Dangerous Moves

by Karen Rock

  Love him more.

  “I thought about you all day,” he said, his voice hoarse. Unsteady.

  His hand shook as he flicked the other strap off her shoulder so that her short dress floated to the floor in a heap. Her strapless bra hugged her breasts too tightly, the Lycra and lace annoying when she only wanted Blake against her skin. He bent his head to her breasts, gliding his lips across each curve and moistening the edges of the white lace cups with his tongue.

  Blood pounded through her veins, making her flesh shake with the beat of her heart. She halted him with a hand on each cheek before he could reach a nipple, preventing him from giving her so much pleasure she’d forget what she wanted to say.

  She moistened her lips with a sweep of her tongue, and her body trembled with the depth of her feelings. “I can’t get you out of my mind, either. I want you. All of you.”

  Including your heart, she added silently, when her constricting throat took those all-important words hostage.

  Tell him later, then…

  After…

  Reese’s gaze lowered to Blake’s trousers and lingered on the erection compromising his zipper. After last night’s shoot-out, he’d sequestered her at his condo, where she’d wandered the space. She’d been unable to sleep, eat or escape the night’s tension, and how she’d nearly lost him. Now that he’d returned, she wouldn’t waste a moment. Blake was close to solving the case, and their time together neared an end.

  She stepped closer until a mere breath separated them.

  “I don’t want a damn thing between you and me,” he growled. Reaching for his belt buckle, he kept his steady gaze on her as he undressed the rest of the way. Then he reeled her closer still and whisked off the last scraps of satin clinging to her body. Electric emotion crackled between them, heated the very air around them.

  “Never again,” she murmured, meaning it on many levels. She gasped when his hands smoothed up her sides until his thumbs grazed the underside of her breasts. Raining kisses over his face and down the rough edge of his jaw, the warmth of her breath revived his aftershave’s faded scent.

  Her lips had almost reached his mouth when he guided her backward, down onto the comforter, the cool, satiny material sending tremors over her already sensitized skin, the shivering sensations mingling with hot, edgy need.

  He stood before her, naked and sculpted, and her blood surged through her in a driving rhythm. He’d never looked more menacing or more vulnerable, every muscle tensed and clearly delineated to her hungry eye. Blake made her mouth water.

  And that wasn’t the only place her juices flowed. Her body was so desperate for him, she thought she would weep with it.

  Just watching him tower over her from that angle, the way his lats cut down his abs and framed his long, thick arousal, could have helped her reach an orgasmic high. But he bent to cradle her body in one arm and stroked her bare skin with his fingertips. Liquid tenderness flooded through her, nearly making her pass out.

  Shutting her eyes against an intimacy she wasn’t yet able to vocalize, Reese struggled to concentrate on the knot of silken tension tightening inside her. An easy task, given Blake’s fingers glided over her slick heat, circled the source of her tension, teasing her to new heights. Her skin caught fire and chills at the same time.

  Ensnared by a web of pleasure, she cried out when he hit her flash point. Waves of liquid pleasure sent her tumbling headlong into a rushing sensual tide. Through her blissful haze, she glimpsed him retrieve a foil packet from his nightstand, then roll on a condom. The orgasm only made her hungrier for him, her feminine muscles squeezing repeatedly around emptiness when she wanted to be filled. Stretched. Completed.

  And then Blake was there, covering her, blanketing her body with his own, pressing her into the mattress with the hard length of his body. Her breasts beaded at the touch of his bare skin, her desire fueled by the gentle rasp of his lightly bristled cheek against her smooth one, his breath warm and moist near her ear. Then his lips reclaimed hers, and his tongue traced her bottom lip, the cinnamon taste sweet and hot.

  He broke the kiss, his chest’s rapid rise and fall mirroring hers. “I’m never going to be able to pry myself away from you,” he whispered, nuzzling her neck, nipping her ear, heating her body outside and in.

  “Then don’t.” Reese rolled her hips against him, so ready for him she couldn’t wait another instant. In answer, he lifted her thigh alongside his hip, opening her.

  The thick heat of him pressed against her, rubbing. Her eyes fell shut. Every ounce of sense she had left was focused on the teasing feel of his member nudging her. She reached for him, pleading with small sighs, entreating his cock with a slow stroke of her hand.

  Finally, he slid inside, working his hips against her as he pressed harder and then harder still. She gasped from the shock of pleasure, the sensations so sweetly keen she thought she’d die of it. But then he withdrew, and the delicious friction filled her veins like an illicit drug, a heady rush bowling her over, boiling her blood. As he surged forward, the pleasure built all over again, higher than the last time.

  No one had ever been so good to her, so thoughtful of her needs and wants. In two weeks, Blake had been kinder and more considerate of her than anyone she’d ever met. Emotions scattered inside her, a shotgun blast of feelings that spread everywhere. Then the sensual pleasure ramped up another notch, the storm inside her ready to break.

  She didn’t know where to put all the feelings. Her body and soul were at his mercy, not because of his strength, his authority, but because of the powerful bond they shared.

