The warm water of the shower slid over her skin, hypnotic as a lover’s touch. Turning the tap to cold scarcely made a difference. Even the impatience she felt with herself was distant, unimportant. As though it really were the morning after, she moved in a cloud of fatuous pleasure.
Sloane dried her hair and slipped into lingerie, silk and lace whispering over her skin. Nothing in her closet matched her mood, she thought, staring at the ranks of discreet, tailored suits. They all looked too confining. The day demanded something different.
The knock at the front door was first a surprise, then, as she glanced at the clock, an annoyance. Visitors at seven-thirty were not the usual order of the day. She pressed the intercom button. “Who is it?”
“Nick Trask.”
She blinked. Of all the people she might have expected at her door, he’d have been the last. Granted, he’d walked her home from Kendall’s, so he knew where she lived, but still…
She pressed the intercom button. “Come on up. It’s the door at the top of the stairs.”
Ducking into the bathroom to grab her robe, she belted it on securely. Then she headed to the door.
And opened it to see Nick coming up her stairs.
Overnight stubble blued his jaw. He wore faded jeans and his leather jacket over a white T-shirt. If she ran her hands beneath the fabric, she knew exactly how the ridges of his abs would feel under her fingertips. Her first thought was not what he was doing there, but how natural he looked framed by her doorway. It was as though she’d expected him. In the aftermath of the dream, she wondered with a thread of disquiet if she had.
He stopped in front of her. “Good morning.”
He’d come by on the spur of the moment, because he wanted, no, needed, to see her. If he’d known what the image of her standing at the door in her silky robe, her hair tumbling down over her shoulders would do to him, he might have driven on by. He’d give her time, he’d said. He wasn’t sure how he was going to manage it. “I brought up your newspaper,” he said, pushing the plastic-wrapped bundle at her.
“Thanks.” She watched him, looking, he knew, at the mileage from a rough couple of days. “No offense, but you look like hell.”
He ran a fist along his jaw. “That bad, huh?”
“When was the last time you got some sleep?”
Sleep? He couldn’t remember. Yesterday seemed an endless time ago. “A couple of days. Things have been busy. Can I come in?”
“Of course.” Sloane stepped back from the door, gesturing him in. “That way you can sit down before you pass out in my hall and give the classics professor upstairs something to sniff at on her way out the door.”
“I’m not that far gone, don’t worry.”
“Are you sure?”
“Positive,” he said, following her into the living room.
It was a spacious, high-ceilinged room with broad moldings and wide bay windows that brought in the morning sun. A milk-glass fixture hung from a rosette medallion on the ceiling. His builder’s eye saw good structure, graceful lines. Unfortunately, it appeared to be furnished in Early American garage sale, with rugs courtesy of the remnant room at Carpets-R-Us. It was tidy verging on spartan, with little sense of warmth or indeed that anyone made a home there.
Sloane shifted uncomfortably. “I haven’t had a chance to do it up yet,” she said.
“Lived here long?” A couple of bookshelves lined one wall. She alternated between reading engineering texts and detective novels, as near as he could tell.
“A couple of years.”
“Let me guess, you’ve been working.” The couch, he discovered, was surprisingly comfortable and he leaned back with a sigh.
Sloane frowned at him, hands on her hips. “So how exactly did you get into this kind of shape?”
“Oh, a twenty-four-hour trick, the full moon, the four-way payday, a lot of things. We’ve been…busy.” His voice was subdued.
“How about some coffee?”
“That’d be great.”
The coffee was already brewed; she had only to go to the kitchen to get it. Walking back carefully to avoid spilling, she got to the threshold of the living room before she looked over at him. And then she simply stared.
Nick sprawled carelessly on her overstuffed couch, eyes closed, jacket off, long legs stretched out under the coffee table. How was it that he was completely relaxed in her home while she was suddenly awkward? “Here you go,” Sloane said briskly. She set the mugs on coasters, then settled herself on the chair at his end of the couch, resisting the urge to clutch the robe to her throat like some vaporous Victorian maiden.
