Dangerous Lover

  Home. She was home.

  Well, not quite yet. She stared ahead at the rusted garage door with near hatred.

  Time for another apology. “I’m sorry,” she said contritely, digging in her purse for the keys, hands still shaking. “The remote doesn’t work. The door has to be opened manually. I’ll do it.”

  “No.” He reached over and took the keys from her hand. “Don’t get out. I’ll take care of it.”

  Her boiler was temperamental, but the garage door was utterly reliable. You could count on it not working. It took her muscle and time and many a chipped nail to turn the key in the rusty lock and lift the door.

  “Are you sure? I can—”

  Again, that touch from his big hand. Heat and reassurance, the punch of sensual awareness, gone when he lifted his hand. After his touch, the cold and the aftermath of panic rushed back in. “I’m sure.”

  Lit by the headlights, she watched him bend and lift the door as if it were brand-new, freshly oiled and weightless. A second later, they were safely in the garage.

  Home. For real, now.

  Caroline got out of the car and had to order her knees to stiffen. Her legs were shaking. All of her was shaking still from the near accident, a deep, almost uncontrollable tremor. The keys were rattling in her hand. She had to clench her fist closed to stop the noise.

  “Thank you,” she said again to the big man, over the roof of the car. She met his eyes, dark and inscrutable. “I owe you—”

  He held up a huge hand and shook his head. “Please don’t. Let’s just get inside.” He picked up his bags and her briefcase. “Lead the way. I’ll follow you.”

  Caroline opened the door to the house, fingers crossed, tense, expecting the worst.

  Thank God, the worst hadn’t happened. Yet.

  The air was not quite freezing, there was a low hum from somewhere under her feet and she could relax a little. The boiler hadn’t gone off today. She kept it on a minimum setting so the pipes wouldn’t freeze, which they did regularly when the boiler went on the blink. But today the gods of heating were smiling down at her, as well they should, considering the number they’d pulled on her last week.

  The temperature was uncomfortably cool, but as long as the boiler was working, it was okay. She’d turn the thermostat up, and in half an hour the whole house would be warm.

  Her heating bills were atrocious, but heating was not something she was prepared to skimp on. Not, certainly, with a new boarder. And definitely not in the middle of a blizzard.

  She led Jack through the mudroom into the big, two-story atrium. Entering was always a delight. Designed by a disciple of Frank Lloyd Wright, every room of Greenbriars was light, spacious, perfectly proportioned. The atrium was simply spectacular. An old friend of the family had once said that Greenbriars was like a beautiful woman, and the atrium was her face. When her parents had been alive, there had been two Winslow Homers, a Ming vase, a Murano chandelier and an immense antique Baluchi carpet in the atrium.

  All long gone.

  The only thing left was the airiness and grace of the room itself, with its black-and-white-marble flooring, arches leading to the library, the living room and her study and the big, graceful, winding maple staircase leading to the bedrooms on the second floor.

  Through all the tough years gone by, through Toby’s long, painful decline and death, through all the sadness and hardship, entering Greenbriars never failed to lift her spirits.

  Greenbriars was alive to her, and was in many ways the last family member left to her. She’d fought ferociously to keep it, even when everyone—the family lawyer who’d had to tell her that there was no money in the bank, Jenna, her best friend, who thought she was nuts to stick by Greenbriars, Sanders, who quickly grew annoyed that she had to pinch pennies and eventually dumped her—everyone said to sell.

  Caroline would have sold Greenbriars only to save Toby’s life, but he died before it became necessary. And now—well, now Greenbriars was her only connection with her family and her only solace. She was tied by unbreakable links of love to the place. To sell it would be to deny the people she’d loved so much. Selling was unthinkable.

  As long as she had a breath in her body, Greenbriars would be hers. Cost what it might.

  She watched Jack Prescott as he took in his surroundings. People reacted in different ways to the mansion. Some people’s jaws dropped. Some were blasé. Some didn’t even understand how beautiful it was and saw only a big house that needed painting and repair work and new furniture.

