Hide and Seek - Lara Adrian Page 0,18

mattered was Lisa beneath him and the pleasure exploding between them.

He drove deep as a violent shudder racked him, and his orgasm ripped out of him on a raw shout. The release seemed endless, mind-blowing.

So fucking good he could hardly bear it.

“Jesus,” he muttered hoarsely, his face buried in the curve of her neck as the aftershocks finally began to subside. He smiled against her sweat-dampened, vanilla-scented skin. “Can’t move. Crushing you?”

“M-mm.” Her voice vibrated through him, as warm as her skin. “I don’t want you to move.”

“Have to,” he groaned, hating the need to pull out and dispose of the condom.

All he wanted to do was rock into her some more, stay inside her all night if she let him.

Bad idea, but his dick was already rising in agreement.

Before he could lose the argument with himself, he withdrew and moved to toss the used protection in the trash bin next to the bed.

Lisa’s hands were soothing on him as soon as he returned to her side. She smiled, sultry and spent. “That was...”

“Yeah,” he agreed. “Incredible.”

She nodded, looking satisfied and too damn sexy lying naked on the rumpled sheets. He couldn’t resist another kiss, then another. Stretching out alongside her, he stroked her hair, traced an idle pattern on the gentle curve of her shoulder. She curled up next to him, one bare thigh slung across his.

For a long while, they simply lay there together in a quiet peace.

And although his thoughts were churning over a hundred troubling issues—not the least of which being the reason for her arrival at his cabin tonight—he stepped away from all of that and let himself relax into the rare feeling of contentment that enveloped him as he held Lisa in his arms.

7

To his complete astonishment, Duarte slept five-plus solid hours, clear through to daybreak. So much for his chronic insomnia. Apparently, all he needed was a good fuck and the warmth of a good woman in bed beside him—the latter more than he cared to admit.

Lisa was still sound asleep, curled up like a kitten in the tangled sheets, her loose honey hair fanned across his pillow.

The warrior in him wasn’t accustomed to soft nights and slow mornings, but he was in no rush to leave her side. For a brief moment, he imagined waking up every morning to that vision. Unbelievable that she’d been married to a man who’d been stupid enough to let her go. Then again, Duarte himself had once been that stupid, too.

Ancient history. Except last night had brought their past back to life in living, breathing color. And this morning, reality slapped him awake with the reminder that it was time to start thinking with his head again.

He twitched with the need for movement, for exertion, for action. Before his body decided to work out those impulses indoors with Lisa again, Duarte eased out of bed and got dressed.

The rain had passed overnight. He thought about her disabled car she’d told him she’d left down on the mountain road. He didn’t like the idea of leaving a vehicle out to be discovered in the daylight. Three years living off-grid had worked for him because he’d been cautious, inconspicuous, unfailingly private. Deliberately closed off from the rest of the world as much as he could be.

Now he had a Phoenix operative’s sister lying naked in his bed and her car abandoned practically in his front yard. He should have made a point of going down to retrieve it or hide it last night.

Yeah, he should have done a lot of things differently last night.

Scowling at himself as he left the cabin with the key fob to Lisa’s Toyota in his pocket, Duarte tucked his pistol into the back waistband of his jeans as was his habit any time he stepped outside. A shortcut took him through the acres of woods he knew like the back of his hand, and down to the dirt road near the base of the mountain.

Her silver Camry had made it a few hundred yards up the muddied tract before getting stuck. Duarte ran a hand over his beard-grizzled jaw as he eyed the deeply entrenched rear tires. They were spun down to the rims of their hubcaps in the thick mud. And with the rain stopped hours ago, the drying mud had turned to concrete.

Shit. No way the puny little two-wheel-drive, four-cylinder was going to have the horsepower to plow out of the deep rut. Gonna have to dig it out.

Using a sturdy