Playing for Keeps (3 page)

The thought made her press a hand to her midriff. Of course, she could, she told herself firmly. Law of averages. . . She absently straightened the crisp, Egyptian cotton sheets and pulled up the coral and cream silk comforter. She smoothed the wrinkles out of a pillowcase edged with lace, then placed the pillow precisely back on the bed. She turned to look at him.

Oh, God. What a sight he was. A navy MIAMI DOLPHINS T-shirt, a size too small-which looked perfect on him-hugged his broad shoulders, fit snug across his chest, and was tucked into new jeans. His hair needed combing, and dark circles smudged his blue eyes. The sharp planes of his cheekbones showed pale under his tan. He looked like hell.

He looked like heaven.

“I can’t just leave, Jon. The man is the president.”

“He’s not your president. Tell him you’re wiped. Tell him your twelve children, two cats and a dog need you at home. Hell, tell him anything.”

Stubbornly, carefully, she shook her head. He was the one who’d taken the twelve children, two cats and a damned dog off the table. The house, God only knew, was freaking big enough. But that kind of menagerie required two responsible adults to care for them. He’d never been home.

“Dani, think, for God’s sake. These guys took you off American soil, without notifying anyone. They kept me out there for hours while they fed you some sort of narcotic, and you want to stay here?”

Yeah. That pissed the hell out of her. A lot. However, she wasn’t about to roll over and let Jon dictate her life just because he’d shown up in the nick of time. Yes. She needed help-his help and expertise-to figure out what was going on. But she didn’t have to like depending on him. Most of the time if she needed saving she could do it herself, thank you very much. Unfortunately, here and now she needed him. Damn it.

“First,” she told him firmly, “whether I want to stay here or not isn’t the point. The point is I’m twenty-seven years old. And single. I make my own decisions. And no, I don’t particularly want to stay, but I’m going to anyway because it’s the right thing to do. I refused the money, but I can’t just blow off the president, Jon. It would be rude. I’ll leave after the ceremony on Saturday. You, however, can take your bossy self back to DC and remember we’re divorced.”

“Almost.”

She shot him a level look filled with meaning. “Almost is good enough for me.”

“For God’s sake, Danica-”

“Don’t Danica me. I’m leaving on Saturday and that’s that.” Unfortunately, the more insistent he became that she leave, the more insistent she would be to stay. Perverse. But there you go. Her typical, if not always logical, knee-jerk reaction when Jon pushed was to shoved back. But the reality was she wanted to get the hell out of Dodge. She was scared because he was scared.

She had to get over this reaction to his action cycle if she ever hoped to live peacefully without him. She thought she’d mastered that little personality quirk but apparently not. Of course, her willpower and resolve worked just fine when they were thousands of miles apart. She’d mastered stringing together almost ten minutes consecutively of not thinking about him. And almost three minutes consecutively not wanting him. It was a start. As time went on the minutes would turn into hours, and days and months, and years. She’d have years to not think about him.

Annoyed that he was close enough to re-infect her when she was still under emotional quarantine, Danica started the million-mile walk to a pair of chairs across the cream-and-rust-colored, inches-thick, big-as-a-football-field area rug. Her legs were shaky. Hell. Her entire body trembled from the tension in her muscles.

“Need help?” he asked, quietly coming to walk beside her.

Her jaw ached from clenching her teeth. “I want to do this on my own.”

“Don’t you always?”

She shot him a puzzled glance, noticing the tightness of his jaw and the way his hair brushed his well-muscled shoulders. “No. I enjoyed doing things with you. Whenever you were home. Which wasn’t often. I learned pretty damn fast to be independent.”

“Dani—”

“I know.” This was an old argument, and one she really wasn’t up to having at the moment. “You were starting the security business and had to baby it to get it off the ground. Wasn’t it off the ground when you cleared your first million? How about the second? What about the third? How many millions did you need to make to prove you could do it and do it well? How many damned millions did you need to remember our big fancy house and me there waiting? Alone. Ten? A hundred? A billion?”

“You always came first with me.”

She snorted. “Yeah. And pigs fly. Even if I believed you, that’s a small comfort. I walked around a sixty-thousand-square-foot house decorated by a New York decorator flown in especially to surprise me, and I felt nothing but alone and lonely. And if I never see the color fuchsia again, it’ll be too damned soon.”

“I thought it was what you wanted.”

