Extreme Danger

by Shannon McKenna

  And what was she shaking with, anyhow? Fear? Excitement? She didn’t recognize it. It had no name. But it couldn’t possibly be healthy.

  She didn’t even have the nerve to ask how he took his coffee. In the normal universe, she would holler, “Cream or sugar?” In this one, her throat was locked in her chest. She poured two cups, doctored her own. Stared at the other mug of strong, bitter black brew, breathing in fragrant steam. She hated it black. So harsh.

  Aw, the hell with it. She kicked the door open and carried the two mugs just out as they were. He was as mean as a snake. It was the cup of coffee that he deserved. It suited his rotten character just that way.

  She picked her way on her bruised feet out over the warped, peeling porch, and ogled the bulky breadth of his back and shoulders, the way his torso tapered sexily down to lean hips. Finally, she was close enough to check out the tattoos. Hypnotic designs that looked somehow martial and menacing, despite their sensual grace.

  His gun was stuck in the back of his jeans, a chilling reminder of what they’d just gone through together.

  She averted her eyes from it with a shudder of distaste.

  The pearly dawn was cool and damp. Too cool for the silk robe. His dour silence damped down the normal sounds of morning. No traffic, voices, airplanes taking off—even the birds were afraid to twitter and cheep when Nick was moping.

  She set the coffee down beside him with a thud that made the liquid slosh over the rim and sat down a couple of stairs behind him.

  He reached for the cup and took a swallow without acknowledging her. She waited. Nothing.

  “You’re, uh, welcome,” she prompted.

  He didn’t speak. He didn’t nod. Wow. Breathtaking. It took balls to be that rude. But balls he had, in abundance. No doubts there.

  She cast around for another starting place, wrapping the robe more tightly around her quaking body. “Aren’t you cold like that?”

  He shook his head, took a last drag on the cigarette, and ground it out. “My body temperature is a couple notches higher than normal,” he said, his voice distant. “Like I’m always running a mild fever.”

  Then why are you so cold? She wanted to scream the words.

  She didn’t. Dignity was all she had to cling to, but anger bubbled beneath the surface of her rationalizations and justifications.

  “Did you hear anything those guys said to each other when you were serving dinner?” he asked abruptly.

  She winced. “Do I have to think about it now?”

  He turned, stared at her. “Yeah,” he said. “Right now.”

  She closed her eyes, trying to remember. “Lots of general chitchat, about economics. And then the country club guy said—”

  “Country club guy?”

  “That was how I thought of him. Rich, handsome, privileged, Ivy League type. He said something about the structure being outfitted and the waiting list growing. That he wanted to conduct more testing. Then the Spider interrupted him, and told him they’d talk business later.”

  He nodded, and turned away.

  She was sick of being dismissed. She grabbed a handful of his hair. “You look like a caveman, with your hair snarled up,” she said.

  He took a gulp of coffee. “I am a caveman,” he said.

  She rolled the matted lock between her fingers. “You might want to rub some conditioner into that before you try to comb it.”

  “I’m not going to bother combing it,” he said. “I’ll just buzz it off. I’m sick of looking like a St. Bernard anyhow.”

  She was startled. “I can’t imagine you with short hair.”

  He shrugged. “Got to change how I look. The more change, the better.” He looked back over his shoulder at her, eyes narrowing. “So do you. Go blonde, maybe. Go short for sure. Get colored contacts. Today. Better yet, leave town for good. That’s the best idea of all.”

  She was startled. “I can’t do that! I work! I have responsibilities!”

  “Who cares? Re-order your goddamn priorities. If you want to stay alive, anyway. You can’t fulfil your responsibilities when you’re dead.”

  “Oh, great. So we’re back to the inspiring theme of how I’m destined to die a horrible death? Early in the day for that.”

  He glared back through the tangled caveman hair. “I’m not trying to bum you out,” he said. “I’m trying to make you face reality.”

  Face reality, her ass. She snorted, thinking suddenly of Justin and Kaia in the hospital. “What is it about men wanting to make me face reality these days? Justin told me a bunch of stuff about myself that I didn’t want to hear, either, but I think you take the prize, Nick.”

