by Eileen Wilks
"Look, if your cousin hasn't been released by next Saturday, we can have the wedding here," he said abruptly. "In his room, in the chapel, whatever."
"You wanted to be married at your home. And Cosmo has already arranged—"
"It isn't Cosmo's wedding." He looked at her. "I've never been married before. I'm not sure how to go about it, but I want to do it right. If what's right for you is having your cousin at the wedding, we'll work it out so he can be."
A smile broke over her face. She unclicked her seat belt, stretched across the bench seat and kissed him.
Her taste, the pressure of her lips, were already familiar, as was the quick rush of heat. Familiar, yet still a surprise.
He'd barely begun to return the kiss when she pulled back. Her fingers lingered at his nape, teasing his hair. He wanted her to keep touching him. He wanted to pull her closer and kiss her smiling mouth.
"You're a good man, Jacob," she said softly. "Thank you. We'll see what Danny's doctor says before we decide, okay?"
It was going to work out, he thought as he climbed out of the car, optimism rising to make his steps light. She wanted him, and he thought she liked him, too. And for now, at least, she needed him. That was enough to build on.
Claire didn't wait for him to get her door. She rounded the back of the car, her purse hugged tight to her side. "I'm not used to carrying diamonds around," she said when she joined him. "Maybe we should have run by the house first to put the necklace up."
He took her hand. "You could wear the necklace if carrying it makes you nervous."
"Oh, no." Her smile was part mischief, part seduction. "The first time I wear the diamonds you gave me is going to be for you … privately."
As quickly as that, anticipation kicked up into need. One kiss, he thought – just one, to take the edge off. He stopped, tilting her face up to his with the knuckles of one hand while the other still held hers. Her lips smiled; her eyes turned smoky with desire.
He bent and brushed her lips with his, teasing them both. Smiling as he did it. Then he flicked his tongue over her lips. Once. Her breath caught. Twice.
Her purse fell on his shoe.
She laughed, a little shaky. "See what you do to me? I'd better get it. Don't want to leave diamonds sitting on the ground." She bent.
And over her back, he saw a man in a dark gray suit walking toward them. He had sandy-brown hair, a sunny smile on his good-looking face – and a gun in his hand.
* * *
One second Claire was bending down to pick up her purse. The next, she was flat on the ground with a ton of solid male on top of her – and the hard crack of a gunshot echoing in her ears.
She found the breath to gasp – and he rolled them both over. Her shoulder bumped into a tire. His hands on her shoulders shoved her away from the tire. "Get under the car."
She didn't think, she just moved. Twisting, she wormed her way beneath the Chrysler's chassis. Heat radiated up from the pavement, down from the car. Her rump brushed some stinging-hot part of the car's underside and her breath jerked in her chest, dragging in metal-tainted air and terror.
"Keep going." Jacob was with her, somehow wedging his larger body between concrete and metal, too.
"Claire!"
The voice was horribly familiar, horribly close. She wriggled frantically away from that voice.
"Claire, don't run from me. Please—" Ken's voice broke. "Don't run anymore."
She reached the edge of the car and dragged herself out, crouching to tug at Jacob. He was still flat on his stomach, his lower body beneath the car, when Ken came around the rear of the car. Smiling.
Terror jammed in her throat. She tried to push Jacob back under the car, back to safety. He didn't so much as resist her efforts as ignore them, shoving himself out and onto his feet in one quick move.
In front of her. Damn him, he'd put himself between her and Ken. She tried to move out from behind him. He wouldn't let her.
"Claire. Oh, Claire, I've missed you. I love you so much." Ken's eyes were damp, shining with happiness. His gun pointed at Jacob, yet it was Claire he looked at, as if the other man weren't there. "Nothing has been right without you."
Jacob shifted, trapping her between the car and his body. "You need to put the gun down," he said, his voice surprisingly gentle. "You're frightening Claire."
Neither Ken's gaze nor his gun shifted. "You have to come with me. My parents aren't happy with me right now. They think I should move away, but I can't go without you." His eyes glowed with confidence and cunning. "Where do you want to go, Claire? The South Seas? Europe?"
