“Miss me?” she couldn’t resist asking, the edges of her mouth curled up in a mischievous smirk.
She watched his eyes roam all over her face—God, she’d missed that look—then he let out a small, playfully derisive chortle before taking another long chug.
“What?” she pressed.
“Hey, I wasn’t the one who ran off halfway around the world.”
Much to her relief, the way he said it didn’t sound resentful at all. “Doesn’t mean you can’t miss me,” she goaded him.
He laughed and shook his head with disbelief. “You’re unbelievable, you know that?”
“So is that a yes?” Her beaming grin was in full tractor-beam mode. She knew his shields wouldn’t stand a chance.
He held her gaze for a long moment, then said, “Of course I missed you.”
She raised her eyebrows with mock surprise. “Well then how about you stop looking at me like that and—”
She didn’t get a chance to finish it. He was already all over her, scooping her head up in his hands and kissing her with an urgent, primeval hunger. The half-empty bottles tumbled off the bed and onto the carpeted floor with muffled thuds as their bodies twisted around each other, frantic hands diving under clothes and seeking out familiar flesh.
“I’m filthy,” Tess whispered to him as he yanked her shirt off and devoured his way down to her belly.
He didn’t stop. “I know. I like that about you,” he said, in between big, wet mouthfuls of her skin.
She laughed, a dreamy, wicked laugh, in between moans of delight. “No, I mean, I’m really filthy—as in, dirty.”
He kept going. “Like I said, part of the appeal.”
She cupped his head in her hands and closed her eyes and arched her back, her head disappearing between two pillows. “I mean I need a shower, doofus.”
“We both do,” he mumbled without letting up. “Later.”
Chapter 16
Later took a couple of hours to come around. They hadn’t seen each other in four months. In fact, they hadn’t known when they’d see each other again, if at all, since they hadn’t exactly parted on the best of terms. And although a couple of hours of disappearing into each other and shutting the world out wasn’t going to make up for the four months of pent-up desire as well as the near-death experiences they’d just been through, it was a good start.
After an extended stint together in the marble-lined shower stall, they were on the bed again, in thick toweling robes this time, digging into a room service dinner of risotto parmigiano and scaloppine al limone.
Reilly watched Tess as she ate. Despite the insanity of the last twenty-four hours, it felt so natural to be with her. Again. Being with her brought it all bursting back to life, everything that he missed about her. The peridot green eyes that glinted with intellect as well as with mischief. The exquisitely shaped lips and perfect teeth, co-conspirators behind her luminous smile. The wild, blond curls that framed it all and added to the untamed vibe she radiated. The laugh. The humor. The drive and the energy. The magic that entranced any room she walked into. Watching her now, as she wolfed down her food with the wholehearted delight of someone who ate life up in big, greedy mouthfuls, he couldn’t believe he’d actually let her walk out of his life. And yet he had, although the reasons for their split now seemed, well, if not trivial, then certainly mishandled. Which was something that was always easily said in hindsight.
He should have said something back then, he thought. Put a stop to the slow erosion, to the frustrations and the feelings of inadequacy, to the hurt. But there had been no easy solution. They’d leapt into starting a life together. She already had a kid, Kim, a daughter from her ex-husband, a sexual-harassment-lawsuit-in-waiting of a news anchor who’d moved to the West Coast. Reilly, on the other hand, had never been married or fathered a child. Which became a problem when the capriciousness of human reproduction came into play. Reilly wanted to be not just a step-father to Kim, but also a dad himself, and, as it was with more and more women in their thirties, it hadn’t proven to be that simple. The gift of life was proving to be frustratingly elusive. Tests had shown that his body wasn’t the one at fault. Years of Tess taking the pill were a probable culprit. And so an undercurrent of melancholy took root as Reilly’s primal longing became hers too. The IVF treatments added to the malaise, chipping away at the bond between them. Each failed attempt felt like going through a divorce. By the end of it, Tess needed to get away. The heartache and the feeling of failing him were too profound to face. And he didn’t try hard enough to stop her, although at the time, he’d felt as drained and hollow as she had.
Yeah, he should have said something, he thought, as he held her firmly in his sights. He told himself he’d never let her walk out of his life again—but in the same breath, he reminded himself that it wasn’t just up to him.
She must have sensed his stare, as she slid a sideways glance at him. “You gonna finish that?” she mumbled between chews, pointing her knife at his plate.
He chuckled and passed her his plate. She scooped up the last piece of veal and gobbled it down. After a pause, he asked, “What just happened here?”
“What?”
He tried to order his thoughts. “This. Us. Here. Dealing with whackjobs and Templars again.”
“Maybe it’s our lot in life,” Tess grinned between mouthfuls.
“I’m serious.”
Tess shrugged, then gave him a slightly pointed look. “There’s still a lot we don’t know about them. Why do you think I went out to see Jed? It’s what I tried to explain to you … before I left. They deserve to be taken seriously. For decades, they’ve been this academic no-go zone, just fodder for fantasists and conspiracy theorists. But we know better, don’t we? Everything we thought was just myth and nonsense … it all turned out to be true.”
“Maybe,” Reilly argued. “We never got a chance to see if the documents from the Falcon Temple were real, or just forgeries.”
“Still … they were there, weren’t they?”
That part was true, he had to agree—and it supported her view of the Order. “So now that your work and your books are all about them,” he asked, “does that mean you’re going to be in the line of fire every time some crackpot thinks he’s got a lead on one of their secrets?”
“This guy didn’t come after me,” Tess reminded him. “He came after Jed. I just happened to be there.”
“This time,” he pointed out.
“Well,” she crept closer to him and gave him a wet, messy kiss, “if it happens again, just promise you’ll be there to rescue me?”
He drank it in quietly, then pulled away, a pensive look on his face. “Just so I understand things correctly—if you’re grabbed by some murderous psychopath, and only then, your request that I give you some ‘space’ “—he did some air quotes—”and keep away from you to give you some time to ‘figure things out’”—more air quotes—”no longer applies.” He paused, mock-thinking it over, then nodded sardonically. “Okay. Works for me.”
Her expression clouded at his words, as if an uncomfortable reality were coming back into focus. “Can we … can we just enjoy this moment and not talk about us for now?”
“Is there an ‘us’?” He kept his tone light and playful, even though deep down, the question was anything but that.
“We’ve just spent a couple of hours putting practically every pose in the Kama Sutra to the test. I think that kind of has an effect on our status, doesn’t it? But can we please just … not now, okay?”
“Sure thing.” He flashed her a slight grin to defuse the moment and decided to drop the subject for now. What they’d been through wasn’t the ideal grounding for a serious chat about where they stood with regard to each other. He didn’t think it was fair to Tess, not after her ordeal.