Rapid Fire (24 page)

Maya
screamed at the sound of his voice and yanked the curtain aside so she could
see out but he couldn’t see in. “What the hell are you doing in here?”

Thorne
stood in her bathroom, fully clothed and smelling faintly of gasoline. There
was a small bruise under his left eye, one she hadn’t noticed earlier. She
noticed it now because his expression was different, more open. Almost baffled.

“Damn it,
you’re not just a cop to me, Maya.” He let out a long breath and held his hands
away from his sides as though indicating that he was unarmed. “You’re a woman.
My woman.”

The last
two words seemed ripped from his chest, from his gut, and they punched through
her like power.

Still,
she stared at him for a long beat, not willing to accept. “What are you
saying?”

He sighed
again, and the last of the barriers fell from his eyes, leaving them clear and
hazel, and looking just as confused and stirred-up as she was. “I’m saying that
I’m falling for you and I don’t know what the hell to do about it.”

Maya let
that lie for a moment while warmth unfurled in her chest and beat beneath her
fire-sensitized skin, counteracting the cool of the shower. She waited while
the truth of it suffused her, chasing away the fears.

Then she
snaked a bare arm out of the shower and wrapped her fingers in the front of his
wrinkled shirt, thinking that the outside world would have to take care of
itself for an hour. “I know what we can do about it.”

And she
pulled him into the shower, fully dressed.

Chapter
Thirteen

Thorne
didn’t trust the leap of joy when the lukewarm water hit his face, followed
quickly by her lips. He didn’t believe the click of rightness when she curled
her arms around his neck and pressed herself—all that wet, slick
nakedness—against his fully clothed, rapidly heating body. But he couldn’t
escape the want, the lust that roared through his veins and left him dizzy,
left him reeling.

I’m
falling for you. He hadn’t meant to say that, hadn’t meant to put himself out
there like that, especially not under these circumstances. But once the words
were out there, they’d sounded so damn right.

He didn’t
love her, but he wanted her. Needed her.

Maybe
that would be enough for now.

“I’ll
make it be enough,” he said, and when she pulled back to look at him askance,
he amended it to, “It’ll never be enough. Kiss me again.”

She did,
kissing him, twining around him until he wouldn’t have been sure where she left
off and he began if it weren’t for the wet bind of his clothes. He struggled
with his shirt while he kissed her, while the water pounded down on him,
feeling cold against the heat that flared through his body, pounded in his
blood.

Then his
shirt was free and her hands were on him, their torsos pressed skin to skin for
the first time, creating new, maddening friction. Her breasts pressed into him,
soft and pliable. He eased back to slide his hands up and capture the small
globes. Her nipples pebbled at his touch and the round weight of her settled in
his palms, small and perfect.

Simply
perfect.

“Here,
let me,” she whispered, and he felt her fingers on his belt, on the button and
zipper of his pants, and he could do little more than close his eyes and savor
the sensation, the anticipation. He felt his entire being expand and harden.
His heart expanded, his senses expanded until it seemed that he could sense
every molecule in the room, that he could taste the air as she did, feel the
pound of water as she did.

He felt
the final mental barrier fall away and he didn’t give a damn. He opened himself
to the heightened sensations, to the feeling of finally being in the right
place and time with the right woman. He laid himself bare to the tug of her
fingers, to the wet slickness of her skin beneath his touch, and the heat of
her mouth against his.

When she
pulled away, she was breathless and laughing. She tugged at the soaked material
of his pants and boxers, which had bound at his hips, tangled and immovable.
“You’ll have to do it. I’m stumped.”

“You got
it.” He stepped away to strip off the remainder of his clothes in a quick,
effective move that lacked elegance but got the job done. Then, instead of
moving back toward her, he stood and spread his hands.

He had
intended to give her one last chance to run, though he knew damn well it was
too late for either of them to escape. But his breath caught on the words and
his hands fell to his sides when he looked at her, really looked at her in all
her naked glory.

“Perfect,”
he breathed, the single word startled out of him by the sight of her, by the
fist of emotion that punched him just beneath the heart.

They had
come together outside in the garden space, mostly clothed, but not caring as
the need had burned between them. He’d come away with the memory of soft skin
and wet, hot kisses, and the thundering power of the connection when they had
joined on the physical level.

Now it
was different. Now it was more.

She was
more. She was everything.

He’d
known she was small, but her big personality had pushed that knowledge to the
back of his mind. And oddly, he’d fallen for—yes, he liked that term—he’d
fallen for her brain, for her single-minded if sometimes potentially
misdirected determination to prove herself and bring the Mastermind to justice.
He’d grown used to her quiet resolve, and found himself looking forward to her
sly flashes of humor, her open flashes of anger.

So yes,
he’d fallen for her mind, her soul. But now he was reminded that she had one
hell of a body, too. Her pink-tipped breasts were small and perfectly formed,
and her finely muscled shoulders balanced the shallow curve of her hips,
defining a waist that he could nearly span with his hands. Her legs weren’t
long but they curved perfectly, and they joined at a narrow line of dark hair
that appeared sculpted by some feminine wile into a curving T that beckoned
him. Invited him.

