Dangerous Attraction

by Susan Vaughan

  Never mind that he was as hard as one of those logs and aching with need. Never mind that some forgotten organ in his chest raced with joy merely at the closeness.

  Warm.

  She’d feared she’d never be warm again. In a drowsy half-asleep state, Claire smiled, luxuriating in the quilt’s heat.

  Even her pillow radiated heat. It was summer and hot coffee and a wood fire all in one. She wriggled in the delicious warmth, propped her head higher on the firm pillow, and curled her leg over—

  Quinn!

  Sound asleep on his back, his head turned toward her, he slept on. It was his hard arm, not her pillow, that cradled her head, and his jeans-clad leg beneath her bare one.

  Then she remembered.

  The woodpile. Alley.

  Twice in one day she’d nearly died. Trapped beneath the heavy wood, she’d called and called for help, but the same trees that sheltered the yard muffled her cries. Finally, Alley had appeared from the darkness to whine at her and lie on her hands. The intense cold and ceaseless shivering had metamorphosed into a dreamlike limbo, where she’d stayed until Quinn had rescued her.

  Carefully, stiffly, she slipped off the bed. On the way to the bathroom, she noticed the empty chaise. During the night, Alley had gone to her own bed in the kitchen.

  With every movement, muscles and flesh protested. A paint palette from head to toe, she bet, but she didn’t want to look yet. After brushing the worst tangles from her hair, she returned.

  Gray light through the window told her dawn approached. She ought to dress and go brew coffee. But instead, she crept back into bed to watch Quinn sleep. Breakfast could wait.

  As soon as she lay down, he rolled toward her, throwing his left arm across her waist. She stifled a groan at the impact on her bruised body, then gradually relaxed again into the luxury of his loose embrace. She couldn’t move now, could she? Not without waking him.

  In sleep, his chiseled features looked if not softer, less hard-edged. A wave of chestnut hair fell across one eyebrow, and his firm yet sensuous mouth was only inches from hers. If she pressed her lips to his, would he awaken?

  Would he recoil or would he kiss her back?

  What would it be like to make love with this man? He distrusted her, didn’t even like her, but he did desire her. So in control most of the time, would he lose that restraint in passion? Heat pervaded her groin at the images that thought conjured. Sweat-slick skin…his hard body covering her…his hands, his lips on her sensitive flesh….

  With Quinn, she imagined sex would be neither sweet nor subdued, as it had been with Jonathan and Paul. Emotion and need steeped inside him in a volatile brew, ready to boil over in erotic greed.

  Impossible. She shouldn’t think like that.

  She didn’t want to love him. She didn’t want to plunge from soul-deep, piercing intensity to tender warmth and back again or to feel such fierce need to be with him and protect him, such giddy pleasure at just gazing at his stubborn jaw, such erotic sizzle that blistered her from the inside out. No, she didn’t want to love like that.

  Edges of white gauze peeked around the side of his head. Someone had bandaged his injury.

  Tears burned at the reminder of danger. Despite that, he’d stayed to protect and care for her. For his own safety, he should leave. She loved him. Did that alone doom him?

  What was she going to do?

  “No…no…can’t be true,” Quinn mumbled. In the throes of a nightmare, his shoulders flexed and his legs twitched. “Not Amy…Amy. No! No!”

  Claire reached out to place a steadying hand on his shoulder. He thrashed, and then stilled.

  His eyes flew open in a wild and disoriented gaze. He lifted his arm and threaded fingers through his tousled hair.

  “It’s okay, Quinn,” she said. “You were dreaming.” A pang of jealousy pierced her. Who was Amy? What had she meant to him? What had happened to her?

  Pain contorted his features. Then the shadow of his nightmare vanished, and awareness sharpened his eyes. And when his gaze scanned her, heated male hunger.

  “I think I must be still dreaming, if you’re in bed with me.” He settled his arm across her and gathered her closer.

  “Are you all right?” he asked, suddenly solicitous.

  Not too sore for what she needed. What they needed. “I’m okay. A little stiff.”

