“So you had to be the good girl.”
“I wouldn’t say that.” Clothes rustled behind him.
“Really? You sure spend a lot of time taking care of your sister now.”
“But—”
“And what about your mom after she divorced? You said you were angry, but it sounds like you didn’t act out. What did you do, repress all your anger?”
“Now, wait—”
“Or did Nikki end up being the surrogate for the anger you felt?”
“What are you, a shrink?” The words sounded like a joke, but her voice was stiff.
Way to turn off the lady, Torelli.
Pete sat suddenly, her diapered bottom thumping against the floor. She abandoned her spoon and scurried on all fours toward Zoey.
“Hey.” Dante instinctively followed her with his eyes, only remembering just in time not to look behind him.
“What’re you doing, you little imp?” he heard Zoey ask. He could almost make out her shape on the edge of his vision. He swallowed.
“No, that’s my water.” A splash. “Can you hold her?”
“Uh . . .”
“It’s okay, you can look.”
He looked.
Actually it was both okay and not okay. On her lower half, Zoey wore panties. On her upper half she wore the wiggling baby. Between her and the baby was a T-shirt, but as far as Dante could tell, Zoey wasn’t wearing it. The thin cloth was held in place by Pete’s little body. With every squirm, the baby threatened to dislodge the T-shirt.
Squirm, baby, squirm!
Oh, he was going to hell for his thoughts.
“Uh, let me take her.” Dante reached for Pete, but she evidently didn’t want to move. She started kicking, nearly propelled herself from Zoey’s arms. When Dante did get a grip on her, the back of his fingers were pressed against soft feminine flesh.
“Thanks.”
Zoey wasn’t looking at him. She had the T-shirt pressed against her chest like one of the more modest goddesses in a Renaissance painting. He could see the side of her breast, the part that curved just under her arm, and the sight made him aware that he was fully—painfully—hard.
Dante blew out a breath. “No problem.”
He took the child and stood. When Pete started to whine he swung her in a wide circle that took them both across the room. The baby squealed with joy. Dante felt the pull of his injured leg, but he ignored it.
“Like that, do you?” he muttered to the little girl. He swung her up again. Anything to get his mind off the half-naked woman across the room.
“Don’t let her get cold,” Zoey warned.
“I won’t.” Dante still wore his black leather trench coat. He tucked the baby into it now and tied the front so that her head stuck out the top like a little papoose. He walked to the window with her.
It was dark outside already.
“Too bad we can’t see the stars,” he whispered to the small face.
The wind moaned outside as it battered snow against the window. A crust was frozen to the glass in an arc at the bottom. Trees seemed to be blowing across the field that surrounded the house, but it was hard to tell in the blackness.
“It’s cold and stormy outside, but we’re safe and warm in here,” he murmured to Pete.
The baby sighed and laid her head against his chest. Dante paced slowly in front of the windows, careful to always keep his back to the fireplace and Zoey. He should’ve been bone tired, but every cell of his body was on the alert, attuned to the woman across the room.
“How is she?” Zoey asked quietly.
He turned.
She half lounged on one hip in front of the fireplace in an unconsciously classical pose, holding out long strands of hair to the warmth of the fire. Her hair was drying in red-blond corkscrew curls. Titian. That was what the color of her hair was called. After the Renaissance painter.
It was an old-fashioned color, not much favored by twenty-first-century style. When women deliberately chose a color for their hair nowadays, they went for white blond or deep red or stark black. Not soft, glowing orange, a color that picked up the firelight and seemed to throw it back. And of course her skin was that translucent white that only seemed to exist in paintings anymore. She wasn’t even wearing the sweatshirt he’d found for her; instead she had a towel wrapped around her upper half, her white shoulders gleaming in the firelight. She was a siren sent from some distant past to tempt a mostly modern man. If she—
“Dante?”
He tore his gaze from her and glanced down at the baby. She was drooling on his shirt. “She’s asleep.”
“Oh, I’m—”
“It’s too cold in the rest of the house still.” He strode to the fireplace and gently laid Pete on the couch. He took off his trench coat and dropped it on the couch beside the baby to keep her from rolling off. “I’m going to get some pillows and blankets and bring them down here.”
