“Hands up, then don’t move,” she commanded.
“Abbie?”
Their voices sounded almost simultaneously. She stepped away from the chair, her gun trained on the person in her kitchen. The one person she hadn’t expected to see.
The one she least wanted to talk to right now.
“What are you doing here?” Her voice was unwelcoming.
Ryne gestured toward her back entrance. “You didn’t lock your back door.”
She relaxed her stance, lowering her weapon. “So this is just a security check? You wanted to add to your list of my perceived ineptitudes? Congratulations. Make a note of my carelessness and then leave. Again.”
His gaze flicked over her figure, and she was suddenly aware that she was facing him down in black pants and a black on black striped bra. Not exactly an appearance guaranteed to boost her avowal of competence. But right now, she was long past caring what Ryne Robel thought.
“I wanted to say . . . I know I was a dick a while ago.”
“You
were
a dick,” she agreed. The apology was unexpected. There was no reason to let him know how it disarmed her. She could feel some of the ire that had seemed so all-encompassing only minutes ago fade away. “It’s been a long day and I’m ready to turn in. If I promise to lock the door behind you, will you stay gone this time?”
His expression altered, alerting her that he was no longer listening. He approached her with a few long strides, taking her injured arm in one hand and turning it upward to examine the wound there. His gaze when it met hers was grim. “What the hell, Abbie?”
She hesitated, reluctant to share the whole experience with him, especially in light of his earlier behavior. “I don’t want to get into it.”
“Can’t blame it on McElroy, he just left.” Comprehension flickered across his expression. “This is why you were late this morning? The deal with your sister last night? Did she do this to you?”
She had the dim thought that maybe she should be grateful he didn’t leap to the conclusion she’d taken up self-destructive habits again. It was small consolation, to be sure.
Another wave of weariness hit her and she felt herself sway a little. Pulling her arm from his grasp, she half turned away. “It was an accident. For once, just let it go.”
“Don’t you think I wish I could?”
The bitterness in his tone surprised her into glancing back toward him. She was startled by the bleak expression on his face.
“Believe me, it’d be a helluva lot easier if I didn’t give a damn. If the thought of you hurt, bleeding, didn’t tear something up inside me that I don’t want to feel.” A muscle in his jaw jumped. “I don’t want this. I never asked for this.”
The meaning of his words rocked her back, threatening her last vestige of composure. She couldn’t—wouldn’t—let him see how they wounded. “I’ve never made any demands on you.” She could hold on to that, at least, even while an inner voice jeered. No, Abbie Phillips would be the last to expect something from a man. Expectations meant trust, something she’d never learned to give.
Ryne seemed not to have heard her. “It wasn’t as hard for me to stop drinking as you might think. Because even without the alcohol, I was numb, and that wasn’t so bad. I could do my job. Could think a damn sight clearer, but didn’t feel a thing. And you know what? That was fine with me. Best thing in the world.”
“No, Ryne,” she said quietly. “It wasn’t. Every mind has its own way of dealing with trauma. But the absence of emotion isn’t a sign of healing. Just the opposite.”
He jammed a hand through his hair. “I wasn’t
traumatized
, I was blind. I was on the fast track in Boston. Dixon might have been the political golden boy, but I was the cowboy. I didn’t mind taking the dangerous jobs early on, going undercover, infiltrating gangbangers. And even later, when I made detective, I had the instincts for the work. I knew I was drinking too much, but it wasn’t going to affect the job. I told myself that.” His tone was filled with derision. “Biggest mistake I ever made was believing it.”
“What happened?”
He didn’t seem to hear her question. He was talking more to himself than to her. “Homicide investigation looked pretty straightforward. Marriage on the rocks. Wife arranges to have her husband whacked and stands to inherit a hefty chunk of change. Had a witness willing to testify he overheard the wife making the arrangements for a hit. Everything pointed to Deborah Hanna, the wife. I never looked elsewhere. Not seriously. Not until it was too late.”
