Blood And Bone (17 page)

“Fair is fair.”

“If you do, we won’t be finishing the way I’d hoped.”

“Fine,” she muttered, sounding annoyed. But her eyes glowed with greedy excitement while she watched him tug open the zipper and shimmy out of his jeans and underwear.

Need swelled inside him. Screw finesse. He wanted her hard. Fast. Now.

He grabbed her, crushed her lips to his and pushed his tongue into her mouth. She tasted damned good. Her fingers threaded his hair as she pulled herself tighter against him. The tip of his penis grazed the soft skin of her belly. He couldn’t wait. It had been too long since he’d been with anyone. Too long that he’d wanted her.

“It’s got to be fast this time,” he whispered, his voice ragged and desperate even to his own ears.

“Yes,” she gasped.

“It’ll be better the next time.”

“Hurry.”

“Open for me.”

She nodded, wrapping one long leg around his waist. The blunt end of his cock brushed against the damp folds of her flesh. He gripped the smooth skin of her bottom, lifting her as he thrust deep and hard. Like molten silk, she stretched around him, wet and impossibly tight. A low groan tore free from his throat. She gasped, her fingernails digging into his shoulders, and he went perfectly still.

“What is it?” she murmured, wriggling her hips and nearly pushing him over the edge.

“Am I hurting you?”

She leaned back to look into his face and frowned. “Why?”

“You’re so damned tight, I thought I might be hurting you.”

“Trust me, you’re not. But if you don’t start moving, I might hurt you.”

A slow grin curved his mouth. “Wrap your legs around me.”

She didn’t hesitate, something he found absolutely amazing. There were no pretenses, no games, just the mutual desire to enjoy each other.

He held her pressed against the wall, pumping slowly and deeply like a train gathering speed. His body trembled, tense and straining, torn between the need to ravish and the need to savor. Her gaze, black like onyx in the dim light, stayed fixed on his. He thrust harder, deeper, faster. Her breath hitched and her eyes started to close.

“Look at me,” he rasped. “I want to watch you.”

Her eyes opened and focused on him. And he drove her on, sinking deep into that tight, wet heat.

She whimpered and arched her back. Her hands clutched his hair. “Des.”

She contracted around him, gripping him. Her eyes widened and went blank as her orgasm shuddered through her, filling him with raw, primal fury.

He pounded his hips against hers, lost in her scent, in her touch. She was soft and perfect and, for this moment, his. He shoved into her a final time, hard and deep. His cock jerked, exploding in a climax that left him shaken to his soul. His knees nearly buckled, but he held onto her, legs braced, elbows against the wall to protect her back.

For a long time after, neither spoke. They clung to each other, their ragged breaths mingling with the whisper of the wind in the trees outside.

“I think my fingernail broke the skin,” Shayne murmured, at last. Her lips brushed his shoulder, so gentle, so tender, his heart stilled in his chest and he held his breath.

He could love her. He could fall mindlessly and wildly in love with her. The kind of love that drove otherwise sane men to marry, buy houses in the suburbs, and have children and pets. And in that instant, he wanted to do all those things with her.

Except he was lying to her to hold his bloodthirsty family at bay. Scavengers who would never leave him alone. Shame and self-loathing slithered inside him like the snake he was.

He moved away from the wall and lowered her to the floor. As he started to pull back, she caught his face with both hands, forcing him to meet her gaze. “What is it?”

Her dark eyes, filled with concern, looked through him, inside him. He shut his eyes, terrified by what he might reveal. When he would have turned his head, she held him still.

“Just us tonight, right?” she whispered, her voice unusually small.

“Just us.” He smoothed the tangled strands of hair away from her face, lowered his mouth and captured hers in a kiss entirely too tender. But he wanted it that way, needed it.

When he opened his eyes, she watched him, searching his face. He gave her his stock cocky smile. “Night’s still young.”

Shayne lay in Des’s arms, sleepy and deliciously spent, her body tender and well ravished. Oh, it had been a long time since she’d spent a night making love, talking and laughing, and making love again for the hell of it.

