by Nora Roberts
CHAPTER TEN
Sawyer worked through it. Riley had come through with what he needed, now he’d use it to make what they all wanted.
He did his best to concentrate, to ignore Annika’s instructions to Doyle, Doyle’s comments back.
And her laugh. Doyle—not much of a laugher—sure seemed to be having a hell of a fucking good time.
Cut it out, he warned himself when he felt annoyance and outright jealousy crawling over his skin. He had a job to do, worlds to save, and couldn’t be worried about part of his team tumbling around on the stupid lawn.
Maybe he’d like to learn how to do a one-handed handspring. Doyle wasn’t the only one with upper-body strength.
Maybe Doyle had the kind of upper-body strength that bench-pressed Toyotas, but still.
He tried to settle down. No point in singeing his fingers with the soldering gun again because he was watching them instead of what he was doing.
Then Sasha came out, sat beside him. “We figured pizza in about an hour, if that works for you.”
Grunting, he finished wrapping enameled wire around a bolt, cutting off the ends. “I want to keep at this,” he said, and stripped the ends of the wire. “I can take it inside, grab a slice.”
“Anything I can do to help?”
He shook his head, picked up the soldering iron to solder the stripped ends to his new, tiny circuit board. “Really a one-man job.”
“If you— Well, wow!
“Wow, what?”
“Doyle just did a handspring, but with one hand.”
He looked up in time to see Annika give Doyle a congratulatory hug. “Great.”
By the time he’d finished building two listening devices, on a table in the living area where he had room and some damn quiet, the moon was up, the stars out. And he needed a break.
He walked outside, and down, sat on the steps to look out at the sea.
“How did it go?”
He glanced back and up, saw Bran on the terrace. “I got two done, and tested. I need—”
“Wait, I’ll come down.”
When Bran came out, he sat on the steps, passed Sawyer a beer. “Sasha said you stuck with water or caffeine during the build. I thought you could use this now.”
“Yeah, I can, thanks. Needed a break. It’s not complicated so much as exacting, especially when it’s makeshift. I could work on the last one tonight, but I think I’d start getting sloppy. We can wait until tomorrow night to plant them, or go with two.”
“We talked about it at dinner, already opted for tomorrow night. Don’t push yourself tonight.”
“Appreciate it.” Content with the company, with the beer, Sawyer turned his mind on the what’s next. “I can get us inside Malmon’s villa, no problem. Since we won’t have to deal with windows or doors to get in, we don’t have to worry about an alarm system. But if they run to motion detectors, that’s a problem.”
“Ah.” With a nod, Bran leaned back against the steps, looked up at the star-strewn sky and the waxing moon. “And one none of us considered.”
Since the decision to check out Malmon’s villa, Sawyer had considered a lot. “Or internal cameras, that’s another. If I knew, one, they had motion detector alarms or security cameras, and two, what type, and three, where the system’s based, I could maybe bypass.”
Amusement had Bran’s scarred eyebrow lifting. “Is that the case then?”
On a quick laugh, Sawyer lifted the beer. “I don’t make breaking and entering a habit, but it’s good to know things, and how things work. You can bank on Malmon installing that kind of security while he’s in there. We don’t know if it’s already there. And if I’d thought of it before, maybe Riley could have found out.”
“She may still—we’ll tap her on it. Otherwise, we take our chances, I think. If we set off any alarms, we can be out again before anyone checks.”
“I can probably make it look like a glitch. But the cameras—”
“I can find a way to deal with those, if there are any to deal with.”
“All right. If we’re back around five like usual tomorrow, I’ll have the third one done before sundown.”
“More than soon enough, as we think to wait until about midnight. Doyle wants a look at the grounds as well, and we’d want quiet and privacy for that.”
“Can’t forget what Doyle wants.”
Bran took a contemplative sip of his own beer. “Problem with Doyle, is there?”
“No. No . . . No problem.”
