Summer Games (22 page)

Who am I to play cold, uncaring queen to the battle-worn soldier who defends my life with his own?

Who am I to disdain competition madness when it’s an ache and a burning in my own body?

There was no answer but the one that stood before her. She shivered again, accepting it. Accepting herself.

Accepting him.

Warm water poured through her hair. His strong, lean fingers worked gently over her head. With each stroke of his hands, scented liquid soap became mounds of slippery lather. He massaged her scalp with slow, powerful strokes while lather slipped and ran through his fingers.

Head tilted back, eyes closed, Raine lived only in the moment. With every cell of her body she absorbed the sensations of water and warmth, of Cord standing so close that she could feel the occasional brush of his shirt against her face and breathe in his oddly familiar scent. The smell of him haunted her like a half-remembered song. When she realized why his scent was so familiar, she laughed softly.

“Ticklish?” His voice was very deep, almost raspy.

“No.” She opened her eyes and looked into his, smiling. “You smell like Dev.”

His lips shifted into an off-center smile. “Is that a polite way of saying I need a shower?”

Her long eyelashes swept down, concealing the laughter and light in her eyes. “Not at all. On you, essence of Devlin’s Waterloo smells . . . sexy.”

His hands paused, then resumed their slow, deep massage. His heart was beating too hard and deep. The purring sound of relaxation and pleasure she made didn’t help cool the heat in his blood. Her head tilted forward, all but brushing his jeans.

He was glad her eyes were closed. If she opened them, she would have plenty to look at. He wondered if she would be shocked or . . . interested.

You’re a damned fool, Cord told himself bitterly. Even if she wanted me, I’m not the kind of predator who would take her the way she is now, off-balance, still in shock from nearly dying.

He shouldn’t even be this close to her, enjoying her, letting the heat and scent of her sink into him like sunlight after endless winter. He shouldn’t be, but he was. Her hair was a thousand silken strands holding him. So was the knowledge that he was giving her pleasure. The certainty of it had no weight, no substance, and was stronger than any chains ever forged.

With another shiver, Raine sighed and rested her head against the hard muscles of Cord’s torso.

He moved quickly, surely, keeping lather from sliding into her eyes. Without shifting her away, he tilted her head back again, keeping her close, not caring that his jeans were getting soaked. Warm water slid over her again, rinsing white ribbons of lather from her hair. Warm water ran over her shoulders, between her breasts, over her stomach and thighs.

She let out a long breath and smiled dreamily. The sensation of being bathed in liquid warmth while fully clothed was both odd and exquisite.

“Once more,” he said. His voice was deep, husky in its intimacy. He didn’t care. It was all he could do to stand up against the waves of heat and heaviness beating between his legs.

Soap came out of the squeeze bottle in fragrant pulses that sank into her dark hair. His hands moved in slow motion, creating pleasure and iridescent bubbles. The changing pressure of his fingers encouraged her to put her cheek against his waist.

She didn’t resist. She didn’t even hesitate. She simply leaned into his tough warmth and smiled.

The motion of his hands shifted subtly, caressing her scalp as much as washing her hair. Eyes closed, savoring the moment, he stood and rocked her very slowly against his body.

For a long time there was no sound but warm water flowing from the wand Cord had braced between his knee and the shower bench. Finally, reluctantly, he picked up the wand again.

“Not yet,” Raine said, putting her arms around his hips as unselfconsciously as she had rested against him. “It’s so good just to be held by you.”

He whispered her name as he cradled her again. Tenderness and restraint coursed through him as much as passion. She was so vulnerable now. Too vulnerable. He knew enough about the physical and mental aftereffects of trauma to understand that she wasn’t completely responsible for her actions right now. She was at the mercy of instincts she didn’t understand.

But he understood. When confronted by death, life reverted to a basic biological strategy: reproduction.

He had seen it happen too many times, to too many people, choices made in heat and regretted in confusion and pain, just one more danger in an already dangerous profession.

He would no more take advantage of her vulnerability at this moment than he would deliberately get her drunk and then haul her into his bed and overwhelm whatever reservations alcohol hadn’t already drowned.

