by Gayle Wilson
And then, as it had when they stood together in her bedroom, his mouth began to lower toward hers. Even in the darkness she could tell that his eyes were closed. At the last possible second he tilted his head to align his lips over hers.
Firm and warm, they moved with the same confident possession she had remembered. When his tongue sought entrance, her mouth opened willingly. There was no pretense of denial.
Too much wine? she wondered. Or too long without this? Without him.
She had kissed other men, of course. Several since she’d last kissed Rafe. With none had there ever been this sense of rightness. Familiarity. Homecoming.
This was where she belonged, she acknowledged as his arms closed around her. He held her so tightly that the hard wall of his chest flattened her breasts almost painfully. Whatever had happened six years ago, he seemed as hungry for this as she had been.
And she had been. All along she had wanted him to do exactly what he was doing now. Kissing her with a thoroughness and a passion that belied any possibility of his disinterest.
He wanted her. She had known that yesterday when his fingers had grazed the curve of her breast.
Perhaps she had been wiser then, but she couldn’t regret whatever had made her keep probing the open wound of their former relationship tonight. Not if this was the result.
His tongue caressed, its movements choreographed by experience. Nothing had been forgotten. Nothing had changed. Not about this.
His right hand left the small of her back to fasten under the fullness of her breast. As it did, his lips began to move as well, dropping a series of small, openmouthed kisses along the length of her throat.
She turned her head to accommodate his touch. Moving lower now, his tongue found the dark cleavage between her breasts.
He hadn’t taken time to shave when he’d grabbed that predinner shower. The abrasiveness of a two-day growth of beard was incredibly sensual against her skin. It reminded her of those days when they had made love through most of the night, only to begin again as soon as they awakened. They had been insatiable, never tiring of giving and receiving pleasure.
His fingers began to work at the buttons along the front of her shirt, slipping them out of their holes with quick expertise. As he did, he lifted his head to look into her eyes.
Trying to judge her reaction to what he was doing?
Then, unexpectedly, he smiled at her, the same familiar slant at one corner of his mouth. And the years fell away.
Friends and lovers. Truly the best of both worlds.
His hand slipped inside her bra, lifting her breast free of its restraint. She could feel the calluses on his palm and fingers. Rough. Undeniably masculine. Exactly how a man’s hand should feel.
He lowered his head, his lips fastening loosely around her nipple. His tongue rimmed it, painting the surface with moisture. Then he leaned back a little, blowing seductively over the dampness his mouth had left.
Heat ran through her veins like molten metal, weakening her knees. Causing a sweet, nearly forgotten ache to begin somewhere deep inside. An ache for which there was one relief.
Her fingers found the back of his head. Spread, they moved slowly through the dark strands of his hair, almost a caress. Blessing. Benediction.
Suddenly his mouth closed over the nub his tongue had teased to hardness. At the first hint of suction, her fingers tightened, grasping the silk of his hair. Anchored to reality only by the feel of it within her hand.
This was real. Not another of those tantalizing dreams from which she would awaken, cold and alone and still empty.
Don’t start something you aren’t willing to finish.
She was willing. No matter what happened tomorrow, she wanted this. She wanted his mouth on her body, trailing hot, wet kisses over her skin. She wanted his hands, hard and rough and masculine, moving possessively against all the secret places only he knew. She wanted him. She always had.
“Rafe,” she whispered.
There was no response. Deliberately she tightened her fingers in his hair, using them to urge his head up. After a moment his lips released. She felt the depth of the breath he took before he again lifted his head.
He didn’t smile at her this time. His eyes seemed almost glazed. His mouth was open, his breathing audible.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong,” she whispered. She allowed her hand to sooth over the back of his head. “I just thought that before this went any further, we should probably go upstairs.”
She didn’t mention the reality that Griff might suddenly show up. After Rafe’s call to the Phoenix yesterday, that had always been a possibility. After all, this was the place any member of the team would come if they were in trouble. If Griff wanted to look for them, he would start here.
Gradually awareness of time and place came back into Rafe’s eyes. He closed his mouth, his lips thinning into a straight, taut line. Without comment he released her, stepping back so that their bodies were no longer in contact.
Although she knew from his face that something had changed, she smiled at him, lifting her hand to lay it against his cheek. Before she could complete the motion, he took another step back, the movement clearly meant to thwart her intent.
“Rafe?” she questioned, feeling a growing unease. She tried to think what she might have said or done that would have precipitated his withdrawal.
“Forgive me,” he said, his voice very low. “I know you’ll think I’m running away again, but I don’t believe that would be good for either of us.”
“Going upstairs?”
“It seems to me we have a more pressing agenda. This would prove a distraction we can’t afford right now.”
A distraction? He was right about that, of course, but still…
“I see,” she said, trying to gather pride as an armor against the pain of this newest rejection.
One minute he had seemed as eager to hold her as she was to be in his arms. The next he was again almost a stranger.
“Whatever you think—” he began.
