by Celia Jerome
“That’s Kenneth’s specialty.”
The younger man said, “And I did tell the boss he wasn’t using his head, rushing in here like that.” He smiled. “I guess he took my warning to heart and used his head after all.”
I pulled the robe tighter and put a knot in the belt.
Grant noticed and dragged his own eyes away from what I’d belatedly covered and growled at his men. “Are you done laughing, or are you going to reset the alarm system today, or wait until someone does manage to break in? Who knows, maybe Miss Tate will do the moke a favor and leave the door open next time.”
Kenneth and Colin left, leaving one flashlight behind.
I was almost breathing normally again, or as normally as I ever did, near Grant. He smelled of wet clothes, spicy cologne, and a little sweat, which is to say, virile male animal.
An angry male animal, wounded and unpredictable. I kept my distance. “Are you badly hurt?”
“My pride or my skull?”
I guess he was okay if he could curse in three more languages when he saw blood on the towel. It wasn’t a lot of blood.
He didn’t seem to want my help. He glared at me when I took a step in his direction, as if he figured I’d hit him again, so I picked up the pieces of pitcher before I stepped on them in the dark. Maybe I could glue it together. I sure as hell couldn’t afford to commission another one. Who needed a vase to match their towels, anyway?
The lights came back on, thank goodness. I was still seeing spooks in the shadows. “The poor dogs must be frantic.” Even if I couldn’t hear them barking anymore, they were still a good excuse to get out of Grant’s way.
“You go. I’ll wash up in the bathroom here.”
“Are you trying to make me feel guilty?”
“A little pity wouldn’t hurt.”
“I said I was sorry.”
“And I suppose I am sorry I yelled. Not that I wouldn’t yell again if you pull another harebrained trick like disappearing off the radar.”
Since he was already shouting, I went downstairs, barefoot, in the borrowed robe. The dogs were fine. One of the agents had tossed them rawhide chews, and they were busy gnawing. I filled the coffeemaker and started it.
Grant came down, his black hair wet and smoothed down.
“Are you okay?”
“No permanent damage,” he said, that steely look gone from his blue eyes. “Everyone always said I was a hardheaded s.o.b. I guess I should be glad.”
“I’m glad, too.” I couldn’t help myself. I ran right into his arms. “I was so scared.”
“I know, sweetheart. I’m so sorry. That’s why I was angry. I wanted to make you feel safe; instead I terrorized you.”
Suddenly I was crying, like I hardly ever cried, great sobbing gulps and runny-eyed tears. It was all too much. The fear, the aloneness, the incomprehensible situation, the guilt. “I am not a crybaby,” I cried, wetting his blue shirt worse.
“I know, Willy. You are the bravest woman I ever met.”
“Me? I thought I was going to have heart failure in the dark. Even before I heard voices. The storm already had me frazzled, and the driving and the lightning and—”
“Shush,” he soothed, pulling me closer. “You fought back. With good aim, too. That took real courage.”
I had to admit that my eyes were closed when I threw the pitcher.
“Then maybe you have telekinetic powers, too.”
Maybe I did. I could feel something stirring at the front of his jeans, where he was pressed against me. I did that! I moved my hips forward, and he moaned. I definitely had a stirring effect on him, and I liked it, too. Oh, boy, did I. My own temperature was rising—or was that from the steam he was giving off?
Meanwhile he was stroking my back, smoothing my hair, rubbing my neck. “You smell like roses.”
“And fear.”
“No, just roses. Lovely.”
I sniffled. He put his hand down, almost between us, and I thought—He found a handkerchief instead.
I blew my nose and turned my back, knowing I must look horrible, all red and swollen. Grant kissed the back of my neck, under my hair.
“You always look beautiful to me.”
“Are you sure you can’t read my mind?”
“Would I have raced in here if I knew you were lolling about in a bubble bath, naked and warm and sweet smelling? Hmm. Damn right I would have. But you’ll have to tell me what you want. Should I go to the guesthouse? Sleep on the sofa?”
