Killer Affair

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Her eyes were big and wide as she gazed up at him in the dim lamplight. Sudden, intense awareness of their bodies rushed over her face as plain as day. He didn’t have to see her blush to feel its sudden heat radiating off her. She swayed closer to him, her fingers toying with his chest hair in unconscious flirtation.

He could so have her right now. And she’d so hate him for it in the morning. He sighed and drew back slightly. He wasn’t the kind of jerk who took advantage of a woman when her emotional defenses were down. He might want to be that kind of unfeeling ass, but it just wasn’t in him to take advantage of any female like that. Not to mention he had no intention of dragging anyone else into the train wreck of his life. Despite the occasional one-night stand, at the end of the day he wanted to be alone. End of discussion.

Except, a small voice whispered at the back of his head, Maddie feels damned good in your arms.

He ought to invite her into his bed, not for wild bunny sex, but just to hold her and make her feel safe so she could sleep. But panic flitted through him at the idea. No one was allowed into his bedroom. Ever. It was his last retreat, his most private, personal sanctuary.

Instead he offered, “Do you want me to sit with you until you fall asleep?”

One perfectly plucked eyebrow curved up at him. “Do I look like a five-year-old?”

He tilted his head and studied her. “Nah. I’d put you at nine or ten at least.”

Her mouth pursed in disapproval, but her anxious eyes told a different tale altogether. And he noticed she wasn’t making any aggressive move to remove herself from the circle of his arms.

He let her off the hook and announced in a tone that brooked no argument, “You’re lying back down here on the couch, and I’m moving over to that armchair and not budging until I hear you snoring.”

She laughed. “I don’t snore!”

“I bet you do.”

“Do not,” she retorted indignantly.

He grinned down at her. Better. “I’ll let you know.” He let go of her and went to stand. But he hadn’t counted on the lady having other ideas.

“Don’t move,” she whispered, looping her arms around his neck.

“But—”

She cut him off. “I want to listen to your heart beat. It lets me know you’re really alive. When I was swimming to shore—I didn’t know if we would live or die—I was so scared—and it was so dark…”

She’d had some sort of drowning scare? When was that? She was talking as if he already knew about it. Dammit. She’d no doubt confessed all the gory details while he was drunk off his ass. Unfortunately, he wasn’t one of those men who got loud and obnoxious when he was wasted. People often mistook him for being much more sober than he was.

Maybe her big scare was how he’d gotten her into the sack with him in the first place. He’d played the “I can keep you safe, little lady” card. And at one point, that might have been true. Before Arielle got killed—stabbed to death by a stalker fan—when he’d been in charge of her security detail.

Careful not to promise to protect her, he thought and gathered Maddie close. “You’re safe now. Everything’s fine.”

Except apparently, everything was not fine. She wriggled in his arms until he turned her loose. He expected her to climb out of his lap, but noooo…she threw her left leg across his hips and straddled him. Right there on the couch. Groin to groin. Pressing down on him just like she would if they were making love. Only a few pieces of flimsy cloth kept him from plunging up into her wet, tight heat, of sliding her up and down his length until he forgot everything and exploded…

Jeez! What the hell was wrong with him tonight?

She laid her right ear against his heart and stilled, listening intently. And for some reason, it was one of the sexiest things a woman had ever done to him. Maybe because it was real. A reaching out for human connection at the most fundamental level of existence. Confirmation of a simple heartbeat. And it all but pushed him over the edge.

“We’re alive,” she murmured in awe. “Both of us.”

Ohh-kay. Poor kid had definitely had some sort of major fright recently. “Uh, yeah,” he mumbled. “Alive. Miraculous, isn’t it?” More like a nightmare from where he sat, but he wasn’t going to quibble with her about the relative benefits of being alive or dead while she was straddling him like a cowgirl about to ride him until his knees buckled.

“It’s a wild thing inside me, this feeling of having cheated death.”

Oh, Lord. He knew exactly the sensation she was talking about. It tore through a person like chain lightning, making every inch a soul tingle, every nerve jangle on edge, every breath a triumph. Blood pounded through him, hot and thick, and abruptly he could count his pulse in the throbbing of his male flesh, so hard and needy he couldn’t stand it.

Gritting his teeth against an urge to throw her down and drive himself into her until they both screamed, he managed to force out, “Honey, you’re going to have to climb off me or be prepared to do something about where you’re sitting because I’m about to have some serious self-control issues.”

She laughed. She laughed!

A noise escaped the back of his throat. Whether a growl or a groan, he couldn’t exactly say. But it made her jerk her head up off his chest and stare at him, startled, her eyes big and wide and…have mercy…aware.

He actually saw her breath hitch. Her chest started to lift, then hesitated, then finished the breath. He closed his eyes in pain. Must. Not. Do. This.

