She’d brought that on, she supposed. Don’t ask if you don’t want to be asked. Being a detective, one who spent her days asking questions of others with it understood that her own thoughts didn’t come to play in the interaction, she’d maybe become a little rusty at the personal stuff.
“I’m not all that fond of men,” she said. “I just don’t believe they’re wired to be what I need in a relationship.”
She saw the verbal bullet hit him. Hurt for him. And couldn’t lie about what his choices had done to her. Not just his, of course. Her father—he’d tried his best but most definitely had not been a man she could rely on, other than to be able to trust that if he wasn’t drunk, he would be soon.
And Tyler—he’d fallen down that same rabbit hole.
“Then you haven’t known the right men,” Rafe finally said.
She shrugged. Maybe.
“There are a lot of happily married women in the world. And men who’ve risked everything for their families. For their country. For...”
Holding up a hand, Kerry smiled. “I get it,” she said. “I actually work with several of them.”
And at home, she had trust issues.
“I’ve found that my life is happier, I’m more at peace inside, when I have no expectations where men are concerned,” she said, giving him more than she’d ever admitted aloud.
Because he was Rafe?
She hoped not. She wanted to believe that she was just a bit more open—a smidge vulnerable—because they’d just been shot at and she had a cop stationed outside her door.
“What about kids?” His question hit a very sore spot.
“I always wanted them.” She was only confirming what he already knew. She wanted four so that they’d always have each other, but no more than that, so there would be at least one parental hand per kid at all times. At thirteen, the theory had sounded valid.
Fooling with a corner of the folder in front of her, a compilation of information about the women her brother had hooked up with over the years, she said, “Now... I’m thirty-six. I’d have to meet a guy, fall in love and get pregnant in pretty quick order...”
She’d been feeling the pressure since her thirtieth birthday. The idea that time was running out. More now, she was starting to settle for a new reality. One where she didn’t have kids of her own. But she had a career she truly loved. Friends she truly loved. A town filled with people who looked out for her. A home that welcomed her every time she walked in the door.
“I’m just so damned sorry, Kerry.”
Rafe’s words hit too deep. She shook her head. “Don’t be,” she said. “I made my choices just like you made yours.” And one of them had been not to settle for less than she’d felt for Rafe. She’d rather live alone than be with a man she always felt was second-best.
“I guess I should get going.” He stood up. She walked with him toward her front door.
“I don’t like the idea of you driving back out to the ranch,” she said, suddenly not complacent, or content, at all. “Whoever shot at us likely knows who you are. He could know that your truck was parked out in front of my house. Might be waiting for you to be alone.”
“I’m not running scared,” he told her. “And I’m not stupid, either. I can tell if I’m being followed. I have a rifle in the truck. And I’m an excellent shot.”
He’d been a decent shot when she’d known him. She’d been better. They’d target practiced with BB guns a lot. She concentrated on the target. He’d always been looking at her.
“Still...maybe it would be better if you wait until daylight to head out that far...”
She had a cop at her door. Surely it wasn’t paranoia to think driving ten miles out in the desert could be dangerous.
He’d stopped in the foyer. Turned. Was a foot away and staring her right in the eye. “Are you asking me to spend the night here?”
No. No! She’d been afraid for his safety. Remembered the drive back into town that night. How thankful she’d been to see the lights of town. Hadn’t wanted him back on any ten-mile stretch alone in the dark until they knew more.
Right?
She didn’t expect him to hang with her all night.
Didn’t want him to.
Not really. The woman she was knew better.
“I’m sure the Dales Inn has a room,” she said. January was one of the biggest tourist months in Arizona, but Mustang Valley wasn’t a hot spot.
He nodded and turned back toward the door.
Disappointment flooded her. Hers? His? She’d always hated to let him down. Had done everything she could not to make that happen. Especially after he’d been adopted and told her how lonely he was, living in that big mansion with a new father who didn’t seem to put a whole lot of stock in having him around. He used to say that her friendship was the most important thing in his life.
Had that been a lie?
Or had it just changed?
Did it matter?
“Good night, then.”
He reached for the door handle.
“Rafe.”
“Yeah?” he asked, turning again.
“You’ll stay in town, right?”
He studied her, frowning. “It really means that much to you?”
With a nod she looked up at him. “It really does.”
“Then yes, I’ll stay in town, rather than returning to the ranch.”
Good. Phew.
“I’ll call you in the morning,” he said.
She nodded. Couldn’t stop looking at him. Remembering the shots firing, needing to know that he was okay. Far more than she’d cared if she was.
Taking a step closer just happened. He seemed to get that. Leaned down just enough... And their lips touched.
Tentatively. Softly. Like two kids raging with hormones, budding with love and filled with curiosity. Two kids who didn’t have any idea what they were doing.
But instead of being ripped apart by angry words from Payne Colton, who’d followed them because Rafe had unknowingly taken a horse that Payne hadn’t wanted ridden, they continued to kiss.