  “Justin?” He made the connection. “Oh, yeah The asshole. The one who was banging the other girl. The one whose photo you just tossed. So I’m worse than him.”

  She choked on a sip of coffee. “Ah, not exactly,” she said, coughing. “I take it back. He was worse.”

  He looked perplexed. “Worse how? He was banging two chicks at one time?”

  “No!” she snapped. “He—”

  “Was doing a guy? Switched sides on you, huh?”

  “Would you shut up and let me talk?”

  He made a silent zipping motion over his mouth.

  “You have to promise not to laugh,” she told him.

  “I don’t laugh much,” he said. “I wouldn’t worry about it. Besides, you told me some of this already.”

  She pressed her hands over her cheeks, which were heating up, despite the goose bumps on the rest of her body. “Not in detail. The night of our engagement party,” she began, “there was this girl there. Kaia. I didn’t know her. One of Justin’s college friends. Tan legs that reached up to her chin, cornrowed blond braids, pierced nose, tie-dye, Barbie goes to Woodstock. The daring adventuress. She wowed the crowd with her tales of trekking in Nepal and crewing on a yacht on the South Seas. Justin told me he’d never been involved with her—”

  “He lied,” Nick interjected.

  She glared at him. “I figured that much out all by myself. So anyway, I was mixing up a round of daiquiries, and Justin asks me, can he use my car to give Kaia a ride to the train station. And I thought nothing of it. Until the hours started going by.” Her voice trailed off. They listened to the wind swishing the tree boughs below the porch.

  “Fucking cheating weasel,” Nick said, meditatively.

  “Yup,” she agreed, her voice demure. “Well, anyway. Turns out Kaia was giving him oral entertainment in the car. As he drove.”

  He twisted against the railing, his face full of wary fascination. “How did you find out? Don’t tell me he was dumb enough to confess.”

  She gave him a lofty, disapproving sniff. “No, he did not. I found out when I got the call. From the hospital.”

  “Hospital?” His eyes widened. “What the hell happened?”

  She breathed out the tension in her chest. Amazingly, after all that had happened, the story still made her miserable. “Evidently, Kaia was so amazing at the art of fellatio, Justin forgot that he was driving a car. My car, to be precise. On a busy street. In a shopping district.”

  Nick let out a low whistle, and his mouth started to twitch. “Oh, man,” he said, with evident relish. “What an asshole.”

  “Yes, that he is. My car was totaled, of course. Kaia had a neck injury and a bad concussion from the steering wheel. And Justin, well.” She shrugged “That weasely cheat is lucky he still has a dick at all.”

  He sucked in a breath. “You mean she…oh, sweet Jesus.” His face contracted in a spasm of involuntary masculine sympathy.

  “Chomp,” Becca said stonily. “He deserved it. The snake.”

  Nick sagged, put his face in his hands. His back began to shake.

  He was laughing at her after all. She jabbed him with her forefinger. “That’s not fair,” she protested. “You promised!”

  He waved his hand in the air, racked by another convulsion. “You are amazing, babe. How you do this to me, I do not fucki
ng know.”

  “You said you never laugh, but you’re always laughing your head off at me,” she grumbled. “Why is that, I wonder. Am I so comical?”

  That set him off again. He hid his face and vibrated.

  Becca resigned herself, and waited for it to die down. She slowly realized that he couldn’t stop. He kept trying, but it was like watching a swimmer caught in the surf. The waves kept sucking him down again. Was he…God, no. He would probably rather die than let himself cry.

  She laid her hand tentatively on his hot back. “Are you, um, OK?”

  “Don’t. Please. You’ll make it worse.” His muffled voice shook.

  She petted him as if she were gentling a skittish animal. “I’m glad that my humiliation is so entertaining for you,” she said. “Go ahead. Hyuck it up at my expense, Nick. I’m used to it.”

  “Aw, fuck.” The shaking of his back redoubled. “Please. Shut up.”

  “I guess it is funny in a way,” she went on, philosophically. “Gives the term ‘man-eating slut’ a whole new meaning, doesn’t it?”

