by Unknown
Eli stalked along behind her like an angry bear. Or a pissed-off tomcat.
“So now you’re going to give me the silent treatment because I’m trying to protect you?”
Her eyes narrowed, but Josie didn’t bother looking back toward him. Maybe if she could have turned him to stone like Medusa, it would have been worth the effort. “First, I’m not giving you the silent treatment. And second, if I were, it wouldn’t be because you’re trying to protect me. I have no problem with being protected. In fact, I prefer it to the alternative of being maimed, tortured, or killed. The reason I have every right to be quite justifiably displeased with you is that in the process of trying to protect me, you stopped treating me like an intelligent and capable woman with enough common sense to protect herself when such behavior is warranted, and instead began to act as if I were either six years old, brain-damaged, or both.”
“I didn’t—”
Finally, Josie paused just at the point where the path curved around to offer a glimpse of the opening to the road beyond. “You did. And you should probably know right now, Eli Pace, that I do not appreciate being treated like an imbecile, nor do I appreciate being ordered around like some kind of subservient human being. If you want me to do something because you’re concerned for my safety, tell me you’re concerned and then ask me to do what you believe is necessary for me to preserve that safety. Don’t turn into a raving barbarian, because all that’s going to do is piss me the hell off.”
There was a moment of silence as the two of them stared at each other in the dappled light of the woods, struggling to come to terms with the stark reality of suddenly having someone both to worry about and who worried about them right back. For Josie, it was a revelation. Judging from the look of exasperation, concern, tenderness, and manly determination of Eli’s face, she guessed he might be feeling something similar.
“Piss you off, huh?” he finally said, his tone softening to something close to musing. “I think I might have noticed something like that.”
Josie crossed her arms over her chest. She felt the unraveling of tension as the worst of the storm clouds between them passed, but she didn’t want him to think she was some kind of pushover.
“Well, that’s just because you’re unusually perceptive for a man, Sheriff Pace,” she quipped.
He grinned and reached out to grab her by both elbows and tug her not forward, but close against him. A much wiser use of his strength overall, she decided.
“Thank you for noticing, Dr. Barrett,” he murmured, his eyes dropping to her lips. “But I have one question for you.”
She cocked an eyebrow.
“If I’m not allowed to act like a barbarian, can I still kiss you like one?”
He really didn’t give her time to answer, but that didn’t matter. She figured he must have read her response in her eyes. Or maybe in the way her lips parted, her arms opened, and she stood on the tips of her toes to meet the fierce descent of his mouth.
She loved the way this man kissed. If the darn things had any real nutritive value, she would have happily lived on them. The taste of him made her tingle; the scent of his skin sent her stomach into a roller-coaster ride of spins and flips, and the thrust and stroke of his tongue made a complete mess of her panties.
All he had to do was look at her, and she wanted him. When he touched her, she lost all connection with reality.
She reminded herself of that when she felt him walk her backward several steps into the tree line and push her back against the trunk of a wide old pine. He managed it without lifting his lips from hers, and Josie marveled at his sense of direction. Especially since she could no longer tell which end was up.
She figured it out only when she felt the world tilt on its axis, followed by the cool, uneven surface of the forest floor. He laid her on the ground and settled his body above her, all the while continuing to consume her mouth as if she were his world’s only source of nourishment.
In the past, the idea of outdoor sex had always seemed to Josie to be completely implausible. She figured no one in her right mind—her, specifically, since guys never noticed things like this so long as they were getting some—would agree to take off her clothes where there were bugs and cold breezes or hot sunlight and bits of sand or leaves or dirt or who knew what else that could get stuck in places where God had never intended such things to be. She had always thought that there was a reason why people had invented beds and other pieces of furniture, and it wasn’t just because they needed something to prop their pillows on. Beds made things more comfortable, as did sofas and lounge chairs and tabletops and even the occasional piece of carpet. So what kind of idiot would let herself be seduced right there in the euphemistically “great” outdoors.
