Remember Summer

by Elizabeth Lowell

  “Sometimes they kill their own just for window dressing,” Cord pointed out.

  “Yeah, but this time they dressed the wrong window. The worm’s girlfriend was five months pregnant when Barracuda scragged her.”

  Cord heard Raine’s gasp. He spun quickly, watching her but saying nothing.

  “Believe me, our worm can’t wriggle enough for us.” The smoky words continued softly, relentlessly, crowding the room. “He wants revenge so bad he sweats thinking about it.”

  “Anything else?” Cord asked.

  “Nothing new, except . . .” Static, soft and scratchy.

  “What is it?”

  “Bad vibes, buddy. If I were running this show, I’d put a lock on Blue and Baby that an A-bomb couldn’t blow. Moving targets are one thing. Sitting ducks are another. Watch your ass, okay? You’re the only one I can beat at chess.”

  “I don’t play chess.”

  “No kidding.”

  “Neither do you,” added Cord, ending the prearranged code that established that each man wasn’t acting under coercion of any kind.

  “That’s a state secret. Hasta la bye-bye, buddy.”

  “Hasta luego, compadre,” Cord said, giving back correct, liquid Spanish for the mangled border Spanglish version of good-bye that Bonner had used.

  Biting her lip, trying to control the emotions seething inside her, Raine watched Cord disconnect. She wished she could believe that she wasn’t the “Baby” that the scratchy voice had referred to. She didn’t want to be another target, another pawn, like the poor woman who was five months pregnant when she was murdered trying to get away from someone or something called Barracuda. Then there was the woman’s husband or lover, another pawn, the worm who was turning and twisting under pressures too great for anyone to bear.

  And there was Cord, wearing his gun again . . . Cord in the center of all that violence, watching it with eyes the color of ice, colder with every moment, and a darkness in the center that admitted no light.

  Even at second hand, Raine couldn’t survive the kind of life he lived. Yet the hunger and need in him called to her in a language older than castles or civilization. He was a winter night and she was a fire burning. He needed her in ways she couldn’t explain. She needed him in the same ways.

  Slowly, never looking away from her, he stood up. With quick, casual motions he unclipped the holster from his belt and put the gun on the chair he had just abandoned. The pager and ammunition clip followed, making an almost musical sound as metal met metal over the leather cushion.

  She closed her eyes, unable to bear the intensity of his look any longer.

  Hard, gentle hands closed around her face. Her eyes opened dark and almost wild. He was very close, his eyes intent as he tilted her head toward the bedside light.

  “What—what are you doing?” she demanded.

  “I’m looking at your eyes,” he answered matter-of-factly, but his lips curved up in a smile that made his eyes look more like blue diamonds than ice.

  Like the man, the smile took her breath away. “W-why?”

  “I’m checking that both your pupils are evenly dilated.” His voice was patient and very deep.

  “Oh. Of course.”

  She bit her lip, caught between the aching pleasure of his touch and the knowledge that he was the wrong man for her, he led the wrong life, he would destroy her and never mean to. Yet his hands were very sure, very gentle, and his fingers curved to fit her face perfectly. His eyes were clear, intent, and so beautiful that her heart turned over.

  “Are they?” she managed.

  “Are they what?” he asked absently. His thumbs traced the sleek brown curve of her eyebrows. It was like stroking a silky kind of fire. It burned him in the sweetest, deepest way. He wondered how something so normal as eyebrows could be so sexy.

  “Evenly dilated,” she said. “Are they?”

  “Flecks of gold and depths of green, dark amber shadows . . . do you know what time it is?”

  She could only shake her head mutely, caught between his hands and his unexpected question, off-balance again, falling toward him so quickly that she didn’t even feel the pressure of her teeth scoring her lower lip.

  “It’s tomorrow,” he said simply.

  Then he bent over her until he filled her world. Gently, coaxingly, he kissed the corners of her mouth. When the tip of his tongue traced the teeth pressed into her lower lip, she couldn’t control the tiny ice-tipped shiver that went through her.

