A Killing Kind of Love: A Dark, Standalone Romantic Suspense (22 page)

Camryn went on. “I know the risks,” she said, adding a new fear to the mess of them in her heart. “But I want Kylie safe. I know you want that, too. Right now, she’ll be safest at Paul’s.”

He was quiet for a long time, then said, “We’ll call him tomorrow.”

“Good.” Camryn visualized Kylie secure behind wired gates and alarm systems and felt instantly lighter. More in control.

“After that we’ll drop in on Dunn—and that friend of yours, Gina.”

Camryn blinked. “You can’t believe she had anything to do with this.”

“I don’t even know the woman. But I think that relationship she has with Dunn makes her worth looking into—and that was definitely a woman at the top of your driveway.”

Everything in her rebelled at the thought of Gina having anything to do with this nightmare. Gina was her friend; she had stood by Camryn during her struggle to have a child, always sympathetic, always there when things got tough.

Not Gina. Never Gina.

But Gina with Adam?

Camryn ignored the prickles along her nape that came with the image of Gina together with Adam, and the rush of heat to her face. “Gina had nothing to do with this,” she said. “I won’t have you thinking that way.”

At her overreaction, he lifted a brow, studied her for a moment. If he wanted to take issue with her vehement defense of Gina, it didn’t show. “Fair enough,” he said, his tone mild. “We won’t go there . . . tonight.”

He lifted her hand to his mouth, turned it, and kissed her palm. The heat of his kiss rushed up her arm, warmed her chest. “But if I’m forbidden to think about your friend, that frees up a lot of head space—a lot of time.” He closed her fingers over her heated palm where his mouth had burned moments before, then kissed her wrist, up her arm, to the inside of her elbow.

Not only did the lounge not provide room enough for her to pull back from him, she didn’t want to. What she did was tighten the curl of her fingers over the kiss in her hand. Dan lifted his head to look at her, and their gazes met and locked. “Dan I—” She dropped her eyes along with the dropped sentence, tried to get past her traitorous stomach, the fullness between her thighs.

He bent his head, “You know what I want,” he said, lifting her face so their eyes again met.

Her thoughts, whatever they were, contracted—reduced to the now, what he could give her in the privacy of the night, in the dark bedroom while the rain pounded the old roof, and the fear and danger remained outside the water-slicked windows.

And time stopped.

“I want
you,
Camryn,” he said, his hand resting on her shoulder, his thumb rubbing the skin over her collarbone. “I want us”—he moved his head to indicate her bed—“in that big bed doing all the right things to each other.”

Her breath stopped. Her mind refused to. “This could be one very big mistake. And it’s so . . .”

“Soon. After Holly’s death.” His thumb stopped moving over her skin.

She nodded. “One good reason.”

He looked away, then back, his gaze dark but direct. “You’re going to have to trust me on this, but it’s not ‘soon.’ There’s no way to make this come out right, but I’ll say it anyway. Holly and I were . . . apart for months.”

“You mean sexually.”

“I mean in every way there is to be apart. When I did come home, it was to see Kylie.” He rubbed his jaw. “Before I left for Canada—after she told me she was seeing someone else—I stayed in a hotel. I’d like to think the whole mess was Dunn’s fault, or Holly’s, but it wasn’t. A lot of the blame was mine. You were right about that. My job took me away for periods of time. Holly hated that.” He shook his head. “Hell, even Grantman weighed in on that issue.” He stopped, let some quiet in. “I was working to fix that.” He stopped again. “But what I couldn’t fix was that I got married for all the wrong reasons—because I thought it was time, because I wanted a family, and because”—his face was grim—“Holly and I were having fun in bed at the time. I figured we had as good a chance as anybody else of making things work. For Kylie, if for no other reason.”

“What about love?”

“Didn’t believe in it. Didn’t think it mattered all that much.” His chuckle was rueful. “And neither did Holly—or so she said when I leveled with her.” He shifted his weight on the chaise.

“You told Holly you didn’t believe in love, didn’t love
her,
and she married you anyway?”

He shrugged.

She studied the lines of his solemn face, the darkness of his thick, sleep-disheveled hair, the corded muscles of his arms. The shadows of regret in his eyes. It saddened Camryn how little she’d really known her friend—how much she was learning since her death. “And now. What do you believe now about love?”

