by Jean Thomas
When he found it and gently parted its petals, she clutched at his hard shoulders, moaning as he thrust a finger inside her and began to gently rub the wet nub there.
She was so totally lost by then that it took only a moment before she was crying out, bucking wildly as the first spasms seized her in a blissful release. He waited for them to pass, giving her time to rest.
Leaning forward, he kissed her. “You okay?” he murmured.
She wasn’t sure, but she gave him what he wanted to hear. It was enough to bring him into action again.
“Time for you to find out what I’ve been hiding in here,” he said.
She heard the faint crackling noise again, realizing he must be extracting what he’d tucked inside the rolled waistband of his briefs. Whatever it was, he pressed it into her hand.
“You do the honors,” he instructed her.
Clare could identify it now. A condom. He must have had it, and probably others as well, in his luggage. Although she’d had very limited practice dealing directly with condoms, she was beyond any further objection. Tearing open the foil-wrapped packet, she removed its content.
He’d shed his briefs and was ready for her. Her hand closed around the swollen shaft that rose from his groin.
“Careful,” he cautioned her, sucking in his breath as her trembling fingers rolled the condom down over his length. “You’ve got me in agony here.”
“What are you doing?” she asked. The near darkness revealed nothing more than the quick movement of one of his hands.
“Taking off the amulet. I don’t want anything between us for this.” She felt him sliding the amulet beneath one of the pillows for safekeeping. “I’m ready now. What about you?”
Having removed her panties, she assured him she was, although she wasn’t certain of anything now but her need to be joined with him.
“Good, because I can’t hold out much longer.”
That was evident when he impatiently levered himself over her, nudging aside her knees. Flattening the palms of her hands against the slabs of muscle on his chest, Clare lifted her hips to accommodate him.
Then, with one powerful thrust, he buried his entire length deep inside her.
He gave her only a moment to adjust herself to him before, his hips pumping out a smooth rhythm, he began to deliver a series of jolting strokes that Clare endeavored to match with her own rhythms.
In a state of delirium now, she was dimly conscious of being swept up in a tide of sensations. The sound of his whispered endearments, the musky scent of his body taking control of her, the lingering flavor of his minty toothpaste when he kissed her repeatedly, the feel of him, damp with a sheen of perspiration, as she raked her hands over the bunched muscles of his back.
It seemed disloyal to the memory of Alan to compare this man in any way to the man she’d lost, but she was unable to deny it. Lieutenant Mark Griggs was a dynamic lover, though admittedly the other lovers she had experienced were few. Still, the joy he gave her was indescribable, ending all too soon when he rocked her into a blinding orgasm.
He followed her into that oblivion within seconds, shuddering with his own climax. Sinking down against her with a massive sigh of gratification, he kissed her one last time before rolling over onto his side.
Arms reaching out for her to hold her close, he confided an emotional, “It’s been a long time since I’ve had sex as fantastic as that.” He amended the declaration with a quick “Come to think of it, it never was that fantastic.”
Clare didn’t have to exaggerate to agree with him. She could imagine the grin he must be wearing there in the almost total darkness. She wondered if he was still smiling when his even breathing told her he’d drifted off to sleep.
She didn’t sleep. She kept thinking of the lovemaking they had shared, as steamy as the New Orleans night.
What is this going to cost me?
Heartache, if she’d already fallen for him. Had she? Compelling though Mark was, and he was that and more, it didn’t seem possible, not when just yesterday he’d been her enemy.
Yesterday. Had it been only twenty-four hours since they’d been together? A single day, and yet it seemed so much longer than that. And now he was her lover.
You can’t afford to let yourself get serious about him, Clare.
There were too many reasons why she couldn’t. Chief among them was the temporary nature of their relationship. She belonged here in New Orleans, in this house. Belonged to the teaching career to which she was dedicated. While Mark...well, when the reason for their alliance ended, when his leg was fully recovered, he would go back to his beloved rangers. And that, if she was foolish enough to care about him too much, would leave her grieving over his absence as she’d once grieved over the loss of Alan.
What about Mark? Would he miss her as she would miss him? She wanted to think he would, but she didn’t know his deeper feelings where they were concerned. As appealing as he was, there had to have been other women in his life, maybe more of them than she was ready to acknowledge. Was she just another of his short-lived affairs, someone he would dismiss when he was gone from her life?
No, he was better than that.
In the end, though, with her emotions in turmoil as they were, there was only one absolute truth. She couldn’t be certain of anything.
Actually, there was one certainty, at least in this moment. It seemed that Mark muttered in his sleep. Not that she could distinguish anything he was saying. She managed to smile about her discovery while wondering at the same time if, along with her other concerns, it was going to keep her awake.
* * *
Clare was asleep beside him. Mark wasn’t. Something had awakened him. What?
He lay there, listening. Silence. A total silence in the house. He could no longer hear the flow of the air conditioner. The temperature must have dropped in the night, cooling the house to such a degree that the thermostat had shut down the system.