"Wherever you like." Her voice cracked.
"Wherever we go, it will be paradise because we'll be together. Just the two of us." His voice grew dreamy. "Together forever."
"I'll go with you, Ken. I – I've missed you, too. But I'll need to pack. I can't leave right this minute."
"Did you miss me?" A shadow passed over his face. "You didn't answer my letter, so I went to see you. You had a man living with you, Claire. You must remember it this time."
"My cousin." She tried to squirm out from behind Jacob. He leaned back, pinning her so firmly against the car that she could scarcely breathe. She couldn't see around him – only the dark sleeve of Ken's suit, a glimpse of his shoulder. The gun in his hand. "You remember my cousin Danny, don't you?"
"He took advantage of you." Ken spoke with the eerie, mild displeasure she remembered too well. The hand holding the gun dipped slightly. Not enough. "You shouldn't have let him do that, but I forgave you. Again. I know you don't mean to hurt me, but now you're with someone else. He's standing there between us, and that's wrong. I can't let others come between us. You know that." The gun barrel lifted and steadied. "I'll shoot him if he doesn't move."
"You can shoot me," Jacob said, his voice deep and steady. "But you might want to think about it first. That's a .357 in your hand."
"It is?" Ken was curious, polite. "I don't know a lot about guns. Fortunately you don't have to know much to buy one. Or to use it."
"A bullet from that gun would go right though me and hurt Claire. You don't want to hurt Claire."
Ken's voice lost none of its certainty. "We have to be together. Together forever … in paradise."
Together in death. Claire heard the words as clearly as if he'd spoken them. He'd come to kill her and himself – and if Jacob didn't move, Ken would kill him, too. Suddenly she was very cold, and very calm. She didn't know if she could save herself, but somehow she had to save Jacob.
Who was damnably determined to shield her with his body. "If you kill me," he said in the same reasonable voice she'd heard him use when dealing with a reluctant stockholder, "I'll be in paradise along with you and Claire. That's not what you want."
"No. No, I don't know where you'll go, but you won't be with us. Claire and I are fated to be one, but she can't handle the temptations on this earthly plane." Ken sounded sad – not angry, not grieving or insane. Just sad. "She doesn't mean to hurt me. She's just too beautiful. Every man who sees her wants her, and she can't help herself. So I have to help her."
"I don't think shooting her will help her."
Ken's voice was firmer now. Condescending. "Of course you don't. I can't expect you to grasp the nature of our bond. It's unfortunate that your lack of understanding is going to kill you."
She saw Ken's arm lift. And she glimpsed, behind him, a blur of motion – Jackie running flat-out, her long legs flinging her forward in a leap that belonged in the record books.
Jackie crashed into Ken's back, jerking his arm up as they fell. The gun went off – pointed straight up at the sky.
* * *
The sky was smoggy with dusk by the time they pulled up in front of Jacob's house. He didn't want to drive around back to the garage, didn't want to spend the few extra minutes that would take. He wanted Claire inside, in his home. Safe. The need was primal and undeniable, however little sense it made. Lawrence was locked away again.
But it had been close. So close. He'd nearly lost her. If Jackie Muldrow hadn't had a hunch, hadn't trusted it … she'd had a feeling, she'd told them later. Just a feeling. Or maybe it had been pure frustration when none of her leads panned out that had sent her to the hospital to talk to Danny again, see if he'd remembered anything more.
If she hadn't…
He didn't want to think about that.
Jacob had seen the sergeant. With his back pressed up against Claire, protecting her the only way he could, he'd glimpsed her moving between the parked cars. Until then, he'd thought only chance was to throw himself at Lawrence and hope Claire escaped. Once he'd seen the cop, though, he'd tried to stall. To keep the man talking – until someone else could save Claire.
Jacob scowled and slammed the car door behind him. It didn't help.
"God." Claire stood next to the car, both hands threaded in her hair, her head tilted back. The air was dead quiet, not a breath of a breeze. And cold. Winter had finally arrived, blown in on the tail of the storm last night. "I can hardly believe it's really over."
