Flashback

12

AIDAN PUSHED AWAY from the door and came toward Kenzie, all easy, loose-limbed confidence, yet radiating an intensity that made her breath catch. He didn’t stop until they were toe-to-toe, and she slowly tipped up her head to look into his inscrutable eyes.

“You want to have sex,” he said silkily. “Here. Tonight. Now.”

Her breath caught at his bluntness. “And then maybe again later.”

“Later,” he repeated, as if trying to process this.

“Maybe even until I leave Santa Rey. At which time we both walk away, eyes wide open.”

He just stared at her for the longest moment. “What happened to trouncing on my heart?”

“It seems you were right. I don’t really want to hurt you.”

When he shot her a not-buying-it look, she caved. “Okay, so I want to hurt you less than I want to sleep with you again.”

“You know, you’d think I’d be tough enough to walk away from such an overwhelmingly romantic offer,” he said drily, sounding both intrigued and baffled. “But apparently…” He put his hands on her hips. “I’m not.”

She offered a smile that was sheer nerve. “So…yes?”

His eyes never wavered, holding hers, leveling her as he pulled her in. “I don’t know, Kenzie. I’m a little afraid…”

“Be serious.”

His smile was crooked and impossibly endearing. “I am. This time you could really do it, whether you’re trying to or not. This time, you just might take out my heart.”

“Come on,” she quipped, even as a part of her was afraid he was right, for both of them. “If we’re just having a physical relationship and nothing else, how can we get hurt?”

With a soft laugh, he slid his hands up her spine, and then back again, low enough now to cup her butt and squeeze.

He was hard.

Bending his head, he put his mouth to her ear and let out a breath that made her shiver in longing. “Just a physical relationship, Kenzie? Is that all this is? Really?” He sank his teeth into her lobe and she shivered again.

“It-it’s all it should be,” she managed.

Another soft, deprecating laugh rumbled through his chest, this one aimed at the both of them. “Okay, well as long as we’re being honest, you should know…” His hands glided up her spine again, this time beneath her shirt to touch bare skin. “Even though you are going to hurt me, it’s not enough to make me say no. Truth is, nothing could…”

She opened her mouth to say something, but then he kissed the spot he’d just nipped at, soothing the ache as his fingers stroked over her skin. Her eyes drifted shut, and she slid her arms around his neck, pressing close. “No pain, no gain,” she whispered, and he let out another low laugh as he lifted her up and carried her to his bedroom.

To his bed.

He settled over her, looking down into her face for a beat before lowering his head and taking her mouth with his demanding one.

If simply walking into his house had felt like a homecoming, then this, here, now, felt even more so. He felt like home, he smelled like home, and he tasted even better; she hesitated, thinking, uh-oh.

His hands came up to hold her face. “What?”

She stared up into his eyes and saw herself reflected there, as if they were one, and although it was deeply unsettling to realize that this time she could fall even harder for him-if she let herself-she also couldn’t imagine walking away, without being in his arms again.

“Kenz?”

“Nothing, it’s nothing.” And she pulled him down for another kiss as the heat of him seeped into her bones, warming her with a sensual promise of what was to come. Those big, warm hands slid along her arms, lifting them up over her head, entwining their fingers as his mouth continued to plunder hers, delivering on that promise.

It was familiar, and it was comforting, and yet it was so, so much more as well. Not since being with Aidan six years ago had she given any thought to what it would be like to be with a guy long enough that he felt…like home. She was a woman who liked change, who liked the new and exciting, who lived off the lines someone else wrote for her each day.

But with Aidan, she knew what he felt like, what he tasted like, exactly how crazy he could drive her with a touch of a single finger, and yet being with him felt almost unbearably right, and far more arousing than she could have ever imagined.

Still kissing her, he pulled off her top, then her skirt. Her new bra was a front hook, which didn’t slow him down at all, and when he had her naked except her panties, he hooked his fingers in the thin strip of cotton on her hips and let his gaze meet hers. Then he tugged, slipping the underwear down her legs and off, sailing them over one shoulder. Towering over her, fully dressed while she was as naked as she could get, he let out a low breath. “You’re so beautiful.”

“And you’re overdressed.” Still in his fire gear, in fact…

“In a minute.” He was kneeling between her legs. He spread his, which in turn spread hers, and his gaze took her in, in one fell swoop, heating her skin everywhere he looked. He traced his fingers over her breasts, her belly, her thighs.

Between.

When he bent his head with fierce intent, she sucked in a breath, a breath that clogged her throat when he replaced his fingers with his mouth.

