Operation Blind Date (15 page)

“What?”

“That I was her anchor. Kept her sane, centered.”

His fingers tightened around hers. “I can see that.”

“She worried about something happening to me. Neither of us ever thought it would be her, not Amber, the golden girl who had it all—” She stopped dead, shaking now. “Oh, God. I’m using past tense.”

He didn’t say anything. He simply pulled her into his arms and gave her shelter.

Chapter 25

S
he was steadier by the time they got back to her apartment. Teague had driven mostly in silence. It didn’t matter, he was there, and that in itself was comforting.

She appreciated that he hadn’t tried to soothe her with false hope. That he hadn’t assured her Amber was all right. He’d only said what he’d always said, that they’d find her. But he must have known all along, and more certainly the more time passed, that there was a chance it would be too late.

As she opened her door she managed not to look at the spot where they’d ended up on the floor last night. But it took an effort that was almost embarrassing, and as observant as he was, Teague was likely noticing how carefully she was avoiding it. Her discomfiture made her voice a little sharp when she turned back to look at him.

“I’d invite you in, but I don’t want a replay.”

He winced, made a small, compressed sound that matched the expression. “That never should have happened.”

“I didn’t mean that it happened. I meant the abrupt stop.”

He looked disconcerted then, which gave her a small bit of satisfaction.

“It wasn’t right. You’re—”

“A client? I know that.”

“Quinn—”

“Wouldn’t approve of you getting involved with a client? Yeah, I got that, too.”

He shifted uncomfortably.

“Not sure Quinn has room to talk, though,” Laney said.

Teague’s mouth quirked wryly then. “And he knows that. It’s not that he’d say anything. Except to be sure.”

“Of what you want?”

“Oh, I know what I want,” Teague said, and a new undertone had crept into his voice, a note that sent an entirely new kind of shiver through her. “He’d be worried about you. Because you’re not in a real good place right now.”

“I’m also a grown woman capable of making decisions.”

“That’s obvious. Look at what you’ve accomplished.”

“But you think me incapable of making this one? Incapable of knowing that I know what I want, too?”

She heard him suck in a deep breath. His jaw tightened as if he were fighting some internal battle. She hoped he was. She hoped he was losing. Or maybe winning? Was he fighting to go, or to stay?

“Not incapable. Just situationally off balance.”

“Is that an official military term?”

He blinked. And then one corner of his mouth quirked upward. “No. But maybe it should be.”

“Have you ever been...situationally off balance?”

“Often. But I’ve also been trained to adapt.”

“And you’ve made decisions in those situations?”

His brow furrowed. She waited. “Of course.”

“And how did they work out, given you’re still here to talk about it?”

His mouth quirked again, and she suspected he’d figured out where she was going with this.

“Laney—”

She cut him off before he could stop her. “So you’re saying you can make a rational decision while situationally off balance, but I can’t?”

“Remind me never to get in a battle of words with you,” he said dryly.

“Gladly.”

“Probably wits, too.”

“Maybe,” she said. “Does this mean you surrender?”

He sucked in a harsh, audible breath. “Speaking of words,” he muttered.

“If I were Amber,” she said slowly, holding his gaze, seeing, savoring the heat burgeoning in his eyes, “I’d try to wind you up tight and then send you on your way wanting, lesson learned.”

“But you’re not Amber.”

“No. I love her like a sister,” she said, very consciously using the right tense this time, “but we’re very different. But I finally remembered that, thanks to her, I’m prepared. She’s always telling me a girl should be, and I’d forgotten she gave me a box on my birthday, as a joke. Or a nudge.”

“Laney,” he began then stopped as if he didn’t have a clue what to say.

Somehow this reassured her, made her bolder. And in the back of her mind she could hear Amber egging her on. She had always said this was the only part of her life where Laney was afraid of taking a chance, and maybe she’d been right.

And underneath it all was another driving motivation. Amber’s disappearance had rattled her quiet world, had brought reality crushingly home to her. You really never knew what might happen and assuming you would have endless tomorrows was not the way to really live.

She reached up to touch him, her fingers lightly stroking that clenched jawline.

