Change of Fortune

by RaeAnne Thayne

“Why?” she murmured against his mouth. He groaned at the note of genuine confusion in her voice.

  “We don’t…it’s not…”

  She kissed the corner of his mouth before he could form a single coherent thought and his brain took a siesta when, with tiny, silky little darts of her tongue, she began licking her way across to the other side.

  “What were you saying?” she murmured, her voice low and husky.

  “No idea,” he answered truthfully, and returned the kiss with all the fierce hunger raging through him.

  * * *

  When she had walked into his apartment earlier, Julie had been emotionally drained and physically exhausted from their futile all-night search for Josh. But his kiss was as invigorating as a straight shot of high-octane caffeine.

  Her body buzzed with heat and energy, like she was standing in a desert windstorm, being buffeted from every direction.

  She had enough energy right now to run a marathon without even working up a sweat.

  Or to spend what was left of the night in his arms.

  She shivered as he trailed kisses down her jawline to the sensitive skin of her throat and then down to the open collar of her blouse.

  Desire surged through her, wild and potent, as he pressed kisses to the curve of her breast above her bra. His mouth tasted her, exploring every inch he could reach that wasn’t covered by her clothing, but it still wasn’t enough.

  Not nearly enough.

  Her gaze held his as she shrugged out of her sweater and reached trembling fingers to unbutton her shirt.

  His brown eyes blazed with desire as he watched her and she saw a little muscle jump in his cheek.

  “Are you sure about this?” he asked, his voice little more than a growl. “We can still stop now, though it just might kill me.”

  “Absolutely sure,” she replied. To prove it, she pulled her arms through the sleeves of her shirt, quickly worked the front clasps of her bra and then stepped out of her jeans.

  The raw hunger in his eyes did crazy little things to her insides. She wasn’t sure a man had ever looked at her like this, as if she was every fantasy he had ever conjured up.

  She shivered a little at the force of that look but she didn’t back away. How could she?

  “Your turn,” she murmured, and her hands found the buttons of his shirt, then his pants. She wasn’t sure where this eager response was coming from but she liked it.

  She had always enjoyed the closeness of making love with her husband in his better years, but it had been a long, long time for her. She couldn’t remember this kind of urgent ache inside her, this insistent, undeniable need to be closer.

  She had to touch him. All of him. He was masculine and tough and his lean strength beckoned her, seduced her. She trailed her fingers across the planes of his chest, relishing his hard muscles and the leashed strength beneath her hands.

  His abdominal muscles contracted tightly when she gently dipped her thumbs into the hollow below his ribcage and he stood immobile under her exploring touch for only a little longer before he groaned under his breath and pulled her against him again.

  She didn’t mind. He was warm and solid against her bare skin. As he kissed her, he pulled her close enough that her breasts were pressed against that hard chest she had been exploring earlier and she couldn’t breathe around the delicious friction of her skin against his.

  At last he lowered her to his bed and she could see the lights of the city spread out beyond his window. He had angled his bed to take full advantage of the view through the wide windows and somehow she found the idea of him lying in his bed looking out at the night sweetly charming.

  And then she forgot all about the city lights and everything else but Ross when his mouth covered hers for another long, drugging kiss at the same time his hand found her breast, his fingers clever and arousing on the peak.

  She gasped, arching into him. His thumb teased her nipple, rolling it around and around until she thought she would implode from the tension and the heat inexorably building inside her.

  When he slid his mouth away from hers and lowered his head to her breasts, she nearly came off the bed from the torrent of sensations pouring through her. He teased and tasted for a long time, until she was writhing beneath him, desperate and aching for so much more.

  At last, those deft fingers headed lower, toward the core of her heat. She clutched him tightly, pressing her mouth to the warm column of his neck as his thumb danced across her thighs, coming close but not quite reaching the place she ached most for him to touch.

  He circled around it and continued to tease until she finally growled with frustration and nipped at his shoulder.

  His low laugh rang through the room. His gaze met hers and her heart seemed to swell at the lighthearted expression in his eyes, a side of Ross she rarely saw but which she was coming to adore.

  “Very carnivorous of you, Ms. Osterman.”

  “I have my moments, when provoked,” she answered, her voice husky.

  “Remind me to provoke you more often, then,” he murmured.

  She smiled and he stared at her mouth for a long time, his expression unreadable and then he kissed her again, his mouth slow and unmistakably tender on hers.

  Oh, she was in trouble here, she thought as heat began to build again, as he continued to tease her.

  “Just touch me already,” she all but begged.

  He laughed roughly. “With pleasure. And I absolutely mean that.”

  His fingers finally found her and she cried out as she nearly climaxed with just one slight touch.

  She thought she knew what to expect. She had been married for five years. Before her husband’s illness, she had always considered their lovemaking fulfilling, an enriching, important part of their marriage.

  This insatiable need for Ross was something completely out of her experience. She thought of that desert windstorm again, fierce and violent, ripping aside a lifetime of convention and restraint.

  It frightened her more than a little, this lack of control, this urge to throw herself into the teeth of the maelstrom and let it carry her away.

