by Lee Kilraine
Delaney looked into his eyes. “I’m not changing my mind. But . . . but, I would like the light off.”
“Okay.” He clicked off the light and joined their hands as the room plunged into darkness. “It’s dark. I’ve been entrenched outside your castle for a month now.” Stretching out his body next to hers on the bed, he started with her captive hand, kissing his way up the soft pulse points at the base of her thumb, the delicate veins of her wrist, the inner bend of her elbow, the rapidly beating pulse at the base of her neck. “I’m swimming across your alligator-infested moat.”
Delaney’s arm was on fire.
Quinn leaned her up to whisk her tank top off. He lay back down next to her, running one hand down her neck, sliding it across her collarbone, along her outer rib cage . . . a feather touch on the tender underside of her left breast. He covered her breast with his hand as he moved his lips along a similar path down the other side of her body, kissing, licking, and sucking along her neck, collarbone, rib cage, and then finally her breast. His attentions were breathtakingly thorough, until he finally sucked her nipple in his mouth, reaching some perfect combination of exquisite pleasure with just a nip of pain before releasing her.
“I’ve climbed your ramparts.”
“Mmm. Aaahh,” was all she could form. She touched and caressed her hands over his back and then down his shoulders to his biceps and forearms. God, what was it with her and his forearms? She grabbed his face and pulled him up for a kiss, slipping her tongue between his lips, seeking out his, making him moan.
He broke away from her lips and began his assault down across the quivering muscles of her abdomen. He quickly eased off her black lace panties, separated her legs, and kissed her and kept on kissing her until she screamed. “I’ve scaled your walls. I’ve entered your keep. Do you yield?”
“Quinn!”
He climbed back up her body to look into her face, and he kissed her with a wild passion until they both needed air.
“Quinn. Quinlan.” Her breath panted in and out like she’d just sprinted a lap. “You’ve been so busy storming the castle, you can’t see I’ve lowered the drawbridge. Come in. Now, dammit.”
He flashed his sexy smile and dimple at her as his fingers squeezed one of her nipples. “Relax, Delaney. I’m the victor. You’re the spoils. I’m going to pillage at my own damn pace.” He leaned down and sucked her other nipple, then moved to lick the sensitive outer side of her breast.
Quinn surely knew what he was doing in bed, but she didn’t think she could wait much longer. She knew a little about battle tactics too. Reaching her hands down, struggling a little to get his briefs off until he lifted his hips and helped, she took a firm hold of his hard penis, instantly changing the advantage on the battlefield.
Quinn’s whole body tensed. “Oh God, yes. Touch me, Delaney.” Touch him she did. She stroked, and slid, and caressed her hand along the hard, satiny length of him. Now she had him panting and moaning. When sweat started beading on his forehead, he finally said, “Okay, I yield.”
“You bet your ass you do.” Delaney reached over and grabbed a condom out of the box. Using her teeth, she ripped open the foil packet.
Quinn’s eyes burned into hers as he watched her. “You are so beautiful.” He reached down to help put the condom on, but she brushed his hand away and rolled it down his hardness, squeezing as she went. He moaned. “You’re killing me.”
“Now, Quinn. Please, now.” Delaney wrapped her good leg around Quinn’s hips and grabbed his tight ass with both hands.
Quinn turned Delaney’s face to look into his. They stared at each other on the edge of a breath, and time stopped. He entered her in one sweet thrust, their gazes still connected until their eyes drifted closed. He rested his forehead on hers as they moved together.
Delaney heard him whisper, “Now, Laney. Let go.” His deep voice was enough to send her over the edge. Her breath caught. Her body shook. She grabbed him by the hair and whispered, “You are a beautiful man,” against his lips. His strong body shuddered against her before his weight relaxed onto her. She shivered as he trailed kisses along her jawline up to her ear, where he whispered, “You can come in my bubble anytime.”
“Oh, bite me.”
Which he did more than once during the night.
