“Reed.” Caroline slid a hand down his back. Her throat was so tight that it hurt to swallow. But she had to swallow before she could get another word out. “There wasn’t anything you could have done to save them.”
He slanted a look at her. There were lines bracketing his eyes and mouth that she had never seen there before, and his voice was harsh as he said, “It was my damned fault. If I hadn’t waited around to have it out with Susan, she would have taken Brandon in the house when she got there and they would have been fine.”
Her stomach twisted. Her eyes prickled with tears. She couldn’t bear that he was taking such guilt on his shoulders. The pain on its own was bad enough. “It was
not
your fault. You had no way of knowing that would happen. You would have done anything to have made it turn out differently.”
“You’re right, I would have. Anything. But that doesn’t make it any less my fault.” He took a deep breath, grimacing, and she could feel him working to ratchet his emotions back down again. She watched as he let go of the chair, slowly and deliberately, as if he had to consciously order his fingers to release their grip. “You know what I’ve never been able to get out of my head? The last
time my kid saw me I was pissed and buzzed.” His eyes were bleak. “I haven’t had a drink since that goddamned night, but that doesn’t change a thing.”
“You loved him,” she said, sliding her arms around his waist and laying her head on his chest, offering whatever slight solace might be found in a hug. Her eyes felt hot with unshed tears. “That’s what matters. You were doing your best for him. I’m sure he knew that. I’m sure he knows that.”
She looked up at him earnestly as she spoke, and he cupped her face in both hands. His fingers felt warm and strong against her skin. His face was all hard bone and angles with the intensity of emotion. The crow-black hair, the dark gleam of his eyes, the high cheekbones, the beautifully cut mouth, the lean jaw shadowed with stubble, were, she realized with dismay, all etched on her heart now. What pained him, pained her, too.
His thumb brushed her eyelashes. He looked down at the glistening drops it captured, and frowned.
“Damn it, Caroline. Are those tears for me?” His voice was husky.
Without waiting for her answer—not that there was any answer she meant to give besides her tears, which spoke for themselves—he bent his head and kissed her. Urgently, thoroughly, his lips hard, his tongue exploring her mouth, as if kissing her was the only hope of salvation he had. She closed her eyes and kissed him back just as intensely, welcoming the steamy heat they generated as an antidote to grief, embracing the blaze of passion that flared between them as a balm for pain. The inside of his mouth was hot and wet, and the slide of his tongue against hers made her shiver and cling. His hand found her breast, closing
over it, squeezing, caressing, and her heart pounded and her pulse raced and her back arched as she wordlessly offered herself to him.
“I want you. So damned much,” he murmured, feathering kisses across her cheek as she ran her hands up under his T-shirt to stroke over the sleek warm skin of his back. His body was taut with muscle and his arms were tight around her. She could feel the unmistakable evidence of how turned on he was pressing against her, and in response her body caught fire.
“I want you, too,” she whispered. At that he lifted his head to look down at her for the briefest moment, just long enough for her to see how heavy lidded and hot his eyes were. Then he was kissing her again, his mouth fierce and hungry. She could feel the urgency in him, feel his tension in the rigidity of the arms around her. When he pulled her shirt off over her head, she lifted her arms for him, then tugged his shirt up until he pulled that over his head, too. She had just a second to admire the breadth of his shoulders and his wide chest before he was tugging her skirt down her legs. As he crouched in front of her and she obediently stepped out of it at his command, he tossed it aside and then slid his hands up the backs of her legs to cup her bottom. She shivered as he pressed his mouth against the silkiness of her panties right at the apex of her legs. The moist heat of his mouth penetrating the flimsy barrier made her suck in air and clutch at his shoulders.
“Reed.” It was the merest breath of sound, uttered as he moved his mouth on her and licked against the silk and the hot dampness of it reached the quivering little nub that burned for his attention. Her heart lurched, her body clenched, and her
bones melted, but before she could collapse into a puddle at his feet he stood up, steadying her with his hands on her waist. She looked up to see that he was taking in her slender curves in the delicate black bra and panties. His eyes blazed as they ran over her body, making her mouth go dry and her insides go haywire.
