And somehow, despite the fact that he’d never really considered fingers sexy before, he wanted to get his lips on them. They were just so darned cute. So petite and slender—just like her—and perfectly polished a seashell pink. They virtually screamed
female!
And Lord knew that was something he’d gone without for a long while now. Too damned long…
“What did Delilah say to you tonight?” she asked, her brow puckering adorably.
Well, wasn’t that just a kick in the nuts? It was also the dead last thing he expected to hear.
“Uh…”
“We’ve known each other for a dozen years, and I think that was the first time I’ve ever heard you laugh like that.” She took a step closer.
Whoa. Not good. And getting not gooder by the minute.
Not gooder? His brain was ceasing to function.
“Uh…”
Now she was standing in front of him, so close he could sense the soft feminine heat rolling off her body in gentle waves, and smell the sweet aroma of her honeysuckle shampoo mixed with the scent of Ivory soap on her skin.
Where was that humming coming from? Was all his blood rushing to his head?
“Uh…” And what was the question? He swallowed and tried to drag in a much needed lungful of O
2
. Was it just him, or were the walls closing in?
“It’s a bit strange, don’t you think?” she asked.
Yeah, it was all very, very strange. Strange that she was here in Chicago. Strange that she was being chased by some spook. Strange that Grigg had put her in the position to be chased by some spook. Strange that she was standing half dressed in his bedroom. His. Bedroom.
Strange that she was looking up at him imploringly instead of watching him like a mouse might watch a hungry hawk. Not to mention the fact that he
felt
very, very strange. Like maybe he was about to pass out.
Bam!
Down for the count. And wouldn’t that impress upon her what a macho man he really was?
“Ali—”
“What?”
Yeah, what? What was he about to say?
Get
out
, maybe?
Get
naked?
That was much more likely.
He simply shook his head. “Nothin’.”
“Back to playing the strong, handsome, silent type?” she asked, her head tipped teasingly to the side.
“Handsome?” She though he was handsome? Not that he should be
too
surprised, he supposed. He was no Brad Pitt, but he wasn’t necessarily Quasimodo either.
She shrugged. “Of course. You do know you’re, like…sorta drop-dead hot, right?”
Did he? Maybe once, years ago when he’d been young and carefree. Innocent of the world. But not now. Not with the years spent battling the elements. Not after having carried around the weight of what he’d been forced to do three months ago. He felt like an old man.
“Wow,” she shook her head, clearly surprised. “You really don’t get it, do you?”
“Get what?”
“That you’re beautiful.”
“
Beautiful
?” Okay, now he
knew
she was blowing smoke up his ass.
Because handsome he figured he could maybe understand. Women were strangely wonderful in that they liked a little character in a man’s face.
Drop-dead hot was probably pushing things a bit. But beautiful? Huh-uh, no way.
“Yes,” she slid her tongue into her cheek, her eyes bright with amusement as she leaned toward him. “Men can be beautiful.”
He laughed even as his spine snapped ruler-straight. He clasped his hands behind his back, gritting his teeth with the effort not to reach out and touch her. She muddled his thinking on a good day. And now, standing so close, especially when she lifted a hand toward his face? Well, that caused all conscious thought to stop dead in its tracks. Every single cell inside his body focused with a capital F on the feel of her sweet, pink-tipped fingers.
“Nate?”
When she said his name like that, he wanted to take on the world. “Hmm?”
“You just laughed.”
“I do that on occasion.” He used to do it all the time when Grigg was alive. The exasperating sonofabitch had done his level best to keep Nate in stitches. Of course, Ali wouldn’t know that. Anytime she was around him, he was usually concentrating so hard on not springing a boner that any attempt at appreciating humor was out of the question. Since Grigg’s death though, all the laughter had left him, flown away with Grigg’s last breath. But something about having Ali there made him feel…lighter. Dare he admit it? Maybe even a teensy bit happy?
“Nate?”
Scratch that. He didn’t just want to take on the world when she said his name like that, he wanted to take on the whole friggin’ galaxy. “Yeah?”
“I’m touching you.”
No doubt about that. The baseball bat he was trying to conceal behind his zipper was testimony enough. “I noticed.”
“You’re not jerking away. Acting like I’m carrying around a double whammy of hepatitis and bubonic plague.”
Double whammy of…he could only shake his head and fight a grin. She was simply adorable. No bones about it. And, yeah, that warm feeling slowly seeping through his veins could only be happiness. He remembered the sensation…vaguely. “What are you jabbering on about now, woman?”
“That fact that you don’t like for me to touch you.”
Was she insane?
“You
don’t
like it when I touch you, do you?” she asked.
“I never said that,” he muttered through clenched teeth because she was in the process of running her hands over his shoulders. Was it possible to feel happiness while in the midst of being killed?
“Then why have you always gone out of your way to avoid any physical contact with me? We’ve known each other for…well, sometimes it seems like forever. You’re like a second son to my parents. You grab up my mom and hug her until she’s giggling and ruffling your hair. Even that awkward male combination handshake-hug thing you do with my dad proves you’re not allergic to human touch. And you and Grigg had your arms thrown around each other’s shoulders so often mom sometimes called you the USMC’s only set of Siamese twins—attached at the armpit. But all I ever got was a tip of the chin, if that. So what gives? Why do you turn sideways when we pass each other in the hallway?”
For a brief instant, he considered lying. But there were so many bitter truths he couldn’t tell her, so many questions she’d asked that he absolutely could not answer. This wasn’t one of them. So…the truth it was. “I like it too much.”
