by Beverly Bird
Until her.
The need to do something about that was stronger than ever. Making love to her had only been the first, sweetest step.
But it was all she was ready for. He knew that intuitively. That she had moved this close to him, that she had abandoned so many of her lines, was astounding enough as it was.
He brushed his mouth over hers again and she shifted her weight beneath him. Wriggling. His eyes narrowed.
“That time was on purpose,” she admitted breathlessly.
And just like that, it started again.
Wishful thinking flared into raging need. A distant, uncertain future zeroed down into an immediate moment of demand. She locked an arm around his neck almost shyly and drew him back toward her, and he was gone.
He realized she owned him, body and soul. Though he was a man who hated confines, he gave himself over to the web she had spun around him.
As cold as it had been outside, now the heat of the fire beat at them. Tessa pushed the blanket away from them with her free hand, still clinging to his mouth. She was stunned to realize that his hand trembled as it slid up her ribs to her breasts again.
No, she realized, this was not practiced, not something he had done many times before. Or perhaps he had, but it had not had this import. She was suddenly ashamed of what she had said to him last night. It’s all tactile pleasure to you. How could she ever have believed that? She should have known, should have sensed it, from the first time he had kissed her, when she had asked him to but he had still done it so slowly, giving her time to pull away. If he was the man they said he was, he would have raged into it. But he had given her such gentle care all along.
“Oh, Gunner,” she moaned.
He touched her almost reverently, his tongue flicking over a nipple, urging it to a rigid peak, his strong hands stroking, first at her hip, then closing over her thigh. His fingers slid through the black curls between her legs and stroked gently.
Her hips began to move of their own accord. His name was a moan on her lips. She called him John again. Nothing had ever sounded so sweet.
“Easy,” he whispered.
“I want you inside me,” she gasped, then she blushed again. Since when did she become so wanton?
“I want to be there, too.” He chuckled. “In a minute.”
He had said that before, she remembered, and it had been worth waiting for. It was again.
His mouth trailed down over her belly, following his fingers. At the first touch of his lips and tongue at the center of her, her whole body spasmed and fire rained through her. Oh, yes, this was new. She felt no shame, no desire to pull away, and couldn’t think about it, couldn’t even dwell on that at all.
He savored the way she gasped each time his tongue flicked over the nub at the center of her, and he had to tighten his hands on her hips to keep her reasonably still. Her pleasure was so real, so simple and genuine. He felt her fingers in his hair again and let his tongue slide. She was ready, writhing. For him. He finally came up over her again.
“Now?” she gasped raggedly.
“Now,” he growled.
He covered her body again then he rolled, taking her with him. Then he felt her suddenly pull back. Gunner went instantly wary, then his breath left him on a harsh burst.
Her mouth roamed, her hands following. “You’re so beautiful,” she whispered.
He fought the urge to buck into her. Take it easy, he told himself. Don’t scare her. But his fingers drove into her hair of their own accord, holding her, as she tasted him with a sweet curiosity that unraveled him. A moment more, and he wasn’t going to be able to keep his promise. It would be all over before it started.
“Now,” he said again, hoarsely. “Now.”
He lifted her before she could protest, fitting her over him. He throbbed with need. Her back arched and she groaned as she welcomed him in again.
He drove himself almost violently upward, into her. Princess or not, she didn’t shatter. She rode him with hard, fierce pleasure. He was vaguely aware of her fingers digging into his shoulders, his skin. He caught her hips, to hold her, certainly not to stop her, but to maintain some control over this. And that was when he realized that he’d never been the one in control of what was happening between them at all. She had merely let him think he was.
He found his hands tightening, grinding her harder against him. And he heard his own voice murmuring her name, again and again in a litany.
Tess felt everything bursting inside her again and she bent toward him quickly, taking his mouth. He rose a little to meet her, slanting his mouth over hers, and they fell over the edge together.
Chapter 19
She couldn’t resist him, Tessa thought later.
It was amazing. Two weeks ago, she would have thought that he’d gotten exactly what he’d wanted from her, so he could relax now. But his charm just kept on coming. He wooed her, teased her, made her laugh. Some treacherous part of her began to wonder if living with him would be like this, if he went through every day of his life happy and joking, attentive and kind.
Oh, he had a temper. She had seen it, and it had ignited her own. But it was quicksilver. Even when he had quit smoking, he hadn’t stayed angry or irritated by it for long.
Maybe he knew, too, that life was just too short.
They drove back into town in the afternoon to see to various errands. The market was really little more than a convenience store. There was a plastic basket near the checkout counter filled with some limp, pseudo-silk roses, and he grabbed one and put it on top of their pile of groceries. After the clerk had rung it up, he tucked it behind her ear.
“What’s that for?” she asked, startled.
He met her eyes. “I figure you’ve had enough ugliness in your life, Princess. It’s long past time for something pretty.” He scowled briefly at the rose. “However dubious,” he added.
She realized she would probably cherish the dusty thing forever. Her heart melted and her hand went to it.