To Bran, three “nos” in succession meant yes. “I see he’s learned some new moves from Annika.”
“What— Moves?” Sawyer’s head swiveled so fast, Bran wondered it didn’t twist off like a bottle cap. “Oh, right, right. The famous one-handed handspring.”
“A forward one, yes. She claims she can teach him a backward one in no time. There’s affection and admiration from him to her and back again. And, mo chara, if you think there’s more than that on either side, you’re, well, a git, that’s all. She’s yours, but for the asking. And now, since I’ve a mind to have my own woman, I’ll say good night to you. And sleep well,” he added as he rose to go inside.
His for the asking, Sawyer thought and glugged down more beer. Not how it looked, not how it felt right at the moment. Besides, asking didn’t seem right. She was new to this world. She still got words mixed up, had to have things explained to her. How could it be right to ask her to sleep with him?
Added to that, which was more than enough to his mind, she only had three months—less than two and a half now, he remembered—before she had to go back to the sea.
He was very much afraid if he asked, if he took, if he had her, he’d never in all his life—wherever and whenever he went—get over her.
He should never have touched her in the first place, given them both ideas. The simple solution? Don’t touch her again. God knew they had enough to do, to risk without adding in sex and heartbreak.
He rose, took the beer with him to his room. Opened the door, and nearly dropped the bottle.
She sat on the side of his bed, got to her feet as he stood there.
“I waited for you.”
“Okay.” Carefully, he set the beer aside. “Do you need something?”
“Yes. So do you, I think. And so I waited for you.”
Watching his face, she lifted her hands, nudged the two thin straps from her shoulders, and with a kind of shrug had the dress pooling at her feet.
The single thought that shot through his head was: I’m a dead man. In a fumbling rush, he shut the door.
“Annika, don’t . . .”
Words slipped away as she stepped out of the discarded dress and stood, lithe and lean and lovely in shoes that were nothing but a few bright red straps and high, thin heels.
“You desire me.” She took a step toward him. “I desire you. Will you take what I offer you? Will you offer me what I ask?”
He knew there were reasons, but he couldn’t find and hold a single one. “I’m supposed to—”
“Lie with me,” she said, and took another step. And her eyes, just her eyes, bewitching green, destroyed him. “Mate with me.” And another step. “Be with me.”
She wrapped her arms around his neck, pressed that long, beautiful body against his, and took his mouth.
Long, warm, slow, deep, she twisted him into knots, then set the knots on fire. Her fingers dived into his hair, gripped him there while his defenses crumbled to dust. Before he could find the will, the reason, to shore them up again, she slid her leg up his and breached the wall.
He surrendered to her, surrendered to his own spiraling lust. Screw the rules, he thought. Screw the risks. He pulled her closer, gripped her hair, all that wonderful hair.
They’d break them and they’d take them together.
When he backed her toward the bed, she lowered her hands to tug up his shirt.
“I want to see you, touch you. All of you. I need to take your clothes off.”
/> “Yeah, yeah, we’ll do that. Just let me . . .” As they fell on the bed, his hands ran over her. Soft, smooth, sublime. “Annika. Just let me.”
It was everything she’d imagined, everything she’d hoped for. This freedom he’d never given her before, the full passions in the way his hands took and touched, and the wild hunger of his mouth as it . . . fed on hers with teeth, tongue, lips.
No one had ever kissed her just like this. With such appetite.
Eager to give him more, she pressed up against him where she felt the hardness, and he moaned against her breast as if in pain, but the kind of pain that spoke of need.
So she arched her hips against him again, felt a jolt in her own center, and a kind of lovely, lovely clutching.
The muscles in his back, his arms—all so different when lying on a bed—the softness under her, the hard over her, caused such feelings inside her.
Though she’d never undressed a man, it couldn’t be so different from undressing herself—and she so much wanted to have his body, without the clothes, against hers. She reached for his belt, trying to stem her excitement so her fingers could work on the buckle.
