The words took a moment to penetrate, a moment to warm her from head to toe. Time seemed to slow as ice pellets peppered the windshield like blowing sand.
Seconds turned to minutes as her heart expanded with the knowledge that she wasn’t the passive doormat who’d married Rory or clung to Max in the hospital. She was tough and resourceful.
And Max saw her as his equal.
Then a bullet whistled through the broken window and plowed into the dashboard. Shards of hard plastic burst outward. One scored Raine’s knuckles, and the pain and the sight of blood sped everything up until the world was moving at normal speed again.
Then faster than normal.
A few hundred feet ahead, cars were stopped all across four travel lanes. The accident took up part of the slow lane and part of the breakdown lane, leaving a narrow gap between a dented Ford and the guardrail. The occupants of the two cars had moved things to the far side of the guardrail, where a small knot of people had clustered and appeared to be arguing over paperwork.
“Hang on!” Making a snap decision, the only one she could make, Raine stood on the brakes, slowed the truck to a crawl and dropped it into four-wheel drive while the sedan’s driver closed the gap with merciless speed. Then she hit the gas, slalomed between two slowing buses and changed lanes with mere feet to spare.
She aimed for the gap between the accident and the guardrail, leaned on the horn and prayed.
Other horns blared. Tires squealed, then stopped squealing as the moving traffic passed into the snow squall and the surface beneath the tires went from black to white. From traction to none.
Raine felt the truck skid and steered into the motion, hoping it would be enough. She heard Max fire three times in rapid succession. They were going nearly forty when she threaded the gap between the disabled car and the guardrail, fifty by the time she’d steered back into the travel lanes, where the other cars were creepy-crawling in the snow.
“Hang on, baby, hang on!” she chanted to the truck, feeling the wheels spin and bite.
Max aimed. Fired. And made a low sound of satisfaction. “Gotcha.”
Raine glanced in the rearview mirror just in time to see the silver car swerve across the two higher speed lanes, listing on a flat tire. It bounced off the Jersey barriers that separated the south and northbound lanes of I-95, and ricocheted back into the middle lane, directly into the path of a lumbering casino bus.
The bus clipped the sedan’s rear corner, sending it caroming back across the slower lanes. The car skidded sideways and fetched up against the guardrail, then was lost to sight as the highway curved and Raine and Max fled down the nearly empty road.
A few miles later, he pulled out the disposable phone. “Here goes nothing.” He punched in a number and waited, tension vibrating through his frame. After a moment, his breath whooshed out. “Ike. Thank God. Listen good and listen fast. I think they’re tracking the phones-I don’t know how, but the signal is compromised. Dump yours and run. Take the weekend away like you planned, but do it somewhere else. No reservations, no trail. Use cash. Leave me a hint at the usual place. And be careful.”
He ended the call, rolled down the window and tossed the phone.
“Ike can look out for herself,” Raine said, wanting to ease the grim expression on his face.
Without looking at her, he reached across the bench seat, took her hand and squeezed. “That’s right. And we’ll look out for each other. The Nine aren’t going to know what hit them.”
THEY DROVE ANOTHER HOUR in silence before Raine pulled the truck off the highway and into a crowded motel parking lot. “Are we ditching the truck or keeping it?”
“We’ll have to keep it,” Max answered. “I’m getting low on cash, and I don’t think we want to add grand theft auto to our laundry list. At least not until we’re sure what we’re dealing with.”
“Sounds like a plan.” Raine parked in a far corner, away from the lights, backing into the spot so the shattered rear slider wasn’t so obvious. “We should plan to be up and out before dawn tomorrow.” She grabbed the duffel bag out of the truck, tossed Max his jacket, pocketed the keys and slammed the driver’s door. “Let’s go check in.”
When he didn’t follow, she stopped and turned back. “Did I forget something?”
Snow feathered down between them, glowing orange in the sodium lights of the parking lot. The contrast made Max seem even larger and darker than he was, but rather than fear, the sight sent a bolt of warmth through Raine’s midsection, where it buzzed alongside chase-pumped adrenaline.
A slight smile touched his lips. “You trying to rescue me, partner?”
Something clicked in her chest, right beneath her heart, and suddenly it was so simple to cross to him, stand on her tiptoes and kiss him.
There was no withdrawal this time, only joy, and a feeling that now, finally, he needed something from her. Reassurance. Comfort.
Love.
They kissed as the snow coated the world around them and their bodies went from cold to warm.
That first moment of contact, of acceptance spun into endless minutes as he spanned her waist and slid his hands to the small of her back, then upward, trailing his fingertips over her ribs beneath the ratty brown jacket liner she still wore. She kissed him deeper, stroking her tongue across his, then mimicking the rhythm in the caress of her fingers on the hard planes of his chest.
She murmured his name. “Max.”
When they drew apart, they both knew it was only a temporary thing. And when they stopped at the desk, it was to rent a room with nearly the last of their cash.
One room. No discussion.
Chapter Twelve
When the hotel room door closed behind them, Max dropped the bag of sodas and snacks they’d bought at the gift shop in the absence of room service. He held out a hand to Raine.