  It was a litmus test.

  His reaction was perfect. He stood in silence for a minute, dark eyes taking in the architectural details, then he turned to her. “What a beautiful place. Thank you for accepting me as a boarder.”

  Yes, perfect. Caroline smiled up at him. “I hope you’ll be comfortable here. The double room is on the third floor, under the eaves. I’ll show you the way.”

  He shook his head. “Don’t go up two flights of stairs for my sake. Tell me how to get there, and I’ll be fine.”

  Oh, God. What a relief. The worst of the trembling was over, but her legs were still shaking.

  “Go up the main staircase, turn right and you’ll find another staircase at the end of the hallway that will take you up to your room. It has an en suite bathroom that’s yours alone. The sheets are clean, and you’ll find clean towels in the big white cabinet in the bathroom. You should have enough hot water for a shower. Dinner’s at seven thirty.”

  “Thank you.” He inclined his head. “I’ll be down at seven thirty,” he said, then turned and took the stairs two at a time, moving fast. Caroline watched his broad back until he disappeared, hoping she’d done the right thing, knowing that she’d had no choice.

  Three

  The instructions, of course, hadn’t been necessary. Jack knew his way up to the big airy room at the top of the house. He stood outside the door, his hand on the handle, and took in a big breath, still amazed that he was here. With her.

  The house was as beautiful as in his memories, only bare and unadorned. Before, there had been paintings on the walls, big pieces of old furniture, soft rugs, elaborate vases. As a boy, he’d had no idea how valuable they could be. All he knew was that he’d never seen rooms as full of beautiful things as Caroline’s home.

  He was no expert, but he’d learned a lot over the years. Enough to know that there had been a fortune in paintings, rugs, sculptures, antiques. Most of which were now gone.

  It didn’t make any difference. The mansion was still gorgeous, like a beautiful woman without makeup. Still, it pained his heart to think of Caroline selling off her inheritance, piece by piece. It must have hurt.

  The room under the eaves was exactly the same as it had been twelve years ago, only shabbier and in need of a coat of paint. The furniture was the same, too, pleasant but unexceptional. Obviously, nothing in this room had been valuable enough to sell off. The room held a big four-poster bed with a huge green-and-white quilt, an armchair in need of reupholstering, a chest of drawers and a small desk on which sat a TV set and a radio.

  More than enough to make for comfortable living, particularly for a man used to roughing it. He’d do just fine here, until he moved into Caroline’s bedroom, which he vowed would be just as soon as humanly possible.

  The mechanics of that—getting from being a boarder to a lover—was something he’d have to work on. But he was good at strategy. Sooner or later it was going to happen. She was single, that much was clear, even though there was probably a boyfriend in the background. How could there not be? It was unthinkable that any man with a pulse and working equipment could be in the same room as Caroline and not want her.

  The bathroom was the same as before, too. Large, with white fixtures and cream-and-green tiles on the walls. The sink was cracked, and a few wall tiles were missing, but for someone who’d been on shit-burning detail in Iraq, and who’d dug his own latrines in Afghanistan, it was superluxurious. As promised, there was a stack
of white towels in a big white wooden cabinet. The towels were clean, but old and threadbare. Who the hell cared? In a second, his dirty, rumpled clothes were on the floor, and he was under the shower.

  The shower stall was equipped with shampoo and soap in a holder. The water was only lukewarm, but it still felt good as he lathered up.

  Both the soap and the shampoo were rose-scented. The smell went straight to the primitive part of his brain that associated roses with Caroline.

  Damn! It was precisely the part of his brain that was connected to his cock, and had been for twelve years. Roses equaled Caroline equaled a hard-on.

  Jack took his time washing up, getting rid of more than the dirt and sweat of a forty-eight-hour trip back from Africa. He was washing more than the grime of travel off—he was washing his old life out.

