by Jill Shalvis
“Hang on.” He was working the buttons, oblivious. I could see his fingers, and the cuts on them from putting his fist through two doors now, and I took his hand.
He glanced at me, eyes blind in the dark. “What?”
“Just making sure you’re okay.” I ran a finger over his palm.
“It’s you I’m worried about.”
“I can take care of myself,” I said softly. “Always have.”
“I know. But that doesn’t make it easier.”
“You’re not alone in worrying, you know. I do it, too.”
His gaze searched mine in the dark. “Do you?”
I could barely speak past the ball of emotion. “So much, Kel.”
His eyes never wavered. “I’m never sure what you think, when it comes to me. And you and me.”
“I guess that’s fair,” I managed to say with a little smile. “Since I’ve pretty much been confused about that since we got here. You’re, um, not my usual type.”
“Yeah, you’ve dated some real winners.”
I opened my mouth, but at the look on his face, and the knowledge deep down inside that he was right, I shut it again. “So I’ve had some wild oats to sow.”
“A few.”
“As my friend, you’re supposed to give me unsolicited opinions. It’s an unspoken pact of our relationship. You could have tried to talk me out of a few of them.”
“Rach, has anyone ever successfully talked you out of anything?”
“Okay, I’m a little stubborn.”
“A little?”
“Kel.” I shook my head. “Sometimes…I’m not sure what it is you want from me.”
His smile faded, his eyes letting the heat shine through, just plain, primitive, raw emotion that told me exactly what he did want: me. On a platter.
The man made my knees wobble without saying a word. “Kel—”
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “I don’t want to go there again.”
“But…” I put words to my biggest fear. “If we don’t get out of here—”
“We’re going to get out. Trust me, you’re going to live to torture me another day.”
I’d always been aware of him having a crush on me, but he’d never put it to words, and I certainly never had. I think the truth was, I’d always felt terrified that if he did say anything, it’d mean the end of our relationship, which had always meant everything to me. Everything.
And now I could lose him anyway. “You want—”
“Nothing. I want nothing from you.”
“No, don’t do that. I want to be honest; I need you to be honest. You don’t want to have a causal thing with me, and my first instinct is to run, because I haven’t done anything deep when it comes to men. The deepest I’ve ever done is—”
“Cade.”
A fellow painter I’d dated for three months before finding him in bed with his roommate. For me, it’d been a passionate affair, and I’d mistaken lust for love. Hindsight was always twenty-twenty. “No.”
“Devlin, then.”
The Harley-driving bartender. I’d met him after I’d painted a mural in his bar. We’d burned hot and cold for a few months, before his intensity had scared me away. Well, that, and his habit of drinking himself into a coma at night. “No.”
“Then—”
“You,” I said, and drew a deep breath at that admission. “You, Kel.”
His startlingly blue eyes didn’t waver. “But we never mixed friendship with anything more.”
“But our friendship…it’s the deepest, most important relationship with a man I’ve ever had,” I admitted. “It’s why I’m afraid to screw it up by adding…”
“More.” He shoved his fingers through his hair, and turned in a slow, frustrated circle. “So you can’t give anything else, and I can’t take less. Hell of a place to be.”
Oh God. I was losing him. “Good things don’t last, Kel—”
“Bullshit.”
“Oh really?” I put my hands on my hips, not that he could see me. “What was the last relationship you had that lasted?”
“My relationships have all been good ones.”
“But none lasted,” I persisted.
He stared at me. “You’re saying what then? That you can sleep with a guy but not get to know him, or you can get to know him but not sleep with him?”
Well, when he put it like that, I sounded as crazy as my great-great-aunt Gertrude. “It’s made for some pretty limiting relationships,” I allowed.
“This weekend is a bit of a departure for you then. Sleeping with a good friend.”
“You knew it was.”
“So when I told you this was a bad idea…”
“I know.” I covered my face. “I’m sorry, but…”
“But what? You were just carried away? By my…what did you call it? Animal magnetism?”
He sounded frustrated and hurt, because that was the part of himself that he’d gained here, with the swap. Or so he thought. I was beginning to see he’d had it all along, though I had no way of proving that to him. “Kel—”
“No, it’s all right. I get it.” He went back to the Blackberry, jabbing at it a little harder than necessary.
“It has nothing to do with you,” I insisted. “It’s me, and my inability—”
“More BS.” He looked up, his eyes dark and full of temper. “You have the ability to do anything you want. Look, let’s talk about something that’s helpful, like how to access some info—Well. Look at that…”
“What?”
“Did Gert ever e-mail you?”
“No, I doubt she even knew how.”
“Oh, she knew how.” He showed me the screen, which revealed e-mail files for Gert, Marilee and Axel. He opened Axel’s.
I stared at it for a moment as the ramifications fell into place. “But Axel said he didn’t know how to use a computer.”
“Read,” Kel suggested, and I turned the screen more fully toward me so I could.
To: Marilee
From: Axel
Subject: Trouble
Gert was right. Her niece e-mailed me from the Web site, and has called several times. She’s coming.
