The rain beat down; the mist drifted up. I had a hard time focusing, but there was definitely a person, a man, leaning against a cypress tree about a hundred yards from the house. Spanish moss hung from the branches, nearly touching the ground, obscuring his face. But the outline of the body was familiar, as were the hair, the jeans, the bare chest.
“Adam?”
He didn’t answer. Tossing the towel on the porch, I headed into the storm.
He didn’t move as I approached. He seemed wilder somehow—his eyes brighter, his hair more tangled, his body tense as a stalking beast. Without the shirt, skin slick with rain, I could see every ridge, every curve. He wasn’t wearing his bracelet. I couldn’t remember ever seeing him without it.
Why was he here? Did he want the same thing that I did? Mindless sex until I couldn’t remember the questions anymore?
I reached the edge of the yard, the cusp of the swamp, and still he waited. Lightning flashed; water ran into my eyes. Impatiently I swiped at my face, and when I looked again, he was gone. Had I seen him or only wished that I had?
Why would I wish? The police wanted to talk to Adam Ruelle about strangling the life out of someone. I shouldn’t go near the man, let alone lust after him.
Though he disturbed me in ways I didn’t want to examine, had scared me more times than I wanted to count, I couldn’t wrap my mind around the idea that Adam had killed someone with his bare hands. I’d felt those hands on me, and while they’d been desperate, urgent, and rough, they hadn’t been violent. That didn’t mean they couldn’t be.
Beneath the tree I found the slight indentation of a bare foot in the dirt. Then another and another, heading deeper into the swamp.
I wasn’t crazy. He had been here.
I should turn back; I might get lost and wander for days. But I followed the tracks anyway.
Why I was so obsessed I had no idea. The man was a mystery, and I liked my life neat. Perhaps that explained my difficulty believing in the paranormal. The paranormal didn’t make sense, hence the name.
I hated things that did not make sense. I was obliged to make sense of them.
After a half an hour of traveling at a pretty fast clip, the trail petered out. I paused, ears straining, eyes searching. All I saw was the swamp in the rain; all I heard was that rain coming down. Then I smelled the faint, acrid scent of a cigarette.
As I blinked the water out of my eyes, my gaze was caught by what appeared to be a roof on the other side of a slight rise. I had no choice but to head in that direction, even when my bare feet sank to the ankles in muck.
I pulled them out, wincing at the disgusting sucking sound they made as they popped free of the greenish-brown goo. Luckily, once I hit solid ground, the rain washed away the slime.
I topped the hill and stared at the shack, which seemed to have sprouted from a bayou. The building resembled something straight out of The Beverly Hillbillies III: Elly May Does Louisiana.
“Good title for a porn flick,” I murmured, peering at the figure on the porch, one that could put pornographic thoughts into the mind of any woman.
A shirtless Adam Ruelle leaned against the railing, smoking as he watched the storm rage.
I glanced at the swamp, suddenly tempted to go back. But a flicker of movement somewhere in the depths had me hurrying into the slight valley, stopping at the edge of the overgrown front yard.
The instant I appeared, Adam’s attention fell from the sky to me. He took one last draw on his cigarette, then flicked the thing into the grass, where it hissed as the ember met rain. He walked down the steps and across the ground, stopping so close, the heat of his body battled the chill of mine. I half-expected steam to rise from my soaked clothes.
His gaze wandered over me; desire rolled across his face like thunder rolls across the sky. His eyes locked on my breasts, and I glanced down, my face heating at the sight.
I’d removed my bra, spent nearly an hour in the rain. Being topless would be less suggestive than wearing the soaked tank, which outlined the weight and fullness, seeming to accent the thrust of my nipples, magnifying the darkness of the areola.
He reached out, the tanned skin of his hand stark against the white shirt as he cupped one breast almost reverently. Testing the weight he skimmed a single thumb over the tip.
I opened my mouth to ask... something, and he yanked me against him. My breath caught, the sound both fear and excitement. I tilted my head, an offering, and his lips captured mine.
