The Lawman's Last Stand

by Vickie Taylor

  A blood lust made him pull her down on top of him and strip her T-shirt in one explosive burst of movement. Rolling her beneath him, he claimed her breast with his mouth. He tasted her soft flesh and pulled at the hardened tip with his teeth, reveling in the sharp little sounds of pleasure she made and the arch of her back as she rose to meet him.

  He fumbled with the drawstring of her shorts a moment and then had them off, hardly noticing the grating rip of fabric as she shoved the garment insistently out of his way. And then his fingers were parting her, inside her, stunned but not surprised at her heat and wetness. She was as ready as he was, maybe more.

  She was close to climax. He could have her there in seconds with just the right touch, just the right urging.

  Never one to let someone else call all the shots, Gigi pushed his wrist away, then unbuttoned his jeans, unzipped his fly and took matters into her own hands.

  Shane pulled back a groan as she squeezed him gently. This was what he liked about Gigi—not what she was doing to him physically, although that wasn’t half-bad, either—but her initiative. Her independence. Her zest for living and her zeal for experiencing everything that life had to offer.

  How many other women would have saved themselves the way Gigi had? How many would have turned their backs on the cops and the system that had failed them and taken their safety—their very survival—on themselves? And of those few that might have, how many would have made it, as she had?

  Not many, he suspected.

  Finally letting his groan slip as she worked her magic fingers along his length, Shane rolled to his back, carrying her with him so that she straddled him, and let her explore.

  She splayed her palms across his chest, massaged his pectorals, scraped her nails lightly down his rib cage, all the while her hips hovering just over his, swaying out of reach then swooping daringly low, caressing lightly. He closed his eyes, wrapped in a blanket of sensation—the feel of her moistness against him, the sound of her short, choppy breaths, the heady smell of arousal.

  When she went quiet and still, he opened his eyes. Gigi looked down on him serenely, as if she was listening to something inside herself, savoring a favorite piece of music.

  “What are you doing?”

  In answer, she reached behind herself and pulled his knees up so that his thighs made a backrest for her. She leaned against him, poising herself over him and started to slide slowly, excruciatingly slowly, down.

  He tried to stop her with his hands on her hips. He opened his mouth to explain that it was too soon. That he wanted to pleasure her in other ways before they joined in this final, irrevocable act.

  But she never gave him the chance.

  “Shh.” She placed her fingertips over his mouth like a kiss. “Maybe I want to see the stars reflected in your eyes while I make love to you.”

  And she did make love to him. He let her control the rhythm and the flow, raising and lowering her body over him until his fingers cramped from clenching the twisted cover of the futon. Until the starlight she’d wanted to see in his eyes glistened off his sweat-sheened body as well. Until his lungs burned and his groin was on fire.

  He’d heard other men banter indiscreetly in the locker room about “taking” a woman. The phrase had always left a sour taste in his mouth—as if their partners were inanimate and uninvolved.

  He much preferred Gigi’s style of lovemaking. A woman couldn’t get much more involved in the event than she was at that moment, bobbing up and down on his sex. A sensual haze clouded her crystalline gaze. She looked lost in the act. Lost in him. He couldn’t imagine anything more humbling. Or more arousing.

  He let her control the pace as long as he could stand it, then when the need for release drove all semblance of sanity from his mind, he gripped her hips and held her down as he thrust upward, hammering himself into her with as much force as he could muster.

  She groaned and leaned back against his thighs again, angling her hips to embed him deeper and pulling his knees under her arms for support. Her head tipped back, exposing the creamy, gulping column of her throat to the moonlight. Her milky breasts bobbed with the power of his strokes.

  He was on the brink, couldn’t hold on much longer, but he didn’t want to cross that barrier without her. Hardly able to find breath for the words and not slowing his jackhammering hips a beat, he reached out for her hand and pulled her down to his chest. “Come here, baby. We’re almost there. Come with me.”

  “I can’t,” she nearly sobbed.

  “Sure you can.” His voice sounded strangled, almost incoherent even to himself. “We’ll do it together.”

  He slipped a hand between their bodies and between her legs. “Ready?”

  Not waiting for an answer, he found the center of her sensuality among her swollen folds and pressed hard with his thumb and forefinger. Her back arched and she let out a long, strangled cry as her body shuddered immediately around his. He let go with a guttural moan of his own and followed her into oblivion.

  Sweet, sweet oblivion.

  Some minutes later—he couldn’t be sure how many— Shane realized he was engulfed in darkness. A black that was blacker than any night. And then he opened his eyes.

  Gigi’s chin rested on his shoulder and over her, a star-sequined heaven shone down on them. Apparently recovering at about the same rate as him, she turned her head toward the skylight a moment, then lowered her head back to his chest.

  “Wherever I end up living next,” she said dreamily, “I’m going to have to get one of those.”

  He couldn’t have agreed more. In fact, he would cut the hole in the roof for her, if he had to. Not that he planned to wait for her to get settled somewhere else to see the stars reflected in her eyes.

  Gently he turned them so that she was beneath him.

  “Again?” she asked breathlessly.

