Shotgun Nanny (13 page)

Leaning against the door, he watched her flit around the room, picking up his aftershave, uncapping and sniffing. Turning the security industry magazine he kept at his bedside toward her so she could read the headlines, then grimacing. He could tell her he’d been reading the dullest thing he could find trying to bore himself to sleep when only a wall separated them and he’d been driving himself crazy with images of her naked in that bed next door.

But he didn’t. He let her take her time, her hands lighting on his things and passing on, almost like swift caresses. In some women it would be nervousness making them act this way, but it wasn’t that with Annie. He felt she was using the opportunity to get to know him better, as though his things gave away secrets to his personality. Which, come to think of it, they probably did. He tried to see his room through her eyes and figured he’d seem as dull as she already thought he was.

Still, she was here with him. And she hadn’t come to his room to show him her new juggling trick.

As soon as the tour of his room ended, he planned to prove to her that he had a few tricks of his own.

The way she touched his things was a kind of slow teasing. He was getting turned on seeing her run a finger over his hairbrush. And something tingling in the air between them told him she was getting turned on, too. They’d taken the edge off, but both knew what was going to happen between them—and she’d chosen to draw out the waiting.

“What’s this?” she asked softly, reaching for a wooden frame half hidden behind a lamp on his dresser.

“Nothing,” he said, grabbing for it.

She batted his hands away as a big grin split her face. Pressing the photograph to her chest, she raised her eyes skyward and cooed, “My hero.”

He felt an unaccustomed heat mount his cheeks. He’d been so young in that photo, so proud of his new RCMP dress uniform. He should pack the infernal thing away in a box somewhere.

She gazed at the picture, then at him, then at the photo. “If you ever want to render me completely helpless, a love slave to your every desire, just put this thing on.”

He thought she was joking until he realized her breathing was getting jerky. Her finger traced his outline in the photograph. “Those jodhpurs. That hat. The sexy red jacket. Those boots.” She practically moaned. “Especially those boots.”

She began to sing softly, “When I’m calling youooo-ooo…”

He’d had enough of the teasing. “You watch too much TV,” he informed her, advancing purposefully. He took the picture firmly from her hands and placed it on the bedside table, then reached for her shirt.

She shot him a perky, provocative glance.

He’d barely been able to see anything in the car. He wanted to see all of her. Taste her, touch her everywhere. Swiftly he pulled the shirt over her head.

As he’d already divined, she wasn’t wearing a bra. Two of the most gloriously perfect breasts it had ever been his privilege to see taunted his gaze. Small but firm, they were as perky as her attitude, and as sexy. He leaned in for a kiss, saw her mouth purse to say something and changed direction, moving south to her breast.

She didn’t talk, she sang. “Will you answer too…ooh…”

Her voice petered out in a sigh, and he sucked a little harder at the perfect berry in his mouth. A faint scent of jasmine hovered between her breasts as he tongued his way from one peak to the other.

The beauty of a woman who wore so little clothing, he soon realized, was how quickly he could strip her naked. A little yank, and the shorts and thong came off in one motion.

He gazed at her slowly, taking in her beauty leisurely, allowing himself only to look, not to touch—not yet.

Apart from looking both delectable and aroused, she appeared…happy. He’d been with women who dived under the covers and only made love in pitch darkness and those who were coy and provocative when naked, but he never recalled seeing a woman just so darned happy to shed her clothes.

“What are you grinning about?” she challenged him.

“You. You seem to like being naked.”

“Mmm, I do.” She opened her arms wide and fell backward onto the bed where she shifted luxuriously, her skin pearly against the navy bedspread. “I feel so free and unrestricted when I’m naked. I should belong to a nudist colony.”

“Might be kind of cold in a Canadian winter,” he suggested, then grinned.

“Course, I’d be happy to warm you up…anytime.”

While he talked he dropped his robe and tried to be equally comfortable in his naked skin while she lay there, inspecting him with unabashed concentration.