“Go or stay,” she said. “But don’t treat me as if I’m fragile or breakable. Or make decisions alone that we should both make.”

“Damn.”

It exploded from him, sounding more like prayer than curse. And then he turned his head, pressed his lips to the palm of her hand. Decision made, she thought, exhilaration slamming through her.

The fire sparked, caught. Nerves already tingling sent messages of heat and need, awakening every part of her in a fierce wave. And then his mouth was on hers, urging, demanding, and she knew he’d thrown that caution to the winds. She wasn’t sure there wouldn’t be a big price to pay, eventually, wasn’t sure he hadn’t been right all along, but she didn’t care. Not now, not when he was holding her, not when she had vivid, searing proof that what she’d felt last night hadn’t been some kind of fluke born of her unsettled state.

It was fire, pure and scorching, and unlike anything she’d ever felt before. Her heart was hammering in response to his touch, her body both demanding and offering. This, this was what they wrote about, sang about. She’d never been sure, feared she was lacking whatever something that enabled people to experience this. But it had just been the wrong person before, that was all. Teague was right, even if only for this moment in time. Maybe she’d regret this someday, maybe he would, but now, now it was all that mattered.

Whatever this was, it was worth any risk.

They made it as far as her couch this time. It made shedding clothes more difficult and the entanglement more frustrating. She thought she heard something rip as he yanked at her shirt. She didn’t care. And he didn’t even notice, which somehow thrilled her.

He was as beautiful as she’d remembered. Taut, lean and strong. Then his hands, just a little rough and very, very male, were on her, cupping her breasts, lifting them for his mouth. She nearly cried out at the searing sensation that shot through her, as if the nerves he aroused were connected to her entire body. His tongue flicked nipples already hardened by his touch, and she arched helplessly. He suckled her gently, and this time she did cry out as the heat and sensation flared. Harder then, drawing that eager peak into his mouth until she thought she would forget how to breathe. He switched to her other breast, repeating the sweet attention until she gasped out his name. Her body seemed to ripple of its own accord, and she felt the ridge of thoroughly aroused male prodding her lower belly, hot, hard, silken, ready.

Just the thought of taking him inside her had her heart pounding until she thought she would die if he didn’t move, now, right now.

He slid a hand downward, not in a rush, at least not the rush she seemed to be in. Leisurely, as if there were all the time in the world, as if she wasn’t about to be consumed by the fire he’d lit. He traced each rib, stroked over her waist, slid out to linger at the curve of her hip, as if he thought someday he might have to reproduce that curve and wanted to get it right.

She understood that if her own urges were any indication. She wanted to trace every inch of him, to savor, remember, wanted her hands and body as well as her eyes able to summon up the memory of this, in case he went all noble on her again and this was the only time they would have.

And then, as his mouth came back to hers, his hand moved, and in the moment before his lips took hers again she felt his touch in that most intimate place. Realized by the ease of his stroke how ready she was for this man, in the instant before the feel of it made her cry out again as he captured the sound with an ever deepening kiss.

He lifted his head, breaking the kiss. She made a small sound of protest.

“Point of no return, Laney,” he said, his voice so low and rough it sent a shiver through her, and the counterpoint to the building heat somehow made it all explode. “Are you sure?”

“What I’m sure of,” she whispered, “is that if you don’t hurry I’ll go insane.”

He made a harsh sound somewhere between acknowledgment and relief. He moved then, reaching down to the floor to wrestle with discarded clothes. A condom, she realized.

He’d come prepared this time.

As if he’d read her thought he said ruefully, “I almost didn’t. Thought maybe it would keep this from happening.”

“But you did.”

“Just remembering how last night felt told me that was useless.”

The husky, quiet admission released any last reservations she had; all she’d needed was to know this was the same for him, this growing, consuming inferno they created together.

“Bed?” he asked.

“Too far,” she answered.

“Yes,” he agreed.

When he finally slid into her, slowly, carefully, she thought she would scream if he didn’t hurry. She wanted all of him, as deep as she could take. And yet the sensation of the slow, steady invasion was so wonderful she wanted it to go on forever.

