“Valri?” Tiana asked, looking from one brother to the other.
“One of our sisters,” Duncan clarified before Brennan had the chance.
“You met her when you ‘brought’ me into the station. She was the one in uniform who gave me lip for not telling you who I was,” he reminded her.
She remembered now. However, maybe it was lack of sleep, but she felt suddenly overwhelmed and outnumbered. It felt as if there were Cavanaughs coming out of the walls.
“How many of you are there?” she asked.
“Too many to tell you about right now,” Brennan assured her. Getting out, he put his hand out to his younger brother. “Give me your keys. I’ll bring your car back in a few hours.”
“No problem,” Duncan answered, handing over a ring of keys. “You might want to fill it with gas if you get the chance,” he added casually.
“Nothing would give me greater pleasure,” Brennan answered sarcastically. Duncan had a bad habit of allowing gas tanks to become rather depleted when in his use.
“I know, that’s why I didn’t bother getting any before I came,” Duncan deadpanned. “I knew you’d want to be the one to do it.”
Rather than comment, Brennan turned his attention to the woman he’d been partnered with. The woman whose scent he’d been inhaling—with dizzying effects—these past twenty-four hours.
Opening the door on her side, he took hold of her arm. “C’mon, let’s get you back to the hotel,” Brennan coaxed, helping her out of the vehicle.
“The second you hear anything useful,” she instructed Duncan solemnly, “call.”
He nodded, knowing to keep a smile from surfacing. This wasn’t his first rodeo, but Duncan allowed the woman with his brother to treat him as if he were a rookie. “You have my word.”
“He’s reliable, right?” she asked Brennan after they left Duncan in the surveillance car and walked away.
“He might look more like a kid than a man,” Brennan told her, guessing at the source of her uneasiness, “but don’t let that fool you. Duncan’s extremely reliable. I wouldn’t have asked him to take over the stakeout for a few hours if he wasn’t. It’s not like he’s the only one available for the job,” he added.
He stopped by his brother’s vehicle and hit the security lock on the key ring. Four locks popped up simultaneously.
Tiana watched him over the roof of the sedan as she pulled the passenger-side door open. “Just how many do you have?”
He wasn’t quite sure what she was asking. “Brothers? Or siblings?”
Getting in, she buckled up. “Siblings, I guess.”
His seat belt fastened, Brennan started up the vehicle. The engine quietly purred to life. “Three brothers, three sisters.”
She nodded in response to his answer. They pulled away from the curb, passing Duncan on the way back to their hotel. “Big family.”
He laughed at her comment. “You don’t know the half of it.”
“Tell me,” Tiana urged, curious what had made him laugh.
He recalled the recent changes in dynamics. He’d thought he had a large family before. Now it felt almost like being part of some kind of dynasty. Or a medium-sized town. Hell, there were towns around the country whose total populations were less than the number of people in his current family.
“Well, until recently,” he began, “I grew up with six siblings and fourteen cousins.”
“What happened recently?” She expected him to say something like that one of them had died, decreasing the numbers. She was definitely not expecting him to say what he did.
“Well, we found out that my late grandfather had an older brother and that there were a whole bunch of Cavanaughs out there—protecting and serving,” he quipped, “that we never knew about.” He grinned at her as he approached the hotel. “As a matter of fact, we’re still trying to get a handle on just how many more there are.”
“There can’t be that many.”
Brennan just laughed in response. “Oh, but there can.” He remembered the thought that had hit him when he arrived at that “welcome home” party for the former chief of the Aurora Police Department. “There’s enough of us to form our own army if we wanted to.”
“You’re kidding, right?” When he didn’t admit that she had him, Tiana looked at the man in the driver’s seat more closely. He wasn’t shifting in his seat or looking uncomfortable. “Right?” she pressed, beginning to think that maybe he actually was serious.
Brennan raised his broad shoulders in a casual shrug, then let them drop again. “If that’s what you’d rather think, then okay, I’m kidding.”
Obviously that was not the answer she was accepting because she realized that it wasn’t true. “There’s that many of you?” she finally asked. “The truth, now,” she cautioned. “I want the truth.”
“Uh-huh.”
Brennan heard her sigh to herself. There was something almost wistful about the sound.
His hunch was confirmed when he heard her murmur, “It must be nice.”
“Sometimes,” he agreed. “But when you’re growing up, there’re times when it really feels confining, like there’s always someone watching you, making sure you don’t screw up—even if you want to.”
They got out of the sedan as Brennan gave the hotel valet the keys. “Something tells me that being watched wasn’t exactly much of a concern for you.”
She had his number, Brennan thought with a laugh. They walked through the hotel lobby to the bank of elevators.
“Let’s just say I wasn’t really trying to impress anyone with my angelic behavior.”
Angelic was definitely not a word she would have used to describe the boy he had to have been. “Not even your mom?”