He kissed me instead of waiting for an answer. Swaying the vote? I was swaying, leaning into him, rocking with the tempo of his tongue dancing with mine. Was I dreaming? Hell, was I breathing?
When he pulled back, he was breathing heavily, too. He raised one expressive eyebrow in question.
I took his hand. “Here. Now.”
I led him toward the bedroom of the housekeeper’s apartment, shutting the door behind us so the dogs couldn’t see. I turned on the reading lamp next to the bed, but then I hesitated. “I’m not easy, you know.”
“That’s all right,” he said. “I’m hard, too.”
CHAPTER 24
HIS HANDS WERE ON THE belt of the borrowed robe, untying it. He swallowed audibly, then smiled when his view rose from the unwieldy knot that now let the robe fall open. I didn’t have time to be embarrassed or modest or insecure. Not when his hands followed his line of sight. I swear he could hear my heart beating when he raised one finger to the tip of one nipple. “Yup, you’re hard, sweetheart. Hard as nails, and soft as silk.” Now his whole hand cupped my breast. “You are perfect.”
After that, I stopped thinking. For once, I was there, in the moment, mind and body working together. I didn’t have to wonder if my partner was happy, if my reactions were encouraging enough, if I’d come, or if he’d care. That was not an issue.
Grant cared, and I almost climaxed the minute he carefully unfolded the robe off my shoulders and touched his lips to my breasts, each in turn.
Maybe he was a mind reader, no matter what he said, because he knew just what I liked, and when. He definitely had magic in his strong, capable hands, hands that touched me everywhere, as if he was learning me, playing me, worshiping me. And he liked what I was doing with my tongue, my teeth, my exploring hands. He urged me on with murmurs of appreciation, sweet words I’d think about later.
No thinking was allowed here, only feeling. I felt . . . I felt like I was soaring, rising on a wind of passion aiming for the roof of the world. Rising, rising, his fingers gently inside me, his thumb stroking, his mouth on my breasts, his erection hot on my thigh—When had he taken off his clothes?
Rising, his mouth moving to my lips, his hands still busy. Rising, until there was no place to go, but going anyway. Rising until I was desperate to reach . . . to reach . . .
Yes! Oh, yes. I touched the top of the sky, and it was beautiful.
Grant thanked me.
“You are grateful to me? You . . . ” I had no words to describe what I felt, no energy to give him back what he’d given me. I’d used all my adrenaline and emotions during the afternoon, and all my hormones just now. I was limp, wrung out, empty. But then Grant started to trail kisses from my eyelids to my mouth to my neck, tiny kisses and a lick here or there, a nibble, a taste, on my breasts, my nipples, that ticklish spot over the side of my ribs.
I could see where this was going—where I hoped it was going anyway—and dredged up enough resources to show signs of life, like grabbing his shoulders with my fingers and calling his name.
“I am right here, sweetheart. I’m not going anywhere.”
But I was, flying again, when his tongue touched my navel, my thighs. I thought, Hey, you missed somewhere! But he was teasing, playing with the curls there, and touching and spreading those inner lips. And breathing warmth on me before touching with the tip of his tongue.
Oh, God.
That’s what he was, a god from another time, another place, with wondrous powers. I tried to tel
l him, with what was left of my ensorcelled mind.
He laughed. “I’m just a linguist.”
I found another language his tongue was fluent in.
Then I claimed my turn. I tried to touch him, but Grant pulled away.
“No, I couldn’t last a minute that way. Hell, it’s all I can do not to embarrass myself now like a school-boy. I want to feel you, all of you, and have you feel me completely.”
He was off the bed and searching for his jeans and cursing. We must have kicked them under the bed or something. I still wasn’t certain the whole thing wasn’t a disjointed dream or a trance because I couldn’t remember getting to the bed at all, that’s how moonstruck I’d been.
I told him to stop looking, that I had protection. I’d put the sample packet from the drugstore in the night table drawer.
