The Black Sheep and the Princess

by Donna Kauffman

  She groaned with absolute satisfaction when he settled his weight on top of her, between her legs, where she so badly wanted him to stay. Forever. Somewhere in the process he’d shucked his clothes because all she felt was his deliciously warm skin brushing against hers as he pulled her legs around his hips and pinned her down to the table.

  “Pure madness,” he breathed into her ear as he buried his face against the side of her neck and sunk deeply into her with one thrust.

  “Yes,” she agreed, arching to meet him, to take him, seeking more when she didn’t think more was possible.

  He drove himself into her, no gentleness in him now. She scored his back with her nails as she grabbed for any perch she could find, finally grabbing at the hair that lay against his neck, tightening her thighs against his increasingly deeper thrusts, taking every one of them with growling acceptance, wanting more with every bit he gave her.

  “Kate,” he panted, moving faster, and faster, turning her face to his and laying claim to her mouth as deeply and intimately as he was her body.

  She took him there, too. Wanting to take him into every part of her with a desperation that made her almost frantic. Somewhere in the recesses of what was left of her mind, she knew it was a form of desperation, this need to take every last bit of him now, while she could, before the inevitable happened and she lost him.

  Then there was that other part, buried even deeper inside her, but becoming incessantly harder to ignore. That part that said if he needed her badly enough, wanted more of her as desperately as she did of him, then maybe, just maybe, he’d find a way to give them both what they wanted. Now…and forever.

  Madness, indeed.

  His body coiled above hers and tore his mouth from hers. “Kate,” he demanded hoarsely.

  Her eyes flew open to find the dark, stormy depths of his own love pinning her down as tightly and fully as his body was pinning hers.

  “Donovan,” she choked out.

  And he came right then, his gaze locked to hers even as his body thundered into hers, shuddering mightily as he poured himself into her in ways more than simply physical. She was drowning, but not simply in his body. That gaze, that look…

  Was she seeing what she wanted to see? Or…

  “Come here,” he said roughly, and pulled her up against him, sliding his arms beneath her as he slid out of her. “Come on.”

  “Wait—”

  But he didn’t. Wincing as his knees protested, he pulled her up with him as he stood, ignoring her protests as he scooped her up against his chest. “Just let me,” he told her, kicking a chair over accidentally as he staggered the two of them toward her bedroom. He banged the door shut behind them, blocking out Bagel’s mournful howl. She’d make it up to the dog later. She had a lifetime with her dog. She had no idea how many more precious minutes of this she’d have with Donovan. Shamelessly, greedily, she wanted them all.

  His legs gave out as they fell to the bed. He rolled to his side, dragging her with him. “Shower again later,” he promised, tucking her against his side.

  She rolled her body along the length of his, her legs tangling easily with his, her head coming to rest atop the beat of his heart as if she’d slept that way many a time. And despite the exhilaration of what she’d just experienced with him, the anxiety over where this would lead them, compounding the fears about what else lay in store for her in the next days or weeks…the sweet drowsiness of such complete satiation threatened to claim her swiftly. She felt him press a kiss on the top of her head and pressed one against his heart. His arm tightened around her, and she smiled…and let sleep take her.

  The dream was odd. She remembered thinking when he was deep inside of her that the house could be burning down around them and it wouldn’t have mattered. Figures she’d dream about the burning building and not the lovemaking. She was more stressed out than she thought. Snuggling closer, making a soft noise of pleasure when Donovan automatically tightened his hold on her and nestled her closer, even in his sleep, she pushed her sleep-muzzy brain to other, more pleasurable dreams. But the burning building just wouldn’t leave her mind, so real it made her nose twitch in reaction to the acrid smoke and—

  Just then Donovan came fully awake and was pushing her gently but firmly aside as he leapt from the bed.

  She pushed her hair from her face and levered up on one arm, nose still twitching. Then her eyes widened, and she scrambled out of the bed behind him and stumbled to the window where he stood. “Oh, my God!”

