“I don’t know, man,” he responded. “How’s that AC coming along?”
Conor heard the distinct sound of Dean turning his unit on. It hummed and churned out crisp air. He turned his own unit on and sighed at the incredible feeling of ice cold air breezing against his face.
“That is good,” he groaned, elated.
Rachel was going to love this.
He returned to the living room where Dean was stooped, face to air conditioner, and breathing in the magnificent air. Perhaps sensing his brother, he stood, turned to him, and encouraged, “I think you ought to ask him.”
“I think you ought to leave it alone.”
“Well, well, well,” Dean marveled as he studied his brother’s sudden temper. “I see I’ve struck a nerve.”
“Thanks for the help, Dean,” he said, his tone indicating that his brother could excuse himself.
“You’re going to hang out until she gets here?”
“That okay with you?” he challenged.
Dean only smiled at him then as he started for the door, maintained, “Talk to Troy when you get a chance.”
“Yeah,” he grunted, annoyed. But when he added, “Maybe I will,” to himself, he realized it was exactly what he wanted to do.
From the stairwell, he heard Dean say, “Evening!” and his heart skipped a beat.
“Dean?” Rachel replied as she climbed the stairs.
“You have yourself a good one,” his brother told her as he continued on down the stairs.
When Rachel stepped into the apartment, she locked eyes with Conor and for a split second looked alarmed until she heard the hum of the AC units and felt the crisp temperature.
“Merry Christmas,” he told her.
“You didn’t,” she smiled.
“I thought you might put off the inevitable since you work too much so…”
Her brown eyes were wide as saucers as she smiled her way to the AC unit behind the couch then turned for her bedroom. She seemed in gleeful disbelief that he’d bought her two units and that she’d never again have to sleep with a cold washcloth on her head.
Conor leaned against the bedroom doorframe, watching as she stuck her face in front of the unit and savored the incredible breeze.
“Not bad, huh?”
“Not bad at all!” she exclaimed as she popped up and neared him.
The next thing he knew, she was throwing her arms around his shoulders and giving him a great big grateful hug.
He wrapped his arms around her waist, holding her tightly against him, and soon her excitement melted into something that felt sensual and relaxed. He caressed his large hands across the small of her back, feeling the damp material of her uniform and her warm breath against his neck. She’d turned her head, bringing her nose, her lips to his shoulder and soon her slender fingers were slowly and gently grazing through his shaggy hair. The sensation of her fingernails across his scalp sent a rush of tingles dancing across his skin. He took hold of her waist and in response she loosened her tightly wrapped arms so that she could look up into his eyes.
“Breaking and entering, huh?” she teased in a breathy voice that told him she might like a kiss.
“Technically, there was no breaking and since your landlord let me in I figured I couldn’t get arrested for it,” he lightly explained.
“Yeah, I might let it slide,” she teased as she smiled, searching his eyes before fixing those big, brown eyes of hers on his mouth.
“Might?” he challenged as he leaned in, relishing the feel of her slender body pressing against the hard wall of his.
She screwed that pretty mouth of hers into a funny smile in response then breathed, “Come here.”
He did. Bringing his lips to hers, he delivered a tender kiss. If they could pick up where they’d left off, and finish what they started, Conor would be a very happy man, so with that in mind he found her utility belt as he kissed her, and unfastened it.
Rachel took over the effort, removing her belt and holstered gun and gently tossing them to the bed. She ran her fingers through his hair next as they tilted their heads, deepening the kiss.
She let out a breathy moan as she drank in each kiss, and when Conor began to unbutton the front of her police uniform, she held his face and began sensually probing his mouth with a series of deepening, aroused kisses.
“If I’d known,” he growled out in-between kisses, “that air conditioners would turn you on so much I would’ve done this years ago.”
“Years ago?” she asked as a huge smile came over her. “Have you wanted to make out with me for years?”
“I’d like to think that two air conditioners would earn me more than just making out but—”
She gave him a playful thwack then jerked him in, silencing his comedy with another deep kiss.
Conor worked her uniform off her shoulders and it soon plopped to the floor, leaving Rachel in a thin, white cotton, tank top. He urged her back, craving the sight of her and her shape defied his expectations. Her collarbone was dainty, her waist slender, and the black bra she wore under her tank complemented her delicate, supple shape.
She pushed his tee-shirt up the chiseled wall of his torso and he took over, pulling the garment up and over his head before dropping it to the floor. His bare skin broke out with gooseflesh and he laughed, “It’s getting nice and cold in here.”
“I’m feeling very warm still,” she told him with a suggestive grin.
“I know what might help with that,” he mentioned and took hold of the button of her slacks.
It took a great deal of concentration to get her pants open. The feel of Rachel’s warm hands sliding over his sculpted chest, her lips nibbling his firm shoulder, his neck, was enough to make him groan, eyes closing, into her every caress.
He couldn’t wait to get her undressed. The fact that her bed was right there greatly enhanced the thrill of being close with her. This had been years in the making, hadn’t it?
