Of course, other than the occasional warehouse bomb, his life these days didn’t involve the sorts of things he’d feel compelled to protect those he loved from knowing about. But that didn’t mean his assignments weren’t interesting. He’d actually enjoy sharing some of his Trinity exploits with her, seeing her reaction, hearing her take on some of the things they’d done, the people they’d helped.
Just as he wanted to know more about what it was, exactly, she did with the kids she was so determined to help. And if she’d ever thought about having any of her own someday.
Whoa. He had no idea where that had come from.
“Earth to Donovan,” she said, a half smile teasing the corners of her mouth.
“I’m sorry, what?”
“I asked you why the cause of the fire seemed suspicious?” She bumped shoulders again, and they paused as Bagel went off the path, investigating as far as his leash would allow him. “Where did your mind just go anyway?”
It was enough that he wanted to share stories with her he’d never shared with anyone other than those who’d been involved at the time. No way was he telling her about that last little mental detour. “Just that you might be surprised by some of the things we’ve done.” It was more truth than he’d intended to share.
“You’ll have to tell me about them.”
His eyes had adjusted enough to the dark that he saw the little shadow that crossed her face after she said it. They were so comfortable with each other, it was hard to imagine that in a short period of time, very short if his suspicions proved correct, they would be out of each other’s lives. Possibly for good.
“But for now, I’ll be happy with the story of what you found in the cabin that makes you think it was set to destroy rather than distract or deter me from staying.”
“There wasn’t much left to look at, and I was limited in what I could do and stay consistent with the firemen’s movements, but the point of origin appeared to be oddly placed. Center of the main floor. Not the corner, where it would climb walls, consume the ceiling, burn faster. And opposite the fireplace, flue is melted, but the lever is still closed. I need to look around a bit, check out some of the other cabins, see what else I can find.”
“You think they used more than that one? Should we be worried about more fires?”
We. He had to admit he liked how she thought of them as a team, so naturally, like that. “I don’t know.” He saw the slight slump to her shoulders, squeezed her hand. “I wish I could be more reassuring.”
“What—what about my cabin?”
“I think they’ve done enough damage for one day. I’ll go through the other cabins in the morning, then wait for the marshal, go through that ordeal, then we’ll see what’s what from that point. Possibly go into town, speak to Gilby again, depending on what we learn.”
“Okay. Sounds like a plan.” She squeezed his hand back, but there was clear trepidation in her voice.
“We’re close, Kate.” Close to finding out who was doing this. Which meant close to him leaving. He turned his mind back to the matter at hand. “Tell me, are all the cabins built on the same blueprint? I mean, the ones of that particular size?”
She shrugged. “Some are. I haven’t been in all of them. Some of them aren’t safe to go into. I need inspectors to help me go through them, but, as of yet, I can’t get any help that way. I’ve spent most of my time up here researching funding and loans. Besides, you’d probably know more about that than I would, growing up here.”
He shook his head. “Never went in them.”
She sent him a surprised look. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, in the summer, they were filled with paying guests, and in the off season, I had other things to do.” Namely staying anywhere but Winnimocca whenever he had the chance. It was the main reason he’d played sports in school. Anything to keep him from going home each day until he absolutely had to.
“But, even with Raphael and Finn here? I mean, I guess I thought you’d been in and out of their cabins every summer while they were here.”
He shook his head. “We hung out, but never in the cabins.” Cabins filled with a half dozen other campers, none of whom would have welcomed the local trailer trash into their midst. Not that he, Rafe, and Finn couldn’t have held their own against them, he just had no motivation to do so. He’d had nothing to prove to those boys.
She didn’t ask, but from her quiet expression, he figured she didn’t need to. Anyone who’d spent five seconds in the camp back then had known he wasn’t one of them.
“Even the girls’ cabins?” she asked.
That surprised a laugh out of him. “No, not even the girls’ cabins.” He’d had plenty of other places all scoped out when that was his mission. Staking his claim on them had been, in some ways, enough of a middle finger to the world at large, and the rich boys in particular. That they’d come to him willingly made it all the sweeter. He’d always treated the girls with respect, even as he was divesting them of their panties. It wasn’t something he was particularly proud of now. But he wasn’t going to beat himself up over it almost twenty years later either.
“But the way the girls talked, it sounded like—”
“I never went in their cabins.”
“Huh,” was all she said, making him continue to grin into the darkness.
She sounded almost a little…jealous. Or maybe possessive was the right word. It was silly, really, that he sort of liked that reaction from her, especially over something that happened so long ago as to be completely irrelevant. Still, he held her hand a little more snugly in his.
“So,” she said, at length, “now what do we do?”
“Now we finish walking the dog, and, seeing as my place is a bit charred at the moment, you could invite me back to your place, we spend the night in your bed together, then we get up and find whatever we need to prove my theory.”
“Where do we start?”