  For twelve years, he’d been the Colonel’s to command. The man who’d found a starving, half-mad mongrel behind a trash can and taken him in had had his undying loyalty. Colonel Eugene Nicholas Prescott, man of honor, the father of his heart. If the Colonel hadn’t gotten ill and died, Jack wouldn’t be here. He’d still be helping the Colonel run ENP Security.

  He’d never allowed himself more than the vaguest kinds of daydreams of an alternative life while the Colonel was alive. He’d been as loyal to him as any feudal knight to his king. But now, in the space of a week, Jack had buried his father, sold the company and the house and shut down the rogue Sierra Leone mission. All the ties with his old life were severed.

  It was all over. He was starting a new life, right here in Caroline’s shower, smelling of roses.

  Now his skin smelled like hers, though it sure as hell didn’t feel like hers. Hers was so pale, so smooth. Smooth and incredibly soft to the touch, too.

  Jack remembered every second she’d spent in his arms in the car. It had taken every ounce of self-control not to tilt her head back and kiss her. He’d had to clench his teeth, hard, because what he’d wanted more than his next breath was to open her mouth with his and plunge inside.

  Her mouth was made for kissing, soft and pink, a little honey trap he’d wanted to fall into so badly he’d ached. Only a lifetime of self-discipline had stopped him.

  They’d been in real danger out there, and not just from the truck. All her tires were basically shot and if another one blew, with no other spare, they’d have been done for. There was no way they could have lasted out the blizzard in the car. So he’d been a real good boy and held her for comfort, just long enough to let her regain control of herself.

  She’d trembled in his arms. His job had been to hold her until the worst of the trembling stopped, then get them both to a warm place as soon as possible.

  His imagination had run riot. In his head, he got rid of his jacket, sweater, jeans, shorts, boots. Her thick coat, sweater, bra, panties, stockings. In his head they were naked—not in a chilly car in the middle of a blizzard, but on a sunny deserted beach. A place where they had all the time in the world for him to explore her body, touch all that luscious rosy ivory skin. Run his mouth along that long, pale neck, down to the breasts he’d seen outlined by the sweater.

  The adrenaline of the close encounter with death had pooled in his cock, and he’d been as hard as a club. He’d wanted to mount her, enter her, fuck her, more than he wanted his next breath.

  It was an enticing thought, but dangerous as hell. They weren’t on a sunny beach, they were in real danger of freezing to death.

  So he’d dropped a kiss to the top of her head so light she couldn’t feel it, then let her go, to concentrate on getting them to Greenbriars safely.

  But now…now that he was in a warm, wet cabin that smelled of Caroline, his mind went wild. He imagined licking his tongue into that beautiful mouth, his nose up against her skin, the scent of roses filling his head. Biting her lips, urging her closer, closer still. Sliding his hand along that long, white neck.

  Jack looked down at himself and groaned at his enormous, painful boner, red and swollen, hard as a pike. Harder than in the car.

  He knew why he had a hard-on that wouldn’t quit.

  Part of it was that he hadn’t had sex in nearly six months. Afghanistan was as close to a no-sex zone as had ever existed on earth. After Afghanistan he’d spent the past month at his father’s bedside, then in Africa, cleaning up after Vince Deaver. True, six months was a long time for him to go without sex, but he’d done it before, on long missions.

  Part of it was the male reaction to surviving danger. Or his, anyway. It happened every time he survived a firefight. His cock went up in celebration of life and thanksgiving that he wasn’t six feet under. When he could, after combat, Jack went out hunting for a woman for relief, and when he couldn’t, his fist worked just fine.

  He and Caroline had been in as much danger as if they’d been on a mission in downtown Baghdad.

  He hadn’t said anything—Caroline had been massively freaked as it was—but they’d nearly died out there on the road. While fighting the wheel of her car, the part of his mind that was always calm and thinking ahead to the next step no matter what the emergency had appreciated the irony.

  Jack had survived the worst life could throw at him, time and again. He’d cheated death a thousand times while waiting for Caroline. Being crushed beneath the wheels of a truck half an hour after finding her again would definitely come under the category of “shit happens.”

  But these reasons weren’t really why he had such a boner.

