Extreme Exposure (16 page)

Kara couldn’t speak. She stared into his blue eyes, too stunned to be angry. Her heartbeat tripped, faltered. The breath left her body in a shudder, and heat flared low in her belly.

“Your skin is so soft. I don’t know what that scent is, but you smell good enough to eat.” His voice was a deep, seductive rumble.

“It’s lavender.” She wasn’t aware she’d spoken.

“It makes me want to kiss you everywhere.” His hands had left her feet and now deftly massaged the muscles of her left calf, sliding beneath the fabric of her sweatpants until they reached the sensitive bend of her knee.

She shivered. “Mmm.”

And then his hands were on the drawstrings at her waist, untying them, sliding beneath the fabric, beneath her panties, cupping her. The heel of his hand pressed against her mound, moving in slow, deep circles, unleashing a surge of wet heat. She knew she should stop him. She couldn’t stop him. She didn’t want to stop him.

She moaned, lifted her hips instinctively to meet his touch, and reached up to grasp his shoulders. “Oh! What are—?”

“Shh! Just enjoy it.” He was leaning over her now, one knee thrust between her parted thighs, the other on the floor, the spicy scent of him surrounding her. The fingers of his free hand threaded through her hair and pulled her head back, exposing her throat to his kisses and the scrape of his five-o’clock shadow, while the hand inside her panties kept up a relentless rhythm.

She had to touch him, had to feel him. Her hands slid over the silky fabric of his shirt, grasped hungrily at the shifting muscles beneath, and fought with the buttons of his fly. But then his fingers found her clitoris, and she could do nothing but cling to him.

Never had it come upon her this fast, this intense. In an instant, she hovered on the iridescent edge of an orgasm. “Oh, jeez, I’m going to come!”

His voice was rough. “Goddamn straight you are!”

He pushed a finger deep inside her, and the shimmering heat exploded.

Her cries might have awoken Connor, had Reece not thrust his tongue into her mouth, taken them into his lungs. And even as his skilled fingers prolonged her climax, they drove her to a second shattering peak.

She gasped in surprise, arched against him, and shuddered as the jagged pleasure of it washed through her and left her weak. For a moment, she lay still, her eyes closed, and listened to the sound of their combined breathing. Then she opened her eyes and found him gazing down at her, a smile on his face.

“You’re incredibly sexy when you come.” He withdrew his hand and ran a finger slick with her own musky juices across her lower lip.

The ringing phone brought her upright with a jolt.

Reece saw the fear on her face and bit back several four-letter words. He stood and adjusted his rather painful erection. “Do you want me to answer it?”

She shook her head, popped off the couch and, tying her sweatpants as she went, hurried to the phone. “Hello?”

Her face blanched, and her finger flew to the record button.

A raspy male whisper came out of the answering machine’s speakers. “—listen very well, do you? This is your last warning, bitch. The ride gets rough from here. Hurt us, and we will destroy you, got that?”

“Who is ‘us’?”

But the caller had hung up.

“Dammit!” She slammed the receiver down.

Reece picked it up and held it out to her. “Call Chief Irving. Now.”

C
HIEF
I
RVING
arrived in less than ten minutes. He was a big, beefy man with a beer gut that made him look eleven or twelve months pregnant. His white hair was cropped short and stood almost on end, giving him the look of someone who’d recently gotten an electrical shock. But the pale blue eyes that gazed out at them from beneath bushy white eyebrows were intelligent, appraising
—
the eyes of a lifelong cop.

Reece watched while the officer questioned Kara about the calls and listened to the recordings, anger brewing in his
gut
—
anger at Kara, at the cops, at the bastard who had threatened her and put the shadows in her green-gold eyes. She refused to discuss the story she was working on and told Irving only that it involved serious environmental crimes and a corporate whistleblower. She also told him that a state government source had contacted her this morning to warn her that both her life and that of the whistleblower might be in danger
—
a significant bit of information that worried Reece even more.

The whistleblower was leaving town. Kara was not.

“Can you give me the name of the company? Or how about the whistleblower’s contact information?”

