The hint of a smile warmed his handsome face. “Every year, for Thanksgiving, she had us do the decorations. They weren’t grand enough for the Colton dining room, of course, but the staff never minded letting us ‘fancy up’ their table. There were gourds and cornucopias, little turkeys made with pinecones, and the centerpiece was always a big pumpkin, hollowed out.”
“Like a jack-o’-lantern?”
“Better,” he said. “She lined the hollow with a little plastic basket, and every kid dropped in a handmade card with a list of what they were thankful for that year, but no one was allowed to sign it. After a while, the staff started joining in, too, and after the meal, before the pumpkin pie was served, we’d take turns drawing out the cards and reading them aloud. Then everyone would try to guess which card belonged to which person.”
“Sounds sweet.”
“It was. And fun, too. Whenever someone read a really gushy card, some smart aleck would always call out, ‘Is it Mrs. Black?’”
Hope laughed. “I have to wonder what she was thankful for, other than laundry starch and the fluff cycle on the dryers.”
He snorted. “She always just wrote her husband’s name. No muss, no fuss, no gushy explanations.”
“That’s sweet. It’s a shame that Amanda and her sisters had to miss out.”
He smiled, that strong, white smile that always made her heart beat just a little faster. “They weren’t supposed to come down to the staff dining hall—the family always ate early on Thanksgiving and then left us alone to have our dinner. But everyone looked the other way when they sneaked in to join us, before the pumpkin pie.”
“Sounds like a wonderful tradition.”
“A memory, you mean. Because the only kids here now are still babies, and without my mother to keep everything going...”
“You never know. Maybe someone will take up the reins.”
“Maybe,” he said and afterward fell silent, each of them drifting on a raft of memories, the bitter with the sweet.
But all too soon, Hope’s thoughts circled back to the duty she had too long put off, a duty from which nothing, not even pleasant memories, could protect her.
* * *
The darkness stole upon them sooner than it had any right to, or so it seemed to Hope until she noticed that the skies had clouded over, and it was nearly 5:00 p.m. “Where are we?” she asked him, seeing far more buildings ahead off the highway, gas stations and fast-food places that she didn’t recognize from their trip the day before.
“We’re coming into Laramie,” he told her, the first words he had spoken in hours. “Took the more direct route this time. We’ll reach the ranch in about an hour.”
“Pull off,” she said abruptly. “We have to take this exit.”
Grimacing, he braked and did so. “Next time,” he complained, “how about a little more warning?”
“Sorry.”
“So what is it you need that can’t wait? Restroom? Food?” he asked as they slowed in advance of a stop sign.
Her voice came out shaky as she answered, “I think you’d better drop me off at a motel. I’ve decided I’m not— It’ll be easier if I don’t go back to the ranch with you, if I don’t have to argue with Amanda about what I’m doing. But please, Dylan, let her know how very grateful I am, how I’ll never forget—”
“WITSEC’s failed you once already.”
She shook her head. “I failed them—and my father, too. Besides, there’s no way the FBI will ever let me out of their sight again, not until I testify.”
“You’re sure about this?” he asked, before taking the turn that would lead them into town. “Sure there’s nothing I can say to change your—”
“Dead sure.” At her own choice of words, she felt her face heat. “As sure as I’ve been of anything for a long time.”
For a while, they drove around in silence, with Dylan carefully studying each motel they encountered. Finally settling on what he grumbled looked like “the best of the lot,” he pulled into the parking lot, just beneath a security light, and climbed out of the truck before coming around to open the door for her.
“You don’t have to come in,” she said, feeling something tear loose inside her chest. Hope, maybe, the same desperate hope she had chosen for her name. Hope for more than mere survival. Hope of finding some connection. But what use was it to feel it when she only had to leave? “So let’s just say our goodbyes now.”
He looked into her eyes, his expression brimming with determination. “The hell I will. There’s no way I’m letting you wait here on your own.”
“I’m sure they’ll have someone here to pick me up by morning, so if you’ll just give me back my gun—”
“Absolutely not, Hope. I’m not having it on my conscience if you shoot some innocent hotel maid. Or if you’re so hesitant to fire because of what happened in Jackson that you can’t pull the trigger if you need to.”
One look at the cold steel in his eyes convinced her that all the arguing in the world would not help. Still, as he grabbed their bags, she couldn’t help but protest, “Didn’t you tell me earlier you needed to get back to the ranch this evening?”
Pain shifted through his gaze, a dread so sharp it made her stomach spasm.
“Could be I’d just as soon put off going back, too.”
“Oh,” Hope said, remembering the letter that would almost assuredly change his life. “Of course.”
With no reservation and none available with two beds, he accepted the one nonsmoking king room the motel had available. “Unless you’d rather we check around?” he turned to ask her.
But she saw another question in his eyes—not simply a question, but a wild hope, a need that matched her own. A yearning to wrest whatever desperate comfort they could out of these last hours.
“No,” she told him. “Take it.” Thinking one room and one bed would be enough. Enough to delay the moment she knew would break her heart.
Enough to get her through the hours and the minutes until they had to say goodbye.