To: Axel
From: Marilee
Subject: Trouble
Be ready. And remember your part.
Kel pulled up the reply.
To: Marilee
From: Axel
Subject: Trouble
I know my part. Be the stoner. It’ll be fun, delving into my past.
A smiley-face emoticon came after this, animated and bouncing up and down.
To: Axel
From: Marilee
Subject: Trouble
It wasn’t so in your past.
To: Marilee
From: Axel
Subject: Trouble
Fair enough. Don’t worry, I won’t regress.
To: Axel
From: Marilee
Subject: Trouble
Let’s just do this. Show the place off, and then get her to go back to L.A. Then things can continue status quo. I like status quo, Axel.
To: Marilee
From: Axel
Subject: Trouble
Status quo, and all that it implies, works for me.
To: Axel
From: Marilee
Subject: Trouble
Implies?
To: Marilee
From: Axel
Subject: Trouble
You know, the you-wanting-me thing.
To: Axel
From: Marilee
Subject: Trouble
Oh, delusional one. I do not want you.
To: Marilee
From: Axel
Subject: Trouble
You’re such a beautiful liar.
To: Axel
From: Marilee
Subject: Trouble
Stop e-mailing me.
And he must have, because there were no more e-mail messages in the file. Kel clicked on Gert’s file.
/>
To: Marilee
From: Gert
Subject: This weekend’s guests
This weekend’s guests are Serena and William, regulars, as you know. Are we ready?
“What did Marilee reply?”
Kellan looked, but eventually shook his head. “I don’t think she did before Gert died.”
“They all talk about this swap thing like…like it’s normal,” I said unevenly. “And what the hell happened? How did we become the unwitting hosts? They can’t just do that.”
“But they did. Look at this one.”
To: Gert
From: Perry Dickenson at All Travels
Subject: 4 stars!
Once again your B&B has been nominated for Favorite Alt-Uni Mini-Vacation. It’s also been upgraded from a 3-star to a 4-star destination. Congrats, and keep up the good work!
I stared at it. “Alt-uni?”
“No idea,” Kellan said, then combed through some other files. “Huh. Look at this. It’s labeled Alt-Uni: Rules.”
Iron-clad rules, punishable by banishment:
• No swapping with unsuspectings.
• No stealing of abilities.
• No swapping for longer than three days.
• Pirates are to be shot on sight.
I gulped hard. “Pirates.”
Kellan scowled. “Unsuspectings.”
“Shot on sight. What the hell is that?”
Kellan slipped an arm around me and shook his head. “Really don’t know. And really don’t like not knowing.”
“It’s like we’re in some Harry Potter world. And I want out.”
“Where is everyone? Can you see?”
I focused, then felt my heart kick hard. “I don’t see anyone. Nothing moving at all.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, but why?” Panic filled me again. What was happening to the others? Were they okay? Damn, I was so darn tired of the fear. “Kel, maybe we should make a run for it.”
“Where to?”
Good point.
“We’re better off waiting for dawn,” he continued, running a hand up my arm, his eyes peering through the dark in my general direction. “Serena said they’d have to leave then.”
“Can you see me at all?”
“Not so good,” he admitted, and let his fingers do the walking, stroking my jaw, my cheeks, wiping away a tear I hadn’t even realized I’d shed.
“Hey,” he murmured, tugging me with him as he sank into the closest piece of furniture, a high-backed Victorian couch. Dust rose, enclosing us, and Kellan sneezed a few times “We’re going to be okay,” he promised, his hands staying on me.
Which was good. I liked that part a lot. With his hands on me, and the dark all around us, the adrenaline and fear turned into something else as I snuggled up to him on that dusty couch. “Kel?”
“Yeah?”
I slipped a leg on either side of him, straddling him.
He went completely and utterly still, only his face lifting to mine. “What are you doing?”
“Well…” I’d been kind of hoping he’d know. “Looking for comfort, I guess.”
“Feels like more than that. And anyway, didn’t we just do this?”
“Again.”
“Rach,” he said cautiously, and set the Blackberry aside. The screen went dark, robbing him of even that small bit of light. He blinked like an owl.
“You really can’t see anything?”
“Nothing.”
“Hmm.”
His voice went even more cautious. “This is not going to happen.”
“Work with me here.” I loved the look on his face, that wary arousal. “It made us feel better before, remember?” I leaned forward, and he put his hand out to feel exactly where I was, coming in accidental contact with my breast.
“Damn it,” he said, and yanked back.
I took his hands and put them on my hips.
“Rach.”
I loved it when he said my name like that, as if I was both torturing him and yet was his next breath of air. “I’m just taking us back to where we were at the guest house, before we were interrupted.”
“We were not doing this.”
“No, but I wanted to be.”
“Yeah, but—Oh God.”
I’d leaned in, and because I was straddling him, the movement brought us flush together in a specific spot that had him breaking out an oath and me sucking in my breath.
I wriggled a little bit, just to get even closer. A rough sound escaped him, and I think I heard him grinding his back teeth into powder.
