“He needs to go out.”
They had reached the edge of Chelsea. The wind was rising, and dry leaves skittered over the front window.
“Out?” Jared frowned down at the puppy wriggling with distress in Maggie’s hands.
“You know—out. At least I think so. I’ve never had a dog.”
A pet had never been a possibility while she was growing up. Her mother had been too frail to have an animal underfoot. Later, when Maggie was on her own, there had never been time for a pet with all her other responsibilities.
“Out it is.” Jared pulled to a halt beside a straggly field bordering a construction project and opened his door. “Off with you, Max, and don’t be long.”
Maggie hid a smile. “Max?”
“Short for Maximilian. Something tells me he’ll grow into the name.”
Maggie watched the puppy trot off to explore a mound of dirt, yipping happily. “You’re not going to give him away, are you? To one of those terrible … farms?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Because he’s partly my responsibility.” She crossed her arms and looked away. “I can’t just let him be shoved into a cage somewhere.”
He angled her face back to his. “What kind of monster do you take me for?”
Maggie shrugged, trying to ignore the touch of his hard fingers. “The usual kind. Someone with no time and a dozen pressing responsibilities. In fact, you’d have every reason not to keep him.” Her voice was shaky, but she refused to believe that it had anything to do with the way Jared was caressing the corner of her mouth. “And I wish you’d stop that.”
“This?” His thumb spanned the curve of her lower lip.
“That.” Her voice wasn’t half as annoyed as she would have liked.
“Illogical creature.”
She stiffened. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You refuse to think of poor old Max stuck in a cage. Then you do the very same thing to yourself.”
“I do not.” Maggie glared at him “I can relax when I want to. I know how to have fun. As a matter of fact, I have lots of fun.” Sometimes she did, anyway. “And for your information, I’m perfectly relaxed.” She saw his slow grin. “What?”
“If you’re so relaxed, why are your knuckles white where you’re gripping the armrest?”
“It’s just a thing I do with my hands. Habit.”
“And that would also explain why your foot has been tapping out Morse code against the door for the last five minutes.”
“My foot?” Maggie stared at the offending body part and flushed when she realized it was true. Why did he get to her this way? “It doesn’t mean a thing.” She swallowed. “Isn’t that dog done yet?”
Jared slid a strand of hair behind her ear. “Max is doing fine. It’s you I’m worried about, Maggie.” His hand drifted over her cheek “Very relaxed. Any more relaxed and you’ll dislocate your jaw.”
“Don’t worry about me. I’m fine.” Dimly, she heard her foot tapping again.
“Too late. Somehow I’ve gotten used to worrying about you. Heaven knows why, since you fight me every second.”
“I’m not fighting, I’m discussing. That’s what mature adults do.” Even as she spoke, Maggie had a strange urge to lean closer and find out if his mouth felt as good as it looked.
“Adults can do other things.” There was a smoky edge to his voice.
Maggie wasn’t going to ask, truly she wasn’t. The words just slipped out. “What other things?”
His lips curved. “This,” he whispered, skimming her neck slowly with his knuckles. “Or this.”
He bent toward her.
Maggie swallowed. He was going to kiss her.
To her horror she wanted to be kissed. She wanted to feel his hands in her hair and the play of his hard mouth.
She sat stiffly, her pulse unruly and her skin hot. His lips brushed hers, feather-light, and she felt the curve of his smile.
“Relax.” He cupped her chin. “I’m not planning to bite.”
Relax? She could barely breathe, and her brain was unraveling. The problem, she decided, was that the man could kiss.
Really kiss.
She’d expected shock and wariness when his mouth feathered down over hers. Instead she found heat and slow, building sweetness. He didn’t rush; he didn’t push. He simply savored—and invited her to savor in turn.
It was a devastating combination, and somewhere amid the swirl of need and wonder she forgot to be wary. She opened her mouth to his gentle pressure and sighed as his tongue skimmed over hers, adding another texture of pleasure to the shimmering layers of need.