“Maybe just hold on there,” he murmured, “or it’ll be over awfully quick.”
Her hands went still. “Can it only be once?”
The sound he made, a mixture of laugh and groan, puzzled her.
“No. Not just once.”
“Then it can be quick this time.” Her need was now, now, now, so she pulled the belt free. “I want to know. It’s the first I’ve mated with legs.”
Breathless, next to desperate, he forced himself to stop. “The first?” Of course it was the first, for Christ’s sake. “Does that mean, you’re . . . Would it be like your first time? Ever?”
“Oh, you mean do I still have the shield?” She dragged him back again. “No. This part is the same. But the legs, the bed, your legs. It’s different. It’s new. I want you between my legs. I want you inside me, between my legs. I want to know, Sawyer. With you.” Filled with those wants, with those jolts, she took his mouth again. “Only you.”
She started to tug his jeans down.
“I’ve still got boots on. Wait.” He rolled, sat up. As he dragged violently at his boots, she reared up, circled him from behind, drove him closer, closer to madness with her mouth at his neck, her hands running over his chest.
Freed, finally, of boots, jeans, everything, he turned toward her. She stayed on her knees, her hair spilling like ink down her back, over one shoulder. Her gaze traveled down his chest, down. And she smiled.
“You’re beautiful, and strong.” Reaching out, she trailed her fingers over his shaft, made his blood thrum. A thousand strings plucked at once.
“This is pleasure?”
“I don’t think they’ve come up with a word for what I’m feeling.”
Still smiling, she lay back, her hair spread over the white sheets in long, rich rivers. A perfect gift, offered without guile or artifice.
“Mate with me, please. Put your pleasure inside me.”
She dazzled him, undid him, and in that moment owned him.
He lowered to her and, struggling to take care, to go slow in case she was wrong and it would be like her first time, began to enter the hot and wet.
“Oh. Oh.” Her fingers gripped his arm, nails digging in as she shuddered. And she cried out, with her eyes full of wonder. “But this . . . this comes at the end. It’s the end?”
“No, it’s not the end.” Every muscle trembled as he braced himself over her. “Do you want to come again? Feel that again?”
“I can? Yes. Yes.”
She made a sound, low in her throat, when he went deeper.
He held there, strained to just hold there until her hips began to rise and fall.
“I need to . . . I need to.”
“That’s right.” His lips skimmed light over hers. “Do what you need.” Then he used his tongue, roughened the kiss when she came again, cried out against his mouth.
He thrust once, hard, deep, and she gasped, she arched.
“Yes. Again. Again.”
So he rode her, fast, hard. Just let himself take.
She felt that ending that wasn’t an ending with him rise up in her again. As it flooded her, she threw her arms back, hooked her legs around his waist, moved with him, mated with him, flew along the wave, then the next.
Then what rose in her was more, more than pleasure and joy, more than all she’d ever known. She shuddered with it, and he shuddered with her.
When the true end came, it swept her into another world, one beyond beauty.
Even when he caught his breath, and that took a while, his heartbeat sang in his ears. When he rolled off her, she rolled with him, nuzzled up beside him.
And that felt exactly right.
“You’re pleased with me?”
“Anni, there isn’t a word big enough for what I am with you right now.”
“I’m the same for you. Making sex with legs is different. And with you, it’s more. You have a very good penis.”
He choked out a laugh. “Thanks. I’m . . . fond of it.”
“I am, too. Will you put it inside me again?”
No one like her, he thought, in this world. In any world. “I’d say that’s a sure bet after this.”
“And was this time awfully quick?”
He took her hand from his heart, kissed it. “I guess the first part was—you know, the foreplay. The before the . . .” Jeez. “Mating.”
“Ah, you mean the touching and kissing. I like that very much. It’s better to have that longer?”
“Depends. But there’s more stuff people like to do sometimes before the big guns.”
“More? What more?”
