good,” she said in that sleepy, sexy voice of hers he loved hearing.
“You feel good.”
She smiled against his neck, slinked on top of him in all her naked glory and pressed her lips against his throat. His blood pulsed. He grew rock hard as the St. Jude medal she always wore fell against his chest. “How good?”
He groaned at the feel of her silky wetness already sliding against his length, placed his hands on her thighs and spread her legs so she could settle herself on his erection. “Like paradise. Let me take you there.”
Their lovemaking was slow and sensuous. But reserved. He felt it in the same way he’d felt it for the last seven days. She was holding back, and the urgency to break through her barrier only reinforced what he needed to do tonight.
“I could get used to you being around like this,” she mumbled later when she collapsed onto his chest, slick with sweat and breathless.
“Could you?”
She nodded slowly.
“Good. Because I plan on being around. A lot.”
She went still. Then pressed her lips against his chest before climbing off and heading for the shower. “What’s your plan for the day while I’m gone?”
Pete pushed himself up in the pillows and watched as she brushed her teeth, telling himself her avoidance technique wasn’t a bad sign. Not completely. “I thought I’d veg on your couch, rot my mind with Egyptian television and drink what’s left of that crappy beer in your refrigerator.”
She turned, toothbrush in mouth, and smiled. “Sounds like a full day.”
His eyes ran over her naked flesh. “After the way you’ve worn me out the last few nights, I need the rest.”
Her reaction was masked as she turned back to the sink, rinsed and grabbed a towel from the rack. “Then you’d better rest up for tonight. We’re having dinner with Shannon and Sawil. And after, I plan on wearing you out all over again.”
He said good-bye to her at the door with a long, lingering kiss he hoped she’d think about as much as he knew he would, then watched her leave from the window. When he was alone, he looked around the sparse living room she’d called home the past year and wondered if she’d like his house in Miami. He did, but what if she wanted something smaller? Or less modern? Shit, she was an Egyptologist. She liked old things.
His cell phone chimed in the bedroom, and he moved across the floor with a smile, knowing it was her on the other end of the line. If she was planning on getting him all hot and bothered, two could play at that game.
“My girlfriend would be upset if she knew you were calling me,” he said into the phone.
“Then you’d better not tell her,” a deeply accented male voice responded.
Pete went on instant alert. Busir. “I thought I told you I was out.”
A deep chuckle echoed over the line. “You said that. But I have something that just might interest you.”
He should have said no, hung up and turned off his phone. If he had, he could have avoided everything that happened next. But he didn’t. Because there was a small part of him—a part he was working hard to bury—that flared with excitement at Busir’s words.
He shifted the phone to his other ear and sealed his own fate. “Tell me what you’ve got.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Dreams woke him. Or memories. He wasn’t sure which.
Pete was at Lauren’s fancy house on Key Biscayne. Sitting on her back stone patio, beer in hand, staring out at the beach and the open ocean beyond.
His sister was there behind him, on one of her many mini-vacations, as she called them, between photo shoots. She stood just inside the wide patio doors, in the kitchen she never used, on the phone ordering a pizza as he listened to the lap of water, the cry of a gull, the whisper of palms blowing in the warm gentle breeze.
It should have been peaceful, but it wasn’t. It should have relaxed him, but it didn’t. He’d told Lauren the whole story. Beginning to end. From the moment he’d met Kat at the tomb to that night she’d come home early from work and found him in her apartment packing, with a full box of artifacts at his feet.
The ones he’d purchased from Busir that afternoon. The ones he hadn’t known had been from her tomb.
She’d instantly accused him of being involved in the smuggling ring. Hadn’t listened to his side of