More, she thought. And she could have sworn that he cursed in the same moment the thought flashed through her mind. She wanted to lean closer, exploring the textures of his mouth.
Suddenly Maggie went still, very still. The need was too sharp, too sudden. Letting down her guard simply wasn’t an option, not with a complicated man like this. Not with the chaos of sensations she was feeling.
Her hands locked on his chest. She tried to forget how he’d felt, all warm skin and restless muscle. “Jared?”
“Mmmmm.”
“I think—we’d better talk.”
He pulled away. Slowly his fingers rose, curling in the wild tangle of her hair. And then he looked at her, simply looked, breathing hard.
“What?” she whispered.
“You. Us.” He took a long breath. “That.”
She fought back a rush of pleasure at the sight of him, just as tense and confounded as she was. At least both of them were suffering. “You mean that simple little kiss?”
“That—whatever you want to call it—was neither simple nor little.” He frowned. “Not unless kissing usually separates the top layer of skin from your scalp,” he muttered.
Maggie would have laughed if she hadn’t understood exactly what he meant. Slowly her fingers opened over his smooth black lapels, which now wore a fine sheen of puppy hairs. “So you felt it too?”
“Like a tank blast.” He looked angry and baffled. “It ought to be illegal.” He shook his head “You’re fine to look at, Maggie. Braw shape. Wonderful legs.”
Wonderful legs? When had he seen her legs?
“A grand mouth,” he added hoarsely.
Her heart hammered. He thought that? Why hadn’t he said so before?
“But I wouldn’t have touched you if I’d realized it would be so damned dangerous.”
“Me?” An odd lump settled in the center of her throat. “Dangerous?”
“Damned right. The genius with platinum and white diamonds. The woman with the reckless laugh and the wild hair that I just can’t seem to keep my hands off of.” A pulse raced at his jaw as he pulled her back toward him. “And I’m going to do it all again.”
So he did.
Maggie shivered, caught in a flood of heat as her body shifted to almost painful awareness everywhere their skin met. Suddenly she wanted her hands under all those stiff clothes so she could feel his smooth, powerful muscles again. “Max,” she said desperately. “We’ve got to—”
“Max is in puppy heaven,” Jared muttered. “It’s you that you should be worrying about.”
She heard his exasperation and his challenge. ‘Is that so? I don’t think that—”
“Don’t think.”
This time when he kissed her, she was ready—or she tried to be. Eyes open, she watched his head descend, certain that watching would take away the electric click of synapses and nerve ends before her mind shot off into a sensual haze.
Watching didn’t help.
Her eyes blurred, and most of her brain seemed to dissolve when he slid his arm behind her and drew her onto his lap. With a soft oath he brought his mouth to hers, not light but urgent now. Taking, then taking again. Searching for answers, just as hungry as she was.
Maggie gave a low sound of surprise, her hands tightening on his jacket, her body instantly, shockingly awake.
Wanting
him. Wanting heat and skin now. She knew she would find pleasure in both with this man. Maggie had never fantasized like this before, never imagined in such hot graphic detail. She felt reckless, almost as if she was coming home to someplace she’d long forgotten.
“Maggie, I want you.”
“Yes.” Her arms slid around his neck. Her head fell back as he rained kisses blindly along her neck. “Please.”
“Please what?”
“Everything. Now,” she said, lips to his.
“Sweet Lord.” His mouth took hers in sudden urgency. His hands were unsteady when he found the hem of her sweater and then spanned the warm curves of her breasts.
She whispered his name raggedly.
He stopped, his breath coming hard. “Maggie, tell me if—”
“Yes.” Equally breathless, she shifted, wanting skin and warmth and this amazing, mind-jolting touch. “I do.”
He watched her face as he trapped the pale curves and traced the tight crests barely retrained beneath wispy lace.
His eyes narrowed. Lace fell away and she filled his hands. Then he found her with lip and tongue, driving her need to a madness, making her shudder when his mouth locked hard, exploring her with rough, demanding strokes.
