She gave a doggy grin and wagged her tail, as if she knew how clever she was.
At bedtime, they all went upstairs together, which felt so weird Bo could barely say good night. If he’d gone upstairs ahead of her, or come along later, it would have been okay. The together thing was as if they were a family, which made prickles of alarm explode all over her body. They weren’t even friends. They were acquaintances who happened to be temporarily living together, emphasis on temporarily.
She firmly closed the bedroom door behind her and considered locking it, but she refused to be silly about the whole situation. He was now able to climb the stairs, so whether or not he slept on the sofa or upstairs in the guest room made no difference. If she’d thought he was a threat to her that way, she’d never have allowed him in the house to begin with.
She got ready for bed, petted Tricks and told her to go to bed, and turned out the lamp. She knew she was too edgy to go to sleep right away, but she could try.
Within a minute Tricks was whining, going from the bed to the door and back again.
“No. Don’t start this crap,” she muttered. “Tricks, go to bed!”
But Tricks had an eerie way of identifying the arguments she could win and the arguments she couldn’t because she persisted. Back and forth, from the bed to the door, back again to whine and poke Bo with her nose in case the whining hadn’t gotten the message across. She knew Morgan was upstairs, and that was something new and exciting. She wanted to go visit. If Tricks had done the same thing during the day, Bo would have been stern with her, but it was bedtime, she was tired and wanted to go to sleep, and the whining was annoying.
After five minutes of relentless whining and poking, she surrendered.
“All right!” she groused, throwing back the covers and getting out of bed. The room was dark, but there was still enough light coming through the windows, and from the electric clock, that she could see Tricks bouncing up and down with joy that her hardheaded human had finally understood what she wanted.
Bo didn’t turn on the lamp. Completely exasperated because she wanted to calm down and get some sleep, she threw open her bedroom door, stepped out onto the landing, and practically yelled, “Morgan!”
Almost before the first syllable was out of her mouth, there was a burst of movement onto the landing, along with the abrupt flaring of the overhead lights that almost blinded her because her vision had already adjusted to the darkness. She threw up her hand to shield her eyes, then squinted—and found herself staring straight at Morgan crouched in a firing stance. She was looking down the barrel of the big Glock, held in a two-fisted grip, and right above them a pair of piercing, ice-blue eyes boring a hole into her.
Her muscles locked; her blood ran cold. She’d always thought that was just an expression, but now she found that it wasn’t. She was staring death in the eye, and her body felt icy from the inside out, as if her blood had indeed frozen. Her heart was slamming against her rib cage so hard she could feel the fabric of her tank fluttering, and all she could do was stand there waiting to be shot.
Delighted, Tricks started for him and Bo almost died from terror, afraid that in his state of hyperalertness he’d shoot the first thing that moved, which was Tricks.
Instead he barked, “What’s wrong?” as he straightened and with a short, sharp motion of his wrists snapped the barrel upward and held it pointed toward the roof. Bo’s sense of relief was overwhelming, as debilitating in its way as her terror; her vision dimmed for a second, and she almost sagged to the ground before she caught herself.
Tricks was wagging her tail so hard her butt was twitching back and forth. She reached Morgan and licked his kneecap, then thrust her nose into his groin to make sure it was him. He grunted a little but didn’t move, his gaze moving swiftly from point to point, searching for the threat.
Bo tried to breathe, tried to suck in a much-needed deep breath. In a thin voice, which was all she could manage to squeeze from her constricted throat, she said, “Tricks.”
His face was still set in stern, hard lines as he looked down at the dog, who was looking up at him with bright eyes and an “Aren’t you glad to see me?” expression.
“What’s wrong with her?” he asked sharply.
Even his voice was different, deep and hard and clear. He’d lost the shallow weakness in his voice he’d had when he first came here, though so gradually she wasn’t certain when the quality of his voice had changed. He wasn’t full strength but he was still lethal, and for the first time she saw that in a way she hadn’t before, not even when he’d accidentally tried to choke her.