Maybe Dean was right. Maybe he should talk to Troy. Maybe Rachel was worth the risk.
She shoved her slacks down and they spilled around her ankles, trapped on her boots.
Conor felt everywhere he could, running his large hands over her hips and down around her perfectly-shaped ass, feeling the cotton lines of her black, sensible panties, her soft warm thighs, as she moaned and held herself up against him.
Only Rachel could make full-coverage briefs look sexy. Her figure was lean and athletic. She could get away with wearing just about anything and it had never been lost on him that she made a policeman uniform look hot.
He looked down at her and searched her eyes, watching her playful smile recede away as a serious glimmer filled her expression. This was real. He could see it in her eyes and on her face that what was happening between them was more than impulsive lust. When she looked up at him, he felt like Rachel could see the real man inside of him, and also the wolf. She was here, after all, kissing him, despite having figured out what he and all of his brothers truly were.
Rachel nearly tripped and burst out laughing as he caught her. Wrestling her boots off wouldn’t be so easy so he helped her to sit on the edge of the bed and kneeled down to remove her shoes.
As he worked one of her boots off then the other, she played with his hair and squeezed his muscular shoulders.
“Dante has gone after every woman that my brothers have fallen for,” he commented as he pulled her slacks off. He didn’t know where it had come from, this revealing concern, but he hadn’t been able to keep it locked inside.
“What are you saying, Conor?”
He could feel her eyes on him and it was hard to meet her gaze. Why did he feel compelled to tell her how he felt?
“I think you could use Quinn Security,” he said, but she already knew the truth.
“Are you falling for me?”
He finally met her gaze and stated, “If Dante thinks so, he’ll come after you.”
She smiled as if undisturbed by that possibility.
“I can handle myself.”
“I’d like to stay with you, be a bodyguard of sorts—”
“I don’t need one, Conor,” she insisted, her tone hitching up as though insulted.
“You know Dante isn’t human,” he reminded her. “He has powers. I’m sorry, but you’re no match.”
“And you are?” she challenged.
He felt his brow furrow and he sat on the edge of the bed beside her. “I’m better equipped to handle him than you are.”
“Because you’re both werewolves?” she said, annoyed.
He wrapped his large hand over her thigh, but she didn’t reciprocate by touching him in return.
“Look, I appreciate the offer, but—”
“I’m serious, Rachel. He’s already come after you once.”
“No, he hasn’t.”
“In the store downstairs,” he reminded her, “he most certainly did. He put a spell over you and if I hadn’t shown up who knows what he could’ve gotten you to do.”
“I don’t need a bodyguard,” she maintained hotly.
Conor was about to argue further to really drive his point home when the radio on her uniform crackled alive and Dispatch came through with the alert:
“All units to Devil’s Advocate.”
Conor and Rachel locked eyes.
Dispatch continued, “Repeating, all units to Devil’s Advocate on Main Street. Got a 451, over.”
“What’s a 451?” Conor asked but soon the scent in the air answered his question.
“It’s a fire!” she told him as the smell of smoke wafted in through the cranked AC.
Chapter Eight
RACHEL
Rachel and Conor exploded into action, as smoke billowed into the room.
Scrambling, Rachel freed her boots from the tangle of her uniform slacks, while Conor yanked his tee-shirt on, then she thought better of it, raced to her dresser and grabbed a pair of jean shorts. Jumped into those. Pulled on the first top she could find, ran to her closet and slid her feet into sneakers. Conor was at the apartment door. He tapped the doorknob.
“It’s not hot,” he told her as she sprang to her desk and began filling the banker’s box beneath it with as much of her research as she could collect.
Sirens wailed down Main Street.
“Don’t open it!” she yelled. “We’re buffered up here. The fire will have to eat its way through the employee door, the breakroom, then the door at the bottom of the stairs. It gives us time.”
She’d thrown every piece of paper, every report, every piece of evidence, and hunch she’d scrawled on scrap paper into the box then cut her alarmed eyes to the window behind the couch and winced.
“If the fire started in the souvenir shop, we’re not going to be able to get out down there,” she told him as Conor rushed to her and relieved her of the heavy banker’s box.
She was staring at and studying the window, the brand-new AC unit that occupied the space they would need to escape through.
“Is there a fire escape out there?” Conor asked.
That particular window faced the rear of the building, not the front. Her bedroom window offered a way out as well, and would let them out into the narrow alley between Devil’s Advocate and the police station. Neither had fire escapes.
“No,” she finally told him. Panic was scrambling her mind. She didn’t know what to do. She felt paralyzed in the face of abandoning her new home, the brand-new AC units and all of her belongings, just to have the place engulfed in flames.
The distinct sounds of the glass entrance door of the shop downstairs shattering could be heard. Boots stomping in and men shouting orders came next. And Rachel still couldn’t make a move. She couldn’t even make a decision.
Conor sprang to action, setting the box on the floor and rushing to the AC unit in the window. He heaved the window pane up and grunted, muscles flexing and bulging, as he hoisted it out and set it on the floor.
“Come on!” he ordered, but her first instinct was to get the box of all of her precious findings.