  He made an explosive sneezing sound, and off he went again.

  Watching him in the grip of a laughing fit gave her a curious feeling of power. It would probably do him good, since a macho caveman like him would never have the sense to give into tears. This worked just as well. She stroked the thick, trembling contours of his back and waited.

  It took a while, but he finally lifted his face from his hands, wiped his eyes, muttering under his breath in whatever the hell that twisty, thick-sounding language he’d spoken all weekend was. Grinning.

  Her breath caught, her jaw dropped. He was so gorgeous when he smiled like that. Radiant. She loved the crinkles around his eyes, the grooves around his mouth. Wow. She had to remember to breathe.

  He gave her a wary glance. His grin faded. “What’s that look?”

  Her mouth went dry. “I…I was just thinking how beautiful you are when you smile,” she whispered.

  Not a muscle moved in the mask of his face, but she felt the light go on inside him. And the answering one flare up inside her chest.

  Chapter

  13

  A voice was yammering on about how he would trash it, yada yada, how much more it was going to hurt her if he kept on down this road, how bitterly she would hate his guts, blah blah, so on and so on.

  Didn’t help. This mindless wanting was inexorable and huge. He swung around to face her, sank to his knees in front of her. Kneeling like the desperate supplicant that he was.

  He stared at her face. Jesus. Becca was dangerous, she was so fucking pretty. She had to tone it down. Wear a bag over her head. People would remember her face even if they had no particular reason to do so.

  She made his eyes ache. That hot pink blush, the delicate line of her cheekbone, her jaw. And that mouth just did it to him, especially that pouty lower lip with the seam down the middle. So sexy, so soft. One look at that mouth would have made him stone hard, if he had not already been so. His dick strained in his jeans, like he hadn’t just had the most amazing volcanic lay of his whole life. And the cock-teasing robe gaping over her cleavage did not help matters.

  Her knees poked out of the crumpled robe. He put his hands over them. Her tongue flashed out to moisten her lips. He stared into that dim triangle between the draped panels of silk over her clamped thighs, where the hot stuff hid.

  Her pale white knees were covered with scratches and scabs. He leaned down, kissed them. The callused spots on his hands snagged at fragile fabric, until his hands found skin, and greedily sought more, pushing the silk up over her legs. The robe gaped at her navel right under the knotted sash. Showing her dark muff.

  Her legs shook too much to keep them clamped against the relentless pressure of his fingers. He pressed them open, and stared down into her shadowy mysteries, the holy of holies. Her beautiful cunt was ready for him.

  His fingers tightened. His balls, too.

  The unmistakeable purpose on his face made her scramble back. She lurched to her feet, batting his hands, and swathed herself with a swirling flutter of rose-print fabric. “Cool it, right now! My landlady is downstairs and the neighbors can see us from their window!”

  “I don’t care,” he said.

  “Of course you don’t,” she said crisply. “You’re a caveman. We’ve already established that.”

  “So can I throw you over my shoulder? Drag you into my cave?”

  “No, you may not!” she snapped. “This is my cave! You can carry in the coffee mugs, and put them in the sink. That’s what you can do.”

  “Shouldn’t have asked,” he said. “Asking was a big tactical error.”

  She folded her arms under her tits. Her nipples poked through the threadbare fabric. “Too bad you didn’t think of that before.”

  Laughter threatened, but he had plans for the next half hour that did not include another sobbing fit, so he breathed it carefully down. He scooped up coffee cups with one hand, Becca with the other, and pushed her, stumbling ahead of him into the kitchen. He deadbolted the door, rinsed the cups, and set them carefully in the drainer.

  He turned to her. “So?”

  She gave him a narrow look. “So what?”

  “I didn’t just put them in the sink,” he said. “I rinsed them out.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Oh, boy, Nick. I’m overwhelmed.”

  “Good.” He pried her arms away from her chest and jerked the robe down over her shoulders so that it bared her breasts, and trapped her arms in the folds of silk. He caught her arms, trapped them behind her back. “You like being overwhelmed. It gets you off.”

