When she glanced back at him, she saw that he wanted to protest, to argue, even to pull back and leave. But her body wouldn’t allow it, not now. Her heart wouldn’t allow it, though he’d never know that she’d done the unthinkable, the inexplicable, and fallen for him all over again, even knowing there was no hope of a future between them.
Knowing that, and knowing it was her problem, not his, she raised a finger to his lips before he could speak and deny the moment. “Don’t overthink it, Jacob. Let’s just go with the flow.”
The words resonated in her head, in her soul, and she realized he’d said something similar to her when they’d first met, when she’d wanted to pull back because they’d just met and the feelings between them seemed too huge to manage.
His eyes sparked with the same memory, wiping away the moment of hesitation. This time when he reached for her, he meant business.
She went willingly, almost greedily, into his arms. This was her choice. His choice. They could have tonight and then move on, move away, have the closure she had lacked all these years.
If not for the lack of closure, why had she fallen back under his sensual spell so easily? It wasn’t weakness, she told herself, wasn’t destiny or any of those rose-colored words she’d used to describe them so long ago. It was chemistry.
And if she brought her emotions along for the ride, that was her problem. Not his. Not theirs.
She poured herself into the kiss, into his arms, and reveled in the heat that blasted, binding them, searing them until she wasn’t sure where her skin ended and his began.
There was only sizzle and smoke and the pressure of perfection in her chest.
She twisted her fingers in his shirt and became aware of the cool dampness of the material, the cold slickness of his hair and the clean smell that said he’d showered before coming outside to sit with her in the crisp night air. She curled around him, stroking, inciting, trying to bring warmth where there was chill, heat where there was cool.
He groaned into her mouth and caught her hands in his, stilling them, making her slow down. She felt the fine tremors race through his too tight muscles and knew he fought for the one thing he valued above all else.
Control.
But this night wasn’t about control, it was about the loss of it, about giving in to the physical storm that had raged between them since that first moment in the Big Sky cabin, when the crowd of men had parted to let him through and their eyes had met after so long and they both realized that the heat between them had survived thirteen years.
Worse, it had intensified.
Now, she rode that heat, let it pour through her, consume her from within. She left her hands in his, knowing she didn’t need them to incite, to inflame. She leaned in and nipped his lower lip, then soothed that place with her tongue.
His body stiffened against her. His breath caught.
Emboldened, she crowded him, bumping against his body and challenging him to take a step, either forward or back.
But he did neither. He stood fast. She felt his control break with a nearly audible snap, and she felt a flush of victory. Of excitement.
Love me! she wanted to say, but instead tilted her head toward the motel bed. “Any interest?”
Humor flared beside the heat in his expression. “Oh, yeah. I’m interested.”
With that, he scooped her up off the floor and carried her to the bed. Not in a romantic carrying-the-bride-over-the-threshold manner, but in a total he-man toss over one shoulder, then a bounce onto the bed.
Isabella’s heart pounded with lust, with joy. She stifled the giggle when she landed on the bed, but let free with the approving murmur when he shucked the damp shirt off over his head and joined her. The mattress gave beneath his weight, rolling them tight together.
She didn’t compare his broad, muscular shoulders to that of the young man she had known, and she didn’t assume she knew what the man liked because she’d known the boy. In that first instant of them being pressed together from chest to toe, she found those memories, those comparisons, gone. In that moment, she was a woman and he a man, and it was as though they were coming together for the first time.
And the last.
She shoved aside the desperation brought by the thought, shoved aside any thought at all, and threw herself into the moment, into each sensation and spark.
The future would wait, damn it.
She reached for the hem of her new shirt and found his fingers there before hers. He eased the shirt up and over her head, and hissed his approval at the bare skin beneath, unfettered by the bra she’d left off after her shower.
He pulled back, and she felt his eyes on her bare skin like a touch. Though she was fit, and proud of it, Isabella felt a momentary flash of shyness, of nerves.
His eyes darkened, then rose to meet hers. His expression turned serious, and he parted his lips to speak.
“Hush.” She reached up to kiss him, to stem the words one of them might regret. “We’ve already said what needs to be said.”
“No.” He touched his lips to her forehead with gentle, utterly uncharacteristic sweetness. “I haven’t yet told you that you’re beautiful.”
The words shimmered through her like light, though she struggled not to let them matter. Instead she smiled and said, “You grew up good, too.”
She reached up and kissed him again, urging him to drop down beside her, atop her, and move beyond speaking, because she feared if they talked more, she would lose her nerve.
Or her heart.
But as she slid back into his kiss, into his arms, the word beautiful slipped through her consciousness and into her soul. It shouldn’t have mattered that he thought her pretty, but it did.
The word sang within the whirl of heat that rose up to consume her and flow into him. They strained together, her breasts flattened against his chest, their hands seeking to hold rather than stroke, bind rather than incite.
A sense of wholeness rolled through Isabella, frightening in its intensity. She needed to shift gears, to get them away from slow touches and words like beautiful and push the interlude back to flash and flame, to safe words like lust and chemistry.
