to feel slightly chilled. He couldn’t bring himself to move, though, not when it meant loosening his hold on Kelley’s slender body, separating himself from the silky sensation of her legs alongside his, or her soft, fine hair against his face.
But now she was talking about getting up.
“I’ve got to go meet Wayland,” she said. “Remember?”
Remember? The only thing Sam could clearly remember was the realization that in spite of all his efforts to get over this woman, in spite of the harshness of the lessons he should have learned, he was just as smitten as ever, just as hungry for her love, just as tangled up and distracted by her as he’d been when they’d first met.
In the throes of passion, that had seemed like a gift, a blessing.
Now he wasn’t so sure.
Kelley was struggling to sit up, and Sam reluctantly moved aside. But he wasn’t quite ready to let her go. He kept one arm firmly clasped around her as he fought to get his wits back in order.
The Honeymoon Assignment Page 16