Present Danger (25 page)

She yawned and rubbed her cheek against the damp skin just under his collarbone. James tunneled his fingers through her hair. “Tired?”

“Um-hmm. I know it’s fairly early, but,”—she yawned again, raising polite fingertips to cover her mouth—“I’m beat.” Her eyes drifted closed, then reopened to regard him drowsily. “I’m sorry,” she murmured contritely. “You’re probably hungry, huh? I think we both missed our dinners.”

“Don’t worry about it.” He eased out of her and rolled onto his back. His arms reached out to pull her to him, one large hand cupping the back of her head to position her cheek gently against his chest. She sighed and snuggled in, looping an arm over
his shoulder, her hand groping for his ponytail. She draped a leg across his thighs.

Two minutes later, she was asleep.

James held her for about an hour before the rumblings of his stomach forced him out of bed. He pulled on his jeans and let himself out of her apartment. In his own, he made two fried-egg sandwiches and washed them down with a tumbler of orange juice. He sat down at his drafting board and was pleased with both the quality and quantity of his work when he pushed back an hour and forty-five minutes later. Going into the bathroom, he flossed and brushed his teeth, removed his rubber band to rebrush his hair, and then clubbed it back again. He shaved carefully.

Then, grabbing a huge handful of condoms, he locked up and let himself back into Aunie’s apartment. In the back of his mind was the thought that this might be his only night with her.

The notion shouldn’t have had the power to disturb him. With other women, that was all he’d ever wanted.

He tiptoed into the bedroom and stood looking down at her sleeping form. Okay, it did disturb him. He didn’t know what the hell made her so different. Usually he was satisfied with one, maybe two sessions of raunchy sex, and then he was anxious to be on his way. Somehow, tonight, that didn’t seem nearly enough.

Who, however, could possibly guess what her attitude might be come morning? So, on the chance that tonight was all he’d ever get, he damn well planned to make it count.

He woke her several times that night. Touching her, kissing her, he pulled Aunie from the depths of a sound sleep time after time. And she discovered that, as unbelievably exciting as it had been when he’d made love to her with that edge-of-control urgency he’d displayed earlier in the evening, it was almost negligible compared to when James was feeling slow and deliberate. She had to grit her teeth to prevent herself from blurting out her feelings for him as his hard body rocked over hers with excruciating laziness. Even when he rolled to his back and let her rise and fall upon him as she wished, he held her to a languorous pace that somehow triggered nerves she’d never even dreamed she’d possessed. Through pure concentration—fueled by a terror of scaring him off—she managed not to tell him that she loved him. It was completely beyond her, however, to prevent
as well the low, continuous moan that escaped her clenched teeth, her compressed lips.

James awoke first the following morning. Stretching until his shoulder muscles popped, he rolled over to reach for her but stopped at the sight that greeted him. He felt the same sickening drop in his gut that he’d experienced the night Fancy-cut kicked him in the balls. The little bit of her that was visible—her face, her throat, a diagonal slice of one delicate shoulder and breast—gave every appearance of having been thoroughly debauched. He finessed the blanket away and stared down at her, swallowing hard.

He’d never known anyone with skin so pale, had never seen a woman who didn’t display at least the faintest of tan lines. But from her hair line to the tips of her toes, Aunie’s skin was untouched by the sun, as white and smooth as a gardenia blossom.

Usually.

This morning she looked like she’d been worked over by a brillo pad. Her skin was marred by angry, splotchy red scrapes from his heavy morning beard … a result, no doubt, of the last time he’d roused her, around seven
A.M.
The finely delineated lines of her mouth had been blurred by the roughness of his passion, lips swollen now and red, and whisker burns abraded the area around it.

But worse by far were the hickeys.

Hickeys,
for Christ’s sake. He’d outgrown thinking they were proof of his prowess when he was about seventeen, eighteen years old. Yet there they were, standing out as dramatically as drops of blood in the snow—on her throat, on her breasts, across her stomach and one thigh. He didn’t even know when he’d produced them—the first time, second time, third … shit, how many times had there been? He
remembered the feel of her skin, incredibly soft against his mouth, remembered thinking she was downright edible, but he sure as hell didn’t recall setting out to mark her like that.

Curses, low and imaginative, whispered out of his throat, and his beard rasped like sandpaper in the morning stillness as he scrubbed his hands over his face. So all right, he tried to tell himself bracingly. You pretty much figured she’d come to her senses this morning anyhow, right?

Yeah, right,
an inner voice replied viciously,
but I wasn’t lookin’ to friggin’ well guarantee it.
Oh, Christ, if she’d had any doubts before, one look in a mirror and she’d be convinced he was nothing more than a slum-born animal, incapable of the finer graces she no doubt expected from a man. He dug his elbows into his updrawn knees and clasped his hands behind his head, squeezing his temples between his forearms.