Rafe’s lips opened, seeming hungry with desire. They moved against hers, strongly, confidently, eliciting a response from her she hadn’t known she was capable of giving. Her tongue moved of its own accord, meeting his, exploring. She sucked at his lips. Pressed hard, needing it all to be real. His arms were around her, flattening her against him, and she held on to his head. His neck. Pulling him to her.
They turned, and she fell back against the door, his body against hers, holding her there. Molding her. She could hardly breathe. Couldn’t think.
Didn’t want to stop.
Ever.
“I’m...” Gasping, Rafe didn’t finish his sentence.
She put a shaking finger to his lips. “Don’t apologize,” she whispered. Begged, more like it.
Yeah, she was “only the help,” but she needed to be good enough to be worthy of his kiss. Like any other woman he’d known.
“I wasn’t going to apologize,” he told her, one hand against the door just above her head. He leaned over her, still breathing hard. “I was going to tell you that I’m in over my head.”
His blue eyes were shadowed with passion, but surprisingly clear, too. Honest.
She had to be the woman she was, she reminded herself, not even sure in the moment what those words meant.
“We’re both adults.” She tried to swallow, to ease the dryness in her throat. Pretty much whispered, “We don’t have to make this more difficult than it is.”
His gaze intensified. She could feel her chin starting to tremble as she stared up at him. “We just have unfinished business.” She said what she needed to believe was true. “Something that just needs finishing.” Just. Just. Just.
“Just” put limitations on it.
; She was sure it did. That she was facing reality. Had her eyes wide-open.
“I’ve had the hots for you since I was twelve,” she told him, hiding under her detective guise, the cover that slid down over her emotions when she was dealing with a potentially heartbreaking case. Like many first responders, she knew how to find her calm. Her strength. Knew how to brace against pain that was too unimaginable to bear. “It’s natural for someone to be left in this state after feeling what we felt at such an impressionable age, and having had it ripped away as we did, without allowing it to run its course and fade naturally.” She’d been working on the situation, the feelings for Rafe that just wouldn’t fade, for years.
“It’s also natural to romanticize something we lost. To grieve for it.” Counseling she’d sought after a reckless stint of meaningless lovers in college had taught her that. “Which then tends to strengthen those remembered feelings. Make them more than they are.”
If she just kept talking, his hard-on might fade. Maybe they could still defuse this enough to get him out the door and her into a cold shower.
“You’re proposing that we have sex and get it out of our systems?”
Of course she wasn’t. Was she? There was merit in the theory...
“You have a better plan?” she asked him. “We live too close to think that, now that the smoldering spark has been lit, we won’t both be burned by it if we don’t put it out.”
“And you think a one-night fling will do that.”
She had no idea what she thought. She only knew that there was no hope of a future for them. Not just because of his choices, but because she wasn’t ever going to be able to trust him not to turn his back on her, to ditch her, to stab her back if one of the Coltons insisted he do so. Maybe he’d stand up to Payne this time. Maybe not.
But the heart didn’t forget when someone chose one person over another. Not when the one not chosen was so irreparably damaged by that choice.
“I think it’s our only hope at this point.” The truth came to her. Loud and clear. She had to get this man out of her system or spend the rest of her life grieving for him.
She needed a strong dose of the real Rafe Colton to replace the romanticized version of the man her fantasies had created within her.
The strength of his desire, pressing against her, grew stronger. More insistent.
“But it would just have to be the one night, Rafe. Whether it gets rid of the attraction or not. I’m not that young girl anymore. I don’t even want to be. And I won’t be in a relationship that can’t lead to marriage.”
He blinked, his lids staying closed a second or two too long, and then he nodded. “I wish it could be different.”
She didn’t. Not anymore.
But she pulled his lips down to hers with a hunger that was never going to be satisfied.
Not in one night.
Not ever.
Chapter 7
He wasn’t going to have sex with Kerry Wilder. She deserved more than a one-night stand. And he’d lost his rights to her long ago.
But when she planted her lips on his, there was no way in hell or on earth that Rafe could reject her.
Kerry’s lips weren’t the tentative soft touch he remembered, and yet their combination of softness and strength, hesitance and confidence, drove him to devour them. To mate his tongue with hers like he needed to mate their bodies. Entering her, moving in her. Knowing her.
He kissed her hard. And he kissed her soft. His hand still pressed up against the door, and then, turning again so that she was in his arms, he was against the door. Leaning. Taking her weight and his. Pulling her weight against him until he could feel every inch of her body with every inch of his.
The softness of her breasts pressed against him was heaven, and sheer torture. There was nothing small or dainty about them, and yet they were vulnerable. Just like her. Needing gentle love.
She went for his shirt, loosening his tie more, first, and because it hurt too much to think of being done yet, he let her. Nothing dangerous in baring his chest.
