Killing Bliss (32 page)

"You asleep?"

Given the answer to her question was obvious, Cade glanced at the numbers on his clock. Nearly eleven. "What are you doing here?"

"Looking for company." She walked over to the bed, shucked off her shoes, pulled the covers back, and crawled in beside him, jeans, T-shirt, and all. "I'm not here to have sex with you, if that's what you're thinking."

He smiled into the dark, thought about the new box of condoms sitting beside the Glock in his bedside table drawer. "Of course you're not."

"I don't want you to think—"

"Shut up and get over here." He pulled her to him and nestled her head close to his shoulder. Her hair brushed under his chin.

After a minute, she said, "You smell good. Like Star Lake does after a good rain." She ran the hand she'd placed on his chest across his stomach and down, veering off and over his thigh. "You're naked," she whispered against his throat.

Another obvious statement that didn't need a reply.

"Do you always sleep naked?"

"Uh-huh." And if she didn't stop with the wandering hand, he'd be naked... plus.

She drew the hand back up to his chest and made circles in his chest hair. "I don't. Sleep naked, I mean."

When her hand wandered again, he clasped it in his and gritted his teeth. "What do you sleep in?" She wanted to talk, he'd talk—if it damn well killed him.

"A big, ugly old tee, usually. Not very sexy, am I?"

"Hm-mm," he murmured, thinking Addy in a tee—without panties—sounded damn good to him. He slipped his hand under her shirt, squeezed the narrow valley where hip met waist. "Sexy enough. But then, I'd want you if you were wearing chain mail. So I'm not the guy to ask."

"Really?"

"So this tells me." He shifted his lower body against her thigh, offering hard proof of his statement.

Through the darkness and silence, he heard her draw in a breath. A split second later, she was out of the bed. She stripped off her shirt, shimmied out of her jeans, and took off her panties.

When she crawled into bed beside him, he stroked a bare thigh, took in the coolness of her skin, and said, "Can I take this to mean you've moved beyond the 'looking for company' stage?"

She ran her hand boldly down to his erection, stroked it from stem to tip. "You can," she murmured from somewhere near his chest. "You definitely can."

Chapter 21

Cade's muscles bunched under his skin, making it feel like a too-tight rubber glove. He let his head fall back to the pillow. Jesus, this woman could do him by looking at him.

She stroked him again, squeezed, as if she were testing his limits, measuring him, fascinated with a part of his anatomy he took for granted.

"I like this part of you," she murmured, then lifted her head to look into his eyes. Eyes he had trouble keeping open. "When you think about it, it's a pretty amazing... thing." She wrapped her hand around him, used her thumb to press and play at his tip.

He groaned. "I'd rather not think right now, if it's okay with you." He took her face in his hands. "Because right now the only amazing thing in this bed is you."

Addy wanted him so badly, she couldn't think. She wanted him over her, under her, all around her, wanted to have what she couldn't have the last time—Cade inside her, deep inside her.

After pacing away the last two hours, worrying about what might happen tomorrow—the nightmare she'd created with her insane plan—her thoughts turned to Cade, and when they did, all her smarts and common sense couldn't stop her from going to him.

What began as a walk to clear her head and unlock Cabin Twelve for Gus, like he'd asked her to, had within seconds taken her rain-damp sneakers and firmly planted them outside Cade's door.

And here, now, in bed with him, she had no regrets.

Because if things didn't work out tomorrow, she might never see him again, and the pain of it staggered her.

She'd burned for him all day. Every time she caught a glimpse of him, she thought about him, the feel of his skin and silky chest hair under the tips of her fingers, his expert hands, his mouth on her body where a mouth had never been before.

He really was...
amazing
right down to the slick velvet tip of him.

Cade stopped her hand, and his breath riffled through her hair. "Why in hell didn't you say you wanted me when you walked in here?"

Good question, but she was pleased when he let go of her hand, let her go back to exploring his silky length. "I was too embarrassed, I guess."

He pulled her to him, and even though she couldn't see his expression clearly in the dark, she knew it was serious and unsmiling. "Don't be embarrassed with me. Ever. Okay?"

"Okay." Easy promise to make in a pitch-black room when you're naked. "But I can't—"

The words flew into the darkness of the room when his tongue slowly circled a nipple, lapped at it.

"There are no buts and no can'ts."

Her breath stopped when he drew the nipple he'd been toying with deep into his mouth. He groaned at her breast, suckled with strong, deep pulls, before lifting his head to give the same service to the other.

"I love your breasts," he muttered against their flesh. "I can't get enough of them... of you."

He raised himself and she felt the cool evening air tease her moistened nipples. He braced himself above her, his face close enough for her to feel the rush of his breathing. "What's happening between us, Addy, I want you to know it's... valuable, and when this thing is over we need to talk, figure out where to go from here."

"Cade, don't." She scrunched her eyelids against an unexpected wash of tears, because if there was one thing she knew for sure, there was nowhere to go from here. This was all there was, sex and stupid hope.

He brushed some hair off her forehead, kissed her eyelids. "But not now. We won't talk now. Tonight, we make love. I want you to come for me, over and over." He took her mouth in a full, deep kiss that left her gasping, aching for more, then ran his hand down to the damp curls between her legs. "Do you want that?"