He stopped and turned toward her so she naturally stepped into the shelter of his body. She looked momentarily surprised, but she didn’t move away. Yeah, he could definitely get used to that.
“What?” she asked.
“You wanted to know where I was going to start, and I seem to recall you saying something earlier about showing not telling. So I was going to show you.”
“I meant where do we start to look for proof.”
“Oh.” He stepped back. “Okay.” He went to turn, then smiled as she immediately tugged him back. “What?” he asked, parroting her.
“This…showing. I do believe in that. Strongly.”
He leaned down, almost brushing his mouth across hers. “Strongly?”
“Mmm hmm. Very.”
“Deeply?” He pressed a very soft kiss to the corner of her mouth.
She moaned a little. “Repeatedly.” She lifted up on her toes. “Please.”
He wrapped his arms around her. “You know,” he began, dropping little kisses along her jaw, “I’m thinking the finding-proof thing can wait until morning. Late morning.”
“Late morning,” she agreed, sighing and letting her head drop back to afford him greater access.
“Ask me to come home with you, Kate,” he murmured against her neck.
She tightened her hold on him. “Let’s go home, Donovan.”
His hold on her tightened almost convulsively. Home. A home with Kate. It sounded so good. It made him want to never search for proof, never find the answers, never conclude his only real reason for being here. It made him want things he couldn’t have. Want them so badly he ached for it.
“Yeah,” he said, his voice almost gruff. “Let’s go home.”
If he thought he could have managed it without his knee buckling, or getting them both tangled in the dog leash, he’d have swept her into his arms and carried her all the way back to the cabin, straight to bed. He’d never been a romantic before, but she made him want to make grand gestures, made him want to literally sweep her off her feet.
&nbs
p; And maybe a part of him wanted to do whatever it took to keep them in this moment, this heady, almost euphoric, need-filled, anticipatory moment where nothing mattered but their want for each other. And all other talking would cease, talking that might lead to solutions, to him finishing the job and leaving, or worse, to him revealing how badly he wanted to stay.
As it happened, he didn’t have to worry about that. Kate turned and tucked herself against his side, her arm snaking around his waist as she reached out and took the leash, gently tugging Bagel away from his rooting about. And they walked back to the cabin in comfortable, easy silence. If you didn’t count the screaming sexual tension that always percolated between them. He slipped his arm around her shoulders and kept her close, their hips bumping as they strolled. Not racing, but not exactly indulging Bagel in any further explorations either.
The air was almost still now, and the smell of the burnt cabin lingered heavily. But the promise of tomorrow, of what they might find, and where that would lead, was something easily pushed away. For now. For now, he just wanted to focus on this moment, this walk, this woman. And Kate stayed in that moment with him, maybe, hopefully, wanting the same for herself.
When they got back to the cabin, they slipped out of their coats and boots. Then Mac unhooked Bagel from his leash, and Kate simply slipped her hand in his and took him to bed. It was different from the other times, gentler, more thoughtful, and yet familiar. Not just in the raging need he always had for her, but…it was Kate. She should feel new to him, a stranger, and yet he knew her, knew her in a way that went beyond carnal knowledge to some other place that defied rational thought or logic. He was utterly himself with her, in a way he’d never been with anyone else. No walls, no guarded moments, no worrying about where it might lead. It had already led.
Yes, she was known to him, in that soul-deep way where like recognized like, mate recognized mate. It should have terrified him, right down to his core. And, he supposed, if he let it, it would. But she was Kate. And she was his. And there was nothing terrifying in that; there was only joy. Life wasn’t fair. He knew that better than anyone, both from personal endurance and intimate observation. There was never a promise of time, and anyone who thought otherwise was a fool.
He liked to think he was no fool.
Even if he could stay in this cabin forever, there were no guarantees on what he and Kate might have, or for how long. Plans could be made, but life, or fate, often had something else in mind. His time, their time, was now. He’d take the now, and worry about the later, later.
He brushed her hands aside and undressed her. If she had any inkling of what was going on in his mind, her expression didn’t reveal it. Instead, she seemed much in the same place as he was, unhurried, enjoying the moment, wanting to, for once, not go at each other like starved animals. She tugged his shirt off, slowly slid off his pants. He pulled her close, liking how her bare skin felt pressed up against his own, suddenly in no hurry to toss her onto the bed.
He kissed along the side of her jaw, down along her neck, across her collarbone. She sighed, tipped her head back, and moaned softly as he indulged in a slow exploration that trailed around her breasts, with brief stops to pay particular attention to her nipples, before slipping lower. But when he reached her hipbone, she tugged him back up and began an exploration of her own.
“My turn,” she said softly, making him wish he had something to hold on to as she made his knees weaken with her own lingering trail of kisses. When she reached his hip, he tugged her down on the bed, but she pushed him onto his back and went right back to exploring. “Just let me,” she said, shooting him a quick smile, then returning to her mission at hand. Or at mouth, as the case may be.