He looked at her for what seemed forever. “I’m not sure.” He leaned closer. “All I’m sure of right now is that I want to make love with you.”

Camryn let silence linger, then pulled her hand from his. He’d been honest with her; he deserved the same from her. “You should know that I haven’t ‘made love’ in a very long time.” She picked at the blanket still covering her knees. “What I’ve done is… have sex. Pretty boring sex, actually.”

He frowned. “Explain.”

She took a breath. “I’m saying you’re not the only one who married for the wrong reasons. I married my . . . friend, because my biological clock’s alarm went off. I loved Craig—just not in the right way. I wanted kids more than I wanted him. And because of that”—she chewed over her next words—“he walked out on me.”

This time Dan left the room to silence, then gave her a crooked smile and said, “Looks like we have a lot in common. We’re a matched set of marital losers.”

Everything about what was happening between Dan and her was wrong, yet so right, so real, that its presence was a solid force in the room. If being with him was a mistake, it wouldn’t be her first, and she’d make it with wide-open eyes. A smile took root in her heart and blossomed on her lips. “Looks like,” she finally said.

He stood, held out a hand.

Hesitating, she looked up at him, then let her eyes skim the taut muscles of his chest and powerful biceps, the fullness at his groin. Her breathing skipped. “No promises,” she said, having no idea where this night would lead, and at the moment not wanting to know.

He nodded slowly. “Not past tonight.”

Anticipation growing, she took his hand, rose from the chaise, and walked with him to her bed. Bedside, she took off her robe and let the regret—a brief but eternal every-woman moment—that she wasn’t wearing a Victoria’s Secret silk nightgown slide with it to the floor.

Soft cotton would do—and a hard man. Her ears filled with the sound of her own breathing, the pound of her own heart. It had been so very, very long since she’d
wanted
like this.

Her skin warmed. Pulsing heat, long forgotten, burgeoned low in her belly, lower still, and when she looked in Dan’s eyes and saw the same heat reflected there, every sinew in her body curled and tensed—strung tight with the need for sex.

Heart-stopping, time-stopping sex . . . and a long, lingering coming. She tried to remember when she’d last felt this powerful an urge, last rode the rough wave of desire to its crest. Not with Craig. Never with Craig. Her fault. Her lousy love life, along with a million other things, was her fault. It had come with her stubborn refusal to accept the truth.

Tonight was sex for sex’s sake. Nothing more and nothing less. She liked Dan Lambert. Desired him. It would be enough.

She inhaled deeply, prepared to slip the narrow straps of her cotton gown from her shoulders.

“Uh uh. My job.” He took her hands and placed them at her sides. “All you do is stand there and let me look at you.”

She swallowed. “Easy for you to say.”

He smiled, shifted the straps of her gown low on her shoulders, and kissed her throat and neck. His hands skimmed under the straps and released them, letting her gown drop to the floor and join her velour robe. His gaze wandered her body, deliberate and intense. Appreciative. “Beautiful,” he said, adding, “Perfect,” in a whisper before pulling her close and taking her mouth in a kiss . . . to seal their bargain.

No promises, past tonight.

Camryn, pulled flush to Dan’s naked chest, was okay with that, okay with not thinking past the urges of her body or his, urges made clear when he ground his lower body against her pelvis and murmured into her ear. “We’ll be good together, Camryn. I’m sure of it.”

When his mouth moved from her mouth to her throat, and his teeth tugged on her earlobe, she sighed and relished a new truth: despite worry, fear, lurking strangers, and gunshots, she’d never felt so safe, so absolutely right in her life.

Tonight she’d be the Camryn she hadn’t been in years, the Camryn she needed to be, wanted to be.

She slid her hands around his taut, narrow waist, pulled him close. Closer.

Tonight she’d let her heat burn them both.

Dan couldn’t get enough of her, couldn’t slow down. Her mouth on his, opening for his tongue, letting him play, then playing right back, set him to crazy.

He was so hard, so much in need, he was in sexual pain. He didn’t like pain. He liked smooth. He liked hot, and he liked to take his time.

And damn! He liked this woman—wanted this woman!

Using every ounce of willpower he had, he pulled back from her and said, “Much as I hate to ask, can you wait a minute?”

Thank God, she didn’t look as if the idea of waiting thrilled her. At least he wasn’t the only one impatient.

