It was the first time she’d said that aloud, but mercy, it was always there. In her thoughts, dreams. Nightmares.
Always.
Nate put his water bottle on his desk, shoved his hands in his jeans pockets and walked closer. “You think you’re responsible?” he challenged. “From what I remember, your father went after the eighteen-year-old thug who attacked you when you were sixteen.”
She whirled around, her eyes already narrowing. “How do you know that?”
He slowly blew out his breath. “I always do background checks on the lawyers I come up against in court.”
It felt like a huge violation of her privacy. And it was. But then she remembered she’d done the same thing to Nate and any other cop she might be grilling on the witness stand.
“Know your enemy,” she mumbled. She lowered her head. “I hate that you learned that about me. I keep professing I’m a good person—”
“You are.” And that was all he said for several seconds. “Why would you think you’re responsible for his death?”
The pain from the memories was instant. Fresh and raw. It always would be. “Because I shouldn’t have been out with Matt Sanders to begin with. My dad had forbidden me from dating him because he believed Matt was a rich bully. He was,” Darcy admitted. “But I didn’t learn that until it was too late.” Her gaze flew back to his. “Please tell me you didn’t see the pictures.”
But his silence and suddenly sympathetic eyes let her know that he had. Pictures of the assault. Black eyes. A broken nose. Busted lip. Along with assorted cuts and bruises. All delivered to her face by Matt after Darcy had gotten cold feet about having sex with him.
“If someone had done that to Kimmie, I would have gone after him, too,” Nate confessed.
“Maybe.”
He took his hands from his pockets, touched her chin with his fingertips, lifting it so that it forced eye contact. “Your father made a mistake by carrying a gun to confront your attacker, but you did nothing wrong.”
That was debatable. A debate she’d had often and lost. “My mother blamed me. Even on her deathbed.” Dying from breast cancer hadn’t stopped her from giving Darcy one last jab of guilt.
“Your mother was wrong, too.” He sounded so sincere. So right. But Darcy couldn’t feel that rightness inside her.
Her father had shot and killed Matt Sanders. And because they hadn’t had the money for a good lawyer, the public defender had done a lousy job, and her father had been given a life sentence. Which hadn’t turned out to be that long since less than a year later, he’d been killed while trying to break up a fight in prison.
“Your father is the reason you became a lawyer,” Nate stated, as if he’d read her mind—again. His voice soothed her. A surprise. Nothing had ever been able to soothe her when it came to the subject of her father. “One day, maybe we’ll both be able to remember the good without the bad mixed in.”
Darcy wished that for both of them. Especially Nate. And that hit her almost as hard as learning that he knew all about her past. She’d known that her feelings for Nate were changing. She blamed the danger and the attraction for that change of heart. But she was more than surprised to realize that she cared about his healing.
About him.
And that went beyond the danger and the attraction.
Oh, mercy.
She was in huge trouble here.
The corner of Nate’s mouth hitched. As if once more he knew what she was thinking. Maybe he did.
“I’m about to make a big mistake,” he warned her. “Stop me?”
Right. She had less willpower than he did.
“Not a chance.”
Nate frowned now. Cursed himself. Then cursed her.
Clearly he was not pleased that neither of them was going to do anything about this. He leaned in. Closer. Until she felt his warm breath brush against her lips. She also felt the pulse in his fingers that were still touching her chin.
And she felt his body.
Because he closed the distance between them by easing against her.
It flashed through her mind that while they shouldn’t be playing with fire, it felt right. As if they should be doing this. And more. Then, he put his mouth on hers, and Darcy had no more thoughts. No more mind flashes.
The fiery heat took over.
It was as if they were starved for each other because Darcy wound her arms around him when he yanked her to him. They fought for position, both trying to get closer, but that was almost impossible.
Darcy’s burning body offered her a quick solution for that.
Get naked and land in bed. Or in this case, the sofa, since it was only a few feet away.
But Nate didn’t take her to the sofa. He turned her, anchoring her against his desk while he kissed the breath right out of her. His mouth was so clever, just the right pressure to make her beg for more. And then he gave her more by deepening the kiss.
The taste of him made those flames soar.
But it wasn’t just the kiss. He touched her, too. First her face. Then her neck. Using just his fingertips, he traced the line to her heart. To her left breast. And to her nipple. It was puckered from arousal, and he used those agile fingers to work some heated magic there.
Darcy would have gasped with pleasure if her mouth hadn’t otherwise been occupied by his.
She hoisted herself onto the desk so she was sitting. Behind her, things tumbled over, and she heard the sound of paper rattling. But that didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered now was feeding this fire that Nate had started. So, she wrapped her legs around him and urged him closer.
Until his sex was against hers.
Yes,
she thought to herself. This was what she needed, and judging from the deep growl that rumbled from Nate’s throat, he needed it, too.
The kiss got even more frantic. It was the same for the touching. Each of them was searching for more, and Nate did something about that. He eased her down, so that her back was on his desk, and he followed on top of her. The contact was perfect. Well, except for their clothes, and Darcy reached to unbutton his shirt.
But Nate stopped her by snagging her wrist.
He looked her straight in the eyes. “This is just stirring up trouble,” he mumbled. “I’m sorry for that.”
For a moment, a really bad moment, Darcy thought he was about to call the whole thing off. But Nate shoved up her top and pulled down her bra. He put his mouth to her breasts and kissed her.
