Heart Strike (15 page)

A king-size bed dominated the room. A wall of windows looked down on Lake Maracaibo and the city's waterfront. But Richie walked right past the bed and into the bathroom before setting her back on her feet.

An oversized glass-walled shower enclosure, a separate tub, bright tiles, and the same stunning view over the waterfront. The hotel was the tallest building in this direction, so there was no reason to curtain the window, but she still felt terribly exposed. After all, her clothes weren't merely in the bedroom; they were scattered on the floor just inside the suite's door. If someone came back unexpectedly, she didn't want that.

“I should really go and get…” Her voice dried up in her throat when she turned.

Richie had stripped down and moved into the shower. He was starting the shower and had a hand held out into the spray to test the temperature.

So simple a gesture. Thoughtlessly kind.

Men were never like that.

Richie was.

She watched him through the glass as he adjusted the final temperature.

“C'mon in. The water's fine now.”

That wasn't the only thing that was fine. There was also Richie Goldman. There was no way to think of him as just the brain on seeing him unclothed. Long, lean muscle sculpted him from heel to shoulders. The simplest action—reaching for soap and a washcloth—rippled across his back.

“I promised to scrub your back.”

The heat that had been building between them since…since the first moment they'd met…had been supercharged by their tussle in the back of the Twin Otter. And despite that, Richie had recalled an idle promise to scrub her back.

She stepped into the shower on autopilot, with no control of her flight path. Her next actions were out of her control; her body had taken over and she had no inclination to turn it aside.

* * *

Richie turned with the soapy washcloth in his hand and was again struck by beauty of the woman before him. He'd had his fair share of attractive women climb into his bed, but he'd never been with one who shone like the sun.

Not merely her hair or her fabulous body. Every time he looked into her shining blue eyes, there was a joy there, a connection that he'd never found anywhere else.

Even now her smile lit up.

Then, as slowly as a runway model, she turned her back on him, spinning once through the spray until her hair darkened and her body sparkled.

Melissa from the back was its own miracle. Women, even the most fit, had a softness to them. It wasn't that Melissa was hard-edged, but that impossible fitness demanded by being a Unit operator reshaped into the female form was astonishing. Her curves weren't just womanly, they were powerfully so.

“Are you going to stare all day, or is
Señor
Drug Runner going to finally deliver on one of his promises?”

A pilot's proper response to the control tower once cleared for takeoff wasn't to get on the radio, but rather to shove the throttles forward and get the heck off their runway.

Richie raised his washcloth and began to rub it against her shoulders. The shock through his fingertips was no less than on that first contact sitting on the couch when he'd brushed his hand over her shoulder. Before it had been her shirt that separated them; now it was a washcloth.

He reached back his other hand and soaped it up, then he placed both hands on her shoulders. With one, he scrubbed; with the other, he explored and massaged.

Melissa braced her arms against the stall's glass wall and hung her head. He found knotted muscles in her shoulders and forced them to release. He scrubbed at her braced arms until they were clear of airplane paint. He knelt and did the same to her legs.

When she turned and leaned back against the glass it looked as if she was suspended in midair. He continued up her front, appreciating every single curve as he went. Studying what his earlier desperation had not allowed time to implant in his memory. Shudders ran up through her frame as he massaged and caressed.

“You still haven't kissed me.” Her voice was practically a whimper. Richie had never made a woman whimper before.

“Sure I did,” he teased her. “Up against the suite door.”

“That was forever ago.” Her whine of protest made him feel so…he didn't know what. Like he was more powerful than he knew he was. She was obviously teasing, but she implied that he alone held her happiness in his soapy hands.

When she opened her mouth to continue her complaint, he leaned his body against her and kissed her hard and deep. The sensation of skin to skin slammed against him as brutally as any training blow that had knocked the wind out of him.

But again, that impossible familiarity that couldn't possibly exist after less than a week. That sense of known, of belonging, shouldn't be possible with someone he'd known such a short time. But it was there, so deep, so pure that he couldn't imagine ever having wanted someone else. Or anyone else again, not after he'd found this feeling.

He kept her pinned to the glass as he dug one hand up into her soaked hair and the other cupped that spectacular form that her gluteus maximus muscles had made of her behind. He pressed himself against her. This time he was the one who groaned first.

Not during his very first time with a girl named Cindy, which had been awkward and over too fast, nor the second a year later with her sister, which had been utterly fantastic and had turned into a much longer relationship, had he felt anything like this, and he hadn't even entered her yet.

And with that thought, he couldn't wait any longer.

He'd dropped a foil packet in the soap dish when he entered the shower. He rolled the protection on while he kept Melissa in place with a kiss.

There was no need to ask. No need to whisper her name as a question. Nothing had ever been so right in his life. Not flying, not joining Delta, not serving with his team.

He lifted her hips and took her against the thick glass.

The moment he entered her, the careful, thoughtful version of himself that he knew so well slipped away. Instead he drove into her, held her hard, and kissed her harder.

They didn't rise together, a soft, gentle coupling in time with the waves on the sea. They simply flew. Fuel at max, temperatures at redline. There was no grace, no gentleness, not even thought. And his Ice Queen melted against him and gave back tenfold everything he gave to her.

It was chaotic, a distant part of Richie noted. It wasn't the right way to court his lovely Ilsa.

But the man who had Melissa Moore wrapped around him didn't give a good goddamn. He didn't care about taking her somewhere special. He didn't wonder if he was being too rough or too gentle—the latter something he'd actually been accused of.

He wanted her and he took her.

She lay her head back against the glass, both legs about his hips.

He buried his face against the base of her neck and kept driving ahead long after she cried out the first time, or even the second.