Our tongues met; his tasted of smoke and I liked it, which only showed how far gone I was. I’d never cared for cigarettes, but when Adam smoked them, I could only think of how I’d feel if he wrapped his beautiful lips around my nipple the way he wrapped them around a cigarette and suckled.
His arousal rubbed against me. My hands flitted over his skin, kneading the muscles, learning the curves and the dips. I couldn’t think, could only feel both his desperation and my own. I should have protested, pulled away, but I didn’t. From the moment I’d first seen him we’d been headed for this. I could no more have stopped what was about to happen than I could have stopped the moon from growing larger with each passing night.
He lifted his head, glanced into the trees, frowned. I tangled my fingers in his hair; then I frowned, too.
He’d been out in the rain as long as I had. Yet his hair was almost dry.
Chapter 14
Adam licked my chin, nuzzled my neck, then captured my rain-puckered nipple in his mouth and gently bit the tip. I decided his hair didn’t matter. Right now, neither would an earthquake.
I had questions, yes. But they weren’t going anywhere and neither was I. I’d save them for after I’d had sex with a perfect stranger.
Well, not exactly a stranger. I skimmed my palms over his biceps. But damn close to perfect.
He didn’t speak, which was fine with me. I wanted sex, not chatter.
His body slid along mine as he went to his knees and lifted my shirt. Mouth hot against my damp skin, he traced my rib cage, then swirled his tongue around my belly button. The rain beat down on us both. I had a sudden urge to feel the droplets everywhere, so I pulled the tank top over my head and tossed it aside.
He looked at me and smiled—the first smile I’d ever seen on his face—and my heart did a funny sort of stutter. Why did he have to be so beautiful?
Reaching up, he tugged the end of my hair. “Come.”
I cast a confused glance at the house.
“Nah, cher, right here. I wanna see your red hair against the grass. I wanna be inside you with the rain comin’ down.”
Suddenly I wanted that, too. My knees gave way, and I joined him on the ground. As I lay back, I expected an unpleasant, damp chill. But I was as wet as the earth and the afternoon as hot as the sun. When he dragged at my jeans, I merely lifted my hips and let them go.
Somehow he managed to lose his pants, too. No doubt he’d had a lot of practice. I pushed that thought out of my head. Who he’d done in the past, even what he’d done, had nothing to do with this, with now.
The sky swelled above us, heavy with clouds and the rain. The wild vegetation shielded us from anyone who might walk by. As if there were anyone but the two of us this far into the swamp.
The thought made me bold. I wasn’t Diana Malone; I was merely a woman who wanted a man. This man. And she could have him. No one would ever know.
His hard, clever hands skimmed over me, both insistent and reverent, arousing even as they soothed. His breath brushed my breast as he licked a drop of water from the curve.
“You’re so wet,” he murmured, the rumble of his voice a sensation all its own. “Are you as wet here,” a finger traced my hip, my thigh, “as you are here?”
My legs fell open, expecting that clever finger to discover the answer. Instead he slid down my body in a movement so fast, it left me gasping, even before his tongue swept into me.
“Mmm-hmm,” he said. “Wet both inside and out.”
I wanted to protes
t. I’d never been much for oral sex, which always seemed so personal—maybe because it was. I barely knew this man. But when I shifted uneasily, he grabbed my hips in his big, hard hands and held me still as he continued what he’d started. Within seconds I was beyond protest, tongue-tied. Thank goodness he had no such problem.
My body tightened, quivered, and he entered me in one smooth movement. As I was already convulsing, the press and release, the enticing rhythm of flesh into flesh, skin against skin, caused a moan to escape. Horrified, I bit my lip, choked it back.
He gazed at me, the clouds swirling behind his head, both the trees and his hair whipping madly in the wind. “Don’t stop, cher. Make all the noise you want. No one’ll hear you way out here. Besides,” he flexed his hips and stroked me deeper, leaning down to nuzzle my neck, his now-wet hair tickling my cheek, “I’m not gonna quit until you scream.”