“Huh?” There went her nose again, all wrinkly and wonderful.
“Your touch. I like it
too
much.” Hell, now it’d be
her
going out of her way to avoid physical contact. Which was just as well. He was only a man after all, and with her within arm’s reach—not to mention actually touching him—his hold on his usually stalwart restraint was tenuous at best.
Downright threadbare at worst.
Her delicately arched brows snapped toward her nose. “Like it too much. What does that mean?”
Geez. The woman wasn’t usually slow, but she was pulling the ol’ bag of hammers routine with this one. Instead of explaining it, he simply reeled her in until she brushed against the irrefutable evidence centered directly behind his fly.
Sweet lovin’ Lord, it was hell. Or heaven. He wasn’t sure. If his dick had a voice of its own, it’d start shouting a rousing chorus of hallelujahs.
Her beautiful eyes shot wide. “Oh!”
Oh
was right.
Lightbulb moment, Miss Morgan. “Yeah, does that clear things up for ya?”
Any second now. Any second she was going to jump back and give him that look she’d perfected over the years. The narrowed eyes and pursed lips, the canted head, the one that said she thought he’d just climbed out from under the nearest slimy rock.
Any second now…
“You
want
me?” she asked incredulously.
“I’d say that’s undeniably apparent.”
“But you don’t
like
me.” Inexplicably, she was still pressed against his pulsing, aching-like-a-month-of-Mondays erection.
Not like her? Was she crazy? “Of course I like you, Ali.”
He silently counted to ten and recited the team roster of the 1998 St. Louis Cardinals. Over the years, he’d learned it was the mental equivalent of a cold shower.
“No, you don’t,” she adamantly shook her head.
“Ali,” he knew he must be wearing the expression of a tormented man, “all evidence points to the contrary.”
Okay, so the ol’ Cardinals trick wasn’t working tonight.
And uh-oh, he knew the look she was wearing now. It was the one Grigg so often complained about, all calculating and wily. This was
so
not going to be good.
“So
that’s
why you’ve been acting so…so surly and disagreeable all these years?” she asked in disbelief. “Because you
want
me?”
Surly and disagreeable? He hadn’t been surly and disagreeable. He’d been noble and honorable.
Jesus
. Couldn’t she tell the friggin’ difference?
Deciding she wasn’t going to budge unless he prodded her, he tried to push her away. With lightning reflexes, she locked her thin arms around his neck and clung like a barnacle on the hull of an aircraft carrier.
“Ali,” he warned, grinding his teeth together against the pleasure/pain throbbing inside his pants. This was getting worse by the minute. Or better, maybe? Christ, he wasn’t sure anymore. His brain was only half working—which he figured was still pretty good considering it was likely being deprived of most of its blood supply. “Back off.”
“Not until you answer me,” she declared with that pointy little chin of hers lifted defiantly.
His patience snapped along with his control. “Yes, damn you! Yes, that’s why I always keep you at arm’s length. Because anytime I get near you, all I wanna do is peel away your clothes, lay y’down on the nearest horizontal surface, and plunge balls-deep inside you until your squirmin’ beneath me like a worm on a hook and beggin’ me to never stop. There! Y’happy now?”
***
Nate expected a number of things from Ali after that rather insensitive and vulgar outburst. The mind-blowing sensation of her lips opening over his was certainly not one of them.
Oh buddy.
Her tongue.
It was sweet and supple and darting in and out, and licking and laving and making him lose his mind.
His wickedest fantasies had nothing on reality. For all their crude, raw carnality, he generally didn’t spend a lot of time kissing Ali in his dreams. Usually choosing to skip ahead to the really steamy parts.
Which he now understood had been a huge mistake. Gargantuan.
Because the hard suction of Ali’s mouth was the steamiest thing he’d ever known—which was saying something considering he’d lost count of the number of lovers he’d had over the years. And some of those gals had had more than one novelty packed away in their big bag of bedroom tricks.
The feel of her skin…
It was hot and satiny smooth beneath his rough hands. Her robe split wide when she shimmied up him like a logger climbs a pine and wrapped her slim legs around his waist. Instinctively, he caught her hips.
Good! Lord!
Hips that were undulating against him in a most infuriating and satisfying way.
“Ali,” he wrenched his mouth away. His lungs were going to burst. “Stop this.”
“No,” she trailed a string of wet kisses across his jaw and down to his earlobe, pausing to suck it into the moist heat of her mouth. His eyes literally crossed. “I want this. You want this. We’re both adults, and there’s been this…this overwhelming chemistry between us from the very beginning. So there’s nothing to stop us.”
For a moment, every reason why she shouldn’t be in his arms sprouted feathers and flew right out of his mind. For one delicious instant, he knew only the sensation of her body moving against him. Her arms around his shoulders, her fingers tunneling through the hair at his nape until goose bumps erupted along his skin.
Before he realized what was happening, he was kissing her back with all the passion and hunger that had been building inside him since that time he walked into the Morgans’ kitchen on a cool May morning and watched her swing a Pearl Jam backpack over her shoulder.
He remembered it like it was yesterday…
Because beyond all reason—she’d been just a girl, a senior in high school and he’d been a twenty-one-year-old man of the world by that point—he’d wanted her. With a force that had knocked him senseless. So much so he’d only been able to stare in narrow-eyed wonder and blink at her when he was introduced.