Her every nerve was sizzling. She couldn’t feel her knees anymore, and her arms felt heavy, weak. But it didn’t matter, none of it mattered, not as long as he was there, holding her, she wouldn’t fall, he wouldn’t let her. All that mattered was his mouth, coaxing, probing, tasting.
It was going through her in pulses now, that heat, that surging, delicious heat, like nothing she’d ever known. Some tiny part of her brain tried to insist it was because it had been so long, but she knew it wasn’t that, knew it had never been like this in her life because she’d never kissed a man like Quinn before.
No, not that, she thought as, after what seemed an eternity, he at last pulled away. Not a man like Quinn. Because there was no other man like Quinn, there was only Quinn.
For a moment she wished could be endless he just stood there, staring down at her. He looked as stunned as she felt. He started to speak, then stopped, as if he were rattled. He shook his head as if to clear it, and she felt a jolt of reassurance; he was feeling it, too, this huge, powerful thing that had swamped her. It wasn’t one-way.
And it seemed vitally important that it not be one-way.
“Quinn,” she whispered, a little startled at the low, husky sound of it.
He drew back, shook his head again, sharply this time. For a moment his fingers tightened on her shoulders. She held her breath, thinking he might pull her close for another melting kiss, then another, and—
He pushed her back. Gently but definitely.
“You—” He had to stop to clear his throat, which ameliorated the pushing away a little. He reached for a small automatic handgun from the table. “Your time would be better spent learning to handle this than asking questions I’m not going to answer.”
She clung to that break in his voice, that moment when he hadn’t quite been the tough, cool, unflappable Quinn. But his words were too flat, too grim to deny. The realization that she might really be in the midst of a pitched gun battle soon was beyond chilling, it sent icy tendrils curling through her, draining the wonderful heat he’d kindled.
She fought for calm, fought not to give in to the simple plea for another kiss that kept trying to rise to her lips. What was she, some weak-willed wimp of a woman, so immobilized by a man’s kiss that she couldn’t even think?
Yes, she admitted wryly, at this moment, she was.
She drew herself up, sucked in some air. She reached out and took the weapon from him, careful not to become a complete cliché and run her fingers over his hand. It was heavier than she’d expected, and she had to exert more effort to lift it. Then she made herself speak in a level, composed voice.
“Then teach me,” she said.
For a moment he just looked at her, oddly, as if he was somehow proud of her. It warmed her even though she wasn’t sure what exactly he would be proud of. Or how she’d gotten to where it mattered so much to her.
The only thing she was sure of was that kiss. And that, for now, she had to forget it. It had probably been a fluke anyway, born of adrenaline and too long alone.
And with that unsatisfying explanation, she was able to turn her mind to the matter at hand. Learning to shoot a handgun.
Learning to, if necessary, kill.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Hayley was, Quinn thought, a lot tougher than she looked. She might seem quiet, even reserved at times, but there was a lot of fire behind that calm facade. And courage, but he’d known that all along. True, life would be easier now if she’d taken down a couple of those guys out back, but she’d held them until he took care of his own, and by then they’d thought better of their plan and scrambled back up the bluff rather than face the gutsy woman with the shotgun any longer.
And now she had set about learning the small handgun he’d given her with a fierce intensity that told him she understood what they faced. And he realized that while she might be a brand-new amateur with the Kimber, her nerve wouldn’t fail, and that was more than half the battle.
She would do what she had to do. Which cut the odds against them suddenly in half.
Yes, a lot of fire....
He shook his head sharply, then again, wondering what the hell had gotten into him. The moment his mouth had touched hers he knew what had been a strategic decision had been a very, very bad one.
Quinn.
The husky whisper echoed in his mind as if the slight breeze was carrying it in an endless loop.
He’d heard his name whispered before. He’d heard it spoken, yelled, screamed. Heard it said neutrally, heard it in friendship, laughter, or anger and panic.
He’d never heard it said in a way that sent a shiver down his spine. Or made a rush of heat follow that path. Or made him wonder if his knees were going to hold out.
He steadied himself, and it was enough of an effort that it irritated him all over again.
She’d stripped, reassembled and dry-fired the weapon repeatedly, until he was sure she had it down. But nothing could prepare her for the recoil, the noise, the actual act of shooting except doing it. He figured they could spare one magazine of ammo, no more. He had to hope she was as quick at learning the actual shooting as she had been everything else. He didn’t need her to be a sharpshooter, he just needed her to get close.
“Cutter?”
The dog, who had been snoozing comfortably on the couch, apparently satisfied they didn’t need his supervision for this, came alert instantly. Before Quinn could say another word, Cutter was off the couch and at his side, looking up expectantly.
“Let’s go do a little recon,” he said, and heard the little whuffing sound he’d learned was assent. The dog couldn’t possibly understand “recon,” tempting though it was to think the clever guy understood perfectly, but Quinn guessed the “Let’s go,” was pretty clear.
“Where are you two going?”
“To pick out a firing range,” Quinn said.
“But…won’t that draw their attention?”
