Lady Killer

Or worse, have Daniel find her.”

“You mean Lonnie.” He got his arm around her waist again and began walking her back toward the barn.

She nodded and sniffed, then threw him a look along her shoulder. “You heard what he said. He said he’d be back, and he won’t wait for a judge’s order, either. I know him. And when Rocky told me about his cousin-”

“What about his cousin?” Tony prompted when she paused as if she’d said too much.

She hissed out a breath. “He said he saw a sheriff’s SUV again. He said it drove by the house several times. Slowly. I know it was Lonnie-probably trying to see if I was home or not. I think when he saw your car, he must have decided not to risk it. But that’s not all.” She paused again to look at him, and her eyes were dark with anguish. “Tony, Isabel said some of the deputies are involved in some kind of extortion ring. Involving the illegals, you know? A lot of them come through here, because it’s right on the way from the border to the big cities, like Dallas and Fort Worth, but off the interstate, where most of the patrols are. These deputies, if they catch them, they make them pay money so they won’t get sent back or put in jail, and if they can’t come up with the money…” A shudder ran through her, and she threw him a bleak look. “Isabel says they kill them, Tony. She said Duncan was in on it, too. Do you think…could that have anything to do with why he died?”

“I don’t know,” he said, and it was the truth. He was frowning, thinking he needed to get this information to Holt as soon as he possibly could, although he still couldn’t imagine why, if Duncan Grant had had a falling out with his partners in crime, they hadn’t just shot him and dumped the body somewhere out in the vastness of West Texas. He was also thinking he needed to tell Brooke everything, and wondering if this was the right time.

He’d about decided it was never going to be the right time, and this was probably as good as it was going to get, when Brooke suddenly gasped and said, “Oh God-Hilda. I hope she hasn’t broken the door down,” and took off running for the house.

Giving his heart time to settle back into a normal rhythm, Tony followed at a more sedate pace. He was crossing the yard when Hilda came galloping out to give him a lick and collect the fur-ruffling hug that was her due, then loped off to the pasture to see how the rest of her flock was faring. And he went on to where Brooke was waiting for him on the porch steps, drawn now by the tractor beam of her eyes.

“We shut her up so she wouldn’t scare Lady away,” she said, and the quick-time thumping of her heart and the hitch in her breathing made the words jump in an unrhythmic pattern. She pressed a closed fist against her chest and tried not to let her feelings show.

This wanting was new to her. Even without going further into her sexual past than her marriage-no, I’m not about to go there!-she’d never wanted, not like this. It wasn’t that she hadn’t sometimes enjoyed herself with Duncan, although not nearly as often as she’d pretended to. She’d even initiated the lovemaking once in a while, because she’d known it made Duncan happy when she did. But every time, when she’d known it was going to happen, there had been that moment of fear. That little clenching in her stomach, that flash of thought she tried not to notice because it seemed shameful and unnatural, and she dared not let Duncan or even herself know it was there. Just that teensy little, there-and-then-gone-again no!

But with Tony, she wanted. Wanted him, with a hunger that astounded her. Astounded, because it didn’t embarrass her at all, but only made her want to smile.

Watching him bend down to ruffle Hilda’s neck fur, seeing his hands, so dark against the dog’s white-and-fawn coat, she hungered for those hands, wanted them touching her body again the way he’d touched her this morning. Was it only this morning? It seems like forever ago. And how can I be so hungry for him already?

Watching him straighten and come on across the yard, seeing his mouth curve in that honey-sweet smile, she wanted his mouth kissing her, kissing her everywhere, wanted it the way a starving person wants, smelling the delicious aroma of food. Juices pooled in her mouth, so that she had to swallow and lick her lips, and her lips burned in spite of the moisture she’d put there.

Watching him reach the bottom of the steps and pause to look up at her, seeing his eyes glow golden at the sight of her, she felt her body grow heavy and hot, and pulses jump in places still tender from their earlier union with his body.

She knew he was watching her, seeing her eyes grow slumberous and her smile seductive, seeing the way her nipples beaded in sharp outline beneath her shirt, and she didn’t feel even a flash of fear or self-consciousness, not even a faint echo in her mind of no!

He’d come to the step below hers and, without a word, reached out and hooked an arm around her waist, pulled her to him and lifted his face for her kiss.

But she didn’t kiss him, not right away. She took his face between her two hands and gazed down at him, stroked the broad planes of his cheekbones with her thumbs and marveled at how beautiful he was, and that just looking at him could make her feel so…happy.

What did I do to deserve this? Especially now, when I have no right at all to be happy.

“Are you going to kiss me, or what?” Tony said.

She gave a faint whimper of a laugh. “I was afraid it might be too soon.”

“Hey, I’m a guy-when it comes to sex, we have short…mmm…”

It was all the encouragement she needed. She let herself sink into his kiss and felt her body grow weightless and her mind go floating off into a pale pink haze. Yes…this is love. I…adore…this… man.

She was barely aware when he came up to her step, then tangoed her backward through the door and onto the porch…then into the kitchen. There he paused to look into her eyes and whisper, “Your place or mine?”

“Mine…” She murmured it without opening her eyes, and they were moving again, and she couldn’t have cared less where they wound up as long as it was together.

They undressed each other standing up this time, not in a frantic hurry, but not too slowly, either. When they were both naked, Brooke placed her palms on Tony’s chest and watched her fingers fan on his smooth mahogany skin, and she shivered, not with cold, but with a surfeit of feelings.

“So beautiful,” she whispered, lost in the miracle of him.

He lowered his forehead to hers. “What is, love?”

“You…your skin…your body. You are.”

“Me?” He gave a little gulp of laughter. “Man, that’s a first. I mean, I am many things, some of which I’m even proud to admit to, but beautiful?” He shook his head in a dazed kind of way and, holding her waist with his hands, took a small step back from her so he could rake her body with his eyes. “You, on the other hand-”

“Hush.” She shuddered and slipped between his arms, brought her arms around him and stopped his words with her mouth. Then laid her head on his shoulder. “As long as I am to you,” she said huskily, and tears seeped between her lashes. “That’s all that matters.”

She felt a ripple pass through his strong, solid body, and his fingers glide through her hair with the delicacy of a harpist coaxing beauty from the strings of his instrument. His lips moved against her temple. “You are…more so than you can possibly imagine. And…I’d like to make love with you now. If you’re ready.” He cupped her head between his hands and tipped her face so he could look into her eyes. “Are you ready, sweetheart? Do you want me? Do you want me to love you now?”

Oh, yes…if only you would. Could you love me, Tony? Not just my body, but…me?

She drew a shaken breath and whispered, “Yes…please.”

And as he had given the reins to her this morning, now she gave them, and herself, over to him. To his skilled kisses and artist’s hands that made every nerve in her body shiver with delight…and to his tenderness that made her ache inside with longing. He took her to places she’d never known existed, gave her glimpses of joys she’d never imagined, lifted her to heights of ecstasy that terrified her, then gave her release that seemed to go on forever. And afterward, she wept and couldn’t tell him why.

She couldn’t tell him she was crying because it had ended too soon, and she was afraid she’d never feel anything so wonderful again. And because she was in love with him. Loved him desperately, irrevocably, with all her heart and soul, and had no idea whether he might…if he could ever…love her back.

I think I love this woman.