This was about sex, not making love. It had to be.
But when she dug her fingers into the solid cords of muscle in his back and scissored her legs over his hips, urging him to hurry, to take…he didn’t hurry, didn’t take. Instead he rained soft kisses on her face, along the too sensitive column of her throat, urging her to come along for the ride.
For a man whose control had snapped, he had exquisite restraint now, touching, tasting, murmuring meaningless endearments that glowed in her soul. But when she opened her eyes and looked at him, really looked at him, she saw the wildness in his eyes that told her he wasn’t in control at all.
He was being controlled by something beyond the chemistry, beyond the heat and lust.
And for once, he wasn’t fighting it.
She stared into his eyes, into the heart he so rarely listened to, and when he brought his hands up to frame her face, when he touched his lips to hers almost questioningly, as though he didn’t know what was happening between them any more than she did, she felt her resistance snap and disappear.
This was real. She was real, as were her emotions. Maybe they were only real for this one perfect moment in time, but it would be enough.
She would make it be enough.
Moving more slowly, in less of a hurry now, they stripped each other bare and came together once again, skin to skin, limbs twined around limbs.
The pressure of it, the beauty of it, built in Isabella’s heart until she feared she might burst and float away. His touch kept her grounded, then sent her spinning, twirling into the heat that built slowly at first, then to a ferocious crescendo.
It was on the crest of that fiery wave that he came to her, thrust into her on a shout and a prayer that echoed in her soul. They fit together, strained together to reach the first pinnacle almost effortlessly, with
little dimming of the pressure or the want.
They climbed the next wave together, building joyously to an explosive release that coiled tight in Isabella’s center, in her heart and mind, until it blasted outward, radiating through her limbs and soul until she screamed with it.
The sound was echoed in his shout. Four syllables.
Her name.
THEY LAY TOGETHER afterward, breathing hard. Isabella felt her heart beat slowly, heard his do the same where it echoed beneath her ear as she lay across his chest.
She felt drained of the tension that had driven her for so long. In the place of that tension, she felt a warm safety, a glow of contentment. Of completion.
With it came a spurt of fear, though the emotion felt distant, blunted by the arms that held her, the feel of the man beneath her. But even blunted, the fear was powerful, as was the knowledge.
She had turned to him for sex. But she had ended up making love.
His heart steadied beneath her cheek, his hands slid along her spine, soothing, inciting, then falling away as his breathing deepened and he eased toward sleep on a single, four-syllable word.
Isabella.
She should get up, she told herself, get out. She should take a walk and clear her head.
But even as her brain told her that was silly, that was running away, she felt her own limbs grow heavy, felt sleep reach up to claim her, to pull her down into the thick, snuggly warmth they had created together.
Just one minute, she told herself. Just a quick nap.
And she slept.
Too long.
The next thing she knew, the alarm was buzzing and everything was motion. Chaos. She woke, befuddled when the yielding surface beneath her surged and cursed. Before she’d even realized she was still sleep ing atop Jacob, he had rolled her to the side and lunged from the bed, wild-eyed.
He stood in the center of the room, chest heaving, staring at her as though he’d never seen her before, or maybe he’d never seen her that way before.
He rubbed quick hands across his face, then looked to their tangled clothes. “Well.”
Isabella’s heart stuttered at the confusion in his expression, the dismay. She gritted her teeth and banished the disappointment. What had she expected? They had agreed, after all. One night, no complications.
Well, the night was over. But the complications had just begun.
She heard Cameron’s voice outside, calling for the others, felt the hum of activity in the adjoining rooms, and knew they would be hard-pressed to disguise the fact that Jacob had spent the night with her.
They were consenting adults, it was true, but they were also riding into battle together. Complications had no place on this raid.
So she nodded toward the back window. “You could sneak out. Nobody needs to know.”
Something flashed in Jacob’s eyes. Irritation, maybe, or temptation. He flattened his lips together and reached for his clothing, shaking it free of hers. “No.” He said the word with his back to her as he pulled on his briefs and jeans. “We go out the front door. Together. Cameron will just have to deal.”
Minutes later, dressed and ready to go, Isabella couldn’t stop the flush from climbing her cheeks when Jacob opened the motel door and gestured her through, then followed at her back. Seven bounty hunters stood in the parking area near the vehicles, armed and ready for war.
Seven pairs of eyes fixed on her, then Jacob. Seven pairs of eyebrows lowered, as though each man was making his own calculation of what this might mean, how it might confuse the raid.
A small part of Isabella wished they would tell her when they figured it out.
Then Cameron swung out of the main suite and jerked his head at the vehicles. “Come on. Let’s go get Cooper’s family.”
Chapter Fourteen
It was just beginning to lighten inside the small attic room when Hope heard the noise.
She’d spent the past day or so in an angry, drugged haze. They’d taken her babies away. She hadn’t heard them in days, not even a cry.
What if they were dead?
On the thought, her mind sent her sliding back into that warm, gray fuzz.