  She could feel herself begin to withdraw, to scramble back to the safety and security of that restraint, but Ross wasn’t about to allow it.

  “Let go,” he whispered in her ear. “Let go for me, Julie.”

  His words were all it took to send her tumbling into the storm. He lifted her higher, higher, and then she cried out his name as she climaxed.

  He quickly donned a condom from the bedside table and entered her even before the last tremor shook her body. His gaze locked with hers as his body joined hers, and she felt truly alive for the first time in forever.

  She wanted to burn every sensation to memory—his scent, of cedar and sage and something citrusy she couldn’t identify, the salty, masculine tang of his skin, his strength surrounding her, engulfing her. She wrapped her arms around him as tightly as she could manage.

  He could hurt her.

  The thought slithered into her mind out of nowhere and seemed to take hold, despite the hazy satisfaction still encompassing her.

  She wasn’t sure if she could treat this moment with the same casualness she knew Ross would. This meant something to her, something rare and precious and beautiful. She only hoped she could hold on to that and remember it as such after he pushed her away once more, as she was quite certain he would when the night was over.

  That wild hunger began to climb inside her, insistent and demanding, and she pushed her concerns away. She would savor every moment with him. She wasn’t going to ruin the magic and wonder of this moment with regret, with needless worry about the future.

  With renewed enthusiasm, she threw herself into the kiss and after a surprised moment, he responded even more intensely.

  His movements became more urgent, more demanding, and she arched to meet him, welcoming each joining of their bodies.

  “Julie,” he gasped after a long moment, and then he arched his back
one more time as he found completion.

  In the sweet, languid afterglow, she lay in his arms, trying to burn the memory into her mind. She couldn’t regret this, even though she could already feel the tiny cracks in her heart expanding.

  He would hurt her. She only hoped she was strong enough to endure it.

  It was her last thought before she surrendered to the other demands of her body and finally slept.

  * * *

  Julie was beautiful in sleep. Her hair curled around her face in a filmy, sensuous cloud and long lashes fanned high cheekbones.

  She looked delicate and lush at the same time and he couldn’t seem to look away.

  How could he ever have guessed a few short weeks ago that the prim and tight-lipped do-gooder he had thought her to be that night at the Spring Fling art fair would be so wildly passionate in bed?

  He should have guessed it by the fierce way she defended the scruffy teenager he erroneously thought had been stealing her purse. He had been so busy snapping back at her that he hadn’t allowed himself to see past her anger to the breathtakingly beautiful woman behind it.

  She fell asleep as easily as a kitten in his bed and with the same liquid stretch of her limbs.

  He pulled her closer and she purred and snuggled into him. It gave him the oddest feeling, this complete trust she had in him. He found it exhilarating and terrifying at the same time and wasn’t quite sure how he should react.

  Over her shoulder, he could see the lights in the trees outside on the River Walk. He watched them flicker and dance on the breeze, as he did many nights. This time his mind wasn’t busy running through the details of a case. It was too occupied with Julie and the mass of contradictions she presented. She could be sweet one moment, fiery the next; pensive with one breath, then wildly passionate the next.

  Everything about her fascinated him, from the courage she displayed after becoming a young widow under such tragic circumstances to the dedication she devoted to her job.

  He thought of the huge basket of provisions she had packed earlier tonight and smiled all over again. It didn’t last very long, though, when he suddenly remembered just why she had packed that basket.

  Josh.

  He hadn’t thought of his nephew once in the last hour. Not once. Josh was out there somewhere, possibly in trouble, and Ross had forgotten all about him, simply because he found Julie so enticing.

  He let out a breath, feeling chilled even though his bedroom was a comfortable temperature.

  He needed to focus. He should never have given in to the hunger to kiss her. He was being pulled in too many different directions and right now his family needed him. He couldn’t regret it, though. Not right now, with Julie warm and soft in his arms and this curiously appealing tightness in his chest.

  He must have drifted asleep eventually. When he awoke, pale dawn sunlight was coyly peeking through the windows where he had forgotten to draw the curtains.

  He stretched a little, struck by a curious feeling of contentment inside him. He wasn’t used to it. In truth, the quiet peace of it left him a little unsettled and he didn’t quite know how to react.

  He gazed down at Julie, still sleeping beside him. If anything, she looked even lovelier than she had a few hours earlier.

  Her mouth was slightly parted in sleep and she made a tiny, breathy little sound. He wanted to kiss her, with an acute, concentrated desperation.

  He couldn’t do it. It wouldn’t be fair, not when she needed her sleep.

  He tried to shift away but even his slight, barely perceptible movement must have disturbed her.

  She blinked her eyes open and gazed at him for a moment, then she smiled softly and he had the random thought that the sun breaking across the city after weeks of rain couldn’t be any more lovely or more welcome.

  “Good morning,” she murmured, her voice throaty and low.

  “Hi.”

  “How long did we sleep?”

  He glanced over at the digital readout on his alarm clock. “Not long enough. Only a few hours. It’s almost six-thirty.”

  She reached her arms over her head and stretched until her fingers touched the headboard. “That’s funny. I feel oddly invigorated.”