It was a purely feminine, Tessa-like gesture that made it the best buck-fifty Gunner had ever spent. He refused to consider that she had probably acquired tons of the genuine article in her lifetime.
Back at the cabin, they ate cheese and crackers and shared a bottle of wine in front of the fireplace. They made love again and they talked. Of silly things and sensible things, but not, she noticed, of Benami.
Ugliness, she thought. Christian Benami was all ugliness, and for a little while at least, neither of them wanted to entertain that. The closest they came to the subject was a brief discussion about Maxwell.
Gunner fed her a piece of cheese and scowled. “By the way, did that cat make it?”
“Make it?”
“It wouldn’t have gotten shot by any chance?”
“Oh. No.” Tessa shook her head. “He was hiding underneath my bed. He’s still alive and well. My housekeeper’s keeping an eye on him.”
“Too bad.”
“Gunner!”
“Maybe what he needs is a woman,” he mused. “You’ve done wonders for me.”
She smiled with pleasure. “But Maxwell wouldn’t be able to do anything with one. I had him neutered.”
Gunner grimaced. “Ouch.” Then his brows went up. “Maybe that’s what’s wrong with his disposition.”
Tessa laughed and settled her back against the sofa. He was laying with his head against it, bolstered by some of the cushions that had somehow ended up on the floor. She traced a hand down his ribs, to his hip. Gunner followed it with his eyes and caught her hand suddenly.
“That’s it.”
“It certainly is,” she murmured. She was thrilled and a little overwhelmed that she could arouse him so easily.
“I meant the mole.”
“What mole?”
He moved her hand to it, just inside his left hip. “I defy you to find another woman in the department who knows that’s there.”
“Gunner, I didn’t know it was there until you pointed
it out.”
“Oh.”
“Besides, I believe you,” she said quietly. “About the rumors.”
“You do?” He hadn’t known relief could be so sweet. “In that case, I think there’s another one down there somewhere. But you’d probably have to look close to find it.”
Which, of course, she did.
At some point she made up the bed—he left such a “woman’s chore” to her unabashedly while he settled the fire and checked the windows and doors. At some point they even slept. But the morning sun had barely begun to steal in through the window when she felt his mouth on her nape, and an unmistakable hardness pressing against her from behind.
“Gunner, I’m not a morning person,” she pleaded.
“Inside every night owl, there’s a rooster waiting to get out,” he murmured, and she realized he could be right. Need stirred inside her again—sleepily, true, but it was there. She snuggled backward, into him, and heard him groan into her ear.
“I’m not a night owl, either,” she whispered. “I just like my eight hours.”
No time to waste sleeping. The thought jumped at him with buckling urgency. He didn’t understand it. They had time. He wasn’t going anywhere, and be wasn’t going to let her get away. But the instinct was there, needling him, goading him on.
He turned her toward him and claimed her mouth. She pressed her hands against his chest.
“I need coffee, a toothbrush—”
“No time.” No time.
He took her suddenly, without warning, and was instantly remorseful. For a moment. For a heartbeat. It took him that long to realize that she had been ready for him all along. She cried out, not in pain, but with pleasure. He bucked into her and she met him thrust for thrust, clinging to him.
Sometime, as their bodies tangled, she began to feel his panic, too. Yesterday had been a short, brief respite. The ugliness was pressing in on them again.
Her climax was nearly one of desperation. She gripped his shoulders and kept moving long after he had finally gone still. She felt him stir inside her again, but this time he didn’t pursue it.
“We’ve got to call in, don’t we?” she asked finally. She was surprised at how long it took him to answer. She’d expected immediate agreement.
“I’ve got to know,” he said eventually. “I’ve got to know what’s going on back there.”
They had been away for nearly twenty-four hours now. “Surely someone’s found him.”
“Let’s hope so.”
He gave her a final squeeze, his arms hard around her, and brushed his mouth over her forehead. “First one into the shower gets to drive to the nearest pay phone.”
He was off the bed like a shot. She scrambled after him, but not quickly enough. She dove into the shower right after him, and the needles of spray were icy. She squealed and tried to scramble back out of the tub but he caught her, pinning her against the wall.
“Now I’m ready again.”
And he was. But even as she felt him slide into her, even as she lifted her legs to wrap them around his hips, something was missing this time.
No, not missing, she thought wildly. Something was added. Tension. Worry. His mouth clung to hers, and the heat of their joining mingled with the cold water in a way that was exquisite, that brought all her nerve endings alive. But when they finally toweled off, his eyes were vaguely distant.
He was worried.
They drove back to the convenience store. There was no phone booth outside, and a sign taped in the window said that the one inside wasn’t for public use. Gunner let the engine idle for a moment before turning the key off.
“I’ll make them let me use the one behind the counter,” he decided.
“We have no jurisdiction here.”
“Hell, it’s just a long-distance call. I’m not asking them to unload their cash register. Besides, I’m persuasive.”