When he found his release, it was an internal explosion that locked his entire body rigid as the energy throbbed and rushed out of him. He held her tight as the shudders coursed through both of them.

He'd never been like this with a woman before. Never simply taken with no thought beyond himself. He kept his face buried against Melissa's neck as she continued to buck and shudder.

There was a place inside him that wanted to weep there against her neck. That somehow knew he'd found a place of perfection.

“What the hell did I do right?” His voice was heavy and rough to his own ears.

“Oh.” Melissa brushed her hands through his hair, her arms still clamped about his neck, her voice little more than a breathy gasp. “I could make a long, long list.”

“I meant to be here with you. It's the best place I've
ever
been.” He raised his head just enough to kiss where his forehead had rested against her shoulder and then leaned his head there once again. He kept one hand cupped behind her to support her, as both of her legs were about his waist, and ran the other from her breast, down to hip, out along powerful thigh, and back.

He felt the shift. It was tiny, infinitesimal, but with their current embrace, there was no mistaking it. A sliver of ice had appeared and he didn't understand it.

* * *

Melissa felt as if she was fracturing inside her head.

Melissa The Cat, Richie's Ilsa, could purr for months over what they just done. Richie was the best lover she'd ever had by far, and not just the incredible foreplay of the soapy massage.

She'd been fully aware of his own surprise when the warrior had been unleashed. Her only surprise was that the considerate guy had let him loose at all. That guy was every woman's dream of a thoughtful, caring man.

Then there was the man she'd thought was the soldier, the dangerous and confident Delta operator with the hint of green in his eyes.

There was a true warrior hidden deep within Richie Goldman, and he was a devastating lover. His raw power and need all the stronger because of the contrast with the man Richie chose to be—because there was no question that every decision Richie made in his life was conscious. Except perhaps unleashing the breathtaking lover on her.

And while Melissa The Cat was thrilled to find such a one, Melissa Moore wasn't interested in anything deeper. The sex was great, but Richie had returned and still nuzzled against her neck and said that it was the best place he'd ever been.

That
she
was the best place he'd ever been.

If it was still the nameless warrior, she'd know it was just the sex and she'd be fine with it. But it wasn't; it was Richie, and he wasn't just talking about the sex.

He'd obviously sensed the shift in her, for which she was sorrier than she'd expected. But he didn't let her go. Instead he sat down carefully on the shower stall floor without breaking their connection, she still straddling him with her legs around his waist, her breasts pressed hard against his chest. The shower's warm spray pattered over them as if washing away all sins. If only it was so easy.

“Hey, lover.” She brushed a hand down his smooth cheek and kissed him lightly.

“Hey,” he responded, but kept his eyes averted.

“Look at me.”

And that simply, with no evasion, he did. His light brown eyes looked at her as if she was far more special than she really was.

“Maybe you should stop looking at me.” There wasn't need there, but rather a knowing. As if he knew more about her than she did herself.

Rather than stopping, he smiled softly and brushed his lips over hers. “I'm so sorry.”

“If you're apologizing for the best sex of my life, I'm gonna smack you, Richie Goldman.” Crap! She hadn't meant to say that.

“I wasn't.” Then he blinked in surprise and whispered, “The best of your life?”

“Yes, damn you!” She
really
hadn't meant to say that…even if it was true.

“Cool!”

And there was her geek.

“I have to admit that it wasn't the best of my life.” His tone might have been joking but she couldn't tell. She seemed to be a complete sucker for Richie's straight lines.

She tried to pull away to see him better, but his arms were still wrapped tightly around her back. If she wasn't his best, at least he should have the decency not to point it out. She shoved again, but he didn't let go.

“You were better than that,” he explained happily, clearly enjoying his own sense of humor. “I don't even remember anyone else. How could I when you so overshadowed every one of them?”

Melissa made a raspberry sound of disbelief. “Such a smooth talker.” Except Richie wasn't. Not the mild-mannered genius, who was always frank and forthright. Nor the wild lover, who didn't speak at all. Maybe he was just trying to confuse her. She certainly hoped so, because if he was speaking truth, she was in far deeper water than she had any interest in.

He leaned in to nuzzle her neck again but she tugged on the back of his hair to keep him looking at her.

“Then what are you apologizing for?”

“For whoever hurt you so badly that you'd freeze up in my arms after what we just did together.” No joke this time. No merry twinkle. No half laugh at his own wit. Instead she was facing the soldier who was angry on her behalf. He could speak and he was pissed. More than that, if she read him right, Richie was equally furious in his own way.

No one except her brother had ever thought to be angry on her behalf. And absolutely no lover.

Unable to face his eyes any longer, she pulled his head back against her shoulder and tried to ignore how right it felt to hold him so close.

Melissa knew she wasn't merely in over her head. She was down deep in a blue hole without even a scuba tank.

* * *

“What the fuck!” Chad's shout rang about the bathroom. He was holding aloft Melissa's bra, and his face was suffused red with his fury.

Richie did what he could to hide Melissa's nakedness, at least her back was to Chad. She kept trying to twist to see what was going on, but Richie wouldn't let her turn.

“God damn you to hell, bitch. I—”

“Get out!” Richie bellowed it so loud that Melissa covered her ears. His own hurt as his shout rang inside the shower enclosure.

“Out!” Richie shouted again, and Chad strode out, still clutching Melissa's bra in his fist.

Richie scrambled to his feet, then pointed at the stall and barked out a command, “You, stay!”

He was halfway to the door when he heard Melissa call his name. He turned to look, and she was pointing at him, at his nakedness.

He grabbed a towel and wrapped it around his waist as he stormed out of the bathroom, closing the door and then the bedroom door behind him.

Chad had turned to face him in the middle of the suite's living room.

“Don't you see what she is, man?” Chad's whisper came out as a hiss.