“It wasn’t her.”
He gave a short mirthless laugh. “It wasn’t her. But she was the next victim. My ‘witness’ turned out to be her ex-lover. He’d had plans for the two of them, but she broke it off. He waited a year for his revenge. Arranged the whole thing to point to her. When she still refused him, he put a bullet in her brain. So, yeah. That eats at me.”
She knew intuitively his words were an understatement. She’d long suspected something haunted Ryne Robel. Now his ghost had a name.
He shoved his hands in his pocket, leveled a gaze at her. “But I can handle that.
Was
handling it. Until you. This. I can’t help worrying when I think of you being hurt. Can’t seem to stop myself from stepping in to protect you. And I don’t want to feel like this.”
Panic sprinted up her spine. The emotional punch of his words was more powerful than the blows she’d sustained earlier. “Then don’t,” she urged almost pleadingly. She didn’t want the kind of attachment he was talking about any more than he did. Less.
And she especially didn’t want to examine her own feelings too closely. Didn’t want to think about what it was going to be like when the case was solved and she left.
His smile was twisted. “That’s the best advice you can come up with? Because it’s . . .” His words broke off as he looked more closely at her. Afraid of what he’d see in her expression, she turned away. But it was too late.
“I’ve seen you run down and tackle a suspect. Saw you pound on a sparring partner twice your size. Watched you humiliate McElroy with a few well-placed kicks.” With a gentle tug on her elbow, he turned her to face him again. “But this is the first time I’ve seen you look scared, Abbie.”
His tone was wondering as he stared hard at her. “Hell, you’re more terrified than I am.”
“I’m not ‘terrified,’ ” she corrected him. Her words might have sounded more convincing if they hadn’t held a slight tremble. “We just need to be . . . sensible.”
“Okay.” He sounded a little too agreeable. With his index finger, he began tracing the slight swell of flesh above her bra. “I can do sensible. How’s sensible work?”
“Well, we . . .”
Her voice broke off as he took the weapon from her hand. “You’ve decided not to shoot me, right? So we can get rid of this?” He set it down on the couch and pulled her closer, one hand sliding down to cup her butt.
He was, she decided, a bit too easily distracted. “The case comes first. We see it through.”
“Of course.”
Her senses scattered as his mouth skimmed over her throat and settled at the hollow of her shoulder. He had the most amazing tongue. “And after that . . .” She could sense the stillness in him. Could barely draw the breath to finish the sentence. Because once the case was solved, she’d be gone. What was between them would have to be finished. Surely he didn’t need her to say it.
“After that . . .” He pressed a stinging kiss to her throat and she shuddered.
“Then . . . we’ll see.”
She heard the smile in his voice. “We’ll see? Good plan. Definite. Precise. I like that.”
Abbie slipped both hands into his hair and tugged un-gently. “Shut up, Robel.” She smothered his laugh by pressing her lips to his and immediately got lost in the taste of him.
He knew exactly how to kiss a woman. Hot, and wet, and deep, as if staking a claim. She may be blind when she tried to envision what lay ahead of them, but now, in his arms, it was the immediate future she cared about. She wanted to bask in the smoldering sensuality he exuded merely by breathing. She wanted, most of all, to forget the events of the last twenty-four hours and to fill up greedy pockets of memories of the two of them together.
And she didn’t want to consider the time when memories were all they’d have left.
He hooked his finger in one of her bra straps, drew it slowly off her shoulder. When his mouth touched the skin he’d bared, it felt hot as a brand, and all of a sudden it was she who was too easily diverted. She knew him well enough to realize he’d take control if she let him, setting a fevered pace to the climax they both sought. And with the passion he so easily incited, whipping her blood to churning whitecaps, she’d be in no position to argue.
But she wanted to take her time. Wanted to savor every taste, each touch. And wanted, quite desperately, to see him sweating and shaking before it was through.