She eyed Irving suspiciously and shook her head. “Not without asking permission.”

“How about the government source?”

She shook her head again. “Again, I’d have to ask first.”

Reece gritted his teeth, torn between admiration and anger. His rational mind knew Kara wasn’t withholding the information to be difficult. She had promised to protect people’s identities, and she was trying to keep her word. He couldn’t fault her for that; her strong sense of ethics was one of the things that attracted him to her. But his gut didn’t give a damn about anyone else at the moment. He wanted to know Kara and Connor were safe.

“Well, Ms. McMillan, I’m afraid there’s not a lot we can do with the information you’ve given us. If I could talk to the others
—
the whistleblower and the state government source
—
then we’d have something to work with. I know secrecy is important in your work, but your life is important, too. Whoever this guy is, he’s persistent, and that bugs the shit out of me.”

“I understand. I’ll talk to my sources and see if they’re willing to speak with you. I’ll talk to my editor, too, and see what he says about divulging the name of the company and nature of the story. If he approves it, I’ll call you.”

“I suggest you get a new unlisted number.” Irving reached into his briefcase and pulled out a small device that resembled
a cell phone. Instead of a number pad it had only a large, red button. “And until this is over, I’d like to set you up with this.”

“What is it?”

“It’s a panic button.” He drew out another device, this one with a long electrical cord. “Set the charger up next to your bed so it’s beside you at night, and carry it with you during the day. If anyone tries to carry out this guy’s threats, you just push the red button. The signal is relayed straight into dispatch, and units will be on their way immediately.”

Kara frowned, turned the device over in her hands, and for a moment Reece thought she was going to refuse to take it. Then she set it down on the coffee table. “Thanks for coming out so late, Chief Irving. Sorry I can’t be more helpful. I feel like I’ve wasted your time.”

“Call me with any new information.” Irving pointed at the panic button. “And push that sooner rather than later. I’d rather have a false alarm than a dead body.”

Reece followed Irving toward the door. “I’ll walk you back to your car.”

Irving, it turns out, drove an ordinary car of the sort used for plain-clothes work. Reece opened the driver’s side door. “If you come up with anything, could you let me know?”

“Sure, Senator. But I really wish she’d just tell us what we need to know.”

So did Reece. “She’s trying to uphold the ethical standards of her profession. She’s made promises to people, and she’s trying to keep them.”

Irving tossed his briefcase in and squeezed his gut in behind the wheel. “I guess I can respect her for that. I just hope it doesn’t get her killed.”

Reece watched Irving’s tail lights disappear down the street. “That makes two of us.”

CHAPTER 12

K
ARA LIFTED
Connor so he could drop a quarter into the saber-toothed tiger’s gaping mouth. The grimacing beast gave a ferocious, mechanical growl, the same growl it had been dispensing to museum visitors for donations of spare change since she’d been a little girl.

Connor giggled with delight. “Another one, Mommy!”

His laughter had always felt magical to her, as rare and precious as the tinkling of fairy bells. It made her happy just to see him smile. It was one of many things about being a mother that had completely taken her by surprise.

Holding him up with one arm, she dug into her purse and felt her fingers brush up against something unfamiliar
—
the panic button. She batted it aside, scraped along the bottom of her purse, and pulled out a couple of loose dimes and a penny. “Here you go.”

Three more gratifying growls.

Kara set Connor back on his feet, took his hand, and led him toward the exit.

“Can we come back again?” He looked up at her through expectant brown eyes and then yawned. He’d probably fall asleep in the car on their way home.

“I’d like that.”

They walked out the big glass doors toward the crowded parking lot, passing Saturday’s skateboarders, stressed-out parents with strollers, and gaggles of geese that lived in
nearby City Park and suffocated the museum’s lawn with their fertilizer. Watching the geese waddle, it was hard to imagine that their ancestors might have been the enormous, ferocious creatures whose bones she’d just seen.

