If it hadn’t happened, she’d be dead. Remember?
She clenched her teeth before they could chatter.
If Adam knew, he wouldn’t want her. But right now, he did. And, oh, she wanted him.
Why couldn’t she have him? It wasn’t as if they didn’t both know any hook-up would be temporary. Very temporary. Maybe very very, depending on what new and thrilling events tomorrow brought.
It would be harder to say goodbye if she did this.
Would it? she asked herself bleakly. She already felt more for him than she ever had for any other man. Saying goodbye would be bad no matter what.
I could love him. Maybe I already do.
Why not look at a night with him as a gift? Who ever regretted having an amazing experience? Swimming close enough to a sea turtle to look into his eyes and know he was looking back. Stand atop Mt. Rainier and see the world below you and rejoice because you’d been there without mourning because you’d never go back. She could think of making love with Adam Rostov like that.
Naomi took a deep breath and left the safety of her bedroom.
*****
“Naomi might be safer once you talk to her,” Adam conceded, thinking it through.
“Or not,” Sam said, dampening any optimism. “If you’re right, and my, uh, co-worker catches a glimpse of me in Cape Trouble, his motivation to take care of her is going to rise exponentially.”
Adam mumbled a profanity.
“Has to be done,” his almost brother-in-law pointed out. “She is safer hunkered down where she is with you guarding her than she’d be during any attempt to get her out of town and to an airport. Unless we send in a National Guard helicopter to pick her up…” He seemed to mull over that possibility before discarding it. “We don’t want to send up that kind of flare yet. No, I can fly into Portland relatively anonymously, rent a car and be over there by tomorrow afternoon or early evening.”
They talked a minute more, but ended the call with Sam saying, “Count on seeing me tomorrow.”
Sam had made the decision not to consult his superiors yet. He wanted the evidence in hand first – and admitted he’d begun to have his suspicions about the identity of the agent trying to assassinate Naomi. He wouldn’t name him, not yet.
“I need something more than a suspicion,” he said, sounding as unhappy as Adam would have been to learn someone he worked with and trusted had betrayed everything they stood for. It wouldn’t be any different than him having to seriously consider whether Frank had been dirty. So damn unwelcome, the mind just shied away from it.
Setting his phone on the table, Adam closed his eyes and massaged his forehead with his fingertips, his thoughts reverting to what Sam had said about Naomi. Hell. Safer? Was she really safe at all, even with him here? Someone could shatter the glass in her bedroom window and pump bullets into her where she slept way quicker than Adam could get to his feet and rush in to protect her. This small cottage was far from impregnable. Locks were deadbolts, but the back door had a glass inset, for God’s sake. Curtained, as were all the other windows, thanks, he felt sure, to the fear Naomi had lived with the entire time she’d been here. She’d chosen black-out curtains; he’d checked during his night-time prowls to be sure shadows of movement inside couldn’t be seen. Even so, glass could be broken silently by someone with the right tool.
A soft whisper of sound had him half out of the chair in the split second before he saw that it was Naomi and began to relax.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I keep trying to hide my head in the sand.”
“Can’t blame you.” He made himself resume his seat as she approached, looking shy, then pulled out the chair too close to him. The damn table was so small.
“Are you hungry yet?” she asked.
“I can eat if you want to, but I had lunch late.”
She nodded. She’d fed him in the café kitchen and knew exactly when he ate. “Um…will you talk to me?” Definitely shy. “Tell me something about you?”
Something true, she meant. He remembered what he’d almost told her the night they went out like two normal people who were attracted to each other.
“Growing up, I wanted to be a fighter pilot. Navy, I thought, so I could land on aircraft carriers. That seemed the coolest to me.”
She almost smiled at the hint of his boyish enthusiasm. “Did you join?”
“No. After Dad died, I changed my mind. Instead, I was going to be a crime-fighter extraordinaire, making everyone ashamed they’d ever suspected Dad of being on the take.” His tone was wry, but not…pained. He was a little surprised at how easily he’d settled into acceptance of the knowledge that his father had taken bribes or pay-offs or just payment for turning his head or something worse. Which meant…he’d already known, somewhere deep inside?
Yeah, he concluded. That was exactly what it meant.
“I don’t know how I deluded myself for so long,” he said abruptly.
She touched the back of his hand, lying on the table. Then she curled her own into a fist and withdrew it. “We want to believe in our parents.”
“I guess so.” He wanted more touches. Those small, competent hands on him, but he also knew he couldn’t ask. Not when she was utterly dependent on him. “You, too, huh?”
“Yes. I still don’t understand…”
When she trailed off, he finished for her. “Why your mother put up with the abuse. Why she endangered you, too.”
Naomi nodded.
“What’s harder to understand is how you ended up so strong.”
She blinked. “You think I am?”
“Don’t you?”
Adam watched as she pondered that. The crinkles in her forehead smoothed.
“I suppose I do. I’ve done things—” She clearly thought better of what she’d come close to saying. “Things my mother wouldn’t have been able to.”
He smiled at her. “There you go.”
She didn’t smile back. Darkness seemed to shadow her most of the time, and never more than now. Adam wondered if it was a legacy of her painful childhood or of the past two terrifying years.
