“And how’s that?” she said, her voice suddenly husky.
“Like you are mine and I can’t wait to get inside your pants.”
“I hate to state the obvious, but I’m not wearing any pants.”
“Hmm...” Which in her imagination actually kind of sounded like “yum.” “Is that so?”
It didn’t take much for him to slide his hand under her robe and continue the hands-on demonstration.
Very effectively. It nearly convinced her.
She groaned when he cupped her possessively, his finger dipping between her legs with the confidence of a man who already knew her body and was staking a claim. A very deep, penetrating, and thorough claim.
Her robe slid off her shoulders as he gave her a few more thrusts of his finger before laying her back on the bed and replacing it with his tongue.
He took her apart bit by bit. Nuzzling, delving, and flicking until she had nowhere to go. Until her heels dug into his back and her thighs clenched around his face as he finally gave her the pressure and friction that sent her soaring over the edge. He devoured her ecstasy with his mouth, making sounds as if he couldn’t get enough.
Turned out, he couldn’t. He took her over the edge again before he let her take a breath.
But she had her revenge. Deciding he looked a little bit too much like the proverbial cat who ate the canary, she sat up on the edge of the bed, lifted him to his feet, and pulled off his towel.
What she was interested in was right at mouth level and looking like it might need a little lightening of the pressure. It was thick and hard and very, very red.
“Poor baby,” she said, making commiserating sounds over his obvious discomfort. She looked up at him coyly. Their eyes met, and for maybe the first time in her life she felt as sexy as any femme fatale. “I think you mentioned a rain check on that lesson?”
His expression was so fierce and his jaw clenched so tightly he couldn’t even get out the words. Instead, he groaned as her mouth covered him.
It turned out she didn’t need much of a lesson after all. All she had to do was follow the sounds, clenches, and pulsing throbs of a very long and bulging vein.
The latter she did with her tongue. A slow, delicious pull from root to tip that ended with her taking that big blunt plum in her mouth and milking him until he came with a fierceness that undid them both.
Afterward, sated and weak from pleasure, they lay naked and entwined on the bed in a weird kind of post-euphoric silence. It wasn’t awkward or uncomfortable; it was more a sense of awe and humbleness. As if maybe something bigger than either of them realized was taking hold.
What’s happening?
She didn’t realize she’d spoken aloud until he answered. “I don’t know.”
But it was clear to both of them that something was. And as she fell asleep with her cheek pressed to the steady beat of his heart—a heart that wasn’t running for the hills—she suspected the answer.
She was falling for him all over again. He’d better not disappoint her. The landing would be much harder this time.
Twenty-one
Kate burst into tears the moment he opened the door. It was as if all the emotion of the past couple of weeks—ever since she’d received that horrible phone call from Colt telling her Scott was dead—which she’d been carefully keeping at bay, burst through the dam. All it took was one look into the navy blue eyes of the man whose face was nearly as familiar to her as her own—no matter how he attempted to disguise it.
She threw herself into his arms and didn’t let go until the heavy, choking sobs slowed to a few sputtering sniffles.
He’d closed the door behind her, but otherwise he hadn’t moved, content, it seemed, to just hold her until she got it all out.
When she finally pulled back to look up at him through blurry, swollen eyes, he was grinning down at her. “I take it you’re glad to see me?”
She swatted at him playfully and wiped her eyes. “Don’t joke about this. I was so scared that I’d lost you. When I heard...” She let her voice fall off. “It doesn’t matter. You’re safe, and that’s all that matters.”
Scott pulled out a chair from the desk, indicating for her to sit.
After dropping Colt off at his hotel, she’d driven straight to the address Scott had given her. It hadn’t taken long, as the hotel was also near Capitol Hill and only a few blocks away. Both men had picked large chain hotels favored by businessmen—she suspected it wasn’t a coincidence and was only glad they hadn’t picked the same one.
She gave an involuntary shudder at the thought of them accidentally crossing paths. Scott’s subtle change in appearance wouldn’t fool Colt any more than it had her.
