Guilty as Sin (23 page)

He took a deep, bracing breath. He could do this. He’d spent the last fourteen years learning how to push away all emotions and keep an iron grip on his baser urges. He didn’t let anything rule him.

He damn sure wasn’t going to be felled by a hundred fifteen pounds of damp, freezing woman, no matter how badly she could fry his circuits with one soft look of her blue eyes, one innocent flick of her tongue across that plump mouth.

Bracing himself as if for battle, he marched over to Kate. Ignoring her startled look, he snatched her up in his arms, sat back down on the bench, and settled her into his lap, his arms wrapped tight around her.

Kate didn’t think she was ever going to get warm. The piles of fleecy fabric Tommy had brought offered some relief, but even as she sat huddled in on herself, it wasn’t enough. She was still shivering so hard it was as if she were having a seizure. And though the dilapidated shack bore no evidence of the violence that had occurred here, the thought of what had happened sent a wave of cold through her that had nothing to do with the icy rain that had soaked her.

Tommy’s attitude didn’t help, his tension rippling off him in waves, his body language conveying quite clearly that he
would rather be anywhere in the world than stuck here with her.

So why was her head suddenly full of long-forgotten memories of the way he smiled at her, the way he laughed at her? The way he made her feel so special and wanted with a mere look.

Seeing him now, every muscle pulled tight across the back turned to her, the grim look he wore, it was hard to believe that boy she knew ever existed. The life he’d lived in the last decade and a half had stripped all the light out of him. Stripped away any hint of softness.

It had started with Michael’s death, she knew. But more had happened since then. Things she would never know.

And the fault for that was squarely on her shoulders, she knew. If she hadn’t let her father take away Tommy’s scholarship, would he have joined the military, seen and done the things that had morphed him into the hardened warrior he’d become?

She’d never know. She’d lost that right the moment she decided to side with her father and keep the truth to herself.

She saw him shift in the corner of her eye and looked up, startling when she saw him headed straight toward her, his mouth pulled into a grim, determined line.

She wasn’t sure what she was expecting, but it wasn’t for him to pull her up off the bench like she weighed nothing and settle her into his lap.

She stiffened for a second, but any thought of discomfort fled at the delicious warmth that seeped through the heavy fabric of her borrowed clothes. It didn’t seem possible given how chilled she was, but immediately everywhere her body touched his began to pulse with heat.

She burrowed closer, tucking her hands between their bodies and burying her head against the wall of his chest.
His arms wrapped around her, warmer than a down comforter, and she could feel the heat of his palms through the layers of clothing as they swept up and down her back.

Within minutes her tremors stopped, her teeth quit their chattering as the heat of him radiated through her skin and pulsed in her blood. She became acutely, intensely aware of him, his huge, muscular arms wrapped around her, the spicy, musky scent of him.

She opened her eyes, flicking them up from his chest to the hard, tan column of his neck. Her lips tingled at the memory of trailing soft, sucking kisses down its length. Her mouth watered at the remembered salty taste of his skin on her tongue.

Cheeks flooding with heat, she forced the thoughts from her head. Whatever chemistry might linger between them, he’d made it more than clear he wasn’t interested in any replay of the past.

She wasn’t ready to separate herself from her human furnace, but this position was too close, too intimate, too reminiscent of the times she’d draped herself over his hard body and explored the hard planes, starting at his neck, trailing across his shoulders, down his chest but never going any farther.

Too shy and inexperienced to give him the pleasure they both craved.

She shifted, turning in his arms to try to face outward.

Tommy let out a sharp grunt and tightened his arms around her. “Dammit, will you stop squirming around like that?”

“Sorry,” she snapped, shifting again, “I’m just trying to get more comfortable—” Every muscle froze as her butt ground into the cradle of his hips.

She swallowed hard, her entire body flushing as she felt
the unmistakable heat and hardness of him pressed into the flesh of her hip.

“Shit,” he breathed, barely audible.

“It’s okay,” she said, her voice high and annoyingly breathy. “I know it’s just friction, like a reflex.”

“Yeah,” he said, his voice crackling with an electric heat that drew her eyes up like a magnet. His own were so full of heat she was surprised her borrowed clothes didn’t start to smoke. “Just reflex.”

In the next breath his mouth was covering hers, his big hand cupping the back of her head, holding her still for his kiss.

Kate’s lips parted eagerly at the first thrust of his tongue. She’d told herself she imagined it, that her memories of kissing Tommy Ibarra had been exaggerated, overblown. Her brain, soaked in the throes of first lust, followed by the worst trauma she’d ever known, had infused the memories of that summer with a kind of intensity that couldn’t have existed.

She couldn’t have been more wrong, and the realization shook her to the core. Her memories of Tommy’s kiss, his touch, didn’t come close to what she was feeling now. It was like being thrust into a vortex full of heat and light, where nothing mattered but the taste of him, the soft rasp of his tongue against hers as he tasted every corner of her mouth. She opened her mouth wider, pressed her lips harder, sucked his tongue into her mouth like she was starving for the taste of him.

This. This was the reason she’d broken the rules, defied her father, been willing to give Tommy anything and everything he wanted, even if he was too much of a gentleman to ask for it.