“Caroline.” He bent his head to briefly kiss each nipple through the thin layer of cloth, drawing them into his mouth until she moaned and slid her fingers through the crisp strands of his hair and held him to her.
When he let her go and stepped away from her, she had to steady herself by grabbing hold of the chair. Passion throbbed between them. The sizzle of it was in the air.
“Get naked for me,” he said. His voice was thick and low. “I want to watch.”
The mere idea of it excited her. Her lips parted because that was the only way she could get enough oxygen. Fiery little pinwheels of desire shot through her bloodstream.
He stood there wearing nothing but his jeans, all broad-shouldered and muscular and hot. His eyes held a gleam she could only describe as carnal. His mouth had taken on a sensuous curve. Just looking at him made her toes curl. Her heart raced. Her body throbbed and burned. If he was using sex as a distraction and a solace, which she thought that he was, well, it worked for her, too. She was shivery with arousal, more turned on than she could ever remember being in her life. Burningly conscious of his eyes on her, she reached around behind her back to unclasp her bra. Holding it in place with one hand, she slid the straps down her arms before slowly, finally, allowing the flimsy garment to drop.
His eyes were narrow and glittering as they roamed over her breasts before rising to meet hers. At the look in them, her bones turned to water. The air between them sizzled and steamed.
“Now take your panties off,” he said.
She did that for him, too.
His eyes moved over her, not missing an inch, scorching her everywhere they touched.
“You are the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in my life,” he said, and reached for her. She went into his arms, burningly conscious of how erotic it felt to be naked against his bare chest and the abrasion of his jeans, and wrapped her arms around his neck.
Then they were kissing again, hot and deep, and he was picking her up and taking her to bed.
Stripping off his jeans, tumbling her down on the bed, he came into her hard, setting the pace, taking what he wanted with an urgent need that had her writhing and clinging to him and responding with a fiery passion that was explosive in its intensity. He demanded and she gave, letting him take her to places she had never been, losing every inhibition she had ever had. In the end, when pleasure broke over her, as she arched against him and cried out his name and he thrust inside her one last time, she was mindless at the wonder of it.
Then they did it again.
The sex was wild, the climax shattering.
Lying there in his arms in the aftermath, she knew that everything had changed.
She had fallen in love with him. Hopelessly. Irretrievably. Terrifyingly. Not a thing she could do.
He lay flat on his back with her next to him. His arm was
heavy and warm around her, and her head was pillowed on his chest. Her hand rested just above his heart. She could feel its steady beat beneath her palm.
For a moment she considered telling him.
Then she tilted her head and met his eyes.
They were absolutely unreadable.
She was just opening her mouth to say something, anything, except the one truly important thing that she was having instant doubts about revealing, when music began to play. Happy music. Young music. Bebopping.
For a moment the two of them lay there looking at each other in mystified silence as the opening bars of Miley Cyrus’ “We Can’t Stop” filled the air.
It hit Caroline first: “It’s Elizabeth’s cell phone. I left it on.”
Glad of an excuse to get out of bed and thus avoid any awkward postcoital chat until she had a chance to get her thoughts, and heart, in order, Caroline scrambled for the phone.
“Don’t answer it,” Reed said sharply, rolling out of bed behind her.
“I won’t.”
After everything she and Reed had done together, and not forgetting that at this point he had seen and more than seen every square inch of her, it was ridiculous to feel shy about being naked in front of him, she knew. But still, she did. She grabbed his T-shirt—hers was stained with coffee—and pulled it on as she went, which was why they reached the table, and the still-bleating phone, at almost the same time.
The name Julio Perez and a phone number blazed from the screen.
It meant nothing to her.
But apparently it did to Reed. He stared at it for a split second. Then, cursing, he snatched the phone up.
“I thought you said don’t answer it,” Caroline protested.
Hushing her with a shake of his head, Reed said a cautious, “Yes?” into the phone.
Then his brows snapped together in a ferocious frown.
“Hey, Dick—” Caroline could hear the urgent voice on the other end perfectly well. Her eyes widened as she recognized it. “I know where Ant is.”
“Where?” Reed’s voice was sharp.
“They got him at the Six Flags. In the theater. Where are you?”
“Never mind that. How do you know where Ant is?”
