Between Darkness and Daylight (39 page)

Between Darkness and Daylight

271

Zane didn't know if the kid's non-appearance was a good or bad thing, was only relieved he wouldn't yet have to deal with the condemnation and doubt in his young nephew's eyes.

He didn't know how he'd have felt if someone had discovered his father murdered on the grounds where he had attended school, couldn't imagine what the kid was going through and didn't know what to say to mitigate the trauma.

"C'mere," Nova murmured, catching him by the tie. She loosened the Windsor knot and pulled him close for a soul-searing kiss.

His tongue mated with hers as he devoured her mouth. Reveling in her taste, he pulled her tight against his chest until they were both gasping for breath. He slid his hands to her front and splayed his fingers over her breasts, brushing her nipples with his thumbs, feeling them harden against the soft silk of her shirt as he bent his head to taste her throat. Her belly pressed and rubbed his hot, hard erection as if to relieve the pain of her arousal.

"I've missed you so much, Zane," she said between kisses.

He swallowed hard, staring at her as he lifted her into his arms in answer and carried her to his bedroom.

* * * *

If their last time in the shower had been gentle and slow, this time was just a little less so for Nova.

Zane didn't waste time with niceties, just pulled his shirt and undershirt over his head in one motion while Nova helped him out of his pants. He kicked off his shoes and stripped out of his socks and pants without his lips once leaving hers. Naked, he pushed her onto the bed, straddling her fully clothed body, and leaned in for another kiss. He touched his lips to hers, teasing her mouth, licking and nibbling the full sensuous lower lip, deepening the kiss to taste her totally.

She opened her mouth to better accommodate his tongue and trembled when his fingers slid under her top to expertly work free her bra. As he'd done with his own clothes, he pulled her blouse over her head, then slid her skirt, stockings and thong down her thighs and calves in one fell swoop, leaving the garments around her ankles, imprisoning her legs.

272

Gracie C. McKeever

Nova's stomach tightened as he settled his cock, hard and pulsating, between her thighs. She touched him, hesitant at first, then boldly as his flesh responded and leaped towards her fingers. She wrapped both hands around the thick length of him, enjoying the satiny softness of his skin over the bone-hardness of his erection.

He trembled as she gently squeezed him, groaned when she thumbed pre-ejaculate from his head and brought it to her lips to sample.

Zane bent his head and took one turgid nipple into his mouth, firmly sucked and thoroughly laved it before moving onto the next one.

Her hands were all over his body, exploring every smooth texture, each hard, masculine sinew, and she squirmed beneath him as he moved down her body and left a sweet-moist trail from her collarbone to her navel before pausing at the dark juncture between her thighs.

He slid in a finger first and was instantly drenched by her wetness. She was getting wetter by the second as he thumbed her engorged clit, and she writhed against his hand. He bowed his head, replaced his finger with his mouth, tracing her labia before thrusting his tongue—deeply, slowly.

Nova almost leaped off the bed, biting her bottom lip to keep from screaming as she buried her hands in his hair and pulled him against her throbbing core, praying he would ease the ache, fill the emptiness.

Everything about him heated her insides, his tangy aftershave intoxicating her, the bright blue colors of his aura blinding her senses.

Everything he did intensified her want—his breath tickling her, his tongue tormenting her, his lean arms freeing her legs from her clothes and flinging them over his shoulders to give him better access to her cunt.

She thought that if he were to stop what he was doing with his mouth, hands, and tongue, even for a second, she would surely die.

Nova remembered the words he'd said to her the first time they'd made love—
Take the pain away… Please just take the pain away—
and knew what he'd meant, how desperate he must have been.

Pain. Sweet, delirious pain that had her mouth watering for his clean male scent, had her center craving his hard body, needing as much of him embedded inside her as she could endure.

"Zane, please…I want you inside me. I
need
you inside me!" she whispered.

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He didn’t waste time giving her the condom to put on him, but tore into it and sheathed his cock himself with a quick practiced stroke.