He decided that the complete stillness must have roused him. Not so unusual. He had a nature as alert to silence as it was to unfamiliar noises. It was something most rangers possessed, a necessity in war zones where surprise attacks could occur at any hour under any conditions.
What time was it, anyway? He couldn’t see his watch. It was too dark to read it, but he sensed that daybreak wasn’t far off. Too early to get up. All the same, his feeling persisted that something wasn’t right.
His mounting uneasiness was verified a moment later by a glimmer of faint light. Not from the street. From the opposite direction.
Turning his head, he located the source. There was a thin bar of light originating from beneath the connecting door to the guest room. A shaft that brightened slightly, then dimmed as it swept away. Too weak to be anything but a flashlight. Not a big flashlight, either. Something more like a penlight.
He and Clare were no longer alone in the house. They had a visitor.
Chapter 10
Whoever was lurking around Clare’s house was being damn furtive about his presence. Except, that is, for the necessity of the light, which had to mean he was looking for something. Otherwise, Mark could detect nothing else from that other bedroom. Not even a whisper of movement.
He wasn’t an ordinary thief. He was searching for something in particular. Mark had no proof of that, just his instinct telling him that the something was his amulet. And if that was true, then it meant their pursuer had somehow managed to find them.
All this went through Mark’s mind as he slowly eased himself off the bed, careful not to disturb Clare and just as careful not to betray his action with any sound that would alert the enemy.
He didn’t try to retrieve his briefs. It was imperative that he not waste any time, which was why he was still naked when he padded silently on bare feet to the connecting door, where he paused t
o listen. He heard nothing on the other side to tell him that the intruder in there was aware he was on the move.
He was safe. For the moment, anyway. Mark knew, however, that when he burst in there, if his opponent had a gun, he was risking his life. Hell, it wouldn’t be the first time.
Surprise was his one advantage. Hand on the knob, he crouched over as low as possible to minimize the chance of his being an easy target. Then, taking a deep breath, he twisted the knob, flung the door wide open and propelled himself into the other room.
The glow of the penlight was enough to locate the dark form holding it. Before he could swing it in Mark’s direction, he launched himself at his startled objective, catching him off guard just as he intended.
Mercifully, there was no bark of gunfire, which meant he either didn’t have a gun with him or was unable to reach it. The impact of Mark’s body slamming into his was enough to send the penlight clattering to the floor, where it rolled away and shut off.
But as hard as Mark struck him, it didn’t bring him down as he’d hoped. Using whatever means were available to them both, the two of them locked themselves in a fierce battle in the darkness.
Mark swiftly realized that his opponent was an equal match for him. He also realized the bastard was a dirty fighter, not just punching with his fists but attempting whenever he could to deliver nasty chops with the sides of his hands and gouging Mark with his thumbs.
These weren’t the techniques of a usual combatant but those of someone who was, or had been, a professional. It was the style of fighting onetime mercenaries Joe Riconi and Malcolm Boerner must have used.
They were of minimal value in this instance, though, because Mark had learned those same techniques in his training as a ranger. He knew both how to break them or elude them.
Mark was sure that in the end he could have defeated him, had their weapons been nothing but their hands. He was less certain of that when his adversary managed to produce a knife.
* * *
Clare came awake with a start, alarmed by the sounds coming from the guest room. Sitting up, her hand reached for the lamp on the bedside table. Even before she had its glow, she realized that Mark was no longer at her side.
What on earth—
Managing to find her sleep shirt on the floor where it had been discarded, she pulled it over her head. She didn’t bother with anything else. Fearing the worst, she left the bed and rushed through the open door into the guest room.
The lamp behind her wasn’t sufficient enough to reveal anything more than two figures in the shadows, their struggle accompanied by grunts, curses and heavy breathing.
Her hand was groping for the light switch on the wall when one of those bodies staggered against her. The force of what she presumed was an accidental connection, and not a deliberate attack, was so hard and heavy, robbing her of air, it sent her sliding down the wall. She landed on the floor, back against the wall and legs stretched out in front of her.
Whoever it was had to have immediately recovered himself and fled toward the kitchen. By the time Clare could breathe again, the overhead light was on and a totally naked Mark, who must have found the switch, was hovering over her in concern. He held out a hand to help her up, but she waved it away.
“Did the SOB hurt you? My fault, actually. I slugged him such a good one there at the end I guess he fell into you. He must have had enough, because he ran out back.”
“No, I’m all right.”
“Then I’m going after him.”
“Mark, no! You don’t have a stitch of clothes on!”
But he was already gone. She could hear his bare feet slapping against the kitchen tiles as he raced toward the patio.
By the time he returned, Clare was on her feet again and closing the cell phone she had just used.
“He got away over the fence before I could catch him,” Mark reported. “I would have scrambled after him, but—”
“And maybe made your leg worse, if you’d tried it!”
