Afterglow Read online

  That depleted her last store of energy, and she began to shake in earnest. Shock, fear. “Ha!” Insanity.

  “Dakota—”

  She pulled the door open. Rand leaned against the jamb. He straightened, took one look at her face, and said roughly, “Damn it, woman!” And swung her up in his arms. “What the hell were you doing in there? Remodeling?”

  “Beating your underwear on a rock.”

  “You’re not making sense. Time for bed. Hit the light.”

  He turned so she could reach the switch. Dakota flipped it, plunging the area into twilight, then wrapped both arms around his neck, letting her head drop to his chest and the steady thump of his heartbeat. She closed her eyes. “Don’t toy with me, Maguire.”

  The large hangar where the planes were parked was cool, but Rand’s body felt blazing hot as he carried her to a far corner. “As wiped out as I am,” she said against the steady pulse at the base of his throat, “I am not sleeping in some strange and skanky Frenchman’s bed.”

  “It warms my heart to hear it,” he said dryly. Rand’s tenderness made her eyes prickle and her heart ache. He was only teasing, she knew, but it had been so long since he’d looked at her in any way other than with varying degrees of anger and mistrust. Too long.

  He dropped to one knee, her body cradled easily in his arms. She tightened hers around his neck, not ready to break contact. “How very Prince Charming of you,” she murmured, looking at him, grateful that the gloom hid her face.

  His smile caught the distant light from the office, looking so sweet, so dear, that Dakota’s throat closed. “Not a skanky Frenchman’s bed,” he assured her. “Just a pallet of packing blankets on the floor.”

  He lowered her onto a fairly soft surface, then pulled a dusty-smelling blanket over her. “This is about as soft, and fairly clean, as I could manage—damn it, you’re shivering.”

  He lay down beside her, slipped under the blanket, and wrapped his arms around her. Pulling her carefully against his chest, he rubbed his hand up and down her back, her bottom, her shoulders… . “Reaction, and it’s colder than hell in here.” He rubbed a little more briskly, clearly forgetting the road rash. “Let’s get you warmed up, then I’ll see what I can find to eat around here.”

  “After-danger sex would probably warm me faster than a brisk back rub, Maguire.” Despite the furnace of his body, she was freezing and couldn’t stop shaking. However, the friction of his hands, the nudge of his knee between hers, was starting to warm her nicely.

  “Oh, damn, sorry. Did that hurt?”

  “No,” she lied, because Rand touching her wasn’t what had ever hurt her. Tilting her head, she kissed the underside of his prickly jaw. “Isn’t that a thing? After-danger sex? If not, it should be written into the handbook.”

  She felt his smile against her forehead. “You were just thrown out of a moving vehicle—I don’t think wild monkey sex is going to do you any good right now at all.”

  She didn’t know about wild monkeys, but the sex part right now sounded good. She’d take what she could get when she could get it. “Would it do you any good?”

  “Making love with you? Always.” His warm hand slipped under her tank top to stroke up and down her back. “God, I’d almost forgotten how soft you are. We’re lucky you got away with strained muscles, road rash, and every bone in your body broken. The latter could’ve been a real—goddamn it!”

  She jerked at his intensity. “Oh, hell. Now what?”

  “Just found another scar.”

  She relaxed. “We’re both covered with them,” she said reasonably, pulling his head down to kiss him.

  “I hate that you were hurt,” he murmured against her lips. “I hate that I wasn’t—”

  “Shh. No recriminations. Not tonight, okay?”

  His knee was caught between her thighs now, and she shifted just enough so it could go higher, where the pressure would do her some good. Dakota slid her hand under his T-shirt, speared her fingers through the crisp, dark hair on his toasty-warm chest, and placed her palm over the steady beat of his heart. “You knew what you were doing. I wasn’t worried.” Much.

  He laughed as he tangled one hand in her hair, sifting through the strands hypnotically. “Liar. Your ‘no’ was heard in California.”

  “It happened too quickly for me to be truly scared,” she told him honestly. “And I trust you, Rand. I knew that you would make sure I was safe. Thank God for your expertise and experience so you knew what to do, and when and how to do it.”