That made him think for a second. He pressed the button for the elevator. The doors opened immediately. “Well, I didn’t want to cause her any grief, but on the other hand, I liked being me.”
“Let me guess,” Tiana said as they rode up to his floor. “You liked being wild and free, right?”
He half nodded, then corrected, “I prefer calling it independent. Sounds more adult,” he explained.
She was trying to get a better understanding of the person she was working with. The person she was trusting with her sister’s life, not to mention the small but very real fact that she was becoming increasingly more attracted to him. “How old were you at the time?”
“Ten.”
Most ten-year-olds think an adult is something they want to avoid being at all costs. “Kind of young for an ‘adult,’” she commented.
“I was an adult-in-training if you prefer,” he quipped.
She laughed, shaking her head. “I really wish I’d known you back then.”
His eyes met hers. There went her stomach again, she thought.
“Likewise,” he told her.
His comment surprised her. “Why me?” she asked as they entered the suite.
Locking the door and putting the chain in place, Brennan turned to face her. “So that maybe I’d have a shot at keeping those frowns you’re so prone to at bay. So that maybe I’d have a chance at hearing your laughter without having the sound come across as being so guarded.”
She looked at Brennan, not knowing what to make of him. That he even noticed that about her was something she found surprising.
“And that’s important?” she asked skeptically.
“Yes,” he told her quietly, “that’s important.”
“Why?” she asked, wanting to be able to understand why he would feel that way.
Did he think of her as someone to be pitied? That had her back up, and yet she had a hard time actually believing that he would feel that way. He certainly didn’t act as if he found her lacking, and there was nothing condescending about his manner toward h
er.
“Because I think you’re capable of experiencing a great deal more happiness than you’re allowing yourself to feel.”
She sighed, shaking her head. She was a stranger to him, and anything he thought about her was just a guess on his part, nothing more. “You have no idea what I feel.”
“No, but I’m willing to listen to you if you’ll trust me enough to hear what you have to say.”
“Stop it,” she ordered. He was getting to her, making her feel as if she could open up to him, as if she could unburden herself, and she couldn’t. He wasn’t a regular, stable person in her life. He was just passing through. He’d be gone before she knew it. She couldn’t act as if he was a fixture, because he wasn’t. “You’re being nice to me again.”
“Is that what I’m doing?” he asked. Inclining his head, he said, “Sorry.”
“No, you’re not,” she insisted.
“Busted,” he replied, as both his eyes and his fingertips ever so lightly caressed her face.
Tiana pulled her head back—or thought she did. When she realized that she hadn’t, she knew that she was about to go somewhere she had never been to before.
And that place was called Trouble.
Chapter 14
Less than a heartbeat later, Tiana was undoing him with her lips. Small, butterfly kisses along the side of his neck that were impossible to resist and were, in effect, driving him utterly crazy.
“We really should use this time to sleep, you know,” he told her, though he wasn’t doing anything to stop her.
She had no idea what had come over her. It was as if some invisible elastic band inside her had just snapped and everything that had been held so tightly together no longer was.
“I know,” she murmured hoarsely, the words warm against his skin as she continued kissing him.
He should be holding her away at arms’ length, but he just couldn’t get himself to do it, no matter how much he knew he was supposed to be the one in control.
Still, he attempted to reason with her—or more accurately, with himself. “The human body only has so much energy. Once it’s gone and it’s not replenished, we might wind up falling down on the job.”
His words of reason fell on deaf ears—two sets of deaf ears because he wasn’t taking his own advice.
The more she kissed him, the more excited she became—especially when she heard his breathing become ever so slightly labored. The fact that she was having an effect on him was incredibly heady for her—she’d never been down this trail before.
“Can’t do that,” she agreed, paying strictly lip service to his display of common sense.
Unable to continue being merely the recipient, Brennan began tracing the same sort of trail along her neck and throat that she had initiated on his. “So we stop?”
She shivered as his breath literally created goose bumps along her skin.
“Yes. But in a minute,” she qualified with effort. The words were not coming easily. “We stop in a minute.” Tiana’s mouth covered his—just for a second she promised herself. “Maybe two.”
“Or five,” he agreed, reclaiming her lips. The kiss went deeper than the ones before, leaving a promise of something more to come.
“Sounds like a plan,” Tiana said with a heartfelt sigh that came from the bottom of her toes even as her adrenaline went into overdrive.
Brennan stopped feasting on the skin along her shoulders and throat and looked at her.
“Venus?”
Her head was swimming and she found it increasingly difficult to concentrate. “Hmm?”
“Stop talking.”
She smiled into his eyes. “You, too.”
“Deal,” he whispered, his breath skimming along the skin just above her breasts.
And then there was no need for words, no place for them, either. They were completely blotted out by the deeds that followed.