And then he was there, and her name escaped him on a whispered groan, sending another shock wave through her. She lifted to him, wrapping arms and legs around him, pulling him as close as she could.

He groaned again and finally began to move. Tentative at first, as if unsure.

“Not fragile,” she reminded him, the words taking all the breath she could manage.

The sound he made then was fierce, low and utterly male. And then he gave her what she’d been aching for, a powerful steady rhythm, stroke after stroke after stroke, driving her higher each time, until she was clutching at him, on the edge of spiraling out of control.

Something shifted awkwardly, and she vaguely realized the couch wasn’t quite wide enough for this kind of energetic activity. They were slipping.

“Hang on,” Teague said in her ear, pausing for a nibble that made her shiver anew after he spoke. He moved her arms around his neck, then tightened his hold on her hips. And rolled.

Still joined, they hit the floor. He’d done it so he landed on the bottom, taking the brunt. It drove him even deeper into her, and she gasped more out of pure pleasure than the shock of the impact.

He urged her up slightly, shifting her weight until it was centered on the connection.

“Over to you,” he said.

He was giving her control, she realized. A new, different kind of flame kindled in her, low and deep and hotter than anything she’d ever known. He was hers now. For this moment in time, he was hers. Surrendered. Willingly. This man she doubted knew the meaning of the word in the fighting sense had done it without hesitation for her.

She would see to it that he didn’t regret it. She began to move, slowly, then faster as he urged her on. Every move that ratcheted up her own pleasure seemed to give him just as much, so she quit thinking and just moved as it pleased her.

She knew the moment when he reached the precipice, felt it in his body, heard it in his warning gasp of her name. She leaned forward just enough, felt him shudder. It was the last push she needed and she cried out his name in turn as she went up and over, spiraling, flaming, and not caring if she ever came to earth again.

* * *

She woke slowly, sleepily. Opened her eyes to her small bedroom, the dawn coming early this time of year, seeping around the edges of the blinds designed to keep it out. Familiar, unchanged. She lay still for a moment, letting her fuzzy brain slowly rouse.

And then she was jolted wide-awake by some very unfamiliar changes. In almost the same instant she realized two things. Her body was most pleasantly sore in a few unusual places, and there was a heater snugged up behind her.

Teague.

She was tucked into the curve of his body as he slept, half-wrapped around her.

It all came back in a rush. The couch, hitting the floor. Then he’d picked her up, brought her in here. Good thing, since the box of condoms Amber had gifted her with was here. And now open and less full than it had been.

It was all she could do not to jerk upright and stare at him, just to be sure it had all been real.

But it had been. She knew it had. Her body knew it had. Incredibly, impossibly, magnificently real.

He was still asleep, so she tried to stay still. He had, after all, worked hard last night. She smiled—a silly, pleased, self-satisfied smile. And why not? She was pleased. She’d been pleased to within an inch of her life, and that last time, just after midnight, she wasn’t sure they hadn’t blasted that last inch out of existence.

She lay there in the faint light, luxuriating in the feeling, letting herself remember it all. She had no idea how this morning after was going to go, but right now, at this moment, she didn’t have to think about it. She could allow herself to relive it, from the moment he’d unexpectedly shown up insisting she needed to eat, to the meal itself—which, she thought now, she should have eaten more of, but she’d had no idea she would be burning off so much energy later.

She could have done without the wearying walk-through of that last day with Amber, but she was sure he could have done without hearing it again, especially since she’d come up with nothing new. Nothing had changed from what was said to the fact that Edward had seemed a gentleman who would let Amber decide, from Amber’s flattering sandals to Edward’s rather battered ball cap with the fastener in the back that was tearing.

An image flashed through her mind. That cap, with the plastic snap strip that had started to tear. It had been nearly halfway through the half-inch strip...that tear. She remembered thinking he was going to lose it eventually. The image was clear in her mind.

And so was something else.

She sat up abruptly, heedless this time of waking Teague. And she did; barely seconds later, she heard him.

“Laney?”

She turned, looked at him. But instead of taking the long, romantic look at him she’d wanted moments ago, she cut to the chase.