Although she’d wanted to talk, now she appeared to have run out of things to say. She peeked at him, then gazed at the uninteresting tabletop. He was surprised, given her mood, she didn’t leap up to engage in comfort cooking.
Usually comfortable with silence, Adam found this one to be different. Tense. It left him free to look at her bent head, the delicate whorls of her ears, the curve of her jaw, the childlike texture of her skin. His heart clenched as he remembered her smiles that one evening, when he’d glimpsed the woman she had been before fear came to dominate her life.
He might have jumped up to pace or at least open some distance between them, except that studying her, thinking about her, had had the inevitable effect of arousing him. He was forced to continue sitting quietly in pretended relaxation.
“When you kissed me,” she said suddenly, and he realized she was now looking at him, too. “Was that part of worming your way into my confidence?”
God, did she really think that?
“I don’t do that.” Maybe he should have been offended, but he couldn’t blame her for her suspicions. “Naomi, I didn’t intend to feel most of what I have for you. Not much that’s happened between us was fake, and kissing you sure as hell wasn’t. I wanted you the minute I saw you.”
Her “oh” was almost soundless. Caramel, he thought again, looking into her eyes, but darker and richer than he remembered the color being.
“Then…will you make love with me?” Her breath hitched in what he thought was alarm. “I mean, not love, but—”
“Have sex?” The gravel in his voice had hardened into something with less give. Concrete. “No. But I can’t think of anything I want more than to make love with you.”
“Oh,” she said again.
“Why?” he made himself ask. “You’re still angry at me.”
Naomi shook her head. “I’m not. I was, because I ca
me closer to trusting you than I usually let myself, and then to find out you’d been lying… But I do understand. And how can I be angry when you’ve done so much to protect me?”
He nodded. She wouldn’t go to bed with him to express gratitude, would she? But, damn, he wanted her, and his brain had quit working the way it should be.
Adam stood and held out his hand to her. Damn, I hope she means it, he thought, as he waited to see what she’d do.
CHAPTER TWELVE
He stood looking at the top of her head and the soft, feathery dark hair. She had to be at eye level with his erection, he realized. The sight had her cheeks pink by the time she lifted her gaze to his. She seemed…surprised. As if she hadn’t believed he really wanted her? Or was she only surprised at herself? Either way, she laid her hand in his with an air of trust that squeezed his chest.
He tugged her to her feet and into his arms, surprised anew at how delicate she felt. She was fine porcelain instead of sturdy ceramic, although Adam knew in one way that wasn’t true. He’d seen her in tight-fitting running clothes and knew her body was as strong as the determination that had kept her going despite the odds. But her bones were finely made. He wasn’t a huge man, but his wrists were probably twice as thick as hers.
He ran his hands down her back and cupped her butt, squeezing and lifting her. Naomi lifted her arms around his neck and kissed his throat, pulling a groan from him.
The next second, his mouth found hers, and they were kissing deeply, passionately, as if taking up where they’d left off that first night, when he’d been so damn close to bearing her to the floor or pushing her up against a wall.
She kissed him back eagerly but still…not clumsily, that wasn’t right, but as if she wasn’t a hundred percent sure what she was doing. Maybe a woman forgot. He was willing to bet she hadn’t let a man get this close to her since she fled L.A.
Since the last time she’d kissed Greg Cobb. The chill the thought gave him didn’t last any longer than it took for him to lift his head and look at her face, even prettier softened and colored by desire.
He made a rough sound and kissed her again.
They managed to stumble through the house to her bedroom, bumping walls a few times, but he was fully aware when he had her backed up to the bed.
“Let me see you,” he said.
Worry flared on her face. “I’m…not that…”
“Yeah, you are.” He tugged her shirt up and she cooperated by lifting her arms. Her bra was as dainty as she was, a virginal white without anything fancy about it, but his flesh surged anyway. He laid his hands over her breasts and gently rubbed.
Head tipped so she could watch, Naomi gave a tremulous sigh.
With a groan, he reached behind her to release the catch, then whisked the bra off to reveal small, perfect breasts. Her tight nipples were more pink than brown, to go with her very white skin. Adam picked her up and laid her on the bed so that he could follow her down, his mouth capturing one breast even before her back made contact with the coverlet.
He kissed and licked and sucked until he heard her saying insistently, “Please. Take this off,” and he remembered he still wore the damn vest.
Not to mention his Glock.
Separating himself from her was downright painful, but he reared up enough to rip off his denim shirt and fumble with the straps so that he could remove the vest and toss it aside. Once he set his weapon on the bedside table, she tugged at his T-shirt until he stripped that off, too, hiding his grimace at the pain from where the bullet had struck his back.
And then he had to groan again at the pleasure of – at last! – feeling her hands on him. She didn’t just stroke, she squeezed, even kneaded, and the strength of those hands was a major turn-on.
The part of his brain still functioning had the fleeting thought that he surely did hope she didn’t have only a one-off in mind, because he wasn’t going to last nearly long enough to enjoy her body and her touch as much as he wanted to.
