Private Affair(60)

“No.”

“Of course I did. I knew it wasn’t safe to leave you alone. Then I let myself get lured away—so the killer could come to your house. He obviously had it all set up.”

“And he obviously had it carefully planned,” Olivia reminded him. “He wanted you to leave so he could come after me and Claire.”

“How does that change anything?” he asked in a gritty voice.

“Well, you realize that he could have lured you away to kill you,” she said.

His eyes widened. “Jesus, I didn’t think about that.”

“I did. I had a lot of time to think while I was hanging around police headquarters, waiting for you to finish with that nasty detective. Where were you supposed to meet Shane?”

“In the parking lot of the restaurant where we had the reunion   meeting.”

“So he knew about that. In fact, he could have been there.”

“Or not.”

She could see from his face that nothing she said was going to have much effect on the way he felt about what had happened. He was still kicking himself for leaving her unprotected. Probably Hamilton had pounded that into him as well.

Maybe she wasn’t totally sure how she felt about his going. But she knew there was only one way to reassure him that she wanted him here with her.

She reached for him, pulling him to her, feeling his resistance and knowing when he finally gave up fighting what he wanted. What they both wanted.

She cupped the back of his head and brought his mouth to hers in a kiss she didn’t even pretend was part reassurance. It was all heat and fury and relief that both of them had come through the incident all right.

He made a sound deep in his throat. A sound of surrender, she decided, as the kiss changed its focus. She had been the aggressor to start with. Now he took that role, and if she had been surer of him, she would have thought that he was staking his claim on her.

He gathered her close, his hands moving over her back and shoulder and into her freshly washed hair. She felt his erection standing up between them, hard and insistent, and knew that this time things were going to end differently.

He fumbled for the belt of the robe, opening the tie and letting the belt ends drop to the side before he swept the edges of the garment out of the way.

She was wearing nothing underneath, and the feel of his large hands on her naked body sent a shock wave through her. The kiss had aroused her. It was nothing to what she felt now.

She was pretty sure the public made assessments about her life. Probably they thought she had slept with a lot of men. But it wasn’t true. Of course she’d had a lot of offers, but she’d learned to be cautious about relationships. And this was the first man she had let past her defenses in years. Maybe because he hadn’t been trying. He’d been keeping his distance, the way she had been until she’d understood what kind of man he was.

His hands moved over her stomach, her ribs, then reached to cup her breasts. He made a needy sound as he took them in his hands, and she echoed that sound when he stroked his thumbs across nipples that had hardened to tight points of sensation.

When she felt him go still, she raised her head, giving him a questioning look.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” he asked in a gritty voice.

“Very sure.”

To make that point, she reached for his belt buckle and pulled the end of the belt free before finding the button at the top of his jeans.

He kept his gaze on her face as she lowered the zipper and reached inside, cupping her hand around his erection through the soft fabric of his boxers.

He sucked in a sharp breath. “That’s good. Probably too good.”

“Yes,” she answered, smiling at his reaction.

Next she tackled his shirt, opening the buttons and pushing the garment off his shoulders. While she did that, he was slicking down his jeans, scuffing off his shoes, and kicking his pants away.

She reached around to his butt, stroking her hands over his curves, and he did the same, then he reached lower into the folds of her sex, caressing her there with knowing fingers.

He let go of her long enough to shrug out of his shirt and push the robe off her shoulders so that they were both naked, with a convenient bed only steps away. She’d already turned down the covers, and he took her down to the surface of the mattress with him, gathering her close and starting to kiss her all over again, beginning with her mouth, then her ears, her neck, her collarbone, and finally her breasts.

“Don’t make me wait,” she pleaded.

He lifted his head away from one breast so that he could speak. “I want you as hot as I am.”

One of his hands traveled down her body while his mouth returned to the nipple he’d been circling with his tongue. When he drew her into his mouth and began to suck, she knew she couldn’t take much more.