If only she could believe it was true.
Although they were two of the last off the ferry, the terminal still hummed with noise, made louder by the modern corrugated-steel construction. People window-shopped or sat outside the cafés located in the terminal, eating or simply drinking coffee. Devonport had certainly grown up since the last time Kel had visited.
Ngaire was drawn to the window of a souvenir shop. He waited five boring minutes. “Hey, you’ll see plenty of those tomorrow.”
“Don’t you think these little cuddly lambs look cute?”
He gave her his best grim look. “Do you really want me to answer that?”
Ngaire’s “What would you do if I said yes” merited an explicit eye roll. It was then that he noticed Schmidt’s tall brown-clad figure two doors down studying furniture in an antique shop. Yeah, as if he believed that one; the guy’s wife wasn’t even with him. “Come on, doll. Let’s move on out.”
“Am I supposed to salute when you say that?”
“What?” He frowned, making a denial harder.
“Move on out. I take it you were in the army or something.”
He began walking and she followed, keeping up with his longer stride as if fixed to him at the elbow. “Or something. The SAS.”
“Whew, becoming a software sales rep must have been a letdown. Not much excitement in comparison.”
He could feel a growl gathering strength at the back of his throat. He wanted off this subject. She was quicker than he’d thought and he’d given himself away. The hell of it was, he felt himself actually starting to like her—not simply want her body—and he couldn’t afford sentiments that might let his guard slip. As it already had done.
“The experience gave me an entry into my job,” he told her, happy not to be lying for once, “at a higher level than I might have expected. Knowing the region was a big plus, you might say.”
They exited through huge glass doors into the car park. “This way, to your right. We have to walk along the beach-front.”
“So you didn’t mind giving it up? All the excitement, I mean.”
She was a persistent little devil, he’d give her that, but he’d thought of a way to make her drop the subject. “Well, I can’t say my life’s been dull, exactly. Only today I rescued a woman off the side of a cliff. Straight up, and hope to die if I tell a lie,” he finished, cursing himself with his own wit.
He glanced over his shoulder as they reached the footpath that separated the lawns from the seawall. Silhouetted against the light from the terminal, Schmidt’s wraithlike shadow stretched out along the path they had taken. His presence didn’t bode well for Ngaire’s little jaunt into her family’s history.
The tide was high, making soft sucking and soughing noises on the other side of the wall, so there was no dodging him that way. What excuse could Schmidt have to take the same direction as they had? It was highly unlikely that his grandmother had once worked at Elizabeth House. That would be carrying coincidence to unprecedented lengths.
For Ngaire’s benefit he kept up a quiet running commentary of what he could remember. “The area we’re moving toward is strictly residential, apart from a café and a few shops where the beach tails off close to North Head, a volcano. One of forty-eight.”
“You can tease, but the day will come when you’ll wish you had my excellent memory.”
“This way.” He veered off the path into the treed area, knowing Ngaire would follow and the soft ground would silence the click of her heels. Opposite, older turn-of-the-twentieth-century villas were being replaced by condos and apartment blocks, old-world charm losing out to a view and a price. And on this side, where they shone through the branches from higher ground, the lights mottled the grass in black-and-gold camouflage stripes.
Earlier, her white pants had teased his libido until he’d wanted to rip them off. He still did. In the dark they glowed like a night-light for a homing pigeon.
“If I remember rightly, we’re almost there.” He skirted a few more trees, keeping to the shadows until Ngaire complained.
“Hold up, buster. My night vision isn’t as good as yours.”
He flung out his arm with a flourish. “Sorry, I’m all out of drum rolls, but this is it. Elizabeth House.” He looked across the top of her head as he spoke. Deep in the heart of the trees a shadow moved, then melted into the night.
So it is old Schmidtty boy. Who would have believed it?
