Only this time, the cause wasn’t a fire.
This time, the cause was linked to him, and he hated it.
Kissing her didn’t exactly make him feel better. But it sure as hell diverted her. And if they were both going to sit there in the steaming shower, it struck Cord that this made more sense than he thought. Kissing her. Forever. With the warm water sluicing down, cleansing, soft. Her lips were slippery wet, jewels of water beading on her eyelashes, down her cheeks. Steam cloaked them in privacy.
She murmured something. A winsome cry, a song of longing.
His one arm had her nested against him, but the other traced the length of her, from collarbone to breast to abdomen to hip. He wanted to soothe, to reassure. He wanted to take, to own. He wanted to tease, to arouse.
Hell, he wanted everything. All she was, every way she was. Till kingdom come and then some.
“Cord…”
“Nothing’s going to hurt you again. Nothing. Whatever it takes, whatever I have-”
“Cord…”
“Hell. Did I hurt you? The bruises on your back?”
“Cord. The water’s turning cold. You didn’t notice?”
Of course he noticed. Or he would have. Eventually. Maybe…
He flicked off the faucets, grabbed a towel, then two, to wrap around her. Peeling off his sodden clothes took an annoying minute beyond that, and the chill of air should have cooled his jets…but didn’t.
He carried her into the bedroom, hooked around his waist, taking utmost care not to press against the sore spots on her back, but forgetting a small detail-which was to uncover her head. When he yanked off the towel, her hair was an incredibly silly tangle, but she had a siren’s smile. A Sophie smile. The wrong kind of smile, if she’d been trying to quell his mood.
His landline rang in the other room.
Then his cell rang from some coat pocket somewhere. The way things had been, both calls were likely connected to murder and mayhem.
In other words, nothing important. At least nothing important compared to Sophie.
“Don’t do it again, okay?” he murmured, as he lowered her onto the mattress, heaping the covers over them both so he could warm her.
“Do what?”
“You don’t have to hide things from me, Sophie. Not fear. Not sadness. Everybody hides stuff from the world. It’s how we protect ourselves. But you don’t have to with me, okay? No more crying in showers.”
“No more crying in showers,” she agreed.
And then she took him under. He’d thought she was tired. And low. And anxious and depressed and more or less beside herself. But in trying to carefully ease her to the mattress in a way that didn’t aggravate the welts on her back, he somehow miscalculated, because she ended up on top.
He briefly suspected she’d maneuvered it that way, but of course she hadn’t. His Sophie was buttoned up, tucked up, and especially all closed up when she was traumatized-which she certainly had been. So it had to be accidental that she ended up straddling his hips, spread so far by his width that her posture was beyond provocative. It stole a man’s breath altogether. And then she dipped down, damp hair spraying every which way, and nested kisses on his cheeks, his closed eyes, his whiskery neck, his mouth. Oh, yeah-his mouth.
She took his tongue faster than a thief, sipped and sucked, then did a wiggle thing with her hips and sank down lower.
She never learned that move in good-girl school.
She just didn’t seem to get it. Who was supposed to be comforting whom in this deal? Who was trying to show that possibly falling in love, deeply in love, problematically in love, was happening here? Right now. This exact second. For her. With her.
Later he remembered scent, sound, taste. He remembered the luring softness in her eyes. He remembered her sucking in a breath when he filled her, slow, deep, owning that silken secret core of her…remembered her opening her eyes and giving him an unexpected smile before starting the ride.
It was a smile saying “I own you.”
A smile suggesting she was about to discover things about his body that he’d never known himself.
She couldn’t have forgotten the trauma or fear of the closet ordeal, or of anything else that had happened over the last few weeks. But it was as if the now, with him, mattered more. As if the two of them together mattered more. As if she turned the switch on the negative, and poured out all the love and heat and energy that was in her…times ten.
When it was over, he was wasted, stunned by the volatility of the orgasm-and even more by the connection to her. It took a while before he found the energy to open his eyes. When he did, he found her lying there with a sweet, soft smile on her lips.
Naturally, then, he had to lean up. Give her one warning glance before pouncing. If she thought she could do that to him without retribution, well. They were just going to have to do it all again.
Chapter 11
If anyone told Sophie a month before that she’d be eating, naked in bed, giggling like a kid at a carnival, she’d have suggested someone was suffering from delusions-and it wasn’t her.
But it was her. A giant tray in the center of the bed was chock-full of delicacies that Cate had prepared before her flight home. When they’d finally awakened, they discovered that they’d completely forgotten lunch-and almost dinner. They were trying to make up for it now. First, there was a wedge of brie, with hot marmalade poured over it, to be eaten with crackers. Another plate had fresh, icy shrimp keeping company with a wicked red sauce. Then there was celery, stuffed with crab and cream cheese. On the side table, sitting together, was one wine and one long-necked beer. And one very naked man on the other side of the bed-making a gooey mess out of the crackers and brie mixture, but was it good!
“Tell me again why we’re having this here, instead of at the table, like civilized people?” she demanded.
“We both agreed that we were never leaving this room.”
Until daybreak tomorrow, anyway. Heaven knew, a heap of reality was waiting for them back in D.C.-the unanswered questions of his brother’s murderer, the source of the break-ins, the repercussions of all the blackmail evidence in Jon’s apartment. Sophie still had the welts on her back to remind her that fear and danger were only hours away, still waiting. But they both figured that getting back to Foggy Bottom by Sunday morning was time enough to gear up for the coming trials.
They still had a few hours. And Sophie needed these last crazy hours with Cord like she’d never needed anything in her life before.
“You know there’ll be crumbs all over the sheets,” she groaned.
“Nah. We’ll just toss out this sheet and find another.” He motioned to the containers on the tray that neither had uncovered yet. “How can your sister make all this fabulous stuff and not weigh five million pounds?”
“She loves to cook, but she never seems to remember to eat. You liked her, didn’t you?”
“What’s not to like? She’d kill for you. Far as I could tell, that’s about the definition of a perfect sibling.”
Her eyes softened. “She is. And so is my other sister, Lily. I just wish your brother had been the least bit like my sisters, so you’d know what that kind of love is like.” She added quickly, “Cate said she’d left some kind of French stew for the real dinner, but after these hors d’oeuvres, to be honest, I can’t imagine eating another bite.”
She looked at him, her handsome lover. Cord was so sleep-deprived at this point that she couldn’t fathom how he could still be awake…much less how he’d…performed as exquisitely as he had. Twice. He loved her, she mused.