  She wanted him more than she would have thought possible. It was dangerous. It was wrong. But he completed her. He understood her. She needed him. She needed his strength, his honor and his humor. Just this once, for today, she wouldn’t think of all the reasons not to love him. Except— “Yesterday you hated me. You said I’d set the bomb.”

  He wrapped his square fingers in her tangled hair. The corners of his gray eyes crinkled with contrition. “We barely escaped being blown to atoms. I was afraid and confused. I know it wasn’t you.” A callused finger trailed across her cheek, leaving searing tingles in its wake.

  “You? Afraid and confused? Impossible.” When his rough thumb glided over her lower lip, she kissed it, and her insides liquefied.

  “How about in a daze from a slight concussion? I have fifteen stitches to prove it.” He angled his head to display the expanse of bandage. “Doc said my hair protected me, or it could’ve been worse. Guess I’ll leave it long.”

  Breasts straining with need against his hard chest, she laced her fingers behind his muscular neck. “If I haven’t already said so, thank you for saving me yesterday—twice.”

  “Can we talk about this later?” His eyes darkened, and his voice grew raspy with desire.

  Molding perfectly to her mouth, his lips found hers for a sensuous kiss. His tongue tested the texture inside her lips, swept across her teeth, caressed her tongue. With a sigh, she gave in to the primal thrill of his hot taste.

  He wanted her as desperately as she did him. He treated her like a desirable woman, not a doll or a goddess, and she was on fire for him, body and soul. Now was the time for bold abandon, not modesty or restraint.

  “Oui,” she agreed breathlessly against his mouth. Disengaging herself, she slipped her nightgown off over her head. Then she undid the clasp of her bra and removed it. “My fingers work fine now. No more clumsiness from cold. In fact, I feel positively overheated.”

  Ardor shimmered between them, a palpable entity.

  “Stop talking, babe,” he said. His moist lips brushed her nipples, teasing each in turn to a hard pebble.

  “I have just one more thing to say, Michael.” She could barely find breath to speak.

  A sigh. “Mmm?”

  “Joyeux Noël.”

  Chapter 8

  “Merry Christmas to you, too,” Michael murmured. The reality of what was happening dashed the remnants of sleep from his swimming brain.

  He lifted his head from nuzzling her lush breasts. “Are you sure you want this, Claire? Gratitude would be misplaced. Hell, if I’d stayed with you, you wouldn’t be hurt now.”

  Her lips rosy and swollen from his kisses and her doe eyes filled with desire, she said, “Maybe, but who knows what else might have happened? I’ve fought this attraction since we met. I don’t want to fight it today. Let’s say it’s a Christmas gift to myself.”

  “And to me.”

  She ran her soft hands over his torso while he struggled with his T-shirt and jeans. Damn, as never before, he ached to possess this woman, to touch and taste her every way a man could love a woman.

  He tossed back the bedcovers from her creamy-skinned curves. “No secrets, Claire. I want to see you.”

  As he’d visualized, her body was beautiful, sensual and alluring. A sigh escaped him as his hands covered her plump, round breasts, not large but perfectly proportioned to her figure. Slender but womanly, not model-thin.

  He took possession of her provocative mouth again in a hot kiss that hardened him to desperation. He let his hands glide over her curves, down the firm satin of her belly, along the silken slopes of her hips, to the heated secret
s of her woman’s body.

  “You’re so soft, Claire. Wanting to touch you like this was making me crazy.”

  Her answering murmurs of passion, her herbal scent, and the hot honey taste of her mouth rocketed urgency through his body. When his fingers probed her moist folds and tight depths, she whispered his name, her breath sweet fire against his mouth.

  “Open for me, Claire. I want to be inside you.”

  “Yes, now, Michael.”

  When she flinched at the press of his arms around her, the memory of her injuries slammed him back from the edge. It angered him that he’d been so out of control, so blind with passion that he would have hurt her.

  “I don’t know if we can do this.” His fingers combed through her long curls and massaged her scalp.

  “There’s protection in the bottom drawer,” she said, apparently misunderstanding his restraint.

  “It’s not that,” he said, stroking the lower curves of her breasts. “I don’t want to hurt your back, your bruises.”