The silence lingered a few moments, stretching out as tight as his nerves. He wanted out of there before Schmidt caught up with them. It was obvious Ngaire didn’t know who her contact would be. Schmidt would probably wait till the last minute to make himself known and leave her with the burden of fending off other interested parties.
“It’s not as I imagined it would be.”
“Disappointed?”
“In a way. I guess Pops added something in the telling.”
“Maybe so. What does it matter? You started dreaming of a fairy-tale palace with Grandma playing the title role of Cinderella and Granddad acting Prince Charming, and instead found a converted castle. All that matters is how your grandfather remembered this. After all, the dream was his.”
The sharp snap of a twig underfoot alerted preternatural instincts honed by years of training. He could sense Ngaire’s unease echo his own without rhyme or reason, as if he’d plucked a guitar string, yet the note it played reverberated through her.
Going back the way they’d come didn’t appear to be an option, but circling the block was as good as stepping out of the end zone with the ball and giving away a free kick to the other side.
A glimmer of silver caught his attention as someone in one of the Elizabeth House apartments turned on an outside light. For a moment they were in danger of becoming floodlit, until he stepped back into the shadows and took her with him.
A silhouette pasted itself against the window, eyes shaded, as it peered into shadows searching for them. “Quick, follow me before someone calls the cops to search for a Peeping Tom.”
They were in luck. The metallic gleam morphed into a bus shelter with a glass advertising screen between them and Schmidt. He pulled Ngaire inside with him, groaning as her day pack banged against the glass. She slipped one strap down her arm and let it hang at her side. He’d tucked them into the darkest corner before she voiced a bewildered protest. “Wha-a-at? Why are we here?”
“Shh…” he said, fitting his hand round her jaw, tilting her face up to him.
As Kel’s hand clamped near her throat, Ngaire’s instinctive reaction was to lash out. She shivered with apprehension. Had she been mistaken about him?
The glass screen felt cool on her back, but not nearly as cold as the determined gleam in his eyes as he looked down at her. Maybe it was as basic as a deprivation of light, opening his pupils wide, that gave him eyes like a creature who hunts by night.
Cold and determined, yes, but she saw none of the malevolence of those who kill for killing’s sake.
Excitement replaced apprehension.
He pressed closer, the weight of him hot where it touched at breast, belly and thigh. Fire or ice? Her body knew its own mind, welcoming the flames. Welcoming the burn. She leaned into him, murmuring “Kel?” and not regretting it for a second.
If the woman would keep talking, what could Kel do to silence her except pull her into his arms and cover her lips with his?
One taste was enough to confirm his mistake.
If her mouth tasted his regret, it didn’t show. It flowered under his as he parted her lips, thinking only to sip. Not a hint of compunction marred his tongue’s foray into the depths of desire as he drank greedily. His head spun, drunk from her essence as she gave and gave with a fervor that surprised him.
Surprise that allowed him to pull back with his mind if not his rampant body. Crushing her against him, he cupped her hips, lifting her level with the powerful ache in his groin. Her legs wrapped round him, fitted as if she’d been made-to-measure,
then he tucked her head into the crook of his neck and watched for Schmidt.
Ngaire breathed deeply, held his scent deep inside her and knew she’d been mistaken to think there was anything cold about Kel. The hard length pressed against her center filled her with awe and apprehension. She had no doubts about them coming together, making love, having sex, whatever, her limited experience making her wonder how they would manage.
Brushing her lips across his neck, she tasted the raw spiciness of Kel’s skin and let the soft brush of his stubble tease her lips where his jawbone jutted. There was no doubt in her mind, Kel was all male and then some.
The moments of doubt she’d experienced in Tahiti faded as if they’d never existed. She lifted her mouth closer to his.
“More,” she moaned. Kel obliged.
How could he have known the first time he laid eyes on her that she would be his downfall? The cause and the cure wrapped in one neat parcel that had swept him off his feet, as surely as her little tootsies were almost four feet off the ground and locked round his waist. She was everything he wanted and the last thing he needed. He had to be strong for both of them or end up dying a happy man.
