by Marton, Dana
Her indrawn hiss of air was the only response.
He made as quick a work of disinfecting the wound as he could, making sure he got all of it. The bullet hadn’t gone in, just grazed her shoulder. But it did take a chunk of skin with it.
When he was done, working by nothing but moonlight, he positioned the bandages so they would cover the worst of the wound. He’d saved a corner of a wipe to clean the cut on her throat, his mood darkening by the minute. When he was done with that, he helped her get her shirt back on. They had no backup clothing here. As bloody and torn as the sleeve was, there was no help for that.
Only when he finally moved and the moonlight fell on her face did he see how her lips were pressed together, the tight set of her jaw.
Dammit. She wasn’t hurt badly, but she shouldn’t have gotten hurt at all.
“Still burning?”
“Like hell on high octane.” She offered a pained smile.
He wished he could take her pain. He wanted to pull her into his arms, run his fingers down her hair and soothe her. But she wasn’t likely to go for that. She wanted him gone. He winced at the memory of how he had kissed her in response.
“Look, I’m sorry about…Kissing you back there was…And that guy in the guardhouse. I had no choice, Taylor. I don’t want you to think that you can’t trust me. I know I’m not what you need, probably the last thing you need, but you have to let me—”
“I didn’t mind the kiss.”
He was so focused on how to word what he meant to say, that she’d confused him for a second. “What?”
“I don’t mind it when you kiss me.”
He stared at her. At her mouth, specifically.
If only they had the time.
Another moment passed before other thoughts caught up with him again. “About the guy. I know what I did appeared savage. Hell, I was—”
“Thank you for saving my life.”
Did she not mind what he’d done? But then why the get away from me speech? God, women were hard to understand at times, which hadn’t bothered him all that much in the past. But he wanted to understand Taylor. “Why do you want to send me away?”
She didn’t look like she was keen on giving him an answer. Looked on the exasperated side more than anything.
“Come on, Taylor.”
For a moment she flattened her lips together. Something shifted in her eyes. “You have nothing to do with this.”
He expelled the pent-up air in his lungs. “Everything that has to do with you, has to do with me,” he said quietly. It was as good as a confession, but he had to make her understand.
“You’re hurt,” she said.
“So are you.”
“You’re hurt worse.”
The corner of his mouth twitched up. “Is this a contest?”
“This might get—” She stopped as if to search for the right word. “If things go badly here…I don’t want anything to happen to you.”
His heart went wild banging in his chest. “Because?” he asked quietly.
“Because I care about you.” She looked away. “So there.”
Digesting that took a while. She cared about him. That was good. Great, in fact. He could build on that.
“Nothing’s going to happen to me. Or to you. Or to Christopher. I swear,” he said and reached out to put his fingers under her chin, turned her head, then bent his head to fit his lips to hers.
SHE COULD GET USED TO THIS. Kissing Akeem. Taylor settled against him, burrowing against his solid chest. His lips were warm on hers, gentle. Which was what she needed. The pain in her shoulder disappeared. He turned the kiss into something more urgent and demanding. Which was what she wanted.
He tasted her as if he never wanted to stop. And at this moment that was fine with her. There was such comfort in his touch.
Oblivion.
She gave herself over to the pleasure, her emotions exhausted from the day’s events. She wanted the energy that vibrated through him and into her as he explored her.
How easy this was, she thought, and wondered if it would have been like this before, if he’d taken her seriously back then, if she hadn’t run off when he’d seemed reluctant.
She didn’t wonder long. What he was doing to her felt too good to spend mental energy second-guessing the past.
They pulled apart reluctantly. He rested his forehead against hers for a moment.
“Are you okay?” He searched her eyes in the moonlit night.
She hoped he couldn’t see the heat in her face. The wound was fine, nothing but a dull throb that felt tight when she moved. Her head, however, was seriously spinning from his kisses.
She simply nodded. “What do we do next?”
Then caught herself and prayed he didn’t think she meant what might follow kissing. Nothing was going to happen along those lines. They weren’t on a date. High time she remembered that.
But he understood her without explanations and rose to look over the edge. “They’re down there.” He sat back down after a moment. “We wait until they give up searching, then we go down and find a back way into the building from where they shot at you. I bet that’s where they’re keeping Christopher.”
She peeked out, and after minutes of straining her eyes could finally see one shadow that was deeper than the others. It might have moved a fraction of an inch.
She pulled back down. “So we’re stuck here?”
“If we try to climb down now, they can pick us off easy as anything.”
“Remind me again why we came up here?”
“We needed a place to hide. And I wanted to get a better idea of the layout of the refinery. At least now we know the exact relation of the buildings to each other. We can make a plan.”
That made some sense. “But we could be stuck up here for hours.”
He nodded.
“I’m going to go crazy.” She stretched her legs, her arms, her back.
Silence settled between them as he watched.
Minutes passed before he spoke. “Why did you run off with Gary and marry him?”