“Spare me,” she said, cutting off any explanation he wanted to make. “You started this. I didn’t, despite that business about warning me. I don’t know what the hell kind of game you’re playing, Rafe, but whatever it is, I should probably mention I’m not enjoying it.”
“Do you think I am?”
Maybe he wasn’t. All she knew was that she was too tired to deal with him. Or to deal with this.
“I don’t know. I don’t know you anymore. All I know is that for a moment at least, you wanted me. Maybe not what we had before. Maybe for nothing more permanent than what’s left of tonight, but you did want me. And I don’t know what I said or did—”
“It wasn’t anything you did.”
“Just…the press of business,” she mocked.
“I shouldn’t have touched you.”
“More mea culpas?”
“If you need to hear them.”
“I don’t suppose I do. They really don’t change anything, do they?”
“For what it’s worth—”
“Don’t,” she ordered softly. “Just…don’t.”
Awkwardly adjusting her clothing to cover her exposed breast, she stepped by him, moving through the darkness of the narrow hall. Before she reached the bottom of the stairs, the tears had begun.
She fought them as she had before, although no one would know this time if she had cried. Crying not for what had happened tonight, of course, as humiliating as that had been, but for what once was and apparently would never be again.
That was a lesson she had finally learned. That she hadn’t learned it the first time was entirely her fault. After all, Rafe had done his best to tell her that just because she still loved him didn’t mean he felt the same way.
Chapter Eight
Rafe’s hand was on her cheek. She turned her face against it, pressing longingly into the caress. Seeking to deepen the contact between them.
“Ther
e’s someone downstairs.”
For a second or two she tried to make the whispered sentence fit into her dream. It was disturbing enough to pull her from it instead.
She opened her eyes to find Rafe leaning over her bed. In the faint moonlight that seeped into the room through its sheer draperies, his face was shadowed, almost sinister.
And even after she was awake, the dream images that lingered in her brain were almost as powerful as this reality. Certainly more pleasant.
“Downstairs?” she repeated, whispering as he had.
“Come on,” he ordered.
By that time, she was far enough out of the web of the dream to sense his urgency. She began to sit up. As soon as she did, he straightened, moving across the room to stand beside the open door.
He seemed to be listening to something she couldn’t hear. Something that had obviously been loud enough to wake him.
She threw back the covers and slipped her legs off the side of the bed. The resultant series of squeaks from the mattress were loud enough to cause Rafe to look at her over his shoulder. Warned, she took greater care in easing up off the bed.
She tiptoed across the carpet, stopping behind him. For the first time she realized that he held the Glock he’d brought into her bedroom in his right hand.
Maybe this would prove to be nothing but a false alarm, as that episode had been. Maybe what had awakened Rafe were simply the normal sounds an old house makes settling for the night.
Then, coming from the darkened rooms below, she heard a noise that could not in any way, shape or form be dismissed as normal. Not in a supposedly empty house at midnight.
Someone had opened a door. The house’s proximity to the ocean caused most of the hinges to creak. She had noticed that last night. The same unmistakable sound she had just heard.
She put her hand on Rafe’s shoulder, squeezing with her fingers. He nodded in response. He had heard it, too.
And of course, he’d heard something from downstairs before this. Whatever it was that had caused him to come to her room.
He had needed to know exactly where she was before he went wandering around a dark house with a loaded gun. Until he told her otherwise, she decided, that would be exactly where she was right now. Pretending to be his shadow.
“Stay here,” he whispered.
She felt him move, pulling free of her fingers and stepping through the bedroom door. He held his weapon in both hands, leading with it.
Heading downstairs? Or would he wait for whoever was there to come up here?
The danger in doing that was all too evident. They had no way to know what was going on down there. Whoever this was could be setting a fire or rigging an explosive. They could be busy filling the place full of booby traps, assuming that the two of them were still sound asleep up here.
As she had been. As she would still have been if Rafe hadn’t awakened her.
But just because she hadn’t heard the original noise didn’t mean she had no role in this. She might not have a weapon, but she had training and experience. Not as much as Rafe, but that didn’t mean she was going to be content to remain a bystander in whatever was about to happen. No way in hell.
He couldn’t know how many of them were down there. Despite being unarmed, she would help even the odds.
Decision made, she took a breath and then followed Rafe into the hall. He was already edging along the wall toward the top of the stairs. She ran along the carpeted passage until she caught up to him, again stopping at his shoulder.
He turned his head and suddenly they were face-to-face. Eye-to-eye. Breath-to-breath. The moonlight was strong enough out here to allow her to see his features, but not to read what was in his eyes.
Get back, he mouthed, gesturing with a movement of his chin toward the room she’d just left.
She shook her head and watched his mouth tighten in frustration. He couldn’t afford to argue, not out here, and they both knew it.
He began to move again, slanting across the hall at an angle that would bring him to the top of the stairs. Without allowing herself time to think about the wisdom of what she was doing, she followed, once more positioning herself behind him. He glanced back at her, giving it one more shot.
