Two Weeks' Notice

“Care about what?” He took in a deep breath, as if he was savoring the smell of her skin.

“About me being dead.” There, she’d said it, and it surprised him, but only a little.

And it didn’t drive him away as she’d expected it would.

“You’re not dead, Bryn.”

“I’m not alive, either. I’m…stuck.”

“Oh, you’re alive,” he said. “Your heart beats. Your skin’s warm. You feel things.” For proof of that, he touched a fingertip to the notch of her breastbone and traced the hard outline of it, the hollows around it. “In no way do I think of you as dead.”

“I need a shot to stay this way.”

“And I need to eat and drink and sleep. Even then, every day I come a little closer to the end of my life. And you don’t. Which of us is dying, exactly?”

“You saw me,” she said. “You saw me with a bag over my head. I was dead. How can you—”

He put that single finger over her lips, stilling them. “That’s not what I remember,” he said. “I remember you turning on the water.” She blinked, because that made no sense, no matter how she ran it through her head; her confusion must have shown, because he smiled. “When you woke up in the room at Pharmadene, and I left you there to think about things, what did you do?”

“I—”

“You went to the bathroom and turned on the tap, and put a cup in place to catch the drops. You timed the drops to pulse beats. You made a water clock so you could keep track of the time,” he said. “It was brilliant. You’d been murdered. Revived. I’d just told you I might let you rot. And that’s what you did. You took control of your own existence in the only way you could.”

“I really don’t understand why that’s a turn-on, Patrick.”

“I like women who take control,” he said, and his lips came close again, but didn’t touch. “I also like women who know when to give it up. Do you trust me?”

Did she? Did she really? Suddenly, there were so many sensations and emotions in her body that she couldn’t sort anything out. It was all just…overwhelming.

“Say something,” he said. It came out as a bare, raw whisper.

“Yes,” she said. Just that.

It was more than enough.

He kissed her with so much force behind it, she felt a burning instant of panic, but then the hurricane hit, blowing through her defenses and barriers, and she met him at least halfway. His hands yanked the hem of her knit shirt up and fitted around the bare skin of her waist, and oh, the burning brand of them —she felt as if they’d left scorch marks. She finished loosening his shirt, but he was too busy to strip it away—busy pulling hers up, baring the black satin of her bra cups. She didn’t want to stop touching him, not for an instant, but she had to lift her arms. The soft knit was a cool counterpoint as it slid away, and then his big hands circled her wrists and held her arms pinned above her head as his lips came back to hers. She let out a trembling breath that was lost in the heat of his mouth, and the silky invasion of his tongue as it teased hers.

When he let her arms go again, he did it slowly, sliding his fingers all the way down the smooth, taut skin to her shoulders. As she reached for him again, he put his hands around her waist, pulled her forward, and spun her around with dizzying speed to face the door. She gasped and slapped both hands flat on the surface, about to push off, but he was close against her, heat like a bonfire at her back. Those suddenly gentle fingers traveled up her arms again, and he whispered in her ear, “Now do you trust me?”

In that flickering second, she wasn’t sure. He was so strong, so fast, so…decisive. Like he’d been out there at the marina, facing Fast Freddy and calculating the odds of killing his best friend. Could a person who could do that be trusted, really?

“No,” she said, and felt him go intensely still for a second before she said, “But I want to trust you. So help me.”

He sighed, breath stirring the hair on the back of her neck; it made her shiver in delicious dread. “I’ll work on it,” he promised, and settled a sensual, warm kiss where the gooseflesh had formed. She felt a faint pressure on the bra catch, and then it loosened; the straps slid off her shoulders and down her arms. “Do you want me to stop?”

God, no. A thousand times no, her whole body shrieked in protest at the idea. “Would you? If I said yes?” His fingers stroked down her back, and that was not helping her keep focused on words.

She almost missed the very soft answer. “With a great deal of effort. Of course.”

Bryn pulled in a shaking breath. There was something so…revealing about that answer, on all levels. It spoke to the depths of what he was feeling, and to the man he was.

And more important, she believed him.

She licked her lips and tasted the memory of his kiss. “Do you want me to stay like this?”

“For now.” His whisper this time was dark, deep, and as silky as the touch of his skin on hers. She moved her head to the side as his mouth touched her neck—a lick, and gentle suction, then moving up. She made an inarticulate sound as he sucked her earlobe, teeth clicking on the gold stud earring, and then his warm tongue traced the outer curve of her ear and left her shuddering with bizarre pleasure. She’d never liked that, but somehow, the way he did it…

And then his hands moved up her sides, and he reached under her loosened bra to cup her breasts. When his fingers crossed the aching surface of her nipples, she felt them swell under his touch, every slow caress harder, more demanding, just trembling on the edge of pain but tipping into pleasure.

She wanted him, with a feverish, vivid intensity that shocked her. She hadn’t ever wanted anything so badly. It frightened her, and delighted her at the same time.

He was expert at stripping more than her defenses. Her belt went next, and then her pants. He kept her panties on for the moment, but they were hardly a barrier to the relentless progress of his hands, and as they slid beneath the elastic, she arched against his chest in a silent explosion of pleasure. The contrast of the hard, cool wood against her bared breasts, his heat at her back, those clever hands exploring her boundaries, drove the breath out of her in hot waves. Not quite an orgasm, not yet, but he was toying with her, reading her frequency.

Patrick might be out of control, she thought in a rare lucid moment, but he was also more in control than she could have imagined. He was also deeply aroused; she could feel that in the pressure of his body against hers, and she teased him with hers, encouraging him without words spoken to go farther, deeper, harder.

It seemed to take hours before he finally let her panties slip away. His pants and underwear followed, and she’d almost forgotten how to interpret words when he put his lips to her ear and whispered, “Tell me you want this, Bryn.”

“God,” she said, and rested her cheek against the cooling wood of the door. She was shaking all over, flying apart with need. “Yes. Please. I do.”

He slipped inside her with a sudden, breathtaking thrust, pressing her against the solid surface, and she let out a low cry of pure, animal pleasure.

And then more, and more, and more, until the world shattered around them in a white-hot fury.

Chapter 6

Somehow, they found the bed afterward—a giant Victorian thing, tall and forbidding, but full of luxurious layers of sheets and blankets that felt soothing and soft against Bryn’s hypersensitive skin. She rolled on her side and stared at him; McCallister, like her, looked flushed, and his skin glistened with sweat. There was a vagueness in his eyes that she couldn’t recall ever seeing before. It looked like peace. For this moment, at least, he wasn’t on guard.

“I’m sorry,” he said, which startled her into a blink. “I’m usually—not that—”

“Don’t tell me that,” she said, and smiled. “Because it was fantastic.”