“I wanted you and. . .never mind. That part of our lives is mercifully over.” He was what she’d wanted. And his babies to love.

Instead, over the three years, the houses and the cars had gotten bigger and bigger, and the lonely place in her heart had become an aching cavern that not even spectacular sex could fill.

She finally reached the chair and clutched a fabric-covered arm, lowering herself into it like a little old lady with chronic arthritis.

He sat in the chair beside hers, then stood again and started to pace, his long legs moving with animal grace as he walked off his-what? His mad?

“You’re making me dizzier. Can’t you sit down for a second?”

“Yeah. Sure.” He sat. She’d never known a man with so much energy. Intense. White-hot. Burning. He was always in motion. Always—doing.

His leg went up and down as he bounced his foot as if his engine was running.

“Relax,” Danica said dryly.

“I am relaxed.” He rested his forearms on the silk-covered arms of his chair. His booted foot tapped, his finger drummed the chair arm, his eyelids moved as he scanned the room. Danica gave a mental sigh. All that lovely energy going to waste.

Stop it, she warned herself. Just stop thinking about what it would be like—Aw, come on! One more time. A little devil sat on her shoulder, egging her on. No fair, when I promised myself I’d never-Go on. Double-dare you. Just one quick stop!

All she had to do was move her elbow and they’d touch. She stayed exactly where she was.

As the caffeine finally started working, waking up her groggy brain cells, Danica realized that she almost bought into Jon’s paranoia. She mentally brushed that little devil off her shoulder and away from her far too attentive ear.

“You know you’re overreacting, don’t you?” She glanced at him, changing her depth perception a little, so he was slightly out of focus. “Because we have a. . .history. You were afraid for me, and now you’re seeing some sort of conspiracy around every corner. I’m sorry you wer—” She made the mistake of touching his arm. His warm, hairy, bare forearm.

A bolt of pure, white heat zinged through her hand, causing her to instinctively curl her fingers over rock-hard muscle and heated satiny flesh, covered with crisp dark hair.

Their eyes met.

And just like that, she knew she was in deep trouble.

D
on’t—” she started to say, her voice, in achingly familiar husky tones, dying away as Raven slid from his chair beside her to kneel between her knees. White, feminine-scented silk pooled around his hips as he pressed closer between her parted thighs.

He’d held himself in check for hours. Controlled the ache. The panic. The fear. He shook with the last ragged edge of restraint.

Eyes the same baby blue of his first car, and more familiar to him than his own, stared back at him. They were filled with shadows like storm clouds flitting across a summer sky, as she sat very still beneath his inspection. Reaching up, he bracketed her face, his scarred, beat-up hands dark and ridiculously large against her delicate bones and creamy complexion.

His gaze raked her face, automatically registering details in the space of several erratic heartbeats: A bruise marred the sculpted perfection of her left cheek. A small, scabbed abrasion on her stubborn chin. Insect bites gave her clear complexion small pink freckles. The sexy fall of glossy black hair curved slightly beneath her jaw line. The slightly annoyed frown was just visible beneath the straight curtain of her bangs.

“Jon. . .”

He closed his eyes. As much as he enjoyed sparring with her, right here, right now, he was just overwhelmingly grateful she was alive. “Shh. . .”

She might look as though she was a lightweight, but Raven knew better. His lady had a will of steel and a backbone to match. Danica Raven-he would never think of her as Danica Cross-was a hell of a lot hardier than she looked. He opened his eyes and filled his vision with her. Then, unable to resist, he reached up to plunged his fingers through the heavy black mass of her mussed hair, tilting her face up to the light. He used both thumbs to caress her high cheekbones.

“I—” He had to clear his throat to push the words out and tried again. “I died when I heard about the crash, Dani. I. Died. My heart stopped beating when I thought I’d never see your beautiful face again, never get to hold you. Never ever hear you laugh again—”

He closed his eyes, chest tight, throat aching, and pressed his lips to her forehead, savoring the smooth texture of her flushed skin beneath the brush of his lips. He heard the catch of her sobbed breath then felt the warm brush of her fingertips over his mouth. Breath ragged, heartbeat going haywire, he straightened and opened his eyes, tightening his fingers on her scalp as he drank in her expression. Ah, hell, her lips parted, her eyes darkened with desire.