He wasn’t a gentleman now, cupping his hands under her ass and shifting her so her knees fell on either side of his thighs,
straddling him. A harsh, animal sound came from his throat as she settled against him, her gasp echoing his as the rock-hard column of his erection pushed against her core.

She twined her arms around his neck, threaded her fingers through the thick silk of his hair as she rocked against him. A hollow ache opened up inside her, a soul-deep hunger she’d only ever felt with Tommy. That feeling that made her fingers clutch and her lips devour, as if she could never get enough.

Desire was a tight knot between her legs. Every brush of his body against hers made that knot pulse, pulling the muscles of her belly tight. She loved the way he touched her, his strong fingers curled into the slim curve of her hips, holding her tight, pressing her closer.

One hand stole up under the hem of her shirt, and she moaned against the silky skin of his throat, at the feel of his callused palm against the bare skin of her back, around to her rib cage, sliding up to swallow up the curve of her breast.

Another cry bubbled up from her throat as his thumb brushed the tight point of her nipple. The soft touch sent a rush of heat and wetness between her legs, the pleasure pulling so tight it bordered on pain.

The storm, the surroundings, the bone-jarring cold, everything fell away. There was nothing in her world but heat and need and that endless hollow ache that was created by Tommy, his touch, his taste, and could only be soothed by the same.

“Tommy,” she whispered, taking the lobe of his teeth between her teeth. “Tommy,” she repeated, in that single word telling him everything she needed.

He groaned and started to pull the hem of her shirt up her back. Kate felt a strange vibration against her inner thigh.

Tommy stilled. “Son of a bitch, what the hell am I doing,”
he muttered, pushing Kate back so he could fumble in the pocket of his cargo pants.

Kate scrambled off his lap, feeling like she’d been doused by a bucket of cold water as Tommy put the phone to his ear.

What was
he
doing? What was
she
doing? was the more important question. She crossed her arms over her chest, willing her body to calm down as she listened to Tommy greet CJ. She closed her eyes and gave silent thanks to her friend, whose phone call had stopped her from doing something very, very stupid.

Though it shamed her to her core to admit it, she knew that if Tommy’s phone hadn’t started buzzing, Kate would have let him pull her to the floor and have raw, down and dirty sex right there.

In the very place her brother had been murdered.

All traces of desire fled, chased by shame and self-disgust.

And a small dose of fear. Because Tommy had just proven to her that he was just as dangerous to her today as he’d been to a naive sixteen-year-old caught in the throes of her first love.

She swallowed hard, tugged her sweatshirt back in place, and smoothed a hand over her damp hair.

“Yeah, I’m with her right now.” His gaze caught hers, and she saw that the flames had disappeared. Once again his expression was flat, hard, as though he hadn’t had his hand up her shirt, squeezing her bare breast mere seconds before.

But the hot color slashing his cheekbones told a different story. That and… Kate couldn’t keep her eyes from drifting down the front of his body to the front of his pants. Her mouth went dry at the sight of him, his erection clearly outlined against the worn fabric.

She quickly turned away. The shack suddenly seemed to shrink in size, the walls squeezing in. There didn’t seem to
be enough oxygen for both her and the huge, hard man who could steal her reason with one touch of his lips.

She didn’t turn around as he ended his phone call. She heard the door open and shivered at the rush of cool, damp air.

“The storm’s let up,” Tommy said gruffly. “I think it’s safe to get moving if you’re up to it.”

Kate nodded sharply and pulled her shoes on. She followed Tommy out, keeping up with his brisk pace, ignoring the way her shoes were squishing around her feet and rubbing her heels raw.

The urge to address what had happened bubbled up, but every time she opened her mouth to speak she caught herself, the right words never seeming to form.

The silence grew heavier until it felt like a force field between them. Tommy’s expression was closed, hard, leaving no doubt to his mood.

Kate climbed silently into his truck. Though her insides were roiling with a mass of confusion and questions, instinct told her to keep them to herself. Trying to talk to Tommy now would be like poking at an angry lion, and she wasn’t prepared to handle the claws.

There was nothing to gain by dissecting what had happened. The smartest thing to do was to follow his lead, close herself off, and act like nothing had ever happened.

T
he squeak of the hinges made Tricia’s blood run cold. Followed by heavy footsteps on the floor. One, two, three, four, five steps to her door.

Going by the sliver of light that appeared and disappeared at the bottom of the boarded-up window across from the bed she was cuffed to, she was in her third full day of captivity. In that short time certain things had been seared into her brain. The squeak of the door hinges. The number of times hard-soled shoes would
thunk
on the floor before she heard the creak of the doorknob.

The feel of his palm exploding across her cheekbone, slamming into her lip.

The door started to ease open, her heart thudding in her chest like a wild bird was trapped inside. A scream bubbled up in her throat, but she held it back. She’d already learned the hard way that wherever she was, it was far enough from others that no one could hear her, no matter how loud she screamed.

The door swung open, and his shape was momentarily backlit by the light in the hallway. But other than a general outline of his body, to her frustration she couldn’t make out his features. The room she was in was kept dark, and though he always brought a candle with him, with his hood pulled
up over his head and his face obscured by shadows, she was unable to get a clear look at her captor.

Part of her was comforted by this. In movies and books, if the bad guy let a victim see his face, it usually meant he was going to kill her.