He was still sitting that way, methodically searching his normally facile mind for a brainstorm, when all hell broke loose.

The fists thundering on Aunie’s front door brought James’s head up with a snap. Aunie shifted in her sleep, then abruptly came awake when the pounding continued. She sat up, the covers tumbling to her lap, and blinked at him in confusion. “James?” she whispered, watching him wrestle his jeans over his naked rear, tucking and cautiously zipping. “What’s goin’ on? Who’s makin’ all that noise?”

“I don’t know. Here.” He tossed her a floral silk kimono that he’d found draped over her little accessory chair. “Put this on. I’ll answer the door.”

James disdained stooping down to put his eye to the
viewer. Instead, he yanked open the door in irritation. Whoever the hell was making all that racket had better have a pretty damned good excuse.

His brother Will was the last person he expected to see.

“Oh, good. You’re here,” Will said and shouldered past James into the short hallway. “Lola said you might be.” He rocked nervously on the balls of his feet, the hands in his pockets anxiously jiggling change. “I need your help, Jimmy.”

So what else is new? James thought with a twinge of bitterness, but he didn’t bother to verbalize it. “C’mon in.” He jerked his head in the direction of the living room. He let his brother precede him, then nearly barrelled into his back when Will abruptly stopped. Looking past him, he saw Aunie standing uncertainly in the entry to the bed-and-bath hallway.

She had donned her little cinnamon satin slip as well as the silk kimono, but nothing could disguise what he’d been doing to her the night before. Some of the violently hued marks had been covered by material but by no means had all of them been, and her hair was still rumpled, her mouth still swollen. The jumpiness in Will’s body stilled as he turned to his brother and for the first time noticed his bare chest and unclubbed hair. For some reason, the sight of their dishabille seemed to lessen his own tension. “I need your help,” he repeated with less edginess than before.

“I’ll make some coffee,” Aunie offered quietly and disappeared into the kitchen. James added a whole new twist of guilt to the mass already knotting his gut when he noted the stiffness with which she walked. Jesus. He’d always prided himself on being a fairly
considerate lover. But he sure as hell hadn’t used an ounce of common sense last night.

He turned to Will with a notable lack of sympathy. “What’s the problem?”

“Lana’s knocked up and …”

“Who?”

“Lana. You know, you met her at … oh, I guess that was Bobby. Well, anyhow, she’s this woman I’ve been seeing and now she’s knocked up.”

“You didn’t bother to use anything?” James demanded incredulously.

Will’s retort was sullen. “I thought she was taking care of it.”

“Good God.” James shook his head in disgust. “Of all the stupid, idiotic … pregnancy aside, Will, you ever heard of safe sex? STD’s? AIDS?” He shook his head again, impatiently. “Never mind. What is it, exactly, that you want me to do about it?” He absolutely drew the line at turning this place into a home for unwed mothers, so if that was what his brother had in mind, he could forget it.

“I need ya to lend me a couple hundred bucks. She can get an appointment at the clinic, but we’re short—”

“Let me get this straight,” James interrupted him sharply, heavy blond eyebrows drawing together ominously over the bridge of his nose. “You want me to finance an
abortion
for your girlfriend because you were too damn lazy to use a glove while you were glad-handing her?”

Will reacted poorly to the incredulous contempt in his brother’s voice. “When the hell did
you
get so righteous, Jimmy?” he demanded hotly. “It’s pretty damn clear you’ve been sticking it to
her”
—he jerked his head in Aunie’s direction just as she emerged
from the kitchen—“the whole night long, so don’t try to tell me if she turned up pregnant, you wouldn’t hustle her to the nearest clinic, same as me. Or maybe,” he said with reckless insolence, his eyes once again taking in the marks on Aunie’s skin, “your idea of birth control is keeping her on her knees sucking your—”

The next thing Will knew, his brother was slamming him up against the wall, a rough hand in his hair jerking his neck taut, a muscular forearm jammed against his Adam’s apple, choking off his air supply. James’s eyes glittered dangerously as he pushed his face aggressively close to Will’s. “You
ever,”
he said between clenched teeth, “talk about her again like she’s one of the little sluts you associate with, and I’ll tear your fuckin’ tongue out by
the
roots. You got that, William?” Chest heaving, James stared at his brother through a haze of red. She was the purest thing that had ever passed through his life. He would friggin’ well be
damned
if anyone would talk about her as if she were a round-heeled little whore.

Will nodded weakly, eyes wide and nostrils flared. Jesus. He’d seen that look in Jimmy’s eyes before, but always it had been directed at someone else… usually while in defense of one of his brothers, never at one of them. His eyes sliced to Aunie, who was standing stock-still, regarding them both with horror. He’d made a big mistake thinking she was just another bimbo who’d fallen easily into his brother’s bed. Jimmy had never been one for kiss and tell, but everyone knew his past conquests hadn’t been all that dissimilar from Will’s. Not only was this one a hundred times classier than his usual type, but … well, Jimmy didn’t blow like he’d just done unless something mattered deeply to him … not ever. Will wondered
if Aunie knew her importance in his life. Hell, he wondered if his brother knew.