“I was going to say I didn’t, because I was still worried about you.”
“Even going after him like that was a damn fool thing to do.”
He looked down at himself, seeming to finally realize that he was naked. “Yeah,” he said sheepishly, “I guess if any of the neighbors were up and their outdoor lights on, they would have gotten an eyeful.”
She didn’t know about the neighbors, but she was getting that eyeful herself. It was scarcely a moment for her to be feeding her treacherous libido over the nude sight of him in all his male splendor. But she couldn’t seem to help herself as her gaze traveled from his wide shoulders, down his powerful chest to his exposed manhood, where she tried not to linger, and on to his muscular legs.
It was when she reached his feet that she discovered what she had overlooked until now. There was a knife on the floor. A very wicked-looking knife. She stared at it in horror. Was that blood she was seeing on its sharp blade? Mark’s blood?
She had been so intent on searching his body she hadn’t bothered examining his face. Her gaze shot up, noticing for the first time the wound on the side of his jaw.
“You’re bleeding!”
His hand went to his jaw. “It’s nothing. Just a scrape where his knuckles grazed me.”
“But that knife—”
“Never touched me. I managed to smack it out of his hand before the tip of it ever got near me.”
She’d imagined the blood on the knife then, and thank God for that. “Just the same, that scrape needs attention.”
“Later.” He frowned, suddenly aware of the cell phone in her hand. “Who were you planning to call?”
“The police, and I already have. And don’t give me all the reasons why I shouldn’t have called them. Not when I didn’t know what was happening to you out back. Did you ever manage to get a look at him?”
“Not as dark as it was in here, no.”
“But we both know who he was, don’t we?”
“Yeah, and what he was searching for.”
“He didn’t get it, though.” She hadn’t forgotten that Mark had removed his amulet and tucked it under the pillow in the master bedroom. “All the same, he found us here. Not just managed somehow to find us but to get inside the house.”
That whoever had been shadowing them had now violated her home made Clare not just sick over the realization but deeply angry.
“And that,” she added, “is another reason why I called the police.”
“Clare,” he reminded her, “we can’t tell them we think this is the same guy who murdered Malcolm Boerner, not when as far as we know his death still hasn’t been made public.”
“No, but we can report an intended theft. I can’t take any more of his watching us and waiting for another chance to strike. I want him caught and behind bars.”
“And how do you think the cops will be able to do that?”
“His fingerprints. They must be everywhere in here, certainly on that knife. And if his prints are on file...”
“Forget it. He’s too cunning for that. He was wearing gloves. I could feel them. Probably the same kind of latex gloves we wore at your sister’s house.”
Mark’s disclosure was a disappointment, but she wasn’t ready to abandon her hope in that direction. “The police may have other methods for identifying him. Speaking of which, one or more of them is going to turn up here at any minute.”
“Meaning you’d like me not to be naked when they do.” He nodded in her direction with a wide grin. “How about you? Wouldn’t you, uh, like to greet them in something more than that sleep shirt, sexy though it is?”
Clare took his advice. When a police cruiser pulled up in front of the house, she was ready for it, having traded the sleep shirt for jeans and a Saints T-shirt. Mark had managed to get on nothing more
than his pants and his amulet strung back over his head, resting on his bare chest where he insisted it belonged.
When the buzzer sounded, they went together to the front door. The solitary, uniformed officer they admitted into the living room was a tall, darkly handsome man.
“Officer Martinez.” He looked from Clare to Mark. “And you?”
They gave him their names, which he jotted down in a small notebook, along with Clare’s information that she was the owner of the house. He looked so young, as if he was fresh out of the police academy. She couldn’t help wondering how helpful he would be to them.
“I understand you folks have had some trouble here. Suppose you tell me about it, and I’ll see what I can do.”
Clare let Mark do most of the talking since it was he who had discovered the intruder and tangled with him. It was unfortunate that his explanation omitted all previous knowledge of the subject. But, as they had both agreed, the circumstances of their involvement made it necessary. Otherwise, they would have been suspects themselves. Besides, anything they had learned so far was still just conjecture. There wasn’t any actual evidence that their intruder was a killer after Mark’s amulet.
“Any chance you can describe him?” Officer Martinez wanted to know when Mark had finished with his account.
“Too dark.”
The policeman nodded regretfully, closing his notebook with a brisk “Let’s have a look at the scene where this confrontation happened.”
Clare led the way into the guest room. Martinez glanced around, noticing a chair that had been overturned in the fight before paying particular attention to the knife they had left where it landed on the floor.
“Yours or the thief’s?” he asked Mark.
“His.”
“Well, there should be plenty of prints here, especially on the knife. I’ll have to get the techs in to dust for them.”
Mark shook his head. “No good. He was wearing gloves.”
“That’s too bad. Still, the knife might tell the lab something. You never know.”