Flashback

where she needed to go.

Halfway there, with her breath sobbing in her throat, with their bodies straining with each other, she cupped his jaw and looked into his face.

He was damp with sweat, hard with tension, and so damned sexy she could scarcely speak. “Aidan.”

“Don’t stop me.”

She shook her head at his rough plea. Stop him? Was he kidding? She wanted him to never stop.

Never…a terrifying thought. “Aidan…”

His mouth nuzzled at her ear. “Yeah?”

“I missed you,” she whispered, letting him in on her biggest secret, giving it to him without reserve, letting him look deeply into her eyes.

She absorbed both his surprise and his next thrust, and then that was it.

She burst.

And so did he.

14

AIDAN LAY ON HIS BACK, a hot, naked, still quivering Kenzie in his arms, and let her words soak in.

She’d missed him. “Kenz?”

“Mmm.” Her face was pressed against his throat, her mouth sending shivers of delight down his spine even now, when his bones had turned into overcooked noodles and he couldn’t have moved to save his life.

Well, except a certain part of his anatomy, which appeared to have segregated from his brain. That part moved. That part wanted round two.

And possibly round three, please.

Kenzie lifted her head and looked at him, all sleepy-eyed and still glowing. Waiting for him to speak.

He found himself cupping her face, and bringing it in for a kiss that lingered.

And deepened.

“I missed you, too,” he whispered against her lips.

She pulled back and closed her eyes.

Staring down at her, he let out a breath. Okay. So she hadn’t meant it. It’d just been the heat of the moment talking. He supposed he could understand that. Had to understand that. After all, the moment had gotten pretty damn heated. “It’s all right.” God, listen to him lie. “I get it.”

Across the room sat his laptop, with answers. Or so he hoped. “We’d better get up.” He was relieved to note that his voice seemed to sound normal, that he was still breathing and that the heart she’d just stabbed was apparently still in working order.

Even if it was bleeding all over the place. Internal carnage…

But he had no one to blame but himself for opening it up to her in the first place. She’d warned him, hadn’t she? She’d warned him and he’d been cocky enough not to believe it possible.

“Aidan?”

He managed to look at her.

“I did miss you. I missed this. But…”

“But life intrudes. I get that, too.”

She looked into his eyes, sighed, then slipped from the bed. Gloriously naked, she walked to his computer. Lit only by the glow of the screen, she afforded him a particularly fine view. “Huh,” she said, and bent over a little so that her fingers could move over the keyboard.

She was absolutely clueless about the picture she made in green glowing profile, with her hair wild around her head, a whisker burn from his face across a breast and her ribs, and her very sweet ass looking good enough to bite.

“That’s odd,” she muttered, her fingers moving faster, the furrow between her eyebrows deepening as she frowned.

He opened his mouth to ask what was odd, but she bent a little farther and he couldn’t gather enough working brain cells to do anything but stare. Her spine was narrow and pretty, and his gaze followed it down past the indention of her waist and the gentle flare of her hips to one of his favorite parts of a woman’s anatomy. Her legs were spread slightly, her thighs taut, allowing him a peek of the treasure between-

“Aidan?”

At the tone, he managed to squelch the lust. Barely. Rising, he walked up behind her. Also naked. Curling his body around hers from behind, a good amount of that lust came barreling back, hitting him like a freight train. He couldn’t help it. His chest was against her back, her world-class ass pressed into his crotch. His hands went to her hips, one slipping around to her ribs, his fingers just brushing the underside of her breast. Pressing his lips to the side of her neck, he let his hand skim up, gliding over her nipple, which hardened gratifyingly in his fingers.

Oh, yeah.

His other hand slid to her belly and began a southward descent-

“Look.” Catching his hand, she pointed to an opened Excel worksheet. She had brought up an interesting list. “My mysterious caller said to look at the demos,” she told him. “I didn’t know what he meant, but all the burned buildings have been razed to the ground. I saw the photos in Zach’s file-not all of those buildings were severely damaged.”

With great difficulty, he frowned at the computer and not at her nude body, his hands still full with warm, sweet, sexy-as-hell woman. “It’s true,” he said. “But the properties were demolished anyway. Except for the last two.”

“On whose orders?”

“The records have been sealed.”

“Why?”

“That’s the question. Zach tried to get the answer to that and it cost him.”

Forcing his concentration from her body, he took in the worksheet in front of him. “Pretty impressive information here.” Blake had been busy.

So had he been keeping track of his own handiwork, along with what happened to each property after the fires?

“Who has the power to order a demolition of a burned property?” Kenzie asked him.

“The owner, anyone acting on the behalf of an owner or the fire department, if the property is deemed unstable or unsafe for any reason.”

She pulled free and went for her clothes, which were strewn across the room. He watched with great regret as she found the pieces one by one and covered up that gorgeous bod.

With a sigh, he reached for his jeans and slid them on. Back to the grown-up world apparently…“How is it you’ve never looked through Blake’s files before?”

“I never thought to. We regularly sent each other files, just in case. It was our backup system.”

“What did you send him?”

She lifted a shoulder. “Rough drafts of stuff.”

“Stuff?”

“I’ve been writing. Scripts.” Another lift of her shoulder. “For the day I finally ate too many donuts and didn’t get asked to audition anymore.”

“I bet you’re a great writer.”

“Really?”

He thought about how deeply she felt things, how good she was with words, and nodded.

Looking touched, she smiled. “Thanks.”

“How long ago did he send you this file?”

“He sent me a backup file every week. We were supposed to keep only the latest version for each other, but I