Behind Closed Doors m&f-1

by Shannon McKenna

  Breath jerked into his lungs in sobbing heaves. She did not protest when he rolled on top of her, settling his hard weight into the cradle of her hips. Her body softened, clasping him. Accepting him.

  Seth was a millimeter away from losing it. The only way to hold his emotions together was to kiss her, with all of himself. All his desperate hunger. Need pounded through his body, but he held it back, trying to express with his kiss everything that was so impossible to say. His anger and grief and confusion, his growing awareness of how important she was to him. How much that awed and terrified him.

  If a kiss could communicate that, this kiss would. He would tell her with his lips and his tongue, with every caress, every nuzzle and licking, swirling kiss. He peeled down me thin straps of the nightgown, pulling it down to her waist, and lost himself in the magic landscape of her body, all the secret hollows and hillocks and hidden places.

  Her breath fluttered through her, sweet and light, like the sudden flight of surprised birds. He caressed and suckled her until she was just the way he wanted her, flushed and dazed and desperate. He would learn any language she wanted, if she would only give him time, but for now, this was the only language he had. He would be as eloquent in it as he knew how to be.

  He touched her between her legs, a love poem of circles and spirals, until she opened up and pressed herself against him in mute pleading, and he slid down beneath her thighs to continue the love poem with his mouth. Her sweet taste was ecstasy, the baby-smooth skin of her thighs clenched and trembling against his face, the folds of her sex drenched and pulsing, crying out in the throes of climax.

  She reached down and pulled until he slid back up on top of her. “This is the way I always want you to be before we make love,” he told her, grabbing a condom. “Wide open from coming like crazy. Both sets of lips pink and soft from being licked and kissed.”

  Raine clutched his shoulders and pushed her hips against him eagerly as he entered her. She rested her chin against his shoulder, and he felt the exact moment when something deep inside her body and heart and mind let go, giving herself up to him. He followed her, diving into a new world, a shining place beyond all words. They melted, fused. Her pleasure and his were one single rocking, sighing blur of light and heat.

  This time, he wasn't alarmed at all when she melted into tears. He finally felt the lightness of it. Like soft rain in the springtime, rustling on the leaves. A fragrant, healing balm. He vibrated with her, cradling her head against his chest and making sure her precious sore nose was turned to the side.

  He stroked her hair and the words just rolled out of him. Halting, and breathless, but he didn't choke on them at all. “I love you, Raine.”

  She was so startled she stopped crying. When she breathed again, she shuddered and hitched. “I knew that,” she whispered. “But I didn't know that you knew it. And I certainly didn't expect...”

  “Expect what?”

  “For you to be the first one of us to say it,” she said bashfully.

  He waited, squeezing her tightly against him. He could feel the hot wet tears against his chest. She sniffled, her breath hitching. “So?” he said expectantly.

  She sniffed, more aggressively. “Hmm?”

  “You got something to say to me?” he prompted.

  She shoved him over onto his back and rolled on top of him, wiping her face and laughing through her tears. “You want a formal declaration? I love you, Seth Mackey,” she announced. “I always have. From the very start.”

  He tightened his arms around her waist, afraid of the hugeness of the joy rushing through him. “Really?”

  “Oh, yes,” she said. “Oh, God, yes.”

  He wound himself around her and stared at her, amazed and humbled. Words had deserted him again, but he didn't care. He didn't need them anymore. It was enough for him, just to touch her hair, feel her body fitting against his, to stare into her eyes. Two halves of a perfect whole. The wonder of it made him tremble.

  He slid into sleep with the thought that he would do anything to protect this. Anything.

  Seth was fast asleep, but Raine was still flying. She was so high, she was terrified to look down now and see how far there was to fall.

  Her mind raced. So much information to process. Was it possible that Victor had sent someone to hurt her? It didn't make sense, didn't fit her perceptions and memories of him. Could he have been so affronted by her reproof that he was punishing her? She was sure he hadn't seen her plant the transmitter. She would have felt the change in his energy.