  Thick black smoke roiled into the air, but there were no flames shooting from the cabin situated just down the hill below hers.

  “What the hell is going on?” Kate demanded, the adrenaline punch kicking the last vestiges of sleep from her muzzy brain, but making her almost nauseous at the sudden shift.

  Mac reached for the nightstand where he’d set his phone. “Obviously, whoever was here earlier was paying closer attention than we thought. I’d swear it was amateur hour out there, but now I’m not so sure. Maybe they saw what I was doing up that tree and decided to strike before the surveillance went into effect.”

  “Is the rest of the equipment—”

  “Going up in flames? Yes.”

  Kate’s eyes widened as the full impact of the situation hit her, and as Donovan turned to punch numbers into his phone, she ran to open her bedroom door and all but tripped over a very grateful, clearly shaken Bagel. “Sorry, little man,” she said, stepping over him as she went for her purse and the phone buried somewhere in it. “I’ll call the fire department.”

  “Already done,” Donovan said from the doorway behind her.

  She turned to find him, a wiggling Bagel in his arms, standing naked in the open doorway to her bedroom. And even with her entire future literally threatening to go up in flames, her body responded, her brain flashed immediately on a few very specific stored visuals, and her heart tripped all over itself. “Now what?”

  “You stay here. I’m going down to check out what’s what.”

  “But—”

  “It’s been burning for a while, I don’t think there’s anything that can be done to save it now. But I want to make sure. The rain has made the exterior and surrounding trees wet enough to keep it from spreading to anything else.”

  “What if someone is still out there?”

  Donovan crossed the room and plopped Bagel into her arms, then pulled on his clothes, which were strewn on the kitchen floor. “I won’t be gone long.”

  “You didn’t answer my question.”

  He pulled on the still damp raincoat he’d left by the door after walking Bagel earlier, then walked back over to her, leaned down, and soundly kissed her. “I know. Don’t—do not—come outside. Not even on the porch. Fire trucks will take a long time to get here, and I want to make sure nothing else is going on.”

  “Donovan—”

  His expression softened a little, and so did his tone. “Let me do my job,” he said, and kissed her, this time more gently. “Please do as I ask, so I don’t have to worry about you while I’m at it. Promise?”

  When he looked at her like that, and asked rather than commanded, it was beyond her to debate him. It was scary in its own way, how grateful she was that he was there. “Yeah.” She squeezed a still-wriggling and whimpering Bagel more tightly to her chest. “My trusty sidekick and I will be here waiting for your report.”

  He grinned. “I won’t be long.”

  He turned to go, and she grabbed his arm, tugged him back, and kissed him soundly. “Be careful.”

  She’d expected a roll of the eyes, or some casual retort. So it surprised her when his expression faltered, almost as if she’d caught him off guard. “What?” she asked.

  “Nothing. And I will.” Then he was out the door and off the porch before she could regroup enough to call him on what had obviously been a dodge.

  She did as he asked and stayed away from the porch and the front door, which he’d closed behind him. But he hadn’t said anything
about her bedroom window. She went quickly into the room, dumped Bagel gently onto the tangled pile of bedsheets, and stepped to the edge of the window, careful to keep most of her body off to one side and out of plain sight.

  Donovan was nowhere to be seen. Probably already on the backside of the cabin, she thought. It was early evening judging by the fading light, though the cloudy skies made it hard to tell. She glanced at her nightstand. Four o’clock. They’d been asleep for several hours. The acrid smell of smoke was stronger now after Donovan had opened and closed the front door. She rubbed at her nose and tried not to inhale any more deeply than she had to. God only knew what it was like out there. Hopefully, the damp air was stifling it somehow, though for all she knew, it might make it worse.