When he returned to her, sliding swiftly up between her legs, Nova had only a second to gasp before he submerged himself between her warm folds and pushed deep, deeper still, until it felt like he was touching her internal organs, until she didn't know where his body began and hers ended.

She arched towards him, ground her pelvis against his and matched his slow rhythm, picking up speed when he did, slowing when he slowed, until she felt the ripples riding the length of her spine up to her brain.

Sliding her arms around his lean-muscled back and skimming her hand upward, over the light sheen of perspiration, Nova cradled his skull. She closed her eyes and pressed her lips to his, wanting to feel her own thoughts echoing back at her from him, vaguely disappointed when only the words
desire-need-want
flashed off and on in her mind, again and again, like a beacon. The most important four-letter word of all remained unseen, unheard, lost in the passion and heat of their bodies, the animal moment fueling oblivion.

Thrusting back the disappointment, she trembled once more as his fingers traced the outside of her breasts, his thumbs lightly caressing her rib cage until he circled her slim waist with both hands and drew her up flush against him. She wrapped her legs around his hips, trapping him to her as he thrust one final time, driving them both over the edge to a mind-numbing climax.

Zane slowly lowered his body, panting as he rested his weight on his forearms and cradled her face between his hands, thumbing beads of moisture from her cheeks. He leaned his face towards hers and rubbed his cheek against her hair, and she felt a shudder pass through him as she brushed her lips across his ear.

He raised his head, staring down at her for a long silent moment. Then he pushed long black tendrils out of her face, fanning her hair across the pillow beneath her head before finally saying, "I've missed you too, Nova."

* * * *

274

Gracie C. McKeever

"That was incredibly reckless of us."

Zane leaned up on an elbow to grin down at her. "You mean Ransom—"

"Is in the next room."

"Not next. He's a little further away than that. There's at least a couple of doors between us and him. Besides, I don't think he could hear anything over all that music.”

Nova didn't think so either and was glad they'd had the pounding accompaniment; it had lent a certain urgent energy to their coupling, not that they'd been wanting in that area.

"Too late to change it now."

"Have you always been so fatalistic?"

"Far as I can remember. More so since I met you."

Nova didn't want to touch that with a ten-foot pole. She’d had enough of a problem keeping what she'd seen and felt at the school to herself, what she'd been feeling and seeing since Thanksgiving.

She wanted him to know what she knew, see what she saw, but

wouldn't wish the attendant sensations of helplessness, fear, and rage on her worst enemy, much less this man she'd fallen for and was bent on protecting.

"Now what would really be reckless would be you and me going down the hall to the kitchen,
au naturel
, for a bite to eat."

"I am kind of hungry."

"You should be, tigress." He leaned in for a light kiss that instantly turned into a hungry exploration of her mouth when she wrapped her arms around his back and drew him close.

She pulled away after several moments, breathless as she stared up at him, surprised when she felt him hard and ready again between her thighs.

The intense look in his eyes confirmed his eagerness. "You're incorrigible." Nova laughed and pushed at his arms.

Zane released her, collapsing onto his back as she got out of bed and pulled his discarded shirt on over her head.

"Wow, that's a beaut. How'd I miss that before?"

She followed his gaze to the scar on the outside of her right leg—from ankle to knee, almost seamless, if you weren't looking directly at it under a light. The surgeons had done an excellent job of putting her body back
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together. It was her mind that had gotten lost in the shuffle. "Oh that. I, uh…got that mountain climbing."

He gave her an inquiring look.

"Okay, more like mountain falling." She came back to the bed and sat down beside him, raking a hand through his hair to his nape and playing with the curls on the back of his neck.

"You had an accident climbing?"

Nova shrugged. She'd have to fess up, but decided to be as vague as possible. He didn't need to know all the gory details, especially about her fiancé—old news, ancient history. She knew she had to tell him sometime, and promised herself she would soon, if she escaped this moment unscathed. But now wasn't the time. "I almost died."