Those smaller, warm fingers moving on him were a shock, created a pleasure so intense he almost cried out. How could Kerry’s blunt-nailed fingers be so much more powerful on his skin than anything else that had ever touched him?
With her lips still plastered to his she slid her fingers through the hair on his chest, raising goose bumps there—and raising his nipples, too. Her tongue seemed to speak to him in rhythm with those fingertips and he forgot to think.
“God, you feel so good,” he gasped as he took a breath and then ravished her lips some more. He’d never been much of a kissing man. Couldn’t make sense of the effect her kisses were having on him.
His hands were plastered on her back. He wasn’t consciously keeping them there, but somewhere, something in him knew that he couldn’t move them.
Because they’d both fall?
Because he couldn’t let go?
Because if he did they’d get him into trouble?
It all became moot when she reached behind herself and grabbed his hand. He liked that too, holding hands with her while they kissed. And then, before he knew her intent, she’d laid his hand down. Let it go.
Centered on her breast.
He broke their kiss, words choking him. The sound came out no more than a groan, a pained one filled with an ecstasy that was shocking him.
He couldn’t let go of her breast. Couldn’t disappoint her. So he held it. Memorizing the contours. Knowing the sensation would always be a part of him.
Her nipples were hard and he wanted to pleasure her, to make the kiss one she’d remember for the rest of her life.
With fondness.
He needed it to matter to her.
And so he allowed his hand to move on her. His fingers found a nipple through her oxford shirt and what had to be an unlined bra covering her. He teased with the expertise he’d gained over his years as a man, grown from the boy who’d had to leave her.
His knowledge of the female body led him to her other breast—not wanting to leave her only half-cared-about. And then, as she moaned and moved within his fingers, he found the buttons on her shirt, had them undone, and her bra, too, in just a few quick seconds. Just so that he could give her the utmost pleasure.
Maybe something was driving him to give her the best she’d ever had of what little he could share with her. Thoughts weren’t real clear.
They became even less so when her hand cupped the hard-on that had crept up toward his belly button, the head of which was bulging uncomfortably against his belt buckle. Which was why he let her loosen the buckle. Just to give him some relief while they stood there.
When, minutes later, she went for his fly, too, he had no reason to allow himself the relief, other than not wanting to deny her anything she wanted.
They moved over to her couch, leaving their clothes in a trail on the floor between him and the door, his hands shaking as he pulled a condom out of his wallet and watched as she slid it home, before he realized that he’d missed the key point.
He’d been right.
He wasn’t going to have sex with Kerry.
They were going to make love.
* * *
The moment she spread her legs and felt Rafe slide inside her, Kerry changed. Irrevocably. She moved with him, let herself fly away to a place where only physical pleasure, sensation, existed. Pulsed against him with a mind-blowing orgasm as his release poured out, and it was all different. She was different.
As he collapsed against her, she held him willingly, with no thought to getting the weight off her. Getting up. Cleaning up. She was his home for as long as he needed to lie there.
And he was her protection from a lifetime of aloneness: for as long as these moments could last.
She knew they would end. But she also knew she’d never regret what had
happened. Her entire life she’d been on hold, waiting for something.
And she’d just had it.
She didn’t know how she knew. Wasn’t sure where it all led her, but she knew that she was finally free of the not knowing. She didn’t have to wonder anymore.
She just had to figure out how to live without it.
But not yet.
“Please stay,” she said. And then, afraid that he’d think she was begging, asking for more than would ever be there, she said. “Just for tonight. Just until dawn and you can see more clearly to drive out to the ranch.”
His nod made her happy.
* * *
Kerry called James before she took Rafe back to her bedroom. She let her fellow officer know that she’d talked Rafe into staying with her, for his own protection, and that he’d said her couch was plenty comfortable.
Which he had, when they’d first lain down naked and she’d mentioned that she had a perfectly good bed with sheets.
Neither of them had been willing to hold on until they could get there.
“You’re always thinking, Kerry Wilder,” Rafe said, grinning as he picked her up and carried her down the only hallway in the place. He had a few doors to choose from: a bathroom, a spare bedroom she used as a catchall and an office, and her bedroom suite. She let him figure it out.
And didn’t bother pointing out the light switch when they entered her room. She was not taking any chances on James witnessing the shadow of a wealthy Colton carrying her to bed.
Their relationship had been secret since they were five years old—because no one understood.
Because they had to guard against others’ opinions. Warnings. Demands.
He settled her against the comforter and she pulled it down as she scooted her naked butt underneath it, stopping only when she felt the sheet beneath her. When he asked for the bathroom, she pointed to the left of the closet door, and while he was gone, flipped on her bedside lamp. In case James was watching to see that she made it back to her room.
By the time Rafe had flushed, run water and turned it off, she figured she was safe to turn off the light, and did so.
Colton's Lethal Reunion Page 6