She wasn’t innocent, he told himself. But she was unschooled in certain areas. “You know, maybe you should talk about some of this with Sasha and Riley.”
“I did. That’s how I knew to come here and take off my dress and wear just the shoes.”
“You . . . Really?”
“You liked the shoes. I’ll tell them.”
He just closed his eyes. “I bet you will.”
Slowly, she circled a finger over his heart, trailed it lightly down his chest. “Will you do the more stuff to me? You’ll teach me so I can do more stuff to you.”
“Annika, you kill me.”
“That’s an expression. I would never hurt you.”
“I know.” As he turned his head to kiss her, a thought struck him like a bolt from a crossbow. “I didn’t protect you.”
“There was no danger.”
“No, I mean . . . ” He pushed up, drawing her with him. “Can you get pregnant?”
“Oh, no. I can’t have young with you. We’re from different worlds, not enough the same. I’m sorry.”
“No.” Relieved, he pressed his lips to her forehead. “It’s better that way. We’ve got a war going on for one thing. And you only have a couple more months—”
Quickly, she laid a finger over his lips. “Don’t speak of the end. Please. We have now.”
“You’re right. If you worry too much about tomorrow, you miss appreciating what is. I appreciate what is, with you.”
She laid her head on his shoulder. “I want to stay with you tonight.”
“I want you to stay. The bed’s a little small, but we’ll manage.”
“Yes.” She snuggled down with him again. “Is it true it can be more than once?”
“Yeah. It’s getting pretty close to being true right now.”
“Then before we sleep, you could show me one of the more stuff.”
“I could do that.” As he angled down to kiss her, he slid his hand down her body, between her legs.
“Oh! I like this stuff!”
He laughed, even as he made her come again.
In the morning, Sawyer headed outside for calisthenics feeling like a man who could run twenty miles—all uphill—without getting winded, then polish that off by e
ating the equivalent of a team of horses.
He found Doyle leaning against the outdoor table, drinking coffee while the sky went pale and pink.
“The others should be right along,” Sawyer said.
“Mmm-hmm. You got lucky. It’s all over you, brother,” Doyle added. “And if it wasn’t, I’m next door. Your mermaid’s enthusiastically vocal.”
“Oh.” Sawyer studied his water bottle, then looked over at Doyle. “Sorry?”
“No, you’re not, and can’t blame you. But you owe me.”
“How you figure?”
“She used me to get you worked up—classic strategy. She’d owe me, too, but she taught me a couple of solid moves, so she and I are even.”
Sawyer thought of the damn handsprings, and the jealousy crawling over his skin. “Didn’t see it coming.”
“They never do. So, payback? Take it up to her room, then I don’t have to think about how I’m not getting laid.”
“Done. I was pissed at you.”
“Yeah.” With one of his rare smiles, Doyle lifted his coffee. “Can’t blame you there either. You’re a lucky man, Sawyer. She’s like no other.”
“I know it. It’s why I pulled a muscle in my willpower not to go there with her.”
“Brother, when beauty falls into your hand, you hold on to it while you can. You could be dead tomorrow.”
“Well, that’s . . . inspiring.”
When the others came out, Annika walked straight to Sawyer, moved in for a kiss—the sort that made him wonder just how soon they could take it up to her room.
“Are you passing those out?” Doyle asked her.
On a quick laugh, she turned to him, laid her hands on his shoulders, kissed him lightly, sweetly on the lips. “This is how you kiss family. Sawyer is family, too, but it’s different. We have sex.”
“I heard.”
“I had stars in my head. It’s very good sex that makes stars. And I learned about the more stuff. Did you know in the foreplay—such a good word—a man can—”
“Okay.” Hastily, Sawyer grabbed her hand. “We should get started.”
After nearly an hour of squats, shuffles, push-ups, pull-ups, and whatever other torture Doyle could devise, Sawyer made a mountain of pancakes. His call as breakfast chef, and he was in the mood.