Something he’d been wanting to do for a while now. “I think I’d better leave.”
“If that’s what you want...” Kelly’s voice trailed off. The expression in her eyes, however, told him to stay.
“What I want?” It wasn’t even remotely what he wanted. “No, but it’s what I should do.”
She disregarded his last sentence, focused instead on the feeling that was all but vibrating between them. “What do you want?” she asked in a soft, low voice that all but undulated along his skin. Making him feel hot.
“Kelly,” he began, searching for the right words of protest that his conscience dictated he should utter.
She stopped him right there. “Right answer,” she told him. Her smile was warm and inviting.
And he was a man who desperately needed to warm himself, to feel as if he was wanted. Still, he had to make sure she understood what was at stake. “Kelly, if I stay there’s no turning back.”
“Who says I want to turn back?” she asked, her lips flittering along his face, leaving small whispers of kisses to mark their passage.
Kane felt his gut tighten, felt a longing pervade his entire body. A body that was responding to her with mind-blowing speed.
“You should,” he told her, his voice low.
“Convince me,” she whispered, her very breath teasing him.
Undoing him.
Kane took her into his arms and kissed her. Kissed her as if his very existence depended on it. Kissed her as if this was the moment he was born for.
He didn’t recognize himself. For as long as he could remember he had been restrained, his every move calculated, mentally rehearsed before it was ever executed. He’d never once just flown by the seat of his pants, not knowing what he was about to do until he was doing it.
But this—and this woman—demanded a whole different frame of reference, different parameters than anything he was accustomed to, anything he’d ever done before.
The way she responded, the way she made him feel, the way her mouth moved both beneath his and along his skin, just set him on fire. Made him want with such intensity that everything except for her became a blur. She was his beginning, his middle and, most likely, his end.
And he didn’t care.
Didn’t care that he wasn’t the one calling the shots, didn’t care that at this very moment he was a virtual prisoner of these very demanding needs. As long as she was in his arms, that was all that mattered.
* * *
Pandora’s box.
That was what she’d opened, Kelly realized. And instead of demons, as the old fable went, what she had wound up releasing was a whole different side of herself. A side that she had never suspected existed.
Her heart was pounding and she felt almost primitive in her needs, her desires. It didn’t matter. All that mattered was this moment, this man.
Clothes went flying.
It wasn’t an orderly process, one garment at a time with each of them moving tantalizingly slow. It was more of an immediate response. Clothing was in the way, so it was ripped aside.
The need to touch and be touched all but overwhelmed her.
And the moment he did touch her, the moment he passed his hands possessively over her, Kelly felt an inner explosion, the first of several that would follow, each astonishingly greater than the last.
Her head began to reel.
Biting back a moan, Kelly struggled to give as good as she got, to make him as much her prisoner as she was his.
The thrill of his hard body moving along hers, teasing her, tantalizing her, driving her crazy, almost drove her over the edge, but she managed to hold that last little bit of her in check until she was certain he was primed and ready and unable to keep from taking her any longer.
They were a tangle of limbs, somehow moving from the sofa—when had they reached that?—onto the floor.
Each movement, each new angle, was marked by myriad passionate kisses, all played against a backdrop of pounding hearts and racing pulses.
She arched against him as he kissed the hollow of her throat, worked his way down to her breasts, her quivering belly and then to the very core of her. A cry of sheer ecstasy escaped her lips before she could press them closed. Before she even knew what was happening.
It only seemed to incite him further.
And then, as they both grappled with the fringes of exhaustion, Kane drew his body over hers. Their eyes met and held.
Her adrenaline reached an all-time high.
The next moment Kane entered her and the last bastion was breached. The inner rhythm that ensued found them both, urged them on up to the final pinnacle.
Fireworks went off, touching the sky before raining down on her, and from the way she heard Kane breathing heavily, she had not been the only one caught in the shower.
She felt Kane’s muscular arms tighten around her as the last sensation seized him in its grip before retreating.
Kane’s heart pounded against hers, pounded so hard until every drop of energy left her body. Kelly closed her arms around him, absorbing him, loving him.
Scaring herself. But in a good way, she couldn’t help thinking, trying not to panic.
“So what else can I get you?” Kelly whispered against his ear.
Kane pushed himself up with his hands, feeling as if this was some sort of a strangely erotic push-up. He looked at her incredulously. His serious face dissolved as laughter progressively grew louder and overtook him.
Deep, resonant and heartfelt, his laughter was infectious. Within a second, Kelly was laughing, too, until they were both wrapped up in it, in the sound and the feeling.
Rolling off her, Kane pulled her to him, unwilling to give up this unusual closeness he was experiencing just yet.
“I didn’t mean for that to happen, you know,” he told her.
Her eyes were dancing with mischief as she released a heartfelt sigh.