  She smiled, her dark eyes luminous with arousal. “And your head.” She bent to swirl her scalding tongue around one nipple, sending flames over his skin. “I’m sure with a little creativity, we can manage.”

  As if to emphasize the point, her warm hand closed around his rigid shaft. Shock waves coursed through him in bombshells of pleasure-pain that mocked his control.

  “The…bottom drawer, you said,” he ground out between clenched teeth and reached for the bedside stand. With passion-clumsy fingers, he grabbed a foil packet from a small box.

  “Let me,” she said. Chocolate eyes darkened to sable, she kept her gaze on his as she ripped the foil and sensuously slid the condom on his nearly exploding organ.

  The blood thundered in his head. “Claire!” She was lightning striking him, searing his body and scorching him to his soul.

  He burned for her. Only for her.

  Caging her with his arms, he twisted across the satin-sheeted bed so he lay on his back, his injured head projected over the edge.

  She let out a little gasp of surprise, seemingly bewildered at the position. Then she straddled his hips and with agonizing leisure took him deep into the torrid tightness of her body.

  He stroked the straining muscles of her thighs, then held her hips in place. She moaned and gripped his arms.

  Shuddering with the sheer joy of being inside her, part of her, he vowed to make it last.

  In tandem, they moved, rocked in an ancient rhythm as if they had always been together, forged as one. The power and perfection of their union awed him.

  He brought her down for a thorough kiss that staggered them both. She sighed, then arched back and, curls flying around her in a wild mahogany cloud, rode him with a frenzy that matched his own.

  The ultimate spark sizzled within him, effervescent in his veins, building, building…. He heaved and bucked, his pleasure building to the inevitable, then stiffened, poised on the edge.

  He slid his hand between them to stimulate her sensitive nub. At last, he felt the shimmering contractions deep in her body. “Oh, yes, Claire, yes!”

  Low, gasping moans and French words he couldn’t distinguish shuddered from her lips as the climax took her. When her inner muscles spasmed around him, he convulsed in an explosive cataclysm, joining her with the white-hot fireworks of his own completion.

  Collapsing on his chest, she kissed his throat. “Mon Dieu, I never knew it could be like that. I never knew.”

  It had never been like that for him, either—this frenzied ecstasy to oblivion, the tingling aftershocks, the heavy pounding of his heart.

  The need to possess.

  He didn’t want to examine or question his feelings now. All he wanted to do was hold her. They rested that way for endless moments. Separating their bodies, he held her gently and rolled to his side.

  Claire’s brain slowly swam up from the swirling opulence of sensation and emotion. Beyond merely pleasant, this was elemental linking. With the primal connection of their bodies, she’d reveled in his power and potency, in the currents swamping her with each thrust, driving them both to an overpowering culmination.

  How wonderful to yield to her own sensual nature—and his. To enjoy each other’s passion fully.

  To love.

  This love she felt for Michael came so unexpectedly, not a soft and comfortable warmth but an edgy and frantic emotional flight, full of voluptuous need and giddy ache. Warmth and companionship existed, too. A happiness she had never experienced radiated through her as they lay curled together, their legs and arms entwined, with the scents of love and each other mingled on their skin.

  At last, up close, she could look and touch her fill. Michael was Rodin’s Thinker, broad and heavily muscled like a boxer. Beneath whorls of coarse hair rock-hard pectorals banded his chest. In repose, his shoulders bulged with solid sinew. Not a body-builder’s exaggerated musculature, but solid as if from hard work. So strong he’d lifted her easily atop his body, and she was no doll.

  Too curious for further restraint, Claire said, “Do you lift weights? How did you become so…?”

  “Muscle-bound?” His self-deprecating grin softened his hard-edged features and warmed her heart.

  Muscle-bound? No. He was as much a deep thinker as Rodin’s subject. “You said it. Not me.”

  He dropped a kiss on her forehead. “You could say the body type runs in the family. Even in his sixties, my old man is still a tough Mick.”

  “Genetics can’t account for it all.”