  Maybe she just didn't want to believe that her own father—how odd it was to think of Victor that way—could order someone to hurt her. What a sentimental idiot she was. He had ordered someone to murder his own brother, after all. And she felt hurt, of all things. She really was a Lazar, as crazy as they come. Someone sends a hit man after her, and her reaction was hurt feelings.

  Seth murmured in his sleep and snuggled closer to her. She nudged his muscular chest until his long, curling black eyelashes fluttered up. She poked again, pitiless. Sleep could come later, after he had fulfilled his promise. “Talk,” she said succinctly.

  He groaned and stretched. “What do you want to know?”

  Raine sat up cross-legged, and pulled one of the wool blankets up over her shoulders. “Begin at the beginning. And don't make me pry it out of you, please.”

  He picked at the satin blanket trimming, staring up at the ceiling. “I had a brother,” he said finally. His voice was hard and flat.

  She nodded. “Yes?”

  “A half-brother, actually. I pretty much raised him. He was six years younger than me. His name was Jesse.”

  She patted his chest and waited for him to go on.

  He stared up at the ceiling, shaking his head. “So Jesse grows up to become a cop, see. Big joke for both of us, considering our upbringing, but Jesse was a romantic. He wanted to save the world. Rescue kittens stuck in trees, babies from burning buildings, that kind of thing. I personally think he watched too much cop TV”

  She could already feel what was coming. She braced herself for it. “What happened to Jesse, Seth?” she asked.

  He closed his eyes. “He was undercover, investigating your uncle.”

  “Oh, no,” she whispered.

  “Oh, yeah. Victor got bored with being fabulously successful in the legitimate business world. In the past few years, he's started dabbling in the dangerous stuff again. Mostly stolen weapons and antiquities, I think. But what got Jesse and his partner all excited was one of Victor's clients, Kurt Novak. Another collector of stolen goodies. Novak is a serious bad-ass. Makes Victor look like a pussy cat. More money than God, no conscience whatsoever. His daddy is a big man in the Eastern European mafia. Novak was the real prize they were after. They almost nailed him, but somebody tipped Lazar off. I don't know who... yet. And Jesse was out on the limb when it got sawed off. Novak killed him. Slowly.”

  “Oh, Seth,” she whispered. She laid her hand on his chest, but he was too far away to feel her.

  “I should have been there to help him,” he said. “I might have been able to change things. But I was too late.”

  She wanted to soothe and comfort, but she knew that words would be useless and empty. She pressed her lips together and waited.

  Minutes passed. He opened his eyes and looked at her.

  “So that’s the story. I've spent months watching Victor. Waiting for him to make contact with Novak. And when he does, I'm bringing those guys down. Lazar, Novak and the traitor. I've been living for that. Just that. I sure as hell didn't plan on... something like you happening to me.”

  She settled against his chest, letting her hair drape over him. “So you and I have more in common than I thought.”

  He played with a lock of her hair. “I guess so,” he said doubtfully.

  She stretched out next to him and propped herself on her elbow. “Tell me about Jesse “ she asked gently.

  He looked startled. “Like what?”
<
br />   “What was he like?”

  He looked clouded for a minute, and then he gave a hard little shrug. “He was nuts,” he muttered. “A clown. Incredibly smart. He had these weird green eyes that were kind of too big. Huge feet. Mad scientist hair. When he was too busy to cut it, it just knotted into dreads. And he was a tender-hearted sap. Always in love, always giving away the shirt on his back. He never learned. Never.”

  She smiled at the image he was creating. “Go on.”

  His eyes grew distant, and he fell silent. She was about to ask what was wrong when he started up again, in a halting voice. “One time, it was Halloween. He was about eight, I think. Mitch, my stepdad, had locked me in the closet for some reason—”

  She stiffened. “Oh, God.”

  “Oh, it was no big deal, I probably deserved it,” he said, his expression faraway. “Anyway, Mitch got blind drunk and forgot about me for about twelve hours. Jesse couldn't find the key, so he got his blanket and pillow and curled up on the other side of the door. He didn't want me to be all alone in the dark. He passed me all of his Halloween candy that would fit under the door. All the flat stuff. Mini Hersheys, mini Nestles Crunch, all of it. He even squashed his peanut butter cups. I tried to make him go to bed, but he just had to keep me company.” Raine's throat tightened. “Oh, Seth.”