“You’re wrong,” he said in a tight voice. “We were not going here. Not again.”
I leaned down and kissed him, making a liar out of him, when his arms came up and surrounded me, holding tight, as if he didn’t want to let go.
As if maybe he didn’t want to ever let go.
Chapter 19
“T his is not going to happen just because we’re here alone,” Kellan said into my hair.
I held him tight. “How about terror? Can it happen because of the terror?”
“No.”
“Okay.” I tightened my legs on him. “How about in case we die?”
He groaned. “We’re not going to die, damn it.” His arms gathered me in even closer, and he buried his face in the crook of my neck.
God, I loved the feel of that, his rough jaw skimming over my tender skin, his mouth pressing against my throat, tasting me as if he couldn’t help himself. I loved the feel of his body, all six feet two of lean hard muscle and hot libido. Plus he had this way of moving, sort of like a cat, at least when he could see. Had he always moved like that? Hard to believe I’d never noticed…
And then there were those liquid, sky blue eyes, or how about the coup de grâce, that always, no matter whether we’d been lost in the woods, flying in a tin can or just plain running from unknown bad guys, he always smelled warm and sexy and one-hundred-percent pure, yummy male?
Slipping my fingers into his unruly hair, I held his head close. In reply, he kissed my throat, then my jaw, while his hand, low on my spine, urged me even closer. He felt so good against me, and I turned my head so I could nibble at the corner of his sexy mouth.
His fingers curled into the back of the sweatshirt I wore. “I no longer have enough blood in my brain to make a rational decision here. Rach…” he said when I tightened my fingers in his hair.
I kissed him, and he responded, and in that moment, all alone with him like this, adrenaline flowing, fear wild, there was nowhere else I’d rather have been.
Kel made a low, rough sound in his throat again, the one that said he had to be inside me, buried deep, now. Yesterday. Then he lifted his head, his eyes revealing everything he felt, all the pent-up need warring with careful restraint. “You’re killing me.”
Because he loved me. He loved me, and I knew it. The knowledge bathed me, and something deep within me opened to it for the first time.
“Jesus.” His laugh was wry as his hands came up to my hips, rocking them to his most impressive hard-on, which was nestled nicely between my legs. “I’m like Pavlov’s dog with you. Touch me—hell, just look at me—and I get hard.”
I leaned forward and kissed his jaw, then nipped the same spot. “Love me,” I whispered against his mouth, running my hands up and down his tense arms, taut with strength and quivering with rigid control, which I intended to shatter. “Please love me, Kel.”
With a groan, he kissed me deeply, thoroughly, until I curled, warm and totally aroused, around his body, feeling the sensual pull of his mouth, of his hands as they ran restlessly up and down my back.
Straightening, I pulled off the sweatshirt, then let the straps of my camisole top fall. The top slipped to my waist. Lifting his hands, I put them over my bared breasts, so he could tell in the dark what I’d done.
His fingers knew what to do, and in no time I was out of control, melting with desire, and needing him to get on with it. But he just kee
p kissing me, deep, melting, languid kisses, along with those slow, sure strokes of his hands over my ribs, my breasts.
“Rachel,” he breathed, as if I were something special, something to treasure. He slipped his hands down the back of my pj bottoms, tracing a finger over my thong, the long line of which he traced down, down, down…
“Still not doing this,” he said, panting a bit now.
“Okay.”
Oh, he was wrong, so very wrong. In fact, if he stopped now, the very tips of his capable, long-fingered, work-roughened hands a fraction of an inch from where I needed them more than I needed my next gulp of air, it was possible I would cry.
“Look for them again,” he said.
“Huh?”
“The pirates. The others. Anyone.” He slid a finger beneath the thong. “Where are they?”
I tried to focus, barely managing it. “I—I don’t know.”
And another finger. “Look, damn it.”
Not easy, but I tried again. “I still don’t see anyone.” Reaching down, I pulled on the fly of his Levi’s. Pop.
Pop.
Pop.
I revealed a wedge of his tanned, taut, flat abs, and spread the jeans open as far as I could. Slipping my fingers inside, I found more hot, silky, smooth, hard flesh, and realized something I hadn’t realized in Gert’s office, because I’d already been too far gone then. “Commando, Kel?”
I could see his blush lighting up the night. “Yeah, uh, yeah.”
I let out a breathless laugh, and stroked him, loving the sound of pleasure it tugged from deep in his throat. His sexy eyes were at half-staff, the expression on his face an image I figured just might dictate my fantasies for a long time to come. “Maybe I’ll adopt the policy.”
A low sound rumbled from his chest as he continued to stroke those fingers over me. “Look again.”
“Kel—”
“Look.”
I tried to focus to do just that, but what I really wanted to know was how the hell he’d learn to touch a woman like that.
“Rach?”
“Still nothing,” I gasped, but then I couldn’t talk because he was doing things to the inside of my mouth with his tongue, to the inside of my body with his fingers…I wanted more, so much more. I wanted that tongue on my breasts, my belly…I wanted it all.