“Two?” He laughed. “Baby, that won’t last long. I’ve been waiting since the minute I saw you. No, since I knew you existed.”
While he was discreetly turned, I admired his broad back and sculpted muscles that tapered to a firm ass with the tiniest shadow of dark fuzz on it. Then I admired his impressive erection when he faced me again. “Definitely a super power. Or a magician’s wand.”
“You’re the Enhancer here, Willy, only you hold the magic to do this to me.”
I didn’t care if he said the same thing to all his women. Or how many women he said it to. He was mine today, tonight, and until he had to leave tomorrow. All mine, all of him. All of me.
I doubted I could be ready again, but it didn’t matter. I decided this was for him, but he refused to travel solo, waiting for me to catch up. His strokes were long and smooth, with no chance of hitting my head on the bed frame, not when my legs were locked around his waist. Every internal muscle was working, too, to hold him, to keep him, to rock with him.
He reached between us to touch my most sensitive spot. So I reached behind him to cup his sac.
“Ah, and I was trying to last.”
Sure, like a race car can go slow. That’s not what it’s built for. I flexed those inside muscles again and he went deeper, no words now, no gentle, tender, teasing strokes, only power and friction, at just the right tempo. I could feel the pressure building again—had it ever subsided?—and knew I was close to coming again.
This time I wanted him with me. I bit his shoulder.
He ended in a rush, a spasm, a pounding frenzy that sent us both over the edge and nearly off the bed. This was what sex was really about? Why hadn’t anyone told me it could be this good, this fulfilling, this absolutely rapturous? I’d never have settled for less if I’d known what I was missing.
Then I developed a new fear, not that I needed another. What if the great sex wasn’t because the man had great technique, a well-practiced talent, and a lot of patience? What if it wasn’t the sex but the sexual partner? I worried I’d never find this grand passion again. I missed it already, and Grant was still inside me.
“A tear, macushla? Are you sorry for what we did?”
“I am sorry we cannot do it forever.”
“Who says?” And he started to stir again. Again? I didn’t think I had the strength. He rolled onto his side, facing me, touching me, still filling me. His caress was like a gossamer touch on my sensitized skin; as if he knew more pressure would be more pain than pleasure. This was lovely. He was lovely. I told him and he laughed, which was loveliest of all. I raised my leg over his, bringing us closer. And we kissed until I was filled with his breath, his strength, his passion, his heat and rapture, too.
Did people die of too much lovemaking? If so, okay. I’d lived a full life, after this. When he got up to use the bathroom, I rolled onto my stomach, arms and legs spread across the mattress. Every cell in my body had declared surrender and refused to fight another second to stay alive, or awake. I could smother in the pillow for all I cared, without the energy to lift my head. My brain wasn’t talking to me anymore, my blood had surely boiled over, and my bones had turned to mush. Maybe I was dead already. I hoped someone threw a sheet over me before calling 911.
Grant came back with a towel for me. “Go away,” I think I mumbled.
His deep laugh sounded next to my ear. “Never, sweetheart.” Then he started to pet my rear end and the back of my thighs, molding the planes, firming the skin in his hands. “The most perfect butt in the universe.”
My ass was too big; the muscles not toned enough no matter how much I jogged. I huffed.
“True. I don’t lie, remember. You are exquisite, from the tips of your toes”—somehow he had one of my toes in his mouth; I never felt him shift—“to the top of your gorgeous curls.” His hand fingered through my hair, combing it smooth.
“Flattery won’t get you anywhere, buddy,” I said into the pillow. “I am brain-dead at the least. Kiss me good-bye when you leave in the morning.”
He laughed again. “The morning is hours away. You don’t really want to waste them in sleep, do you?”
His hand was following the curve of my spine, up my neck, down my tailbone, then reaching lower, between my spread legs.
“Go away,” I repeated, trying to put some conviction into my voice.
“I’ll let you be on top.”
“I’d fall off and land on the floor.”
“I’d hold you tight.”
“Not good enough.”
Now he bent over me, nipping love bites on my tush, then my thighs. I moaned.
