Come Hell or High Desire

by Misty Dietz

  “That’d do it, all right.”

  “No, listen. At Ann’s, after I went into the bathroom, I called Tori. I could tell right away she was upset. She saw her boyfriend at a restaurant with someone else when he’d told her he was going to be out of town. She was so beside herself, I told her I was coming over, but she pulled herself together. I tried to get her to talk more about it, but she kept changing the subject. So I let it go. Then when your friend called about the burning…” Her voice caught, and Zack couldn’t not touch her. He reached for her hands again. She studied their joined fingers before continuing. “I had this awful feeling. I have a key to her place, so I went over there. After knocking with no answer, I let myself in.” Her eyes found his. “She wasn’t there, but her car was. Just like Ann. Bad things always happen when I try to use my visions.”

  “You can’t possibly think any of this is your fault.”

  But her subtle shrug told him she did.

  “Her car in the garage means nothing. She’s probably making nice with her boyfriend.”

  “No.”

  “How do you know? Have you met the guy?”

  “No. He— Tori said he travels a lot for work.”

  The look in her eye stopped him cold. “Did you read something at her place?”

  “Not exactly, but the vibes were the same. First Ann and now her.” She hugged herself and bent over like she’d been sacked. He pulled her up and gathered her in his arms while his mind spun.

  She blames herself. Why?

  If the corpse wasn’t Ann’s, but Tori’s, the only logical connection between the two was Skinny Dipping. Which left Sloane square in the middle.

  Pinpricks of panic needled his extremities. Puddles of water were forming in potholes along the road’s shoulder. She shuddered, and he leaned into the truck to grab an old shirt behind the seat to wrap around her.

  She looked at him, rain droplets clinging to her lashes. Her haunted expression unleashed every protective instinct in his DNA. Definitely time to start praying. “We’ll figure this out, Goldie. We will.” His arms tightened around her once more, and he pressed her wet head to his chest.

  Please, God, help me protect her.

  Chapter Sixteen

  MONDAY

  In Zack’s truck driving back to her apartment complex at Blackhawk Gates, Sloane wondered how the sun continued to rise and the earth continued to turn when grief arrested a person’s entire universe.

  But this was no bad dream. Tori would never wake up. They’d gotten the call an hour earlier. The corpse’s dental patterns had matched her oldest friend’s.

  Sloane felt small. A puny, insignificant ball in the shell of her body. The few comments Zack had made moments ago seemed to come from far away. Everything seemed so very far away now. Everything but her memories of Tori. Their less-than-carefree adolescence. The fun they’d had at work. Tori’s perfectionism. The way she would crack her knuckles. Their fights…

  The trust they’d forged over time and shared challenges.

  Sloane pressed her lips together to prevent a moan from escaping, but she felt Zack’s eyes on her anyway. A giant bomb was waiting to detonate inside her. A vibrating pressure that pounded its way from her stomach to her cranium. She tried to swallow past the razorblades in her throat, but that only made it worse. She squeezed her fists, digging her fingernails into her palms hoping the pain would wake her from this nightmare.

  Oh, Tori! What were you hiding? Why couldn’t you tell me?

  “Why? Why Tori?” Her question hung in the cab for several heartbeats until Zack’s hand reached over and cupped her neck.

  “I wish I had answers for you. I’m so sorry.” Emotion made his eyes a jeweled green. Sloane watched his face and knew he believed her. About her visions. About her sanity.

  About Tori.

  Last night, after she’d told him about her suspicions at the river, the last thing she remembered was his arms closing around her. She awoke hours later to find herself in her own bed. She’d bolted from the room only to be brought up short by Zack. The shadows under his eyes had made her want to weep. He was exhausted, but he’d taken care of everything while she slept. Attended to his dogs. Gathered information and DNA samples from Ann’s and delivered them to the police station.

  While there, he shared their concerns about Tori so they could do a wellness visit. When the police couldn’t track her down, they’d secured a search warrant to enter her home.