  Reese grasped him, searching for a hold on his strong back, her fingers gripping his shoulders as he pumped into her again and again. Peering up into his eyes, she spied only their glimmer in the dark. She couldn’t see into them, but she felt his passionate gaze as surely as any touch; it lit her up inside.

  “You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me,” he rasped, his breathing ragged with the effort of holding back.

  She tilted her hips up, taking more of him. All of him. “No one’s ever made me feel like this.” She kissed his lips, running her tongue over his mouth. “Only you.”

  “Me.” A possessive note entered his voice as he changed the angle, guiding her legs to wrap around his waist while he picked up speed. “Only me.”

  “Yes. I only ever want”—her body tightened all around him—“you.” Their gazes locked for a blazing-hot instant before sensation rocked through them. It pulsed from his body to her and back again in a scorching current, racking her with sweet, shuddering spasms of pleasure.

  Through the veil of heavy breathing and hoarse shouts, he gasped, “Only you,” as he forfeited his control and gave in to the pleasure Reese could feel engulfing him, pushing him over the sensual edge right alongside her.

  A few minutes later, legs locked tight around his hips, she held him deep inside her, knowing it might be the last time, unwilling to let him go. And she planned to store up every passionate memory as Blake Knight’s lover to keep her warm in the cold days ahead.

  Limbs languid, body sated, little pulses continued to rock through her as she lay on the bed, luxuriating in the moment. Reese studied the streak of light flashing on his ceiling from another building.

  “Are you okay?” He shoved up on one elbow. He’d been laying to one side of her, no doubt to keep his weight off her. “Last night was…intense.”

  Warmth rolled through her at the concerned expression in his eyes. “I wouldn’t change a thing, since it meant saving you.”

  His lids lowered and then, as if drawn by a magnetic pull, he captured her lips in the sweetest, most tender kiss she’d ever known, as gentle and magical as a butterfly’s wing.

  “Thank you,” Blake said gruffly. “You saved my life.”

  “Then we’re even,” she teased, although she wasn’t really joking. No one
wanted to score points in their deadly game.

  “What happened to—to—the officer that I…” she couldn’t bring herself to finish her question.

  He slid an arm around her shoulder and cradled her close. The reassuring warmth of his body steadied her. “They’re both out of surgery and expected to make full recoveries.”

  The disgusted note in his voice made her laugh. “You sound like you wish otherwise.”

  “They swore an oath and carry the badge. Yet they’re peddling illegal substances. Kidnapping. Shooting civilians.” His hand smoothed over her belly, absently circling her navel with a fingertip.

  “Did anyone confess to shooting my dad?” Reese dropped her cheek to his shoulder, craving his solid strength.

  “Everyone lawyered up.” The force of his sigh blew strands of hair from her temple. “Though we’re hoping to cut a deal with Dixon. Tim Light and Shane O’Neill both have solid alibis for that night, though.”

  “So we’re back to square one.”

  “Worse, if the ring isn’t tipped off already, they will be soon—then they’ll go underground, if I don’t figure out the leader fast.”

  “And you’ll lose your promotion.”

  His chin bumped gently against her scalp in a nod. “There’s that.”

  “I’m sorry. I know you wanted to make your dad proud.”

  Blake was quiet for such a long moment, Reese thought he’d fallen asleep, then he said, “I just wanted to belong. Find my place.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  He left the bed then returned, pressing something round and gold in her hand after he’d gathered her close again.

  She examined it in the gloom. “What this?”

  “A Saint Anthony medal. Patron saint of lost things. People. Like me.”

  “Like you?”

  “I’m adopted, and I never felt like I belonged. Like I didn’t fit in, which is stupid, since my parents loved me, but I couldn’t shake the feeling.”

  “Why?”

  “My father found me in a dumpster,” Blake said bluntly, his body stiff against hers. “My birth mother left me there with this medal pinned to my diaper. The newspapers called me the dumpster baby. My hospital records labeled me a crack baby, but my adoptive father raised me to be better than my birth parents, one of the good guys. All my life, I wanted to show I was nothing like them.”

  “You even lock them up for a living,” Reese mused, as her heart split open at the thought of anyone treating a baby so cruelly, especially Blake. No wonder he believed he had a lot to prove—though that’d never be the case to her. He’d more than proved himself.

  “You were abandoned,” she continued, understanding at last his black-and-white perspective of the world. “Lost. But you were also found and saved for a reason.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Me.”

  He removed her elastic band and slid his fingers through her hair. His voice deepened. “I’d like to think so.”

  “Plus,” she joked, needing to lighten the intense moment until she’d figured out what she wanted to say—what she could say, given their impossible situation. “You’re the best cop I know.”

  His chuckle vibrated from his chest against her ear. “That’s not saying a lot, considering how you feel about the police.”

  “True….” She hesitated, then drew in a deep breath. “I was nearly raped by an officer once.”

  Instead of drawing back as she feared, he pulled the comforter over them and tucked it carefully around her body, as if she was something fragile. Precious.

  Precious to him?

  “Can’t breathe,” she choked out, pushing against his hard chest when he clasped her close.

  He loosened his hold the slightest bit. She gulped down a thimbleful of air but didn’t protest his tight hold. It bolstered her.

