Money Shot (21 page)

Rush rubbed a palm over his face. “Well, shit.”

Goose nodded. “That was pretty much my reaction as well.” She got up and plunked herself onto the couch, though she was careful to leave plenty of space between them.

Rush blew out a breath and shot her a sideways look. “Okay, fine. Einar’s ambitious, but that doesn’t mean he’s the one playing around with the Stone Altar. He doesn’t believe in black magic any more than I do.”

“But he believes in money, right? In the power of appearances? Think about it, Rush. If he’s going to sell something, especially something as sexy as dark magic, wouldn’t he make sure it looked damn good first? And that he looked damn good selling it?”

Rush stared, struck. “That’s what you think he’s doing down there at the Stone Altar? Dress rehearsals?”

“Makes sense to me.” She tipped her head. “You?”

He was silent for a long moment, then blew out a breath through tight lips. “Yeah,” he said finally. “It makes sense.” He dropped his head into his hands, elbows braced on knees. “Fuck me, though, I don’t want it to.”

Her heart broke a little at the weary distress in his voice, the defeated slump of those strong shoulders, and she abandoned common sense for compassion. How could she
not
touch him? She scooted closer, until her thigh snuggled up against the hard length of his. The heat of him burned through the flannel of her pajama bottoms, but she ignored it. Or tried to. She put her palm between his shoulder blades, on the muscle and bone that spread tense and vital beneath her hand.

“I’m sorry, Rush. I hate it that I have to ask this of you. For you to betray your own cousin’s trust.”

He speared his fingers through the hair he didn’t have and shook his head. “Fucking Einar.” His tone was more weary than upset. “Hey, though. It’s not your fault, Goose. Don’t take it on, okay?”

“Fault.” She made a rude noise. “Like fault counts for shit when something blows this hard.”

He gave her a wry almost-smile. “I love it when you talk dirty.”

She grinned back, too relieved to do otherwise. “Hey, I’m not above crude language if merited. And this situation definitely merits it. If you want, if it’d cheer you up, I could probably drop you an F-bomb or two.”

“A well-placed ‘fuck’ is a joy forever.”

“Um . . .” She grappled with that one for a moment. He did smile at her this time. Smirked, actually. “I didn’t mean literally.”

“Oh.” Her cheeks went bright. “I didn’t think—”

“Sure you did. Your mind’s in the gutter, di Guzman.” He shook his head in mock dismay. “How utterly sophomoric.” Then he leaned in, effectively paralyzing her lungs. She should move back, she knew, but he’d somehow paralyzed her fight-or-flight mechanism, too. Damn him and those snake-charmer eyes.

“My mind,” she said indignantly, as trumped-up outrage was about all she could manage in terms of self-defense, “is nowhere near the gutter.”

“My mind,” he said, “is on about number four of that list I mentioned earlier. Top Ten Ways to While Away a Stormy Night with Goose?”

She blinked at him, all innocence. “You want to play Stratego?”

“I want to play something.”

 

THOSE BIG sad eyes went wide, then darted toward the stove, the door, the window. She edged toward the arm of the couch.

“That’s, um, probably not a good idea,” she said.

Of its own volition, Rush’s mouth curved in a halfamused, half-predatory smile, and his heart gave a hard thud of something like joy. Because for the first time in ages, he didn’t wonder if he was smiling at the right time or the right place. He didn’t worry or wonder or second-guess himself. He just let the smile well up from the darkest, most primitive corner of his soul—
mine
—and slide right onto his face.

He inched forward until she’d scooted her butt right to the arm of the couch. “No? Because I think it’s a great idea.” He reached across her to lay a hand on the worn armrest, effectively caging her between his arms. He didn’t touch her, though. He simply allowed the air between them to go heavy and electric with the weight of what snapped between them so relentlessly.

“Didn’t you hear any of what I just said?” She glared at him, but he noticed she didn’t touch him. Didn’t put so much as a finger on his chest to nudge him aside. Desire rose up within him, slid hot and dense through his veins to settle, hard, between his legs.