  That was how they had learned the name of her dentist.

  And so the call had come.

  Sloane looked down at her lap. Zack had even called Carmen to stay with her while she slept so someone would watch over her. He’d come and gone, and returned once more, and still she’d slept. Now they were in his truck, on the way back to her apartment after the short meeting she’d called for her staff.

  He’d said no one should have to be alone after something like that.

  She clamped down her eyelids and swallowed hard. He was so protective, but didn’t seem to realize it. Didn’t seem to know that taking care of others came naturally to him. Didn’t know he had every quality she admired in a man.

  Everything she ever wanted in the man she would one day love.

  Oh.

  Sloane buried her face in her hands as the grief broke free, forceful sobs rocking her body. He stopped the truck, hauled her onto his lap in the cramped cab, and wrapped his arms around her. No one had ever just held her and let her cry out her pain. Pain and confusion and vulnerable new feelings.

  When the tears finally subsided, her arms were around his neck and he was silently stroking her hair, her back. She brought her face up and realized they were in her parking lot. He swept a matted lock of hair from her eyes.

  He filled places she never realized were empty.

  And right now she was damned empty. “Can you…can you come up?”

  “Yes.”

  That one word and the intensity in his eyes unsettled her deeply. On a level she’d never experienced. They stepped into the building entryway, and she had to re-key her pass code three times before she punched in the right series of numbers. As they moved into the elevator, she was acutely aware of the masculine presence of him. His body heat. Why wasn’t she numb? Tori was dead. Ann was missing. There was a killer on the loose…

  First floor.

  Her eyes began to leak again. She wanted to scream from the pressure in her chest. From the longing of her body. It was wrong to want to be with him when her friend was lying on a slab in the morgue.

  Say something. She pretended to look for something in her purse just to make some damn noise because she was this close to screaming like a crazy woman.

  Second floor.

  Zack stood perfectly motionless, controlled. How could he be so strong? Ann was probably dead, too.

  Dead, dead, dead like Tori.

  And sweet Abigail, Benjamin’s granddaughter.

  Sloane choked on another sob and whirled away from Zack. But he pulled her back against his chest, shushing softly into her hair. His body was so warm. She wanted to burrow in that heat. He would shield her from everything dark and ugly.

  No, no, no! We’ll only end up hurting each other.

  He somehow managed to slip past all her barriers. How much longer would she be able to hide her duplicity? She’d be ruined. Her family devastated.

  And that was if her visions didn’t portend his death first.

  I’m sorry, Tori! I should have tried to protect you.

  She flinched from Zack’s arms, bewildered that he might be her desert and her oasis all at once. When the elevator doors slid open at the third floor, she fled the cramped box and ran to her front door, where she slammed her forearm on the solid wood. She could feel his gaze travel over her.

  Her body pulsed like a tuning fork.

  She turned to face him, ready to fight, but his eyes—hot, wild—made the words die on her lips.

  They came together at the same time. He h
eld onto her face, the coarse calluses on his palms scraping her cheekbones. His teeth nipped, his stubble scoured. She was gasping by the time he seized her keys, unlocked the door, and kicked it shut behind them.

  He took her straight to the floor, pulled her blouse down, and ripped open the front clasp of her bra. His eyes glittered.

  “So p-perfect.”

  His hoarse stutter loosened something warm and altogether scary in her chest, but she had no time to think. His dark head replaced his hands at her breasts, and she arched up to meet his mouth, parting her legs so he could settle in closer. Closer. His hips rocked into her pelvis, the burning, hard length of him nearly sending her flying. She reached between them to unzip his pants.

  “I need—”

  “I know, baby.” He pulled back to focus on the button-fly on her shorts and in an instant the wood floor was smooth and cool against her buttocks. His head dipped to her belly button, taking his time, tonguing the pink crystal ring there, sending heat rippling low through her abdomen. Made her feel earthy. Beautiful. Idolized. Her fingers curled into his hair, bringing his head up so she could somehow tell him.