She made a little sound, a soft, “Oh,” that shot through him like a fifty-thousand-volt taser. And then she leaned forward as if to kiss him. Except the movement also had the effect of rocking her gently against parts of him that didn’t need any more rocking at the moment. She froze, her pupils black in the subtle, and suddenly unbearably sensual, light suffusing the room.

He muttered, “Yeah. That.”

She melted on top of him, flowing over him like warm honey, her body softening and relaxing against his. Her hands slid over his shoulders to toy with the short hairs at the back of his neck. Her breasts came to rest against him, hard nipples cushioned in the gently resilient softness of her breasts. Her thighs opened wider, pressing her even more firmly against him.

He closed his eyes. Threw his head back against the sofa cushions in an agony of need so great he barely noticed his back protesting. And damned if she didn’t lick his throat. She really had to quit that licking bit unless she planned to lick all of him. Soon. Hands tugged at his head, drawing it forward once more. And then she was kissing him, her mouth open and wet and inviting. How could a guy say no to being eaten alive like this?

His own adrenaline rush answered hers. He had no idea where it came from, but it tore through him like a tornado. With her body surfing his, sliding across him with her mouth—with her whole self—he rose up to meet her helplessly.

Her hands fumbled at his waist, untying the drawstring of his shorts. She lifted up enough to slide them down his hips, and then he was spilling into her hands, hard and hot and jumping beneath her touch.

“Oh, my,” she sighed.

She had to quit that sighing thing, too. It was driving him out of his mind. He reached forward, lifting the hem of her—his—shirt off her. She rose out of his lap, a naked nymph called forth from the heart of nature, perfect. Ethereal. Beautiful. Her breasts were high and firm, not large, but beautifully shaped. With a chest like that, she ought to walk around topless all the time. He restrained the urge to reach for the pale mounds and just looked at them, savoring the way they rose and fell with her rapid, shallow breathing. His gaze traced the slim inward curve of her waist, the gentle flare of her hips, the shadowed place where their bodies met.

“Well, touch me, already!” she demanded.

He glanced up at her, startled. And grinned. “Sorry. I was enjoying the view.”

She leaned down and kissed him voraciously, biting his lower lip hard enough to draw his undivided attention to her mouth. Vixen. He slid a hand up to the back of her head under her silky hair, anchoring her in place as he took control of the kiss, plunging his tongue inside her mouth. It tasted of the ocean, salty and primeval. It called him home. He sucked at her, drinking in her sighs, devouring the taste of her, the smooth slide of her tongue against his, the way she surged against him.

He skimmed his fingertips down her body, and she stretched sinuously under the light caress, inflaming the inferno already raging inside him. “Yup, you’re definitely alive,” he murmured.

She arched her back, rocking her hips against his provocatively. Except now there was nothing between them, just hot, slick flesh on hot, slick flesh.

He leaned forward, wrapped his arms around her and lifted her up and away from him. “Are you sure about this?” he murmured.

“I’m not sure about anything except that by some miracle we made it. We’re here. We’re alive.”

He could wait no longer. He plunged into all that vibrant exuberance and groaned when she cried out in joy. His buttocks clenched until they nearly cramped, driving him up and into all that heat and energy, hot and tight upon him and around him. He touched her very core, and it pulsed against him once. Twice. He surged beneath her, drawn into her as if she was a force of nature. Her internal muscles milked him powerfully, sucking life from the very dregs of his soul. And he gave it all to her. He pumped into her with abandon, holding her hips down to push into her more and more deeply.

The sea roared outside and he shouted his release inside. She threw her head back and let out a keening, shuddering cry of pleasure that broke something loose within his soul. Something he’d not even known was bottled up within him. He collapsed as new awareness of it, of her, of himself, flooded over him.

Wonder suffused his consciousness. Indeed, she was right about one thing. He was alive. For the first time in a long time. Since before Arielle. Before…

Inexplicably, the end of the thought slipped away from him. Before what? How long had it been since he’d felt like this? His short-term memory might be shot to hell, but his long-term memory was just fine, thank you very much. And he couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt this good.

“Mmm.” She curled up in his arms, his wild, elemental force of nature back to being a kitten once more, limp and sleepy.

“You need to rest,” he murmured.

“You, too,” she murmured back drowsily. “Big night. Almost dying and all.”

He had no idea what she was talking about. The cut on his back? It was no big deal. Annoying, yes. But life-threatening? No. The only threat some guy with a knife posed to them was catching him drunk enough not to defend them. The bastard had come close to that tonight. But it wouldn’t happen again, Tom vowed silently to himself. As long as Maddie was with him, he would not get so drunk that he blacked out or that he couldn’t fend off some asshole with a blade.

Tightening his arms around her, he leaned forward. She made a sound of protest as he stood up with her in his arms, but she settled quickly against his chest. He laid her down gently on the couch, tucking the blankets in around her chin.