“About you wanting me to ask you into Einar’s house for a sneaky-peeky?” He leaned in, dipped his face into the warm, scented air beside her throat until he could feel as much as hear her swiftly indrawn breath. See as much as sense the mad flutter of her heartbeat. And still she didn’t touch him. Damn, he wanted her to touch him. “Yeah, I heard you.”

“And you still want to . . .”

He cocked his head to meet her baffled, embattled eyes. “Yeah.”

“Why?” It burst from her, reluctant and tortured, like she didn’t want to ask, didn’t even want to broach the subject, but was powerless to resist her desire to know the answer. “Why would you want to—”

“Kiss you? Touch you?” He nuzzled the fine, slippery strands of hair away from the side of her neck and allowed himself to place one chaste kiss there. The urge to gorge himself on the sweet silk of her skin savaged his self-control, but he locked it down. Barely. “Take you?”

“Yes.” It was a bare, ragged whisper. “I’m gunning for your family, you know. Your blood. You shouldn’t want anything to do with me.”

“And while I’m not thrilled with the idea, I’m okay with it. Which I’ve already told you. Multiple times. If you don’t do it, somebody else surely will. And frankly?” He flicked the tip of his tongue against the sweet warmth of her skin and her strangled gasp nearly undid him. “I like our chances better with you running the show.”

He felt it then. The first tentative pressure of her hands against his chest. Not pushing him away, not yet. But not allowing him any closer, either. He grabbed desperately at the desire raging within him, driving him closer, harder, throbbing mercilessly through his body, his soul. He gathered it all up, held it in a precarious, fragile balance and waited.

“Don’t look for me to play favorites on this, Rush,” she said quietly. “If it comes down to choosing between business and pleasure, business wins. Every time.”

“Goose. Honey.” He leaned in to inhale the sweet warmth at the base of her throat. “Don’t be an idiot.”

“Excuse me?”

“Am I asking you to pull any punches? To play extra nice with any criminals I may or may not be related to?” He leaned back far enough to meet her wary eyes. “I’m not, okay? That’s a totally separate thing. Right now all I’m asking is whether or not you want me.”

“Do I—” She broke off on a sharp exhale. “No, Rush. Of course I don’t. I might throw you a pity bang in a few minutes here but only because I feel sorry for you.” She shoved at his chest and snapped, “Do I
want
you. God.”

He laughed as triumph flashed through him. “A pity bang, huh?”

She closed her eyes, as if realizing upon mental review that her last few comments had been less than prudent. “Okay, I didn’t mean—It’s not like I’m really going to—” She broke off, wary. Good for her. Rush suddenly felt very dangerous. “I just—”

“You just what?” he asked softly, and what he saw in her eyes had fear leaping sharp and ugly into the lust already churning inside him, creating something hotter and earthier than either of them alone. Something dangerously unstable. Combustible. He’d promised himself he’d back off, let her come to him with her decision, whatever it was.

But that was before. Before he’d looked into her eyes and saw her teetering perilously close to
no
. Before he’d realized that while wanting her, waiting for her, was agonizing, losing her might actually kill him. And he was afraid—okay, he was
terrified
, damn it—that he was about to find out for sure if being rejected by her was a survivable event.

So. New plan.

He’d never been one for waiting around anyway.

He moved forward, crowding her until she’d scooted herself right into the corner of the couch. Her eyes were huge and wary on his face, but still those warm hands on his chest didn’t move. Didn’t pull him in but didn’t push him away, either. He came up and over her, slipped a knee into the gap between her hip and the armrest until he’d caged her neatly between his thighs. Until every inch of his skin begged him to close the gap, to press his desperate body into the welcoming heat of hers, but still he didn’t touch her. Didn’t dare.

He shook his head slowly. “I’m having a hard time figuring you out, Goose.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean you smile like Miss America but your eyes are sad enough to make me ache. Sometimes you laugh and it’s like bells ringing. But every now and again, you snort instead. So who are you really? Who did I kiss last night?”

Her mouth opened—those lush and curvy lips—but no words came out. But that wasn’t a problem because for once words just wouldn’t stop pouring out of his own mouth. And he was powerless to stop them. “Are you Goose? Or are you Maria?”

She flinched. “Don’t call me that,” she said.