“I heard it on the street. I checked it out. He’s there for sure.”
“How the hell did you hear it on the street? In Mexico?”
“Umm . . .” There was a pause. Even Caroline, who was not that familiar with Holly, knew that his hesitation portended trouble. “Well—I’m not exactly
in
Mexico. I—uh—hitched a ride at a truck stop and came on home. Man, I couldn’t just leave Ant.”
“You’re in New Orleans? Right now? What, did you steal the damned trucker’s phone?”
“Yeah.” Holly sounded a little shamefaced. “To both.”
“Goddamn it, Holly, what the hell were you thinking?” Reed exploded. “Are you
trying
to get yourself killed?”
“I found Ant,” Holly said mulishly. “Are you going to come and help me get him out of there or not?”
“Fuck,” Reed said. “Where are you? Right this minute?”
“Outside the main gate.”
“Can anybody see you?”
“I’m smart enough to hide, so no.”
Reed briefly closed his eyes. “It’s going to take me about an hour to an hour and a half to get back into the city. Why don’t I meet you someplace like, say, the skate park?”
“I’m not leaving here. What if they try to take Ant somewhere?”
Caroline could see from Reed’s expression that he was mentally cursing a blue streak. But when he spoke to Holly his tone was abrupt, but calm. “Okay. I’ll meet you in front of the main gate in about an hour and a half. Agreed?”
“Yeah.”
“Holly—stay out of sight.” Reed’s voice was harsh with warning. “If they catch you, they’ll kill you. And Ant, too.”
CHAPTER
TWENTY-TWO
“G
ODDAMNED STUPID KID,
” Reed growled as Holly disconnected. His hand clenched around the phone.
“That was Holly.” Caroline’s tone didn’t make it a question.
“Yeah.”
The driving fear that filled Reed on Holly’s behalf took a backseat for a second as his eyes slid over Caroline. With her dark hair all tumbled, her thick-lashed eyes wide on his face, her mouth still rosy from his kisses, and her killer body barely covered by his T-shirt, she was so beautiful that she took his breath away. She’d torn the bandages off the raw wound that was his heart. Instead of leaving it battered and bleeding, though, it felt more whole than it had in years. Maybe, he reflected, the wound had needed air to finally start to heal.
Maybe it had needed Caroline to finally start to heal.
He didn’t have time to think about it.
“We’ve got to go,” he said, and walked over to her to slide a
hand behind her head and kiss her, a quick but thorough kiss that he couldn’t let turn into anything more because he didn’t have time for that, either. The kiss made him hot, which became pretty obvious pretty quick—because he was naked. As he let her go he saw her give him a once-over and watched her eyes widen as she registered that, which made him hotter still. “Damn Holly anyway. Kid never listened to anybody once in his life.”
“If whoever is holding his brother has him at Six Flags, then he’s not being held—at least not officially—by the NOPD, which means that the NOPD is not
officially
holding him to trade him for me. Could Holly be wrong?”
Six Flags New Orleans was the city’s iconic amusement park that had been laid waste by Katrina and subsequently abandoned. It hadn’t been operational since the hurricane despite numerous plans for its restoration, and lay dead in the Ninth Ward, fenced off and sealed against trespassers, like some giant urban wasteland.
“I don’t think so. Holly’s a pretty damned good detective. So far, he hasn’t been wrong about a thing.” He spoke over his shoulder as he headed for his clothes. “Cher, I’m pretty sure this stopped being about the official NOPD from the moment I got fired and walked out of headquarters. Whoever this is has enough clout to use the official NOPD as a weapon, but the real action is taking place behind the scenes.”
“My father.” Her tone held reluctant acceptance.
“I don’t know.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“Go get the little shit and see if I can pull Ant out of there.”
“I don’t think you should go,” Caroline said in a constricted
voice. A glance around at her as he picked up his shorts and jeans from beside the bed showed him that she was picking up clothes, too: that sexy underwear set that she had so memorably taken off for him, and her skirt. A fresh rush of heat coursing through his system made him grimace. He would have given a lot right at that moment to take her back to bed. She continued, “Like you said, if they get you and Holly and Ant, there’s nothing to stop them from killing you.”