Her kind, apparently.
The kind who stretched out beneath an amorous and insistent Feline who kissed like a dream, possessed magically gifted hands, and fit against her body like the other half of herself.
Instead of lodging a firm protest, she lifted her hips to help him remove her jeans, and she was the one who tugged her own T-shirt up over her head. She knew it was worth it, though, when his mouth latched on to her breast and proceeded to suck her soul out through her right nipple.
She moaned and squirmed when his fingers slid between her bare thighs, teasing the curls over her mound before parting her soft folds and doing their best to drive her completely crazy.
Fair was fair, she told herself, releasing her grip on his hair and reaching for his shirt to strip it off. Unexpectedly, he growled a protest and caught her hand pulling it up over her head. Abandoning her center for a moment, he dragged the other up alongside it and pinned both of her wrists to the ground in one of his large, powerful hands. Then he returned to his previous task with a purr of satisfaction.
Josie swore and squirmed, but his grip remained unbreakable. Not only did he outweigh her by a good seventy-five pounds, but he had the strength of any three men his size. Easily. She’d have had an easier time bench-pressing his SUV than breaking free and moving when he wanted her to stay still.
But that didn’t mean she didn’t try.
She drew a leg up untl she could press a knee to her own chest, which allowed her to press her foot against his shoulder and use her powerful thigh muscles to push him away. She didn’t really want him to stop touching her, but something inside her demanded that he at least have to work for it.
Eli didn’t budge. He kept her hands pinned to the forest floor and made a low curious sound in the back of his throat. Before Josie had time to speculate about what it might mean, he swapped his grip on her wrists to his other hand so that he could grab the leg she still had extended and position it to mirror her other—bent totally in half, her foot on his shoulder and her knee pressed up near her ear. Then he pressed a brief, affectionate kiss to her belly, shimmied south, and opened his mouth against her weeping core.
She screamed. She didn’t mean to. In fact, the sound of her own voice nearly scared her witless. She hadn’t realized she could even make that sound. It was barely human, but then, Josie barely felt human as Eli ran his tongue through her swollen folds, tasting her and purring with pleasure. She felt like flame, weightless and burning, dancing up from the wreckage of something else. Her past self, maybe, or the part of herself that had thought she could control this thing that had grown between the two of them.
She had been fooling herself, obviously. Who could control something this intense? This unexpected?
This perfect.
The knowledge exploded in Josie’s consciousness along with the sensation of his wicked, talented tongue flicking over the tiny button buried between her folds.
She needed to give in. There was no other option. She had to surrender, not just to Eli or to this moment, but to the inevitability of their togetherness. The back of her mind acknowledged the fear that came along with such a momentous shift in her reality, but that little voice was completely overwhelmed by the sense of certainty that created it. The decision, s
he realized, had never really been hers to make. It had been made somewhere else, by some force she didn’t even understand and could never hope to control; because she belonged with him.
He belonged with her.
They belonged together.
The knowledge flashed white-hot and overwhelming as his mouth began to draw on her, pushing her over into the abyss. She felt herself hanging there, floating, suspended between the now and the infinite for what felt like days, yet raced by in seconds. From a distance, she heard her own voice calling his name. And then just calling, a high, rich, exultant sound that echoed in the woods around her.
She collapsed, utterly spent, utterly boneless. Her hands ceased their determined struggle to be free, and her legs slid like water off his shoulders and onto the ground. She could feel bits of leaves and dirt clinging to her sweat-dampened skin. She couldn’t have cared less. What she cared about was the man hovering over her.
He watched her face with an intensity she could sense even through her heavy eyelids. His entire being focused on her. It made her feel as if the fate of the world hung on her next move, her next word. Only she couldn’t think of any words to say. Nothing seemed appropriate. What were her options? Wow? Talk about an understatement. I love you? Inappropriate. They hadn’t reached that point yet, had they? They couldn’t have. They had known each other less than a week. Love didn’t happen like that, even if it felt almost like it already had.