He looked at the smooth arch of her throat. His own throat felt raw.
It's over. She meant her fear, the whole ugly situation with Lawrence. Jacob knew that. She didn't mean that they were over.
But Claire didn't need him now.
Not that he'd been much good when she had needed him. "He'll be put where he belongs this time. Your friend will see to that – just like she took care of everything else."
She dropped her hands and looked at him. Then came to him, not speaking until she stood a heartbeat away. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing. We should go in." But he didn't move. So close, he had come so close to losing her.
"Something's wrong. You look like an explosion about to happen."
He managed a grim twitch of his lips that he hoped could pass for a smile. "It's been an eventful day."
"And you haven't held me since nearly squeezing the life out of me while Jackie was clamping the handcuffs on Ken." She moved a whisper closer, reaching up to touch his cheek. "What is it, Jacob?"
The feelings inside him wound a hard notch tighter. "If your friend hadn't come when she did … dammit, Claire, I wasn't much use. I promised to protect you, but when it came time for a rescue, your friend did the job."
Her eyes widened. "You shielded me with your body. Which, by the way, makes me furious every time I think about it. Just what more do you think you were supposed to do?"
"Something! I should have done something, anything." He dragged a hand through his hair. "I never want to be as helpless again as I was then, standing there, waiting for him to put a bullet in you—"
"In you, you idiot!" Her fingers dug into his shoulders as if she wanted to shake him. "Do you have any idea what that did to me?"
Fear, past and present, whipped higher. Fury threatened to break through – fury at himself, at Lawrence, at the system that hadn't kept Lawrence penned up. And at her, for being the center of the emotions building, cyclone strong, inside him.
A muscle jumped in his cheek. His hands were careful when they removed hers from his shoulders. "Claire. I'm not safe right now. You don't want to be touching me. I need time to calm down."
She gave him a quick, impatient frown. And stretched up on tiptoe to crush her mouth against his.
Claire felt the quiver run through Jacob when she leaned against him, body to body, standing on tiptoe so she could make the fit as complete as possible. She pressed herself – mouth, body and heart – against him, willing the stupid man to know she was safe with him.
Every bit as safe as she wanted to be.
He froze. It lasted one quick spit of a second, then his arms snapped around her, holding her desperation-tight. Tight enough to steal her breath, and send her soaring.
This wasn't the careful man she'd known. This man hungered so fiercely he lifted her off her feet, the throb of his erection setting up an answering throb between her legs. He groaned and swept a hand over her back, squeezing her buttocks, pulling her tighter against him. His tongue plunged inside her mouth.
Inside. Yes, she needed him inside her, filling her, making her whole – but they were outside. Standing on the cold cement of his driveway, three steps from his car. On the wrong side of his front door.
She tore her mouth from his. "Jacob…"
Her hands, clenched in his hair, may have given him the idea she wanted his mouth elsewhere. On her cheek, her throat, trailing heat down the neckline of her jacket. The muscles in his arms bunched, and he lifted her higher, nuzzling at the collar of her jacket. In another second, he'd have it pushed aside and be blazing a trail across her breast.
She threw back her head and laughed with sheer exhilaration. "Jacob," she tried again, this time tugging at his hair to get his attention. "We're in your driveway."
He lifted his eyes. For a second his eyes were blind, unfocused – then filled with horror. "God, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I didn't mean—" He let go of her so quickly she landed back on her feet with a thump.
"Don't." She curved her arms around his waist in a quick hug. "Don't apologize. I want you wild, to match the wildness in me. I need that. But maybe we should go inside first?" She smiled wickedly and leaned back so she could drift the tips of her breasts across his chest.
His breath hitched. Then, slowly, he smiled back. Twice as wickedly.
They made it inside, but they didn't make it to his bed. Not right away. Jacob had called Cosmo from the hospital, giving him the bare bones of the tale, and he and Ada were waiting for them.
