Crazy Hot (9 page)

The need had surprised him, but he'd felt it as surely as he'd felt her tongue slide along the length of his, as surely as he'd felt her hand clutching at his waist. He had a feeling she'd been just as surprised by her reaction as he'd been.

Gently, because he couldn't resist, he kissed her again, brushing his mouth across hers in a light caress, more of a good-bye than a hello, trying to take them both down one level from being ready to crawl inside each other's pants before he raised his head.

It didn't work. Looking down at her, her face flushed, her mouth wet, feeling her breasts rise and fall against his chest with every breath, he still wanted to get inside her pants. He dipped back down for another taste, then one more before he was actually able to let her go and retreat half a step.

Her eyes fluttered open, her gaze slowly clearing from a slumberous shade of confusion to a thunderstruck, oh-my-god gray. A wash of color rose in her cheeks as she stared at him, suddenly wide-eyed.

“Oh, my God.”

He'd second that.

“We have to go,” he said, his hand still cupping the back of her neck, his thumb stroking the soft skin behind her ear. “We can't stay here.”

“No. Of course not,” she said. The color in her face deepened, but her gaze didn't waver from his, not for an instant. She was as transfixed as he was, her pulse racing beneath his hand.

God save him.

“Or maybe we could get a room.” The words were out, husky and heartfelt, before he had time to think. He wanted a room, a room with a bed and her naked in it. He wanted the rest of the night and into the morning. He wanted to know what turned her on and the chance to drive her out of her mind, just the chance.

The look on her face said he could do it. She would come undone for him, completely undone. It was a hell of a temptation, to take her and make her his.

“No.” The word was barely a breath of sound, but he heard it loud and clear.

“No?” He slowed the movement of his thumb across her skin, his brows drawing together. What part of what he was feeling wasn't she feeling?

She gave her head a small shake and turned toward Jeanette, her movements jerky, her voice strained. “No, I . . . uh, don't think, well, I . . . uh, I have to call Nikki, and I need to make sure Wilson is okay, and then what about those other guys, Branson and the man with him?” He let her go. There was no need to push. She'd melted for him with a kiss. He could take it from there—take it all the way home. A grin curved his mouth. He was going to like chasing her just fine, little Miss McKinney with her careful buttons and careful job and completely wild kisses.

“Christian Hawkins is checking them out,” he reassured her, reaching around and opening the door. “He'll call when he has something.”

She whirled back to face him. “Christian Hawkins? That's who you were talking with? The one who went to jail for life?”

“Actually, they only held him a couple of years.” Just long enough to change him forever. To change his nineteen-year-old streetwise toughness into pure tempered steel with a razor's edge. Nobody fucked with Christian Hawkins anymore. Nobody fucked with Superman.

“But he murdered a senator's son.” The accusation was flat, chiseled in the granite of common knowledge.

That was the damned thing about the media. They were more than happy to splash a man's sins all over page one, but his redemption barely made the paper, especially when someone powerful wanted the truth kept quiet.

“No, he didn't, but not much got printed about his release.” And that was an understatement if Quinn had ever heard one.

“He was innocent? Good God.” Her hand came up to her mouth, then dropped to the base of her throat. “The papers crucified him.”

Quinn would never have used the word
innocent
in connection with Hawkins even before prison, but he hadn't deserved what had happened to him for being a street kid in the wrong place at the wrong time.

“He survived,” he said, summing up the salient facts in two words.

“I remember him,” she said, her embarrassment momentarily forgotten. “I remember talking with him at Rabbit Valley.
Survivor
is a good word to describe him.”

“You spent time with Hawkins?” Son of a bitch. Hawkins had never mentioned talking with Doc McKinney's hot granddaughter.

She nodded. “We were actually together quite a bit. Wilson liked him, put us both on supply crew a number of times. It was hard for him, thinking one of his summer boys had committed murder.”

“Yeah,” Quinn said absently, imagining it had been hard, but mostly he was remembering supply crew, the damned elusive supply crew. He'd never gotten assigned to it, not once. Regan and Hawkins had been assigned to practically every one. But what he remembered was Regan sitting in the truck cab with the graduate students, and Hawkins always being in the bed of the pickup, going along as muscle to hump the supplies into the truck.

Now he was wondering how many times Regan had ridden back from town in the bed of the pickup with Hawkins.

Son of a bitch.

“Well, there's a good chance he'll be coming by your house sometime, maybe even tonight. He might need to talk to you, or Wilson again, or catch up with Kid.” Damn. He was jealous. What a kick in the ass. It was ridiculous, especially after that kiss. But there it was, because he knew Hawkins, and he knew the effect Superman had on women, especially classy women looking for a dangerous thrill, looking for a walk on the wild side.