  She was afraid, but not of him. It was his world that frightened her, a world where violence came as surely as midnight. She couldn’t be a part of that world.

  “Cord,” she whispered achingly, “it won’t work. We’re too differ—”

  His tongue slid between her lips, her teeth. The tender invasion of her mouth made speech impossible. He savored her slowly, stealing her words. Stealing her. The velvet texture of his tongue stroked her, exploring her with a deliberate thoroughness that asked everything of her and concealed nothing of himself.

  All of his hunger and gentleness and strength were condensed into a single kiss.

  “Give it a chance to work,” he said, his voice as caressing as his tongue. “I need you, Raine. I’m cold without you.”

  His honesty overwhelmed what few defenses she had against him. A wave of longing swept over her, drowning and lifting her up in the same rushing instant.

  She couldn’t live in Cord’s world.

  She couldn’t deny her world to him any longer.

  And it didn’t matter. Not really. It was only for a few days, a week, until the Summer Games ended and sanity returned. She could live in his world that long, and he in hers. For that long, he would not have to live in cold and darkness.

  She tried to say his name, but the only sound she made came from deep in her throat, a cry of surrender and victory and passionate surprise. Hungry to feel the rough silk of his hair parting between her fingers, she lifted her hands to his head. She heard her name whispered against her lips. He took her mouth again before she could say anything at all, even his name.

  The kiss was different this time, a possession that drank her response, filled her, seduced her with slow movements that spoke eloquently of male hunger and the moment when he would hold the center of her body as deeply and surely as he held her mouth.

  A strange trembling took her. Deep inside herself, muscles tightened around a melting heat. She knew nothing beyond his taste, felt nothing but the flames spreading through her, burning her, burning him. She gave herself to the fire. To him.

  He drank her shivering response as he had her kiss. He felt the heat spreading beneath her skin, the sweet fire he had hungered for since he had first sensed its presence. With a smooth, powerful movement he lowered himself to the bed and lay beside her, pulling her against the ache and need of his body.

  Willingly she came to him, fitting herself perfectly against him as though for the thousandth time rather than the first. He held her, surrounding her, needing her with a force that shook him. He lifted his mouth from hers, measuring the depth of his need in the slicing pain of simply ending a kiss.

  “Raine, listen to me,” he said, his voice deep, a shaman casting spells before a shimmering midnight fire. He kissed her between each word, unable to deny himself the taste of her for more than a few seconds. “I can stop if I have to. Now, but not later. Not even a few minutes from now. Do you understand?”

  He captured her lips again, let his tongue move deeply over hers. Then he felt the liquid movement of her hips against his as she silently answered his question.

  She understood.

  “Tell me in words.” His voice was urgent. His hands kneaded down her back, pressing her close to the pulsing ache of his arousal. “I have to hear you say that you want me. Do you understand? I don’t trust myself to guess, because if I guess wrong I don’t know if I can stop.”

  Before she could answer, he took her soft mouth again with a controlled passion that made h
er moan.

  “I won’t hurt you,” he promised, velvet voice and tongue touching her. “Don’t be afraid of me.”

  Her slender fingers combed through his hair, pulling his head back until she could see his eyes. Shards of blue burning within a silver that was smoky, molten. Black, thick eyebrows drawn in waiting. Black lashes motionless, waiting. Muscles tight over the male planes of his face, waiting, and his whole powerful body like a coiled spring against her.

  Waiting.

  “I’m not afraid,” she whispered, brushing the back of her fingers over his lips. “Not the way you mean.” She hesitated, not wanting to talk about her past but knowing she had to match his honesty. “It’s just that I’m not very good at . . . this.”

  Still he waited, watching her with eyes that burned.

  She closed her eyes, unable to look at him. She didn’t want him to see the need in her, and the raw fear of not being able to please him.

  “I’m not very experienced,” she whispered, her voice so soft he could barely hear the words. “I don’t want to disappoint you. I couldn’t bear that.”