HE WAS even more gorgeous out of his clothes than he was in them, Annie mused, letting her gaze travel from his broad shoulders and muscular, hair-sprinkled chest to the flat belly and finally lower.

“Mmm.” She almost purred at the proudly upstanding erection. If she didn’t know better, she’d swear he’d been lifting weights with that baby, it seemed so toned and muscular.

His thighs were a little thicker than average, bulging faintly with muscle. He could probably stop a speeding train with that body, she mused.

Her breasts felt tingly and amazingly sensitized from where he’d sucked at them. They were still faintly damp, and the air caressed them, reminding her of how exciting his touch had been. The sex in his car had been intense and mind-blowing. Now she wanted to take time getting to the main event. She was curiously lazy, prolonging each moment of waiting, loving being here with this very special man.

A flutter of unease crossed her belly. It felt almost like fear, but even as she named the emotion it was gone, and she knew it was ridiculous. She had nothing to fear from her gentle Mountie. It was normal that a healthy, unattached male and female living in the same house would start getting attracted to each other. This was the perfect way to let off a little steam.

He sank to the mattress beside her and ran his fingers over her face in a gesture full of tenderness. She wasn’t looking for tenderness or anything that smacked of deeper feelings, the kind that might get hurt when she said goodbye.

That fluttery, scary feeling returned, even stronger, as a surge of answering tenderness filled her being. Determined to change the mood, she tilted her face, captured a finger in her mouth and bit softly, then started teasing it with her tongue.

He removed his hand and replaced it with his mouth. Just the feel of those strong but soft lips on hers had her melting into him. Warm and hair-rough, his skin rubbed against her while she wrapped herself around him like a vine.

The kiss built from light pressure to a hot, deep mating of tongues. Everywhere their flesh touched she burned, but most especially the soft place between her thighs where his erection naturally seemed to rub back and forth.

It was building up almost too fast. She felt frighteningly out of control and yet achingly empty. She nudged her hips forward, needing him inside her.

But he made her wait. “Not yet,” he whispered, shifting away. Instead he moved his mouth downward. He took about a thousand years getting to her breasts, so long did he spend kissing and nuzzling her neck. Her breasts got another eon of attention, bathed by his teasing tongue while the tormenting heat built and tortured her.

He didn’t seem clued in to how much she needed him right this second. Every time she tried to remind him in subtle little ways, like trying to roll on top of him, he pushed her right back where he wanted her and then, if anything, seemed to go even slower.

The man was completely maddening. She was so frustrated she wanted to scream. At last he finished with her breasts and moved down—all the way to her ribs.

She wriggled her hips around a little, in case he needed a hint, and she felt him smile against her burning skin. He was torturing her deliberately!

She gasped, “You are going to pay for this.”

Another millennium passed while he kissed and licked every inch of her belly, taking extra time around the belly ring. “I can’t believe how much this thing turns me on,” he admitted.

He shifted away, and she heard the bedside drawer slide open and then the rustling that told her he was protecting her, as usual. Yeah.

Finally.

But not so. He parted her thighs wide and settled himself between them. Then he parted her most intimate place with his thumbs and gazed at her. He was so close she could feel his breath wafting across the burning, needy core of her.

She couldn’t take much more of this. She grasped the bedcovers on either side.

“Please,” she begged.

Then his tongue was on her, and she thought she would die right then and there from the intensity of sensation. She was somewhere outside herself, able to hear her sobbing cries and the ragged panting that passed for breathing but helpless—her body belonged to him and he played her like a symphony.

When she was certain she could take no more, he raised himself above her and thrust home, hard and deep. Nobody had ever filled her so completely.

He didn’t close his eyes. They stayed open, gazing right into hers. And because he didn’t, she wouldn’t. So they stared into each other’s eyes while he entered her fully. The fear was back, along with a new emotion so warm she wanted to cry.

She reached up, planning to cup her hand around the back of his head and pull him down to kiss him, but he caught her hand in his and brought it to his lips. She watched the gesture, shocked to notice that her fingers were trembling.