“Stay here,” he hissed.
To listen and wonder what was going on? Not likely. Besides, if something happened to Rafe, she’d be left without a weapon. Then whoever was down there could do whatever they pleased, and she wouldn’t have any way to stop them. Given those options…
She shook her head.
He didn’t try again to convince her. Instead he started down the staircase. Back against the wall, weapon extended, he went down sideways, one slow, infinitely careful step at a time. She followed, praying that none of the risers creaked.
If they did, it wasn’t enough to give them away. They reached the bottom, and before Rafe stepped off the bottom step, he paused to listen again.
Elizabeth had heard nothing on the way down, concentrating on any noise they might be making. Now she listened as well. There were no more noises from the darkened rooms to give away the location of whoever was down here.
Apparently they weren’t going to be that lucky. They were going to have to play hide-and-seek in the dark with some unidentified intruder.
For the first time she wondered how he’d gotten in. Rafe had reactivated the security system as soon as they were inside. Maybe the alarms had already gone off at whatever firm Griff employed to guard his property. Maybe while they were sneaking down the stairs, help was already on the way.
As that comforting thought formed, Rafe stepped off the bottom step. His bare feet made no sound on the hardwood floor, but her heart, which had already been beating too rapidly, lodged in her throat.
Truth or dare time. They had entered enemy territory. And they had no idea who that enemy might be.
Rafe moved silently through the moon-touched rooms. The faint, silvered light made everything ghostly, even furniture that she recognized from the time they’d spent here before they’d gone upstairs.
He stopped in the doorway of each room, the Glock held in front of him. His gaze and the weapon moved in unison, sweeping the perimeters. Searching for whoever had opened that door.
One by one they covered the rooms until the only area that remained unsearched was the kitchen. Maybe the intruder had gone out through the back door, she thought, and down the exterior stairs off the deck. Or maybe he’d gone into the basement. That entrance was also in the kitchen.
Despite the need to understand who this was and how he’d gotten in, she wouldn’t be disappointed if they found no one. Who had been in the house was a mystery she could live with. As long as they both got out safely.
Feeling useless, she trailed Rafe down the narrow hall that led to the kitchen. He seemed to be taking more care now, easing along it as slowly as he had down the stairs.
When they reached the doorway, he turned his head, looking back at her once more. The kitchen’s wrap-around windows, which had allowed that unimpeded view of the ocean while she’d cooked dinner, also provided enough moonlight so that she could see his face for the first time since they’d left the upstairs.
His eyes held hers for maybe five seconds. There was something within them that made her expect him to speak to her, in spite of the obvious danger of doing that.
Then, turning back toward the kitchen, he stepped through the door. And everything seemed to happen at once.
She heard Rafe shout. Someone answered, although whatever words he said were unintelligible, sounding on top of Rafe’s.
Suddenly the lights in the kitchen came on and Rafe shouted again. This time something that made sense.
“Drop it, you bastard, or I swear I’ll shoot you.”
She waited for gunfire. Rafe’s or whoever he’d ordered to drop his weapon.
“Sinclair? Rafe Sinclair?”
The tone of that question wasn’t what she might have expected from an enemy who had just been di
sarmed. But if he were disarmed…
She moved far enough into the doorway to see part of the kitchen. Rafe was still in a shooter’s stance, knees bent, the Glock pointed at a target she couldn’t see. Not until she took another step into the room.
On the other side of it, hands raised in the classic gesture of surrender—although one of them still held a weapon—was the intruder.
Not Gunther Jorgensen, she decided. Tall and broad-shouldered, with dark hair and eyes, this man looked nothing like the grainy photograph in the terrorist’s file.
Those intense eyes had been drawn to the doorway by her movement. Rafe must also know she was here, but he didn’t look at her, his entire concentration on the man in front of him.
“I’m behind you,” she warned unnecessarily.
“Weapon on the counter,” Rafe ordered, ignoring her.
“Ms. Richardson?”
Whoever the intruder was, he knew her name. And the name he had just called her was not the one that had been created by the CIA when the team disbanded. It was her real name.
“Who the hell are you?” Rafe demanded, recognizing, as she had, the significance of that.
“John Edmonds. We talked yesterday. I took your call at the Phoenix. I have identification. If you’re familiar with the—”
“Put the goddamn gun down,” Rafe interrupted. “Do it.”
This time, after a brief, assessing interval, the intruder obeyed. He leaned to the side, moving carefully, with his hands still held high. Slowly he brought the one that was holding the weapon down, laying the gun on the kitchen counter.
“Now move away from it,” Rafe said.
As the intruder obeyed, Elizabeth skirted behind Rafe. She edged along the counter toward the weapon, staying well out of the reach of the man who’d put it there.
When she was close enough, she reached out and picked up the gun. It was a Beretta, the weapon of choice for a lot of operatives.
Despite the length of time since she’d handled a gun, it fit comfortably into her palm, just as her own agency-issued firearm had. She had to admit that she felt better with it there.