  “You’re not going to drop this? To help pay for college, I worked on the docks in Boston.”

  “A stevedore? Is that what they call them?”

  He nodded. “Summers and weekends during the school year, I tossed around boxes and crates. Now I lift weights in a gym to keep fit.”

  “So you can protect clients like me.”

  A shadow of emotion darkened his expression. Jaw muscles taut, he said wryly, “Not protect. I’m an investigator, not a bodyguard. I didn’t do you much good yesterday.”

  Something had happened that continued to torment him, to weigh him down with guilt. Whatever it was, Claire would bet it involved the mysterious Amy of his dreams. Now was not the time for serious discussions.

  “You’ve been alone a long time.” He nodded toward the bedside stand. “Yet you have those—”

  Mortification heating her face, Claire pushed away from him to no avail. She might as well launch Gibraltar into space. “Paul’s! Those were Paul’s.”

  Amusement quirked one corner of his mouth. “They’ve been there five years?”

  “And why not?” Acting offended was impossible when entwined with a large naked man. Her reason for not throwing them out was silly. “I…thought the trash men might make jokes at my expense.”

  His roar of laughter skipped silvery tingles through her veins. When they’d first met, she was certain he never even smiled. He cupped her chin and kissed her softly.

  “I believe you, though you’re full of contradictions. As brave as you are, living here and throwing the murder accusations back in everyone’s faces, you still care what people think of your morals.”

  “I’m not promiscuous.”

  “I never thought you were. In spite of two marriages, you’re…inexperienced.”

  His skimming finger left a track of sparks around each breast and down her belly. “But hot. Definitely hot.” He lowered his mouth to hers for a slow, steamy kiss.

  When they came up for air, she murmured, “A hot babe? You called me that once.” The way he said it now, the term didn’t seem demeaning. She preferred it by far to being a remote object of worship.

  As she slid her leg up and down his thigh, she felt his arousal hot and hard against her groin. Liquid heat pulsed within her. She heard the rip of another foil packet.

  “I was right, babe—” he drew her leg higher across his hip and slipped inside her “—as long as it’s me you’re hot for.”

  “Aah…bur
ning.”

  Later that evening, Michael sliced tomatoes for their salad. Fresh vegetables didn’t last long on his winter camping trips, so while in civilization, he considered them essential. They were finally going to eat the Yule log cake and that mouthwatering pork pie she’d made for Christmas Eve.

  Claire reached around him to snatch a carrot strip. He grabbed her hand and kissed it before pulling her into his arms for a more thorough embrace. Heat licked through him from every pulse point, from every touch of skin. His need for her was insatiable, like an all-consuming wildfire.

  “All this for stealing a carrot? In that case I may turn to a life of crime.”

  It was too close to the truth for him to laugh, but her sensuous smile tempted him to drag her upstairs again. He’d never felt such connection, such fulfillment. Had never wanted just to hold and be held like that.

  She’d revealed the reasons for her inexperience. Farnsworth and Santerre hadn’t looked past the beautiful facade to the beautiful inside. They were fools. She was a passionate and enthusiastic lover.

  If it hadn’t been for the animals, they would have made love until neither one could move. But Alley’s pitiful whine at midmorning had reminded them the dog needed to go out and the kitten needed food.

  Even though it was Christmas morning, Michael had driven to CID headquarters to report the attack and to check on the bomb analysis. Results could have taken days, even weeks, but they’d gotten lucky. Most of it he could share with Claire, but for now he wanted only the pleasure of her company.

  For him, for this day, she abandoned her widow’s weeds in favor of a clingy pink sweater. The way her black leggings displayed her spectacular legs, he didn’t even mind their color. In the afterglow of sex, she appeared even more beautiful, her complexion flushed and luminous, her vibrant spirit free of defenses.

  “I know it’s not funny,” she said, running her index finger across his furrowed brow, “but these days, gallows humor is all I have.”

  He did laugh then and released her.

  “Before we eat,” she said, arranging their dinner on a tray, “tell me what you learned this morning. I don’t want my Christmas dinner spoiled with detecting.” She folded each napkin precisely around the silverware.