Chapter 5 #2
Of all the things contained in the chasm that stood between them, like their age difference, her need to prove herself, his need to chill, the idea that she could be his twin—the female version of him—was the most unnerving.
His theory was that this similarity between them sparked their competitiveness, their lines of battle.
In some ways it was an old-fashioned battle of the sexes with a layer of young vs. old thrown on top.
But what did it matter? The battle was real and all-consuming. It exhausted him and wound him up to trying levels of intensity, while it excited the hell out of him.
He reached out a hand to touch her hair, but somewhere along the way his fingers changed the game and he grabbed a fistful, simultaneously stepping forward and pulling her up against his chest.
The heat of her stunned him. His heart jolted as if the twin peaks of her breasts pressed against him were like a pair of defibrillator paddles. Maybe it was the electric field—maybe it malfunctioned and hit him. The shock of Shana felt that incapacitating and that exhilarating at the same time.
She pushed around him, but he held her hair and pulled her inside the room.
He spun her around and pinned her against the kitchen counter.
One of her arms was plastered against his chest now and the other, he realized, held the bottle of tequila and was well poised to be used as a weapon.
His speeding pulse faltered and then sped up faster than ever as he lowered a hand to cover hers around the neck of the bottle.
“Thanks for bringing us a bottle.” His voice was raspy. He pushed his hips forward, knowing it was a ridiculous clumsy, stupid, unthinking dickish thing to do. She gasped before she lifted her chin. But she didn’t lift her chin to kiss him or to look him in the eye. A classic Shana act of defiance.
“What’s the plan—I mean after drinks?”
Her voice had a slight tremble. He saw the strain in her eyes, felt a tremor in the hand against his chest, felt her heart beat as fast as his.
The desire overwhelming him receded without him forcing it.
There was no act of will involved. Luckily for them.
There was in him enough decency to want her whole and happy and to protect her from dicks like him.
Must have been his alter ego answering her.
He released her hair, let her back up, but not too far. He kept his hand over hers on the bottle.
“We have an address and a dead body. Cap can look into the dead body and see if we ought to look further into it. We’ll make a visit to Fiona Whitaker, wife of the man Acer had jailed a few years back—who now happens to be out of federal prison.”
She nodded. The tremor was gone from her hand. Her eyes were clear. She pushed on his chest and backed all the way away. He let her.
“I’ll pour us some drinks.”
“You planning to get me drunk, girlie?”
He followed her to the peninsula that divided the kitchen and dining areas, standing close behind her. Looking over her shoulder, he noticed Acer wasn’t there at the table. He lowered his voice and said, “Thinking to get me so drunk I can’t take advantage of you?”
She turned. Her eyes flashed at him and her mouth was a rigid lined scowl. This was the dangerous Shana he knew and loved.
“You couldn’t take advantage of me if you were stone cold sober and armed to the teeth.” She paused, a nostril flared, and continued in a low, clipped, matter-of-fact voice, “Let’s be clear about this, if you did anything I didn’t want done, you would be a dead man inside of three seconds.”
He believed her. Nodding, he suppressed a smile, but not a shudder. He accepted her at her word. It would be only right. Backing away, he retrieved another three glasses from a cabinet and clunked them on the counter. She opened the fresh bottle of tequila and poured three healthy measures.
Acer appeared from the door on the other end of the dining room. “I see I’m just in time.” Walking past the table, he joined them at the peninsula counter and they raised glasses.
“To this unholy trio of roommates. May we not kill each other before the sniper does.” Dane downed his drink without waiting for the clink of glasses.
Acer grinned and Shana scowled. They both drank. Acer downed his and Shana only took a sip.
“You’re going to fall behind, girlie. Still worried?”
She shook her head.
He said, “You didn’t expect me to stop teasing, did you? Too late to change stripes.”
“Too late in the game or too late in your life?” she asked. He wasn’t sure if it was a rhetorical question, but he had no intention of giving her any answers. It would always be the wrong answer. Besides, he didn’t know the answer.
“Where do you want me to bunk?” Acer said.
Dane pointed down the hall to his second bedroom. They followed Acer.