She couldn’t argue that.
She watched him go into the store, watched his delicious walk, smiling at the way he swung open the door and stepped inside. Then her smile faltered.
What now? she wondered.
Her rules and lines were gone. But she realized she still needed them, or some semblance of them, anyway. She knew—was reasonably certain—that nothing would immediately change between them when they went back to the city. She didn’t honestly believe that whatever they shared was all that fleeting. It was too good, too pure.
What an odd way of describing it, she thought, but it fit. What they had shared last night had been elemental, sometimes staggering in its force, but there was no badness, nothing wrong in it anywhere.
No, she didn’t believe the attraction would end when they went back to work. It would just be easier for her if they could define what this relationship was. Then again, John Gunner was not a man who was long on definitions.
Don’t think about it, she told herself. It’ll work out. For once in your life, just go with the flow. Having him healthy, whole, warm and laughing in her world, even without definition, was far better than not having him at all.
She closed her eyes and leaned back. She loved him. She thought it was quite possible that she had been tumbling head over heels in love with him from the first moment he had made her laugh with his outrageous irreverence.
What was taking him so long? she wondered finally. Her heart lurched. Obviously something had happened. Something had broken back home. If the status quo had remained unchanged, it would take him only a moment to learn that.
She pushed open the passenger door, and it thudded against something. She looked up, startled, into Christian Benami’s cold, unsmiling eyes.
She didn’t have time to scream.
She opened her mouth, but before anything could come out, she dove instinctively sidewards, toward the floor, for her purse. Her gun. Christian leaned inside and wrenched her purse out of the car just as her hand closed on the strap, twisting it violently away from her. In the next moment she felt something hard and unyielding against her ribs.
“Gunner will be a while,” Benami said in that smooth, not-quite-cultured voice. “Phone trouble.” He pressed the gun into her with more force. “Move over. You’re driving.”
She had one clear, lucid thought, relatively untouched by her terror. No matter what Benami might have done to the phone, Gunner was just inside. She dragged a breath in and screamed for him. Benami cracked the butt of his gun against the side of her head. The pain was incredible. It brought instant stinging tears to her eyes. Stars. Red and blue, some white, like a fireworks display, she thought, slumping into the wheel, moaning.
“Drive,” Benami said again.
“Can’t,” she mumbled. Stall. Wait for Gunner. Something hot and almost caustic burned her right eye. She put a hand there. Blood.
“Drive.”
Why wouldn’t he do it? Then she knew. Because driving would mean he would be less able to keep the gun trained on her.
She laughed shrilly. At least she didn’t have to worry about using her own. Christian had it. She looked wildly at her purse still clutched in his hand.
He shoved her again roughly. Tessa finally got an arm on the door and levered herself up, grasping the wheel. Stall, she thought again. Gunner had to come out soon. Surely, please God, he would come out of that store at any moment.
Then something inside her stiffened, hardened, got blessedly angry. She was a cop, not a damsel in distress. Princess. Oh, how she hated that tag! She shouldn’t, wouldn’t snivel, praying for rescue.
Think. Pain was jagged and sharp in her head.
She turned the key in the ignition. Her hands were uncooperative, trembling claws. She turned automatically for the cabin.
The gun came back, a sharp jab in her ribs that made her cry out. “Not that way,” Benami snapped. “Back to the city.”
The city. No, no, that wasn’t good. “Why?” she gasped.
“More of a challenge,” he said pointedly, and his grin was cold when she managed to gla
nce at him. It froze her blood. “It’ll make it harder for him to find us,” he said. “But he will.”
“Gunner will kill you for this,” she whispered. “He’ll make you wish for the gas chamber.” And she was suddenly sure that Gunner would. She’d been sitting here fretting about their relationship when the truth had been staring her in the face all along.
John Gunner loved her.
She moaned. The truth exploded inside her head, making her feel even more dizzy and faint. It had been there in a million little telltale ways, almost from the beginning. He had nearly throttled this man simply for making her remember Matt’s death.
There was no time to savor the sweeping, tender, amazed feeling that filled her. Yes, Gunner would kill Benami for this. Or he would die trying.
She had to do something.
But first she had to make sense of it, had to know. “How?” she asked. “How did you know where to find us?” If he was truly psychopathic, he would want to tell her, she thought. He would want to gloat.
She was right.
“Your brother. It was kind of you to tell him where you were going.”
Jesse? She almost drove off the road. “No!” she howled. Jesse? Sweet God, no!
“Kind of him, too, to keep going through secretaries the way he does.”
She didn’t understand. Her heart was thudding and nausea pressed up in her throat. “Secretaries?” she repeated in a whisper.
“He lost another one two weeks ago. Just in time for a very good friend of mine to step up and apply for the job. She’ll be leaving with me when this is over. She’ll get her just reward.”
He would kill that woman, too, Tessa thought wildly. Whoever she was, she had helped him trustingly, maybe even loving him the way Daphne had, but he would dispose of her, too.