“Honey, we’ve got their attention, I promise you.” He’d drawled it out like a joke, he’d meant it as a joke, there was no reason for her to flush as if he’d meant the endearment in the usual way. Because he hadn’t. The fact that it wasn’t a word he usually used even as a joke didn’t change that.
“I’m actually going to go out and shoot this now?” she asked, gesturing with the pistol, carefully keeping her finger off the trigger and safely resting on the trigger guard, as he’d instructed.
“Nothing can replace actually putting rounds through it,” he said. “Besides, it’ll throw them off guard. Make them wonder.”
She got there quickly. “You mean they’ll wonder what we’re shooting at?”
“Or who? If we’re lucky, maybe they’ll wonder if they aren’t alone out here.”
“Then why don’t we—I—just step out and start firing?”
“I’d rather direct their curiosity somewhere else.”
She looked thoughtful, then barely a second later said, “Because if they’re having to watch two places, their attention will be divided.”
Yes, she was quick all right.
They were maybe a couple of hundred yards from the cabin, a midnight trip that made the one that had started this whole thing seem like a stroll down a peaceful city sidewalk. The moon was full, and her nerves were screaming that they were lit up like a stage. Not only was it unfamiliar ground, but Hayley knew they were out there, watching. A fact that was pounded home when, after setting Cutter to watch their backs, Quinn told her in a harsh, low voice that she had nine minutes to get minimally familiar with firing the weapon, no more.
“A minute for them to react, five for them to figure out where they think we are, and three for them to decide what to do. If they’re still where I think they are, it’ll take them ten minutes to work their way over here. I want us back inside long before that.”
He’d made her trade her white blouse for a dark sweatshirt, and used what looked like electrician’s tape to cover her white sneakers. And he hadn’t helped
her over the rough ground, and she didn’t know whether to be offended at his lack of assistance, or flattered that he’d been confident she could do it herself.
She’d finally decided he had enough to think about without having some needy female on his hands. But thinking about his hands immediately set her to thinking about his mouth, and there was nothing to be gained on that track except shaky hands and too-quick breathing at the memory of that unexpected, fire-inducing kiss.
She steadied herself, focusing on the target he’d laid out for her. He’d marked the side of the bluff itself with some kind of paint he’d taken from the locker, paint that put off a slight glow. The target was under an overhang that looked as if it could go at any second, which made her question the wisdom of the location, but then again, if the bluff did collapse, it would cover the target and any evidence of what they’d been doing. Better the bad guys think they were facing two expert marksmen, not one and a brand newbie.
She wasn’t sure what good the target was going to do though; in the darkness of the overhang she could see the faintly glowing outline, but how on earth would she know if she was even close to hitting it?
Quinn answered the question for her as he took out what looked like a short, clunky telescope and focused it on the target. Night vision? She barely had time to wonder before he told her to fire three rounds in succession.
The moment she fired the first shot, Hayley realized three things. The kick wasn’t quite as bad as she’d expected, the noise was much worse and Quinn had, not surprisingly, picked the perfect place.
Perfect because, the way the sound echoed around under the lip of this part of the bluff, she guessed from distance you’d have no idea how many shots or shooters there really were.
“You’re up and to the left. Try and compensate, but don’t overdo it. Three more.”
She shifted her aim level and right, tried again.
“Better. Empty it.”
When she was done, they headed back at a crouching run. Cutter was out in front of them, pausing for a second or two to test the breeze before glancing back at them and starting out again, as if to make sure they’d read his all clear and were still with him. If she hadn’t been looking for him, hadn’t been able to spot the gleam of his dark eyes and the slightly lighter fur on his legs and lower body, the nearly black dog would have been invisible.
“You,” Quinn said to Cutter when they were safely back inside, “are damned near as good as anybody I’ve worked with. Better than some, back in the day.”
He accompanied the praise with a thorough scratch of the dog’s ears. The usually cool Cutter practically wiggled with delight, managing to look smugly proud at the same time.
“How much does he understand?” Quinn asked.
Hayley smiled, despite the fact that she was in the most ominous position of her life. “I know he understands a lot. He’s got an amazingly large vocabulary, for a dog. Sometimes he seems to understand context, too. Like when the wind blew my side door shut, locking my house keys inside. Now, he knows the car keys, he brings them to me, because he gets to go for a ride. But the house keys are on a different ring. I sent him through the doggy door for the car keys, because then I could unlock the car and use the garage opener. He came back with the house keys.”
Quinn looked startled. He gave Cutter an assessing look, as if his opinion was shifting yet again.
“In the beginning,” Hayley said, “on our vet’s recommendation, I took him to obedience school. Not because he needed it, more of a bonding thing. What a waste.”
“He didn’t learn?”
“He didn’t have to. He blew through everything in the first day, then sat there looking at me like ‘Now can we go do something interesting?’ The trainer asked me to bring him back so she could test him.”
“Test him?”
Hayley nodded. “She started out with colors and shapes. Blue cube, red ball, yellow triangle. He got the right one every time. Then she went to a red one of each, told him what shape to get. Every time.”