She should have been frightened, but she wasn’t. There was too much pleasure. And with it came the unexplainable sense that this was somehow familiar, that she had known just such a touch long before.
The awareness grew, taking on an intensity that bordered on pain. His breath stirred her cheek, and she smelled his heady mix of scents, cinnamon and cold wind and man. Maggie knew exactly where they were headed and didn’t care. Common sense was gone, replaced by dizzy discovery. They were tangled like teenagers in a car on a public street, she thought wildly. She barely knew him and she still wasn’t sure she liked him.
None of that mattered.
How could it when he seemed to know everything about her? He had awakened something dangerous within, something lost. In his hands she’d become an impetuous stranger.
She might have heard the sigh of the wind. She might have only imagined the angry ring of horse hooves on dark, frozen earth and voices in a night without stars. Maggie frowned as wisps of dreams teased the edges of her mind. She fought to hold the drifting images, but they slid away like restless mist.
Only then did she realize that Jared’s hands were tensed. He was smoothing down her sweater. She heard his low Gaelic mutter as he stepped away from her.
He’d stopped. Stopped cold. And why should she be surprised?
Another rout for Maggie, she thought. Another crash and burn. Well, she would take it like a man.
She tried to pull away. Instead, he caught her, watched her, one hand rising to her tousled hair. And then he smiled, a slow crooked curve of cheek and lip that melted ten years from his face and demanded an answering smile from her.
“My sainted Gran had a word for a lass like you, Maggie Kincade.”
“Oh? And what was that?” Her voice was far too shaky.
“Bonny. A sharp tongue she had, and everyone in the glen feared her wrath. A grand old thing she was. I wish you two could have met, for she’d have chuckled at that hair of yours. It’s the same wild color as her own.”
As he spoke, Maggie felt the tension in his thighs and the hard line of his aroused body. He had wanted her, and he wanted her still. Yet he had pulled away.
She stared up at him in confusion, feeling her cheeks go hot. “You stopped.”
He nodded.
“I … suppose there is a reason. Maybe you didn’t care for what you were feeling.”
“Does it feel that way?”
She moved and felt the lie of her words. “I suppose that just happens.” She gnawed at her lip. “Hormones. Stress. Like temporary insanity.”
He caught her shoulder, scowling. “What happened can’t be put down as insanity, temporary or any other sort.”
“It’s just—I don’t do this.” Never before. Why only with this quiet, brooding stranger?
“And you think I do?” he asked with sudden anger.
She shrugged. “No more than another man. Blame it on chromosomes.” She looked down. “And I don’t have amazing hands,” she said unsteadily, feeling a strange urge to cry.
“That you do, and I’ll have no more arguing the point.” His voice tightened. “It would be far too pleasant to make up after. We’re going somewhere to talk, Maggie. Right now. But we’ll do it in a brightly lit room with a table between us, or I can’t vouch for my good sense.”
She couldn’t accept the enormity of what she had felt, was still feeling. “I don’t think I want to talk.”
“Too bad.” Turning, Jared surveyed the darkness. “Max? Where has that wretched dog gone now?” There was no answering yelp. “I suppose I’ll have to go find him.”
She hesitated. “Jared?”
“Yes?”
“I’m sorry for what I said. I know you’d never drop Max at some horrible dog warehouse.”
“If he keeps dribbling saliva over me, I might change my mind.” After a swift touch to her cheek, he opened the car door and strode over the dark ground, calling loudly for Max.
A muffled yelp drifted from somewhere behind a low hill, and the puppy shot into view, filthy with dust and dry leaves, ecstatically happy.
“Come here, you brute. Heel.”
In answer, the puppy flattened, rolling playfully in the dirt.
Jared rolled his eyes. Maggie thought he might have muttered something about finding a farm after all. She smiled when the dog bounded to his feet and raced off over the field.
“He thinks it’s a game.” Grumbling, Jared started after him.
“I’m coming too.” Maggie was determined not to miss the sight of six feet, four inches of Scottish manhood brought low by eight pounds of mischievous puppy.