His charcoal eyes opened. For a moment, he simply watched her until she wondered if her ivory silk camisole was showing. With a low sound of effort he sat up. “Thanks. At least now I’ll stay awake long enough to get home.”
Sloane lifted her mug, the sides of the cup heating her hands. Empty seconds dragged by. She shifted on the chair. “So.”
“So?” Nick took a grateful drink of coffee.
“Um, no offense, but what are you doing here?”
“I brought you a little present.” He set something on the table and reached for the coffee again. “From one of your Orienteers.”
“From one of…” Sloane leaned over and picked the object up. It was one of the helmet display modules, or had been at one time. Now it was mostly a warped clump of plastic. Comprehension dawned. And the beginnings of irritation. “You had a fire last night.”
“A fire?” Nick shook his head, taking a drink and setting his coffee down. “No, I don’t think you could call it a fire. Conflagration is a better word, or maybe inferno.” He leaned his head back on the couch wearily and winced.
“You were supposed to call me so I could be there,” Sloane reminded him.
Nick let out a long breath. “There wasn’t time.”
Sloane set the melted display back on the table. “Nick, this testing is important. The longer we take to qualify the gear, the longer it’ll take to get deployed and the longer guys will be at risk.”
“That’s assuming it gets deployed at all. Look, we were fighting a fire. That takes priority over everything.”
“How about the evaluation sheets? Tell me you at least managed to do that much.”
“Sorry.” He shook his head.
“Why not?”
“We barely got back to the station by the end of shift. The last thing I wanted to do was bother the guys for feedback. I’ll get it next shift.”
When they’d have forgotten most of the details. “So you didn’t notify me, you didn’t get evaluation sheets, you melted the equipment. You do remember you’re supposed to be cooperating, right?”
Nick frowned. “It was almost three in the morning. I didn’t have time to wait for you to wake up and answer the phone. We caught a three-alarm fire at one of the projects in Dorchester. People were going to die if we didn’t get them out.” He leaned his elbows on his knees and rubbed his eyes tiredly. “Your gear worked fine. The only problem is that the clips that hold the displays to the helmets aren’t as solid as they could be. This one got knocked off Knapp’s helmet by his ceiling hook.”
Sloane picked up the display again. “If I’d been there, I might have been able to fix the clips.”
“What do you think a fire scene’s about?” Nick demanded, dropping his hands. “Do you think we’d be standing around waiting for you to MacGyver our helmets? We had everything we could do just to keep it from spreading to neighboring buildings and get people evacuated. There were people trying to jump from the fourth floor just to get out. There were…” he broke off, squeezing his eyes tightly shut as if closing off a vision.
Sloane became very still. There was a hollow ring to his voice, a soul sickness that ran deeper than exhaustion. She swallowed. “Nick, stop. Please. You don’t have to explain. I’m sorry.”
He stared at his hands. “I found a family in an apartment on the top floor,” he said slowly, tonelessly. “We
didn’t get to them in time. The parents were by the children’s room. They must have been hit by the smoke and the fire just…the fire just swept through.” The words were colorless, but his eyes saw beyond her to a fiery orange room in a building that no longer existed except as ashes. He wasn’t supposed to let it hurt.
It did nothing but.
“There were two little girls, not more than a year or two old, curled up together in their crib. They went to sleep last night and they’ll never wake up.” His voice cracked. “They never had a chance at life.” His eyes came back to hers and he looked at her bleakly. “They never had a chance.”
“Oh Nick.” Sloane knelt before him, taking his hands in hers. They were cold, so cold. “Think of the ones you did get out, the ones who were trying to jump.” He made no response. She pressed his hands to her cheeks, kissing his knuckles, noticing for the first time the tiny burn marks left by stray embers.
Slowly, Nick bent his head down and buried his face in her hair. For a long time he only inhaled, pressing his lips to the tumble of red. He hadn’t known what he was after when he’d walked up to her door. It was only now that he was here, holding her, that he understood how much she’d become a part of his world. He drew her against him and held her, just held her, absorbing comfort, warmth, the reality of a living, breathing human being.
Then she shifted against him.