After she and Travis had married, they’d never had sex just because they’d been caught up in the moment, just for the sake of touching and enjoying each other. Every time they’d come together, the frantic pressure to create a family had loomed over them. And once the inseminations had started, the sex had pretty much stopped altogether. She’d no longer felt like a woman, but like the vessel, her only purpose to carry Travis’s young. A purpose she couldn’t fulfill.

She felt like a woman now, though. A slight smile pulled at her lips. Her skin still tingled with memory of Des’s thorough touch, the wet exploration of his mouth. Good Lord, she couldn’t remember the last time sex had been this good, or feeling so quietly content afterward.

Des’s heartbeat slowed beneath her ear. Maybe he’d fallen asleep. She shifted on the bed to get a better look at his face.

“No,” he groaned, “I’m sorry. I can’t possibly go again.”

Exhausted and well sated, she merely giggled. “Where’s the prowess I thought I’d get with a younger man?”

“Four times is plenty of prowess. A personal record, actually.”

“Oh, don’t sound so wounded. If we went again, I doubt I’d be able to walk tomorrow.”

Des chuckled and pulled her against him. His lips brushed the top of her head. Something pulled tightly in her chest at the tenderness of his kiss, filling her with all kinds of unwelcome flutters.

Good sex and love were not the same thing. Bad enough she’d broken her own rule about getting involved with a source, the last thing she needed to do was confuse lust with actual emotion.

“Do you have brothers or sisters?” he asked suddenly.

She blinked at the sudden shift in conversation. “Two sisters.”

“What are they like?”

She tilted her face to look up at him, but his expression was inscrutable. “Where are you going with this?”

“Nowhere…I’m curious about you…is that bad?” His fingers fiddled absently with the ends of her hair.

“No, it’s not bad.” Still, she couldn’t shake the feeling there was something more than idle curiosity driving his questions. “I have two sisters. One older and one younger. Maura is the oldest, and she’s nauseatingly perfect. She’s a stay-at-home mom who makes Martha Stewart look like a slacker. She and her perfect investment banker husband have two perfect children, a boy and a girl. The only time they are less than perfect is when they spend the day with Auntie Shayne and she fills their little bellies with candy and junk food.”

“You’re pure evil.”

She grinned. “It’s true, I am.”

“What about your other sister?”

“Aiden’s perfect too, but not in the sterile way Maura is. She works for a magazine, in the art department. She’s engaged to her college boyfriend, who worships the ground she walks on. The whole thing is sickeningly sweet.”

“That leaves you.”

“Well, I’d say you know me rather intimately, wouldn’t you?”

“You have two perfect sisters, how are you perfect?”

“Um, I think we can safely say I’m about as far from perfect as one can get.”

“I don’t know about that.” His hand drifted down and cupped her breast. Her nipple tightened immediately. “You seem perfect to me.”

“Please, no cheese after great sex.” He chuckled, the sound bringing a smile to her lips. “And I wasn’t fishing for compliments, by the way. I meant in my parents’ eyes, my sisters have it together, while I…don’t.”

“How are you less than perfect?”

“Well, not being able to bear children, followed by my divorce, didn’t help to convince my parents I had my life together. But their real issue is my work. My father thinks I’m an
unnatural woman
—his words—because of my preoccupation with death, and, well, my mother doesn’t acknowledge what I do. She tells people I’m unemployed. One of her friends keeps emailing me job postings.”

Des laughed aloud this time. “Your parents are cracked.” He rolled her beneath him, positioning himself between her legs and caging her head between his arms. “There is nothing unnatural about you.” He kissed the tip of her nose. “And you’re an excellent writer.”

“Yeah? How would you know?”

“I read one of your books.”

Sure you did
. “Which one?”

“The one about the guy who murdered his friend’s wife, then eventually went after his friend’s daughter, killed her and didn’t get caught until years later.”

An odd swelling filled her chest. She reached out and stroked his cheek. “You did read it. When?”

“Shortly after I threatened to sue you. I’d heard you were planning to speak to some people in town. I knew you’d be going ahead with your book with or without my family’s cooperation. I figured I better see what kind of writer you were.”

She tensed, uncomfortable with the turn the conversation had taken. “And?”

“I liked that you concentrated on the investigation rather than the gore. You’re a good writer. I just didn’t want you writing about my family.”