Easier said than accomplished, as she fitted against his hips, filling him with the agony and ecstasy of knowing he hadn’t put a condom in his wallet, hoping to prevent temptation dragging him into the fiery pit. The flames were definitely licking at his heels. Not to mention other parts of his body that hadn’t a hope in hell of being satisfied.
With the part of his mind that stood to one side admonishing him, he noticed a splash of light from a doorway and heard a voice shout, “Who’s out there?”
Ngaire felt him tense as she pulled the shirt from his waistband. Her hands soon rid his skin of its tension, had it melting under her palms as she shaped the taut muscles.
In her business she’d seen and felt loads of male bodies while she taught advanced classes at her do jan. None of them beckoned the way Kel’s did.
For once in her life she knew she was going to take Leena’s advice. How could she pass up the chance of a lifetime, whether there was a future in it or not? She didn’t see many others coming her way.
Her thoughts fragmented and fell away as if they’d never been as Kel cupped her breast and robbed her of breath. His thumb brushed the tip of her nipple and she surged forward, trapping his hand between them even as she tightened her hold around his waist with her knees.
The way things were going, Kel should have known her breast would be the perfect fit for his hand. It was as if the gods were laughing at his arrogant assumption that the perfect woman for him didn’t exist, and had created her just to spite him.
It had seemed natural to claim her breast, to cup it and test its weight, something he seldom thought about when reduced to seeking a woman for relief.
Long before his marriage had ended his wife had removed her services, and even before that, she’d refused to let him touch with his hands. His hands were trained to do violence. They were lethal weapons, and unlike Ngaire, she couldn’t bear them on her skin.
With the still cognizant part of his brain, he heard a man’s voice add its might to the woman’s voice and more lights flicked on in the eyeless windows of Elizabeth House. He knew he and Ngaire couldn’t be seen and he actually felt a moment’s pity for Schmidt as the man on the steps shouted, “Go on, beat it before I call the cops.” After that he was definitely glad it was Schmidt taking the abuse and not him. The last thing he needed from his sister, Jo, was a get-out-of-jail-free card.
Ngaire was deaf to everything but the mutual satisfaction of their gasps and was doing something under his shirt to his back that he never wanted to stop. He strained against her in a rhythmic advance toward satisfaction.
His training had been too long and too profound to miss Schmidt slink past the shelter, looking left and right before crossing the road well away from the people calling the shots at Elizabeth House.
A few minutes later when most of the lights had been extinguished and Schmidt had long since disappeared, he felt Ngaire tense in his arms on a gasp and muffled her moans with his mouth. It took all his control not to come apart in her arms when his whole body burned to join her in the small death pulling her into another world. A place he was forbidden to go.
He kept her pressed tight to him long after her release subsided. Long after he’d swallowed her cries whole, and taken what enjoyment there was to be had from being the catalyst of such intense pleasure deep inside him, locked in the place where his heart used to reside.
Her hair tickled under his chin and her breath condensed in the hollow at the base of his throat. It was enough. It had to be enough. It was all the gratification he would allow himself while still living within his version of right and wrong. The law had nothing to do with it. They played this game under his rules.
His entire body spiked with tension as she sighed his name, “Kel.” She tried it out again. “Ke-e-el. I knew it would be like this with us. All white heat and black magic.”
Yes, he’d known it, too, damn her, he’d known.
Just for once, why the hell couldn’t he have been wrong?
Chapter 7
N gaire didn’t have much experience in dealing with morning-after stuff; tonight it was the few minutes after that were proving difficult. Would it have been so awkward if Kel hadn’t turned into the strong silent type? At least then she could have told him the surprise had been mutual, instead of coloring up each time she remembered spinning off the planet—like right now.