Raven groaned, bringing his arms down around her slender body, holding her tightly against him as he dragged her out of the chair, bringing them both to their feet. He buried his face in her hair, losing himself in the scent of her. In the warm, living wonder of her. He knew he should loosen his grip so she could at least breathe. But a part of him was afraid that this was just another goddamn dream, and that she’d disappear in a puff of smoke, and a blaze of regrets.

He crushed her mouth beneath his, no warm-up, no gradual buildup, spearing his tongue into the warm, coffee-flavored cavern. He wasn’t just hungry but starving for the taste, the feel, the texture of her. Dani. Dani. Dani.

Her arms came up around his neck, pulling him closer. He tasted the salt of tears. An indication of narrow escapes and near misses. Of second chances.

He slanted his mouth over hers and kissed her deeply, nothing held back. Dani shuddered, standing on tiptoe, drawing him tightly against her body as she kissed him with everything she had. He wanted her now, more than ever, and she wanted him again. That was all he needed to know right now.

Pulling his mouth from hers, dragging in what oxygen he could, he pressed hot kisses along the line of her jaw. His fingers cupping the back of her head as she flattened her breasts against his chest so that he felt their hearts beating in tune. She grabbed hanks of his hair, pulling him to her mouth, holding on for dear life. Oxygen intake was highly overrated. He greedily plunged his tongue into the dark, rich cavern of her mouth. Reveling in the scrape of her teeth, and the pleasure-pain of her nails digging into his scalp, he sucked on her tongue the way she liked it and had the satisfaction of hearing her breath quicken as her nails bit into his neck.

He cupped her breast, sliding his hand beneath the lace to find the hardened point of her nipple, waiting, eager for his touch. “God, I missed this. Missed you.” Flames of lust incinerated what was left of his brain.

“I want you. I never stopped.” He squeezed the erect nipple between his fingers and gloried when her back arched in response.

He needed her naked. Now.

He slid his thigh between hers, rocked it higher. Imagined the wet heat he knew was waiting for him, and almost came at her sharp cry of pleasure.

Home, Danica thought, dizzy with longing. I’m home.

Craving the familiar, sensual assault of his mouth on hers, Danica pressed her aching breast against Jon’s hand, against the urgent fingers bringing her such sharp, sweet pleasure. Their tongues played a sweetly familiar game as she rode the hard, muscular thigh pressed between her legs. More, damn it. More. Now.

She was ready to explode like a supernova, and they were still vertical.

And, damn it, he was still fully dressed. She brought a hand down to tug the hem of his T-shirt out of his pants. Offoffoff.

Her fingers encountered satin skin. She raked her nails lightly up his side in retribution.

His mouth broke away from hers, leaving them both gasping for air and damp with perspiration. His arms loosened infinitesimally. “I’m hurting you—”

Danica wove her fingers through the long strands of hair brushing his shoulders and brought his mouth back to hers. “Stopping would hurt me more,” she whispered before going in for a full assault. The hunger inside her felt almost savage in its intensity. She was no more gentle than he was.

She needed him. His strength. His power. His vitality. She needed him to make her whole again, and knowing that, she held nothing back.

His hands skimmed the narrow silken straps from her shoulders, but because her arms were around his neck, he had to use brute force to snap each thin ribbon without lifting his mouth from hers. She moaned into his mouth as he freed her breasts from the stretchy lace with a brush of his calloused hand.

She keened, a low, pleading murmur, when his large, warm fingers closed around the globe of her breast. Rubbing the hard pebble of her nipple between his fingers, he devoured her mouth with sexy nips and sensual laving of his tongue.

Danica’s heart pounded like a trip-hammer as he tore his mouth from hers to swing her up in his arms. His hands gently supported her back and knees as he crossed the room in a few giant strides of impatience.

She heard the hard throb of his heartbeat beneath her ear and splayed her fingers over his chest next to her cheek, feeling the unsteady thump-thump-thump as his blood flowed through his veins hard and fast.

One knee on the bed, he lowered her among the pillows then followed her down. When she reached for him he shook his head. Catching her wrists with one broad hand, he curved her hands over her head and held them there. “I need to look at you.”

“Later.” She arched her hips and rubbed herself against the hard ridge straining against the zipper of his jeans.

“Cruel woman.”

“Impatient woman,” she assured him thickly. “Do something with those two thousand and one body parts of yours.”

He raised a brow. “All of them?” he asked, kissing her palm.

“Get naked and I’ll let you know which ones I want.”