Doubt unfurled low in her belly. In the dark bedroom, she couldn’t read his expression. Did he feel guilty for sleeping with her? Like he was betraying Julia, his mother and brother? Shayne didn’t want to be anyone’s regret, but especially not his.

“Are you sorry?” she blurted out.

“What?”

Insecurity swirled inside her. She wasn’t sure she wanted to hear his answer, but after a seven-year marriage to a man who cast her aside like a broken toy, she wouldn’t let herself shy away from difficult questions again. “Are you sorry we had sex?”

“My God, no,” he said, incredulous. “Why would you think that?”

“I wondered if by being with me you felt like you were betraying your family.”

“Don’t ever think that,” Des said, cupping her face with both hands. His mouth found hers and he kissed her, hard and fierce.

Still, doubt nagged at her. “I would never use what’s going on between us for my book. Do you trust me?”
 

“More than anyone I’ve ever known.” He kissed her again. This time with a tenderness that stole her breath. “Do you have regrets?”

“No,” she told him truthfully. Despite the many reasons why getting involved with him was a bad idea, she liked him, more than she should, given that whatever was happening between them had nowhere to go once she left Dark Water. Still, she had enough to deal with. She’d cross that bridge when she had to. “I want to be careful not to blur the lines between you and me and my work.”

A wry smile lifted one corner of his mouth. “You’re not going to like what I’m about to tell you.”

Suspicion coiled tightly in her stomach. “Well, don’t keep me in suspense.”

“I’ve decided to help you with the book.”

Had she heard him right? “
My
book? How exactly would you do that?”

“I’ll answer your questions. I know who you should speak to in my family, and I’ll convince them to talk. My only stipulation is you stay away from Julia.”

She sat up, gathering the sheet in a ball against her chest to hide her nudity.

“You know,” he said, gently tugging at the blankets, “I’ve seen everything up close and personal. You don’t need to cover up.”

“I do, actually. This is serious. I don’t understand why you would go against your family to help me.”

He sighed and sat up too, not bothering to make any attempt to cover himself. She forced her gaze to remain on his face, refusing to let her attention wander down his hard-sculpted body.

“I’m not loyal to anyone in my family—except maybe Ian.” He shrugged. “The truth is, if it were up to me, I’d have nothing to do with any of them.”

“Why are you living here, working for the family business?”

“Julia embezzled from one of Heddi’s companies. I convinced Heddi not to press charges by agreeing to pay the money back. Since the prospect of having the money returned combined with the opportunity to make my life hell was far more appealing than sending Julia to jail, she agreed.”

There really wasn’t anything he wouldn’t do to protect his sister. Yet, where was Julia when he needed her? He’d given up everything to help her, and she didn’t seem to have any problem leaving him here holding the bag. That kind of loyalty was impressive, but it could be dangerous too.

“Are you helping me to spite your grandmother?” She didn’t like the sound of that.

He leaned closer to her. “I don’t want anything bad to happen to you. I can help you get the answers you need faster and get you out of Dark Water before anything else happens. As much as I would hate to see you go, Heddi’s dangerous.”

Warmth rolled through her, easing the icy knots in her stomach. “You’re very sweet, but I can take care of myself.”

“I know you can, but I’m still going to help. And I want to go with you tomorrow.”

Oh no, he couldn’t do that. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Until, you’re done with your book, I’m going to stick close. You shouldn’t be on your own.”

“You don’t have to worry. I won’t even be in Dark Water tomorrow. I’ll be in the city.”

“I don’t want you to be by yourself in case Heddi has someone following you.”

“I plan to do more than sign paperwork tomorrow. I’m going to try to see your father while I’m there.”

Des paled, and he hesitated before speaking, as if carefully choosing his words. “I don’t even know what he looks like. I could pass him on the street and not even know who he is.”

“If you’re considering meeting the man, you need to think about what that means. I don’t want you to do anything rash, anything you’re not ready for,” she told him, the memory of his reaction to his father’s voice still clear in her mind.

“I don’t know what I’ll do about him. I might wait in the car.” His mouth lifted in a smug grin. “But one thing I do know, there’s no way I’m letting you out of my sight.”