Stranger on Raven's Ridge (12 page)

“Did she give you two bottles of red wine, an elbow to the ribs and a big wink as well?”

“Along those lines, yeah.”

“That’s her trying to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear—which is totally disgusting, so forget I even said it. Good situation out of a bad one in any case.”

A jagged bolt of lightning shot into the trees directly ahead of them. The fact that Aidan didn’t appear to notice let alone react to it, had her studying his profile. “Nothing fazes you, does it? You might not like a thing, but you don’t let it stop you from doing what needs to be done with as little fuss as possible.”

“I have my moments. Had a big one today when I discovered that you’d been taken from the campsite.”

“But you found me.” Lashes lowered, she tipped her head in speculation. “Saved me.” A smile curved her lips. “Even got my new hat back. I’d say that rates a big thank-you.”

“Does that mean we’re going to have sex—sorry—make love?”

“Night’s long.” Reaching out, she switched off the Jeep’s engine. “Assuming we don’t get shot or struck by lightning, we should have time for both.”

He let the vehicle glide to a halt on the side of Ridge Road. “You know the brakes and steering stop working when the engine cuts out, right?”

“Yeah, I’ve heard that.” Not taking her eyes from his, she undid her seat belt. Then she crossed her arms, grabbed the hem of her T-shirt and pulled it smoothly over her head. “I also know, Lieutenant, that you’re a whiz when it comes to dealing with the unexpected.”

Eyes glinting in the barely there light, he lifted her over the console so she straddled him with her knees. “This is gonna be tricky, angel.”

“I know.” Running her palms from his shoulders down his arms, she leaned in until her lips moved against his. “But it’s also gonna be fun.”

Chapter Twelve

What it was, Aidan thought, when his mind was actually capable of thought again, was a rocket ride into the kind of need he hadn’t let himself experience for two painfully long years.

Green eyes sparkling, Raven pushed both him and the seat back, reached for his fly and tugged the zipper down. Her hands were magic on his skin, drawing him out and driving him to the limit of his restraint at the same time.

The tricky part should have been losing their clothes, but in his fevered state of mind, Aidan managed to miss that side of it. Raven’s hot, hungry mouth fed on his. Her hands were everywhere, on his face, his chest, his ribs, his hips. Pulling, tugging, sliding, pleasing.

“It needs to be rough the first time.” She bit his bottom lip. “It’s been so long, it has to be hard and fast and wild.”

He could give her that, he reflected—just as soon as his blood pressure throttled back from a volcanic storm to a mere storm of fire. However they did it, he wanted her on the same page as him.

“Might be better if we slowed this down a bit, angel.”

Her smile had a wicked edge, like the light in her eyes. “Is slow what you want, or have you forgotten how to make out in a vehicle?”

“A guy never forgets that. I just thought after today you might need a moment to catch up. Guess I was wrong.”

“Guess you were.” She kissed him long and deep. So deep, his hands moved instinctively to grip her hips and lift.

Dragging her mouth from his, she let her eyes close, her head fall back and her body slide, hot and silky, onto him.

He felt the flash, like a thunderbolt in his system. Then the explosion ripped through him and into her.

This was it, a distant part of his mind realized. This was the reason he’d been willing to die. This was woman he’d been willing to die for. Two years ago in Milwaukee, and again here in Raven’s Cove.

* * *

S
HE
’
D
FORGOTTEN
, R
AVEN
thought through a dizzying haze, how incredible they’d been together. Or perhaps more correctly, her memories had dulled with time.

They weren’t dull at the moment. Aidan whipped her into a frenzy of need that stole her breath and shot a thousand volts of current into her bloodstream. Everything pulsed. He was rock hard inside her, and yet, somehow, he managed to make a deliciously tortuous exploration of her throat, her shoulders, her breasts.

Shapes and motion fused and blurred. They made it to the RV, but no farther than that. The door clicked closed behind her back as he pushed her up against it. The clothes they’d tossed on came off again. Her white T flew into darkness. His black one joined it. She wriggled out of her jeans, pushed impatiently at his. And finally, skin to skin, his hands cupped and lifted her so she could wrap her legs around his hips.

They’d find a horizontal surface eventually, she supposed, but by the time they did, they’d either be too tired to move or dead.

Because she craved the taste of him, she caged his head in her hands and brought his lips up to hers. “You have a breast fixation, Aidan.” She tugged on his hair to keep his head up, then dove in and took what she wanted from his mouth.

It was control torn to shreds and all boundaries knocked aside. Her heart was a giant fist pounding in her chest. She ran her palms over sleek skin and taut muscle, changed position and slid her tongue along his jaw.

“Do it,” she murmured against his neck. “Make us both crazy.”