  Dakota played with his nipple, which responded just as hers did when touched. “Although”—she rolled her head to kiss his chest, then his shoulder—“I will remind you that you owe me a boar’s-bristle hairbrush. And sometime, preferably in the very near future, a deep soak in a bathtub filled with bubbles.” And you.

  Rand used to tease her about her love of bubble baths, until she’d introduced him to the pleasures of shoulder-deep hot water, slippery shower gel, and a shower wand.

  “I enjoyed our baths.” He rested his chin on top of her head as his hand changed direction to stroke a long glide down her spine. “The scented bubbles not so much.” His hand slid inside the waistband of her drawstring pants to stroke her butt. Dakota wiggled closer and wanted to purr.

  She ran her fingers through the springy hair on his chest; wanting the feel of it against her sensitized breasts. She caressed between his pecs as his knee rose a little higher. She was warming up nicely, and nuzzled the underside of his jaw, loving the scratchy, soft texture on her lips.

  “Did you ever think how little time we actually spent together? Your job. My job …” He was stroking her with purpose. They both had on far too many clothes. “Out of about a hundred and four weekend days that year, we spent less than half of those together. I counted.”

  She brought her hand out from under his shirt and started the process of tugging it off. “That worked out to be forty-six days, including the four we took off to go to Napa.” Being ambidextrous, she used one hand to tug the shirt up his chest from the front, and the arm she had beneath his head to snag it from the back. The man didn’t stand a chance.

  “So really,” she told him very seriously between nibbles to his throat, “we knew each other for about six weeks.” His ear was fair game, and she nibbled and laved it with her tongue until she felt the jut of his penis against her thigh. She painted a wet swirl, felt his responsive shudder, then moved down the tendons in his neck with licks and light nips guaranteed to drive him wild. “If you figure we spent three quarters of that time in bed, we really only spent about a week and a half getting to kno—”

  With a shout of laughter, Rand rolled her onto her back, bracketing her shoulders with his arms so he could look down at her. He plucked a long strand of her hair off her nose, using it to paint delicate strokes across her lips. “Do you really want to talk about this now?”

  “This is why we never talked before,” she pointed out reasonably as she tugged his T-shirt up. He let go of her hair and helped her pull the fabric over his head, bunching it in one hand, and flinging it over his shoulder like a marauding Viking.

  She arched her throat to give him better access as he kissed and nibbled his way to her breasts.

  She melted at the first hot, wet sweep of his tongue circling the areola on her left breast.

  “We had better things to do.” The hot suction of his mouth made her back arch.

  “Oh, verily,” she teased breathlessly, spearing her fingers through his thick, silky hair to hold his head exactly where she wanted it. “We certainly did. But we didn’t … get … to know …”

  He slid down, lowering his head so he could nuzzle her belly, following his hands with his mouth as he slowly—painfully—moved, kissing his way up her torso again while he skimmed the tank over her head. Tossing her top aside, he looked down at her, eyes gleaming in the semidarkness. “My business was in LA, yours in Seattle. We did what we could, met when we could… .”

 
; It had never been enough. Trips to and from airports, frantic kisses. Urgency. Heat. Passion.

  “Hello sex,” he murmured.

  “Good-bye sex,” she countered.

  “Hello sex melding with good-bye sex. There went our whole weekend.”

  Neither of them had complained.

  Dakota felt as though she were being given something infinitely precious in this moment. This slow build was something they’d rarely taken the time for. She knew it couldn’t last, but she wanted to remember every brush of his hand, every stroke of his tongue.

  “Talk,” he murmured against the corner of her mouth, putting his palm to her cheek. “Later.” His lips stroked tenderly over hers, once, twice. Soft as a butterfly’s wings. Banking the power behind a touch so exquisitely gentle, so filled with intent, Dakota’s entire body caught fire in response.

  She lifted her head, drawing his head closer, fingers threaded in his hair. Rand’s mouth crushed down on hers, his tongue spearing inside. Starving for this, she feasted on the taste of him. The brief encounter in the field earlier had just been a prelude, the hors d’oeuvre.

  This was the main course.