“You’re
perfect,” he said, not realizing he’d spoken aloud until the words carried over
the hiss of the shower, breaking the silence between them.

Her lips
curved. “No, I’m not. But thank you.” Before he could respond to that, or put
words to the images cramming his brain, she tilted her head and gave him a long
look, up and down and back, bringing his blood to a boil. Her lips curved. “For
what it’s worth, I’m crazy about you.”

He
stiffened momentarily, then smiled when the panic didn’t come. Crazy about you
he could deal with. It wasn’t I love you.

It didn’t
ever have to be.

“Ditto,”
he said. He wrapped his hands around her waist and boosted her up, so their
mouths were aligned. They met halfway in a kiss, then another and another yet
again, soft touches that soothed and heated at the same time, then stronger,
longer, deeper, searching kisses that rocked Thorne to his very core as she
lifted her legs and wrapped them around his hips.

The water
dwindled to a warmer trickle, though he wasn’t sure if they’d run the boiler
out or if she’d turned the shower down. The warm dribble flowed over them,
between them, slicking and warming and adding a new level of pleasure.

Of need.

Her
fingers dug into his shoulders, then slid down to fasten on to his biceps as
she gave herself up to his support, to a position that aligned them perfectly.
She cradled his hard, throbbing manhood at the juncture of her thighs, along
that neatly trimmed T of dark hair and darker, hotter promises.

His body
howled for entrance, for completion, for a joining that was fuller, faster,
harder than their quick, furtive coupling in the garden. But he held himself
back, refusing to rush this time, determined to make sure she was ready, even
if it meant going painfully past ready himself.

He turned
and pressed her against the cool tile wall, using the corner to support her, to
support himself as he kissed her jaw, her neck, the hollow behind her ear. She
moaned and he wallowed in the heat and the glory of it as he returned to her
lips. Her mouth drew him in and her tongue trapped him, held him in her thrall
as she unlinked one foot from behind him, used it to brace herself on the door
molding, and shifted up against him, then down again, seating his hardness
within her.

Thorne
was unprepared for the move, for the heat and the slick wetness that suddenly
held him, caressed him, closed around him until there was nothing, only that
hot, wet clamp that commanded his entire attention.

He was
dimly aware that something wasn’t right, but the perfection of their joining
swept away the doubts and concerns, expanding his consciousness away from
himself and into her, into the room at large until he swore he could taste the
difference between each of their kisses as the water trickled between them,
adding the sharp tang of iron to her womanly bouquet. He heard the drum of the
water, the thump of faraway pipes, and the cry of a bird outside or maybe a
child in a nearby unit. He was aware of everything, connected to everything in
a way he hadn’t been since he’d come down off Mason Falk’s mountain.

He sucked
in a shuddering breath, pressed his cheek to hers, began to move inside her—

And the
world contracted to a single point of contact, to the two of them and nothing
else as he withdrew from her and thrust back in on a surge of heat and sensation.
He groaned, or maybe she did, he wasn’t sure anymore where he left off and she
began, he only knew that this was right, this was perfect, this was what they’d
been heading toward since the moment they’d met, years earlier.

“Again,”
she breathed, and he complied, withdrawing from her and thrusting forward in a
smooth slide that set off chain reaction detonations deep in his belly, and
higher up, in his chest, where a fist tightened around his heart, squeezing
until he could barely draw breath.

But who
needed to breathe when he had Maya?

Scattered
droplets of warm water flicked across his shoulders, streaming between them in
sparkling rivulets. He bent and touched his mouth to the wetness at her
shoulder, drinking her, reveling in her.

His body moved
again, finding a rhythm far older than him, one that rose and heated and
blotted out everything but the feel of her against him, around him, the feel of
her fingernails digging into his arms and the sound of her voice at his temple,
whispering his name, urging him on, chanting for him to move faster, harder,
the words echoing in tandem with the beat of his blood and the slap of
shower-slicked flesh coming together in a frenzy of need and want.

Harder.
Faster.

He held
her tighter, wanting to know she was with him. She bit his shoulder and he
growled deep in his throat, unprepared for the jolt of heat, of power. She met
him stroke for stroke, taking more, demanding more until he was buried to the
hilt with each thrust, only on his feet because his legs were locked and the
walls were solid at her back. His breath rattled in his lungs, oxygen seeming
not nearly as important as the woman in his arms.

Suddenly,
though not suddenly at all, she bowed back, arching her breasts into him and
vising her legs around his hips. “Thorne!”

Her inner
muscles clamped around him, pulling him into her, holding him at that deepest,
fullest point. She shuddered against him and raked her nails down his
water-slicked arms, across his back and ribs, trembling with the force of her
climax. Her excitement fueled his and he pressed into her, against her, holding
her tightly.

Mine, he
thought as he came. Mine.

But even
as some insane part of him spoke of deeper, frightening feelings, another surge
rose up and caught him, swamped him with the weight of its power.