  He smiled at the memory. “I think I was off chocolate for years after that. But if you're sitting in the dark on top of a pile of stinking gym shoes, and somebody gives you chocolate, you eat it.”

  He paused. His fleeting smile faded, replaced by bleakness. His eyes flicked up to hers. “So there you go. That was Jesse for you. Satisfied?”

  Raine pressed her cheek against his chest to hide her tears. “Oh, Seth. I think I would have loved your brother.”

  “Yeah, well... I sure did.” His face contracted. He jerked away from her, rolled over onto his stomach and pressed his face into the pillow.

  Raine draped herself over his broad back and absorbed the racking tremors into herself. Covering and protecting him. She had no idea how long they stayed like that. They slipped loose of linear time. She would have stayed years if it could have healed him. Centuries.

  He finally stirred, and she lifted herself up. “Seth—”

  “No more stories about Jesse. He's dead now. Let him stay dead.”

  She did not flinch away when he grabbed her and rolled on top of her. “Gently,” she said, cupping his face. I don't want you lost in some tornado in your mind a million miles away. Come back to me.”

  His body was rigid, his eyes so lost and dark with pain that her throat burned for him. 'Think island sunset,” she urged, covering his face with soft kisses. “Think garlands of tropical flowers.”

  He rolled over and pulled her on top of him, gripping her hips painfully hard. “You run it,” he said roughly. “I can't control anything. I don't know how to give you what you want”

  She kissed away the tears that had trickled out of the corners of his eyes, rubbing her wet cheek against his hot, scratchy one. “Sure you do,” she told him. “You always have, from the beginning. You're brilliant at it. You're inspired.”

  She smoothed the condom over him with a slow, lingering caress, and guided him into herself, sinking down over him, enveloping his burning heat with a sobbing sigh of pleasure. He grasped her waist with a groan as she rose up onto her knees and sank down again, taking more of him. Deeper, bolder. Soothing him with her silken softness.

  Raine pried his hands away from her waist and held them out, spreading them wide. She swayed over him in a divine dance of love and acceptance, rejoicing that he finally trusted her enough to be vulnerable; to ask, with arms and mind and heart wide open, for her love and healing. And she could not help but give him what he needed. It would have destroyed her to withhold it.

  She wanted to heal all his wounds, fulfill all his dreams.

  She wanted to love him forever.

  Chapter 23

  It was torture to disentangle himself from her velvety warmth, but his back was throbbing where he had slammed it into the newel post, and he was just now starting to notice it, in a big way.

  Raine murmured a sleepy protest. “What's the matter?”

  “Sore back,” he said. “No big deal.”

  She ran her hand across his shoulders. “Take a hot shower,” she suggested, stroking his spine. “It might loosen it up.”

  He could think of fifty better ways to loosen up, but he didn't want her to think he was a total sex maniac. He reached back with a short wince and massaged it. “Don't tell anybody, but I'm a little old for stunts like the stairs tumble.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Thirty-six in about two weeks.”

  She kissed his shoulder. “I'm only twenty-eight, you cradle robber, you.”

  He leered at her. “Want to take a shower with me, little girl?”

  She stretched luxuriously under the covers. “I can't face the cold. And I don't think I can move yet. My bones are liquefied.”

  “That's not your bones that are liquid, sweetheart.”

  The kiss he gave her could easily have segued into something hot and pounding and delicious, but he dragged himself away. They could always have more sex later. Lots of it. For the rest of their lives.

  “Would you like me to call out for some food?” she asked.

  His stomach rumbled eagerly at the idea. “Go for it.”

  “Anything in particular?”

  He gave her a goofy, foolishly happy grin. “I'm not fussy.”

  The water pressure was better than he expected in a dive like this. He relaxed under the hot, pounding spray for a long time, and when he came out, she was asleep. He tiptoed around the room, trying not to wake her. He felt like he was floating. Wanted to laugh and cry at every little thought that passed through his mind. He pulled on his jeans and silently scooted the armchair up next to the head of the bed, so he could just sit there and stare, openmouthed, at how beautiful she was. Every tiny detail fascinated him. The faint, rosy flush that stained her cheek was the most heartbreakingly perfect thing he had ever laid eyes on. He could spend the rest of his life exploring her.

