Page 53 of 72 Hours

“Judith? What you need to do is to get someone back to Greg’s hideout, the one that Brad found. Simon said he’d read up on some of Brad’s notes and was trying to follow the route that Brad took, to catch up with him. He suspected Greg as well by that time, I’m sure of it. So he obviously found the hideout himself, discovering not Brad, but Greg. There’ll be some more clues there, some evidence. Whatever—”

“Tanner,” she said, her voice firm again now, the very epitome of our efficient boss. “Leave it to us. Brad’s already left.”

I FELT BOTH WEARY AND tense—a strange combination. Niall had spent another hour on the radio since Judith signed off, but there wasn’t much that could be improved. He’d gone quietly into the kitchen to make coffee, and I just stood staring at the set. Neither of us wanted music on, or to go through Brad’s or my notes again. Neither of us quite knew what to do with our time before Greg arrived.

Niall was still dressed only—and barely—in that fucking towel.

When he came back out of the kitchen carrying a couple of mugs, I was rather snippy. “Why don’t you get dressed? You don’t want to face our lunatic guest in just your birthday suit. And this ain’t easy for me either, you know? I’m pretty reluctant to waste what time I may have left with a bunch of regrets.”

“Regrets?” His murmur licked around me like spilled, sticky honey. Messy, sweet, and too tasty for words. He put the mugs down on the table, and my nerves twitched with the sensual memories of many months ago. Straightening up, he gazed at me. “If you have any regrets left, Tanner, shake them off now. I think that things are moving too quickly for us to be protesting what we should have said and done in the past, right?”

I nodded dumbly. Fine words, and true. They made me feel fucking stupid at having carried my grudges and my jealousies for all this time, eating away at my pride like ravenous sewer rats. But the words also provoked in me a wave of amazing relief.

Things were, indeed, moving too quickly. When did I drift from resenting Niall’s very presence to comparing him to the sweetest, richest stuff that could ever slide over my eager tongue?

I was a fucking idiot. And I was—I suspected—going to be even more so.

When he moved, it was towards me, when I’d expected him to wheel around and take the clean clothes to the bathroom to dress. His body still carried the slightly damp aroma that skin has after a shower; it had that clean, soft look that follows. Then his hand lifted to slide around my neck, and I was having trouble remembering why I was so fucking tense in the first place.

“I don’t know how to say it, Tanner.” He breathed his words into my ear. “I don’t know what’s going to happen. I’m angry with Greg, and I’m upset for Judith and the others, and maybe I’m nervous, too, though only because I don’t know what I’ll need to see me through this. But what I don’t need is to dig around in all our old stuff as well, all the old misery.”

“Sure.” I cleared my throat. “What we feel—”

“What I feel is you, Tanner, every time I breathe, every time I turn around.” His voice was ragged. “That’s the only real thing I can think about at the moment. I mean, where the hell have I been for the last three months, not coming to find you, not calling you, not remembering what I liked about you rather than what pissed me off?”

I let my head drop back as his lips nudged at my neck. My vision was going a little hazy. His mouth at my ear was making me even more of an idiot, couldn’t he see that? Couldn’t I see that? “I constantly provoke you, Niall Sutherland,” I whispered back. “Bait you, when you hate argument so much. I’m jealous and volatile and demanding and judgmental.”

And always so fucking, fucking wrong about you.

“Yes.” His laugh brushed my throat with its vibration. “You have your moments, I’d say. So it unnerves you to see me half naked. Well, I could say the same for you. If you don’t want this to happen, you need to stop wandering around in those pathetically loose shorts. Don’t you realise how low the waistband slips? How I can imagine tracing the trail of your hair all the way over your belly and down?”

His breath sounded uneven. His fingers were very tight on me. I thought I’d never feel anything so good!

Then his mouth was on mine and I stopped thinking altogether. He grabbed my shoulder tightly, pulling me to him. In return my fingers snagged on the thin loops of the towelling fabric at his waist, tugging him in tightly against me so that his hip grazed mine, and my knee nudged in between his thighs. He tasted as good as he felt, but then I’d always known that, hadn’t I? My mouth pressed so hard on him I was afraid I might split his lips, but I wanted to taste it all, lick at it all, smell the skin and taste the mouth and feel his smooth muscles flexing under my fingers.

I couldn’t help but notice the towel was slipping at its knotted fastening.

“Tanner.”

Time was telescoping into just this minute, just this need. I couldn’t take note of anything else in life, even if it were full of danger, bereavement, mystery... fear. The need roared its way through my veins and begged my arms to hold on to Niall, tight.

“What the fuck are we doing?” I gasped. When he started to laugh, I stuttered on, “I mean... hell, of course I know. But now?”

“You want to stop?”

Stupid question, another of those rhetorical ones. “You know those movies?” I wasn’t keen on the begging note in my voice, but I guess I didn’t have a lot of control over it at that particular moment. “When the guys and girls are facing hideous danger but they still find time to make out? How many times have you thought how unrealistic, how damned stupid that is?”

He laughed again, but very softly, and close against my neck so that the sound tickled the hairs. I decided to abandon any protest. After all, since when was life like the movies?

“You said we had time. He wouldn’t arrive until dark.”

I threaded my fingers through his damp hair and tugged his head back. He groaned, and the lids drooped over his eyes like they were too hot to stand it. His throat convulsed, and I watched the throb of the pulse in his neck.

“I did, didn’t I?”

Niall gasped. “We’ve both been around to check the site, we’ve both had some time to prepare for Greg. Now it’s just us, Tanner, just us for this brief hiatus. I don’t know what else I want to be doing but this.”

“Jeez....” I might still have argued, but the thrill in my nerves was too vivid now to think straight. I just wanted to laugh, and punch the air and other ridiculously childish things! My whole body seemed to be shaking, and I wondered and marvelled at how I was so affected by him. I kissed him again—and again—and then took my mouth around his jaw and along the rim of his ear, licking playfully at his neck. He shuddered under me, his tongue darting out to moisten his own lips. Then I found myself standing in a pool of damp towelling, and the skin pressed against me and writhing under my hands was stark fucking naked. Niall was naked, and his hands were up and under my shirt and it was the most magnificent feeling I’d had since birth.