Sloane didn’t know where it came from, the sudden hunger, the certainty of rightness. Pushing him away made no sense, only being with him did. Take a chance. For the moment, fear and common sense fled. She wanted only to hold, to heal, to feel his touch. Blindly she sought his lips, first tentatively, then with confidence. “Nick,” she whispered softly. “Kiss me.”
With a groan he tangled his fingers in her hair and gave in to growing need. Soft and pliant, fragrant and sweet, she was a refuge from the bleakness inside him. Her avid mouth tempted him with taste, touch and texture, combining them into heat. It might have been the first kiss he’d ever had. It was his return to the land of the living. Giving was unnoticed, taking was forgotten. There was only growing pleasure, drawing him deeper, always deeper.
Sloane traced the lines of his face, memorizing them with her fingertips as she had already memorized his mouth with hers. She felt the taut line of his cheek, the rough scrape of his stubble. And his mouth, so warm, so soft. With a sigh, she wrapped her arms around his neck and pressed herself to him, half lying across his lap. And feasted on him with abandon.
Nick raised his head to look at her. Her mouth was soft and swollen from his kisses. Arousal had turned her eyes heavy lidded and dark. The vivid blue of her robe gapped open to show pale silk and lace beneath that shifted with her every gasp, and under that…
Under that, only warm skin.
It dizzied him. He had wanted her until it had become a constant drumming in his head. Now, he had only to reach out and he could sweep her robe aside, have her against him. He bent his head to taste the fragile skin of her throat and her scent rose around him. And he touched her, because he had to.
When she felt his hands parting her robe, Sloane caught her breath in anticipation. Then his hands stroked over the thin silk of her camisole and she gasped at the soft seduction of the fragile fabric sliding along her skin.
His mouth roamed down into the shallow V between her breasts. For long moments, every nerve in her body was focused on the warmth of his lips, the teasing circles of his tongue. Desire tightened in her, impatience built for more than this teasing touch, for him to go further.
The slightly rough texture of his hands made her shiver as he pushed her robe off her shoulders, slipped down the thin straps of her camisole. Then his lips journeyed back up to capture hers with a power that made her go utterly still. More…this was more than any kiss had ever been, ripe with promise, decadent with pleasure. There was no thought of running or stopping now; she couldn’t have borne it. Explorations and caresses blended into compulsion. Passion and need became inextricably tangled in a Gordian lovers’ knot.
Everything a man could want, Nick held in his hands now. Everything he had burned for night after sleepless night was his. When he lowered his mouth to hers again, he had some thought of gentleness, but it was lost in her soft gasp as he slid one hand up under the thin cloth of her top.
It tore at his control, feeling the warm, smooth flatness of her belly, the curve of her waist and the slight swell where her breasts began. He took his time, testing them both with rhythmic strokes, fighting the urge to plunder. When he could wait no longer, he slipped his fingertips up higher to feel the hard points of her nipples.
And felt himself turn rock hard.
Arousal vaulted through her. It was exquisite, it was tantalizing, it was almost more than Sloane could bear. And there was more, she knew there was more.
Suddenly she couldn’t bear it anymore, she had to feel Nick’s flesh under her palms, his bare skin against hers, the muscles of his flat belly raised up in taut relief. With impatient fingers, she dragged the fabric up over his head. And when she ran her fingers over his chest, his nipples, to tear a moan from him, she gloried in her power.
Nick slipped both hands under her camisole. Sloane’s breath caught as she realized his intent, then raised her arms to assist him. The scrap of silk slipped over her fingertips and wafted gently to the floor, forgotten. As easily as if she were weightless, he shifted her around to place her beneath him on the yielding cushions of the couch. A tension began to coil in her belly as she felt the weight of him against her.
Sloane ran her hands down from his shoulders to his wrists, feeling the rippling strength of the tendons, the curves of muscle under her fingers. “Touch me, Nick,” she whispered, eyes heavy lidded and hot. “Touch me everywhere.”