As she lifted it into her arms, a WHOOSH sound unlike anything she’d ever heard in her life rushed up the stairwell and then the apartment door exploded, flames of the raging fire having breached into her home.
“Now, Rachel!” he insisted.
Her legs felt like jelly and as she joined him at the open window, her body soon felt like it didn’t belong to her.
Conor took the box from her as she stared, wide-eyed and shaken at the flames that were eating their fast way through the entryway towards the kitchen and lapping into the far side of the living room.
She flinched at the sound of a faint THUD and realized Conor had dropped her box out of the window onto the pavement below.
“My laptop!” she exclaimed, but he already had her by the waist, his strong arm wrapping around her stomach. He lifted and turned her into the open window. “My mother’s jewelry!”
“Leave it!” he barked. “None of that is worth your life!”
As firefighters stormed into the shop below, shouting orders at one another and spraying water onto the fire that sounded like a raging river fighting the engulfing flames, Conor helped Rachel to extricate herself out through the window and balance on the narrow ledge. She took terrified hold of a gutter drain that ran vertically down the back of the building. It might as well have been made of toothpicks. She knew if she lost her balance, she would bring the whole length of it down with her.
She inched aside as Conor slipped out onto the ledge beside her and they looked down.
The alley was dark, but not so dark that they couldn’t see gray smoke wafting out of the building.
“We’re going to have to jump,” he informed her. “I’ll go first.”
“Wait!” she exclaimed. She couldn’t let him break his ankles with such an impulsive strategy. “Let’s just think about this.”
“What options do we have?” he challenged as he glanced through the upper glass pane of the window.
She peeked in as well. The fire was eating through her living room. Soon flames would be licking out through the open window and the entire building would be devoured. There was no time.
“Use this!” she suggested, indicating the flimsy tin gutter that she was holding.
“Okay.”
Conor maneuvered around her and as he did, Rachel held his muscular waist as tightly as she could to ensure he wouldn’t accidentally fall off the ledge.
He took hold of the tin pillar of the gutter and tested its hold against the building siding. Though it was braced by tin hooks that seemed to be set every two feet the entire length down, Conor grasped hold of it and tried to pry it away from the building. It looked like he was using every muscle in his body, straining and grimacing in his effort, and soon the tin pillar whined as it separated from the brick siding.
“Be careful!” she begged as he took hold of the gutter with both hands, preparing to slide down it like a pole.
The second he eased off the ledge, his large hands holding the square shape of tin and his boot braced against the side of it, the gutter immediately bent, arcing downward under his muscular weight.
Rachel gasped as the tin bent, fast as a slingshot being cocked, but the next thing she knew Conor had touched down safely onto the pavement below. But when he released the bent gutter it didn’t spring back for her to use in the exact same manner next.
She was going to have to jump.
She felt heat behind her and when she glanced over her shoulder she was horrified to discover the fire had spread to the couch. It had gone up in flames.
She cut her eyes to Conor who was standing with open arms.
“I’ll catch you! I promise!”
“Oh God,” she breathed, praying like hell that she wouldn’t break every bone in her body.
Then she hopped off the ledge, lifting her legs and leaning back and shrieking.
Conor kept his light eyes locked on her and shuffled his feet, his strong arms opened w
ide, and the next thing she knew he had caught her, one arm under her knees and the other under her shoulders.
She embraced him and though he carefully lowered her down, helping her feet to touch the ground, she’d wrapped herself around him and refused to let go.
“You’re trembling,” he said softly as he stroked the back of her head.
“I’m fine,” she managed to say. She wasn’t. There was an incredible rush of adrenaline coursing through her and it felt like she didn’t have control of her muscles, her body. Would she be able to stand on her own if he let her go? “I just need a minute.”
They stood there as the glow of the raging fire illuminated the alley and Rachel felt tears sting her eyes. It wasn’t because she’d lost her new home or because a few expensive items were now being destroyed in the blaze. It was because she knew, had Conor not been here with her, that she might not have gotten out safely or alive.
“I’m okay,” she asserted, urging him back and wiping her eyes. “Come on!”
She jogged up the alley, Conor at her heels, and when they spilled out onto Main Street, there was one firetruck, firefighters standing on top and aiming a massive hose of spraying water at the flames, others marching into the souvenir shop. It looked like every single police officer employed at the station was present, either in uniform or, like Rachel, in plain clothes.
She found the sheriff who was in the throes of a shouted conversation with the fire chief, that’s how loud the crackling fire was that they were all battling.
“What the hell happened?” she asked him breathlessly.
“Clancy! Jesus Christ!” he exclaimed then grabbed the fire chief and told him, “She’s out! She’s right here!”
The fire chief immediately hopped on his radio and ordered his men to pull back.
“Thank God!” Rick pulled Rachel into a bear hug and no amount of wriggling to urge him back was going to free her. He held her by the shoulders and looked her square in the eye. “I thought you were trapped up there! Oh Lord, there is a God!" he exclaimed and pulled her in for another strangling hug.
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