She tugged his shirt free of his pants, leisurely undoing the buttons, one at a time. It was hard to concentrate on each inch of hard masculine flesh she bared while his mouth was busy, skimming over her shoulders—both bared now—and up the side of her throat. But there was a reward to be had in maintaining focus. As the widening vee of his loosened shirt framed his muscled torso, she gave a pleased hum.
He could be a model for that gym he used, though he’d scoff at the idea. Wide shoulders, roped with enough muscle to leave intriguing hollows where flesh met bone and sinew. Well-defined pecs, sprinkled with hair a shade darker than that on his head. Flat belly, the muscles jumping when she stroked a finger above the waistband of his trousers.
She felt her bra fall away under his hands and moved closer to press against him. Her nipples drew tauter when she went on tiptoe to drag them over his hair-roughened chest. Drawing his bottom lip into her mouth, she scored it lightly with her teeth.
His arm came around her like a steel band, pulling her higher, closer. The kiss went from teasing to carnal so quickly she lost her breath. One of her hands clutched his hard bicep, the other anchored at his narrow waist.
His mouth ate hers with a single-minded intensity that torched her earlier intentions and had flames licking through her veins. She pushed his shirt over his shoulders, dragged it down his arms, all without relinquishing his lips. And then her hands stroked over the flesh she’d bared in a frenzy of exploration.
Her fingers skimmed over his hard back, traced the indentations of his spine, lowered to test the firm hardness of his butt. She’d never thought of a man’s body as more than a means to an end. Never considered it as something to be hedon istically enjoyed. But his was different.
He
was different.
Abbie tore her mouth away to press her lips against his collarbone, against the wild beat of the pulse at the base of his throat. The evidence of his desire calmed something in her, had her wanting to stoke it higher before she became lost in her own.
And he was still overdressed.
She pulled his shirt off, took a few moments to skate her hands up and down the corded muscles of his arms, then unfastened his pants. Their fingers tangled as he struggled to help her free of hers. Eventually they had to pull away to divest themselves of garments in an impatient frenzy before walking into each other’s arms again.
Pressing her lips to one dusky male nipple, Abbie flicked it with her tongue while her fingers went in search of his hard, straining length. Her breath quickened. She knew how to touch him now, what made him shudder, and what could fracture his control completely. The knowledge was heady, almost as exhilarating as the feel of him, hot and pulsing in her hand.
His belly quivered beneath her fingers as she worked the waistband of his boxer briefs down his lean hips. She went to her knees to bathe the tip of his sex with her tongue. There was a drop of pearly liquid on the head of his shaft and she scooped it up, then took him fully in her mouth.
She barely heard his oath, could hardly feel the grip of his hands in her hair as she tortured him with the wet suction. She reveled in the taste of him, and the slightly musky smell of desire. But it was his response that had her pulse careening madly. The bunched muscles of his thighs and stomach, his harsh groan, the unrestrained surge of his hips against her mouth.
His reaction stoked her own hunger. She couldn’t get enough of it, of him. Every time they were together, it was a sensual battle to drive each other crazy. There was a hot spear of satisfaction at the knowledge that he was lost in the pleasure she brought him.
But that all changed in the next moment, when he stepped away from her and swung her up into his arms. The abrupt shift in positions was dizzying. She draped an arm around his neck to steady herself and dragged her heavy lids open to look at him.
His mouth was full, hard. The skin was drawn tightly over his cheekbones and his eyes . . . there was a flare in the pit of her belly when she caught his gaze. Narrowed and intent, the sexual intensity she saw there was an unmistakable promise.
Her veins went molten. She reached up to trace the seam of his lips with the tip of her tongue, but the kiss quickly grew desperate, with teeth and tongues clashing. There was a hammering in her blood, a wild tattoo beat that sharpened desire to urgency. Next time they’d go slow, tormenting each other with languid strokes and teasing touches. Right now she needed the release they found together, secure in the knowledge that he was as ready as she.