“Nothing,” she managed, her own voice shaking. She was shaking all over, head to foot, so acutely aware that she or Tricks, or both, could be lying in a pool of blood right now—and the whole situation was her fault. She knew what he was, yet she’d still jerked the door open and yelled his name, without considering what his trained reaction would be. You don’t poke a gator and expect it not to snap, but she’d done just that. “She . . .” Her voice trailed off as her terror faded enough that she could see him, all of him and not just the pistol and his eyes. She reeled under a second shock, completely different in nature from the first one but just as devastating.
He wore only a pair of boxer shorts.
She’d thought of him as thin, and he was—but only in comparison to the powerful musculature he’d sported before, going by how his clothes hung on him. His body as it was now looked like a swimmer’s body, still muscled, but sleek. Had he retained that much muscle, or had he truly been pushing himself so hard in these past two weeks that he’d already packed some back on?
She had been cold, but abruptly a wave of almost suffocating heat swept over her. She wanted to look away, she wanted to open her mouth and tell Tricks to stop nudging him in the balls, she wanted to say, “Sorry,” and go back into her bedroom. None of these were viable options, though, because she literally couldn’t move. She was as stunned as if she’d been slammed by some invisible force that had knocked her stupid.
She could see the lines of muscle clearly delineated in his arms, his long legs that still looked powerful. Holy crap, she could see something else clearly delineated in his boxers, and thank God it was sleeping. Swallowing hard, she jerked her gaze upward to the broad plates of his lightly haired chest muscles—and she stopped, staring at the obscenely long red scar that bisected his chest, and other lines that looked shattered and puckered, almost like a broken windshield. The scar—well, she’d seen surgical scars before, even those of heart surgery, and a scar was a scar. But what in hell were those dark lines radiating out from the scar?
She was still so stunned that she pointed at his chest and blurted, “What’s that?”
His dark brows drew together in a scowl. If she was still in shock, he was still in attack mode, without any outlet for the adrenaline pouring through his system. “Scars,” he said curtly. “You remember. Bullet. Surgery.”
She gave her head a little shake. “Not that. Those lines.” She moved closer, frowning at his bare chest in the brightness of the overhead light that he’d flipped on as he charged out of his room. “They look like . . . a spider web?”
He glanced down at his chest and grimaced. “Oh, that. That’s what’s left of my tattoo.”
A tattoo! She blinked. Okay, that made sense, even if the pattern didn’t. “Why a spider web?”
He scowled again. “It isn’t a spider web,” he growled. “It’s a bull’s-eye.”
A . . . bull’s-eye. She blinked, then blinked again. A freakin’ bull’s-eye?
She snapped from bewilderment to fury so fast she had no way to rein herself in, no way to retreat behind her walls. Her mouth fell open, she hung there motionless for a second, and then she blew. “You drew a damn target on your chest!” she shrieked. “You moron! Do you have a death wish? Did you think it was funny when some knuckle-dragger nearly killed you?”
He moved closer, his chin lowered, squaring up against her like a fi
ghter about to go a round or three. His gaze was locked on her face, fire simmering in his own eyes, but he gave a negligent shrug. “I thought: ‘Shit, this messed up my tattoo.’”
She felt as if her eyes might bug out, as if her hair were standing on end. The only other time in her life when she’d been this angry was when Kyle Gooding had punched her in the face and she felt the same, as if her skin couldn’t contain her body. In her outrage, she poked the gator again, literally, jabbing his left pec with her forefinger as she glared up at him. “Idiot!”
She saw a flash of his eyes, glittering like glacier ice, and then he kissed her.
She had no warning. He wasn’t kissing her, and then a split second later he was. His right arm was around her waist, holding her up on her toes against him, and she could feel the coolness of the weapon still in his hand as it pressed into her hip. His left hand cupped her jaw, holding her face tilted up while he lowered his head and slanted his mouth over hers.