Chapter Seventeen
Delaney lay in bed the next morning wishing she could turn the clock back eight hours. Maybe even set the last eight hours on a constant loop. She sighed, running her hand over the cool sheets next to her. Hiding in Quinn’s arms wasn’t any better than bingeing on PBS and cabernet. Okay, it was way better, but she needed to stop it anyway. Blinking her eyes open, she pushed back the sweet memories from last night like warm blankets on a bitterly cold morning.
She normally hated waking up. In part, because good solid sleep had been her Holy Grail over the last few months. But mostly, she dreaded the moment of moving from sleep to wakefulness. When morning snuck in on tiptoe feet, there was a second when her body felt whole and healthy. Normal. She was pre-explosion Delaney, a nurse and an athlete. One precious, cruel sliver, that instant of forgetting. She loved that moment as much as she reviled the one that crashed into it like a speeding train.
Her first movement—no matter what part of her body she moved first, her arm, head, or her hips—was enough to shatter the illusion and send reality hurtling in like a meteor. Her doctor had said it was a combination of kinesthetic memory and phantom sensations. In the early months, she used to look under the covers, hoping she’d dreamed the whole thing. As time went on, she’d learned to suck the moment up quick like foul-tasting medicine.
This morning, the moment barely registered because she woke up feeling pretty damn good. Glancing at the clock, she was surprised to see it was eight a.m. What do you know, Quinn was right about the things you could do to help you sleep at night. Darn if she hadn’t had her first good night of sleep in six months. Sitting up in bed, she grabbed her prosthesis off the floor and slid on the gel liner and then her foot. After a quick shower, she dressed in sweats and headed out into the kitchen to find a cup of coffee and Quinn.
The scent of fresh-brewed coffee led her into the kitchen. Quinn sat staring in deep concentration at a large whiteboard propped on an easel next to his kitchen table. He flipped the board over before looking over and releasing a slow, sexy smile on her that sent a delicious flush through her whole body. Who needed coffee after that? She angled toward the coffeepot anyway to cover her awkwardness.
“Morning.” He moved next to her, handing her a coffee mug from one of the overhead cabinets.
Her attention fixated on the graceful play of muscles in his biceps and forearms until she pulled her gaze away to pour coffee into her mug. She raised an eyebrow at him when he dumped a teaspoon of sugar in her mug. “How do you know I like sugar in my coffee?”
There went that lopsided grin again. “I’m a pretty observant guy, being a cop and all. I like to pay attention to the details. I find it pays off.”
“It sure paid off for me last night.” Every cell in her body perked up at his knowing smile. She took her coffee over to sit at the table, putting space between them. Yesterday’s truce had expired, so attacking Quinn up against the kitchen counter wasn’t an option. She moved her focus to the whiteboard because if she looked at Quinn one more second she might jump him. “What are you working on?”
“Nothing.” He moseyed over to stand in front of the board, blocking her view. “How’d you sleep?”
“Great.” She took a sip of coffee, keeping her gaze on his face. “Your nothing sure looks like something.”
“It’s no big deal. I’ll show you, but I want you to know I made this for me—not you. Okay?” When she nodded, he flipped the whiteboard back around and took a cautious step back, his hands tucked into the pockets of his worn jeans.
“Huh.” Delaney squinted at the board, tilting her head left and then right. “You coaching football?”
“Not this year. No,
this is your offensive game plan.” He scratched his neck, looking a bit like there was too much starch in his underwear. “Look, I was an athlete all through high school and college. Sometimes when I’m thinking things through, it helps me to diagram them.”
“My offensive game plan?” Delaney’s gaze moved from the whiteboard’s mess of x’s and o’s, to Quinn, and back again. Squinting at the board. It looked like some complicated calculus problem. “So, I’m playing football?”
“No. But the way I see it, you’re at halftime in the game of your life. You think you’re trailing, twenty-four to nothing.” He pointed at her, his energy a palpable thing. “You’re not.”
Still not following, she played along anyway because Coach Quinn was damn sexy. “I’m not?”
“Hell no. Right now, you’re locked in a tie. And how you start the second half might decide the game.”
Giving Quinn the benefit of the doubt, she closed one eye and tilted her head, but the board didn’t make any more sense to her. “Sorry, I’m not getting it.”
