Avenging Angel (16 page)

“You’re still hurt.” Her fingers touched his shirt, close to where he’d been knifed.

“Yeah, I know,” he said, pulling her shoes off and dropping them over the side of the bed. “But let’s just do one thing at a time. Okay?” He looked at her from under his lashes and flashed her a grin.

The underlying sensuality in that rare smile of his was her undoing. It brought the mischief back to his face, the implicitly sexual mischief he’d promised her more than once when their eyes had met across Austin’s office. His smile had been the tease, the come-on she’d waited for during Austin’s longwinded tirades. Dylan’s smile had been the lifeline she’d looked for when Austin had started stalking her like bedroom prey instead of simply admiring her as a boardroom advantage.

“Okay,” she agreed, pushing herself up and slipping out of her jeans. She dropped them over the side of the bed to join her shoes. A smile of her own graced her mouth, and she began unbuttoning his shirt. “And the first thing we’re going to do is take care of you.”

She opened his shirt, and her fingers were on the corner of his bandage before he caught her hand.

“You’re working a little high, counselor,” he said, sliding her hand lower, down over his chest. With his other hand, he unbuckled his belt and opened his pants.

“You need to be taken care of,” she insisted.

“You’re right.” He kissed her, moving his mouth over hers as he drew her hand ever lower. Slowly he pushed her back on the bed and slipped her hand beneath his waistband. “So take care of me, Johanna.”

His message was clear, his method of delivery provocative, and his request undeniable. He filled her hand with his heat and desire, making her want to touch him and hold him, to stroke him until his pleasure ran over into her.

“Dylan.” The breath went out of her on a shuddering sigh as he responded with a groan.

“Yes,” he urged her, keeping to the rhythm she set.

He stripped off her underwear and began his own sensual exploration of her body. Smoothing his hand over the sleek, creamy skin of her curves from breast to hip, he remembered everything he’d missed about not having a woman, and realized everything he’d missed by not having her.

But she was his tonight.

“Johanna.” He sighed her name and threaded his fingers through the soft curls at the apex of her thighs. Every atom of his being told him to take her, to imprint himself on her and take more than she knew she had to give. She was his salvation—not from Austin, nothing could save him from Austin—but from dying alone for no reason other than that he had stayed in the game too long and gotten caught.

Johanna Lane would remember him, and he wanted those memories to be passionately alive, to last. He wanted to give her the very best of himself and as much of the truth of Dylan Jones as he had left.

He took a hold of her wrist when to let her continue her sweet torture would only leave her unsatisfied and him wishing he’d been able to wait.

“Dylan?” she asked, her voice questioning and breathless.

“I want to make love inside you,” he told her, smoothing his thumb across her brow and pressing his lips to her forehead. “And I want you to be naked when I do it.”

The color that washed into her cheeks brought another smile to his face. He rolled onto his back to shuck off his jeans, then took the rest of his own clothes off before he came back and helped her slip out of her T-shirt and bra.

“You are so beautiful,” he murmured, running his hand down the line of her throat to her breast. He followed the path with his mouth, then lifted his head to meet her eyes. “I used to spend a lot of time wondering what you looked like without your clothes.” His glance strayed down her body. “I know a lot of people do that, it’s human nature—but with you, it was different. I’d watch the way your hips moved when you walked and be damn impressed that any physical action could be so smooth, that such a relatively small movement could have such a profound effect on me. I should have been immune, but I wasn’t. And counselor”—his hand swept down over her hip to her thigh—“I didn’t have it even half-right.”

“Dylan,” she whispered, and he pulled her beneath him, laying his body along the length of hers.

“You were important to me from the first day we met, and I can’t tell you how many times I wished I’d kissed you that night.”

“I’m not sure we would have stopped at a kiss,” she confessed, looking up at him with surprising shyness, considering that they were almost as physically close as two people could get.

A slow, easy smile curved his mouth. “I can guarantee we wouldn’t have stopped at a kiss.”

His hand glided across the top of her leg and up her inner thigh until he touched the soft core of her femininity. He stroked her there and watched a lambent light darken her eyes and take the shyness away. His smile faded.

“Don’t forget me, Johanna,” he said, his voice hushed as he pushed into her, making the contact he had craved. Her gasp of pleasure was all the invitation he needed to take her higher.

Don’t forget me . . . don’t forget me
. His entreaty tore at Johanna’s heart while his body made her forget everything except that he was with her now, for this moment of time.

She gave him everything. Where he touched her, she opened herself and gave him back warmth and welcome. She touched him in turn, and with her fingertips and the palms of her hands told him he was beautiful. She whispered words of love she should have kept to herself, yet she retracted nothing. She let him have her ego and her pride, because he had given her life. The man of her dreams was more than she’d ever imagined him to be, more courageous, more tempting, and more in need of her love.

When she felt him quicken inside her, she wrapped her legs around his waist and held him. The tension he created inside her increased in waves of intensity until he came to the point where his surging slowed in speed and built in power and grace, filling her deeper, pushing her farther.

“Dylan . . . Dylan.” She clung to him, her back arching in the purest physical release.

Dylan covered her mouth with his, sealing them together and taking the sounds of her surrender inside himself and adding them to his own.

She was his. In triumph and ecstasy, she was his.

* * *

He held her long past the time when he could have let her go. She was warm and sweet in his arms, her body trembling, her lips moving in a gentle caress across his shoulder and down the curve of his biceps.

He’d weakened himself immeasurably by loving her. His state of relaxation was so complete as to be dangerous, yet he couldn’t keep a smile from flirting with his mouth. He felt so good. Turning his head, he kissed the soft skin of her neck and buried his face in the crook of her shoulder.