“Th-that might take a while.” I wasn’t much of a screamer.
“A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do. I don’t care if it takes all night.”
He began to move again, murmuring encouragement, telling me to touch him, take him, fuck him. The latter disconcerted me, but something in his voice, a note of desperation, a tiny quiver of need, made the word less a profanity and more of a plea.
I did as he asked, clenching around him as the tremor in his voice spread through both his body and my own. I felt him come as the rain swirled around us, and I got so caught up in the depth of sensation, the scent, the sound, the feel of him and me together in the half-light, that I forgot I’d already had one orgasm and went ahead and had another.
I forgot a lot of things while I lay there, Adam’s head on my shoulder, his body still buried in mine. He shifted, sprawling half on the ground, half on me, his cheek pressed into my breast, his breath tickling my still-aroused nipple.
He traced a lazy finger across my belly. “You do that a lot?”
I stiffened. “Are you insinuating that I’m loose?”
“Loose?” He raised up on one elbow, using the hand that had been caressing me to shove his hair out of his face. His bracelet caught the light of the moon and turned from bronze to silver and back again. “You felt pretty tight to me.” His fingertips skimmed the curls between my thighs, and my skin danced. “What I meant was, come twice in ten minutes.”
My face went hot. I wasn’t sure what to say. Was that slutty?
I’d been with one man before today. I’d loved him with all of my heart. We’d had a good sex life. The best. I’d never wanted anyone else. Until now. I felt as if I’d betrayed my best friend.
I guess I had.
I started to get up, reach for my clothes. Adam yanked me back, and when I struggled he rolled his body on top of mine, capturing my legs between his and pinning my wrists above my head with one hand. The other held my hip still as I tried to buck him off.
“You keep that up, we’ll go again. I’m game.”
I could feel that he was. How could he be aroused so fast? What was he? Superstud?
Dumb question.
“Don’t be embarrassed, cher. You think a man doesn’t want a woman to come every time he touches her? I liked it.”
I had, too, but I wasn’t used to discussing sex in such detail with my body still humming from his. I wasn’t used to discussing sex at all. I’d learned the facts of life in the locker room of my private girls’ school, and to tell the truth... they’d gotten a couple of things wrong.
“Where you come from that you make love like a wild thing and get all red in the face when you talk about it?”
“Love?” This hadn’t been love, at least not for me. Not for him, either, I was certain. He didn’t seem like the kind of man who fell in love.
“Figure of speech.” His voice trilled down my body, leaving goose bumps in its wake.
“Find another,” I snapped, unreasonably annoyed at his cavalier attitude. Though why, I had no idea. I wanted him to be that way. I couldn’t bear anything else.
“You’d rather I say ‘you fuck like a wild thing’? How about ‘screw’? ‘Bang’? ‘Boink’? None of them seemed the right word at the time.”
My lips trembled, and he stared at me, horrified. Then I burst out laughing. I couldn’t help myself. “‘Boink’?”
He smiled, too, then shrugged, the movement making his slick chest rub against mine in new and enticing ways. “See what I mean? Not the right word.”
The laughter had been good, had made me feel almost closer to him than the sex had.
Almost.
Rain dotted my cheeks, sparkled in his hair. Suddenly my hands were free, and I drew a finger down his face. “There’s so much about you I don’t know.”
Amusement fled as wariness took its place. “There are things you don’t wanna know.”
He rolled off me and to his feet in a quick feline movement. Leaning over, he dug his cigarettes out of his pants, then glanced at the still-dripping sky.
“Did you kill someone?” I hadn’t meant to ask that, wasn’t sure why I had. Like he was going to tell me.
The pack of cigarettes crunched as his hand clenched, then he took a deep breath, and as he let it out, his muscles relaxed, his fingers unfurled, and the shiny crumpled paper thudded to the ground. “You know I have.”