Heat suffused her body and she crossed to him, knowing it was time. Their time.
They kissed, meeting as equals. Needing each other equally.
He drew away to look down at her with eyes that were dark, and full of fire and promises. Then he released her and stepped away, keeping only her hand, which he raised to his lips. He pressed a kiss to her knuckles. “The first moment I saw you, I thought you were the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen.”
The words carried an unexpected punch that caught her beneath the heart and wouldn’t let go.
She’d been complimented before. She’d been romanced. But she’d never been thoroughly undone by either.
Not until now.
Until Max.
On another night, with another man, she might have returned the compliment, or slid into the slow tug of desire when he touched his lips to her knuckles a second time. But it was this night with this man.
The man she loved.
The realization was painless, comfortable, as though it had been at the edges of her brain for longer than just this week, waiting for her to figure it out, for them to figure it out and find a way to meet, not as rescued and rescuer, but as partners.
I love you, she thought. She didn’t say it aloud, not yet. But she stepped into him, basking in his warmth, in the warmth they created together as she lifted her hands to the buttons of his flannel shirt, which was worn and torn from the trials of the past few days, but still soft against her skin.
He froze, barely breathing as she eased the buttons free, until the shirt hung open, baring a narrow strip of taut male skin, lightly dusted with wiry hair.
Then she looked up at him. “When I knocked at your apartment Tuesday evening, I was thinking about Thriller, and about how I was going to convince you to help me. Then you opened the door, looking just like you do now, and I thought…” She trailed off, throat tightening with the huge emotion of it, clogging to the point that she almost couldn’t breathe.
She halfway expected him to go with a quip, with the easy, shared laughter that would defuse a situation that had suddenly grown far heavier than she’d expected, far more serio
us than she was prepared for. Instead, he took her hands and twined their fingers together. “What did you think?”
“That I’d been stupid.”
“To leave Boston?”
She shook her head. “No, to think that I’d forgotten you once I did.”
He looked at her for a long moment, perhaps wondering if that was enough when it felt like too much. Then, as though he’d seen an answer she hadn’t meant to give, he nodded once, released her hands and shrugged out of his shirt.
A small sound escaped from between Raine’s lips at the sight of his bare chest, at the feel of his naked skin beneath her palms.
He kissed her, holding nothing back. She could feel it in the possessive stroke of his hands, in the hard press of his body against hers, centered desire to desire. She could taste his growing impatience, feel the rising heat that met and mated with the rhythmic pound of her blood, the deep-seated pulse in her core.
She was wet for him, weeping for him, aching in places that were familiar yet not, as though her sensuality had awoken from a long, torpid hibernation and was hungry and ready to feed on sex, on Max.
Only Max.
She traced the hard planes of his chest with fingers that trembled with urgency, and maybe a touch of fear. The burgeoning emotions were bigger than she’d expected, huger than she was prepared to face, but there was no turning back now.
Max’s skin was a warm slick over hard muscles that coiled and relaxed beneath her touch as he drew her closer, or maybe that was her moving, she wasn’t sure. All she knew was that they were wrapped together, twined together until it was difficult to tell where he left off and she began.
She broke the kiss to lay claim to the skin at his throat, which was faintly abrasive with his growing beard, faintly salty with the events of the day. He hummed his approval and dropped his hands to the hem of her shirt, easing it up and over her head so smoothly she barely lost contact with him.
Then it was all contact. Skin to skin. Heartbeat to heartbeat.
He unsnapped her bra and cast it aside, then stepped back until they were facing each other across the hotel room. He looked like a god, clothed in jeans below and nothing above. The dull light of a single lamp softened the planes of his face, making him look less fierce. More approachable.
All but his eyes, which were fixed on her with an almost frightening intensity.
Raine looked down at herself, at her breasts and the smooth skin of her belly. On any other day she might have flushed and tried to cover herself. But now, with this man, she stood fast and grew warm under his inspection. Then, inwardly amazed at her own boldness, she touched the button at the waistband of her tailored slacks. “I’ve thought of us doing this, too many times to count.”
At the flare of heat in his eyes, modesty fled. She toed off her boots, unsnapped the pants and slid them down over her hips, hooking her bikinis on the way down.
Max’s eyes followed her every move. He didn’t seem to be breathing.
Raine wasn’t sure she was, either, wasn’t sure she needed to. Oxygen didn’t seem nearly as important as chasing the sensations that flowed through her body like lava.
Naked, she stood for a moment, letting him look his fill, reveling in the tension that crackled between them. It lasted a moment. Two. Then he let out a low, reverent oath, crossed the room and took her.
That was how it felt, as though she were being taken. He swept her off her feet and carried her to the bed in an action that should have seemed foolish, but instead jammed her heart into her throat with excitement and an edge of fear that he might let her fall.
Then she realized it didn’t matter.
She’d already fallen.
On that thought, on that hit of hot, wild desperation, she turned her lips into his neck and nipped the soft spot where his pulse pounded in time with hers. He murmured something-her name perhaps-and shifted her in his arms so he could take her lips with his, take her under again as they dropped to the bed, twined together.