  What had set him off was being in the same house as Caroline, having talked to her, touched her, held her in his arms—that’s what had his cock swollen and weeping. After so many years in which she’d haunted his dreams, he was finally with her, and it was scary as hell.

  Do. Not. Fuck. This. Up, he told himself.

  He couldn’t count the nights lying on a cold hard cot when her face swam before him. At first, he’d been ashamed to jerk off thinking of her, but it turned out that no matter how many women he had, she was the only one who could turn him on simply by thinking of her.

  Jack liked women. He liked the way they smelled, the softness of their skin, their voices. He liked sex, too. He was courteous to his sex partners, even if it was a one-night stand, which most of his encounters were. A little foreplay, in for a while, then out, then get up and go. Oh, he had stamina, that wasn’t the problem. The problem was he couldn’t remember much about the woman after walking out the door.

  He remembered everything about Caroline. Everything. How she looked with her hair in a ponytail, or loose around her shoulders. He remembered every item of clothing he’d ever seen her in and every expression she’d ever had. He remembered every single word she’d ever said to him. It was all seared into his mind, and it would probably take a shot to the head to get rid of it all.

  So naturally, when he reached for his cock to unload some stress, a generic woman with, say, one head, two tits, four limbs and a pussy simply wouldn’t do. Caroline floated into his head in those moments and he’d long ago given up the fight to keep her out.

  Now there was something more, something unexpected. Turned out the Caroline he’d mooned over for twelve years was long gone, vanished with the years. The beautiful girl had been replaced by an even more beautiful woman, mature and stunning, intelligent and classy, a woman who wore sadness like a shroud, utterly irresistible.

  The girl had been very pretty, like a million other upper-class girls, with a sunny smile showing off ten thousand dollars of orthodontics, wearing a thousand dollars’ worth of clothes. She bathed regularly and had someone to wash and iron her clothes for her. Lots of girls in those conditions look pretty.

  The woman she’d turned into, though, knocked the breath right out of him. She was like some sad princess longing for her lost kingdom.

  Jack remembered every second she’d been in his arms as he reached down for himself, gave one, long experimental stroke.

  The hard-on had to go, right now. There was no way he could go down to dinner in th
is condition, she’d kick him right out. Please God, he thought, let me get through the evening without embarrassing myself.

  To be really sure his dick would stay down, he should park himself in the shower under cold water and jerk off a couple of times, just to get rid of the fierce, itchy arousal he felt. His skin prickled with the desire to touch her again, only not for comfort this time and not dressed for cold weather with layers of clothes between his skin and hers.

  No, he wanted to touch her and see whether he could make that smooth ivory skin turn pink with desire. He wanted to watch it happen, watch the flush cover her breasts, while he kissed them. He wanted to touch her sex, feel himself making her wet, ready for him.

  Caroline was downstairs, right now. Waiting for him. She wasn’t a memory, a photograph, an image in his head. She was a flesh-and-blood woman, more beautiful even than in his dreams and she was downstairs cooking a meal for him.

  He’d see her every day, as much as he wanted. It was impossible to think that he wouldn’t get her in his bed. His cock swelled even more at the thought.

  His fist was working hard now, pumping, as the images of a naked Caroline spread out on a bed just for him filled his head. He wanted to know what sounds she made when she was turned on, feel her heels and nails digging into his back, feel her cunt pulling at him as he stroked inside her…

  It was all so much more intense now that he’d seen her again, felt her, smelled her. Now that he had so much more sensory input as he imagined fucking her, hard. For hours.

  If she were here right now, he’d take her in the shower, kissing her all over first in the steamy heat, making her ready. Entering her with his fingers first, oh so gently. He was big, and she had to be ready for him. He wanted her wet and soft and open for him. When his hand told him she was ready, he’d lift her, hold her legs apart, start pushing inside her…

  Sometimes it took Jack a long time to climax but he’d been semiaroused since he’d seen her, and when he imagined entering her, parting her tissues with his cock, he groaned.