But she couldn’t hide behind this deliberate blindness forever. He deserved more than that, some piece of herself, besides the ones he’d already stolen. And besides that, she wanted him to know, even if it was too early for love, what she felt for him. The strength of it, if not the name.
Her eyes flickered open, and she found him exactly as she’d pictured him in her still-reeling mind, intent, hungry, and expectant. So she gave him what she could. She let him see the smile that had built inside her, the one that spoke of peace and profundity and a well of unspoken emotion.
With a supreme effort of will, she coerced her hand to move languidly from the position in which he had held it pinned and cupped his stubble-roughened cheek in her palm. Her thumb tracked the sharp blade of his cheekbone, and her fingertips hinted at all the things she couldn’t quite say. And then she whispered.
“Thank you.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
It took close to half an hour before Eli could trust her to stand on her own two feet. Before then, every time he tried to prop her up, her knees would buckle, or she would stumble over thin air, or she would just kind of melt against him in a way he appreciated, but felt constrained from taking advantage of. He couldn’t quite put his finger on why, because Josie gave no indication that she felt they required more privacy or more comfortable surroundings to finish what they had started. He was the one who decided that the rest of their business should be concluded in bed.
In his bed.
In the bed where he’d been imagining her ever since he’d walked through her back door and seen her snap in an instant from a weary, wrinkled, and grumpy stranger to the professional, efficient, and dedicated woman he knew her to be.
Quickly, he collected Bruce, who had occupied himself quite nicely digging for woodchucks, and wrangled all three of them back to the cabin, where he shut his bedroom door in the dog’s impassive face.
When Eli finally had Josie where he wanted her, he took his time.
He made love to her slowly and thoroughly, and then after a restorative break for sustenance, he allowed her to do the same to him. Or maybe he should have said, she insisted on doing the same to him and he could find no reason to argue. Nor any motivation. Afterward, they fell asleep in a purely contented tangle of hair and limbs and heartbeats and slept like kittens after unraveling a ball of yarn.
He woke a few hours later, shifting from sleep to wakefulness as he always did—in a silent dizzying rush, dreaming one moment and capable of calculating complex combat strategies entirely in his head the next. He’d always been that way, his Feline antecedents notwithstanding, and he’d come to view it over the years as quite a useful skill to have. Nothing ever caught him unawares while he slept, and that had saved his skin more than once.
Tonight, it saved Josie’s.
Even before he opened his eyes, his senses alerted him to the fact that something wasn’t right. Josie slept on undisturbed, sprawled half atop him, boneless and breathing deeply. She was exactly where she belonged. The problem was that something had changed in their environment. All was not as it had been when sleep had claimed him, and his senses clicked instantly to the problem.
A crisp autumn breeze wafted lightly over his bare skin where Josie’s body did not cover him. Only when they had fallen asleep, all the windows and doors in the cabin had been closed.
Eli felt rather than saw a movement, felt it as a shift in the atmosphere, and he clamped his arms around Josie’s back to pin her in place as he threw himself into a roll that spun them across the sheets and onto the floor while their attacker’s hand still had not reached the apex of its preparatory backswing.
They landed with a thud on the floor between the bed and the rear wall of the cabin. The impact jerked Josie out of a sound sleep and she cried out reflexively, bewildered by the abrupt change in elevation. On the other side of the closed door, Bruce barked like a hellhound and threw himself at the wooden panel until it shook on its hinges. Eli simply rolled again, pinning Josie to the floor before leaping to his feet to face the intruder.
Unlike the characters in poorly scripted action films, he didn’t bother to ask who the person was or what he wanted with Eli and Josie. Eli had always held the belief that in situations like this, it was better to maim first and ask questions later.