  He pasted a kiss on the end of her nose, watching her eyes glitter. “There’s a lot of starlight left yet tonight, sweetheart. And I plan to make use of every minute of it.”

  The next morning, entwined in each other’s arms, they watched the sky turn from velvet gray to aqua, too exhausted and limp to move. The sheets were twisted into tangled ropes around them. Their clothes were nowhere to be seen.

  Gigi turned her head and sighed contentedly against his neck. “I should get up and get us something to eat.”

  “Maybe I should get up.”

  She stabbed a finger in his gut. “You’ve been up quite enough for one night, don’t you think?”

  He rolled on top of her playfully. “Oh, I don’t know. I think you could still get a rise out of me, if you tried.”

  She tensed a little beneath him. The pitch of her laugh scaled too high, as if it were forced.

  “Are you sore?” Fanning her hair out on the pillow behind her, he searched her eyes for the truth and found what he needed to know. “I’m sorry. I should have gone easier.”

  “Nah.” She reached out and stroked the two days’ beard growth on his jaw. “You just should have shaved.”

  He shucked into his jeans while she pulled her T-shirt over her head, then he followed her down the ladder.

  “It looks beautiful outside,” she called without looking back as she hurried across the living room. “I’m going to clean up and then maybe get some air. Why don’t you fix us something to eat?”

  “That wouldn’t be a good idea.”

  She looked back. “Why not? Can’t you cook?”

  “I can cook just fine. But it wouldn’t be a good idea for you to get some air.”

  “Why not? We were outside yesterday.”

  He raked his hand through his hair, realizing too late that he should have told her last night what he’d seen—why he’d stayed sitting out on that rock out front so long. “Yeah, I meant to talk to you about that.”

  “About what?”

  He pulled in a deep breath and prepared to be blasted. “We’re being watched.”

  Shock and incredulity settled on
her face. “Watched?” she said. “By whom?”

  “A few of my buddies from the agency, I think.”

  “You think?” she chided. Incredulity was fast giving way to anger.

  “One of them looked like Bald Billy Mac—an agent I worked with a couple of years ago.”

  “But why would your buddies be watching us? And how did they find us?”

  “I figure Fitz set them on us. Maybe he had us followed from the hospital—although I sure didn’t catch a tail and I don’t remember Bald Billy being that good. More likely he traced us using the car. Fitz never mentioned having one of those antitheft vehicle locator systems, so I didn’t think to check.”

  He glanced up at her and shrugged. “Sorry.”

  Gigi’s spine looked stiff as a flagpole. “You’ve known this since last night,” she said as if she’d just realized there was no other time he could have seen the men spying on them, “and you didn’t think to tell me?”

  He gave her a dry look. “I got distracted, if you recall.”

  “They could have been watching us!”

  “Relax, we kept the light low in here, remember? And no way could they see into the loft, even if they had night vision equipment, which I doubt. There aren’t any windows up there except the one in the ceiling.”

  “You still should have told me.”

  “When would have been the best time for that, do you think? When I was on top or when you were?”

  Her face flamed. He instantly was sorry he’d embarrassed her. Last night wasn’t something he ever wanted her to regret.

  “Gigi…”

  She stomped into the bedroom without giving him a chance to apologize. Seconds later, the bathroom door slammed shut hard enough to shake dust off the roof. He waited to hear the click of the lock on the bathroom door, took a deep breath, then grinned. He suspected her huff was as much morning-after jitters as real anger. She hadn’t looked him in the eye all morning.

  Not that he blamed her. He wasn’t entirely comfortable with last night, either. Not because he regretted it, or because of some puritanical sense of guilt about what they’d done, but because of the sheer intensity of it. He’d lost control—no—freely and willfully given up control. Surrendered himself to her, body and mind. It was like she’d climbed inside his body, the way she knew exactly what he wanted, how he needed to be touched, without him asking. And he’d known the same about her, somehow. He’d just known.

  They hadn’t just had sex last night; they’d made a connection. A connection so strong that to break it would be like amputating a limb. He might never be whole without her.

  And that scared him.

  His only consolation was that he thought he saw the same fear in her eyes. Because they couldn’t stay together forever, and they both knew it. As close as they were physically, emotionally they still hadn’t closed the gap between them.

  She was still his mystery woman. Though she’d told him the story of the murder she’d witnessed and her escape from New York, she still had secrets. He’d bet on it.

  And he was still who he was—a man without ties. Unrooted. Like a boat that had broken its mooring he drifted from port to port, but called none home.

  What kind of future could they have?

  Shaking himself out of his reverie before it became a foul mood and spoiled the contentment—however temporary—he’d found with her, he pushed his worries aside.

  If they didn’t have much time together, he didn’t want to spend however many few hours or days they had left separated from her by a locked bathroom door.

  Fortunately, he’d excelled in the DEA course on lock picking. He’d give her two minutes, in hopes that the hot water would pound some of the unruliness out of her.

  Then he was going in.

  Chapter 9

  Gigi didn’t believe for a minute that the flimsy lock on the bathroom door would keep Shane out, and she was right. She hadn’t even rinsed all the shampoo out of her hair before the door swung open.

  “It’s just me,” he said quietly, as if she would be afraid.