  She leaned closer to the windowpane, almost pressing her cheek against it as she squinted in the rapidly growing gloom for any sight of Donovan. An uncontrollable shudder shot through her as she realized the intruder had been that close without their knowledge. With her and Donovan going at it like wild animals right in her kitchen, they could have been standing on the porch watching for all she knew.

  She shuddered again and folded her arms against her chest, hugging herself, trying not to let the idea freak her out completely. Whoever it was, was likely long gone by now. They’d probably seen Donovan go inside her cabin after walking the dog and figured that was their chance. That they hadn’t waited until dark, that they’d risked it in broad daylight, unnerved her more than a little. Of course, the rain and mist made it a bit more shrouded, but if either one of them had happened to look out her bedroom window while the perpetrator was setting the fire or going in or out of the cabin, they would have caught him dead to rights.

  Maybe they’d thought Donovan was going to head back out and finish the installation of the cameras, so they had to strike when they had the first opportunity. It was the only thing that explained taking such a risk.

  Though, she realized, as she thought about it, they’d been pretty bold with the boat shed earlier. Maybe this had been the plan all along. She kept running a visual scan over every part of the property she could see from her vantage point, but she’d yet to see Donovan. Her mind was spinning with all the ramifications. She tried not to think about the damage itself, all the incredibly expensive gear Donovan had just lost, or about how badly it was going to set back her timetable for getting the camp up and running, not to mention the money involved. At the moment, unless they could figure out who the hell was behind this, it wasn’t going to matter.

  She turned then, stared through the open door of her bedroom, directly at the table in the kitchen where her purse lay. And her cell phone.

  Donovan might be out there chasing monsters, but there was another potential one out there that she had the power to fight.

  He hadn’t said when he wanted her to call Shelby, but as far as Kate was concerned, the cabin fire had just sped up any timeline Donovan might have had. She dug her phone out and immediately called Shelby’s private line. She got his generic voice mail request on the first ring. “Call me,” she said flatly, in a tone that brooked no argument, then clicked the phone shut. Shelby never answered calls directly. He liked the pretense that his calls needed to be screened for importance. Well, if he knew what was good for him and his beloved empire, he’d—the phone buzzed in her palm, startling her. She looked at the screen, then flipped it back open. “We need to talk.”

  “Don’t harangue me about the meeting. I know you’re all caught up in making plans for your little camp, but I’m running an entire corporate complex, and sometimes things come up.”

  “Which is why they make cell phones. Or, better yet, lawyers with banks of office phones. Why didn’t you call me? Why leave me sitting there, steaming? Was it some kind of power play? What do you want now?” She was trying to keep Donovan’s earlier guidelines in mind, but between the fire, her badly shaking hands, and the heavy cost of trying to keep that same shakiness out of her voice, she could only go on instinct. “What more could there be? We had an agreement.”

  “And we still do,” Shelby assured her, in a tone that made it clear he was being sorely taxed by her intrusion into his oh-so-busy life. “We merely have to reschedule.”

  “This deal is worth everything that matters to you,” she needlessly reminded him.

  There was a pause. “What are you implying, Katherine? Is that some kind of veiled threat? Because we both know that I could keep you tied up in court for years and you’d never touch your inheritance.”

  “It would also keep you from taking over her empire and running it the way you want to.” She raked her hands through her hair, stared through the window at the thick black smoke, temporarily losing track of the phone conversation as she sought out Donovan and still couldn’t spot him. “We’ve been over this a million times.”

  “Precisely why we’ll reschedule and dot all our i’s, cross our t’s.”

  She was silent for another long moment, trying to decide how to frame her next question to best get her stepbrother to tell her the truth.

  There was an aggrieved sigh on the other end of the line. “Don’t be punitive just because I didn’t inform you of my inability to attend.”

  “And when were you going to get around to calling me to set this new meeting date up?”

  “I may not be the lawful owner of all of our corporate holdings as yet, but I’m still the defacto head in the meantime. It’s slightly more involved than setting up camp. Things come up that can’t be put off. I really wish you’d grasp this fact.”