“If that’s what happens when you don’t mean it, warn me when you do mean it, because I’ll have to get my affairs in order.” Turning toward him, she saw the puzzled expression on Kane’s face. Without waiting for him to ask, she explained, “Because there’s no way I could survive anything of even a tiny bit larger magnitude than this. Actually, I barely survived this.” Propping herself up on her elbow, she watched him, her smile growing deeper and larger. Against all reason, she asked, “Wanna do it again?”
“You’re kidding,” Kane breathed. What was the woman made of?
“Wouldn’t there be laughter if I were kidding? I don’t hear any,” she told him. “Do you?”
Kane laughed then, softly, to himself as he shook his head. “You are really something else, Kelly. Give me a minute—no, make that five.” For reasons he couldn’t fully understand, he was beyond secrets, beyond embarrassment. That was the only reason he admitted, “You sapped all my energy.”
“Tell you what. I’m feeling generous. I’ll give you ten, as long as you go on holding me like this until you’re ready.”
She felt his smile against her cheek. Another wave of warmth unfurled within her. “You drive a hard bargain, but I think I can handle it.”
Kelly curled her body into his, thinking how right that felt. And trying to fathom why that felt scary, as well.
“I think you can handle anything that’s thrown at you,” Kelly said.
Except for you, he thought.
Kane toyed with her hair, wrapped a strand around his finger. There was something comforting about its silky feel against his flesh. “I’m not nearly as confident about that as you are.”
“You could have fooled me,” she told him.
Resting her head on his chest, she slowly traced small, concentric circles along his skin, allowing only her fingertips to graze his body lightly.
The lighter her touch, Kane realized, the more he responded—until all of him felt almost as hard as a rock. Certainly ready to go on another wild, exhilarating roller-coaster ride.
There were rules against this sort of thing happening. Department rules and, more importantly to Kane, his own rules. But being with Kelly like this, lost in intimacy, somehow made breaking all the rules the right thing to do.
He had to be out of his mind. There was no other explanation for it.
But that—and the rest of it—were things he would reexamine and deal with later.
Much later.
In the morning.
Right now his attention was focused on something entirely different. Something far more urgent than guilt or penance or confusion.
He wanted to make love with her again.
Pressing a kiss to her temple, he said, “I think I’m ready now.”
Her smile, so angelic before, was positively wicked now as she raised herself up ever so slightly, her eyes washing over him.
“I think you are, too.”
Chapter 17
His house was just as nice.
Nicer.
Definitely warmer looking and not nearly so blatantly ostentatious.
His mouth curved as he shook his head. There was no humor in his smile, he knew. The oversize house reflected the couple who lived inside it. It all but shouted: Hey, look at me. I’m rich and you’re not.
Twenty years and nothing had changed.
He’d harbored a hope that it had. But then, he supposed that despite his vast technical background, he’d always been a dreamer. Always hoped that tomorrow would be better than today. Hoped that once they all got together, there would be apologies. That was all he’d really wanted, an apology for their treatment of him in the past. Once he heard it, he could move forward, could forgive and could attempt to forget.
But there were no apologies. Not a single one. All he saw were the same sneering, condescending looks that had haunted him all those years ago. Back then, he’d used the humiliations to fire up his determination, to do what he’d had to do to become a respected man in his field.
To open doors that hadn’t been opened before.
Ironically, the condescension he’d encountered had made him strong, made him determined to be successful and make something of himself. He wound up building the software company he now helmed. Wound up being a respected man in his field. He’d done it all in the hope that the people who had belittled him, laughed at him, shunned him would realize how wrong they’d been to treat him that way. All in the hope they would attempt to make amends.
But that dream had crashed and burned five weeks ago. Nothing had changed. If anything, it had grown more intense.
He’d told himself that they were just jealous that he had made such strides, accomplished so much while they had done nothing more than aged.
But knowing that wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough.
He’d have no peace until he made them pay for what they had done. That meant hitting them where they lived. That meant taking from them that which they valued the most. Their possessions and their pride.
He couldn’t go home until he had the satisfaction of knowing he’d made them pay for all the countless humiliations, large and small, he’d been forced to suffer in those four long years so long ago.
He wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he allowed this last opportunity to just slip through his fingers. Those narcissistic bastards would never know what—or who—had hit them. But whether they knew or not didn’t matter. He’d know, and, in the long run, that was all that really mattered.
He’d been sitting out here since the sun had gone down. By his watch, he had another two hours to go. He wanted them asleep, too groggy to put up a fight until it was too late.
He was systematically going down the line, dealing with one jackass at a time, and he was almost finished. Just a few more pompous idiots to take down and he would be done.
Just a few more.
He glanced at his watch again and shifted in the car.
Just a few more, he silently repeated.
And that was worth waiting for.
