In the Arms of the Wind (6 page)

That was where it had begun and now—like an addictive drug—she could not do without his hard embrace, his strong body, his knowing hands and thrusting fingers. She had been ensnared by the sensuousness of his nature while ignoring the danger he posed.

He was a Ridge Lord, a Prince of the House of Adair, a sorcerer-swordsman of infamous reputation, a man to be feared. He was a man whose lethal nature was known far and wide.

She should have known better—did—but paid no heed to the warnings going off inside her fevered mind.

“Shall I stop?” he asked.

“No, please don’t,” she pleaded with him. “I’ll…I’ll be good.”

“You don’t know how to be good, Kaycee,” he said in a gruff voice. “You’re better when you’re bad.”

She ached to thread her fingers through his lush black curls. His hair looked so soft, so sleek, and its thickness curled so sweetly at the nape of his neck. She wanted to trace the upward peak of his dark eyebrows and fan her fingertips over the long lashes that swept over the dark gold of his eyes. How she wanted to run her hands over the ridged muscles of his flat belly and the swollen expanse of his pectorals and the bulge of his biceps, but he would not allow it. He could touch her all he liked, but she had been expressly forbidden to lay one hand to him.

“Tell me what you want,” he said, his lips between her breasts.

“You,” she said.

“And where is it you want me, Kaycee Connor?” he whispered, flicking his tongue to the hollow at the base of her throat.

“Inside me,” she replied. “I want you inside me, milord.”

He laughed, but it was not a sound of mirth that escaped his finely chiseled lips. It was a sound that made the hair stir on her arms.

“That’s all you ever want,” he said as he slipped his hand beneath the waistband of her underwear.

With a suddenness that made her cry out, he thrust his finger into her moist heat—going deep, twisting, eliciting from her a gasp of delight as he probed deep within her sheath.

“This is it, isn’t it, Kaycee?” he asked and slid another finger inside her. “This is worth losing your soul over, isn’t it?”

“Aye!” she groaned, her hair matting beneath the tossing of her head on the stained pillow.

“Aye,” he echoed. “This is all that matters.”

“I need you,” she said. “I need…”

“Hush!” he ordered, and his touch was less gentle.

He began moving his fingers in and out of her, pivoting them on entry, rotating them on exit. The speed of his thrusts increased along with a third firm finger then a fourth as his thumb stroked her clit with each circuit of his hard, calloused fingers inside her.

Kaycee moaned, her neck arched, head pressed into the pillow. She had lowered her hands and her fingers were plucking at the mattress as he pushed as far inside her as he could, and the rough cotton of his shirt scraped across her exposed belly.

He never undressed her when he took her. He preferred her bosom exposed like a harlot’s on a backstreet and her bloomers still upon her hips with his hand inside them. Not once had he taken her in any other way, and when he allowed her to pleasure him—which was rare—it was with the opening of his fly and the drawing out of his cock, her mouth upon his stone-hard flesh, her hands to herself as he held his cock still for her tasting.

“Come, little whore,” he whispered in her ear, his voice a sultry blend of heat and fury that never failed to send chills over her body. “Come for me.”

He milked the release from her with his fingers slamming in and out of her—going deep, pivoting, twisting almost painfully inside her—until she shrieked her climax and shuddered hard, the pulsing of her vaginal muscles clutching around his hand.

It was a sin what she was doing and Kaycee knew it, but she was unable to stop coming to him here in this forbidden place, deep in the woods where no one ever saw them trysting. His was an illicit treat, a sumptuous feast no other man could lay before her and she needed his touch now as much as she needed to breathe the fresh, cool mountain air that sustained her.

She lay there drawing ragged breaths into her lungs, feeling the afterglow of the immense pleasure he—and he alone—could give her. Though she wanted to lace her fingers with his, she knew he would not allow it and had to content herself just to lie there with their knuckles touching.

“I love you so much,” she said.