“Is that…unusual?”
“A bit. But then she got into trickier stuff. She’d hide stuff from him. A lot of dogs can’t make the jump, for instance, that the ball you just had in your hand is now behind the chair, even if they saw you put it there. They just know it’s gone. Cutter got it out of a closed box.”
“Smart dog, all right.”
Quinn gave the dog another sideways look as she went on. “But then it got really interesting. She showed him a picture of a rag doll. He went and got it out of a pile of toys. Same thing with a plastic bird, and a small basket, so she was pretty sure he hadn’t seen any of them before.”
“Hayley?”
“What?”
“Stop pacing.”
She hadn’t even realized she had been. Talking about Cutter, and the trainer’s amazement at his intelligence, had distracted her from her worry, but her subconscious apparently hadn’t forgotten that there were armed men out there waiting for their moment to strike. She wondered if that was why Quinn had let her ramble on like that.
“Sorry,” she muttered, and stopped midstride. But as if her body had to do something, she felt the faintest of tremors start.
“Why don’t you sit down?”
She did, mainly because she was afraid the trembling would get worse and she might simply fall down.
“Why now?” she said. “I was fine when we were outside, when we were most likely to get shot at, but now I fall apart?”
“It’s natural,” Quinn said with a shrug. He gave Cutter a last pat and walked over to her. He seemed even taller, towering as he stood next to the sofa. And then he sat down next to her, something he’d never done before.
Quinn looked at Cutter, who had quietly padded across the room to sit at their feet and look at them with benevolent pleasure.
“No idea where he came from?”
“Another planet is my best guess.”
Quinn’s gaze shot back to her. After a split second that crooked grin flashed across his face. “Now that wouldn’t surprise me.”
Almost involuntarily she smiled back. She had, she realized, stopped trembling. In fact, she’d felt better, calmer, since the moment he’d sat down beside her. She told herself it was simply that he was, still, distracting her from the threat outside.
Oh, he’s distracting you, all right.
And what better way to spend what could be her last hours than distracted by a man like this one?
An odd sensation flooded her then, not unlike the adrenaline that had coursed through her when she’d been outside, firing that pistol at the target she could barely see. It was a sort of recklessness she’d rarely felt in her life. She wanted to know.
She needed to know.
She had to know.
“Quinn?”
“What?”
It took a very deep breath to steady her enough to say the words.
“Kiss me again.”
For a split second he looked startled. “I’m not sure that would be a good idea.”
“I don’t care.”
“Hayley—”
“I know you just kissed me before to stop me asking questions. Should I start asking again?”
His mouth quirked at that. But he reached out, cupped her face in his hands. She made herself fight the urge to lower her eyes, to look away. He was so damned intense, it was more difficult than she ever would have imagined simply to meet his gaze.
She was trembling again. But this time it had nothing to do with fear.
Chapter Thirty
Every instinct he had in him was screaming at him not to do it. He’d learned to trust those instincts, and more than once they had saved his life, or other lives.
Now, he wasn’t fighting them.
He was ignoring them.
Because he wanted, more than he could remember ever wanting anything, to do exactly what Hayley had asked. Even knowing her simple, stunning request was born out of fear, the fear they migh
t not survive this. He knew they had a good chance, with a certainty born of his faith in his own skills, his experience and what he knew of the disorganization of their enemy. They might run a tight ship in their criminal enterprise, but there were too many big egos for them to make an efficient fighting team.
But even knowing what was driving her didn’t slow his response to her simple yet shattering request. Because he wanted to kiss her, to sample that hot, honeyed sweetness again. He wanted the taste of her, the feel of her.
Taking advantage of her fears, of the situation, would be wrong. Unethical. She wasn’t a client, so he wasn’t bound by those rules, but she wasn’t here willingly, either. She was trapped in a situation not of her own making, thanks to his having to make a snap decision to protect the operation.
He still wanted to kiss her. He wanted the rush of sensation that had rippled through him, seductive, addictive. He wanted to hear her say his name again, in that husky, stunned voice that sent delicious shivers racing through him like nothing in his life ever had.
Truth be told, he wanted a lot more than just a kiss. But reality was, and there wasn’t going to be time for anything else.
But he would take time for this, and damn the consequences.
The tiny gasp that broke from her in the instant his lips touched hers destroyed his last reservations with a power much stronger than the faint sound warranted.
It was as hot, as fierce, as consuming as he’d remembered. And suddenly he knew why she’d asked for this. And he understood.
Then the feel of her mouth seemed to destroy his capacity for thought. He asked for more, his tongue flicking over her lips. They parted, just slightly, allowing him to probe, to taste. She was as sweet, as tempting as before, only this time his goal wasn’t to quiet her questions, it was to drink all of what he’d only sipped before.
He was barely aware of what he was doing to add to the fire, stroking, caressing, knew only that the taut yet soft feel of her drew his hands onward. She moved, not to pull away but to press closer. He held her there, marveling that he’d never really noticed how incredible that womanly curve was, from hip to waist, how perfectly made for his hands.
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