He shifted her so their eyes met in the shadowy entrance. “We’ve been crazy since that first night in the alley.”

Still pinned between him and the door, she set her mouth next to his ear. “In that case, Lieutenant, I want you to make me crazier than I already am, than I always am when I’m with you.” She nipped his earlobe. “I want you to make me scream.”

“My pleasure, angel.”

With so much energy already streaming through her, Raven didn’t think it would take much to bring about that scream.

Locking his eyes on hers, Aidan adjusted his hold on her hips. Then bracing her spine against the door, he slid his hand between her legs.

The unexpected force of her orgasm stunned her. Her body arched, her lashes swept down, and her mind went numb from the burst of heat that streaked through her limbs to her nerve ends.

The force of her own response robbed her of breath and brought a sharp gasp, but it didn’t make her scream—until he brought her fully down onto him, and she was wrapped around him, and need and hunger exploded through her system all at once.

Her nails bit into his shoulders, scraped over slick skin and raked along his arms. She screamed his name, then moaned it as he pumped more heat deep inside.

Aware but not aware, she let desire flood through her. His hands weren’t rough, but they weren’t gentle, either, so even when she thought there couldn’t be more, there was.

The climax was a raw punch of power, a glorious gift that left her stunned and absolutely boneless. The best she could do, with no part of her brain left functioning, was slither down the inside of the door to the floor.

Too thunderstruck to move any further, Raven let the aftershocks of their incredible—no, off-the-scale—lovemaking ripple through her.

“That was...” A luxurious sigh finished the thought. With her eyes closed and her skin still alive with delicious tingles, she murmured, “You have the perfect body, Aidan.”

“Not from where I’m lying.”

She managed to smile. “I feel like I’m floating.”

“Floating, drowning, dead, it all works.”

He moved first, and brought her with him, so she was fully on top of him, and he had the floor beneath his back.

“You’ve lost weight,” he said against her hair.

Raven held up her index and middle fingers. “Two pounds. That’s sixteen measly ounces for each year you were gone, and since I’m not two feet tall, it’s made absolutely no difference to my dress size.” Unable to focus her mind, she let her hand drop. “Why are we talking about dresses?”

“No idea. I’m still working on remembering my name.”

She nuzzled his shoulder. “As long as you remember mine, we’re good. We’re also on the floor. Again.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

She lifted her head just far enough to see him. “There are such things as beds, you know.”

“Beds are bonuses for us.”

“Apparently.”

“Look at it this way, Raven. We’re inside, we’re alone, and we have food and wine. Not a hit man or crime boss in sight.”

“Mmm. Except the pizza and wine are out in the Jeep.”

A glimmer appeared in his eyes. “I’ll flip you to see who makes a dash through the rain to get them.”

“Sounds fair.”

She should have known better than to test his mental recovery powers. Or his physical ones, either, for that matter. He got his hands around her waist while she was trying to figure out which direction to roll and pinned her on her back beneath him, in less than a second.

“Well, one, two, three, go,” she said with a laugh. “Guess I lost the toss.”

He gave her a mind-melting kiss, then nudged her legs apart with his knee. “Depends how you define the word. In my dictionary, we’ve got a win-win going here. I take on the rain, you take on another round of hard surface sex.”

“If I must, I must,” she agreed. Having finally determined that none of the shadows were stairs in disguise, she shoved him up and away just far enough to switch their positions. On top of him now, with her palms pressed flat to his shoulders, she lowered her mouth slowly to his. “Let the win-win begin.”

* * *

N
OTHING
IN
the universe
was as galling to Demars as waiting for the perfect opportunity to strike.

Raven Blume would be the first to go, that was absolute. Not only had her cop husband killed Jason, but now she was responsible for Weasel’s premature demise.

Watching her die would help put things right. Watching Aidan McInnis watch her die would be even more rewarding. McInnis would suffer, and then he would join his lovely wife in death.

Revenge complete.

Of course the plan was simple enough on paper, but the timing and execution, those were stickier points. Too bad it couldn’t happen now, because a noisy night was optimum for murder. Tomorrow would have to do, but no later than that. Nothing screwed a plan worse than procrastination.

Twelve years ago, a sliver of lingering sentiment had caused a death to be delayed. In the end, that delay had sent a once-obedient son down an emotionally charged path of self-destruction.

More than likely, Jason would have died some other way, eventually, but Aidan McInnis had taken the matter out of everyone’s hands, and that could not be tolerated.

Demars had heard talk of a WWI soldier here in Raven’s Cove. The “eye for an eye” expression had come up more than once. It was a description that fit the current situation to an eerie T. In this case, it would be a dead wife in exchange for a dead son.