  And he would. She might not know it yet, but she was never getting rid of him. He was sticking to her like glue.

  She jerked awake when the phone rang. She gave him a sleepy, satiated smile as she reached for it. “Hmm? The... oh, yes. Thank you. How much? Ten ninety-eight. OK, thanks ... we'll be right down.”

  “Food's here?” He yanked on his boots and sweater, shrugged on his jacket and shoved his SIG into his pants. “I'll go get it.” One kiss, to send him high and flying, and he set off down the dark path in a loose, easy lope. The rain had eased off, and the wet pine needles were springy beneath his feet. It smelled good. He was ravenous.

  It wasn't sound that alerted him, because the guy was utterly silent. It was a weird rush of displaced air. A shiver on the back of his neck, like the sigh of a lover's breath—but cold, not warm.

  He spun just in time to see a cannonball of darkness hurtling towards him. The glow from the curtained window of their cabin glinted across the dark surface of a long blade, stabbing for his gut.

  He lunged back, parrying the stab with a chop of his arm, but the guy was in too close. The tip of the blade slashed down Seth's side, a thin, white-hot line. He spun, slammed his elbow into the guy's jaw, felt the jolt, the grunt. Jerked to the side just in time to take the guy's knee in his thigh instead of his balls, fucking ouch, but no time to feel it, no time to grab for the gun. He was dancing back to evade another slash, then another. Ducking back, parrying. Sliding in wet pine needles, going down backwards.

  The attacker followed up his advantage and leaped, but Seth blocked his knife arm and grabbed his wrist. He slammed both booted feet up into the guy's stomach, lifted and flung. The guy somersaulted in the air and rolled smoothly back up onto his feet. Seth rolled back over his shoulder, sprang up and yanked out his gun. The guy's leg snapped out, quic
k as a whip, and kicked the gun right out of his hand.

  The light behind him brightened as the porch light switched on. He hoped it would blind the guy and give him a split-second advantage, because he needed one, and fast.

  “Seth? What's... oh my God!”

  The killer launched himself with a menacing shout. Seth spun back sideways alongside him, seized his knife arm at the wrist. Wrenched it up, twisted it back, whipped it down. There was a loud snap. The guy let out a gurgling, agonized grunt. The knife dropped.

  There was a small cinderblock structure adjoining the cabin, and Seth opted for the simple and handy expedient of wrenching up the guy's broken arm until he shrieked and bent over, and then slamming him into the cement blocks headfirst He hauled him back and gave him another one for good measure before he flung the guy down to the ground like the sack of shit that he was. He stared down at the twitching form, chest heaving, and started to shake with retroactive terror. Wow. That had been way too fucking close.

  Raine darted towards him, her bare feet flashing over the muddy ground. “Seth, are you all right?”

  His breathing was labored. He was pressing his hand against his side, and it was warm and sticky. He yanked up the sweater, glanced at it. No big deal. His sweater and jeans were slashed, and the cut was long and messy, but it looked relatively shallow.

  He pushed Raine's hands away, blocking out her anxious questions. He couldn't even hear her, with the unthinkable thoughts pounding at the door of his mind. He would have welcomed another assassin. A whole pack of them, so they could keep him too busy to mink, to reason. To use his worthless brain for the first time in weeks and ask himself how the rack this guy had found them, with all the tricks he had pulled. All the lengths he had gone to. And right after he had confessed every goddamn secret he had been keeping to his archenemy's only heir.

  He hooked his foot beneath the guy's carcass and flopped him onto his back. He leaned over with a hiss of pain and yanked the ski mask off. The top of the guy's head was a bloody mess, but his face was recognizable. Short dark hair, mid-thirties. Average, unnoticeable. Close-set, empty brown eyes, staring up. He put his finger to the guy's carotid artery. Nothing. Just as well, though it would have been interesting to question him. Not the Templeton Street guy. This one had been lighter, quicker. Far more deadly.