  “When? Where?” The timbre of his voice lowered, and she heard his concern edged with something dark and menacing. Protective.

  “I was eighteen, and it happened behind my father’s club. There was a cop who used to charge the businesses in the area for ‘extra protection’.”

  Blake swore.

  “One night he found me alone outside. And then he…” A hard, painful lump rose in her throat. She shoved her words past it. “But then my father stopped him.”

  Blake’s eyes glittered. “Who was the bastard?”

  “Chuck Bates.”

  Blake tensed. “Captain Chuck Bates?”

  Her heart seized. Did he know the policeman? Was Blake about to defend him against her? “He was just a regular cop.”

  “Not now,” Blake bit out, grim. “He took over for my father as head of the DPS Criminal Investigations unit. You filed a report…pressed assault charges and the judge found him not guilty?”

  “My father didn’t want me to press charges. Said he didn’t want bad press for the club or trouble.”

  Blake’s fingers flexed on her back. She could feel all ten. “Wrong. You should have come first,” he said. Fierce. “He should have protected you.”

  She nodded, wordless at Blake’s stout, passionate defense. Her Uncle Tom told her to make a new life for herself away from Dallas. Her father wanted to sweep it under the rug. Here, at last, was someone saying exactly what she’d always wanted to hear. She was worth another’s defense. She mattered.

  Hadn’t Blake already proven that to her, many times over, these past two weeks? He’d vowed to keep her safe, but somewhere along the line, she sensed it transcended duty, and he cared for her too.

  Could he love her?

  Did she dare admit her feelings with their futures so uncertain?

  “That’s why you left Dallas,” Blake continued, as if speaking to himself. “Why you and your father haven’t spoken in years. You felt deserted. Unimportant.”

  Blake. Ever the keen detective. She shouldn’t be surprised he’d immediately leapt to the heart of it all.

  “Yes. I guess we have that in common.” Both were abandoned and trying to prove themselves to their fathers. Blake needed to become as good a cop as his father to prove he was worth saving. Reese needed to prove that she was worth more than the business her father had chosen over her. Their stakes in the case revealed motivations that made them more alike than either realized, yet also put them at odds.

  How could this—they—ever work?

  “But you were saved for a reason,” he said, tossing her words back at her. “For me.”

  Her breath caught and her eyes stung. “Then I’m glad.” He cared. Shared her feelings. She stroked the side of his rough cheek, and he turned and kissed the center of her palm.

  “But my relationship with my father ended long before the attempted rape. He left me when my mother died,” she continued. “He threw himself into the business to cope, I guess.”

  “What about helping you cope?” came Blake’s rapid-fire question, his outrage on her behalf striking a match inside her, setting her aglow.

  “He couldn’t see past his grief. When I heard about the shooting, I thought maybe enough time had passed for him to let go of Dallas Heat and reconcile with me. I suppose there’s little chance that’ll happen now. Even if he wakes, he’s going to jail.” Her chest ached for all that could never be. No more Gorilla Dad. Sir-Dance-A-Lot.

  Blake tucked her head against his chest. “The D.A. approved the deal we discussed. Clemency for any minor illegal actions unrelated to the steroids ring,” he said through a yawn. “The forensic report on his devices came in. No links to the group.”

  A lightness flooded her, nearly levitating her from the bed if not for the anchor of Blake’s arms. She and Blake were not on opposite sides if her father wasn’t implicated in the case, clearing the way for her to confess her feelings. “So, Dad’s not involved?”

  “Maybe not, but he has som
ething the steroids ring wants, something important.” His voice sounded slurred. Heavy. How tired he must be…

  Reese fingered her locket, thinking of the key inside. It’d been hidden beneath her father’s desk, suggesting it linked to something significant. She opened her mouth to tell Blake about it, but the steady rush of his even breaths stopped her.

  Angling her head, she peered up into Blake’s slack face as he slumbered. She kissed his chin, too tired, too replete to wake him.

  “I love you,” she whispered, then held her breath. He didn’t open his eyes or seem to hear her, but she was glad she’d said it just the same. She loved this dark, complicated man with all her heart.

  And she’d tell him so, and about the safe deposit key, tomorrow, she thought hazily, suddenly woozy herself, the events of the last twenty-four hours catching up to her. Her eyes drifted closed and she nestled close, twining her arms around him.

  Yes. Tomorrow.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “Dad? Dad?” Reese sat beside her father and squeezed his hand, her body hot and shaky with hope. When the hospital had phoned this morning to report he’d opened his eyes, she’d grabbed her cell phones, including the one CSI recovered from her house, and zoomed over, breaking at least half a dozen traffic laws. Blake had already left for the precinct, so she hadn’t had a chance to tell him yet. Once she had some time with her father, she’d phone to let him know her whereabouts.

  “Dad? Can you hear me?”

  The faintest return pressure rocketed her heart into the stratosphere. “Dad, it’s me. Reese.”

  A slight tremble shook his lips, and then his lids lifted. Reese gasped, breathless and dizzy with joy as they stared at each other, her father’s expression hazy, but aware. Tears welled in her eyes; she brushed them away with her sleeves, not letting go of her father.