“Don’t do it,” both Amy and Mallory said at the same time.
Grace sighed. “He’s cute. But I’d rather have the job. I filled out the application. I’m trying hard to find my happy.”
“And you think counting nails is going to do it?” Amy asked.
“Is clearing dishes doing it for you?” Grace countered.
Amy shrugged. “It leaves me a lot of free time and brain cells to do what I like.”
“Which is?” Mallory asked.
Amy shrugged again. “Drawing.”
“You’re supposed to be letting people in,” Mallory reminded her. “It was your decree, remember? Drawing is a solo sport.”
Amy stabbed her fork into the cake for a large bite. “I’m in training.” She eyed Mallory. “You want to talk about today?”
“What about today?”
“Gee, I don’t know—how about the fact that MCG is carrying?”
“MCG?”
“Mysterious Cute Guy. Ty Garrison. Hot stuff. The guy you smile dopily about every time he’s mentioned.”
“I do not smile dopily.”
Amy looked at Grace. Grace pulled a small mirror from her purse and held it up in front of Mallory.
Mallory looked at her faint glow and—dammit—dopey smile, and did her best to wipe it off her face. “It’s the chocolate cake.”
Amy coughed and said “bullshit” at the same time.
Mallory sighed and set down her fork.
“Uh oh,” Grace said.
“I like him,” Mallory said.
“And that’s a bad thing?” Grace asked. “You set out to stretch your wings, experience something new. It’s happening.”
“With a guy that could break her heart,” Amy said softly. “Is that it, Mal? You’re scared?”
“Like a little bunny rabbit,” Mallory said. “Some bad girl I turned out to be.”
Ty swam by moonlight, and then hit the beach for another run. He didn’t fall this time, not once.
Progress.
When he was done torturing his body and his every muscle was quivering with exertion, he went to bed. Too tired for nightmares, he told himself.
Things started out good. He dreamed about the time his team had been assigned to rescue a diplomat’s daughter out of Istanbul. Then the dream shifted to another mission, where they’d “commandeered” certain components from a godforsaken, forlorn corner of Iraq, components that had been waiting for another shipment, which when combined together would have been a huge terrorist threat. Then things transitioned again, to the time they’d managed to get to a bus loaded with U.S. and British journalists before their scheduled kidnapping…
All successful missions…
But then the dream changed, and everything went straight to hell in a handbasket.
He was thrown from the burning wreckage. When he opened his eyes, his ears were ringing, and although he could see the wild flames all around him, he couldn’t hear a damn thing. It was a movie without sound.
His men. He belly-crawled to Kelly, but he was already gone. Ty found Tommy and Brad next and did what he could, then went after Trevor. Trevor was on the other side of the wreckage, gasping for air, his chest crushed, and all Ty could do was hold him as he faded away…
He woke up alone in bed, not on a godforsaken mountain. “Christ,” he breathed and shoved his fingers through his sweat-dampened hair. “Christ.”
It was two in the morning but he rolled out of the bed, grabbed his jeans, and shoved his legs into them. His phone, blinking due to missed calls that were no doubt from Frances, was shoved into his pocket. Same with his empty Vicodin bottle.
He got into the Mustang and fired her up. With no idea what possessed him, he did a drive-by of Mallory’s house. She wasn’t the only one with recon skills, though he figured the only way she could have gotten his cell phone number was through the hospital records.
How very industrious of her.
And illegal.
He found it amusing, and in a world where nothing much amused him anymore, he was also intrigued. A deadly combination.
Distance. He needed a boatload of distance. He was working on that.
Mallory’s ranch-style house was in an older neighborhood. Typical Suburbia, USA. The place was freshly painted, the yard clearly cared for, much more than the piece-of-shit car she drove.
Which was why he was here. Or so he told himself.
It took him all of six minutes to replace her alternator with the one he’d driven into Seattle to get for her.
Probably he needed to work harder on keeping his distance.
He really needed to get back to work. He needed to be f**king useful for something again. He put his tools back in his car and had started to get behind the wheel when he heard locks tumble. Her front door opened.
In the lit doorway, highlighted by both the porch light and a single light somewhere inside, stood Mallory. Her hair was a wild cloud around her face and shoulders, her bare feet sticking out the bottom of her robe. “Ty?”
So much for stealth.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
Funny thing about that. He had no f**king clue what he was doing. None. Not a single one. He shut his car door and walked up to her, crowding her in the open doorway.
“Ty?”
He didn’t answer. If she backed up a step or told him he was crazy, or gave him the slightest sign that he wasn’t welcome, he would turn on his heel and walk off.
He was good at that, and they both knew it.
And he definitely expected her to be unnerved. He’d seen her face at the car wash when he’d been holding his gun.
But she surprised him now by stepping into him, meeting him halfway. Reaching for him, her body answered his touch with a slight trembling that made him feel pretty f**king useful, and wasn’t that just what he’d wished for? To be useful again?
He kept telling himself that as curious and attracted as he was to her, if Mallory hadn’t started things up between them at the auction, he’d have never initiated any sort of intimacy.
He was full of shit. She’d assured him that all she’d wanted was the one night, and he’d tried like hell to believe her, but somehow they kept getting in deeper.
She was like a drug. The most addicting kind, and he had a problem—he was pretty sure that she was developing feelings for him. He no idea what to do with that, or with his own feelings, which were definitely getting in his way. This whole “no emotional attachment” thing had gone straight to shit. Because Mallory Quinn was emotionally attached to every person she ever met, and she had a way of making that contagious. He craved contact with her in a way that he wasn’t experienced with.
And he liked to be experienced.But he couldn’t think about that right now because her lips were parted, her cheeks flushed, her eyes telling him that his presence affected her every bit as much as hers did him. Helpless against the pull of her, he caught her up against him and stepped over the threshold, kicking the door closed behind him.