Something cataclysmic happened inside her. It felt right, as if every other kiss she’d had in her entire life had been wrong. All of her senses, everything she knew or felt, was swamped by this. The taste of him filled her, the mint of the toothpaste he’d just used underlaid by something raw and hot and powerful, something that made her heart pound and her blood, which had been so cold, sear her veins as it raced through her body. There was the heat of his skin, most of it bare, against her and under her hands. The tank shirt she wore was a single, flimsy layer of cotton between them, inadequate for protection but suddenly feeling rough against her nipples, nipples that were no longer soft but tightly pinched and erect. And below . . . he was erect now, too, a straining hardness pushing against the softness between her legs. There was heat there, his as well as hers, blood pooling and throbbing and burning.
Distantly she was aware that this was just a kiss, one kiss, a kiss that hadn’t stopped yet, and she was ready to let him strip down her pants and get between her legs. Even worse, that was what she wanted, wanted as she had never wanted a man before. She wanted him there, inside her, riding her deep and hard.
She was a fool.
The thought was a slap in the face, a dash of cold water, just what she needed to will control back into her arms and legs, steel back into her spine. The first step was to turn her head, breaking contact with his mouth. One kiss, but if he kept on kissing her, she knew he’d have her on her back. She let her forehead rest on his shoulder and that was almost worse, because she could smell the heat of his skin and feel the tug of instinct that urged her to burrow deeper against him, so she could absorb more of that heat and man-scent.
The second step was to stop digging her fingers into the muscled pad of his shoulder, to place her palm flat against his chest and push. Her fingertips flexed on his skin, just for an instant, then she concentrated her strength and put pressure in her touch. She couldn’t push him away, he was too strong for that, but the pressure let him know to stop.
Slowly his arm released its hold and he let her drop from her toes, her body moving down his, the hard ridge of his erection momentarily dragging through the soft folds between her legs and sending little fiery arcs of sensation through her clitoris. She caught her breath, bit back a helpless moan even as her hand pushed more insistently against him. Oh my God, she wanted to surge against him and whisper, “Do that again,” because she felt so close that if he did it again, she would come.
One kiss. One kiss, and everything else.
Then she was free, stepping back, and hallelujah, her trembling knees came through like champs and didn’t fold.
He said nothing, his eyes narrowed, his gaze locked on her. His chest was rising and falling as if he’d been running, and she was savagely gratified that she wasn’t the only one wrestling with the effects of that kiss. She refused to let herself look any lower than his face, she didn’t want to see how far his boxer shorts were poking out or if they had failed to contain him. What if they had? Would she be able to resist curling her fingers around his penis, stroking it, bringing him to his knees the way he’d almost brought her?
“No,” she said, her voice hoarse but firm. “We aren’t doing this. Sex is not on the table, not part of the deal.” She would keep saying that until she convinced herself as well as him.
He cocked his head a little. “Not part of the deal,” he agreed, “but we’ll be doing it. Count on it.”
Panic raced through her because she was afraid he was right. And if he was, it would be because of her weakness. She couldn’t let herself be weak, she had to remember that he was leaving and keep her guard up. She’d learned too many times not to depend on anyone else to forget those hard lessons now. She turned away, needing the sanctuary and privacy of her bedroom, where she could close the door and be alone. “Don’t touch me again,” she ground out. “Good night.”
“Wait.”
She didn’t want to stop, she wanted to get to her bedroom, but her feet halted and she stood with her back to him, waited to hear what he said.
“Why did you call me?”
Call him? She couldn’t think; her mind was a big blank mess. Why had she called him, what had started this fiasco? She turned back to face him, confusion written on her face, and she saw Tricks sitting patiently, waiting for the humans to stop acting silly.
Thoughts began forming, memory returning but moving as slowly as molasses. She said, “Tricks.”
He glanced at the dog. “What about her?”
“She was driving me crazy. She knew you were up here, in a different place, and she wanted to come visit.”