“I don’t promise that there won’t be blood shed,” Jared muttered darkly. “Of course it will probably be my own.”
A low rumble drifted over the mounded dirt. Jared turned, studying the far edge of the field. “Come on.”
“But this is private property. We can’t just—”
“We can and will.” Jared lunged, catching Max on top of a muddy mound. He gripped the dog firmly beneath one arm and pulled Maggie behind him.
“What’s wrong?”
Jared looked north, where a row of half-finished town houses glinted like metal skeletons in a single broken streetlight. “Just keep up.”
The shadows deepened, lapping coldly at Maggie. “If I’d known I was getting involved with James Bond, I would have run in the other direction.”
“As I recall, you tried.”
“Very funny, tough guy, but for your information—”
“Be quiet,” he said urgently. His hands clamped down on hers as he studied the shadows. “Someone’s out there.”
“Right. Like I’m going to fall for that one.”
Max yipped restlessly
“Hush, Max.” Jared sank down behind a pile of rubble, pulling her with him. “He’s just beyond the guard’s box. Watch the door about waist high, and you’ll see a hint of movement.”
“Probably a bird. Or maybe a stray cat. Do we really have to squat here in the dirt while some poor scruffy animal…” Her voice trailed away.
Darkness shifted again. Movement disturbed the shadows.
“See him?” Jared’s voice came low at her ear.
Maggie swallowed hard. “By the iron fence?”
“He’s wearing black, staying low, but he’s there.”
Out of the corner of her eye Maggie caught another hint of movement.
“He must have followed us out of London,” Jared said grimly. “If I hadn’t been so bloody distracted with finding out how you taste, I’d have noticed him sooner.”
“What do we do now?”
With a clang, a backhoe came to life near a pile of wooden shutters, then slowly pivoted. The big rubber tires bit into the dirt and su
rged forward.
“Jared?”
He was busy scanning the high stone fence to their left. The backhoe spat loudly, and a plume of smoke drifted toward them.
He slid Max beneath his jacket and buttoned it tightly. “That should hold him. Let’s go.”
Maggie scrambled after him. “You know, there could be a perfectly normal explanation for all this,” she muttered. “The driver could be putting in some harmless overtime.”
“Even my old deaf aunt wouldn’t believe that piece of nonsense.”
Gasping, Maggie crossed a mound of bricks and slid into a ditch ankle-high with water. A cement pipe ran along the far side. Something moved near her foot. She didn’t want to think about what it was. “Remind me to wear paratrooper’s boots the next time I go anywhere with you.”
Oily smoke filled her lungs as the backhoe’s lights flashed on. For a second Maggie was frozen by the blinding glare. Then Jared tugged her out into the middle of the ditch, while icy water swirled past her knees.
Teeth chattering, she plowed through the heaving debris. “What are you doing now?”
“First we tried hide-and-seek.” Frowning, Jared pointed at the black mouth of the drainpipe. “Now we’re going to play boot camp.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“You mean crawl?” Maggie’s voice broke. “In there?”
“That’s the plan.”
“Oh, no. There’s no way you’re going to get me in there. Not with snakes and rats and heaven knows what else.” She cast a desperate glance over her shoulder, praying she’d been right about the innocence of the driver.
But the black shape was still coming.
“It’s this or the backhoe,” Jared said, pulling her in behind him.
Light flared above them. Glancing back, Maggie saw a figure hunched behind the wheel. The ground began to vibrate, shock waves traveling through the cold cement at her back. There was no more question of a mistake, she realized, as Jared tugged her forward into the darkness.
The pipe shook and then began to rise. She felt Jared’s shoulder brace hers.
“We’re moving,” she said hoarsely.
“He must have wedged the teeth beneath the mouth of the pipe.” Jared staggered backward as the cement floor shook, then tilted sharply. “The bloody fool.” He found a metal bar protruding from the wall of the pipe and gripped it tightly. “Grab my waist and hold on.”
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