Okay, this was the opposite of stopping. She reached for his shirt again. However, Nate let her know that he was calling the shots because he got on the desk with her, pinning her in place with his body.
They were going to have sex, she decided. Right here, right now. And while she tried to think of the problems that would cause—and it would cause problems—she couldn’t wrap her mind around anything logical.
Especially when Nate unzipped her jeans.
And slid his hand into her panties.
His first touch was like a jolt, and Darcy might have jolted right off the desk if he hadn’t continued to pin her down. He kept up those maddening kisses to her breast and neck while he touched her in the most intimate way. It was making her crazy. Making it impossible to speak. Or move. Or do anything except lie there and take what his hand and mouth were dishing out.
Darcy felt herself racing toward a climax and tried to pull back so that Nate and she could finish this together. She wanted more. She wanted sex. But she was powerless to stop what Nate had already set in motion.
His fingers slid through the slick heat that his touch had created, and he didn’t stop. Not with the touching. Not with the kissing. But what sent her over the edge was what he whispered in her ear.
“Let go for me, Darcy.”
And she did. Darcy shattered, her body closing around his fingers as his mouth claimed hers. He kissed her through the shattering and deep into the aftermath.
Until reality hit her squarely between the eyes.
Mercy.
What the heck had she just done?
“Yeah,” Nate mumbled. It was that “I’m right there with you” tone. “Trust me, though, it would have been, um, harder if we’d had sex.”
Because Nate was indeed hard—she knew because of the way they were still pressed together. Darcy couldn’t help herself. She laughed.
Nate’s eyebrow rose, and he smiled. “I thought there’d be regret.”
Oh, there was some of that. Nate was probably regretting it’d happened at all, and Darcy was regretting they hadn’t just taken it to the next level.
“Hand sex crossed just as many lines as the real thing,” she let him know. “Plus, it was only pleasurable for me.”
He leaned in. Kissed her hard. “Don’t think for one minute that you were the only one who enjoyed that.”
And it seemed like an invitation for more. Darcy’s body was still humming, but one look at Nate and she was ready for him all over again.
“It’ll have to wait,” he insisted.
For a moment Darcy thought the buzzing sound was all in her head, but then Nate let go of her. That’s when she realized the sound was coming from his desk.
He pulled in several hard breaths as he made his way to the phone. Not the red one but the other landline. Nate snatched it up.
While she got off the desk and fixed her clothes, she looked up at the monitors. The babies were still asleep, thank goodness. But her sense of relief faded when she saw the look on Nate’s face.
“Where?” he demanded of the caller.
Nate cursed and punched some buttons beneath the monitor of the pasture and zoomed in on the high chain-link fence. Darcy saw nothing at first, but then the movement caught her eye.
There.
Someone was scaling the fence. Dressed in dark clothes with a baseball cap shadowing the face, the person dropped to the ground.
And that someone was armed.
“
S
TAY PUT AND LOCK DOWN
the house. I’m going out there to confront this SOB,” Mason insisted.
“Be careful.” Nate knew it was an unnecessary warning. Mason was always careful, and his brother would no doubt take a ranch hand or two with him. But the sight of a gunman meant plenty of things could go wrong.
Or maybe they already had.
Had Ramirez’s boss hired someone else to come after them? Was this the start of another kidnapping attempt?
Nate hung up, and while he kept his attention on the monitors, he pressed in the code that would set the alarm for every door and window of the main house. He also took the gun from his desk drawer.
Beside him, Darcy was trembling now. She had her fingers pressed to her mouth. Her eyes were wide with concern and fixed on the screen with the intruder. An opposite reaction from what she’d had just minutes earlier.
Later, Nate would figure out why he’d had such a bad lapse in judgment by taking her that way on his desk. But for now, they had a possible kidnapper on the grounds.
“Please, not again,” Darcy whispered.
Nate knew exactly how she felt. He didn’t want the children, Darcy or anyone else to be in danger again. And in this case the danger didn’t make sense. The person behind this had already failed to get Darcy and him to throw the investigation. Heck, Darcy was no longer even Dent’s attorney.
But maybe this guy didn’t know that.
“I need to go to the children,” she insisted and headed for the door.
“No. Stay here. For now we just need to keep watch, to make sure Mason can handle this. There are no viewing monitors in the nursery, and it’ll only upset the kids if you wake them from their naps.”
Nate tapped the screen where the nursery and the babies were displayed on the monitor and hoped she would keep her focus there.
She didn’t.
Darcy volleyed glances between the babies and the menacing figure making his way across the back pasture. Nate zoomed in on the intruder, trying to get a better look, but the baseball cap obstructed the man’s face. Still, Nate had a sense of his size—about six-two and around one-eighty.
“How far is he from the house?” Darcy’s voice was trembling, too.
“A good three miles. That part of the property is near the county road.” And that was probably why he was there. It wouldn’t have been difficult to drive off the road and onto one of the old trails. Then hide a vehicle in the thick woods that surrounded the ranch. And maybe the intruder hadn’t realized that any movement on the fence would trigger the security system.
“He’s moving fast,” Darcy observed.
Yes. He was practically jogging. While he kept a firm grip on his gun. A Glock, from the looks of it. There was something familiar about the way the man was holding it.
And that created an uneasy feeling inside Nate.
He flipped open his phone and called Grayson. “Tell me Ramirez is still behind bars.”
Grayson didn’t answer for a second or two, and that was an answer in itself. “Dade and Mel are on their way out there right now. It’s possible Ramirez escaped.”