  She wasn’t afraid. She knew Shane would never have allowed anyone to sneak in on her.

  She waited for him to say more, but the room was quiet. On the other side of the filmy shower curtain, a blurry silhouette rustled through drawers and in cabinets. Busying himself somehow, he started whistling. After a few bars, she recognized the theme from an old aftershave commercial.

  He was shaving! Of all the arrogant, macho, sexist— If he thought just because he’d shaved that she was going to let him…again…

  Before she’d worked up a really good, indignant outrage, she heard the rustle of denim hitting the floor. Despite the steam floating around her in the shower, making every breath heavy and moist, her throat went dry. Her body tingled—in memory of last night, or in anticipation, she wasn’t sure. Didn’t want to know.

  The shower curtain pulled back and Shane, in all his smooth-shaven, naked glory stepped into the shower with her. Feeling unbearably exposed, she turned her back, chiding herself for the wave of embarrassment that seared her veins. Ducking her head under the spray, she turned her head left, then right.

  His hands found her scalp, massaging, and despite her best efforts to remain aloof, within a few moments she melted into his touch.

  “I really meant to tell you about Bald Billy,” his voice whispered next to her ear.

  She frowned, struggling for detachment, anything to stop the meticulous stripping away of her defenses by his magic fingers. “Why do you call him Bald Billy?”

  A deep chuckle rumbled up through his chest, vibrated into her back where he pressed against her, slick and soapy. “Billy got caught in an explosion when he busted a meth lab about five years back. He wasn’t seriously injured, but he was definitely singed. He lost his eyebrows, temporarily. They grew back, but the name stuck.”

  His expression grew serious again. He cupped her face in his hands. “No way they’re here to do anything except watch. Fitz wouldn’t have sent someone I’d recognize and posted them out in the open where I’d see them unless he wanted me to know they were there. I think it’s his way of telling me he wants to help. Otherwise, he’d have me sitting in the cooler for grand theft auto right now.”

  “But you quit the DEA. Why would he want to help?” She ducked her head under the water.

  “Maybe because I saved his life once.”

  When she pulled her head from beneath the shower stream, she found herself looking up at troubled blue eyes through a roguish layer of very uncoplike long hair that tried to hide them. She left the hair falling over his forehead this time. After all, he wasn’t a cop any longer.

  “It was a long time ago,” he explained—actually avoided giving an explanation—before she could ask. Whatever had happened between him and his boss, he clearly didn’t think it was important at the moment. “But Fitz has always cut me a lot of slack because of it—more than I deserve. I would have told you if we were in any kind of danger. I swear it.”

  “I believe you.”

  Relief eased some of the tension from his face and unfanned the crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes.

  “By the way,” he said, brightening considerably. “I called the hospital while I was waiting for you to cool off.” He looked like a kid with a juicy secret for about half a second, then blurted it out. “Bill’s condition has been upgraded to ‘Good.”’

  Gigi hugged him. “That’s wonderful!”

  “Yeah,” he agreed, hugging her back, then asking with just a hint of caution, “Does this mean we’re officially past our morning-after awkwardness?”

  She winced. “Was I that obvious?”

  He picked up the soap and put it in her hand, guiding both to his chest. “No. But I figured you weren’t the type to hop in and out of a man’s bed without a second thought. And even if you were, last night was…different. Kind of…awesome.”

  His look challenged her to deny it. She didn’t.

&nb
sp; “Very awesome,” she agreed, circling the soap over his copper, flat nipple. “Overwhelming.”

  “Breathtaking,” he groaned as she moved to the other side of his broad chest.

  “Staggering.” She rubbed against him, her nipples leaping to attention as they brushed the wet, wiry hair of his chest.

  His hot gaze ran the length of her body, making her shiver. “Stunning,” he said.

  He pulled her close, his even hotter, slick body fit to hers. His hands coursed the length of her back.

  “Mmm, inspiring,” she murmured. She felt his smile as his mouth passed over the tender spot on the side of her neck, nibbling. She also felt a hard spear of flesh tangling in the curls between her legs. Looking down, she admired the full steely length of him. Her eyes widened. “Monumental.”

  He curled his tongue around the shell of her ear. “I happen to know a surefire cure for morning-after jitters.”

  “Really? What would that be?”

  “Put it off until afternoon,” he said.

  The gleam in his eyes gave her a pretty good idea how they were supposed to spend the time until then for this great cure to work.

  She raised her knee along the outside of his thigh, stroking her foot along his muscular calf. “If we’re going to procrastinate, let’s do it right. If we put our minds to it, I’m sure we could forget all about jitters for at least, oh, say a week.”

  He laughed, grazing his knuckles up the sensitive inside of her thigh, surprising her, and she couldn’t keep from wincing.

  His grin leveled immediately. “You really are sore.”

  He wet a washcloth hanging on the spigot, then pressed it gently between her legs. She moaned and bit his shoulder.

  “Easy, baby.” He resoaked the cloth and laid it against her again, working his hand gently against her abused muscles and tenderized flesh. His hands were as meticulous today as they had been urgent last night. “I’m sorry I hurt you.”

  After a few more repetitions she leaned against him.