She pressed her cheek closer to him, savoring the warmth radiating through his soaked clothing. “You’re all wet,”

He laughed oddly, wondering if she had been reading his mind. Without being conscious of it, he let his hands slide down to her neck, her shoulders. The pink of her shirt was dark with water, almost cherry colored. Streamers of lather wound over and between her breasts. Her nipples stood out clearly, defined by water and clinging cloth.

Unable to stop himself, he looked, memorizing and remembering at the same time. She had felt so good in his mouth, hard and soft, salty and sweet, giving and demanding, utterly feminine. The soft cries he had dragged from deep in her throat had echoed through his sleepless nights.

With a soundless curse and a stifled groan, he bent and picked up the shower wand. He rinsed her hair carefully, ignoring the siren call of her cheek pressed against his abdomen, the warm water flowing over her, sliding over him, warm water joining them in an intimacy that was fast eroding his control.

He was losing it. He had to stop.

Now.

With quick, hard movements he turned off the faucets. Yet his hands were gentle as he squeezed water from her hair. And he was very gentle when he loosened her arms from around his hips.

“All done,” he said, his voice neutral.

He turned away quickly, before she could open her eyes. He knew that his arousal wasn’t at all concealed by the wet jeans plastered against him.

Dreamily she began to open her eyes.

“I’ll wait out here while you finish your shower,” he said. “Holler if you need anything.”

When the shower door closed firmly behind him, she blinked and rubbed her eyes as though waking from a deep sleep. Confused, she looked at the opaque rectangle of glass and the man silhouetted just beyond. She knew that he had enjoyed touching and holding her as much as she had enjoyed it. What she didn’t know was why he had stopped.

“Cord?”

Instantly the shower door opened. Eyes that were oddly smoky and brilliantly blue looked out at her from an expressionless face.

“I feel a little dizzy,” she whispered.

It wasn’t a lie. When he looked at her like that, she felt weak and dizzy, hot and cold, hungry to taste and feel the male textures of him.

He moved with startling speed, scooping her off the bench and holding her tightly. “I never should have let you out of bed.”

Soft, laughing agreement was breathed into his ear as her arms wound around his neck like a lover. He stood very still for an instant, fighting for control. When it came, he set her carefully on her feet and tilted her chin up until she met his eyes.

“Nearly being killed is the most potent aphrodisiac known to man,” he said, with a casualness that went no deeper than the expressionless mask of his face. “Don’t trust your reactions until tomorrow.”

When Raine understood what Cord was saying—and what he wasn’t saying—she felt as though she had been dropped into ice water. Flushing red in one instant and then going pale in the next, she jerked her arms away from him. But when she would have turned and walked off, she discovered she couldn’t. His arms were still around her.

“You don’t need to hold me.” Her voice was as pale as her skin. She didn’t meet his eyes. “I’m fine now. Not the least bit dizzy.”

“Raine . . .”

She refused to look at him.

He turned her chin until she had no choice. The sensible words he had been going to say caught in his throat. He hadn’t meant to hurt her. He hadn’t really even believed he could, not like this, her eyes narrowed, her lips pale.

“Let go of me,” she said quietly, keeping herself together with the same discipline and nerve that had made her a world-class rider. “I’ve taken enough falls for one day, don’t you think?”

Abruptly he pulled her close and hard, pressing her against the entire length of his hungry body. He didn’t care anymore if she knew just how savagely aroused he was.

“If it was tomorrow,” he said roughly, “I’d be in that shower with you right now, pulling off your clothes and licking water off every bit of your skin. Call my name like that again tomorrow and see what happens.”

He couldn’t help the slow, blazing surge of his hips against her body, but he could let go of her. And he did.

She closed her eyes, wondering how she had so badly misread herself, him, everything.

Off-balance. Again.

She resented the feeling, and the man who caused it. “Maybe, maybe not.” Her voice was a cool echo of his when he had told her about death and aphrodisiacs. “Competition madness is unpredictable. Besides,” she added distinctly, “tomorrow might never come.”

“I used to believe that.”