He wondered if he were going to pass out for lack of oxygen before he could figure it out. He could feel himself growing lightheaded.

“James, please,” Aunie said in a low, urgent voice. “He’s your brother, and you’re hurting him!”

He glanced at her, saw the horror in her eyes, and the red mist began to dissipate. He slowly eased his arm back, released his grip in Will’s hair. Breathing heavily, he stepped fully away from his brother, shoving his hands through his own hair while he stared unblinkingly at Aunie. Then he turned on his heel and strode from the apartment, slamming the door behind him.

Slumped weakly against the wall, Will took several cautious breaths. He looked at Aunie, at her confusion and horrified dismay, and was genuinely embarrassed that she’d heard what he’d said to James. The Ryder brothers didn’t ordinarily run across women of her ilk, and his only excuse for the crude comments he’d made at her expense was frustration with Jimmy’s attitude … which he supposed wasn’t really much of an excuse at all.

“I’m sorry,” he said, pushing away from the wall. “What I said about you and Jimmy was uncalled for, and … well, I’m sorry.”

She suddenly seemed to recall just what it was he had said and blushed scarlet, tugging the lapels of her kimono closer. Will felt even lower. Jeez, there was just something about her that could make a guy feel like the crudest of lowlifes. He didn’t know how Jimmy could stand it. But then, maybe his brother didn’t respond to that untouched quality in quite the same way that he did. “Look, I’ll get out of your
hair,” he said. “It was stupid of me to come here in the first place. Jimmy’s always had this moral streak … I think he got it from Otis’s ma. I guess I should have remembered that before I told him what I needed the money for.”

“Is that your only regret?” Aunie inquired in amazement. “That you didn’t lie to James about the reason you wanted the money?”

Her well-bred wonderment made Will squirm with something he didn’t particularly care to feel… conscience. “Hey, accidents happen,” he said defensively.

“It occurs to me,” she commented neutrally, “that they happen a lot more frequently to those who do nothing to prevent them.”

“Maybe, but the fact remains, lady, that Lana’s already knocked up, neither of us wants the kid, and one way or another we’re gettin’ her an abortion!”

“So be it,” Aunie said, delicately shrugging one shoulder. “What you ultimately choose to do is your business and you have a perfect right to that choice. But rather than dragging other people into a controversy over abortion as a means of birth control, why don’t you finance your decision the old-fashioned way … and earn it yourself.”

“Spoken like someone who’s never had to work a day in her life!” Will snapped. “When you pay your dues, sister, then you can talk to me about earning it myself!”

That flicked her on the raw, touching a nerve in her most persistently held insecurity. But a newly discovered pride brought her chin up. “Just who do you think is balancin’ my budget and payin’ my bills?” she asked coolly, looking him squarely in the eye. “Who do you suppose is workin’ her tail off to get an education to prepare herself for the real world?
You don’t know the first thing about me, Will Ryder, or the dues I’ve paid, so don’t presume to tell me I’ve never worked a day in my life. At least I don’t expect my brother to fork over money that he’s accumulated through his own hard work just to make things smooth and easy for me!”

For a moment, Will looked as though he might explode, and Aunie took a leery step backwards. But then he puffed up his cheeks and expelled a long breath. “Okay, maybe you have a point,” he conceded with a modicum of good grace. He even managed half a smile. “I’ll consider what you say, all right?”

“All right.”

His conscience pinching, Will was totally sincere as he spoke the words. He was almost thirty … maybe it
was
time he quit depending on Jimmy to bail him out every time he was in trouble. Maybe he should start figuring a way to take care of business for himself. He’d give it some real thought.

By the time he’d reached the main entrance door of the building, however, he was already wondering if Paul had any spare change, now that he was no longer putting all his money up his nose.

Aunie closed the door behind Will’s departing back and slowly slid down it until her knees were wobbling in front of her face. Of the many times she had fantasized the seduction of James Ryder, never had she visualized a morning after quite like this one. It had turned out to be a regular circus, and now she didn’t have a clue where she stood. Would James be back?

He had flat-out told her ages ago that he wasn’t
big on commitment. That was something she had better keep in mind. And yet …

She couldn’t erase from her mind the way he’d
looked
at her just before he’d stomped out of the apartment. He’d looked at her as if he needed her understanding, her approbation … needed her. And, as much as the viciousness of his attack on Will had unsettled her, the fact remained he’d come unglued in defense of her. Almost as if… well, almost as if she were important to him.