“Well, that’s—”
He turned his back and fled into the cold upper story of the house. But even as he did so, he knew.
He was going to have to return and face Zoey.
Saturday, 6:54 p.m.
Z
oey sighed and turned to the fireplace. Dante had seemed okay earlier in the evening, but now he was being curt with her. Maybe it was just fatigue. Maybe she was just imagining the whole thing, but she didn’t think so.
Pete made a sound and turned on the couch cushions, and Zoey leaned over to check on her. She didn’t want the baby to roll off the couch. When Dante returned, maybe they could make a bed for Pete on the floor and—
“Why haven’t you put on that sweatshirt?” Dante’s harsh tones made her start.
Zoey looked up. He was standing over her like a censoring father, his arms full of bedding.
The image had all sorts of bad connotations for her, but she cleared her throat before she spoke to keep her voice calm. “I didn’t want to get the shirt wet while my hair dried.”
He tossed the bedding on the floor, nearly hitting her feet. “It’s dry enough now, isn’t it?”
“Almost, it should—”
“Then put on a shirt, for chrissake.” He stalked off without waiting for an answer.
Zoey jumped to her feet and viciously jerked some pillows and a blanket into a little bed for Pete on the floor.
When Dante stomped back into the room, she was pulling blankets into a bed for herself on the floor several feet from Pete. Except Dante didn’t really stomp—he made no noise when he walked—but the emotion behind his walk sure was a stomp.
“What are you doing?” he demanded.
He dumped his new load of bedding right on top of the pallet she’d been making.
Zoey straightened slowly. “I was making a bed for myself.”
“We’re sleeping together,” he said flatly.
“What?”
“You heard me.” He thrust aside the pile of bedding, including her little pallet and unzipped a sleeping bag. “I’m not letting you out of my sight again. You took off last time I did that. We’re sleeping together.”
“First of all, I am not sleeping with you—”
“You never struck me as a prude,” he shot back.
He shrugged out of his gun holster and placed it on the fireplace mantel. Then he squatted to spread the open sleeping bag on the big rug in front of the fire.
“And secondly, you don’t have the right to talk to me like that!”
It was his turn to straighten slowly, and when Zoey saw his face she almost took a step back.
“I don’t have the
right?
” he asked softly.
“No.” She stood her ground, feeling her own anger begin to crest her levee. “I’m not some stupid piece of ass you’ve picked up for the night. I’m—”
“You’re the woman who’s been using me for the last three days.”
“I didn’t use—”
He stepped into her personal space, so close his chest nearly brushed the towel covering her breasts. “You lied to me. Abandoned me in that rest stop—”
“I was trying to protect my niece!”
“And took off without a backward glance,” he ground out.
In any other circumstances, his nearness to her would mean that he was going to kiss her, but Zoey wasn’t about to mistake the anger in his face for lust. She felt a twinge of guilt. She had lied to him. She had used him. But there had been extenuating circumstances.
“Listen,” she tried in a lower tone. “I’m sorry I hurt your feelings, but my loyalty to my sister, to Pete, superseded anything I owed to a guy I hardly knew.”
“Hardly knew?” His head reared back.
Zoey winced. Poor choice of words. “I thought we were over all this. You seemed to understand my reasons just this afternoon.”
“Yeah, but then apparently I’m nearly a stranger to you.”
Zoey inhaled slowly. Someone had to keep their temper in this discussion. “I didn’t know you when I got into your car. That’s what I meant. Now—”
“Now you think you know me?”
“I-I don’t . . .” She took a breath. “Yes. Yes, I know you.”
He actually laughed, and it sure wasn’t a sweet little chuckle. This was more in the line of an evil cackle. “You don’t know me at all.”
“I—”
He ripped his sweatshirt off over his head.
For a moment Zoey was stunned by his bare chest. He was muscled, his skin smooth and dark, with only a thin patch of black, curling hair between his pectorals. She was nearly overcome by an urge to lean forward and lick a dark, tight nipple. Her eyes snapped up, shocked.
Just in time to see him shove his face into hers. “You lie to me, you don’t trust me, and now you’re parading around in a towel like I’m some sort of neutered—”
“I told you, I didn’t want to get my shirt wet. And it’s not as if I’m acting like a slut—”
“No, you’re acting like a woman who wants to be fucked.”