"Is that when the…your visions started?"

She nodded, knowing instantly where his mind was going. "Please don't be angry at me for not telling you before. I really wanted to take Ransom climbing and I knew he would enjoy himself. I didn't want anything to ruin that."

"That's not what I was thinking."

She smirked and he shook his head, chuckling as if caught in the act.

"Okay, so I thought it. But I'm not angry."

"Forgive me?"

"There's nothing to forgive." He reached for her lips as she bent her head.

Nova closed her eyes as their lips touched. She could still taste herself on his mouth, warm and slightly salty. When his fingers brushed her thigh, tracing the line as far as her calf, a flash rocked her.

She instantly jerked away from him in an effort to relieve the shock, to stop the vision. No such luck, so she went with it, staring down at him but not seeing him—at least, not the him in bed with her now. She saw him in a living room where she'd never been, with people she didn't know. The woman and her two children were there—teary-eyed and frightened while the man hovered somewhere nearby, his essence dark and agitated. They were all framed in such dark shadows she could barely make them out, but could only feel them, could only distinguish each person by their aura, not by any facial features.

276

Gracie C. McKeever

She was there too, physically, her body across the room from the other woman. She knew that she would be in this place—in this room and house, with these people—in the near future; knew that they all would be experiencing some threat.

It was all something that was going to happen, something she couldn't stop.

But could she change
how
it happened, make it unfold differently?

"Nova?"

Her hands were tied—literally—pulled tight behind her back. Had the man tied her? Had he tied the woman and children?

"Nova!"
Zane shook her once, his fingers gentle but firm around her biceps as he stared at her. His aura registered concern, but no real fear.

Not yet.

She opened her eyes, relief washing over her when she realized she wasn't in that dark and cold place with the woman and children, but still in the bedroom with Zane. "I'm okay."

"You had one just now, didn't you? A vision?"

"I have them all the time, Zane." She freed an arm to squeeze his shoulder. She didn't want to tell him she'd been having them more frequently since she'd met him, that the intensity was more powerful with each episode. "I told you. They're a part of me, old hat."

"It takes some getting used to."

"But you will?" She hated that she'd phrased it like a question, hated feeling like she was begging, but his response encouraged her, made it almost worthwhile.

"I guess if I'm going to be with you, I'll have to, won't I?"

Nova saw the smile in his eyes, his seriousness and determination mingling, and averted her face so that he couldn't see the moistness in her eyes. She refused to bawl in front of him, so she stood and headed for the bedroom door, then paused on the threshold and glanced at him over a shoulder. "Extravagant or simple?"

Zane gave her a blank look.

"A meal. I could throw some cheese and crackers on a plate with fruit, or fix us up a couple of omelets for starters."

He got out of bed and pulled on a pair of threadbare jeans from his closet. "I'll help you make some omelets. We need the protein."

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* * * *

He couldn't honestly say that he mourned the man's passing.

Trevor Cross hadn't been back in his life for very long, had never been in his life long enough to make anything but a bad impression, and Ransom couldn’t say that he missed him. It scared him, however, to think that his uncle might have been the one responsible for his father's death, to think the man he idolized and loved capable of murder.

He knew the police considered Uncle Zane a suspect. Oh, they said it was routine questioning, and they had questioned most in the immediate vicinity at the school, especially the girls who'd found the body when they cut class to sneak outside and smoke cigarettes.

But none of that meant anything to Ran when he remembered Uncle Zane dragging his father by the collar from behind the desk. He'd seen the rage in his uncle's eyes, raw and near the surface, so out of line with his usual calm and cool demeanor.

The most positive thing to come out of the day—if there could be anything positive about losing one's father to murder—was Nova's reappearance. He'd been questioning his uncle about her whereabouts ever since they returned from Gram Addie's, badgering him about going to Nova's for a visit, insisting he hadn't finished working off his debt.