Hawkins had given it to more than a few.

Damn.

“Maybe you better warn Nikki she might be having a lot of company tonight,” he said, repressing his jealousy.

“Nikki. Right.” A faint trace of her blush returned. “I'll call, and maybe you should talk to Kid and tell him . . .” She stopped in mid-sentence, as if she'd suddenly thought better of what she'd been about to say.

“Tell him?” he prompted.

“Tell him, well . . .” She hesitated a moment longer. Her hand came up to brush at a straying tendril of hair. “Well, Nikki kind of has this thing about men, kind of an artistic compulsion thing with her art and . . . men. It's not a personal thing.” A pained expression crossed her face, as if she really weren't at all sure it—whatever “it” was—wasn't more personal than she wanted to admit. “Well, just sort of an art thing, something to do with never really knowing her father, I think, and I wouldn't want Kid to get wrapped up in something that might compromise his ability to do his job. I mean, well, he's kind of young and maybe if he was warned, you know, that Nikki can be a handful . . .” Her voice trailed off.

Fascinating,
Quinn thought, watching her stumble over her words, trying to explain something that didn't make much sense to him. He wasn't overly concerned.

“So Nikki's an artist?”

“Yes.”

“And how old is she now—I'm thinking twenty-one, twenty-two?” He remembered her younger sister had just been a little kid back at Rabbit Valley.

“Twenty-one,” she confirmed.

Quinn grinned. “Don't worry. Kid is a pro. There isn't a twenty-one-year-old girl on the planet who could wrap him up in anything he didn't want to be wrapped up in.” And Quinn was including silk sheets right along with trouble.

The doubt on her face only made his grin broaden. He thought it was sweet of her to be concerned, sweet and totally illogical. Kid was rock solid, honed by the Corps's finest into an elite combat weapon, trained to think two steps ahead of the enemy while under fire, underwater, and outmanned. Unless an army had declared war on Boulder since this morning, there wasn't anything in northern Colorado Kid couldn't handle, on his own, with one hand tied behind his back.

Absolutely nothing—least of all little Nikki McKinney.

C
HAPTER

9

K
ID WATCHED
Skeeter's Jeep drive away from the McKinneys' house before he reached inside the Porsche and lifted a black duffel bag and a pack out of the back seat. Skeeter had done a good job watching the place. Stayed cool. Laid low. Kept the intel flowing between them. If any of Roper's men had shown up, she would have called the police. Now any bad guys would have to deal with him.

Kid slipped the duffel and pack straps over his shoulder, then reached back in for his sport drink and took another look around. The McKinney house was big and old, the first floor built of stone, with a wooden wraparound porch complete with a swing and more windows than he wanted to know about. Four huge spruce trees nearly overwhelmed the place, and years ago some gardener had gone nuts. The yard was a jungle. Kid could have put a whole platoon in the front alone and nobody would have ever been the wiser. In the back, beyond the gazebo, a small stone cottage could barely be seen hidden in the undergrowth.

The garage was detached. There was no fence, and a stripped-down Jeep was parked in the alley between the McKinneys' and the brick two-story house behind them. The vehicle was little more than a roll bar with two seats and four wheels, but the back was full of stuff, good stuff from what Kid could see, ropes and climbing gear. From his position in the driveway, he could just make out the license plate:
SRCHN4U
. If Nikki McKinney had company, Skeeter hadn't mentioned it, but she wouldn't have seen someone arriving from the alley. Or the Jeep could belong with the brick two-story. Finding out would be his first order of business.

He looked back to the house and took note of no fewer than three doors opening to the outside, one of them French—and that was just on the ground floor. The upper balconies had at least another two doors opening out.

A definite challenge if anything started to go down.

Kid finished his drink, and tossed the empty bottle onto Nadine's floor with all the other junk he hadn't bothered to clean out of the Porsche lately, including half the sand in Utah. For fifty bucks, Skeeter would get her cleaned up, a real bargain. Nobody detailed a car like Skeeter.

He grabbed the laptop before locking the car's doors and heading on up to the house. The temperature had been 104 in Cisco, and even at seven o'clock was holding at an easy 99 in Boulder. It was going to be hot all night long. He could tell. Swelteringly hot. A beer and a little ESPN would be a nice break after two weeks of camping out in a barn, but he wasn't going to get either tonight, not as long as he was on his own with two women to watch. Quinn had said he and Regan were about an hour behind him.