They staggered into the entryway together, mouths fused, bumping into her umbrella stand, knocking it over as she tripped on some shoes and slammed into a coat rack.
They were both laughing as he spun her away from danger, pressing her against a little cherrywood desk and mirror. He trapped her there, and all amusement faded as she gasped, the sound full of desire.
He wanted to hear it again, needed to hear it again. Lowering his head, he kissed the sweet spot beneath her ear, along her jaw, and then the column of her neck. He spent a long moment at the hollow of her throat because, oh yeah, that’s where she made the sound again, her shaky hands clutching his shoulders.
“I was dreaming about you,” she said softly.
He was glad, even more so since he’d been dreaming of pure hell. He’d had no idea how much he needed this, her, until this very minute. “Tell me.”
“We were back at the auction.” Her fingers wound their way into his hair, giving him a shiver. “Working our way through all the furniture,” she murmured.
“Working our way through the furniture?”
“Yeah, you know…” She hesitated. “Doing it on each piece,” she whispered.
He drew back far enough to see her eyes. When she blushed gorgeously, he laughed softly. “After what we did that night, you can still be embarrassed to say ‘doing it’?”
She pushed at him but he didn’t budge. “No,” he said, pulling in her tight. “I like it.” Hell, she had to be able to feel the proof of that. “What piece of furniture did we do it on first?”
She turned her head away. “I’m not going to say now.”
He nibbled her ear. “Tell me,” he coaxed, flicking his tongue on her lobe.
She gasped. “A table.”
He grinned. “I did you on a table?”
She made a sound that was only half embarrassment now, the other half pure arousal.
“Tell me that I spread you out for my viewing pleasure and feasted on all your sweet spots,” he said.
Glowing bright red, she stared at his Adam’s Apple. “No. You, um, bent me over the table and then, you know, took me from behind.”
Yeah, good luck with finding distance now. He was hard as a rock. Maybe distance wasn’t the way to go. Maybe they needed this, needed to just go for it, to get each other out of their systems.
Yeah, that was the story he was going with. He turned them both so that she was facing the small foyer desk. “It was just a dream,” she murmured into the mirror.
“Doesn’t have to be.”
She stared at his reflection, watching as his hands ran down her arms to take her hands in his, drawing them up, up around his neck where they’d be out of his way.
The air crackled with electricity. And need. So much need. “What are you wearing beneath the robe?” he asked.
She nibbled on her lower lip.
“Mallory.”
“Nothing.”
He groaned. Her body was so close to his that a sheet of paper couldn’t fit between them. He reached for the tie on her robe. “Do you want this?”
“I—” She closed her mouth.
“Yes or no, Mallory.”
“Yes.”
One tug of the tie and the robe began to loosen.
“Wait,” she gasped. “I—I’m…” She hesitated. “I can’t watch.”
And yet she didn’t take her hands from his neck, or her hungry gaze off the mirror, eyes glued to his fingers as they gripped the edges of her robe.
“Full access this time,” he said.
“Oh, God.” She nodded. “Okay, but I—” She broke off when he slowly spread the robe open, eyes riveted to her own body.
Which he already knew was the body of his dreams. “Mallory,” he breathed. “You’re so beautiful.” He stroked his hands up her stomach to cup her breasts, his thumbs brushing her velvety nipples, wringing another gasp out of her lips. He did it again, a light teasing touch before he took his hands off her.
She whimpered.
He pulled her hands from around his neck and pushed the robe off her shoulders to puddle at their feet. Taking her hands again, he pinned them out in front of her on the table, which forced her to bend over. He gently squeezed her fingers, signaling he wanted her to stay like that.
“Ty—” she choked out, holding the position with a trusting sweetness that nearly undid him, especially when it was combined with the sexy sway of her br**sts and the almost helplessly uncontrolled undulation of her h*ps into his crotch.
He cupped those gorgeous full breasts, teasing her ni**les before skimming one hand south, between her legs.
“H—here? We really shouldn’t…”
“No?”
“No,” she whispered and then spread her legs, giving him more room.
Dipping into her folds was pure heaven, and he groaned when he found her very wet. His fingers trailed her own moisture over her, exploring every dip and crevice, until she was undulating again, her fingers white-knuckling their grip on the table, her eyes closed, her head back against his chest.
“Watch,” he reminded her.
Her eyes opened and locked on the sight of her own body, na**d, bent over the table, his tanned hand on her pale breast, the other slowly, languidly moving between her legs. “Oh,” she breathed. “We look…”
“Hot.” He slid a wet finger deep inside her, and she gave an inarticulate little cry, straining against him.
“Ty—”
“Tell me.”
“In me,” she gasped, breathless. “Please, in me.”
“Come first.”
Giving her another slow circle with his thumb, he watched as she shuddered, still holding obediently onto the desk’s edges for all she was worth. He could feel her tremble as the tension gripped her and added another finger and some pressure with his thumb, nibbling along the nape of her neck to her shoulder. Strung tight, she breathed in little pants, her spine and ass braced against him, her arms taut, her face a mask of pleasure.
“Ty.”
“Right here with you,” he assured her, and sent her skittering over the edge. She cried out as she shattered, and would have dropped to her knees if he hadn’t caught her.
“Now,” she demanded breathlessly. “Right now.”
Not one to argue with a lady, he stripped, grabbed a condom from his pocket and put it on before pushing inside her.
She cried out again. With one arm supporting her, his other hand found hers where it gripped the wood, and he linked their fingers. She was still shaking from her orgasm. Bending over her, pressing his torso to her back, brushing his mouth against her neck, he tried to give her a moment. But when she pressed her sweet ass into him, restless, he began to move, stringing them both up this time. She took each thrust, arching her back for more, insistent demand in her every movement.