“I’ve got protection, but it’s”—he filled his lungs—“in my truck.” Which at the moment might as well have been Outer Siberia.

Her confused expression turned to one he couldn’t quite read.

“What?” he said, dipping his chin to better catch her eyes.

“Nothing, but . . . Oh, damn. Might as well say it.” She moved from his arms, sat on the edge of the bed, and pulled the quilt over her lap, and up far enough to half-cover her breasts. He could see her jaw moving, then her setting it to determined. Whatever the lady wanted to say, it wasn’t coming easy. “Are you . . . healthy?” she finally asked, with only the slightest tremor in her voice. “Sexually speaking, I mean.”

“Perfectly,” he said.

“So am I,” she said. “So you—we—won’t need protection.”

She rose from the bed, let the quilt drop, and as much as he wanted to get back to where they were, he hesitated, planting the hands he’d planned to have all over her on his own hips. “There’s other reasons for using protection.” Okay, so he was stating the obvious, but it had to be said, because when it came to having kids, either by the old-fashioned way or any other, Dan didn’t take chances. He’d let his guard down with Kylie, let her into his life. He’d made promises to her that he intended to keep—wanted to keep. That didn’t mean he wanted any more kids. Two were enough—especially when he’d already lost one and was having trouble hanging on to the other.

Camryn raised her eyes to his; they were strangely defiant. “Not with me. I can’t have children.”

This was a first, and he wasn’t exactly sure where to go from here. He had sex on his mind, not procreation, and he was having trouble making the shift. He tried. “And not your call, right?” he asked, remembering her father’s mumbled words about her wanting a child.

“Right.”

“You’re sure?” he asked, more to satisfy himself than her. He didn’t think for a moment she’d lie, which gave him a moment’s pause, because it went solidly against his usually cautious approach to women.

“Three-doctors sure, and . . . personally sure.” She looked a bit grim but didn’t add anything else, nor did she look as if she wanted him to ask more questions.

“Then I’m sorry.”

She nodded, the gesture terse, prim. “I thought you should know.”

He wasted a few seconds wondering why, but couldn’t stay focused on anything but the pale skin of her shoulders, the long column of her throat, her breasts pale in the dim light and waiting for his hands. If there was a word for Camryn’s body it was
delicious.

Maybe this issue had to be explored, but not tonight. Tonight was about a man and a woman exploring each other. “Now I do know.” He reached for her and brought that delicious body to his. Camryn was lush—narrow in the right places, full in the others. Curves, not angles. She fit him perfectly. “And it doesn’t change the way I want you. Need you.”

He kissed her again, pulled her hard to where he wanted her the most; the kiss was long, deep, and hot—and in one fiery instant it took them back to pre-confessional mode. Exactly where he wanted to be. And judging from the heat and pulsing in Camryn’s body, so did she.

“Lie down,” he whispered against her throat, loosening his grip, sliding his hands over her buttocks, then thrusting against her before releasing her. “I have to get out of these jeans the old fashioned way. Unlike the Incredible Hulk.”

She stretched out on the bed and grinned at him. “Ever notice, during all that muscle-bulging, fabric-ripping, and seam-splitting, he never did burst from his pants?”

“Yeah.” Dan unzipped. He sure didn’t have that problem. “Poor bastard.”

He stripped, jeans and briefs, and stepped toward the bed.

“No. Wait.” She shifted to bedside, stared at his erection. “Impressive.”

When she moved closer and reached for him, he clamped his jaw closed. If she touched him, chances were good his last few months of celibacy would have him erupting like Vesuvius, but no way would he stop her. Hell, he couldn’t wait to feel her hands on him.

She slid her hand between his thighs, took the weight of him in her hands and fondled him.

Dan’s breath left him in one long, harsh groan. He spread his legs for balance and ground out, “That’s probably not a good idea.” He knew he was beading, knew he wouldn’t last. He had to move. Couldn’t move.

She closed her hand around him, looked up into his face, which by now had to look like a slab of granite, and said, “You’re beautiful, too.” She leaned in as if to kiss him—

He lifted her by the shoulders, laid her back on the bed and covered her with his body, a body now hot and hard enough to stall his brain. All he wanted was in, one long, deep plunge into female heat. Camryn’s heat.