  TWELVE

  Dakota smelled of unfamiliar soap and tasted of minty toothpaste. He barely tasted the lies. Rand didn’t care. The press of her body and the ravenous heat of her mouth blotted out moral judgments or the need for full disclosure. He was drawn to her as he’d been to no other woman before or since.

  Raw sex was what they both needed, not analyzing. Not thinking. Just feeling.

  He moved from her mouth, kissed her throat again, but when he nibbled lightly, she froze and a whimper escaped her lips in a soft rush. He lifted his head. “Damn. Sorry. I forgot—” That she’d taken a beating an hour ago.

  “I’m okay. I’m okay. Come back here.” She guided his head back to her breast, and he felt her lips graze his temple as she did that sexy hum of arousal that shot his own lust-meter even higher.

  She felt perfect in his arms. But then, she always had, damn her. He felt the soft, plump press of her breasts and pebbled nipples against his chest. Smelled her arousal and felt his own in every thudding heartbeat as she pressed full-length against him.

  “Any special requests?” he asked against the underside of her breast. He nuzzled higher, closing his lips around the hard peak of her nipple, grazing it lightly with his teeth the way he knew she liked it. He wished there were more than the iffy light. He wanted to see her to compare his memories of her body with reality.

  Her fair skin was incredibly soft and silky against his lips as he lazily trailed his mouth across each nipple, then breathed on her damp skin until she shuddered.

  “No.” Her sexy murmur was soft with amusement. “I’m enjoying your improv. Carry on.”

  “How’s this?” He tugged the nipple into the heated cavern of his mouth, sucking delicately until her back arched off the blankets. “Good?”

  In response she pulled his hair, and he returned to the other breast before moving down.

  Tracing the circle of her navel with his lips and tongue, Rand slid one hand beneath the soft curve of her ass, lifting her slightly to his mouth.

  He threaded his fingers through hers and held them over her head as he moved down her body. She’d always bathed before bed, but he realized he preferred her with the sexy smell of the day on her skin. Hell, who was he fooling? She could roll in a mud puddle and he’d want her. All the scents of her body turned him on. Shower or no shower, she always smelled of Dakota, and God only knew, that gave him an erection.

  He trailed his lips across her belly. Her cool skin warmed to his touch, and he stroked his lips to the tender crease at the top of her legs. She slipped her fingers from his and trailed them up and down his arms as he moved her body where he knew she’d get the most sensation.

  This was all for her.

  Rand buried his face in the soft thatch of damp gingery curls at the juncture of her thighs, and inhaled the essence of her. The fragrance of her arousal almost made him come. He slid his hand up the inside of her thigh, and with his other, brought her hips higher, like an offering to his marauding mouth. The sharp sting of her nails in his skin hiked the ante.

  He pushed her legs wider, opening the folds so he could suckle and tease her. Lapping the swollen bud until she shifted restlessly, Rand ran his hand down her leg, and she brought both up over his shoulders, opening herself for him.

  Eagerly, crazed with lust, his dick so hard it was painful, Rand parted her dewy heat with his tongue and sucked on her clit. His name echoed in the vast open hangar, and her nails scored his shoulders as her hips arched off the pallet with a lightning-fast climax.

  Dakota’s hands tangled in his hair, a good hard grip that almost—but not quite—lifted his head from his target. He grunted in protest as he speared his tongue inside the slick heat.

  She got a tight, stinging grip. “S-stop tormenting me, Rand! Make love to me. I need to feel you inside me—”

  “Not yet.” His voice, muffled as it was, was implacable. Too bad he couldn’t taste her and make love to her at the same time.

  She tried to shift her legs from his shoulders. “N—” Her order was cut off by a sob of pleasure jerking her body.

  He slid two fingers inside her, and she arched again, rising higher in the cup of his hand under her butt. “Better?” He inhaled the sweet and salty of her, dragging as much of her scent into his lungs as he could. Nectar of Dakota. Yeah. Didn’t get much better than this.

  “I can’t take any more!”

  Rand smiled against her inner thigh. “Now?”

  “Do it, you’ve made me crazy!”