Satisfied, if not entirely happy, the crime boss went eyeball to eyeball with a fat Maine lobster, smiled nastily and dropped it into a pot of boiling water.

* * *

C
ONSIDERING
ITS
SIZE
, Gaitor’s RV boasted more conveniences than Raven had anticipated. The bedroom had a closet, the bathroom a shower. There was a fully equipped kitchenette, and even a small fireplace in the living room.

Midnight had long since come and gone by the time she and Aidan got around to heating the pizza, opening the first of two wine bottles and switching on the electric flame. By then, Raven figured her body had combusted at least five, possibly six, times. A delicious feeling of lethargy flowed in her veins, because, well, because the lights were low, Louis Armstrong was crooning in the background and somewhere along the line, they’d made their way to the shower—which had naturally resulted in more combustion.

“I’m too wired to sleep,” she said with a sigh, “and still too dazzled to think, so I guess all that leaves us is food and drink, the sound of the rain on the roof and an RV full of shadows.”

“Not to mention the prospect of more sex.” Aidan reached around her for the wine bottle. “When and if sensation returns to my lower body.”

Thunder beyond the ridge underscored the mellow tones of Louis’s cornet. Wearing one of Aidan’s dark cotton shirts, Raven lay on her stomach in front of the fire, hugged a cushion and regarded the dancing flames. “I see faces in firelight,” she told him. “My mother’s sometimes, yours most times, and for the past two years now, a featureless reaperlike head, with two red eyes and really sharp teeth.”

“If you see a live version of that anywhere, let me know, and I’ll shoot it. Nightmare done.”

Smiling a little, she swirled the robust wine around her glass. “You’re so literal, Aidan.”

“Cop,” he pointed out, then grinned and, with his back propped against the sofa, looked into the flames with her. “I asked Gaitor about the red eyes you saw outside the bar. He had a pair of contact lenses made as part of his Ravenspell disguise.”

She sipped, considered. “People believe, you know. In Hezekiah—in the whole ‘Raven’s Tale’ for that matter. Only about a quarter of the people I’ve talked to also know about the convalescing soldier who murdered the man he thought had killed his brother. I find it interesting that the true story tends to get overlooked in favor of the legend. Even I didn’t know about the soldier until Grandpa mentioned him yesterday.”

Aidan played with her damp hair. “If you were looking to be fascinated, which scenario would you go for? That the dead deer you came across on the forest floor had been torn apart by a grizzly bear or Bigfoot?”

“Since all deer are Bambi to me, I refuse to picture such a gruesome occurrence, however, I get your point. Rooney says the Reenactment covers the entire spectrum, from evil comes, to evil winds up trapped in bird, to evil might or might not have been banished—said banishment depending on how you view Hezekiah’s fate. Still, no matter which side you’re on there, the legend maintains that some part of the original evil that possessed him managed to detach itself and push its way into the walls and grounds of Blume House. Soldier cracked open an emotional door, evil slipped inside and went to work on his grief.”

“Sounds like a Goth version of Demars’s story as it relates to Jason’s death.”

The shadows shifted, and for a moment firelight played across Aidan’s features. He wore only his jeans, and the muscles of his chest made Raven think he was poised to strike like a panther. With a last sip of wine, she rose to set the bottle and glasses aside. Then, keeping her eyes fastened on his, she crawled slowly toward him. “Now you tell me something, Aidan. If tonight was your last night on earth, and you could have one final wish, what would it be?”

“I can tell you what it wouldn’t be,” he said as her fingers got busy on his fly. Keeping one knee raised, he supported her while she worked the zipper. “I wouldn’t wish away the last two years of my life.”

“Because this one night makes all that lost time worthwhile?”

Closing a hand lightly around her throat, he brought her mouth to his. “Because this one moment makes all that lost time worthwhile.”

With a sound like a purr, Raven splayed her fingers over his stomach. “In that case, McInnis, you’re gonna love what the next moment holds.”

* * *

A
IDAN
DREAMED
ABOUT
a beautiful raven with eyes like green mist and legs that went on forever. Unfortunately, he also dreamed about more malevolent ravens carrying guns and knives and porn magazines.

A man’s voice said, “Jason,” over and over in his sleeping mind. Finally, thankfully, the only Raven he cared about returned to whisper gently in his ear.

“If you’re going to talk in your sleep, I’d rather you said my name than Jason Demars’s.” Then she kissed his cheek and gave his butt a slap. “Wake up, Aidan. Someone’s banging on the door.”

He forced his eyes open to a rapier-sharp beam of light. “Jesus!” And slammed them shut. “Whoever it is, shoot him. And while you’re at it, blow away the road crew that’s jackhammering inside my head.” The simple act of rolling onto his back required a gargantuan effort. “What the hell kind of wine was that?”