Just as his body penetrated hers, so did he seem to be forcing some kind of penetration into her mind and heart as he was watching her. And she was staring right back, fascinated by the way the black pupils dilated into the blue, blue iris. Iris was exactly the right color, she mused dazedly. His eyes were the smoky blue of the Siberian irises her grandmother used to grow. Old-fashioned plants with great staying power.

A faint sheen of sweat on his forehead told her he wasn’t as in control as he was pretending.

“Annie,

I—”

She grabbed his head and planted her lips over his, arching her hips at the same time. A little growl rumbled against her mouth, and then he plunged into her again and again, letting go of all that control.

He was so hard, and filled her so completely, she felt her body clinging to him with each wet slide, arching even as he pounded down. The trembling had spread from her fingers to her entire body. Wordless sounds of pleasure and need filled the air, hers soft and high, his low and rumbling.

It was too much. Her heart was hammering so hard she felt as if she couldn’t breathe fast enough to keep up. She was panting, reaching up, up, up… And then a swamping great wave came under her and lifted her high on its crest. Wave after wave rocked her very soul while she clung to Mark, who rode with her all the way.

The waves continued, ebbing until she was deposited lightly back to earth.

It wasn’t just physical. An equally powerful wave of emotion filled her eyes as she lay with her head against his shoulder, watching the sweat-dampened hair rise and fall as his breathing slowly quieted.

She blinked back the tears, refusing to give a name to the emotion that flooded her.

11

ANNIE AWOKE with a start, heart pounding.

For a second she was completely disoriented. All she knew was she couldn’t move, trapped by warm bonds that imprisoned her so she could barely breathe.

Shaking herself fully awake, she remembered.

A smile curved her lips. She was on her side, tucked into Mark’s body, his arms wrapped around her possessively.

Much too possessively. With a jerk, she pulled herself away.

He grunted in his sleep, rolling forward until he was in the spot she’d vacated and she was teetering precariously on the edge of the mattress.

What had they done? What on earth had she been thinking? Mark wasn’t a man a girl could have a few laughs with and move on. He was a protector, a possessor, a…

There must be at least one more P word that would describe the sense of claustrophobia he induced. He was a—an imprisoner. That was close enough.

And Emily. What would Emily think if the nanny rolled out of her uncle’s room in the morning?

A squint at the clock told her it wasn’t even dawn yet. Carefully, she eased out of the bed and gathered her clothes. She crept in the general direction of the door and after some silent detective work finally located it.

In less than a minute she was in her own room, in her own bed. Alone.

She found she was trembling.

It must be colder in her room.

“HI, GIRLS.” The deep voice sent quivers of longing into the depth of Annie’s very being. She checked the lentil casserole one more time, hoping the heat from the oven would explain the heat in her cheeks, then turned with what she hoped was her usual cheery employee-to-employer expression.

Unfortunately, he wasn’t playing by the same rules. The expression he gave her was intimate and tantalizing. He came so close she thought he was going to kiss her.

She jerked her head Emily’s way in warning. “Tell Uncle Mark about your day, Em,” she said.

Later,
his expression promised, setting off an urgent throbbing in her most sensitive areas.

Mark laughed when the child demonstrated the disappearing pencil trick she’d mastered, a carefree chuckle that brought a smile to Annie’s face. When had he started to change from the stiff-rumped excop? She wasn’t sure, but she had a feeling last night was a part of it.

Strangely, last night had the opposite effect on her. Where she’d been carefree before, now she felt tense. Like a trap was closing in, and she had to bolt before it was too late.

They’d miss her at first, but after she was gone, they’d continue, a healed and better family. She sighed at her usefulness to these two people she’d come to care for, feeling like an angel from TV who fixes a problem then flits away to a new situation next week.

Angel Annie. Had a nice ring to it.

They ate dinner, and nobody whined about lentils. Mark pretended he didn’t know Kitsu was watching them like a hawk, not in case some crazed drug dealer crashed their family dinner, but in case a stray tidbit should fall from a plate.