  But his eyes with their unbanked fire made her words of gratitude fall away.

  “Your shirt. Off. Now.”

  He shifted to his knees in one fluid movement and peeled the black T-shirt still wet with her tears over his head. A black panther tattoo rippled across his pectorals with sinuous grace. Sloane stared at the animal, momentarily transfixed. It looked beautifully dangerous. Like him.

  She ached to taste it.

  Bare-chested, he paused, looking down at her, his eyes saying everything and then—

  A slow smile. It was a promise.

  And a threat.

  Her bones melted into the floor.

  A shaft of sunlight struck his hair when he leaned over her. She reached to touch the shining purple-black strands. He paused for her discovery a moment before taking both of her hands in one of his and stretching her arms over her head. Pinned, exposed, body vibrating, she closed her eyes to give herself up. To no longer think.

  Just to feel.

  To feel.

  And forget.

  His lips feathered delicately over her eyelids and time slowed. Nothing else mattered but the sensations he evoked as his mouth discovered the sensitive hairs of her brows, the planes of her cheekbones, the delicate inside of her ear, that small, secret hollow at her throat, on down to her breasts where his tongue traced the shape of her nipples. She arched into him. Lost. Drowning. Drowning in an ocean of sensation.

  Then cool air replaced that wonderful tongue. Her inelegant shiver raised the hairs on her arms, the swift response nearly painful.

  She cracked her eyelids open. What?

  He was watching her.

  “Breathe, Goldie. You’ve got to breathe. It’ll make it that much better.”

  A tremor gathered force at her knees, spiraling up through her pelvis, across her sternum and into her shoulders, finally radiating outward in a fierce pulse at her wrists where he still pinned them against the floor.

  And she breathed.

  Oh hell, yeah, she was breathing.

  Restless, she shifted her body in line with his and made a soft cry of protest when he stilled her with a large hand low on her belly.

  “Shh. Not done memorizing you.” He released her hands from over her head and continued his exploration, fanning the curve of her belly, down, down, down her legs and then up the inside flesh of her thighs, rubbing his stubble, his torturous lips against her, until his tongue—Lord, finally—found her to assuage the ache.

  Sweet Jesus.

  Her world erupted in a cascade of blue crystals, hips bucking off the floor as he clasped her thighs, fingers curling into her muscles to anchor her. The sweet sting of his nails, the bold stroke of his tongue extorted more pleasure from her nerves until she wondered if she could survive the onslaught.

  Pulsing blue light fired behind her eyelids. Her fingers crawled through his silky hair. Grasping, pulling, releasing. Flying. She was flying.

  Dying.

  The little death.

  She’d never felt the esoteric blade quite as exquisitely. She couldn’t contain the pressure.

  Now.

  Her eyelids flew open and he moved over her—a dark angel—to swallow her wild cry with his mouth.

  …

  Zack studied the woman beneath him. Her hair splayed across the floor like a rich wheat field at dusk, her lips parted, her body warm, undulating against his hand, slick, arousing, honest.

  He’d never felt so vital, so pulsing with energy. Touching her, experiencing her—the colors, textures, smell, sounds, and taste of her—made every one of his senses seem to awaken for the first time.

  He’d been right to come back here with her. He felt awful about Tori, and who knew what was coming next with Ann, but right now they needed this more than anything, or they’d both go crazy. They needed to feel alive. Feel joy.

  Love.

  Even after everything, he still couldn’t help believing in it.

  Maybe one day it would kill him.

  He continued touching her, his hand moving in rhythm with her hips, his eyes hungrily watching as a new orgasm rolled over and through her body. She clutched at him, arched her back, offering the curve of her throat to his tongue. So sexy. Her uninhibited response was a gift. It humbled him.

  And made something arcane rise within.

  Possession.

  God, he wanted to be in her.

  Mark her.

  She quivered one last time and her lids opened to reveal eyes of molten chocolate. His heart tripped at her tears. “Was I too rough?”

