too damn good to deny. His groan rumbled against my breasts and it was sheer amazement, the way it felt.
A big hand cupped my butt, boosted me higher. Wrapping my ankles around his hips, I arched against him. Through the thin cotton yoga pants I’d worn to bed, I could feel a thick, heavy ridge. His jeans held him confined and it was a damn good thing, because I could already see me trying to rip away my clothes and just wrap myself around him. Desperately. Hungrily. Forgetting everything else—
No…
Something important—
Groaning, I tore my mouth away from his and shoved against the muscled wall of his chest.
“Damn it, this is insane.”
His hands closed around my wrists.
“Life isn’t exactly supposed to make sense, baby girl,” Damon said quietly.
Shaking my head, I closed my eyes. I needed to think. Needed to think—
“If you don’t find him, she’ll want you dead,” Damon murmured against my temple. “So we need to focus on finding him.”
I stiffened. Well. That was a good way to throw a pall on things. Twisting away from him, I moved on clumsy legs until I had a little bit of space between us. A very little bit. I glanced around and then shivered at the cool kiss of air on my naked flesh. Scowling, I looked down and saw my shirt on the ground. I bent over and grabbed it, hauling it over my head. “I wanted a shower,” I muttered. “I just wanted a shower and I wanted to eat.”
“You just took a shower last night,” Damon pointed out.
I shrugged, absently scratching my arm. Even though there wasn’t anything on me, I still felt dirty.
He noticed.
Dropping my hand, I crossed my arms over my chest and glared at him. “Are you going to let me shower?”
He stood there for a minute, studying me. “We’re talking, baby girl. Very soon.”
“I can’t wait.” I bared my teeth at him.
His hand snaked out and he caught the front of my shirt, hauled me against him. A kiss so hard, so quick, it left me breathless. “Keep doing that, kitten,” he whispered. “And we’ll just go complicating an already complicated mess. Now shower, so you can eat and we can talk and start trying to figure out the other options we’ve got.”
“We’ve got two,” I told him. “I find Doyle or I die.”
“There’s only one acceptable one. We find Doyle. But there are going to be other ones. We start figuring those out. Today.”
I showered down, from head to toe, washed my hair twice and felt mostly better.
Physically, at least.
Emotionally, mentally, I was still a mess. As I stood there slicking on lotion, I had to acknowledge an ugly fact—I was going to be a mess until this job was over and done, and maybe even for a while after.
Assuming I survived.
Of course, if Damon was to be believed, he didn’t want me dead.
Not thinking about that right now, I told myself. Instead, I focused on the mundane task of digging through my bag for clothes. Tan tank top, sport bra, tan BDUs. A little bit cooler version of what I’d worn yesterday. I had some shorts I could wear, but that wasn’t going to happen, not if we were going to head back into the Everglades. No way, no how was I going through there in shorts. It was stupid enough going out there in a tank top, leaving my flesh exposed for the mini-vampires also known as mosquitoes.
I grabbed the clothes I’d slept in and draped them over the shower rod. We needed to wash clothes if we were here more than another night. With my hair still wet, I left the bathroom.
Damon was standing at the window, talking in a low voice on the phone.
His conversation carried on, consisting mostly of grunts, repeated intermittent use of the words yes and no, and an occasional hmmmm thrown in for variety.
Hard to figure out who he was talking to, but I knew it wasn’t the Queen Bitch. His voice just didn’t have that blind adoration, that yes, ma’am, I’ll kill whoever you need me to kill obedience to it.
I opened the fridge and spied the box of pizza sitting there. We’d polished off two and half pizzas last night—I’d actually eaten nearly an entire one, plus some spaghetti and buffalo wings.
Pulling it out, I saw there were only two pieces left. But there was some spaghetti. He must have had some, too, because it had been half full last night and now