Claire understood. These people loved Jacob, too, in their different ways. They, too, needed to confirm with their senses that he was alive and whole. Ada fussed at him and dragged them both to the kitchen to feed them. Cosmo trailed after them, waving his arms in sweeping gestures, demanding details and wishing loudly he had been there.
But eventually, after she'd pushed some food around on her plate and answered a few hundred questions, Claire decided that enough was enough. She yawned once, then again.
Her yawns didn't fool anyone. Ada smirked. Cosmo patted her shoulder and suggested oh-so-innocently that she needed some extra B-complex vitamins – for energy. And Jacob frowned. "Claire, you're falling asleep sitting up. You've had a rough day. You'd better go to bed."
It was eight o'clock. Did the fool man really think she wanted to sleep? Just to make sure he got the point, she pushed her chair back, stood, and smiled at him. "You still haven't shown me where to put my things. I'm not going to move all my clothes into your closet tonight, but I'll need a few odds and ends with me."
Maybe his slow blink meant she'd surprised him. Maybe – judging by the sudden heat in his eyes – it meant he needed a moment to gather his control before he grabbed her and dragged her upstairs.
She was hoping for the latter.
Jacob helped her pack. He was in an odd, playful mood, teasing her about the amount of cosmetics and cleansers she considered essential, insisting on selecting her nightgown himself. His eyes were bright, more alive than she'd even seen them. He didn't touch her.
She knew why. There was a bed in this room. Anticipation and heat coiled in her belly, a lazy serpent awaiting the slightest provocation to strike. If Jacob had touched her even once, however lightly, they would never have made it upstairs, to his room. His bed.
She wanted to be in his bed.
He stayed in the same playful mood all the way up the stairs – then, at the top, he scooped her up in his arms.
"Hey!" She grabbed his neck and hung on. "What are you doing?"
"Being romantic. I would have carried you all the way, but I wasn't sure I could make it up all those stairs."
"That's romantic – hinting that I weigh a ton?"
He gave her one of those slow, sexy smiles, looking very sure of himself. Or maybe of her. "You don't need me to tell you how beautiful you are. You've got a mirror for that."
She drew her fingers along the back of his
neck. "A woman always needs to know she's beautiful to – to the man she's about to give herself to." The man I love. Her heart beat faster. How would he have reacted if she had said that?
His eyes darkened. He dipped his head to kiss her, slowly, lingeringly. He was still kissing her when he shoved his door open – and closed it behind them.
Jacob seemed to have in mind a gradual wooing of her senses. She didn't. She wanted him to explode with her the way he nearly had out in the driveway. She wanted straining limbs, shivering flesh and both of them wild. "Let's speed things up," she whispered, kissing his neck.
His hands tightened at her waist. "How fast?"
"Fast enough to wipe everything else out."
He swept her up in his arms, tossed her on the bed – and came down on it with her, grinning. Oh, that grin – it transformed him. For a moment he was boyish – purely, simply, happy. Then he kissed her again, and he was all man. Hot, hungry, impatient man.
But still controlled. Even when his hands shook, he didn't lose himself. She could feel him holding back, and it drove her crazy. She wrapped her hand around him and he shuddered – and clasped both her hands in his, drawing them over her head, then bent to drive her insane with his mouth.
Claire knew Jacob needed his control. She valued it, too, because it was part of him, part of the strength and integrity that made him who he was. But damned if she would tolerate it in bed. The second his hand relaxed its grip she tugged hers free, twisted, and trailed kisses down his chest, his stomach … and below. She got her mouth on him – one long, slow lick of her tongue. And she got her explosion.
He bucked. And grabbed her, his fingers digging into her hips, and rolled her onto her back. Thrust her legs wide, and thrust himself inside.
She climaxed on the second stroke in a breath-stealing punch that crashed, then dimmed – then ripened once more, his body calling hotly to hers until she was sobbing, clawing his back and calling his name.
He cried out her name, too, as he slammed into her one last time – and sent her tripping and falling, falling where there was nothing, and no one, but him. Only him.
Eons later, her breathing had slowed and her mind had mostly returned. He still lay on top of her, heavy and limp, infinitely welcome.