  “I had already guessed that you weren’t experienced,” he said, smoothing hair away from her face with a gentle hand.

  She wrenched her head aside as though he had struck her. Shame swept through her that her inadequacy as a woman should be so obvious to him after only a few kisses. When his hands tightened, turning her face back toward his, she struggled against him.

  It was futile. He was far stronger, far more experienced in using his superior strength.

  “Your hesitations told me you weren’t experienced,” he said. “Do you know how sweet it is, how hot, when you hesitate and then open to me? To feel your surprise . . . and then to feel you come to me, kissing me the way I kissed you, the way I’ve always wanted to be kissed by a woman.”

  The shaman’s voice tugged at Raine, unraveling her. She couldn’t conceal the quiver that went through her at Cord’s words, at the memories blazing in his eyes and the hunger of his sharply defined lips poised so close to hers.

  “The kind of ‘experience’ you’re talking about doesn’t interest me,” he said softly, distinctly. “A thousand women could give it to me. I don’t want it. I want you. I want your hesitations and surprise and fire. I want to hear the sexy cries you make when I touch you. I want to feel your body change when I make love to you.”

  He shifted with the same smooth power he had used to hold her motionless. She felt a premonition of warmth, his breath flowing over her. Then his teeth raked lightly over her breast, capturing the nipple, pulling it into the heat of his mouth.

  Her thin blouse and bra offered no real barrier to his caress. She cried out in surprise and passion as her nipple tightened starkly beneath his probing tongue. An instant later she was caught and held with loving finesse between his teeth. Fire shot through her, tightening every muscle in her body. She wanted more of it. Of him.

  He laughed softly and arched like a cat against the unconscious demand of her nails raking down his back, wanting him closer, all of him.

  “Yes,” he whispered, biting her with fierce restraint, savoring the husky sounds of passion he drew from her. “Cry for me. Want me.”

  When her nails scored down his spine again, he rolled her onto her back swiftly and settled between her legs, opening them, making room for himself at her fire. His teeth closed again over her breast as his hips moved deliberately, caressing her and telling her the full measure of his hunger.

  For an instant she hesitated, shocked by the sensations sweeping up through her. Then she moaned and her hips moved helplessly, caressing him as he had caressed her, soothing her need and doubling it at the same time.

  He arched above her, inciting her, letting her cries sink into him until he could bear no more and consumed her mouth in a powerful kiss. When he finally tore his mouth away from hers, his breathing was ragged.

  “Experience comes in all kinds,” he said, biting and licking her lips between each word. “Did you feel like this before?”

  “No,” she said, then repeated the word again and again, shivering and burning with each shift of his weight between her legs.

  “Neither have I,” he said thickly. “Do you want me?”

  He didn’t want to release her but knew that if he held her, he wouldn’t be able to let go if her answer was no. With a struggle that tightened his whole body, he forced himself to move, to lift his hungry weight from her hips so that she was free of him.

  She made a sound of protest and reached for him even as he freed her. She buried her fingers in his thick hair and tried to pull his mouth back to hers.

  “Tell me,” he said. “Don’t torture me, Raine.”

  “Is this torturing you?” She lifted herself until she could move her mouth slowly over his, tracing the line of his lips with the moist tip of her tongue.

  “You know damn well it is,” he said roughly.

  “Now that you’ve told me, I know.” She caught his lower lip between her teeth, holding him immobile as he had held her the first time he kissed her. While she slowly, slowly released him, she whispered, “Yes, Cord. Yes and yes and yes.”

  Chapter 14

  The shudder that went through Cord’s powerful body surprised Raine. It told her how much he wanted her, and how afraid he had been that she would not want him enough. She heard the catch of his breath, the husky murmur of her name and his need.

  His hands came up to her face, surrounding her with his warmth, his strength. He lowered his head and kissed her with a tenderness that made tears gather behind her eyelashes. As he kissed her, he cradled her against his body carefully, completely, savoring each new point of contact, each new warmth.