Jon smiled, a wolfish grin that had her heart doing the tango. “In a minute.” His hair fell over one eye as he stared down at her, and Danica pushed the strands back, letting her fingers linger to stroke the hard planes of his face. He needed a shave. “Now, pal. Right now.”

“Whatever happened to foreplay?” He took a handful of sheer silk and slowly drew the fabric a few inches down her body.

“Over—ah! Overrated.” Danica moaned at the sinuous slide of cool fabric against her sensitized skin. “Touch me,” she demanded, aching for him.

“In a minute.” His eyes, hooded but intense, skimmed her torso. He touched a finger to a sore place just under her ribs. “Bruise.” He bent his head. The satiny strands of pooling hair were cool on her breasts, in contrast to the scrape of his stubbled jaw. He kissed the spot gently then lifted his head again to tug a few more inches of nightie down her body in a frustratingly slow glide.

His hot hand followed cool silk. “I need both hands,” he told her hoarsely. “So you just keep yours right there.”

Danica obeyed, curling her fingers around a pillow as he continued his maddeningly slow reveal.

He kissed the bruises and bug bites all the way down her arched body with lips that made promises. He continued down the slope of her rib to her waist, around her navel, over her hipbone, first one, then the other. Danica flexed her fingers in protest, but didn’t break the invisible hold he put on her. He dragged the fabric down a few more maddening inches, but just before she had him where she wanted him, he shifted and started at the top again. How was it possible that her skin could have become even more sensitive?

A rhythmic throbbing pulsed deep inside her as his lips followed his hands. Across the bridge of her collarbone, down the slope of her chest. . . Danica cried out as his mouth, hot, wet, eager, closed around her nipple. She arched, everything inside her tightening unbearably. She was on fire. Burning.

Teeth scraped the overly sensitive bud, and she shuddered, sobbing his name, a curse, a plea as her body tightened another notch. “I. . .need. . .you,” she managed to gasp as the scalding wetness of his mouth worked its magic. “Now.”

“Soon,” he promised. The single word came out in a rush of hot breath against her other breast.

Powerfully impatient and wonderfully frustrated, Danica pressed her head back into the soft mound of pillows, hands balled into fists as the need he created consumed her. “Jon.” His name was an impassioned plea, spilling from her parted lips.

“You’re so beautiful.” His voice was a husky whisper, more a breath than a sound. He moved up her body to kiss her mouth again.

Hard. Hungry. Hers.

Everything about Jon Raven was hard: his body, his erection, his head. Yep. That was almost as hard as his willpower.

She’d fix that-

As soon as she could move without shattering into a million pieces. “At. Least. Take. Off. Your shirt.” With barely a pause, he yanked it up and over his head, tossing it behind him onto the floor, then bent to run the slick heat of his tongue across her waist to dip into her navel. She curled a leg around the back of his knees and tried to pull him down to her.

The vibration of his chuckle against her tummy sent ribbons of desire shooting through her at the speed of light. Forget keeping her hands restrained. Danica grabbed his shoulders, curling her nails into solid muscle. His skin was hot, blazing hot, damp, and smooth.

She was breathing so fast she felt light-headed and giddy. She lost her train of thought as his mouth slid down her belly. She bit her lip he came close to the heart of her. Her body ached and burned. Hot, then hotter, then on fire. His open mouth trailed down her thigh, leaving her shaking and close to the edge. The weasel dog.

“Don’t stop!” she begged as he drew the last slithering wisp of fabric off her legs, leaving her bare to his intense gaze.

His eyes glittered as he watched her from his position near her feet. He looked up her body then lowered his head and opened his mouth, gently taking her toes into the hot, wet cavern of his mouth and stroking the underside with his tongue.

Sensation shot in a blinding spear from her foot directly to her womb. Her hips arched off the bed as he sucked and nibbled. Her toes literally curled with the sharp, sweet sensation of his wet open mouth. He knew how to play her body like a violin. No, not a violin. A Stradivarius.

“You. . .still have on too many. . .clothes,” she said, desperately, trying to sit up, trying to stay marginally sane while her body reacted predictably to his ministrations. Feeling as juicy as a ripe peach, she braced her other foot on his shoulder. “Jon—” He tongued each toe, licking, nibbling, sucking until Danica’s head thrashed on the mattress, and her fingernails bit into her palms. “I want you inside me. Please—”