He scrubbed a hand over his rough jaw, the rasping sound arrowing through her. She thought of that beard scraping across her breasts, between her thighs. No, no, no! She wasn’t going to go there . . . she already had.
He sighed and said, “That was it? That had you yelling as if the house was under attack?”
“No, that had me yelling as if I was exasperated and wanted to get to sleep but she wouldn’t let me,” she said shortly. “Not every yell means we’re being attacked.”
“In my world it does.”
The truth of that silenced her. The scar on his chest was proof that he lived in a very different world from hers.
She acknowledged that with a nod, briefly closed her eyes. “Anyway . . . that was it. Just leave your door open, if you don’t mind, and I’ll leave mine open. She’ll probably go back and forth between us until she decides to pick her place and settle down. She might get on the bed with you, so if you don’t want her in there just say so and I’ll keep her with me no matter how much she acts up.”
“No, that’s okay, I don’t mind.” He gave her a smile that was like a wolf flashing its fangs, with a total lack of humor. “But just for the record—she’s not the one I’d choose.”
CHAPTER 14
BO LAY IN BED, CURLED PROTECTIVELY ON HER SIDE like a shrimp, so tense every muscle in her body was aching. She’d been rash, she’d been stupid, and the whole incident was her fault. She knew to keep her distance from him, to not let him see in any way how attracted she was to him. The kiss wasn’t even the worst part. Yes, she’d kissed him back, as hungrily as he’d been kissing her; while that had been a huge mistake, it was one she could handle. The worst part was getting angry at him because he’d had a target tattooed on his chest.
Even a fairly thickheaded man would figure out a woman would get so angry at a tattoo—one that was like daring someone to shoot him—only if she cared—and Morgan wasn’t thickheaded. She was beginning to fully appreciate how intelligent and cunning he was to have muted his personality to the extent he had so she wouldn’t be uncomfortable with him. She’d seen flashes of the unmuted Morgan before, but tonight more of the power of his personality had come through loud and clear.
She wanted to sleep, needed to sleep. But her senses were too on edge, her mind racing as she zigzagged between remembering everything that had happened, how it had felt when he’d touched her, how he’d tasted—and then
all the reasons why she should never let it happen again. Tricks, of course, went back and forth between the two bedrooms, jumping up on the bed to nuzzle Bo, then after a few minutes jumping down and trotting to the other bedroom to presumably treat Morgan to the same “I’m happy so no one is going to sleep” routine. Occasionally she’d hear the deep murmur of his voice as he tried to get Tricks to settle down in one room or the other, but good luck with that. Or maybe he was telling Tricks “Good girl” because she’d almost gotten him laid, Bo thought resentfully.
Finally, on about the fifth or sixth return, Tricks licked Bo on the arm and then curled up on her bed on the floor. “Please just go to sleep,” Bo muttered, though why it mattered she couldn’t say. She wouldn’t have been able to sleep even if Tricks hadn’t been partying.
For whatever reason, having Tricks back in her room and no longer trotting back and forth allowed Bo to relax. She couldn’t change what had happened; she simply had to make certain it didn’t happen again. Once she got that thought firmly fixed in her mind, she dozed off.
Tricks woke her up at the normal time by laying her muzzle on the pillow and staring at her. The message was plain: it’s morning, and you haven’t fed me yet.
She gave Tricks a hug, then lay there for a moment longer. The morning brought a return of mortification. She didn’t want to get up and face the day, she didn’t want to face him. She wanted the whole situation to just go away, which was such a juvenile thought that she mentally slapped herself, got out of bed, and got on with her normal routine.
She hadn’t heard him walk by her open door, but he was downstairs, and just coming in from outside as she went down the stairs. He was dressed in one of his regular tee shirts, this one dark green, and khaki cargo pants. He had a cup of coffee in his hand, which meant she’d been so sound asleep that she hadn’t heard the coffeemaker. Evidently Tricks had also been tired enough after her back-and-forth exertions of the night before that she hadn’t alerted Bo to Morgan’s activity.