* * *
She had always been a light sleeper. So when Kane attempted to quietly leave her bed hours later and get dressed, his effort was doomed from the start.
Kelly felt him stirring.
Opening her eyes, she saw that Kane already had managed to pull on his jeans. His shirt and shoes were in his hands and he was trying to tiptoe out of the room.
“You don’t have to go, you know.”
Turning around, he told her, “I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“It’s okay. But I meant what I just said. You don’t have to go.”
Kelly sat up, her hair cascading down around her bare shoulders. She looked, he couldn’t help thinking as desire overtook him, like some sort of a goddess—as well as his complete undoing.
Kelly tucked the sheet around herself, but her eyes never left his.
“Don’t worry, I’m not going to make you take me to the senior prom. And I’m not going to make an announcement to the world at large that we’re going steady. We’re both adults and we just enjoyed one another’s company. No big deal,” she told him, trying to keep her voice as light as possible because, to her, it really was a big deal.
But she intended to keep that to herself.
“Maybe it was a big deal,” he contradicted. Because she gave him so much space, he found himself wanting to decrease it.
“Maybe it was,” she agreed softly. Her eyes held his. His expression was impossible to read, but she went with her gut—and hoped ultimately she wasn’t going to regret it.
Less than a heartbeat before he leaned in to kiss her, their cell phones went off, ringing almost in harmony.
Kelly groaned. “Talk about bad timing...”
“The call—or us?” Kane asked.
The wicked look in her eyes was back. “I’ll leave that for you to figure out. Okay, okay,” she cried, addressing the last words to her phone. “I’m coming.”
It took a couple of minutes, but she managed to locate her phone beneath the pile of the clothing they’d shed much earlier. She picked it up. “Cavanaugh,” she said as she braced herself.
Kane already had found his cell phone and was talking to the person who had called him at what some might have considered an ungodly hour. But then, criminals didn’t keep regular hours.
For purposes of mental clarity, Kane knew he should have looked away from Kelly, who was on her cell talking to someone while she climbed back into bed, completely and unselfconsciously nude.
He felt his palms grow itchy, felt desire well up within him with a vengeance. He wanted her—and that was a bad sign.
Almost in self-defense, he turned away so that he actually could concentrate on what the person on the other end of the call was telling him.
Turning back around, he saw that Kelly’s call had already terminated and she was standing, dressed and ready to go. The woman was a regular whirlwind.
“That was fast,” he commented.
Her grin was almost impish, giving him a glimpse of what she must have been like as a girl. “I was one of seven and I grew up in a house with two bathrooms. Eventually, Dad had a third one put in, but because there were only two to begin with, I learned how to get ready really, really fast or risk having one of my brothers come barging in on me if I took too long.” She nodded at the cell he was still holding. “I take it that you got the same call I did.”
It seemed a safe enough assumption. “There’s been another identical home invasion.”
“Not so identical,” she contradicted as they went down the stairs and to the front door. “This time one of the home owners fought bac
k and wound up having to be taken to the hospital.”
“Sounds like the thief is upping his game,” Kane commented.
“Or had it upped for him,” she suggested. After swiftly arming her security system, she closed the front door and hurried to Kane’s car.
“How do you mean?” Kane asked.
“Sounds like the home owner either rushed our guy, or the home owner got loose and decided to fight back. Either way, there was a physical altercation. I have a feeling that the thief might have panicked.”
“Sounds like a possibility,” Kane agreed. “With luck we’ll know more once we question the home owners.”
“If we can question them,” she qualified.
Driving to one of the main thoroughfares, Kane gave her a quizzical look. “What do you mean? Why wouldn’t we be able to question them?”
“According to dispatch, when the owner fought back, the thief just started swinging, wound up shoving the owner. The guy stumbled backward, fell and hit his head on his marble coffee table. When the EMTs arrived, they found the victim unconscious and unresponsive.”
Kane’s frown deepened as he shook his head. “This is just sounding better and better,” he murmured under his breath.
Pressing down on the accelerator, he picked up speed. With little traffic at that time of night—or morning, depending on one’s point of view—they managed to make excellent time.
They arrived at the hospital within a few minutes. Because he was still unconscious when he had been brought in, the latest home invasion victim, Matthew Wallace, had been admitted to the hospital proper for extended observation.
Starting at the ER, Kane and she located the nurse who had ministered to Wallace’s wounds. “You just missed him,” the nurse told them. “They took him up to room 512. Take the tower elevators. They’ll get you there quickly.”
They followed the signs on wall. After a couple of twists and turns, Kane found the tower elevators.
“Maybe I should be dropping bread crumbs,” Kelly said.
“I’ve got a pretty decent sense of direction,” Kane told her. “I’ll get us back.”
How to Seduce a Cavanaugh Page 17