“How about if you stayed just like this and I did all the work?” His fingers were reaching beneath me.
“That’s necrophilia. Are you into kinky?”
“I am into you.”
With my last ounce of life, I drew my legs together and pulled the pillow over my head. “If you have so much energy, go take the dogs out. They can use the exercise.”
“You are a hard woman to please, Willow Tate.”
“No, I was too easy to please. You obviously didn’t expend enough effort on it if you have this much in reserve.”
God, I loved his laughter. Even in my comatose state, my heart warmed at the sound.
“Are you complaining?” he asked. “I thought I’d done a fine job. Those groans and whimpers sounded authentic, but maybe you were pretending. I could try harder next time.”
“Don’t beg, Agent Grant. It’s beneath your image.”
“Damn, all I want is you beneath me again. I’d beg on my knees if I thought it would work. Watching you come has to be the most satisfying, most stimulating sexual experience of my life. You think I could just roll over and go to sleep?”
“Alvin always did.”
“I thought his name was Arlen.”
“Him, too.”
“I know what you need, and that’s food. I do, too. I can’t remember when I ate last. I think I grabbed a croissant at the airport while I waited for the rental car.”
I had a sandwich for lunch, but I had no idea how long ago that was. Two days, at least. I needed sleep more. “I stopped at the grocery store. There’s a box of macaroni and cheese next to the stove.”
“That’s what you were going to have for dinner? No wonder you have no stamina. As soon as I get back we’ll start you on a proper regimen. Healthy food and good aerobic exercise like sex.”
I rolled over to look up at him. “You are coming back, aren’t you? I mean, what if someone identifies your bad guy and you go arrest him?”
“I’m hoping it’s that easy, but I doubt it will be. But, sweetheart, I’d come back if there was no missing boy, no misplaced troll. I waited my whole life for you, it feels like. Do you think I’d just walk away?”
Everyone knew a man said anything before, during, or after sex. Or when he hoped for more of it. I let his almost-promise pass. I tried to memorize it, though, for tomorrow. “He saved my life, you know.”
He was bent over, fishing his jeans out from under the bed. He bumped his head on the mattress frame and winced. I’d forgotten completely about his injured skull. I know I had my hand
s wrapped around his head at one point. “Does your head hurt?”
“Who saved your life?”
I don’t know how Grant managed to look and sound like a man in black when he was naked, but he did.
“And when?”
“Fafhrd did, this afternoon, in the storm.”
“You saw the troll again? And didn’t tell me?”
“You didn’t exactly give me a chance to say anything, did you?”
Grant zipped his jeans—no boxers or jockeys beneath them. I made a mental note to check under the bed later, before the cleaning crew came in tomorrow, just in case. Then I watched as he smoothed out his blue chambray shirt and put it on. He left it unbuttoned, which gave me a great view of his flat abdomen and the dark line of chest hair that arrowed toward the low waist of his pants. Maybe I had a smidge of stamina left after all.
Grant was all business. “What did he do? Did he communicate with you?”
So I told him how Fafhrd held up a falling tree so my car could get by safely. And how he nodded to me before dropping it afterward. “He had to have been waiting there, looking out for me. I wasn’t thinking about him at all, only about getting back here in one piece. I never drew him with an oak tree in his hands, so I didn’t call him up. He came on his own, to protect me.”
“I don’t like it.”
I repeated, slowly: “He saved my life.”
“He’s not human. Who knows what he’s thinking, what he wants from you. Bloody hell, he could be a deranged stalker for all we know.”
“I know he would never hurt me. Don’t ask how I know, but I do. He’s young and playful, and sweet.”
“Sweet? He’s got to be stronger than an elephant and stupider than a stone if half the stories are true. And mean.”
“Fafhrd is not mean. Maybe some trolls are, or maybe they just got a bad rap. He held up a tree for me, for crying out loud. How could that be mean?” I didn’t mention the electric wires Fafhrd ignored. That might have been stupid, but how was a troll to know?