“Aidan,” she managed, hardly recognizing her own voice. “I-”

His tongue encircled her tender, sensitized flesh, making her quiver from the inside out, and she promptly forgot what she’d meant to say. While his tongue and fingers circled and teased and stroked, she gripped the sheets and stared down at him. His hair stood up, from her fingers, she realized. His eyes were closed, his expression dreamy as he brought her such bliss she could hardly even see, much less think.

But she didn’t close her eyes. She watched him concentrate on her pleasure as if it were his own, took in his moves, the moves that were driving her right out of her ever-loving mind.

It was as if he knew what made her tick, inside and out. That was a terrifying thought, really. Because the girl he’d once known no longer existed, and since then…well, she hadn’t really let anyone know her.

An ever-changing script.

That was her life.

A life she was no longer sure about. But having him take her apart the way he was, that she was sure about.

He opened his eyes, so molten hot that they were nearly black, and looked up at her. He was sure, too, which should have stopped her cold, and she stirred. “Aidan-”

“Shh.”

Then he swirled his tongue in a precise rhythm over ground zero, and she lost it.

Completely.

Lost.

It.

Panting for breath, arching up off the mattress and into his mouth, she dug her fingers into the sheets, throwing her head back at the peak, sobbing out his name.

Slowly he brought her back to planet earth. She closed her eyes, savoring the pleasure, still quivering and pulsing as he kissed his way back up her body, his tongue stroking a rib, a nipple, her throat…and then he cupped her face and smiled at her.

“You shushed me,” she said, her voice sounding weak and raspy.

“It was for a good cause.” He rocked his hips into hers.

“I’m going to get you back for that.”

He smiled wickedly. “Should I be scared?”

“Terrified.” Rolling him over, she sat on him and tugged his uniform shirt off. She could have spent a year lapping him up with nothing but her tongue. He had a tight body, toned from years of physical labor. His chest was broad, hard, his belly rippled with sinew and rising and falling in a way that assured her she was in no way alone in this almost chemical-like attraction they shared, which transcended both time and logic.

His hands went to the button on his pants to help speed up the process, and she ran her fingers up the taut, corded muscles of his abs. He unzipped, she tugged, and then nearly drooled at the sight of the part of him so happy to see her.

She licked her lips.

He groaned.

She kissed him, on the very tip.

“Kenz-” he choked out, tunneling his fingers through her hair.

Since her mouth was now full, she couldn’t answer, and he said something completely unintelligible anyway, which, she had to admit, only egged her on. God, she loved rendering this big, bad, tough man completely incapable of speech. Loved the power that surged through her at the way he was breathing, saying her name.

Loved so much about it that it scared her. Scared her into being even more bold and brazen so that she didn’t have to think about how much being with him meant to her.

How much he meant to her.

Using her hands and mouth, she drew him to the edge. “Two-minute warning,” he groaned out, his hands fisted in the sheets at his sides as she ran her tongue up his length. “Okay, thirty seconds. Maybe.”

She kept going until he swore and grabbed a condom, nudging her to her back, his hands running up the undersides of her arms until they were over her head. His knee spread her legs, his thigh rubbing against the core of her.

“In,” she gasped, arching into him. “In me now.”

Lowering his body to hers, he nipped at her lower lip, then kissed her, hard and deep, his tongue slipping into her mouth at the very moment he slipped into her body. “Like that?”

She couldn’t answer. Hell, she could hardly breathe.

“Kenzie?”

“Yes,” she managed, then shuddered as he withdrew, only to thrust into her again. And again. “Like that.”

The feel of him, thick and hot and filling her to the brink, had her gasping his name, wrapping her legs around his hips, leaving her unable to remember exactly what she was supposedly paying him back for. Her toes were curling, her skin feeling too tight for her body, which seemed to swell from the inside out. “Aidan-”

“Come,” he demanded, grinding his teeth in what looked like agony. “I want to feel you come before I-”

She burst in mindless, blind sensation, and barely heard his strangled answering groan as he exploded.

For long moments afterward, they lay there entwined, panting and damp, and powerless to move, their breathing echoing loudly through the bedroom.

“Is it just me,” she finally managed, “or does that get better and better?”

“Oh, yeah.”

She fell quiet a moment, but then couldn’t resist. “You think it’ll keep happening? You know, until I leave?”

“If it does, it’s likely to kill me.”

“Yes.” She sighed dreamily. “But what a way to go.”

His soft huff of laughter was the last thing she remembered before she drifted off to sleep.

AIDAN WOKE UP SOMETIME LATER with a smile, his body ready for another round. In the pitch-dark, he rolled over for Kenzie.

And got nothing.

With a very bad feeling in his gut, he sat up. “You’re gone, aren’t you?” he said into the night.

