do if I got into bed with you?”
“Mmm-hmm.”
He bent his head. “Mmm-hmm, what? You knew?”
Lia couldn’t help a soft laugh at his outrage. “Of course I do. I hear you every night, you know. I always wake up when you come downstairs.”
“It’s been killing me.”
“Me, too,” she admitted with a sigh. She kissed his neck right where it joined his shoulder. He tasted salty. She licked him for another sample. Who would have ever thought sweaty male could be so delicious?
“I’ve got to take this damn condom off.” He groaned, lifted her off him, and heaved himself out of bed. Her lamp was still on; she was able to drink in the sight of his broad back, lean hips and long legs as he left her room naked.
That gave her a moment of concern—what if one of the kids got up?—but it didn’t last long. For all she knew, he slept naked every night and chanced running into someone when he got up to use the bathroom. He was back before she had a chance to wonder whether he’d return. He was also semi-aroused, she saw.
She smiled when he reached the bedside. “May I touch this time, Agent MacLachlan?”
A grin flashed across his face, lightning quick and very sexy. “Certainly, Ms. Woods. To your heart’s content.”
Her heart would not be content for a very long time, she thought, speared by the pain that would be so much worse when he packed his bags and left.
But he wasn’t going yet, and she’d made her choice. For a second, sadness wanted to smother her. Was this the closest to true love she’d ever find? Perhaps it was inevitable that she’d fall in love with a man who would only be in her life for a short time.
So be it.
She reached out and cupped him in her hands, watching his face, learning what he liked.
* * *
CONALL DIDN’T LET HIMSELF fall asleep in her bed, even though he desperately wanted to. Lia had conked out after they made love a second time. Once the pressure cooker had been released the first time, they managed slow and tender, and, God help him, he’d never had sex like this.
Asleep, Lia was slight in his arms, her bones delicate when he moved his hands over her. Fulfilling a fantasy, he’d taken her hair from the braid and it now fanned over the both of them, a thick silken blanket. He gently lifted a handful at a time and let it run through his fingers.
She hadn’t told him to go. But he knew she wouldn’t want the kids to discover him in here, or to see him emerging from here later in the morning.
So at last he separated himself from her, kissed her softly when she mumbled protests, and tucked her in before picking up his jeans from the floor, turning off the lamp and slipping out of her room. He left her door ajar, exactly as she always did—and he’d memorized it down to a fraction of an inch—then took himself to the bathroom to discard the second condom and wash.
When he was done he braced his hands on the sink and looked at himself in the mirror. He’d never bothered before, after sex, to look deep. Well, not since the first time, when he was an exhilarated sixteen-year-old on a high from what he’d done with Autumn Hiatt who was short, probably on her way to being plump but possessing huge tits. Sex otherwise was great, one of life’s pleasures. But the partners he’d had that sex with had never mattered all that much. He was shaken to find out how much different it was when the woman did matter.
When he had the really bad feeling no other woman ever would matter the same way. And that maybe sex wasn’t going to be so good in the future, either, when it wasn’t Lia’s gorgeous mouth he was kissing, her slick, heavy hair he’d buried his fingers in, her slim body beneath his, her green-brown eyes, glazed with passion but widening with amazement…
“Oh, hell,” he groaned, and let his head fall.
Tonight he and Henderson had finally caught a break. The men in the pickup had come back with another load, and before dark. They were getting cocky, it seemed. Given a good look, Conall had placed that familiar face, and they’d gotten some decent photos of two of the three residents of the house as well as the visitors.
The bastard Conall knew was a gunrunner. Gordy