Nemesis (Southern Comfort) (12 page)

“Where?” Please, not under the bed.  He’d found her there so many times when they were kids that surely she’d learned that lesson.

“Inside the bathroom cabinet.  I’d just cleaned it out and –”

“Did you say inside the bathroom cabinet?” 

“Yes,” she said more aggressively, sitting a l
ittle straighter in his lap.  “And if you say anything about my growth and development I’ll be happy to remove you of the burden of your fat head.”

Declan had to bite back a smile.  If she was comfortable enough to snarl at him, she must finally be feeling safe.

“Apologies.” He squeezed her gently.  “Do go on.”

Sadie sniffed and wiped at her tear-stained cheek with her fingers.  But when he saw the bloody streak they left behind his new sense of well-being went right out the window.  “What the hell,” he breathed furiously, “happened to your hands?”

Sadie looked down at the hand he’d just grabbed.  When she noticed the raw skin and the oozing blood, she went an alarmingly whiter shade of pale.  “I cut them when I was sliding off the roof.”

And Dec’s carefully heeled temper nearly exploded into orbit.  She’d slid off the damn roof?  She was lucky her fool neck hadn’t been broken.

And because that thought hit so painfully close to home, his grip on her tightened involuntarily.

“But they don’t hurt, really.”  Her voice went back to shaky
, even as
she
tried to comfort
him.
“I mean I couldn’t even feel it when I climbed over the privacy fence, even though I knew I should be feeling something, but… it’s not bad.”  And the look she gave him was desperate.  “It must not be that bad, right? Because I really can’t feel the pain.”

More likely she was in shock.  He wrapped her up
even tighter and thought of the whiskey in the kitchen cabinet as he listened for approaching sirens.  Where the hell were the stupid police?

Maybe he should grab a blanket and give her that whiskey.

Maybe he should just load her into his car and drive her to the hospital himself, to hell with this waiting around.

Then something she said finally penetrated.  “You climbed over the privacy fence?”

Sadie glanced up from her mangled fingers.  “I had to. The s-s-second guy came around front and the one in back had me cornered.  He grabbed my ankle as I was going over, but luckily my shoe was untied.”

Guilt settled with an all too familiar weight.
  To hell with this, and to hell with the police and to hell with his own culpability.

He glanced toward the door.  Whoever had chased Sadie had probably taken off when he’d tripped the alarm.

“Come on,” he said suddenly, the sight of her bare foot making him feel sick to his stomach.  “I’m taking you to the hospital.”

He’d make damn sure she didn’t feel any pain.
   

SADIE
studied the gauze swaddling her hands as Declan drove them home from the hospital, the intermittent swish of the windshield wipers the only sound penetrating the silence.  The last few hours had been a blur of adrenaline that left her alternately confused, terrified, shaken and exhausted.  Declan had turned into a rampaging lunatic, yelling at the cops who’d finally shown up at the ER to get her statement and raking the poor hospital staff over the coals when she’d had to wait before getting treated.  He’d even threatened one of the nurses when she copped an unsympathetic attitude, saying that Sadie’s injuries didn’t look “all that bad.”

Sadie was trying not to love him for that.

Of course it helped that he’d turned sullen and uncommunicative again on the brief ride home from the hospital. And when they pulled onto their street and she caught a glimpse of her grandmother’s cottage, Declan Murphy became the least of her worries.  Her stomach did a nervous hula when she realized she was going to have to sleep there tonight.

For what was left of the night, anyway.

She wished she’d thought to ask Dec to drop her off at a hotel.  Now she looked at the metal roof and pictured herself dangling from it like a wind chime, those horrible men running her to ground as if she were some kind of cornered rabbit. The awful memories were vivid enough to make her tremble.

“Stop the car.  Stop, stop, stop.  I can’t –”

But Declan bypassed her house and pulled into his driveway, blithely ignoring her ramblings as he parked in the detached garage. Coming around to the passenger side without one word of comment, he scooped her up and headed for the back door before her head cleared enough to protest.

“What are you doing?”  Okay, so the
painkiller they’d given her might be making her a little slow.

“Just shut up, would you, Sadie?”

Well, she saw no cause for him to be rude.  “Excuse me,” she pointed out as he banged into the kitchen, using a well-placed elbow to set the alarm.  “But I’d like to remind you that I’ve just experienced a trauma.  Bad guys trying to kill me, practically dislocating my shoulder, stitches in my hands.”  She waved one of the Q-tip like appendages in his vicinity.  “Any of this ringing a bell?”

His jaw set, but he otherwise ignored her.  He just carried her right up the stairs.

“Look, Declan, I appreciate all your help tonight, but –”

“Shut.  Up.”

That was it.  Now he’d riled her temper.  “Don’t you tell me to shut up, Declan Murphy. I’ll have you know that just because you –”

A firm set of lips slapped over her mouth, effectively muzzling her outburst, and Sadie was too shocked to do much more than lay there limply against his chest.  Not to mention the fact that she was drugged.  Which was the real reason all her bones went liquid.

And her tongue just sort of… slipped.  Which happened when you were drugged.  So if hers fell out of her mouth and into Declan’s, she didn’t see how that was really her fault.

And that little sound she made?

Definitely the painkiller talking.

Because it was inconceivable that Declan Murphy would kiss her, and
she’d go into meltdown, for heaven’s sake.  Because he’d tried to kiss her plenty of times when they were growing up and it had definitely been pretty gross.

Of course, back then he hadn’t had the goatee.

Or all the… you know.  Muscles.

Or whatever hard appendage was currently pressing against her bottom.  Well he’d had it, but she didn’t think it had been hard.  At least not so that she’d noticed.