As he carried the bags to the empty elevator, he said nothing, but when the twin doors closed behind them and she pressed the button for the third floor, his gaze locked onto hers again.
“I don’t want to get this wrong, Hope. Don’t want to make assumptions that I have no business—”
“No more words, no overthinking.” She took a step, one short step that had her heart pounding, and laid two fingers across his lips. Two fingers that she moved an instant later as she leaned in to offer the gentlest and most tentative of kisses.
There was one thunk, then a second, as he dropped the bags and wrapped strong arms around her, deepening the kiss and pressing her back against the elevator wall.
His body crushed to hers. The hard length jamming into her hip sent a thrill up her backbone, a need exploding through her brain with a force that cast away every other thought but the desire to have as much of him as he would give her. She was so wrapped up in sensation, in the dance of tongues and the feverish movement of their hands over one another, that she never felt the elevator shudder to a stop or heard the doors roll open.
It was Dylan who stepped away to whisper hoarsely, “To the room. And hurry. Before we scare any small children.”
Too inflamed to return his smile, she hurried down the hallway while he gathered their bags. He caught up just as she had found the room and handed her the key card with a shaking hand.
It took her three swipes to get the green light. Three tries until the lock disengaged and they tumbled into the room on a wave of nervous laughter.
Once inside, she flipped on a light to orient herself, looking past the tiny closet and the bath to the big, inviting bed and heavy curtains just beyond it. Then she turned it off again, casting them back into darkness—and causing Dylan to growl, “Don’t do that. I want to see you. Want you to see what you do to me.”
But when he moved to hit the lights again, her hand clapped over his. “No. Please. I—I’m nervous e
nough, being here.”
His callused finger feathered the lightest of caresses along the side of her face, caresses that found her neck and drew sweet shivers. “What are you afraid of?”
“You,” she breathed.
“You should be,” he said, “because I want you, Aurora. I want everything.”
His mouth claimed hers, igniting a host of glittering sparks behind her closed eyes. Wave after burning wave of sensation rippled through her, swirling through her body to pool in places far too long untouched.
As her head tipped back and her lips parted, she let the purse slide off her shoulder and shrugged off her jacket, too. She had to hurry, to rid herself of the barrier that kept her from feeling his hands on her, from feeling the heat of his bare skin against hers, the sharpness of desire.
She felt his balance shift and heard the clunk of each of his boots as it hit the carpet, of his jacket as he made short work of it, as well. For a while, they were content to kiss, to hold each other for dear life.
When he pulled away, she felt bereft, until he wiped her cheek.
“I thought your face was wet. What is it? Is this too much, too fast, after everything that’s happened? Because if it is, you tell me. Tell me now and I swear I’ll stop.”
She knew he meant what he said, no matter how much his voice hinted it would cost him.
“Don’t you dare stop, Dylan,” she murmured. “Don’t you stop for anything, or believe me, I’ll be crying harder.”
“Then you’re all right?”
“For the first time in a long, long time, I’m much more than all right. Because whatever happens, wherever I end up, whoever both of us end up, we have this moment. We have now.”
* * *
Dylan, Cole—here in the darkness, it didn’t matter whether he was a poor widow’s only son or a billionaire’s lost heir, no more than it mattered whether the woman in his arms was a runaway socialite or the mansion’s newest housemaid. All that mattered was the liquid warmth of her mouth beneath his, the heat of her flesh as his day’s growth of whiskers trailed down the length of her neck, at least as far as her clothing would allow him.
Frustrated by the roadblock, he abruptly scooped her into his arms, eliciting a gasp that sent a jolt of pure lust streaking through him. He took the woman he had wanted from the first day he had met her to the bed. Once there, he helped her pull free of first one sleeve and then the other before carefully removing the turtleneck sweater she’d chosen to hide as much bruising as she might. Remembering that lurid trail, he laid her back against the pillows and kissed his way across her neck with all the gentleness that he could muster.
“I wish I could take it from you,” he whispered. “All your pain, your bruises. I’d take it on myself.”
“You would, wouldn’t you?”
“I would,” he said, and when she arched her back, he slid his hand behind to find the closure to her bra.
He hesitated, loving the way her breathing quickened, but before he could release her breasts—those breasts that had cost him so much sleep the night before—she caught his hand and whispered, “I’m cold.”
“I’ll warm you up. I promise.”
“Meet me under the covers, cowboy,” she suggested. “And I’d better not be the only one there naked.”
She wasn’t, and he made good use of what he knew would be his only opportunity, touching, suckling—driving every memory of the past, every fear about the future from both of their minds. Finding that sweet spot, the source of pleasure between her thighs, he parted inner folds to stroke and tease and torment, bringing her to the precipice before backing off.
“Don’t. You. Dare. Stop,” she panted, with a whimper of frustration that had him trailing kisses down her belly, tasting damp curls before making love to her hot center with his lips and tongue. As she wriggled against him, a fierce need raged inside him, but her muscles were already tensing, her breathing building toward a shattering crescendo.
As she began to cry out, he plunged a finger into her to feel her come apart around him. To feel the power he had over her as she arched and threw her head back, crying out his name.