  “You overdo it,” she whispered, and moaned into his mouth as he claimed her lips in a ravenous kiss. The puckered buds of her nipples tickled his chest, and he explored the sweet, silken, coffee flavored depths of her mouth as he pressed her closer.

  “Maybe,” he said. “But it works for you.”

  “This part, yes. Just not what happens after,” she said.

  He stared down into her wide, somber eyes, ringed with long wet black lashes. She wasn’t fooling herself this time.

  Her statement hung between them like a lingering chord. She waited for him to deny it. For him to reassure her that it wasn’t true.

  But he couldn’t. The rules weren’t going to change just because he wanted them to. Being locked into this cage made him furious. Sick of the fucked-up situation, sick of eating poison, constrained at every step, by danger, duty, guilt and fear, sick regret.

  He wanted this. The universe could chuckle at the cosmic joke at his expense all it wanted, but he would have this one thing. For him. Not for always, but for now, for right now, he would have it. Have her.

  He spun Becca around till she faced the wall and buried his face in her neck as he wrenched open his jeans, dragging up handfuls of her dressing gown. He filled his hands with the warm silky curves of her ass, the hot cleft, the slick folds between. He fit himself to her, pulling her hips back to get the angle right, and they cried out together as he shoved his cock into the tight, wet clutch of her.

  The sweet friction, the fluttering resistance of her pussy around his cock head almost did it. He forced himself deeper, thrusting inside until the whole length of his cock was kissed with her dew, clasped in that tight, throbbing sheath.

  She cried out, her slender arms trembling where she was braced against the wall, her cunt muscles fluttering and clenching around the intrusion. “No,” she said. “Don’t. It’s not…I don’t like it.”

  He stopped cold. His instincts rarely led him wrong in sex. At least not in this phase of it. He touched her ass cheeks, with slow, soothing strokes, trembling with his own desperate eagerness to let go and have at her. “This way I won’t rub your sore clit.” His voice was raw with effort. “I can make you come this way. I promise. You’ll love it.”

  “It’s not that.” Her voice shook. “I just…it makes me feel the way I felt with…with them.” Her voice cracked.


  He knew instantly who she was talking about. His arm tightened around her waist. His body shook with the strain of staying still. He gritted his teeth, cursed silently. Women and their goddamn complicated notions. It was like blundering through a fucking maze.

  “It’s not your fault. The way they looked at me, but they didn’t see me. At all. When I can’t see your face, it makes me feel…” Her voice trailed off, and he heard her swallow. “Alone. Worse than alone. I’m sorry. I’m not blaming you.”

  “Don’t apologize. You’re the last one who should be apologizing right now.” He ground out the words as he eased his cock out of her.

  They stared at each other for a moment, and he picked her up and carried her into her bedroom. She stiffened, grabbed his shoulders like she was afraid he was going to drop her.

  He deposited her on the bed. There was a cheval mirror by the dresser. The answer to his prayers. He dragged it over, situated it in front of her so she was staring at herself. She tried to smooth her hair. Curled into a knot, wrapped her arms around herself.

  “I’ll look right at you. Eyes locked. The whole time,” he told her.

  She looked uncertain, that rosy, blurred lower lip caught between her teeth. Her eyes big and haunted.

  “I can’t see anything but you,” he urged her. “I swear it.”

  She wiped away tears, shook her head. “I just feel so messed up,” she whispered. “I told you, I’m not the adventurous type, and this whole thing was awful. It wiped me out.”

  “What’s adventurous?” He circled the bed and stared into her eyes from behind, stroking his hands over her hips, cupping her ass. “You say this Kaia was the adventurous type? Trekking in Nepal, crewing on a yacht, rave parties in Thailand? Sucking some engaged guy’s dick while he drove his fiancée’s car? Bet that made her feel like a real wild thing. I know the type. Spoiled kids, living out their fantasies in controlled conditions. Daddy’s credit card in the fanny pack, right along with the passport and the satellite phone and the hash pipe.”

  “I do not see how that is relevant. Oh, God…” Her eyes closed, and she sucked in a sharp breath as he parted her hair on the back of her neck with his lips, and pressed hot kisses against her nape.