Raven (Kindred #1) (10 page)

Crunching up, she caught his lip in her teeth and threw her hands to the back of his neck where she clawed at him, forcing him to kiss her with everything he had, with the same overwhelming need that was swamping her. He didn’t miss a beat in his rhythm and when she flopped onto the bed, she used every ounce of reserve energy to meet his pounding.

Pushing away from her, he grabbed her hips and clamped them down on the bed to watch his final thrust that made his head go back. He didn’t scream like she did, he let out a long string of curses that if she hadn’t been so completely spent might have made her blush.

Withdrawing from her body, he didn’t wait until the last of her orgasms finished their cascade. Meaning she was still blinking at the ceiling when the bed moved beside her and his form left hers. Her hands fell, one on her chest and the other on her forehead, and she closed her eyes.

“My God,” she breathed out, struggling to form words. Her head flopped to the side to see him sitting on the far side of the bed. “I think I figured out who you are.” He whipped around to face her direction, though she couldn’t read his expression through the shadows. “You’re a delusion, aren’t you? I’ve actually gone completely insane and somehow you’re my reward.”

His body loosened then he rose to his feet and pulled his jeans up from where they hung over his ass. He fastened them and his belt again.

Being so caught up in the passion of their joining, it hadn’t occurred to her to question what would happen next. “This where you run out on me?” she asked.

“Want me to spend the night?” he mumbled with a deriding snigger.

“Yes.”

He turned and because he was right in front of the window, there was no prospect of interpreting the details of his features. “The question was rhetorical,” he said, moving around the bed, past the corner chair he’d been in when she first met him. He came all the way around to her side of the bed and dipped to snag his tee shirt from the floor.

He was done with her. He’d gotten his ya-ya’s in her bed and now he was going to disappear into the night. Raven was never going to be much of a cuddler, he was too guarded to let her in. But she didn’t want to be abandoned without trying to reach him, especially not with everything she’d learned.

“You’re not interested in why I wanted to speak to you?” she asked, pushing up onto her elbows, which got lost under the pillow her head had been resting on.

“Sure,” he said. Unwinding his tee shirt and pulling it over his head, he stretched the material with his elbows to put his arms into the sleeves in an efficient, masculine manner, which made her sorry she’d turned their conversation to business. Not that she’d had any other choice because he was about to fade out of her life. “Hit me with it.”

“Grant’s keeping secrets from me,” she said and his exhaled laugh didn’t make her feel any better.

“Well, shit, sweetheart, that’s what I’ve been telling you all along.”

“I know,” she said, scrambling up onto her knees to catch his ribs beneath his arms to keep him there with her. “I think he might be in over his head. That he might be in trouble.”

“Isn’t that a shame,” he said in a way that made her think sympathy was the furthest thing from his mind.

She glowered. After building this man up to be some kind of hero, he was proving to be anything but. Disappointed, she wasn’t ready to give up on him. “Don’t you care about anyone?” she asked, falling back to sit on her feet. “Don’t you care that something terrible could happen? Something that we could stop if we work together?”

“Ok,” he muttered on an exhale as though he was only humoring her and didn’t expect her to offer anything of substance. “What did you find out?”

Zara wanted to tell him everything, to spill the secrets of her boss and her investigation to Raven and have him help her piece together a solution. She wanted to trust him, but she had to be realistic. If Raven wasn’t on the same page as her, or if this had all been some great ruse to gain her trust, she couldn’t pour out her secrets to someone who had yet to reveal his end game.

Sex didn’t make them a couple. It didn’t mean that she had moved up Raven’s priority list either. It just meant that they were both unattached and attracted to each other. Zara knew her heart had been touched by his determination to protect her. Having sex with him only enhanced her want to get to know this man better.

“How did you know other people were watching me?” she asked, opening her fingers on her thighs. “You said it the first night after Tim died. How did you know people were watching me? And how did you know that Detective Kraft wouldn’t be in touch with me again?”

“Because Dennis and I go way back,” Raven said and folded his arms across his chest. “What did you find out, Shifty?”

“Oh, I’m shifty? That’s rich,” she said.

“Once,” he muttered and she lost his train of thought.

“Huh?”

“You screw a girl once and that gives her license to bitch. It never fails.” Turning his attention to the floor, he stuck his feet in his boots. Although she couldn’t see them, she figured he wasn’t going to take the time to lace them. With a wide stance, he folded his arms again. “What do you want, Zara?”

Closing her arms around her abdomen, she didn’t like being so physically exposed when she was about to reveal an emotional vulnerability. “I want your word that no harm will come to Grant, that you’ll protect him like you protect me.”

She couldn’t reveal the whole truth to Raven until she was sure Grant would be treated as a friend. Yes, she was pissed that he hadn’t been honest, but she had to believe that he was still the moral man she knew and that his actions were evidence of him being in hot water. If he was being coerced by blackmail or something similar, then she had to know Raven would help Grant, not attack him.

“I can’t be in two places at once,” he said, addressing this conversation as he probably would in any other scenario. Her nakedness didn’t soften him and the sex certainly hadn’t left him beholden. “And keeping you alive was a means to an end.”

“Which is?”

“Information,” he said. “I told you that already.”

That may be true, but he’d declared himself as finished with her on Saturday night, and yet here he was. In light of tonight, she wondered if his goodbye was all part of the theatrics because he certainly hadn’t stopped checking in on her. “But you walked away from me on Saturday. You said goodbye to me.”

“Because you were sure that Saint Grant was gonna be your shining hero. Why do you think I came here tonight?”

“Because you were worried about me,” she said, daring him to deny it. “Because you wanted to make sure I was ok. I don’t know. Maybe you just can’t help yourself. You’ve been watching me for God knows how long. Maybe months.”