When she shifted the weight in her day pack to her other shoulder, it nestled warmly under her arm, while the sea breeze on her hot face felt cool. Both soothing in their own way. The temperature changes in Te Ruahiki were weird. Even weirder, the thought of the mere knowing what had just gone on.
She colored again. There was more to the greenstone than its bloody history, no matter what Savage gave as his reason for wanting to add it to his private collection. More than likely he had this crazy idea that the changes in the greenstone would warn him of his impending death, in time to prevent it. As the saying went, forewarned was forearmed.
That didn’t make it possible for the mere to sense the way Kel had rocked her socks, in a bus shelter of all places. If she told her friend Leena—the repository for all the important events in her life—she’d never live it down.
The lights of the ferryboat winked as it bobbed slightly in the middle of the harbor, warning her that one of them better say something soon, while they were still alone.
Someone ought to take the initiative, and it was her turn. Deal with it, Ngaire. You’re a big girl now.
“Sorry.” Even to her own ears it sounded weak.
“For what?”
“Losing it back there. I can’t remember the last…” Her voice trailed away. It had never happened that way before, the intensity, the sheer purging of inhibitions, as if she’d just been born. That she’d never lived until he took her in his arms.
If it had, she would have marked it on her calendar as the day she’d been reborn. Jeez, if it affected her that way without full penetration, the future few days suddenly took on super-nova status.
Kel looked down at her, eyebrows drawn straight, eyes and dimpled chin darkened by shadows as they walked under a street lamp. “So you aren’t mad at me because of my caveman tactics?”
So, that’s what was bothering him? Her apprehension faded. “Let’s say I give you an eight for seizing the moment and a three for the accommodation, on a scale where a hotel room scores ten.”
His lopsided grin, which had been missing in action, lit his face the way a comet lights the sky, smoothing out the harsh lines the lamp had drawn in black crayon. “I notice you didn’t rate me on performance.”
The dark cloud hovering since the bus shelter evaporated, as if it had never been. Never weighed on her. A warm rush of feeling swelled as if her heart might burst with pleasure, to hear him tease her like a friend, or lover of longstan
ding. A voice at the back of her mind, which sounded like Leena’s, whispered, “You are so pathetic, girl, being so pleased by so little.” She ignored it, answering him in the same coin. “Sheesh, if I did, you might stop trying to excel.”
“That counts me out for the rest of the night.” A rejection softened with a lift of a brow, like a wink in reverse. “I’d hate to spoil my record. And you must be beat, doll. You’ve had a helluva day one way and another. And in the caves tomorrow, we’re going to be climbing more stairs than a mutt has fleas.”
On the other side of the harbor, their hotel lights reflected in the water, but she’d turned the lights out in the one they were never destined to share. Swallowing a sigh whole, she urged, “Heck, the ferry is almost in, better make a dash for it.”
They made it to the top deck without a stop halfway. “What do you fancy, doll? Coffee or soda?”
She gave the selection behind the counter a brief glance. “Soda? Make mine lemon.” Unlike their previous crossing, vacant tables were hard to find with the bulk of younger passengers, dressed for a night on the town. From the snatches of conversation she caught, tomorrow Auckland’s city dwellers should waken to find everything painted red.
A small, sharp shaft of envy pierced her. How would it be to dance with Kel? If his long, loose-limbed stride was anything to go by, he could move and shake with the best of them. As always, when his name came to mind, which was often, she had to look at him. Her chin grazed her shoulder as she snuck a peek. Somebody pinch me! Tell me I’m not dreaming.
From behind, his khakis enhanced his firm butt, cupping it. She’d already had the pleasure of curving her hands round that part of his anatomy. Visions of the two of them on a small crowded dance floor turned up her personal thermostat. A twinge of pain was all it took to remind her that the day’s events had put paid to flexing her dancing muscles.
Kel gave his order, more concerned with watching Ngaire than whether or not the server could change the fifty he handed over the counter. The young guy doled two twenties into Kel’s palm, then began scraping through change for the rest.
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