Kid didn't know what to think about that. An hour? What the hell had the two of them been up to? Quinn should have been right on his ass the whole way.

The doorbell itself was his first clue that this was not exactly cold-beer-and-ESPN territory. It was a naked angel—a highly detailed, metal-casted, anatomically correct naked
guy
angel with wings spread, tips touching, standing on a fiery sun. The doorbell button was the sun, and it looked hot and molten, the depths of its amber crystal lit from within.

His finger hovered for a second, then two, before he pressed it. From somewhere inside the house, a guy screamed.

Shit!
He jerked his hand back. Then he felt like a fool.

Shit.
No wonder the old man had left home.

Damn. He grinned and pressed the button again, holding it in.

Yeah, the guy was screaming in there all right, but it wasn't a fearful scream. It was more primal, more like Tarzan, or the sound he'd made the last time he'd lofted himself off a half-pipe on a snowboard.

His grin broadened. Yeah, that's what it sounded like—some bozo doing something really stupid.

The door opened, swinging inward to reveal a woman on the threshold. For another incredibly long second, he didn't take his finger off the button. With the temperature sweltering and the guy screaming away, all he could do was stare. It took another second before he realized his jaw had dropped open.

He shut his mouth and dropped his hand from the doorbell at the same time. Then he spent yet another embarrassingly long moment trying to remember something to say. Something simple like . . . like “Hello.” It finally came to him, but instead of hello, when he opened his mouth, years of training and mission readiness took over and what came out was “Ma'am.”

Worse, immeasurably worse, his voice cracked when he said it.
Geezus.
His voice hadn't cracked since he'd been sixteen.

“Hey,” she said, her voice sweet and cool, like liquid silver.

He didn't believe in love at first sight, honest to God, but something really awful and wonderful was happening to him on that porch.

“Nikki McKinney?”

“As charged.” She offered her hand, her voice still very liquid and very cool.

She didn't look like her sister, nothing at all like her sister. She couldn't have been over five foot two or a hundred pounds. Her hair was black . . . and purple, cut short and spiky. Her eyelashes were black, and long enough to cast shadows at the corners of her eyes.

And her eyes—he swallowed softly—her eyes were the clearest, most crystalline gray he'd ever seen, like river water with sunlight shooting through it.

He suddenly remembered she was holding her hand out, and he finally took it with his own. She had delicate bones, a single silver band around her middle finger, and paint caked into her fingernails, electric blue and glitter green. Her skin was soft, her hand very small inside his, but she was stronger than he'd expected. Her firm grip on his hand was proof of that. He looked back to her face—and swallowed again. God, she was beautiful. Not pretty. Not cute, but freaking fucking beautiful, like a Victoria's Secret model, but without the push-up bra.

Without any bra.

His mouth went a little dry at the realization, and he had to force his gaze back to her face—which was no hardship. She had a smear of electric blue paint on one cheek. He had a serious urge to lick it off, but—God—if he ever once got his tongue on her, it was a pretty sure bet he was going to lick more than her cheek.

“And you would be?” she prompted with just enough amusement in her voice to let him know how long he'd been standing there with his tongue hanging out.

“Kid . . . uh, Peter Chronopolous,” he stammered.

“Chronopolous,” she said, his name sounding lazily silken on her tongue. “Also known as Kid Chaos?” One dark, winged brow arched in question.

“As charged,” he managed.

“Regan called a little while ago. She said you were coming. She said Grandpa was fine, camping out in Lafayette.”

“Yes, ma'am.”

Those crystal-gray eyes held his for a long, considering moment. “She said I should be careful with you.”

“With me?” People weren't careful
with
him. Some people might be careful
of
him, but not
with
him. That was his job, to be careful with people, to make sure they didn't get killed—except when he was on the other side of the equation, when his job was to make sure someone did get killed.

He was good at both. The best.

“She told me you were a sniper, an ex-Marine with a gun,” Nikki McKinney said. “Very dangerous.”

Well, hell. He never knew what to expect from civilians, but this was his least favorite response. He wasn't only a sniper.

Who the hell would ever have thought the retrieval operation for a bunch of guns would come to include someone like Nikki McKinney—this incredibly gorgeous, black-Lycra-miniskirted woman wearing a tiny, torn white T-shirt, who was currently short-circuiting his brain and whose hand he'd been holding for far too long—and whose sister had told her he was dangerous. Given the way he'd met Regan McKinney, she could have said worse. Hell, she probably had.