Not that Kara had been paying that much attention to the museum’s educational displays. Like a song playing over and over again in her mind, thoughts of Reece followed her everywhere. His thoughtfulness in making dinner, covering her with the quilt, installing the new lock. His gentle indulgence of Connor. His expertise with his lips and hands.

Good lord! She got turned on just remembering it.

He’d brought her over the edge so hard and fast she’d barely had time to breathe. And it had seemed important to him that she really enjoy it
—
she’d felt it in the heat of his kisses, heard it in his voice, and sensed it in the way he’d focused so intently on her response.

Goddamn straight you are!

They barely knew each other, and yet he seemed to understand so much about her, anticipating her needs and respecting her feelings in a way no one ever had. How could that be? And what did he want from her? He was going to an awful lot of effort just to get laid, if that’s all he wanted. Besides, he’d had more than one chance to push sex with her, and he hadn’t. He wanted more than sex, but the question was how much more.

Had Galen ever treated her with this same consideration? No, he hadn’t. Oh, certainly, he’d done thoughtful things like buy her roses or surprise her with dinner at a fancy restaurant. But every gesture, every word had been predictable, almost mechanical, as if he knew what was expected of a lover and was determined to fulfill those obligations.

Nothing Reece did was ever predictable.

If she’d been with Galen last night, he would have expressed his concern for her safety in a few articulate sentences, then hurried her into bed so he could have his orgasm, too. But not once had Reece brought up the fact that she had
come and he had not. Nor had he tried to bring them back to the place they’d been before the phone had rung. Instead, bristling with anger she didn’t understand, he had checked every door and window to make certain they were all locked tight and then offered to sleep on the couch. When she’d told him she would be fine, he’d given her a good night kiss, promised to call her, and reminded her to lock the door behind him.

I guess no man has ever gone out of his way to spoil you before
.
Well, get used to it
.

She wasn’t sure she
could
get used to it.

Of course, it wasn’t just a matter of what Reece wanted, she reminded herself. This was her life. It was what she wanted for herself and for Connor that counted.

So what did she want?

A man who grabs your hair in big fistfuls and twists and pulls it when he’s fucking you
.

A bolt of heat shot through her belly.

Oh, stop it! Just because he’s sexy enough to thaw nuclear winter and pretty much frigging perfect doesn’t mean you have to obsess over him!

She fished her keys out of her purse, unlocked the doors, and lifted a very sleepy Connor into his car seat, determined to put Reece out of her mind for at least the next five minutes. “Let’s buckle you up. There you go, sweetie.”

A shadow fell across the car from behind her.

She whirled about and found herself face-to-face with a ragged man in dirty clothes.

“Spare change, lady?”

Heart racing, she groped in her purse, grabbed some loose coins, dropped them into his filthy upturned palm.

Get a grip, McMillan! Since when do homeless people scare you?

“God bless, ma’am.” He gave a little bow and walked off to work the crowd.

Only after she’d turned onto Colorado Avenue and her heartbeat had returned to normal did she realize that she’d completely forgotten about the panic button.

“P
USH IT
! Push it! Eleven! One more.”

Reece ignored the screaming of his pecs and triceps, brought the bar down almost level with his chest, and then pushed with every shred of his remaining upper-body strength. His muscles shook and felt paralyzed under the crushing weight, but he inched the bar upward.

“Come on! Push it! Push it! Twelve!” Miguel took the barbell’s weight from him and lifted it into its rest. “Three-ten. That’s your new best,
amigo
. You are cookin’ today.”

Reece sat up, caught his breath, and toweled the sweat off his face with arms that would barely bend. “Thanks, Miguel.”

“You haven’t mentioned her name once, but I can tell she’s all you’re thinking about.” Miguel’s voice held a prying tone as he removed two twenty-five-pound weights from the barbell for his own sets.

“It’s that obvious?” Reece stood, grabbed his water, and shot the cool liquid down his throat.

“Definitely.”

The amused look on Miguel’s face only worsened Reece’s already black mood. “Did you come here to lift steel or to chitchat?”

Miguel settled back onto the bench to start his sets. “Start counting.”