SHE LOOKED AWAY, and for a moment Akeem didn’t think she would answer, didn’t know why he’d asked the stupid question in the first place. The night was filled with awareness between them and the last thing he wanted was to discuss Gary with her. And yet, part of him needed to know.
“He wanted me,” she said after a while. “He did anything to get me. I was just so dazzled that he wanted me that badly. You have no idea how nice that felt.” She shook her head.
The words You had pushed me away, You didn’t want me, hovered in the air between them.
“I was an idiot.”
That earned him a smile. Which elicited another confession.
“However much Gary wanted you, I wanted you a hundred times worse.”
Her eyes went wide. “You did?”
“I’ve been kicking myself since for not going after you when you ran off. Somebody should have.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I was nobody. I had nothing to offer. And I figured Flint would kill me if he ever found out that I lusted after his baby sister.”
She flashed a rueful smile. “I was hardly a baby. Flint did come after me, you know.”
He shook his head. He hadn’t known. Flint had never said anything about that.
“I didn’t come back with him.”
Would she have come back with Akeem? was the question that hung in the air between them.
“I’d been naïve and idealistic. Things were off with Gary from pretty early on. But I was too determined to make it work.” She drew a deep breath. “I had to learn that not every mistake can be fixed. Some mistakes you just have to walk away from.”
He watched her in the moonlight.
“You probably don’t know much about mistakes.” She gave a self-deprecating smile. “You’ve never put a foot wrong.”
He gave a strangled laugh. “You’d be surprised.”
“Look at the busi
ness you’ve built. You are a success. What am I?”
“A beautiful woman, inside and out, who learned her lessons from life. Someone who had the courage to walk away and start anew. A great mother. The beginning of a spectacular success story.”
She looked surprised.
“The woman I still want,” he added, and found that her eyes could go wider yet.
She didn’t seem like she was used to compliments, so he decided to back up his words with action. He kissed her brows, her eyelids, kissed his way down the bridge of her nose, dragging out time before he brushed his lips over hers.
She was a woman to be savored.
She wasn’t hurt badly. He thanked heaven for that. He’d be able to protect her. Another thing in their favor. For the moment, he refused to think of the million other things that stacked the odds against them.
For the moment, he allowed himself to taste the sweetness of her lips, to run his fingers through the silk of her hair. The moon and the stars shined above them.
And it was all slow and easy and good for a while. Then an urgency crept between them again, just like it had at the guardhouse.
Things could not get as out of hand again as they had back there, he thought in the last coherent corner of his brain. Then reassured himself that they had been able to stop in time. They would stop again.
So he allowed his hands to caress her face, her uninjured arm, her breasts. And when she moaned into his mouth, he swallowed the sound.
She reached for his shirt to pull it up. He let her. Then held his breath as her slim fingers explored his abdomen and moved up to his chest. She set his body buzzing with need. A need he would ignore. All he would do was distract her for a while, relax her.
He, himself, was feeling far from relaxed.
Every muscle in his body was drawn hard, focused on the pleasure of her touch, the pleasure that came from him touching her. When she tugged off his shirt all the way, he didn’t protest.
The night breeze glided along his back, cool. Taylor in his arms, hot as fire. He was more than willing to let himself burn up in her flame.
He brushed aside her shirt and wanted badly to take her T-shirt off, but didn’t want to hurt her arm—he no longer felt his own pain. Her T-shirt would stay. A good limit to set to ensure that things didn’t get out of hand between them.
But he did want another look at that pale yellow bra, so he pushed the T-shirt up. He kissed the underside of her breasts, then found his way to the lace cups. She arched her back when he flicked his tongue against a hardened nipple.
Then he got carried away just a little.
When she made a sound like a woman who desperately needed release, it seemed like the logical thing to unzip her pants and slide his hand inside. His fingers combed through her silky curls, dipped into her moist heat.
She was going for his pants. Absolutely nothing was going to happen, but he had no heart to stop her. He let her do as she wished. And that was when things got dangerous. Because the frantic seconds that followed left him in his underwear. And her pants were tangled up in the pile with his, along with two guns and their knife.
Oh, man.
It only looked like something was going to happen, because it wasn’t. Going to. At all.
He started to backpedal to that end. Removing him self from on top of her seemed like a good first step. So he pulled back and sat on the ledge, his back to the outer wall, trying to catch his breath. And congratulated himself for having kept a cool head.
They would catch their breath, suffer some awkward silence, then it would be as if this had never happened.
Which really was the best outcome at this particular moment in time, although definitely not the one every cell in his body was begging for.
Nothing.
Was.
Going.
To.
Happen.
But then she came and straddled him. His hands might have gone to her hips to help her off, but they ended up holding on to make sure she stayed in place. And even as she lowered herself, his body rose on its own. And then he was pressing against her.
Heat.
Friction.
Desire.