The only name he knew or needed; the only name he cared to claim.
Before he could take her over the edge again, she was pulling at him, whispering, “No, not that. Not now. Come up here. I want to have you in me. I need you, Dylan, now.”
She didn’t have to ask twice, for almost before the words were out, he was over her, his entire focus arrowing down to this one moment. But first, he forced himself to lean forward, to reach above her for the switch of the headboard reading lamp.
“Hurry,” she whimpered.
“Watch your eyes,” he warned before he turned on the light to look down at her, her hair tumbled wildly across the pillows, her lips moist and pink and swollen...and her face filled with such desire, so much emotion that he knew the image would be seared into his memory for all time.
“I had to see you. To see this,” he explained. “And to let you see me take you.”
“Yes,” she said, breath hitching as she turned her long-lashed gaze to meet his. “Oh, yes.”
Unable to restrain himself an instant longer, he plunged, deep and hard, inside her, releasing every ounce of stress into the thrusts she met as she moved with him. Trying to slow down, to take his time and savor the tension building in her slender arms, her strong thighs, in the sweet, wet heat that gripped him. But there was no help for his struggle, no mental trick capable of driving back awareness of the joy of claiming this woman he had come to love so very quickly. As their rhythm built, all sensation in him coiled, winding tighter, until she began to pulse and throb around him, moaning her release.
No longer able to hold back, he spilled himself inside her, her true name torn from him like a war cry, every ounce of energy wrung from him, as well.
Afterward, as he spooned her body, Dylan nuzzled her neck and tried to stop himself from whispering the promises that neither one could keep. It was only when the touching and the kissing began to progress that realization struck him.
A realization that stopped him, cold as the coming winter winds.
Chapter 14
“What’s wrong? Where are you going?” Hope turned her head to ask.
Seeing the stricken expression on his handsome face, she rolled to face him, pulling up a sheet to hide her breasts. For as much as she longed to stall reality a while longer, it had clearly reasserted itself.
Regret shadowing his blue eyes, he shook his head as he sat on the bed’s edge. “I’m so sorry, Aurora. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
Heart bumping, she tried a smile. “I thought it was kind of obvious...thank goodness.”
“It’s not that. Don’t you get it? It’s that I didn’t—couldn’t—stop for a moment.”
“If you had, I might’ve slugged you—or maybe even shot you, if I could reach my gun.” Her toes curled as she imagined losing control again, losing herself as she watched him do the same. Only this time, she wouldn’t be too shy to leave the lights on throughout the whole encounter. This time, she would memorize the hard glint of lust—or maybe something more—in his eyes.
It would be little enough to carry with her, little enough to warm the lonely nights to come.
“Stop to think about a condom, I mean,” he said. “Of all the irresponsible—”
Realizing what he meant, she straightened, the implications squeezing her beating heart into her throat. But surely, it was ludicrous to imagine that a single encounter, when she was on the verge of leaving, would result in the consequence that troubled him....
A consequence she would welcome, if she were allowed such a miracle. She knew, though, she was wrong to hope, that she had no right to wish the danger she faced on another innocent life. And no right to wish fatherhood on a man who could never know about, much less meet, his child. A man who had most likely been stolen from his natural father, too.
“There’s no need to worry,
” she assured him, the words bitter as ash on her tongue. “It took me forever and a day to get pregnant in the first place, and that was before the surgeons had to remove the ruptured tube—”
“Maybe it’s unlikely,” he conceded, the stubbornness in his face telling her he’d never let his child go willingly, that he’d throw away everything, up to and including his life, to save his son or daughter from growing up inside a lie as he had. “But it’s not impossible, is it? Not quite.”
It took her a long time to shake her head again, to tell him, “You need to understand. To save my life, they had to rush me into surgery. When they do it that way—no, there’s no chance. The surgeon said I’ll never have a child of my own.”
She dropped her gaze, face heating, fearing he would hear the lie in her voice or see it written in her eyes. Instead, he gathered her into his arms and kissed the top of her head.
“I’m sorry, Aurora,” he told her.
She snorted. “Sorry but relieved, I’ll bet.”
“If only things were different, I can’t think of anything I’d love more than the chance to get to know you a whole lot better, and maybe someday, if everything fell into place...” The warmth of his sigh stirred her hair. “But that won’t happen, will it? You’re about to get dressed and then call back your WITSEC contact. And as soon as I know you’re safe, I’m about to face my future.”
She looked up at him and ventured, “But maybe that phone call could wait until the morning?”
“I wish to hell it could,” he said. “But if I spend another night with you, I know damned well I’ll never let you go.”
* * *
Several hours later, Dylan was on his way back to the ranch alone, his throat clogged and his chest tight with the memory of the moment Hope climbed into the backseat of an unmarked SUV driven by two deputy U.S. marshals. The younger of the pair had eyed him suspiciously, especially after she’d burst from the backseat and run back to him, then threw her arms around his neck.
“If only things were different,” she’d whispered into his ear, echoing his own words as she clung to him. But instead of telling the waiting men to go on—to go to hell and leave them—she’d only given him one last, lingering kiss before climbing back inside the vehicle.
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