When he got no answer, he tossed back the covers and got out of bed, but it was too late. She had left. He told himself he wasn’t her keeper, and she could go wherever she wanted, but he’d been lulled into the impression that she hadn’t been done with him yet.

She wasn’t done with him, not yet. Which meant she was probably out there looking to poke her nose into the arsons. Aidan hurriedly got dressed. He had no idea where she was but he needed to find out, because with whatever information she’d get, she’d go snooping into things that were guaranteed to piss off Tommy.

Hell. They’d just spent hours in his bed. And in his shower. And then his bed again. Hadn’t he tired her out?

His stomach was grumbling and his head starting to pound when he picked up his cell phone and called hers; he was shocked when she answered.

“Hi,” she said in that soft, breathless voice that had only a few hours before made him come.

Just hearing it stirred him halfway to life. He was little better than Pavlov’s dogs. “Where are you?”

“Oh, out and about.” She still sounded breathless.

“Kenzie, what are you doing?”

“Um…exercising?”

“That’s a bad word to you.”

“Not anymore. Do you have any idea how much work it takes to stay in TV shape?”

And then he heard it, the unmistakable sound of a sliding door either opening or closing. “Where are you?”

“Whoops, bad connection,” she said.

He gnashed his teeth together. “We have a great connection. What are you up to?”

“Wow, I can hardly hear you…”

“Kenz-”

“Gotta go.”

He didn’t have to hear the click to know she’d shut her phone. Nor did he bother with swearing. Instead, he grabbed his keys and went after her, figuring her options were severely limited. She wouldn’t have gone back to the docks because there were no sliding door there. So she was probably at Blake’s house. He supposed she could also be at any one of the arsons Blake had been accused of, but most of them had been demo’d, and plus it seemed likely that if she was butting her nose in, she’d start at the top.

So would he.

He hit the jackpot on his first try. Pulling into the small house Blake had claimed as his own, he parked right next to Kenzie’s flashy Mercedes. He got out of his truck and felt the hood of her car.

Still warm.

So she hadn’t been there long. She was just damn lucky she hadn’t gotten herself arrested again, considering the yellow tape surrounding the house. Just thinking about what Tommy would say, and how long he’d jail her this time, had him sweating. The front door was shut and, as he discovered, locked.

Aidan moved around the side of the house. His plan was simple. He was going to scare the hell out of her. And then he was going to kiss the hell out of her.

And then…and then he had no idea. Spanking her seemed like a good option.

The sliding back door on Blake’s deck was unlocked and opened an inch. This was where she’d entered, and following suit, he slipped inside. The place was dark, but there was a light on upstairs, and he headed in that direction. At a sound behind him, he whipped around just as two hands smacked him in the chest and shoved. As he fell back, he reached out and hauled his assailant with him. He hit his ass on the bottom step and Kenzie landed on him.

“What are you doing?” she demanded.

The stairs biting into his back, her full weight over the top of him, he hissed out a breath of pain. “What am I doing? What are you doing?”

“I’m-” She bit back whatever she’d been about to say, crawled backward off of him and stood up.

“No, it’s okay, I’m fine, thanks,” he muttered, getting up on his own and brushing himself off. “How did you get in here?”

“Blake gave me his spare key a long time ago.”

“Okay, so back to my first question. Why are you here?”

“Looking for clues to Blake’s innocence.” She glared at him, then pointed to the door. “You need to leave.”

“So do you.”

“Oh, no. This is my brother’s place. I’m his beneficiary. I get to be here.”

“Not with the caution tape still blocking the front door, you don’t.”

She was breathing fast, her voice thick and husky as if she’d been crying. Or maybe she still was. He couldn’t see her clearly enough to decide. “Ah, Kenzie. Don’t-”

“Go,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest.

“Fine. But you’re coming with me.”

“No, I’m not.”

“Yeah, you are.” Wrapping his fingers around her arm, he headed toward the sliding door, toting her with him, until she yanked free. Then, lifting her nose, she stalked out in front of him, going willingly but not happily. “Kenzie,” he said as she got into her car.

“I don’t want to talk right now.” She tried to shut the driver’s door on him but he stepped closer, holding it open.

“Isn’t that convenient.”

“Dammit, Aidan. Get out of my way.”

“Just tell me where you’re going.”

For the first time, she hesitated.

“You could try my house,” he suggested. “My computer.”

She paused another beat. “I wouldn’t want to impose.”

“Imposing would be getting your pretty ass arrested again, goddammit. Meet me there.”

“Fine.” Putting the car into gear, she peeled out, leaving him little choice but to hope that she would.