I blinked. “Wh-what?”
“Why you ask if you don’t want to hear? I was in the army. I did what I had to do.”
“I wasn’t talking about the army.”
Slowly he turned, his eyes eerily light in the encroaching night “What were you talkin’ about?”
Adam might feel comfortable standing in the swamp buck naked, but I didn’t. I reached for my shirt drew it over my head, and started hunting for my underwear. “A detective came to see me.” Had it only been this morning? “There was a man killed in the swamp.”
“Another animal attack.”
I found the white scrap of cotton and shoved my legs inside. My jeans were soaked. I debated trying to put them on and decided against it. “Not an animal this time. Guy was strangled.”
Adam’s face revealed nothing; however, he didn’t seem surprised. “You think I did that?”
“Did you?”
“Who was this man? Why would I kill him?”
I didn’t know the answer to either question. “The detective wants to talk to you.”
“He can want all he likes.”
“You aren’t going to talk to him?” I asked.
“When I get around to it.”
“He seemed pretty determined.”
“He’ll have to be a lot more than determined to find me out here.”
He had a point.
I jerked my head toward the shack. “This is where you live?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
He lifted his brows. “Why not?”
“You’ve got a perfectly good house, if you’d only take care of it.”
Adam’s face became shuttered. “I hate that place. I wish it would rot, but the damn thing never will.”
His vehemence surprised and confused me. “You moved out here because you hate the house, not because you—?” I stopped abruptly.
His mouth quirked. “You heard I lost my mind? Why you come here if you think I’m nuts?”
I hadn’t come here—actually I had, but not the way he meant. I’d followed him. Or at least I thought I had. “Why were you watching me at the mansion?”
He’d been leaning over, reaching for his clothes, giving me an eyeful of his terrific backside. At my question, he stilled for just an instant. If I hadn’t been admiring the view, I wouldn’t have noticed.
“Watching?” He straightened, but he didn’t face me. Instead, he seemed to be scanning the swamp.
“By the cypress trees. When I called out, you left, so I followed you. Didn’t I?”
“Mmm.” He scooped up his clothes, my jeans, and grabbed me by the arm. “I’ve had enough rain. Let’s go inside.”
I hung back. “
Why did you lead me here?”
He stared at me from behind the tangled curtain of his hair. “I’m a man. Why you think?”
For some reason the idea that he’d led me into the swamp for sex annoyed me, which was stupid. I hadn’t followed him for a tour of the area. We were mature adults who were attracted to each other. There was no reason we shouldn’t act on that attraction. Just because Adam gave voice to the truth shouldn’t make me feel slutty and guilty and bad. But I did.
“I should go,” I said.
“Not tonight.”
“But—”
He kissed me, lips, tongue, teeth, and I forgot again. Where I was, who I was, the other questions I wanted to ask.
He lifted his head, and his gaze flickered to the swamp, then back to mine. “Stay with me. At least until the storm ends.”
I found myself nodding, even though I got the distinct impression he meant something other than the wind, the rain, and the thunder.
Chapter 15
Adam’s place definitely looked better on the inside. Not much furniture, but tidy and dry—what more could anyone want?
Hot water and a shot of whiskey—Irish, to be sure. I was suddenly so cold, my bones ached. Which made no sense. The storm hadn’t done one thing to dissipate the heat.
“I’ll put your clothes in the dryer.” Adam held out a hand. I stared at it confused. “Your shirt, cher.”
He wanted me to strip in the living room?
His lips twitched at my sudden shyness, but he didn’t point out that he’d already seen everything, touched and tasted it too. Instead he nodded to the nearest door. “Bathroom’s right there. Take a shower, toss out your things.”
“Hot water?” My voice quivered with hope.
Adam nodded. “I live here year-round. Could do without electric, but why? Bought a generator first thing.”
I practically ran into the bathroom, which was small but functional. I turned on the water, tossed my clothes through the door. As I waited for the steam to rise, my gaze flickered over the countertop.
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