“Oh!” She narrowed her eyes to slits. “That is so typical of a guy—”
He snorted.
“Like I’d be coming on to you in the middle of a goddamned blizzard!”
“If you’re not coming on to me in a goddamned blizzard, then why’re you prancing around half-naked?”
“I’m not prancing around,” she ground out, “and I’m not half-naked, and for future reference, if I were going to come on to you, I’d be a whole lot more obvious.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah!”
“And what’s more obvious than this?” He hooked his finger in the top of her towel and flicked it contemptuously.
“This!” And she flung the towel to the floor.
His eyes dropped to her naked breasts.
Her nipples tightened in the cold air.
Wait.
Okay, maybe her last action was just a little hasty. Zoey started to raise her arms to cover herself, but he caught her wrists.
“Don’t.”
Suddenly the cabin was very, very quiet. She could hear the fire snap, she could hear the wind blowing outside, she could hear Pete’s gentle breathing.
And none of it mattered.
At the moment the only thing that mattered in the entire world was Dante’s dark eyes, drinking in the sight of her naked breasts.
“Dante,” she whispered.
He didn’t look up. “You have the most beautiful skin I’ve ever seen. It’s almost incandescent.”
“I don’t—”
His eyes flicked to hers, and she saw that his expression hadn’t softened. If anything it had become harder, more intent. He looked like a predator sighting prey.
“Hush,” he said low. “You set the rules, you made the move. You can’t back away now.”
She hadn’t known she was making rules, at least not consciously. How had she gotten here? She wasn’t sure she was ready for this. If they could just slow down . . .
She opened her mouth to say just that, but he murmured, “Hush,” again.
And then he lowered his head to her breast.
She gasped. He tongued her nipple before he sucked it into his mouth, shockingly hot after the chill of the cabin air. Oh, God. Maybe she should just stop thinking altogether. He sucked strongly on her nipple, and if he hadn’t been holding her by her wrists still, she might’ve staggered. The shock streaked right down her belly, almost painful in its intensity, to land at her most vulnerable point. She contracted internally, nearly groaning.
And then he licked across her chest to her other breast and she did groan aloud. His tongue was so hot, his fingers so hard. He took that nipple into his mouth and sucked again, and she felt herself melt at her center.
He pulled away to stare at her and she looked down. Her nipples stood out, red and shining with his saliva, and the sight was incredibly sexy.
Incredibly erotic.
Dante obviously thought so, too. “You’re beautiful,” he said, and his voice was a deep growl, so removed from his usually cultured tones that it was shocking. “Lie down on the sleeping bag.”
She blinked and sat, feeling dazed. This was surreal—it couldn’t be happening.
He stood over her and toed off his shoes, stripped off his socks, and hooked his thumbs into the sweatpants he wore to skim them down over his hips. He straightened and looked at her. He hadn’t worn the tighty-whities she’d gotten him at the Kmart so long ago, it seemed. He was naked under the sweatpants, and his cock was red and erect and obviously meant for her. She stared, taking in the elegant, narrow line of hair that arrowed down from his navel, his black, curling pubic hair, and his penis, long and hard, glistening just a bit at the blunt head. She swallowed and didn’t know if she was breathing anymore.
“Take off the long johns.”
He waited, poised, until she obeyed, then he bent and reached for the pocket of his trench coat.
Zoey watched, terribly conscious that she lay before him naked. Her skin felt oversensitive, like she was newborn, without defenses or shell. He ripped open the condom packet he’d taken from his pocket and unrolled it over his penis. She felt her eyelids drift lower as she watched him handle himself, felt the moisture between her legs. She shifted, deliberately opening her thighs, posing for him.
He looked up and said almost casually, “I may not be able to last long the first time. But I’ll make sure you come.”
She swallowed. She’d never heard a man so self-assured, so certain that he could give her an orgasm. In any other circumstances she might laugh at his arrogance, but right now . . . Right now she believed him.
He knelt between her legs and looked at her without touching. His gaze moved from her knees, up over thighs, to her center. She knew she was wet with moisture for him. His gaze lingered there and his nostrils flared before he continued up over her belly to her breasts and then her face.