But she seemed to feel the same urgency, because she unfastened his belt at the same time as he stripped her of jeans, panties and socks in one go.
For a minute he had to stare. She was slim and supple, her curves subtle but definitely there. Man, his hands were shaking as he finished undressing himself and grabbed a condom from his back pocket.
An expression of shock on her face gave him pause.
“I didn’t even think,” she whispered.
He grimaced. “I did. I bought these the morning after I kissed you for the first time.”
“You…thought we’d get here?”
“No. I didn’t know. I couldn’t have made love with you until I’d told you the truth, but I wanted you. I…hoped.”
She relaxed again, smiling. A tiny dimple flickered in her cheek. “I’m glad you had the foresight.”
Yeah. He hadn’t come to Cape Trouble with any expectation of having sex, that was for sure. What if she’d asked, and he’d had to say, Love to, after I make a quick run to the pharmacy?
And then they kissed and rolled and touched, Adam exploring her body as she explored his, until he couldn’t wait another second and found his place between her legs. Sliding inside her was one of the best feelings of his life. From the astonishment on her face, he thought it might be the same for her.
They moved, sometimes coordinated, sometimes as if they were doing battle, but he’d been right – he couldn’t last long. Fortunately, he didn’t have to. She came around him with an exultant cry, and he let himself go, the pleasure roaring through him. He was unable to so much as say her name although it was there, in his throat, in his head.
Naomi.
*****
He crushed her into the mattress for a minute before seeming to heave himself off her and roll to his back. The air cold on her bare skin, Naomi suddenly felt vulnerable in a way that had panic swelling. She desperately wanted to burrow beneath the covers or leap up and get dressed. Instead she lay completely still, not wanting him to notice that she was freaking out.
Why had she thought this was a good idea? She’d wanted…she didn’t even know. Comfort, satisfaction. Real closeness to another human being. Instead, she was terrified by more intimacy than she’d thought possible.
And that was why she felt so bare now.
His long arm came out and gathered her against him. “Damn, it’s cold in here,” he mumbled. Once he had her tucked close, his arm left her long enough to gather up her comforter and fling it partly over them. He must not know how he radiated heat. Naomi wasn’t cold anymore, but she still did battle with the desire to separate herself from him, figure out how to pretend making love with Adam hadn’t been so overwhelming.
That it was just sex.
“Are you all right?” he asked, voice still slurred, his head tilting as if he was trying to see her face.
No!
“Sure.” She shrugged, as well as she could when half-draped over a hard, warm, male body.
His arm tightened around her. She expected him to say, I don’t believe you. Let’s talk about it. Instead, what came out was a drowsy, “Don’t go anywhere. I need to sleep for a little while, and I don’t want you even out in the kitchen without me.”
And then, as far as she could tell, he dropped right off. His breathing deepened and his muscles went slack. Her mouth opened in outrage that she welcomed as a replacement for the irrational panic.
That was it? He couldn’t say, That was fabulous? Was it as good for you as it was for me? Nope, he just took a nap?
But he didn’t even know that she’d stiffened. And…she didn’t actually want to get up and go into the living room or kitchen without him, not after what had happened this morning when she had almost gotten herself – or him – killed by not following his instructions.
In fairness, he had reason to be tired, too. She knew he wasn’t sleeping much, and that was because he had dedicated himself to keeping her safe. Which meant she was being petty.
Once she gave up
and let herself relax and even enjoy the sensation of lying half on top of his warm, strong body, some of the unnerving feeling of having her nerve-endings bared like electrical wires stripped of their plastic sheathing subsided. Her eyelids felt heavy, too. Her thoughts clouded.
*****
They made love twice more before finally agreeing they were starved and getting up, at which point he was careless enough to turn his back to her and she saw the bruise from the gunshot. He couldn’t see it himself, but from her exclamations, it must be an ugly one.
Adam thought Naomi was incredibly cute in sacky sweatpants, a sweater that hung to mid-thigh, and thick, bright red fleece socks. With any other woman, he’d have suggested they settle for sandwiches, but Naomi put together a stir-fry almost as fast, and it was five-star restaurant fabulous. And then there were those cookies.
They didn’t talk much over their meal, any more than they had in bed. Adam hadn’t known what to say to her, and guessed she had the same problem. He shouldn’t have made love to her, not yet; there was too much he didn’t know about her, and one of the few things he felt sure of was that she still hadn’t told him whatever secret she held knotted inside her.
He’d been coward enough not to press her so far. She had enough to deal with. Maybe they both did. And that was the other, flashing-in-neon-lights reason he shouldn’t have so much as laid a hand on her: he couldn’t afford to be distracted when his entire focus should be on guarding her.
It was natural to assume her silence might be partly uncertainty because he hadn’t said anything about how he felt. He had the uneasy feeling, though, that she wouldn’t have wanted to talk about feelings. He just hoped she wasn’t conning him now while plotting an escape.
He finished his third cookie and took a swallow of coffee to wash it down. As far as he could tell, Naomi had mostly crumbled her cookie rather than taking even a bite.
See How She Runs (A Cape Trouble Novel Book 2) Page 19