She rose above Max, naked while he remained half-clothed. Then she paused. “Oh, hell. We don’t have-”
He held up a finger. “Yes, we do. It’s not all snacks and soda in that gift shop.”
She grinned, bubbles of light froth and excitement expanding in her chest and bursting through her as she dropped from the bed, padded naked to the crinkling bag and extracted the small packet. Power spiraled through her. A sense of rightness.
This was right. No matter what came after, this was right for her. For them.
Riding on the high, she turned back with the thin box held between her thumb and forefinger. “You planning on a three-fer?”
She faltered when she saw that he was standing beside the bed, gloriously naked, supremely confident.
He was as heavily muscled and perfectly proportioned as she had imagined in her darkest, unacknowledged fantasies. But the whole of him was more than she’d pictured. More warrior-like. More masculine. And his proud, jutting flesh suggested that he was up for anything.
He held out a hand. “Come over here.”
She hesitated briefly as nerves tangled with needs inside her, then crossed the room and pressed the condoms into his hand. “I was hoping we’d end up like this.”
Part of her wished he’d say something about this being a beginning rather than an end, but no such assurance was forthcoming. Instead, he kissed her-a simple, closed-mouth kiss that quickly spiraled into something more, something larger than itself. Skin slid across skin, inciting delicious friction, torturous want.
She drew him down to the soft bed, or maybe he urged her down, she wasn’t sure anymore whose idea was what, she only cared that the kisses didn’t stop, the friction didn’t stop.
The heat built. Quiet was forgotten; gentle was lost to the inferno of passion as they strained together, twined together, kissing and nipping until Raine’s entire essence was steeped in him.
He said something on a low growl. The dark, almost violent sound of it pulled at her, inflamed her, called to something deep within her. She whispered his name in a demand, a plea, and parted her legs, wrapping them around him and rolling so they reversed to a position as old as humanity itself, with him atop her, his hard flesh nestled at the juncture between her legs.
The need pounded in her blood while he sheathed himself in one of the condoms and set the other two on the bedside table. Then he was back there with her, truly with her, focusing all his attention on her with a fierceness that might have been intimidating had she not trusted him.
But she trusted him. Hell, she loved him. So she opened to him, welcomed him, demanded him the way her body had been clamoring for his, ever since that first moment she’d knocked on his apartment door and been forcibly reminded of what she’d left behind in Boston.
At the time, she hadn’t understood. Now, as he slid into her on one graceful thrust of hard against soft, flesh against flesh, she finally did understand.
When she’d run from her hospital room, she hadn’t just left her job and a man who might have been her lover. She’d left a piece of herself behind. She might not have ever understood the enormity of it, the finality, except for one thing-
As he moved inside her, as he loved her, that piece was restored.
The beauty and power of it, the heat and the mad frenzy gripped her tightly. She might have struggled against the hold, except it was pulling her exactly where she wanted to be, down into the swirl of pleasure and sensation and flesh and Max, only Max, who waited for her at the center of it all.
Their eyes locked as surely as her legs gripped his hips and her hands anchored at his shoulders. She saw herself reflected in his dark irises, saw the flicker of candlelight and emotion. And heat. So much heat it nearly scorched her, burned through her like a nearing wildfire, increasing with every second.
Their bodies moved together with relentless rhythm, slowing down, then building as the sensations layered within her. But where always before Raine’s climax had turned her inward,
until she concentrated on that deepest core of herself, this time, the sensations radiated outward, encompassing Max, drawing him into her pleasure as it spiked and imploded, carrying her along with it.
No, she realized as her body pulsed and clenched around him and he groaned deep within his throat, within his soul as he emptied himself into her. The tidal wave of sensation wasn’t carrying just her along with it this time. It was carrying them. Together.
The tide built and crested, then just when she thought the ebb was inevitable, Max moved in a long, slow glide of flesh against flesh. Raine cried out in surprised pleasure and tightened around him once again, wringing a groan from him. Her name perhaps, or a prayer.
As the sensations faded, as the dim light came into focus around them, Max collapsed gently atop her, pressing her into the yielding mattress with his good, strong weight.
He said her name. Pressed a kiss to her temple. And laced his fingers between hers and held on.
Then they lay there.
Together.
THEY TURNED TO EACH OTHER twice more as the snowstorm built, crested and then ebbed outside, leaving the world cloaked in white and the plow crews working double duty to keep the roads open.
The third time, they drew out the experience as long as they could.
If their first time together had been all need and greed, and their second time together had moved with the fresh, exciting rhythms of new lovers, then their third time was forever. Simply forever.
Though she hadn’t said the words-and neither had he-Raine knew they’d made a commitment to each other that third time. They had soundlessly agreed to make a go of it, to find a halfway point between his desire for a homemaker and her desire to be a high-powered executive. Between trust and distrust. Between rescue and equality.
They’d find their compromises and make them work. What they had together was too special to lose.
Afterward, they dozed, twined together, until Raine woke near dawn. She held herself still, listening to her own heartbeat. To his, where her cheek was pillowed on his chest.
Under the Microscope Page 14