But wait, maybe that was his pistol.  He’d stuck it in that little hip holster when he was getting out of the car.  She squirmed a bit to test the theory.

Oh yeah. She was pretty sure that was Declan.

A soft mattress pressed against her back and Sadie suffered a moment of confusion.  The guest bed, she thought, but then Declan’s tongue was back in her mouth, moving right in like he owned it, not tentative or polite or neighborly at all. Which was typical. 

But then he said “fuck,” breathed it really, and raw heat shot through Sadie, the chill of the fear she’d experienced
that night burned out by simple lust.

Not that anything about this was simple.  After all, this was Declan.

Declan, who’d certainly learned a thing or two about kissing in the intervening fifteen years.

The warm press of his chest had her breasts tingling, the scrape of his goatee singed her skin, the fire of his hand sliding
firmly up her hip made her shiver from the burn.  He was hot.  God, he was hot and rude and raw – everything Sadie needed, needed now.  Helpless, she arched off the bed, wrapping her arms around his neck to drag him closer.

His lips cruised to the hollow of her throat, sliding back so that the whimper vibrating there was caught between his teeth.  Sanity hanging by a thread – damn those drugs, anyway – Sadie dug her heels into the mattress.  He shifted, raised a leg, and just like that, parted her thighs.  When his hips pressed her down, one hand curving into the back of her jeans to pull her tight against him, the thread snapped.  Rational thoughts spilled away like beads
from a broken necklace.

God.  “More.”

Declan growled, swore baldly.

The rawness, the grit
tiness of it thrummed in her blood as his hips surged and retreated.  Denim scraped her skin, and flashes of heat shot off like sparklers.  She nipped at his jaw, cursed the bandages she wore because she wanted her hands in his hair.

His breath was hot in her ear – and sweet, who would have guessed it? – coming in pants that sounded erotic as hell. 

Her skin went slick beneath the hand that wrenched up her shirt to cup her breast.

Then his mouth was on hers
again, tongue plunging, lips crushing and Sadie squirmed, frantic with need.  Her pulse scrambled, hitched, then roared through her veins as the taste of him flooded her mouth.

Rain drumm
ed steadily against the window glass in tempo with her heartbeat.

She wrapped a leg around his hip but when they rolled she cried out in pain. 

“My shoulder,” was all she could think to say.  

Breaking the kiss, Declan slowly removed his hand, pushing himself up onto his elbows.  The steam rising from their bodies all but clouded the heavy air.

For a moment they just lay there, both of them struggling to breathe.

Then accompanied by a scowl and absolutely no eye contact, Declan’s long fingers began to undo her jeans.  Sadie thought
well, isn’t this interesting
, and then
what the hell do you think you’re doing,
but her jeans were off before she could find the wherewithal to say either.  The painkiller suggested there really wasn’t a problem.

The
painkiller thought that maybe Dec would like to step out of his jeans as well.

Lifting lids that had gone heavy as stones, Sadie watched him climb to his feet, all long legs and messy hair and
bad attitude.  Just like the boy she remembered. 

But the curve of his very grown-up bicep as he yanked the quilt from the end of the bed had admiration stealing her breath.

Then the quilt settled over her, rather wetly.  Oh it was dry, of course, but simply not what she’d been expecting.   Honestly, she’d been anticipating about a hundred and eighty-odd pounds of aroused male.  Not that she was in any condition, or anything.  And she certainly didn’t want that to happen.  But you know, given the way he’d just inspected her tonsils and tried to suck them into his own throat, she just sort of –

“Good night, Sadie.”

And with that he closed the door.  

Sadie lay there, stunned into insensibility.  Had she actually made out with Declan Murphy?  And had he actually just… walked out?  In possession of a full-on stiffy? She replayed the course of events since they’d come home, and that was pretty much the way things had happened. She ran her tongue over her lips, tasted him there, and experienced a pang of
intense disappointment. It was almost more difficult to comprehend than the fact that she’d nearly been robbed.  Or raped. Or possibly even murdered.

Well okay, maybe not.  This whole night was one big conundrum.  Sadie shivered, no longer warm, and glanced furtively out the window.  The electricity seemed to have been restored next door.  She could
just see into the bedroom, the tops of the bed’s four posters made blurry from the rain.

And the thought of what had almost happened there had big fat tears rolling out of her eyes
, shock and horror rushing back in to replace lust.

Dear God.  She’d almost been
killed
tonight.

A sob ripped out of her throat, and she muffled it against the pillow.
One more reason to be glad Declan had vacated.  Because she absolutely wouldn’t want him to see her crying.  And the other thing, that notion of sex she’d been entertaining, well it was a good thing he didn’t understand the language of painkillers.  Because that certainly would have been a mistake.

Her tears eventually dried, and a
huge yawn cracked her jaw. 

She’d have to think about this stuff tomorrow.  Right now the
Percocet, or whatever it was they’d given her, was telling her it was lights out. 

CHAPTER ELEVEN

SADIE
awakened to the logging of the rain forest. 

Seriously, that’s how it sounded.  A chainsaw buzzed loudly enough outside her wind
ow to wake Elvis.  She tried to move to a sitting position, groaned loudly over various aches and pains, and finally managed to creak and mince effectively enough to identify the cause of the ruckus.

Declan was decimating the privacy fence.

Clad in worn jeans, protective goggles and a gray T-shirt, which sweat had darkened where it clung to his broad back, he wielded the power tool like a man possessed. Or possibly one who was off his medication.  Why else would a seemingly reasonable human being be chopping that fence post into a bunch of little toothpicks?