He dove at the man in a blur of motion and bare skin. The reflection of the moonlight through the window allowed his black-clad assailant to see him better than if he’d been dressed, but nature evened the odds with Eli’s acute Feline night vision. He could see that the figure standing across the bed was definitely male, probably fairly young, and dressed surprisingly well for a breaking, entering, and attempted murder plot, when one discounted the idiocy of targeting a sheriff—and an Other sheriff at that—with such a scheme. The youth wore a black sweater and trousers made from a light-absorbing material that covered him from high on his neck down to the backs of his hands. He had covered those hands with dark gloves, and used black greasepaint to darken the skin of his face and throat. But he had left off the requisite balaclava, allowing Eli to note that his dark hair had been shaven close to his scalp. He definitely qualified as Caucasian, and behind his left ear, he sported a dark brown mole that hadn’t received quite enough dark paint to cover it.
It took Eli all of three seconds to develop a complete description of the subject that he would be happy to share with his deputies and every law enforcement agent from San Francisco to the Canadian border. Just as soon as he made the idiot pay for putting Josie in danger.
One spring of his powerful legs closed the distance between them from approximately four feet to less than as many inches. The man’s left hand came up and something in his hand glinted in the darkness. Eli’s right forearm rose to block the downward thrust while he simultaneously drove his left fist into the attacker’s unprotected gut. The black-clad figure grunted and jackknifed forward with a gagging sound. Surprisingly, this stirred little to no sympathy in Eli’s soul.
“Josie! Out! Now!” he snapped, and was gratified to see her hand come up to drag the sheet off the bed. Two seconds later, she had the fabric wrapped around her like a toga and was flying across the room toward the cabin’s exit, calling her dog to her as she went.
He’d really thought he was going to have to argue that one.
As soon as Josie disappeared into the living room, Eli twisted his arm and captured the intruder’s wrist in his hand. He slammed it against the bedside table and listened to the clatter of an object dropping to the floor from the man’s nerveless fingers.
Then he finally gave root to his frustration, picked the intruder up in both hands, and flung him across the room like a pile of dirty laundry. He landed with a particularly satisfying thunk but failed to fall unconscious. Fortunately, Eli would be happy to rectify that oversight.
He prowled around the bed, each step deliberate and malevolent. He intended to first beat this asshole a little harder; then he would find out who the stranger was and what he was doing in Eli’s cabin, threatening Eli’s mate with some sort of weapon while the couple slept. Because that was just rude.
When Eli rounded the first corner of the bed, the black lump on the floor stirred, eyes widening until the white sclera seemed to glow in the otherwise darkened room. Tensing, Eli braced himself for a renewed attack or an onslaught of frenzied pleading. He got neither. Before he could take another step, the figure rushed to its feet and poured every ounce of its remaining strength into an upward leap, throwing itself out the open window and into the darkness of the nighttime forest.
Roaring in fury, Eli gave chase, determined to catch the assailant and question him, but just as his hands closed on the windowsill in preparation for a relentless pursuit, Josie’s voice from calling to him from the front of the cabin froze him in place.
“Oh my God! Eli!”
Cursing viciously, Eli spun on his heel and raced through the door to face the new threat. Instead, he found Josie standing on the front porch in the center of a virtually unrecognizable space.
The pale pine and reed rocking chair that had always sat beside the bright blue door had been smashed into little more than kindling and scattered across the floorboards and onto the neat front lawn. A pot containing a huge sunflower that had been given to him by the PTA when he’d first moved to Stone Creek had also been broken, the tall plant now upended on the front steps. But worst of all were the vile words scrawled in red across the bright blue door.
FREAK FUCKER RACE TRAITOR ANIMALS ARE MEANT FOR SHOOTING
“It’s not terribly eloquent, but I think the author got his point across,” Josie quipped, her voice thin but steady. When she turned to face him, though, her eyes were clouded with fear and concern. “Are you okay? I heard some banging but not much else, so I figured you were doing okay. He didn’t have a gun, did he?”