She nodded and mumbled a "Yes."

"You're already wet for me," he whispered against her hair. He ran a finger along her slick seam, opened her, and probed deeply, one finger, two, then pulled out to play with her hardened nub, circling it with a deft finger until it stood away from her milky flesh, distinct and exposed. He touched it with a sure and gentle finger, then left it to cool, to wait...

A new rush of moisture pooled and heated at her opening.

She gasped, rolled her head back, and grasped the sheet on either side of her with trembling hands, clutching the bunched linen as if it were a life raft in a storm.

Cade played with her body, toyed with it, his hard length only a promise at the juncture of her thighs.

He kissed her throat, down, over her breasts and stomach, and thrust his fingers into her heat, each motion different than the last, slow now, then faster, then gone.

Replaced by a mouth that took her hard, fast, and relentlessly.

She screamed, convulsed, and came in a blinding, seething rush, a wild thing, her mouth dry with breath and fire, her heart a deafening sound in her chest.

"Oh, my God..." She clutched at him, pulled him to her, wanting him in, wanting him deep.

There was movement above her, then he entered her in a long, potent plunge. In deep, he raised himself again, and she could see the strain, the tautness in his neck at the effort to still himself. "You feel so damn good. Like tight satin." He flexed, went deeper, pulled back, then drove into her, to her limits, his hard, demanding length pinning her to the bed.

Man into woman... totally, intensely, gloriously.

She shuddered, desperate to pull him in deeper, deeper still. Her inner walls closed around him, and every nerve and sinew in her body melded to his, urged him on. A climax of her own hovered, first a flutter, then a demand, and she sank her nails into the taut muscles of his shoulders, hung on so... she could let go.

She bucked, panted to get her breath, tore at his back, his shoulders, his buttocks. Crazed. She was crazed.

Cade groaned, lifted her hips, dug his fingers into the plump flesh of her bottom to hold her high, and released into her in one last powerful plunge, his body a thrust of pure steel under her grasping hands, the contractions of her inner walls.

Exhausted, they clung to each other, sated, their bodies slick from heat and sex.

When she found her voice, Addy said, "You bought condoms."

"I'm a quick study," he said. Shifting his weight to her side, he stroked his knuckles along her cheek. She sensed his smile when he leaned to brush his lips across her mouth. "I wanted to be ready in case I was caught in my bed with my pants off."

She kissed his tempting lips. "Is that the male ego I hear?"

"Loud and clear." He lifted his head. "And speaking of condoms." He got up, went to the bathroom, and was back in double time.

"Now, where were we?"

"I'm not sure. The last thing I remember was me saying I didn't come to you for sex." She tapped his chin. "After that, I think you hit me on the head with a club and took advantage of me."

He laughed. "I think we started"—he pulled her to his side, put her head on his shoulder—"about here."

She rested there, calm and quiet, breathed in the scent of the man in the bed with her, and let the darkness and silence of the cabin close around her like a cozy blanket. "Cade?" she finally said, sleep curling the edges of her mind.

"Uh-huh?"

"Thank you."

"For what?"

Sleep closed in, shutting her eyes and hazing her brain, and she yawned into a soft spot near his shoulder. "For the orgasms and for... loving me a little bit."

She drifted away, dimly aware Cade's hand had stopped its idle stroking of her hair, that his chest, where she'd rested her open palm, no longer heaved and ebbed with the rhythm of his breathing.

Sleep, deeper now, became a wall against his whispered words, "More than a little, Addy. Much, much more."

* * *

Shortly after midnight, Grover parked his Honda across the street from the Everwood Hotel. Rivers of rain, shimmering under the street lamps, coursed across his windshield.

His head roared with pain, a blur of shooting images. Jumbled, disconnected thoughts elbowed each other in his aching head, each one ready to explode, force him to action. The painkillers he'd taken hadn't helped, had only colored the violence in his mind and given him shaking hands.

He had to calm down, had to control the fear and wildness in him—the immensity of his power.

His next thought was about food. He was hungry. A hungry lion, he told himself, ready to feed after a good kill. The headache jumped and banged around inside his skull like an electrical storm crossed with a jungle drum. He wanted to laugh. He wanted to cry. He wanted to shout his victory into the wet night sky, but the emotions fired through him too fast, chaotic and impotent, never still long enough to grasp.

His hands were sticky, and he lifted them, turned his palms up toward the streetlight to better see the blood. He couldn't get enough of it.

Sandra's blood.

In the darkened car, it deepened to black, warming him and giving him strength to stay the path he'd set for himself. In death lay glory, the ultimate power. He'd forgotten... No matter.

He had begun...

He would not turn back. Ever again. One murder. Two murders. A dozen murders... It didn't matter.

Grover pressed his bloodied palms hard to his temples and ordered the headache away; it obeyed, ebbing to a dull, rhythmic throb at the base of his skull.

His body was his now, from his soft belly to the aching need in his genitals. Never again would he allow it to be violated, degraded, abused, kicked aside ass if it were a bad piece of meat left in the noonday sun. As if he weren't in it. Sandra said he was nothing, no one. Not like Belle. Belle said she loved him every time, after every session.

A rush of tears blinded him, then he laughed, leaving the dampness to cool on his cheeks.