“Actually, ma'am, I'm the least dangerous person with a gun you are ever going to meet.” It was the truest truth he knew, and he knew it down to the marrow of his bones. No one had more respect for the killing power of a gun than a Marine sniper.

“She said to let you in.” It was a simple statement, but Kid got the feeling the question was still under debate in Nikki McKinney's mind.

“I would appreciate it.”

Still she hesitated.

“Sooner rather than later would be better, ma'am.”

M
A'AM
. Nikki wondered if Kid Chronopolous knew how somber he sounded when he called her ma'am. She wondered if he knew how incongruous his frat-boy party looks were with what her sister had said about finding him armed and dangerous with Quinn Younger in Cisco.

He didn't look dangerous, though his duffel bag probably held the gun Regan had warned her he'd be bringing with him. Nikki supposed it only made sense that a sniper would have a gun. She didn't like guns, but neither was she going to make a fuss over it. Regan had been very insistent that she treat Mr. Kid Chaos Chronopolous with a healthy measure of respect. He was wearing a pair of wraparound Oakley sunglasses, and she wondered if his eyes would be dark like his hair, richly dark.

Boy Wonder, Regan had called him, and he was a boy wonder—a wonderful, beautiful boy, a psyche on the cusp in a body fueled by pure testosterone. Perfect. Or at least he looked perfect standing on her front porch. She wouldn't really know until she got him out of his camouflage pants and rumpled blue parrot-printed Hawaiian shirt. It would all have to go, including his scuffed sneakers and black T-shirt, until she had all six feet of him—six feet of warm, smooth skin wrapped around converging layers of ironbound muscle, sinew, and bone—naked and under the lights.

Then she would unwrap him, layer by layer, through her lens and beneath her brush. For model material alone, she decided to let him in.

She loved Regan, but anyone who knew her older sister knew Regan was wound a little tight, especially when it came to her and Wilson. In Regan's view, Grandpa was too old to get anything right and Nikki was too young. Between the two of them, they'd formed a silent pact not to panic every time Regan had a meltdown.

Like last night, when Regan had found the entry on Wilson's desk calendar.

Nikki had stayed cool. Wilson wandered. That's what he did. All summer long. And if he had run off with a woman named Betty, all Nikki had to say about it was “Great.”

She wasn't flippant about her grandfather's welfare. He was getting old. He needed a little looking after, but he was far from incompetent. He could handle himself.

When she'd called, Regan had said there was some kind of trouble, and Nikki didn't doubt it. Trouble was everywhere, expected and unexpected. Her big sister had spent a lifetime building walls around herself to keep the trouble out.

But every wall Nikki had ever tried to build had crumbled, every single one, leaving her naked and unprotected. So she'd long ago learned another way.

“Would you like some iced tea?” she asked, stepping aside, the movement inviting him in. It was still hot, pushing a hundred, and she knew he had to be feeling every degree. She and Travis were melting in the studio.

“Yes, ma'am. I would.”

“I have some work to finish up before Regan and Captain Younger get here. There's a small kitchen in the cottage, well stocked, if you're hungry.”

“Thank you. I made a pretty fast run from Cisco. There wasn't time to stop for . . . uh . . . dinner.” He'd come to a halt in the entryway, his gaze ricocheting from one corner of the living room to the other, his mouth agape.

“I call it
Narcissus by Night
.”

Kid called it incredible, stunning, and the strangest freaking thing he'd ever seen in a living room. Someone had stretched huge sheets of canvas on the walls and had been painting on them. Someone damned good with a brush, and who had a fixation on men—totally ripped, bare-assed naked men. They were everywhere, each one partially painted, partially composed of line drawing, all of them exuding strength and a real out-there sexuality—especially Narcissus, who bore a striking resemblance to the naked angel on the doorbell, from his broken nose to his six-pack abs.

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph
—Kid felt like he'd just walked into a cathouse, a tomcat house. The Narcissus guy had one wall all to himself, stretched out on his side along the length of a dark pool with thunderclouds and bolts of lightning all around. He was gazing into the water, just the way old Mrs. Vernon had told the story in tenth grade English, except old Mrs. Vernon hadn't said anything about the guy's hand sliding along his thigh.

There was no doubt what this Narcissus was thinking, or which direction his hand was heading. It made Kid nervous as hell to be looking at him while he was thinking it and getting ready to do it—not the act, but the rawness of the desire behind it. The artist had stripped him bare, filleted him like a fish. The guy was more than naked, spread out there on the wall like that. He was way too hot for himself, sexually desperate—which was more than Kid wanted to know about the guy's problems, and a whole hell of a lot more than old Mrs. Vernon had ever told them.