“I got to thinking about your rehab this morning, and to be honest, it’s pretty intimidating. I mean, I think I get why you ended up shutting the world out. It’s damn scary, what you had to face.”
Delaney swallowed hard. He had her full attention now.
“And you’re strong and stubborn, so you tried to face it alone. And damn, Delaney, you made it pretty far on your own before you fumbled the ball. But because you’re strong and stubborn, you suck at asking for help. Luckily, Greer did an end run around that, and we’re part of your team now.”
“Part of my team?” She didn’t remember discussing a team.
“Uh-huh.” He picked up a marker and traced over a circle in the center of the board. “This is you. You’re the quarterback. And I’ve broken your offensive plan into zones. See these?”
“I see them, but it’s like reading a foreign language.”
“You’ve got coaches—those are your doctors. Teammates—Greer, me, my family, friends. Not to brag, or anything, but I’m your star running back. When you need me, I’ll be there to catch you. I can go long too.”
“You proved that last night.”
Quinn laughed but stayed focused on the game plan in front of him. He drew more x’s on the board and used arcing lines to show how they came into play. “We’ve got your doctor, physical therapist, prosthetic and orthotic doctor, your psychiatrist.”
“I don’t have a psychiatrist.”
“Not yet.”
Her spine snapped straight and jaw tilted up in all her reflexive stubborn glory. She opened her mouth to tell him where he could stuff that psychiatrist—
“Now, hear me out, Laney.” He sat in front of her, pulling his chair close until she ended up between the V of his legs. Real close, so she could see the yellow specks in his blue eyes. “That nightmare is hell on you—you admit that, right?”
She didn’t nod or anything. Just kept staring at him.
“And you said yourself it’s got something to do with the explosion. You’re sleep deprived, which is a method of torture, by the way.” He lifted his hand, stroking her jaw until it relaxed. “Okay, how about this. What if we don’t make the psychiatrist a starting player? They could be on special teams, and you’ll call them into play when you’re ready. Maybe just a quick trick play on your signal. Will that work?”
“I have no idea.” The optimism and excitement in his eyes scared her. Was this just another person she was going to let down? “Quinn—”
He leaned forward and kissed her. A slow, mind-blowing kiss probably designed to distract her. One of his trick plays. It worked. Pulling back, he smoothed a strand of hair from her face. “Hey, I watched you run in high school. I know what a fierce competitor you are. You can’t give up now just because it’s third and long.”
“If I knew what third and long was, I might get your point.”
Quinn pushed his chair back and stood, moving to stare out the bay window before turning back around. “In your second to last cross-country race in high school, you were behind in the 5K with a mile to go. The two runners ahead of you were top in their counties and no one predicted you to win. You dipped your head, and everyone was sure that was the moment you gave up. I almost couldn’t watch, but I couldn’t turn away either. Hell, you didn’t give up. You dipped your head and dug deep, and somehow found this burst of speed. You blew past the two fastest runners in the state and won.”
The memory hit Delaney like a gust of wind and forced her back against her chair.
“Third and long is the same as trailing with a mile to go.”
“Got it.” She nodded and reached into her pocket for the list of her doctors they’d made last night at the VFW. The paper crackled as she unfolded it and placed it on the table next to her mug. “Okay. So today, I’m tackling these guys. Anything else, coach?”
“Since you ask, yes.” He moved back to his board. “When I drew this out, I noticed you’re missing a chunk of your offense. Pain management.”
“No, I’ve got plenty of pain pills.” She took a sip of coffee, ready to move on.
Quinn nodded his head. “I know you do. Full bottles of them. I saw them when I packed you up in D.C., and I saw them again last night. You have to actually take them for them to work.”
“How do you know I don’t?”
“Your memory’s probably a little foggy, but you told me the night I brought you home. You said you’d stopped taking them weeks before. It’s probably not a coincidence that you stopped trying right around when you stopped your pain meds.”