  “No, oh, no.” Her arms laced around his neck, her legs around his trunk to pull him down into the cradle of her hips. He was gonna explode in these damn jeans any minute now. She lifted her pelvis to grind into him. Beads of sweat rolled down his back, and he shuddered. Her sudden laughter wove around him, husky with spent tears. “Take your clothes off before you hurt yourself,” she whispered.

  Yes, maybe someday his belief in love would kill him.

  But someday wasn’t today.

  …

  This man. He made something effervesce inside her. Getting too close. She bit her lip, breathing hard once more as he carried her to the bedroom and laid her gently down. Don’t think. Just don’t think about it.

  She eased up on her elbows—damn, her arms were shaking—to watch him quickly shed the rest of his clothes and wrap himself in protection. Butterflies, heat, goose bumps, and greed threaded through her as her legs moved restlessly, twisting the quilt. Waiting. All that beautiful, powerful male sinew—that otherness—hers to taste. Somehow she knew his taste would linger on her tongue for a long time to come.

  She’d never been more aware of her heart beating in her breast. The subtle quavers of her low belly. The fractional tightening of quadriceps, her insides. The swelling of her—

  She exhaled heavily. He looked up and smiled. A secret smile, a knowing smile that made her nipples contract. Yes, you do know me, don’t you?

  She might not like that later. Too late?

  Thin ice.

  He edged onto the bed, and she shot up on her knees.

  He stopped, frowned. “You okay?”

  She nodded. Don’t you dare lie to this man. “I don’t know.” But she eased toward him anyway, unable to do anything else. She took a deep breath, brushed a lock of hair from his forehead, and looked him in the eye. “Kiss me.”

  He maintained eye contact as he leaned in and took her bottom lip between his, a torturous massage that drew a moan from the well of her desire. He eased away, still not touching her, to lean back on a pile of pillows against the headboard.

  “You drive this, baby.”

  She bent down to kiss his belly to hide the wetness that sprang to her eyes. His ab wall was firm, hot, and jumpy beneath her lips, and her eyes soon dried. She spread her palms to touch as much of his l
andscape as she could, her tongue broad and salty with his taste. She turned her head to rub her cheek against the thin trail of hair spearing down to his groin, smiling to see his fist grip the bed covers.

  Safe, solid ice? So far he’d proven that his word was good. He’d been inside her head, and nothing bad had happened to him.

  Yet.

  Stop it.

  Okay. Her whole body seemed to sigh. She pressed one last kiss to his belly before sitting up. His eyes were closed, lids fluttering, his whole body taut. She smiled, heart expanding until her smile started to fade.

  Don’t. Think.

  She moved up his body to straddle his legs, easing forward until his erection grazed her, and she gasped at the electrifying contact. His eyes opened, his fingers inching up, curling into her thighs as she rose over him, the wide tip of him pulsing against her heat. His nostrils flared, his mouth opening on a guttural groan to receive her kiss the moment she slid down his length.

  She sucked in her breath, neck curving back until strands of her hair brushed the swell of her buttocks. She could feel him, feel him everywhere. Hot mouth at her breasts, thumb of one hand beguiling her clit, fingernails of his other hand digging in her ass to enjoy her movement—her movement—because, oh yeah, she was driving this thing.

  Ssssssafe ice.

  Swelling inside. More.

  He leaned forward, wrapping his arms around her, hands climbing her neck to tangle in her hair and pull.

  Her nerve endings sizzled. Faster. Open mouths, fingers entwined behind her back. A soul exposed. Yes.

  She watched their joining. Inhaled the tang of their mating.

  Impossibly erotic.

  The last inhibition fell and with it, incoherent words of…

  Love.

  Her heart stuttered. No!

  “Zack!”

  Sweat at his temples, his eyes liquid green, so achingly intense. “Let go, baby. I’ve got you.”

  That’s what I fear.

  But the blade cut through the humid air. And untethered like never before, she soared.

  Chapter Seventeen