With one stride, he brought himself to the very edge of the bed then he bent to hook a finger under her chin. Forcing her face up, they were nose-to-nose when the darkness in his eyes met hers and this time a sinister glow had overtaken them.

The scorn of ridicule colored his words. “There’s one thing you haven’t figured out yet, baby.”

“Oh, yeah, what’s that?” she asked, determined not to shrink in the heat of his attempt to intimidate her.

“I was never watching you.”

She didn’t believe him and arched a brow to prove her doubt. “You just happen to always be in the right place at the right time?”

His volume lowered until his words were barely a breath that cascaded over her cheeks. “I was watching them.”

“Watching…”

Dropping his finger, he backed off and folded his arms again. “I don’t give a damn what you do with your time. I wasn’t watching you. Why would I do that? I’m not interested in what you do. I’m interested in what you know. I’ve been watching the bastards who are watching you. I want to know what they’re doing. I don’t give a damn what they know. I know more than they do about the damned device.”

Forgetting his disrespect and her confusion, she perked up. “The device,” she said and rose onto her knees to curl her hands around his folded arms. “Tell me about the device.”

“Oh,” he said with too much glee to be sincere. “Now she wants information! Is that what the sex was for? Let me tell you, baby, I don’t owe you a damn thing.”

Mortified that he would consider her such a harlot, she stuttered before putting any words together. “The sex was not my attempt to…” she trailed off because she didn’t know how to articulate what he was implying.

“Coerce,” he said, ducking his head an inch. “That’s what it’s called, it’s called coercion, and you’re good at it, baby… very good at it.”

“Don’t talk to me like that,” she said, not appreciating the lewd hue of his voice.

But when she slapped a hand onto his chest, she was reminded of their encounter and instead of drawing her hand away after the slap, she kept it there and pushed into him again, curling the tips of her fingers to drag her nails over the fabric of his tee shirt.

“I could tell you were the naughty type from the minute I saw you,” he said.

Lifting one arm from his chest, he extended a finger and used the single digit to push her hair back from her shoulder, exposing her breast, reminding her of her nakedness.

The thump of arousal began to build until her skin pulsed. “Is that why we had sex?” she asked, still obsessed with the act of driving her fingernails into him.

“We had sex because we wanted to have sex,” he said. “Guys don’t need to pin a deeper meaning on it.”

“I’m not a guy,” she said, letting her head fall to the side so she could look up at him.

“Which is another reason we had sex,” he said and dipped forward to kiss her hairline. “Now, if there’s nothing else…”

Ceasing their contact, he headed for the door. If he wasn’t going to give her information, then she would just have to keep digging on her own. But letting him walk out now didn’t offer a resolution to her true motive for lighting up the window.

Just as he opened the bedroom door to exit, panic made her call out. “What do I do if they come for me?”

He stopped and turned to look at her. Sagging back to sit on her feet, Zara remained in her kneeling position, hoping that he wouldn’t leave her without some reassurance. She felt pathetic asking him for help, but she’d rather feel an instant of embarrassment with Raven than be defenseless if she was faced with goons like Kahlil’s again.

His tongue pushed out his top lip and the impatience in his eyes left her hanging, wondering if he was going to offer any support. Then he muttered something and exhaled before disappearing into the living room.

Pouncing off the bed, Zara got as far as snagging her kimono from the back of the bedroom door when Raven reappeared in the room, carrying his jacket with him. On the cusp of asking why his outerwear was relevant, he tossed the jacket onto the bed and she noticed the pistol he was holding.

The black piece was small in his large hands. With practiced efficiency, he ejected the clip and checked the ammunition. Slamming the cartridge back into place, he grabbed the barrel and turned the butt of the weapon toward her.

“Here.”

Her eyes went from his face to the gun then to the left and right. “What am I supposed to do with that?” she asked.

“Someone threatens you, you point and shoot. Have you ever shot a gun?”

Loosening her body, she shifted her shoulders in an attempt to portray nonchalance. “Maybe,” she said, reluctant to reveal her ignorance.

With an eye roll, he came closer. “That’s a no,” he said. Grabbing her shoulder, he hauled her to him, and spun her around so that her back was to his chest.

Picking up her hand, he molded it around the grip then picked up the other hand to put it on the opposite side. “I’m not comfortable with this,” she said, trying to relax her hands.

“What? You don’t like it doggy style?” he asked, and she expelled a syllable of a laugh.

They were standing upright, so where he got the idea of sexual positions from she didn’t know. “That’s not what I meant,” she said. But he closed his hands around hers and raised the weapon.

“There’s a round in the barrel, so we’re not gonna squeeze the trigger. Bring it up until you can see down the sight. You see it?”

Light from the candles in the living room illuminated them, so yes, she could see what he meant. “I see it.”

With his arms being longer than hers were, and his shoulders broader, she fit comfortably in the triangle his body formed around hers. Her shoulders pressed into the sturdy muscles of his upper arms as she focused ahead and closed one eye. “Pick an object and aim at it,” he said. “Get comfortable with the weight.”

“It’s heavier than I would’ve thought.”

“You’ve got eight rounds, ok?” he asked. “That means you’ve got eight shots to hit what you’re aiming at. It’s semi-automatic, so you can just keep on pulling the trigger.”

“This is a nice gun,” she said, bending her arms to try to get a better look at it.

“It’s Swiss,” he said, attempting to extend her arms again, but she resisted.

“Have you killed people with this gun?”

He ceased trying to get her to aim, and curved his head around enough to look at her. “You worried about the police coming to your door looking for me?”