They still had some clothes on. Very little, but at least it was something. As long as they had that, they couldn’t get carried away, could they? He put his hands on her underwear to make sure it stayed in place. That worked for about three seconds before his fingers slipped under yellow lace, dipped toward the center from where all the heat seemed to be radiating. She arched her back, and made a low sound in her throat, pressed harder against him. Pleasure spread through him in response, as they rocked against each other. An eternity passed with them lost in each other’s bodies. Old desires heated to a fever pitch, old fantasies coming true at last.
He buried his face between her breasts and pulled her tighter to him if that was possible. Control was slipping out of his hands. His body sought hers mindlessly. Everywhere they touched, pleasure seemed to seep into him through his very skin. Slow, he bade himself. And then moved faster.
Slim fingers teased the elastic band around his waist.
He held his breath.
Her fingers sneaked inside.
A tremor ran through his muscles. Control was what he needed.
Good luck with that.
“Taylor. I’m too—” His voice was so deep and raspy he barely recognized it. And as her fingers closed around him, he couldn’t finish the warning.
Breathe.
Sure, if only that were possible.
They held each other’s gazes as release claimed them at last, and he wished the moon was brighter so he could see her face more clearly.
Then she collapsed into his arms, and he held her, spent in passion, wondering if this was the right time to tell her that he was never going to let her go again.
They were pressed together so tightly, as if fused at the core. Her heart beat wildly against his.
And she still had her T-shirt on.
She lifted her head after a few minutes and looked at him with a dazzled look about her. “What happened?”
“Fate,” he said, and savored the feel of her body entwined with his own, wanting to soak in every second of the reprieve he had a feeling might be very short-lived.
Chapter Eight
“Anything?” Taylor asked once Akeem had pulled back from surveying the area below. She was ignoring the fact that her body still hummed with pleasure. She hadn’t said two words to him since they had dressed.
And putting clothes on had been quite the trick up on top of a storage tower, in the dark, on a two-foot-wide ledge. How they’d manage to…What had happened before the getting-dressed part was another question. Which she was not going to think about. And was definitely not going to talk about with him.
“Don’t do this,” he said.
“See that cloud of guilt?” She pointed above her head. “It can’t be too easy to miss since it’s darker than Hell’s Porch at midnight and twice as large.”
“Don’t do this to yourself.”
She couldn’t address what had happened between them. Absolutely not. Not now, and possibly not ever. “What did you see down there?”
He kept his gaze on her face as if hoping for something else, then let it go after a moment. “They’re still watching. Still in hiding.”
Which meant he couldn’t do a thing to disable them, so she was stuck on the roof with him. Climbing down with the enemy waiting in their secure positions would have equaled suicide. Still, she couldn’t help the guilt that ate at her for forgetting about her mission even for a short while, for giving in to her own need for comfort. She was a mother. She should have no needs. Should not be scared. Should not be exhausted.
“So your grandfather didn’t like this place?” Akeem was examining their hideout on the inside now. “Can’t blame him.”
Something teased the edge of her memory, danced out of grasp before she could snatch it. “He didn’t like the way they tre
ated their employees. Saved a lot of money on safety.” She’d been pretty young back then, didn’t remember much of those conversations among adults.
Her grandfather had been blue collar all the way. Short stints at various refineries, working as a day laborer on the megafarms of the area in between. A decent man if dirt-poor. Akeem’s grandfather had been a sheik. Royalty. According to Flint, he had oil pumps in Beharrain.
But to Akeem’s credit, never once had he let their differences be felt between them. He had, in fact, chosen to make his own fortune instead of taking his share of his grandfather’s billions. She had a feeling there was something other than money he might have wanted from the old man, but never gotten. At least her grandfather had loved her. That was more precious to her than any financial heritage. Her mother had been a cook—and part-time quilter—and her father a poor ranch hand, but she was proud of them both.
One particular summer night behind the barn floated into her mind, talking about old times by a fire, the whole family lounging around. And she remembered now the story of her grandfather’s best friend’s accident, and the rescue that had come too late for the man. And then it all clicked.
“I know! There’s a ladder somewhere on the inside, too. There’s a maintenance door near the bottom.”
He took her face in his hands and kissed her soundly on the mouth, but she pulled back, then looked away from his searching gaze. An awkward moment passed between them. Then they were moving along the ledge.
“You could stay here until I find a way down,” he said.
She couldn’t have stayed still for all the treasure in the world. She needed to be moving, doing something, anything, that took her closer to Christopher. “I’m going with you.”
To his credit, he didn’t argue. He simply said, “Be careful where you step.”
He was right to be cautious. Judging by the condition of the rest of the structure, stepping on a weak spot and falling straight through was a real possibility.
“What did they keep in these things?” he asked. “Crude oil?”
“No idea.” She followed close behind so she could grab him if he slipped. “All Gramps ever talked about was tar.”
They moved ahead in silence, their full attention on their next step.