Almost before the first syllable was out of her mouth, there was a burst of movement onto the landing, along with the abrupt flaring of the overhead lights that almost blinded her because her vision had already adjusted to the darkness. She threw up her hand to shield her eyes, then squinted-and found herself staring straight at Morgan crouched in a firing stance. She was looking down the barrel of the big Glock, held in a two-fisted grip, and right above them a pair of piercing, ice-blue eyes boring a hole into her.
Her muscles locked; her blood ran cold. She’d always thought that was just an expression, but now she found that it wasn’t. She was staring death in the eye, and her body felt icy from the inside out, as if her blood had indeed frozen. Her heart was slamming against her rib cage so hard she could feel the fabric of her tank fluttering, and all she could do was stand there waiting to be shot.
Delighted, Tricks started for him and Bo almost died from terror, afraid that in his state of hyperalertness he’d shoot the first thing that moved, which was Tricks.
Instead he barked, “What’s wrong?” as he straightened and with a short, sharp motion of his wrists snapped the barrel upward and held it pointed toward the roof. Bo’s sense of relief was overwhelming, as debilitating in its way as her terror; her vision dimmed for a second, and she almost sagged to the ground before she caught herself.
Tricks was wagging her tail so hard her butt was twitching back and forth. She reached Morgan and licked his kneecap, then thrust her nose into his groin to make sure it was him. He grunted a little but didn’t move, his gaze moving swiftly from point to point, searching for the threat.
Bo tried to breathe, tried to suck in a much-needed deep breath. In a thin voice, which was all she could manage to squeeze from her constricted throat, she said, “Tricks.”
His face was still set in stern, hard lines as he looked down at the dog, who was looking up at him with bright eyes and an “Aren’t you glad to see me?” expression.
“What’s wrong with her?” he asked sharply.
Even his voice was different, deep and hard and clear. He’d lost the shallow weakness in his voice he’d had when he first came here, though so gradually she wasn’t certain when the quality of his voice had changed. He wasn’t full strength but he was still lethal, and for the first time she saw that in a way she hadn’t before, not even when he’d accidentally tried to choke her.
“Nothing,” she managed, her own voice shaking. She was shaking all over, head to foot, so acutely aware that she or Tricks, or both, could be lying in a pool of blood right now-and the whole situation was her fault. She knew what he was, yet she’d still jerked the door open and yelled his name, without considering what his trained reaction would be. You don’t poke a gator and expect it not to snap, but she’d done just that. “She…” Her voice trailed off as her terror faded enough that she could see him, all of him and not just the pistol and his eyes. She reeled under a second shock, completely different in nature from the first one but just as devastating.
He wore only a pair of boxer shorts.
She’d thought of him as thin, and he was-but only in comparison to the powerful musculature he’d sported before, going by how his clothes hung on him. His body as it was now looked like a swimmer’s body, still muscled, but sleek. Had he retained that much muscle, or had he truly been pushing himself so hard in these past two weeks that he’d already packed some back on?
She had been cold, but abruptly a wave of almost suffocating heat swept over her. She wanted to look away, she wanted to open her mouth and tell Tricks to stop nudging him in the balls, she wanted to say, “Sorry,” and go back into her bedroom. None of these were viable options, though, because she literally couldn’t move. She was as stunned as if she’d been slammed by some invisible force that had knocked her stupid.
She could see the lines of muscle clearly delineated in his arms, his long legs that still looked powerful. Holy crap, she could see something else clearly delineated in his boxers, and thank God it was sleeping. Swallowing hard, she jerked her gaze upward to the broad plates of his lightly haired chest muscles-and she stopped, staring at the obscenely long red scar that bisected his chest, and other lines that looked shattered and puckered, almost like a broken windshield. The scar-well, she’d seen surgical scars before, even those of heart surgery, and a scar was a scar. But what in hell were those dark lines radiating out from the scar?
She was still so stunned that she pointed at his chest and blurted, “What’s that?”
His dark brows drew together in a scowl. If she was still in shock, he was still in attack mode, without any outlet for the adrenaline pouring through his system. “Scars,” he said curtly. “You remember. Bullet. Surgery.”
She gave her head a little shake. “Not that. Those lines.” She moved closer, frowning at his bare chest in the brightness of the overhead light that he’d flipped on as he charged out of his room. “They look like… a spider web?”
He glanced down at his chest and grimaced. “Oh, that. That’s what’s left of my tattoo.”
A tattoo! She blinked. Okay, that made sense, even if the pattern didn’t. “Why a spider web?”
He scowled again. “It isn’t a spider web,” he growled. “It’s a bull’s-eye.”
A… bull’s-eye. She blinked, then blinked again. A freakin’ bull’s-eye?
She snapped from bewilderment to fury so fast she had no way to rein herself in, no way to retreat behind her walls. Her mouth fell open, she hung there motionless for a second, and then she blew. “You drew a damn target on your chest!” she shrieked. “You moron! Do you have a death wish? Did you think it was funny when some knuckle-dragger nearly killed you?”
He moved closer, his chin lowered, squaring up against her like a fighter about to go a round or three. His gaze was locked on her face, fire simmering in his own eyes, but he gave a negligent shrug. “I thought: ‘Shit, this messed up my tattoo.’”
She felt as if her eyes might bug out, as if her hair were standing on end. The only other time in her life when she’d been this angry was when Kyle Gooding had punched her in the face and she felt the same, as if her skin couldn’t contain her body. In her outrage, she poked the gator again, literally, jabbing his left pec with her forefinger as she glared up at him. “Idiot!”
She saw a flash of his eyes, glittering like glacier ice, and then he kissed her.
She had no warning. He wasn’t kissing her, and then a split second later he was. His right arm was around her waist, holding her up on her toes against him, and she could feel the coolness of the weapon still in his hand as it pressed into her hip. His left hand cupped her jaw, holding her face tilted up while he lowered his head and slanted his mouth over hers.
Something cataclysmic happened inside her. It felt right, as if every other kiss she’d had in her entire life had been wrong. All of her senses, everything she knew or felt, was swamped by this. The taste of him filled her, the mint of the toothpaste he’d just used underlaid by something raw and hot and powerful, something that made her heart pound and her blood, which had been so cold, sear her veins as it raced through her body. There was the heat of his skin, most of it bare, against her and under her hands. The tank shirt she wore was a single, flimsy layer of cotton between them, inadequate for protection but suddenly feeling rough against her nipples, nipples that were no longer soft but tightly pinched and erect. And below… he was erect now, too, a straining hardness pushing against the softness between her legs. There was heat there, his as well as hers, blood pooling and throbbing and burning.
Distantly she was aware that this was just a kiss, one kiss, a kiss that hadn’t stopped yet, and she was ready to let him strip down her pants and get between her legs. Even worse, that was what she wanted, wanted as she had never wanted a man before. She wanted him there, inside her, riding her deep and hard.