  “What things could possibly come up that are more important than signing the very documents that will make you the rightful king of all you survey?” Sensing the tension in the air and in her tone of voice, Bagel whimpered and pressed his full weight against her ankle.

  There was a significant pause, then, “You’re reading too much into what was a simple scheduling issue.”

  “Am I? There isn’t anything else I should know about? Any last minute concerns you might be having?”

  “My dear Katherine,” he said, as unctuous and condescending as he’d ever been, “if I were, don’t you think our lawyers would already be hashing them out?”

  Not if you didn’t want them to know about whatever deal you’re working on the side. “Fine, then. When do we meet?”

  That seemed to catch him off guard. “I—I’m at my club at the moment, hardly able to do any actual scheduling. Besides, Laurel handles that for me, you know that.”

  Kate decided to go for broke. “You’re stalling. What’s the real hold-up here, Shelby? What’s the real reason you didn’t show up?”

  He affected another weary sigh, but she wasn’t buying it.

  “Honestly, Katherine. The drama is unnecessary. I’ll have Laurel call you first thing. My dinner has been delivered to my table, and I’d like to get back to it before it cools.”

  She tried to think like Donovan would. Shelby normally enjoyed holding court at his table, talking to people, working deals, and taking important phone calls, or at least giving every appearance of it, looking for all the world as if he were in demand in every possible way. And yet, he’d excused himself to call her back. A call he’d returned immediately. Had she pulled him out of his comfort zone, as Donovan had said she might? And if so, what did it mean? She blurted out the first question she thought of. “Who are you dining with?”

  “Why on earth would that matter to you? Now, I really must go. We’ll talk later in the week when the schedule has been adjusted.” He clicked off before she had a chance to reply or say good-bye. Rude, and seemingly evasive, but typical.

  She sneezed several times as the soot began to waft into the cabin through the stovepipe. She hurried to shut the front grate before it covered everything in the house. She almost tripped over Bagel, who was glued to her heels. “Careful there,” she cautioned, adjusting the grate and checking the flue. She turned and looked down at her dog. “I don’t know what to make of it, Bagel. For a
ll I know, he was just being the insensitive asshole he can be, making sure everyone knew how important he was by having to reschedule something so vital.” Or, he could have been sitting down to dine with executives from Timberline right then and there. She wished she’d been able to read him better. He was such a smug, patronizing asshole, it was hard to tell when he was being insincere.

  Ignoring Donovan’s orders, she walked to the front door and peeked through the window curtains covering the glass panes. If she didn’t spot him in five minutes, she was heading out there and to hell with his damn rules. The dog whimpered again.

  The rain had stopped, and the smoke was rising more directly upward through the trees now. She finally heard sirens in the distance, but close enough she decided it was safe to go outside. She wondered if Gilby was on the way, too. “It would be about damn time,” she muttered, pulling on her mud-encrusted boots. “Stay here,” she told Bagel, who was already at the door, all but vibrating to be let out. “You don’t need to breathe that stuff.” She grabbed a rag off the porch and dampened it, in case she needed it to cover her mouth, then grabbed a second one for Donovan, dampened it, too. She pushed out the screen door, sighing as Bagel started howling behind the cabin door, and started down toward the smoking cabin.

  The sirens grew louder by the second. She could hear the powerful engines grinding up the steep incline of the camp road by the time she’d reached the cabin. Her heart tightened even further inside her chest as she surveyed the extent of the damage. Coughing, she lifted the rag to her face, careful to stay back as far as she could, yet still peer through the smoke to try and see just how badly the cabin had burned. Much of the exterior walls looked okay, but when she rounded the back, she saw the roof was half gone, and the windows had all blown out and were scorched. The rain had probably kept the exterior from going up, but from what she could tell, the inside was completely ravaged. Which meant the whole thing would have to come down and be rebuilt.