He was going to object, going to pull her up on top of him, slide inside of her, and make love to her as slowly, as sweetly, as he was capable of, but then he was groaning, and arching off the bed as she took him into the delightfully warm and soft interior of her mouth. Her hands pushed at his chest, kept him in place, as she slid her leg over his, making her intentions clear. And far be it from him to not give her what she wanted. Especially when—
“Sweet Jesus,” he said, followed by a long, slow growl as she began moving her mouth and hand on him. “Kate, that’s—” But there were no words. So he groped for a pillow, pulled it under his head, and watched, and felt, and pumped, as she brought him screamingly close to the edge.
And she would have taken him over, but not this time, not tonight. He nudged her away, grinning when she pouted up at him. “Come here,” he murmured, helping her slide her weight over him, then slowly easing her down onto him. Their sighs of pleasure matched. “You’re so damn perfect for me.” He didn’t think he’d said that out loud, until she agreed.
Her hair fell forward as he brought her mouth to his. “Roll me over, Donovan,” she whispered. “I want to feel your weight on me.”
It caught at his heart, every time she said it. The way she said it. He was Donovan only to her. And it felt so damn good to know that. He shifted them both to their sides, paused there for a moment, kissed her, then moved the rest of the way, sinking deeply into her as she lifted up and wrapped her legs around his hips.
And he held her gaze, in between long, slow kisses, moving inside of her, feeling her match his steady rhythm as easily as if they’d done this for centuries. He finally slid his arm beneath her, tilted her hips up that extra bit, so he could sink a tiny bit deeper, reach that spot he already knew was there, the one that made her gasp and tighten around him almost convulsively. The one he knew would take them both over the edge. But he held her there, for that one moment out of time, and looked into her eyes. “Kate…”
And her eyes grew glassy then, at that one hoarsely uttered whisper. And it didn’t scare him so much as hurt him. Because she was his, dammit, and he’d never do anything to hurt her, and the look in her eyes spoke of much the same, even as they both knew the reality of what they were doing to each other. And where it would leave them.
“With me,” he said, pushing the rest of the way in.
“Always,” he thought he heard her whisper, as she took him there, and they both went over.
Chapter 21
“I’ll be fucked.”
Kate stretched, smiled. “Highly possible. Probable even.” She blinked her eyes open and found Donovan standing by the bedroom window. Bare-ass naked. Her eyesight was a bit blurred from sleep, but, even blurry, he was the best thing she’d ever seen.
“Sorry,” he said, “I didn’t know you were awake.”
“What’s going on? Uh oh.” She pushed up on her elbows and shoved her hair out of her face. “Did something else happen?”
He turned, and the hard set of his jaw instantly softened. “Actually, nothing is going to be happening for a while.”
She sat all the way up, only to have him flatten her right back to the bed. She’d never get tired of that. She smiled into his sleepy face and bumped her hips up. “Really? All tuckered out, are you? Because I thought—”
He rolled to his back and pulled her, squealing, on top of him. “I think we achieved that somewhere around three this morning. I can’t remember ever being this worn out.” He wrapped his hand around the back of her neck and tugged her mouth to his. “And yet, strangely energized, all at the same time.”
She laughed against his lips, kissed him back. “Funny, I seem to be having the same predicament.”
He started to shift up on the bed so she could straddle him, but she pushed his hands away, still laughing. “If we’re going for some kind of marathon record, I need sustenance first.”
His grin was as wicked as it was wide. “I thought last night when you had your mouth full of—”
“Men,” she retorted, but snickered. “That was more like a dessert topping. I need real sustenance if I’m going to keep up with you.”
“A dessert topping? Did you just call my—”
She rolled off of him. “You have a problem with that? I happen to r
eally love my dessert toppings.”
And with that she found herself on her back again, a grinning Donovan in her face. “I’ve been reduced to a sex condiment and you think I should be flattered, do you?”
“Trust me, nothing about you is reduced.”
He laughed, then winced as he shifted his weight.
“You okay?”
“Cop knees.”
She rolled him to his back, gently this time. “Sounds serious. Perhaps I should investigate.” She slid down along his body.
“I thought you were starving?” He groaned a little as she slipped between his legs. “And, last I looked, that wasn’t my knee.”
“Hunger first, injury later. Besides, this will take your mind off of the pain, for a little while anyway.”
“True.” He let his head drop back against the bed. “Very true.”
“So,” she said conversationally as she teased him with a string of kisses along the velvety smooth length of him. “What were you looking at outside?”
“My eyes are rolling back in my head and you want to chat?”
She kissed the tip, making his hips buck, smiling at how easily they’d come to know each other’s bodies so well. “I was just curious.” And she didn’t want the fire marshal rolling in and interrupting anything either. “Why won’t anything happen today? Anything else, I mean.” She looked up at him, wiggling her eyebrows.
But his head was back, his eyes shut. He was all hers.
The Black Sheep and the Princess Page 29