“You should. You’re the one who taught me.”

“I don’t believe it anymore. Tomorrow will come for us. When it does, I want it to be right. I want to know that I didn’t take you off-balance and more than a little afraid. I’m good at taking people that way. Too good. It’s part of my job. But not you.” His voice shifted, deepened, a river running through moonlight and darkness down to a warm sea. “I want you in a very special way. I can wait one more day for that. I’ve already waited a lifetime.”

She looked away, unable to meet the hunger and certainty in his eyes. Maybe he was right. Maybe she shouldn’t trust her own instincts now.

Maybe she shouldn’t trust herself at all when she was around him.

“I’ll make your omelet while you shower,” he said, his voice matter-of-fact again as he turned away.

This time when the door shut behind Cord, she didn’t call his name. After a silent dinner, Cord took Raine back to the radio room. He saw her looking around with the kind of curiosity that said her mind was alert and in full working order again.

“This is a hallucination,” he said.

“What is?”

“This room. It doesn’t exist. The equipment doesn’t exist. The motor home itself is only an unfounded rumor. Therefore, the fact that you don’t have the security clearance to be here doesn’t matter.”

“Oh. I see.”

“I thought you would, being Blue’s daughter and all.”

“You’re sure you don’t know my father?”

“I can guarantee he doesn’t know my name. Lie down on the bed. If you feel like reading, Thorne brought the books from your motel room. They’re on the bedside table.”

She stretched out on the bed, surprised that it felt so good to be off her feet. One way or another, she had done little for the past eight hours except lie down. A neat stack of mysteries beckoned. She had bought them at Dulles Airport before she got on the plane to California. She picked up the first book and opened it.

Sixty-two pages later she closed the book and picked up a second mystery, hoping that it would hold her wandering attention. After five chapters she chucked the second mystery on the floor and reached for a third.

Only a few feet away, Cord worked quietly. The computer keyboard made tiny hollow sounds beneath his fingertips. The scanner cast fragments of scratchy dialogue into the room. Sometimes poignant, sometimes urgent, most often simply bored, the voices had an eerie unreality that nagged at Raine’s attention as much as the big man who sat and watched the computer with an intensity that hummed with intelligence.

“Delta/Blue Light, do you copy?”

From the corner of her eye, she saw his hand flash out to the scanner and hit the hold button. She realized that each time she had heard those words, Cord had reacted in the same way. Other words, other codes overheard by the scanner seemed to have no interest for him.

She tried to make out the meaning of the transmission, but couldn’t. Both men and women spoke in a staccato shorthand that might as well have been another language.

Curiosity gnawed at Raine. Her assumption that Cord was some sort of glorified bodyguard for her father had shattered against the high-tech, high-tension reality of the motorhome. Whatever Cord did, it was more far-reaching and less obvious than guarding VIPs.

Doggedly she dragged her thoughts back to the second chapter of the third mystery for the fourth time, but its clues and red herrings were less tantalizing than the fragments of conversation pulled out of the night by the scanner. When the words “Delta/Blue Light” came again, and Cord stopped the scanner to listen, she put down her book with an impatient gesture. As soon as the transmission ended, she looked at him directly for the first time since her shower.

“What is ‘Delta/Blue Light’?”

He swiveled his chair to face her and said nothing.

“If the equipment doesn’t exist, and the room doesn’t exist, then I don’t exist,” she said reasonably. “You can’t break any security rules by telling me about Delta/Blue Light, because I’m not really here at all, am I?”

His lips turned up in the shadow of a smile. “You should have been a lawyer.” For a moment longer he hesitated, then he shrugged. “Delta/Blue Light is a big secret, badly kept. The newspapers have been hinting about it for eighteen months.”

She waited, knowing that he would tell her what he thought he should, and no more. She also knew that it was his way of protecting her, as her father had protected her mother. But even knowing that, she chafed at ignorance in a way she never had before.

She wanted to know more about Cord Elliot, about what he was, about what he did, about his thoughts and memories and dreams. Yet his life was a closed file kept in a locked cabinet in a guarded room, with access only on a strict need-to-know basis.