  In a smooth move, he surged up her body and plunged his throbbing dick inside the pulsing wet heat of her. Her feet crossed in the small of his back as she met each thrust with a countermove that flung him off a cliff. The shudders racked him for what felt like an eternity, and the space of a heartbeat. He collapsed on top of her, their sweating skin glued together as they panted and wheezed against each other’s necks.

  She lifted a hand to touch him, then dropped it limply to the side, too spent to move. “I suppose,” she murmured weakly, her internal muscles still clenching around him, “it’s a bit late to mention I have a family pack of condoms in my purse?”

  Rand smiled against her sweaty throat. “The night’s young. We both know sleep’s highly overrated.”

  MONK’S EYES NARROWED TO dangerous slits as he enunciated clearly and succinctly, “Both dead.” He didn’t raise his voice, and it was not a question. His hands, relaxed and hanging over the arms of his chair, flexed. No fists. No overt show of anger. But inside he seethed.

  Szik’s eyes flickered from the medieval instruments laid out neatly on a chamois to the Cuban smoldering in the Baccarat ashtray on the small inlaid table beside his chair. The man couldn’t get any pastier. He cast his gaze down again and licked his bloodless lips. “An unfortunate accident, Father. One that I deeply regret.”

  Deeply regret, you little turd? Deeply REGRET? All these years of meticulous planning, years of living an exemplary life, had just disintegrated in a puff of smoke, because the people he held accountable, the people he trusted in his own limited way, failed him. He should’ve known that if one wanted a job done well, one did it one’s self. Unfortunately, he couldn’t be in two fucking places at once. Monk shifted in his chair.

  “Unfortunate accident? A high-speed car chase was an unfortunate accident? What other outcome could there possibly be when a man is chased by would-be assassins in the dead of night on an open road? If you had thought the scenario through, you would have ensured that Dr. North was secured safely somewhere else. Before he was killed.”

  “I failed you, Father.”

  Failed? Without Dr. North’s input and expertise, it was impossible to go forward with his well-crafted, carefully thought-out marketing plan. No. Not impossible. Nothing was impossible. Her death made what he wanted to do more … challenging.

>   Monk was not in the mood to be challenged. He was not in the mood to have his plans thwarted or delayed. Yet here he was. Forced to endure all three.

  “Was that irony, my son? Because the word failed is a gross understatement.” Rapture labs would have to be established in key markets. That meant more time. More personnel. And more opportunities for people to cheat him. Szik was a necessary evil, and would have to be eliminated when the time was right. That was a task scheduled on his calendar, and one he had to do himself. Clearly, he could trust no one else.

  This new development was unacceptable on every level. Sweat beaded his brow as he thought of the ramifications of not having the doctor’s expertise and knowledge for this final, critical phase of the project. Years of grueling work were coming down to a two-week window. Monk had timed this like a precise Swiss watch. Every moving part had been carefully manipulated, and then put into play.

  “I instructed that only Maguire be eliminated. I instructed that Dr. North be taken directly to the lab. Was that order too complicated for you, Szik?”

  “No, Father. I would have gone—I would have gone myself, but you told me to—”

  “It’s my fault you failed? Is that what you’re telling me, my son?”

  “No, Father.”

  “You confirmed that both the man and Dr. North were inside the incinerated vehicle? That they are both indeed dead?” Monk still held a tiny spark of hope. She would be useful even if in traction. Burn victims were notoriously easy to control. Dead was final. Critically injured was something he could work with.

  Szik’s lashes fluttered, and his head bowed even lower. “Of course, Father.”

  “And Branah and Raimi?” Driving the vehicle sent to retrieve Dr. North. “What became of them?”

  “I had them t-terminated, Father. It was made to look like a head-on collision.”

  He thought he was so damned clever. He wasn’t paid to think. He was paid to make things happen.

  Monk wanted to kill him. Quickly. He couldn’t stand to look at Szik’s face one more second. But sometimes expediency was not as satisfying as a slow, drawn-out conclusion. Why deprive himself of at least a modicum of pleasure? Slow was much more satisfactory. It would also show his other subordinates that when he gave an order, that order was to be obeyed. Instantly, and to the letter.