“What?
Maria?
” He tugged at the braid of yarn hanging off one of her earflaps and gave her a grin that was all teeth. “That
is
your name, isn’t it?”

She didn’t meet his eyes. “I prefer Goose.”

“I think I prefer Maria. That’s who I kissed the other night, isn’t it?”

She shoved against him and he obligingly backed up. She shot to her feet and something inside him rejoiced at the idea that he could do this. He could break through that plastic veneer and make whatever was inside her come out into the light. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said, her mouth pinched tight.

He rose, too. Even with her in stocking feet, he was still only three or four inches taller than she was. He liked that, too. She wasn’t some fragile little thing he had to worry about intimidating. She was tough, strong, and under all that charm just as stubborn as he was.

“Sure you do,” he said. He took another deliberate step toward her. Until he was so far inside her personal space he could feel her body heat, could hear the quiver of her breath. “Come on, Maria. Come out to play.”

Then he went ahead and threw the Hail Mary.

He yanked her in and planted his mouth on hers. He poured everything into it, too. All the aching want he’d been bottling up, the yearning to push inside her, to connect. To get past all that shiny, slippery charm of hers to the roiling cauldron of emotion underneath.

He expected her to shove an elbow into his midsection—a well-deserved elbow, he would admit. He expected her to slap his face, or worse, laugh in it. He expected her to stomp on his instep, remove herself from his distasteful embrace and retreat with offended dignity to her room.

He did
not
expect her to kiss him back. He’d had his hopes, of course, but nothing as solid as expectation. So when she wound her arms around him, arched into him and exploded in his arms, he couldn’t tell if his answering wrench of desire was from the act itself or the shock of it. He didn’t much care to reason it out at that moment, however. Not that he had the mental faculties to reason at all.

For the next several moments, all his mind was capable of registering was the pulling and snatching and panting and grabbing. It was some sort of primitive autopilot that had him boosting her up, wrapping her legs around him and lowering them both to the floor. Then space and time sort of disappeared on him, leaving him with nothing but a refractory jumble of heat and want. He was caught in an inferno of pulsing, glowing desire, fueled by the satin sweep of her skin under his fingers, her hair on his face, the sweet hitch of her breath in the crook of his neck.

MINE
.

It rang through his soul like a bell, shock waves sailing out and bouncing back until he couldn’t think, couldn’t speak, couldn’t do anything but stake his claim with hands, lips, teeth. God, he wanted to
mark
her. It hammered at him, the primal urge to make her his in absolute terms, until nobody, not even Goose—not even
Maria
—could deny it.

Maria
. That rang through him, too. It was her name. Her self. Her vast and hidden truth. How had he not seen it before? And it was in his arms now;
she
was in his arms now. Wrapped around him, seeking his mouth, his kiss, his body with an avid hunger that both humbled him and inflamed him. She was a gift. Unexpected and undeserved. And was he satisfied? Hell, no. He wanted more.

His hands flew over her, plucking at the layers upon layers of clothing between them. He was reluctant to leave the wonder of her mouth, but he was also mad to feel the heat of her skin against his. Skin that was locked away behind this ridiculous maze of buttons, zippers, ties and hooks. He needed to unwrap this package,
now
. And he was going to start with that ugly hat.

He levered up onto one elbow and grabbed a handful of utilitarian gray wool. He pulled it free with a grunt of satisfaction, then stared in shocked delight at the riot of glossy black ringlets that tumbled free. They bounced around the quirky oval of her face with passionate abandon and something inside him said
yes, of course
.

His cranky, foulmouthed, snort-laughing temptress was also curly-headed. Beautifully, madly, crazily curly.

He grinned at her. “Hello, Maria.”

She went perfectly, utterly still. Not that she had much choice, pinned as she was to the floor by the glorious weight of him. Pinned, hell. Like she was trapped by anything other than the inescapable gravity of her own desire. Look at her. She was twined around him like a climbing vine, twisting and seeking and grasping and gasping. Pushing herself closer and closer, higher and hotter. Rocking herself shamelessly into the hard heat of him, indulging herself and her worst instincts without conscience or restraint.