Moments later, his breathing grew soft and even in the quietness of sleep.

When Dylan awoke to sunlight several hours later, he was alone.

Panic grabbed at his gut. She was gone.

Dylan swung his legs over the side of the bed and grunted at the pain that shot through his chest. A bloodstained towel fell into his lap. He stared at it a moment, confused, then he realized she must have pressed it to his wound while he was asleep—before she’d run off to her damn my-partner-Henry-Wayland, or the police, or to who knew the hell where.

He swore furiously. He’d been suckered by the oldest trick in the book—
pun intended
. She had been sweet and willing, and he’d taken the bait, hook, line, and sinker, and lost himself in the love he’d felt.

Damn her
.

To think she’d been lying to him last night hurt more than he would have admitted to anyone, himself included. He clenched his hand into a fist.

He couldn’t have been that wrong about what had happened between them. He had trusted her, and he hadn’t thought he’d ever trust anyone again. His paranoia on that score had saved his life more than once. Extreme caution was an ingrained habit. Watching his back was the cardinal rule. Those kind of convictions weren’t overcome by a beautiful face and a great pair of legs, even if the great legs were wrapped around him. It took something more.

No, he had not been wrong about Johanna Lane. She wouldn’t have left him . . . but she could have been taken.

The thought no sooner formed than he discarded it. Austin would not have left him alive under any circumstances.

So where the hell was she?

Lifting his head, he took a breath and tried to slow the racing of his heart. Early-morning light, vague and hazy, spilled across the middle of the cabin, showing him most of what he’d missed the previous night: the mellow pine paneling, the moss-rock fireplace and blue hearth rug, the cowboy lamp on the dresser, the autumn-leaf pattern in the curtains. He looked out at the scenery framed by the window and saw heavy mist and fog rising off the river.

The smell of coffee slowly brought his head around. A plate of doughnuts and an insulated coffeepot were sitting on the bedside table. He felt the first edge of fear ease. Gus didn’t do room service; the food had to have been Johanna’s idea. The duffel bag with his guns and clothes was at his feet, and the shotgun had been leaned against the wall next to the headboard, as if whoever had put it there had had plenty of time to organize things the way they liked, or the way they thought he might like things organized.

Gus definitely wouldn’t have touched his gun. Johanna, on the other hand, would have known exactly where he’d expect to find it if he needed it. He started to relax, but not enough that he could do anything except pray she hadn’t gone so far he couldn’t find her damn quick.

He pushed himself to his feet, stifling a groan. His legs didn’t feel too steady. As he reached for his pants the door opened, slamming his adrenal gland into overdrive.

Propelled by instinct, he lunged for the shotgun and swung it around, pumped and ready to fire.

“Hi,” she said softly after a heartbeat of terror had passed over her face, leaving her pale and wide-eyed. She stood half inside the doorway. “I was afraid this might happen.”

“What?” His finger was on the trigger and his pulse was going a hundred miles an hour in an erratic, breath-stealing rhythm.

“That you might accidentally shoot me if I came back inside. I got to thinking I’d made a mistake by putting the gun where you could get to it. But I knew you’d be safer if it was in reach.” She paused and made a helpless gesture with her hand. “I should have knocked, or something, but I didn’t want to wake you up if you were still asleep. I stood out there on the porch for five minutes before I decided to take a chance.”

“I’m sorry.” He slowly set the shotgun down on the bed behind him, trying to prove to both of them that he was in control. “I’m not quite awake.”

“You move pretty fast for someone who isn’t quite awake,” she said, still holding her ground by the door.

“It’s called an overload of survival instinct. It’s not a very comfortable thing to live with.” He ran a hand through his hair and attempted a smile. “It’s okay to come in.”

She didn’t look like she believed him.

“It makes me nervous to have you stand in the doorway like that,” he added, trying to coerce her inside where she would be safer.

It occurred to him then that he was buck-naked, and from the way her gaze fell, he could tell it was occurring to her too. Of its own accord, the temperature seemed to rise in the room.

“Better be careful, counselor,” he warned her softly. “Like you said, I can move pretty fast for someone who isn’t quite awake.”

His teasing brought a wry smile to her mouth. She looked up at him with one eyebrow raised.

“I think if it came to that, I could outrun you this morning,” she said. “I’ve had my coffee, and I’m wide-awake.”

“Yes, but I’ve got motivation.”

“Me too,” she said, closing the door behind her and crossing the room. “I’m motivated to look at your wound this morning.”

“What I have in mind is more fun,” he assured her, following her with his eyes as she bypassed the bed and headed into the bathroom. She was wearing one of his clean shirts, the tails tucked into her jeans, the collar flipped up. It was big on her, but he liked the way it looked. He liked having her wear his clothes.

“No doubt.” She disappeared into the smaller room, and he heard the water start running in the bathtub. “Are you going to come in here, or do I have to come out there and get you?”

He took a bite of doughnut and reached for his pants, grinning widely. She was still with him. He was still winning.

With less trouble than he’d anticipated, he managed to get his pants on and zipped up. He’d been living on adrenaline for too long, and letting go of it last night with her had left him sore and aching, able to feel the tension he’d been nursing into steel knots in his muscles and joints for three days and nights.

“Dylan,” she called.

He took another bite of doughnut and poured himself a cup of coffee. He wasn’t going in there without coffee.

“Dylan.”

He looked over his shoulder and found her leaning against the bathroom door, a no-nonsense expression on her face.

“You shouldn’t have bothered to put your pants on,” she said. “I’m only going to take them off you again.”