“Sleep,” he murmured, smoothing her hair away from her creamy brow. There was something eminently satisfying about making love to a woman until she lost consciousness. He watched her eyelashes flutter down. She was out like a light in a matter of seconds.

His arms felt unaccountably empty and he frowned at the sensation. True to his word though, he sat down gingerly in the armchair opposite her. After their athletics, his back stung like hell. But it was worth it. And how.

He propped his feet up on the end table he’d carved last month in a failed attempt to climb out of the bottle. His sharp eyes picked out her profile against the larger blackness of the storm outside. The seas were worse than he’d ever seen them. Vague memory of a storm approaching tickled his consciousness.

He and Maddie had stirred up quite a storm of their own in here, tonight. Fascinating woman. A study in contrasts. Calculating the odds of turning their now two-night stand into a three-peat, he locked his fingers across his stomach and settled in to watch over her.

An uncomfortable sensation of déjà vu crept over him. He used to watch over Arielle like this wherever she happened to pass out after one of her wild escapades. She used to tell him to quit hovering over her like a nervous mother hen, to go get some sleep in a real bed. She actually thought she could out-stubborn him. It had never worked. But she’d never given up trying.

Right up till that last night. He’d been ready to strangle her for insisting on going out on an evening when he was not only off duty but had other plans. But he’d never broken the implacable calm that was part and parcel of his job. Bodyguards weren’t supposed to show emotion, and they certainly weren’t supposed to throttle their impulsive, immature, spoiled, self-destructive clients. Even if the client richly deserved it. Not even if the client snuck out when her chief of security was out and her other guards were sleeping, and the client went and got themselves carved up by a nutcase. But it didn’t stop him from wanting to wrap his hands around Arielle’s neck and squeeze some sense into her.

Nor were bodyguards supposed to seduce females in their living rooms and make love to them until they screamed, even if they richly deserved it, too. Particularly when the poor woman was clearly upset and exhausted. What Maddie had needed was a decent night’s sleep.

But in spite of what he should have done, he couldn’t stop relishing what had happened. Images of Maddie in the throes of screaming pleasure danced across his mind. As he sat there in the dark, listening to her quiet breathing, fantasies of her crawling all over his willing body again and again in as many different ways as his imagination could conjure stole his breath away. Who’d have guessed he had such a vivid imagination?

Desperate to distract himself, he listened to the storm gathering steam outside. Kato. The name popped into his head. A moment later, its meaning came back to him as well. That was the name of the cyclone spinning in toward Vanua Taru. He hated it how these random snippets of memory kept dropping into his mind like capricious gifts from a prankster deity.

The ocean sounded furious below. Like a woman whose lover, almost in her grasp, had been stolen out from under her nose. What an odd thought that was. But then, this had been an odd night all around.

If these rain bands got much worse, the island would be completely shut down by morning, cyclone or no. That could be a problem since he had food and drink in the house for one. He hadn’t expected to ride out the cyclone with company. He had some shopping to do, assuming he could convince her to stay with him until Kato passed. Three or four days marooned in his villa with nothing to do but listen to the storm and try out a couple dozen of his fantasies sounded like a little slice of paradise.

Looked like a trip to town was in order first thing tomorrow—or rather, later today. Given the searing pain in his back, he’d probably have to give in and get some stitches in his back, too. Which would also give him a chance to tell the sheriff about the attack on the beach.

He frowned, considering the chances of the attacker escaping the island before Kato hit. He bloody well wouldn’t fly in this weather, and neither would any of the other island-taxi pilots. People wishing to leave Vanua Taru would be down to ferry service or private boats. Joe the bartender, also the local ferry pilot, was extremely stingy about sailing his precious ferryboat in heavy seas. The Merry Widow was probably already tucked safely in her boathouse and not likely to emerge until after the storm. Unless the attacker had his own boat and a death wish, he wasn’t going anywhere until Kato passed. Nope, the Sex on the Beach Killer was stuck on Vanua Taru for at least the next several days. If that was, in fact, who’d attacked them.

Without any great heat, the thought that he could use a drink passed through his mind. But it was overridden by a much more pressing concern. He seriously didn’t need to be trapped on this tiny piece of real estate with some crazy bastard looking to slice folks into bits. Truth be told, the thought made his blood run cold. Six months ago, he’d have laughed at the prospect. Back then he was still invincible. Had still never lost a client. He’d still been the baddest badass bodyguard in the biz. Nothing had gotten past him. But all that had been before.

And besides, Maddie was with him now. He had her safety to think about.

A flash of Arielle’s bloody corpse flashed through his mind’s eye. By some trick of his imagination, or maybe his subconscious, the face in his memory morphed from Arielle’s into Maddie’s. And suddenly he felt sick to his stomach.