The room contained one single bed and one three-drawer low-slung bureau with a mirror. There was a nightstand with a lamp. The rest of the things in the room were Shana’s.
“I’ll get my things out of here.”
She pushed past Dane and Acer and swept the things from the top of the bureau into a basket.
She got a large piece of luggage from the closet and pulled clothes from their hangers and dropped them into the open bag.
Then she opened the top drawer, gathered everything into her arms and dropped the things into the other half of the open luggage.
She closed it up and took the luggage and the basket and went back out the bedroom door.
Dane’s heart raced in something like panic. He wanted to shout at her but he had no idea what to say. He held his breath waiting to hear the back door slam shut behind her. Then he’d bolt after her and drag her back. He needed her to stay.
But when she got to the short hall, she didn’t turn right toward the kitchen and back door. She turned left. Toward the only other room in the house. His bedroom.
He let out his breath and felt a surge of heat and pleasure and the telltale kick of adrenaline having nothing to do with fear. Goddamn but she was the most unpredictable woman he’d ever met and that was considerable. And it was hot.
“I reset the perimeter for the night,” Acer said.
Dane turned to him. He’d almost forgotten about his friend and why he was there. He was supposed to be protecting Acer.
“You have a piece with you? Let me bring a few things up from the basement.”
“Dane’s famous basement of armaments—I’m going down with you. I gotta see this.”
“Sure, but I’ll have to blindfold you in case you’re tortured for intel on where I keep the goods,” Dane said.
“They wouldn’t need to torture me—I’d lead ‘em straight to you.”
Dane slapped Acer’s back and led him to the basement stairs.
He glanced toward the end of the hall. His bedroom door was closed.
She was in there waiting for him. He stepped down the stairs, his feet drumming a staccato beat along the way, matching the relentless thrumming of anticipation in his chest.
* * *
Shana’s hand shook as she pulled the zipper down on her skirt.
She shimmied it over her hips and let it drop to the floor.
Dressed only in panties now, she looked around the room and realized there were no mirrors.
Not one. The realization was enough to kick up her nerves so that her stomach felt like a popcorn popper with the seeds pummeling against her insides in wild abandonment.
What the hell was she doing?
Where the hell was Dane? She imagined he would follow her within a minute.
She picked up her cell phone and checked the time.
It had only been five minutes. A door closed and feet shuffled in the hall.
Her heart stopped and leapt up to escape through her throat.
She slipped the panties from her hips, steadying her hands.
She had them halfway down her thighs when the bedroom door opened and Dane walked in.
He stopped, closed the door behind him and stared at her, his mask melting into the look of a starving lover.
“Don’t let me stop you.” He stood there, eyes hooded, hands at his side. She felt the nervous tremor return and shouted at herself to stop with the adolescent behavior. She’d never been like this as an adolescent, in fact, or ever. Until now.
She smiled at him and pulled the panties off in a swift motion, kicking them off with her toes. Then, pushing herself to be brave, she lifted her arms in a lioness-like stretch and took a turn around as if she were a Miss America contestant—or maybe something less wholesome.
“No need to sell me,” he said. He moved toward her and the fraction of a second it took him to reach her even in the small room shocked her. He reached out and touched her hair.
That melted her like nothing else would have.
Liquid pooled and muscles clenched and her knees almost bent as her heart floated around as if it were an effervescent bubble.
Stabbing, pulsing need radiated from between her thighs and ran through her as the heat of his body closed in.
He tugged at her hair, then fisted it and drew her to him, against him.
“I shouldn’t ask,” he whispered, “but I need to know why.”
“Why do you want to know why?” She stalled because she had no answer, no words or thoughts coalescing in her spinning mind.
He chuckled, bending his head so that his breath fanned her ear. Goose bumps of thrill and anticipation bombarded her and she forgot what he’d asked.
“Stop stalling and tell me why you’re coming to my bed tonight. Why should we break our rule?”
“I can’t—” She would have said that she couldn’t think, couldn’t speak, with him touching her, breathing on her, commanding the attention of every cell of her and wanting him desperately.