  He had the sudden, painful awareness that she was naked beneath the sheet that barely covered her. She was inches away from him, all that soft, glorious skin and those delectable curves.

  His body snapped brightly to attention.

  “Invigorated. Yeah. I know what you mean,” he muttered.

  She smiled again, her eyes half-lidded and knowing, and he couldn’t mistake the sultry invitation. He held out as long as he could manage—oh, maybe a second and a half—before he lowered his head to hers and kissed her.

  She responded just as sweetly as she had a few hours earlier, her mouth warm, slick and eager against his. Those arms she had just stretched out above her slid around his neck now and she pulled him close.

  He loved when she touched him. Whether it was a casual hand on his arm in the middle of a conversation or her lips brushing his or her body arching against him in the sweet throes of passion, he couldn’t seem to get enough of her.

  A weird feeling seemed to trickle through him as that sensuous magic surrounded them again. It welled in his chest, clogged in his throat. Something warm and tender and terrifying. He wasn’t sure what it might be—and he wasn’t sure he liked it.

  He wanted to take care of her. To cherish her. To rub her feet at the end of a hard day and make sure her car was filled with gasoline when she needed it and cook her fish on the grill just the way she liked it.

  What was happening to him? For one jittery, panicky minute, Ross wanted to jump out of bed and rush out of his apartment and not look back. He didn’t want this. Any of it. He didn’t need another soul to take care of in his life, especially not a woman whose heart was so huge and full of love.

  Anyway, she didn’t need somebody else to watch out for her. She was doing fine on her own. She especially didn’t need a cynical ex-cop with more baggage than an airline lost and found.

  “Something wrong?” she asked, watching him carefully out of those big blue eyes, and he realized he had wrenched his mouth away and was staring at her as if she had just sat up in the bed and started spouting pig latin.

  He quickly forced his emotions under control. He’d had plenty of practice at that when he was a kid and again as a cop.

  This weird feeling wasn’t love. It couldn’t be. He wouldn’t let it be.

  He liked her well enough and he was more grateful than he could ever say for her help with Josh. That’s all it was.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “Nothing. Nothing at all,” he said.

  He pushed away the jumpy feeling and turned his attention to that spot on her neck that he had discovered drove her crazy. She shivered and tightened her arms around him.

  He might have thought their second time making love wouldn’t have been as intense, as shattering, as the first. He knew what to expect, after all. He had already had the exhilarating chance to explore all those delectable curves. He had already discovered that little mole above her hipbone and he knew she made those soft, sexy little sounds when she was close to finding release.

  But if anything, the repeat performance was even more astonishing. It was slower-paced, sweeter somehow, as if they were moving through soft, warm honey. Every sensation seemed magnified a hundredfold. He had never known a woman to give herself so generously, without any reservations, and it stunned and humbled him.

  Even more, she acted just as stunned by her own response, which only seemed to accentuate his own.

  She cried out his name when she climaxed, then wrapped her arms tightly around him when he joined her with a groan, and Ross never wanted her to let go.

  All those scary feelings crowded back as he held her afterward, her head nestled in the crook of his shoulder, but he forced himself to hold them all back.

  He wasn’t in love with her. No wa
y, he told himself.

  He was still trying to convince himself of that when his cell phone suddenly bleated from somewhere in the bedroom.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  He might have been tempted to ignore it, to dive back into the heat and magic they shared, if not for the sudden recollection of just why they were there in his apartment in San Antonio.

  But who else would be calling him at 7:00 a.m., unless Josh had just bothered to return to the house and found all his strongly worded orders to do just that?

  “Is it Josh?” Julie asked.

  “It had better be,” he muttered. He grabbed his phone from the bedside table.

  “Where the hell are you?”

  A long silence met his growled question and then a small female voice spoke. “Um, still at the jail. But my lawyer assures me that’s only for another few hours. They’re releasing me on my own recognizance.”

  “Frannie?” He scrambled up against the headboard and pulled the comforter up to his waist, as if his sister could see through the telephone.

  “What are you talking about?” he demanded. “What’s going on? Why are you calling me so early?”

  She let out a strangled sound that was half sob, half laugh.

  “You haven’t heard, I guess. Nobody has picked up the story yet this morning since the police aren’t releasing any details. They’re letting me go.”

  “Dropping the charges?”

  “The next best thing to it, my attorney says. They’ve dropped my bail to nothing. They’re not holding me any longer. I’m going to be freed, Ross. Can you believe it? They’ve brought someone else in for questioning. I’m going home to Josh. It’s like some kind of miracle, isn’t it?”

  His sister started crying in earnest but Ross felt as if his heart had jerked to an abrupt stop.

  He couldn’t believe it. He didn’t want to believe it. But how could it possibly be a coincidence that Josh goes missing a few hours ago “helping out a friend” at the same time somebody gets hauled in for questioning about killing Lloyd?

  Josh, what the hell have you done?

  But, maybe he was way off base. If Josh had confessed and was now in custody, wouldn’t Frannie be hysterical instead of reacting to the news with this sort of stunned jubilation?