The words dragged him to the edge of control. With every passing moment, he swore it couldn’t get any more intense. With every kiss they traveled further and further from the bounds of sanity. Her skin glowed, milk-pale in the morning light; her breasts were small and perfect. Around her shoulders her hair swirled in wild disarray, gleaming like flame. He leaned down to pleasure, to possess.
In a surge of mingled desire and delight, Sloane felt his tongue trace a line down her neck to the taut peaks of her bare breasts. The slick caress of his tongue against first one, then the other sent her twisting against him. It was exquisite, maddening. He scraped his teeth lightly against her nipples and she gasped for air, clutched at him as he ran his hand down the line of her thigh where the silky nylons whispered under his palm.
“Oh man,” he muttered as he reached the top of her nylons and found bare flesh and the lacy line of her garter belt. “I might just lose it right here.”
“Not yet, cowboy.” Sloane slid her fingers down, reaching for the buckle of his belt, but as his hands grazed the tops of her thighs, she went boneless and weak. For a whirling moment, she felt his touch on the silky triangle of fabric and the exquisitely sensitive nubbin beneath. With a moan she clutched his shoulders, her hands sliding urgently up to his neck. And felt broken skin under her fingers.
Nick jerked back, gasping in a sudden flare of pain that overshadowed even desire.
“What is it? What’s wrong?”
He shook his head, blanking it out. “Nothing.” He turned back to her, but the movement had him hissing.
“It’s not nothing. Let me see it.” Disregarding his hands, she sat up and examined the back of his neck. An ugly strip of burned, welted skin ran along the back of his neck. Sloane inhaled rapidly, trying to ignore a quick twist of queasiness. This was no time to get faint, she ordered herself. “God, Nick, what happened?”
“A falling stringer knocked my hat off and hit my neck. The medic put a bandage on it.” He shifted, trying to ease the throbbing.
“Well, it’s come loose.” Sloane took another look. “You’ve got to get that taken care of,” she said decisively, reaching for her robe. Her skin felt sensitized from his touch as she belted on the silk. The fa
bric felt strange, foreign now against her skin.
As though he’d read her mind, Nick reached out for her. “You don’t need to be in such a hurry with that,” he murmured.
“Nick, you need to go to the hospital,” she persisted, batting his hands away. “Why didn’t you?”
He gave up and simply wound his fingers through her hair. “During the fire, we needed every hand.”
“You should have gone afterward, though.”
Nick stroked her neck and brushed his thumb over her lips. “I wanted to see you.”
For a moment, she lost herself in the smoky depths of his eyes. In the next heartbeat her mouth was on his, seeking, finding. Her hands slipped up to pull him closer and he flinched again.
“Nick.”
“Forget it, it doesn’t matter,” he muttered, kissing his way down the neckline of her robe.
Sloane pushed back. “It does matter. Look, I’m sure I’ve got some bandages and stuff. I can clean it a bit and cover it for you, then you have to go get it taken care of.” She stood up, not trusting herself to stay in physical contact with him, “Relax. I’ll get the peroxide.”
Of course, she hadn’t actually seen the peroxide in a few months, she realized as she rummaged through the medicine cabinet over her bathroom sink. What had she done with it? More to the point, what in God’s name was she doing? She tried to look sternly at herself in the bathroom mirror but only managed a rather foolish grin.
Yes, it was risky. But maybe, just maybe, it was worth it. She wouldn’t fall all the way, but surely partway was all right, wasn’t it? Taking a chance wouldn’t destroy her, but turning away from a feeling like this just might. It had been so long….
Switching to the cabinet under the sink, she pulled out a nearly full bottle of store-label ibuprofen and peered at it. She didn’t see an expiration date; then again, the label was so faded perhaps it had disappeared.
Illness generally made her impatient. Her method of treatment was to ignore everything and simply sleep until it was gone. It worked splendidly with colds and flu but was probably not going to be effective on lacerations and second-degree burns. “Ah-ha,” she muttered as she unearthed a small first aid kit she’d gotten one time after she’d taken a fall running. At the back of the cupboard, she finally located the peroxide. Toting her prizes triumphantly, Sloane hurried back into the living room.
Where There's Smoke (Holiday Hearts #1) Page 9