  She put her arms around his waist and smoothed her palms over the long muscles of his back. He arched his body into her caress, responding with an honesty that made her breath catch, then shatter. Impatiently she pulled his shirt, yanking it free of his jeans. When she felt the sensual heat of his naked skin beneath her fingers, she made a throaty, purring sound of pleasure.

  He laughed and rubbed against her hands, his muscles twisting and shifting beneath her touch. She tested him with her nails, caressed him with her palms, and all the while husky little sounds rippled out of her.

  “Do you like petting me?” he murmured into her ear, then his tongue followed his words in a hot, caressing stroke.

  She shivered in response. “Can’t you tell?”

  “Can’t you tell me?”

  “You feel wonderful, all hard and sleek and strong.” Humor glinted in her hazel-brown eyes. “Like Dev’s rump.”

  Chuckling, Cord nuzzled Raine’s neck. “I’ve never been called a horse’s butt so nicely.”

  Her laughter turned to a gasp as he seduced her ear with a few quick, deep strokes of his tongue. Then his teeth closed in a hot and loving bite that sent fire spearing through her center. Blindly her hands sought him. Her fingertips found and traced his spine as far as she could beneath the shirt that stretched tightly across his muscular back. She pushed against the cloth, then made a sound of frustration when all she did was imprison her own hands.

  “Unbutton my shirt,” he said. He bit her neck with exquisite restraint, leaving no marks but the spreading flush of passion beneath her skin.

  She hesitated. She had wanted to run her hands over his bare chest since the instant her fingertips had slipped between the buttons of his dress shirt in Griffith Park. The silky feel of him had haunted her dreams. But the first—and last—time she had tried to unbutton a man’s shirt, he had laughed at her inexperienced, fumbling fingers.

  “I’m not very good at undressing men,” she said unhappily.

  Cord felt the change in her, hunger draining into uncertainty. Once he had wondered what had soured her on men so thoroughly that she allowed none into her life. Now he knew. Silently he cursed the bastard who had made Raine feel less than the sexy, sensual woman she was.

  “Practice on me. Undress me.�
�� Cord lifted his head and smiled down at her. It was a warrior’s kind of smile, challenging and barely civilized. “I promise I’ll do the same for you. And more.”

  Before she could answer, his head dipped swiftly and he buried his tongue in her sweet, soft mouth. She tasted of everything he had ever wanted and never had.

  Swiftly he rolled over onto his back, releasing her while he still could. “See?” he said huskily. “I’m making it easy for you to get to the buttons.”

  She slid off him and leaned awkwardly across his body. Her fingers worked over the first, stubborn button of his shirt.

  “Surely an Olympic equestrian can think of a better way to keep her balance,” he teased, his voice velvet and rough at the same time.

  She gave him a startled look, then accepted the challenge. With a fluid movement, she settled onto him as though he was Dev waiting patiently by the mounting block. Perfectly balanced, she bent over the buttons again. It was much easier now.

  “I do believe,” she said, her smile as uncivilized as his, “that I finally have you at my mercy.”

  “You like that, don’t you?” he said, watching her with eyes that were a smoldering band of silver around dark, dilated pupils.

  “Considering that I’ve been off-balance since the first instant I met you, yes.”

  Smiling to herself, she unbuttoned until she could push aside his shirt entirely. Her eyelids lowered as she slowly stroked the crisp black hair on his chest with the back of her fingers. When she brushed over his dark male nipples, his breath caught. She paused, then returned, circling him with delicate, curious fingertips.

  He watched her dreamy, absorbed expression with a concentration as intense as hers. His body tightened, his breath wedged, and he shuddered in pleasure as she teased his flat nipples into nailheads of sensation. She bent down, licked each nipple as delicately as a cat, then caught him between her teeth with the tender ferocity he had taught her.

  Hunger ripped through him, a hot, bittersweet pain raking him with claws that were neither kind nor wholly cruel. His hands clenched at his sides. He knew that if he touched her in that searing instant, he would tear off her clothes and bury himself in her fire.