Then she heard the noise again. It sounded like an owl’s hoot, but not like any owl she’d heard since she’d been here. She started to shrug it off, to slip back into that beckoning grayness, but a sliver of consciousness pricked at her.
Something was different. But what?
She forced her eyes open, heaved herself to the side of the narrow bed and noticed one difference right away. She was vertical. Her mind—such as it was—started to clear.
They must’ve missed a dose of whatever they’d been pumping into her system.
A spark of life, of fear, worked its way through her and she stood, swaying. She stumbled to the door and pressed her ear to the cheap wood.
Silence.
In the week she’d been held in the cabin, both before her escape attempt and after, she’d never heard silence in the cabin. Even in the deepest depths of night, there had always been a sense of movement, of guards walking the porch or sitting in a downstairs room and passing the hours over cards and lies.
She pressed closer to the door and the noise came again. Only this time, she recognized it. It wasn’t an owl. It was one of her daughters, making the sort of cooing noise both girls had outgrown at about a year. The noise that said they were waking up.
Anger suffused her, along with near-paralytic relief. The girls had been drugged, too! They were alive, and from the sounds of it, being held in the room next door.
Adrenaline and rage flooded her, driving away most of the drugged lethargy and giving her strength to stand. To plan.
She heard footsteps in the hallway outside her door and froze. A second set of steps moved to join the first, only these footsteps dragged and bumped with a noticeable limp. Lyle.
The gravelly voice confirmed it when he said, “Sounds like the brats are waking up. Should we check on them?”
Her whole body stiffened, and her mind screamed, Don’t you dare touch my babies! But the other voice—it sounded like Kane—said, “Nah. Cooper’ll be here soon. Let him deal with them for as long as necessary.”
Dread knotted in Hope’s stomach alongside failure. She should have escaped and warned him. Now he would be trapped alongside them. Handed over, as Boone had said.
“What about the wife?” Kane’s voice asked.
“Leave her. She’ll come to over the next hour or so, but she won’t cause any trouble. We can check on her later.”
The footsteps moved off down the hall, one set measured, the other set ragged. Hope strained close to the door, but didn’t hear another set of steps or voices. She couldn’t be certain, but it sounded as though Lyle and Kane were the only men left in the cabin.
Which meant that Boone and the others were gone. But where?
Had they left for good? Or were they even now ranged around the cabin among the traps? Waiting.
Watching.
Hope’s heart thundered in her ears. She needed to do something. She needed to escape, to get her girls out of here. If she met Louis halfway, maybe they could get free. Maybe they would all survive.
Maybe.
Pulse racing, palms sweating from a combination of fear and her body’s desire to clear the last remnants of the drug from her system, she sat on the bed. Through the wall, she heard a second coo join the first as her other daughter woke up.
She felt tears well, felt possibilities argue with despair, and pressed her hand against the wall.
“Don’t worry, babies,” she whispered, not loud enough to carry, “Mommy’s here. I’ll take care of you. I promise.”
Then she snuffled back the tears and pushed herself to her feet once again. It was time to make a plan. Lyle had said he’d check on her in an hour.
Well, this time she’d be waiting for him.
“IT’S WAY TOO QUIET,” Mike reported from his forward station near the cabin. The tiny radio buzzed in J
acob’s ear, and he tapped it in an effort to clear the fizz.
He and Isabella crouched in a small clearing barely within sight of the cabin. Mike and Cameron had gone in as forward scouts, and sure enough, had found a ring of booby traps encircling the cabin, ranging from old-fashioned loop traps to high-tech pressure pads wired to enough explosives to bring down the mountain.
Worse, the cabin porch was wired to blow. Which had left one important question. How were they going to get in there to rescue the hostages and capture the bounty?
Now, it seemed there was a second question. Where the hell was everyone? The cabin appeared damn near deserted, though all the vehicles were accounted for.
They’d kept watch on the cabin starting the night before, and Mike hadn’t seen anyone come or go, but it was becoming rapidly apparent that Boone had another exit. A back door.
“Darn it,” Isabella muttered at his side. “We should’ve moved last night.”
Jacob clenched his jaw, knowing she was right, and also suffering with images of what they had done the night before, and how it had left him shaken and unsure.
It was supposed to have been a final chance to get it out of their systems once and for all. But damn, if it hadn’t felt like something else entirely.
Like a beginning. At least to him.
But since they’d woken up together and brazened the walk of shame out to the vehicles, she’d barely looked at him, hadn’t spoken to him. Not even her expression had shown a hint of what had happened between them.
Or whether it had affected her as deeply as it had him.
“Wait.” Cameron’s transmitted voice broke into the tense silence. “Someone’s in there.”
Jacob tensed immediately and felt Isabella do the same. He could only imagine the strain she was under, knowing she could already have lost her protectees.
He wanted to reach for her hand, but didn’t. There would be time enough later for them to discuss what had happened between them.
Once he figured it out for himself.
Then a figure burst from the cabin and there was no time for thinking at all.
Bullseye Page 18