Her pulse racing, Tiana felt as if she had to outrun her thoughts, the thoughts that told her that this was no time for something like this to be happening. That she needed to keep her mind focused, not utterly, hopelessly enthralled the way it was at this moment.
But her feelings were so hard to ignore, especially since she had finally given up all hope of ever feeling like this. She’d wanted to, tried to, then resigned herself to the fact that there was just something broken inside her. That because of her harsh upbringing, she was never going to even remotely think that she was in love or even some reasonable facsimile thereof.
She would never feel that wild rush that would make her throw caution to the winds just to become intimate with a man.
In pursuit of this precious sensation, she had pushed herself to the brink a couple of times, only to pull back and run before anything of consequence happened. For that, she’d been called a tease and worse, subjected to a volley of hurtful words and left to wonder what was wrong with her.
Why couldn’t she feel what other women claimed to feel?
So she had come to the realization that the magic others claimed so vocally had entered their lives was never going to be part of hers. She’d given up and told herself it was okay, that she didn’t care. She had her work and she had Janie and eventually, Janie would get married. Janie would have a family and she would share that with her sister, be happy for her sister.
It was enough.
She’d almost made herself believe that.
And then suddenly, here, with this man, she realized that someone else’s happiness, even her beloved sister’s happiness, wasn’t going to be enough.
Wouldn’t begin to really fill the emptiness inside her.
But this, here with Brennan, would satisfy the ache that she’s always denied feeling. Or at least the satisfaction would be there for a little while. That was enough for now.
With that thought centermost in her mind, she gave herself up to the wild, thrilling feeling making its way throughout her entire being, revving up every single motor within her.
“Oh, baby, what is it? What is it?” Brennan asked, stunned at the sudden increase in pace and urgency of the way she was moving and making love with him.
One moment, they’d been teasing each other, grasping a little bit of happiness and salvation in a world filled with spirit-breaking burdens and responsibilities. The next, it seemed as if she had suddenly ratcheted up her pace, seeking to satisfy a suddenly unappeasable appetite.
Framing her face with his hands as he looked at her, Brennan asked, concerned, “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” she cried, pulling out of his hold and then feverishly kissing him as if she were afraid that the next moment, all this would just stop, vanishing into thin air.
“You’re breaking the pact,” Tiana accused. “You’re talking.”
Ordinarily, he’d just let himself enjoy what was happening, enjoy the sex, pure and simple. But he found himself more heavily invested than that with this woman, and what was happening went beyond a feverish frenzy of the blood.
Why?
Was she afraid they’d get a call in from Duncan and be forced to stop? He knew that was a possibility, but he also had a feeling that it might still be a while before Roland said or did anything that would make Duncan call them back to the hotel.
Something else was at the bottom of her behavior. But what?
“We can take this slow,” he told her, catching her hands as Tiana was about to drag his shirt off his torso.
“We don’t have time for slow,” she said breathlessly, trying to pull her hands free of his grip.
It was tighter than she thought.
Still holding her hands, Brennan looked into her eyes and said softly, “Yes, we do,” his voice low, gentle, as if he was trying to gain the confidence of someone who had been abused.
Now that h
e thought about it, he realized that he had gotten those kinds of vibrations from her more than once before.
It made sense to him now.
Someone had hurt her, possibly damaged her, and she was trying to outdistance her fears before they closed in on her and prevented her from enjoying what could be a very beautiful thing between two people who had feelings for each other.
“Trust me, Tiana,” Brennan assured her, “it’s better slow.”
She blinked, staring at him as his words registered. “That’s the first time you’ve actually called me by my name,” she pointed out, surprised.
A smile curved his mouth. “I was saving it for a special occasion,” he told her, lightly brushing his lips against the side of her neck. “Like this one.”
She melted, absolutely melted. Any possible hope she had of maintaining control completely dissolved.
Her eagerness, her desire to make love with him before something stopped her, was still there, but she let him set the pace, let him take the lead and show her exactly what it was that she had been missing all this time.
Brennan made love to her slowly, lyrically, with his hands, with his eyes and with his lips. They moved in concert from the front room with its sofa to the room behind it with its spacious queen-sized bed and comforter that whispered faintly of vanilla and lavender.
Her body heated quickly, her temperature rising another degree each time he kissed her, each time he touched her. Tiana could feel her body priming, wanting his.
Wanting him.
This time, as she increased her urgent pace, he was unable to keep her in check—mainly because he was having difficulty keeping himself in check.
This woman whom he found hard to read had tapped in to his control, his resistance. An area that was not subject to any of his usual restraints.
Brennan now experienced a heady and insatiable desire to make love with her, to become one with her. The more he tried to hold himself back, the greater the urgency to give her everything—all of his passion, all of his longing.
Naked and damp with sweat and desire, they tumbled onto the bed, touching, caressing, possessing, feeding their souls and draining any and all available energy, however little was still left.
Cavanaugh Undercover Page 16