“Quinn, you don’t understand.” She shook her head and rubbed at the pain spiking in her temple. “When I took the pain meds, I couldn’t think. My brain only worked in slow motion. It was like having to cut my way through a jungle of kudzu vines and my head floated ten feet above my body. Nothing felt connected or real. Then the nightmares started. And then things got scary. . . .”
She closed her eyes, searching for the strength to go back to that dark time.
“I kept hearing a voice, whispering to me when the pain was overwhelming, or when I hadn’t slept for three days straight. It was telling me how I could stop it.” She sucked in a breath and opened her eyes. “Stop it all.”
Her gaze collided with his. His face paled and he sank on his chair like an anchor dropping into water.
“And when I realized it was my voice . . . I stopped my meds cold turkey.”
“Holy shit. Oh . . . okay. That was a good call then.” Quinn ran fingers through his hair and blew out a shaky breath. “But pain’s your enemy. It can wear down the strongest people.”
Delaney’s knee-jerk instinct was to object. The memory of the medicine’s eerily tempting siren song still reverberated in her soul. But she knew Quinn was right too. Pain still sliced at her. Phantom pain was a daily issue.
Before she could answer, Quinn’s dog slid into the kitchen from the foyer. And it was no-kidding just like the Tom Cruise underwear slide from that old movie. “Did your dog just—”
“Yeah. Spooky, right? I think he watches cable TV when I’m at work.” Quinn hadn’t moved his gaze off Delaney’s.
She nodded. “I won’t rule it out. I’ll talk to my doctor about my options.”
“That sounds like a good game plan.”
Chapter Eighteen
By the time Delaney and Quinn pulled into the parking lot of Dave’s Diner for lunch, Delaney had crossed a lot off her to-do list. She’d called her surgeon, physical therapist, and prosthetic guy. Luckily, Greer had let them know Delaney was with her in North Carolina, and they’d arranged convalescent leave and contacted doctors at Fort Bragg Army Base nearby. Today’s phone calls were a relief to all of them so they could get Delaney back on the road to rehab. Within thirty minutes of her phone calls, they’d called in a few favors and rearranged the clinic schedule to fit her in tomorrow morning.
Quinn used the time while Delaney made her phone calls to call in
for an update on what they’d found at her house last night. No definitive fingerprints, but a possible partial shoe print.
“They think it’s a man’s shoe print?” she asked as Quinn pulled his truck into what looked to be a full parking lot at the diner.
“That’s what Gage said, but we’ll know more when we get it back from the lab.” Quinn found a spot in the back corner. He threw the gear into park and cut the engine. “Come on, Laney. It’s gauntlet time.”
“Please tell me this is just the usual lunch crowd.” She paused outside the truck, frowning at the packed parking lot.
“No can do. Only gossip can draw an audience like this to eat Dave’s cooking for lunch. He makes a mean breakfast, but lunch and dinner? No. Just no. There is not enough antacid in North America to draw this crowd for lunch. This is about the break-in.” He grabbed her hand and led her firmly toward the diner. “And the sleepover.”
“Quinn, I can’t do this. This drove me crazy growing up, people always talking about me and Greer behind our backs.” She wouldn’t be exaggerating if she told him she might have a heart attack. Her pulse kicked up like the wings of an angry wasp.
“That’s the trick. Force them to talk about it in front of you and you control it.”
“Hey, I made my phone calls, didn’t I? Isn’t that enough reality for today?” She tried to stand her ground.
“Laney, I’ve got your back. No way will I drop the ball on that, especially now that I’ve seen it naked.”
“Gutting you with a dull spoon is sounding pretty good right now.” She set her jaw and moved forward.
“Kinky, but with you I think I’d try just about anything. Now, stop delaying. Let’s go.” He opened the door and guided her in.
The diner was fashioned out of an old railroad car. There were two main entrances, with one at each end. Two rows of booths snaked around the front of the diner while the sit-down counter hugged the waitress station. The window to the kitchen sat behind the counter. Dave, the owner and cook, was ruining meals with the best of intentions. Even with the bad food, the diner was packed with people who had a stronger appetite for gossip than for a tasty lunch.