“Aye, I’m sure you think you do,” he said, though his tone was filled with bitterness she had long ago learned to accept.

Her life beyond the rundown cottage could be endured if she had this glorious man to see to the needs no one else had ever been able to assuage. She was as happy as any woman could be who stepped outside the bonds of Joining to find what she was missing in her marriage. As long as she had this man beside her, she could bear most anything life threw her way.

As though he were reading her thoughts, he said, “This will be the last time for us.”

“No!” she gasped, sitting up as he rose from the bed.

“Never again, Kaycee Connor,” he told her. “You will go back to your husband and children and stay there.”

Tears instantly filled her eyes. “What have I done to anger you?” she asked, her gaze wild.

“You’ve done all I wanted you to do,” he said then opened the cottage’s door. “I’ve gotten what I want from you.”

Outside, the rain was driving sideways in fierce silver sheets, the wind howling in the eaves. She saw him thrust his hands into the pockets of his worn britches then he stepped out into the deluge to be swallowed up in the gloaming.

“No!” she cried out again, and scrambled from the bed. “Come back! Please come back! I’ll do anything you want, milord! I’ll leave my husband, my children for you!”

Running barefoot to the door and out into the violent storm, she called his name over and over again, but he did not answer. He had vanished like the morning mist.

Her gown soaked, her feet muddy, she ran through the trees in search of him but he was long gone, having returned to whatever hell had generated him.

“Daniel!” she shouted until she was hoarse and so thoroughly lost within the greensward of the forest, she would never be found.

Kaycee came awake with his name on her lips, calling out to him, a hand out in pleading. Her heart was racing and perspiration dotted her upper lip.

She blinked, realized where she was, what she’d been doing as she slept and shame filled her. Sitting up abruptly, she put her hands to her blushing face—caught a whiff of the scent of her desire on her fingers—and quickly lowered them, her blush deepening.

“You shameless slut,” she whispered. “Masturbating in the middle of the day over a man you’ll never have in your bed!”

Getting up from the sofa, she hurried into the bathroom. What she needed was a very long, very cold shower.

* * * * *

Danny drove with his right wrist cocked on the top of the steering wheel and his left elbow out the window. He loved the play of the wind through his thick hair and the wet press of it against his face. He was bone-tired, ached in places he didn’t know he had and feeling jittery. The radio was cranked up and the song playing was a Celtic folk rock song by Cruachan that stirred his blood, spoke to the berserker in him.

He was thinking about the file he’d read on Kaycee Connor. There hadn’t been much there since it had been hastily compiled in the wee hours of the morning, but it was now all part of the Gerring investigation. He knew only the basics about her and had guessed some of the rest—like her love of dark fantasy from the dozens of books under the coffee table and the take-out menu from Hot Wings R Us he’d glimpsed on her desk. By the time he picked her up for their date, he’d know a lot more because he’d sent a team out to learn all they could.

Not a law enforcement team, but one from his brother’s organization—a team not needing to adhere to the strict letter of the law when gathering information. Everything from how much she had in her banking account to how much she owed in credit card debt would be compiled for his perusal. He wanted to know all there was about her. That was just the way he worked.

A deep frown settled on Danny’s face. There hadn’t been anything about Kaycee Connor—or any woman for that matter—in Thomas Gerring’s file. As a matter of fact, it was well-known the man was a homosexual. What the hell had he been doing dating a female and why hadn’t she shown up in the surveillance reports? Why hadn’t they been made aware she was at Gerring’s house the evening before? That was a question in need of an answer.

“Gerring carries on him a thumb drive with a list of the fences he uses to move antiquities through Georgia,” Danny’s brother had said when he’d handed out the assignment. “I want that thumb drive and I want that faggot neutralized. Send the message loud enough that anyone else who thinks to squeeze into our business will think twice before doing so.”

John Fitzgerald Kennedy Gallagher wanted only one antiquity-artifact dealer plying the waters off the Eastern Seaboard and that ship was sailing under his colors. He did not tolerate competition.

Rosemary’s Sage Thyme, the antiques shop where Kaycee worked, was one of the moving points for the stolen artifacts in which Johnny dealt. Danny doubted Kaycee knew of the illegal activities going on around her for Rosie Adams, the owner of the shop, had been a professional fence for over forty years and kept the legit and shady sides of her multimillion-dollar operation totally separate. Rosie had numerous clients like Thomas Gerring and she kept Johnny apprised of news that might affect Gallagher interests. The trouble was—would Kaycee get caught up in the mess should those criminal activities at the shop ever come to light?

“Not if I can help it,” he said to himself.

Why he had experienced such an immediate, intense reaction to the young woman surprised him. From the moment he had seen her sitting there with Gerring’s mutilated body only a few feet away, he had felt an overpowering urge to shelter her, protect her, take her into his arms and shield her from all the unpleasantness of life. It was an odd reaction to a complete stranger and one he still did not understand. Nevertheless, for the first in many years, he felt alive and not dead inside.

He was looking forward to seeing Kaycee again.

* * * * *

“He took one look at that twat and I could see the wheels clicking in his head,” Barnes told John Gallagher.

John stood on the balcony of his multimillion-dollar high-rise and stared out at the cresting waves of the Atlantic. His attention was caught and held by soaring seagulls banking gracefully across the bright blue sky.

“My brother is a very lonely man,” John observed as he tracked the glistening white wingspan of a gull. “Kathleen nearly destroyed him.”

“Begging your pardon, boss man, but he let the cunt do it to him. He should have beaten the shit out of her the first time she acted up and he’d have made a good woman of her.”

A nasty look passed over John Gallagher’s face. He turned that look to the man beside him at the railing. “The men of my family do not raise their hands to their women, Barnes. It simply isn’t done.” He held Barnes’ gaze until the underling looked away then returned his attention to the gulls. “Blowing her goddamned brains out, yes. Hitting her, no.”

Barnes cleared his throat. “Ain’t too late to take her out. Just say the word and…”

“Have it come back at Danny? I don’t think so.”

The two men were quiet for a few minutes then Barnes asked what was to be done about the Connor woman.

John narrowed his eyes. “For now, let it ride. There’s no way she can connect either of you to the hit. Let’s see where he’s going with this.”

“Right to the twat’s bed is where he’s going, boss.”

A slight smile hovered on John’s lips. “We all need our amusements, Barnes.” He leaned his elbows on the railing. “Even a stone-cold killer like my baby brother.”

* * * * *

Farther down the coastline of Georgia, near the cosmopolitan city of Savannah, in a mansion in an even more exclusive subdivision known as Weaver Bend, a Baccarat crystal brandy snifter flew against rich cherry wood paneling and shattered. The brandy that now ran down the wall had cost the one who’d thrown it over a thousand dollars a bottle, but that didn’t matter. The fury lashing out as the decanter and several more pristinely cut glass snifters followed brought immediate silence to those assembled.

“Son of a fucking bitch!” Terrence Malone spat in a thick West of Ireland brogue even years of living in the States had not dulled. “How the hell did you let this happen, O’Malley?”

Ioan O’Malley gave the man who employed him a pleading look. “The Adams woman must have found out about the list and snitched to the Gallagher crew. Gerring carried that thumb drive on him day and night on a chain around his neck. Our cop friend says the little faggot didn’t have it on him when they got to the scene so that means whoever did Gerring took the thumb drive.”

“Do we know who did the hit?” Malone snarled, lips drawn back over gnashing teeth.

“My guess is that cop brother of Gallagher’s. He does most of the wet work for their crew. The man is brutal,” O’Malley replied.

“Him and his partner, that braying Scotsman Barnes,” Tim Shannon, the third man in the room, put in. “I’ll have to give it to Gallagher. Having a brother and another top guy on the police force working homicide sure makes cover-ups easier.”