Authors: Toni Blake

Hotbed Honey (24 page)

BOOK: Hotbed Honey

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Just in time, too, she thought, her mood suddenly going grave. For at any other place or any other time, this conversation would have been a dream come true, but recalling the reality of their situation hung a dark cloud over Kimberly's joy. Sadly, her confession to Max and his sweet, even if unexpected, understanding, may have taken place at the last possible moment it could.

Max tilted his head, studying her expression, which had just turned troubled, yet he didn't have to ask why. For a few moments there, it had been as if they'd forgotten, but the fact was, they might very well die tomorrow, something that he was just now fully comprehending. This wasn't a comic book, not pretend … this was real. He could only guess that it was hitting Kimberly just as hard.

He lifted one hand to her cheek. "I'm so sorry, Kimberly," he said. It still helped nothing, of course, but at least it came from the heart.

Yet she peered into his eyes and shook her head. "No, Max, truly, don't be sorry. Because it's not your fault. And because I'm not giving up yet. I refuse to believe this is over."

Even amid their suddenly remembered dread, he managed a small smile for her. "This is that tough, sassy side of you I like."

Max saw heat in Kimberly's gaze, a heat he recognized, a heat now tempered with a primitive sort of fear.

His heartbeat increased as he let himself be absorbed into those pretty eyes of hers. In the shadowy light of the closet, they were so dark as to be almost colorless. Yet they still shone hot upon him, and he could see in her all he ever had, all the beauty, all the grace, all the sweetness, all the raw sexuality, now magnified with the need that accompanied it.

Max couldn't wait another second. He crushed a hard kiss onto her silken lips, and she returned it, wild and needful, her arms twining around his neck as she leaned fully into him, her warmth intoxicating.

They were kissing desperately and she climbed into his lap, straddling him until his hardness pressed up into that most tender part of her. "I need you, babe," he murmured.

A small, reckless moan left her, but he stifled it with another kiss, his tongue pressing hungrily past her lips. Their kisses turned less frantic then, calming into something deep and enveloping, slower, but still just as wrenching.

"I need you, too, Max." Her words were the merest whisper, like a verbal caress. "I need you so much."

They touched tongues delicately and Max slid one hand to her breast. Finding her nipple through her dress and bra, he gently squeezed it between thumb and forefinger. Another tiny moan came, but he cut this one off with his mouth, afraid someone might hear them.

He still teased the taut peak with rhythmic strokes of his thumb, and they were both panting now, quiet and harsh. Max feared he would soon burst with the intensity of how he wanted her. How his body
needed
her. But it wasn't just his body. No, this was way more than physical.

"Remember before," he said, short of breath, "when we stopped? Because of where we were?"

She nodded, their gazes seductively close, her eyes wide with want.

"Well, where we are doesn't matter anymore, Kimberly," he told her. "Or maybe it's just the opposite and it matters more than anything. Either way, nothing could stop me from having you now."

Chapter 10

«
^
»

M
ax had never wanted anyone or anything in his life as badly as he wanted to make love to Kimberly, right now. The feel of her, the scent of her, was enough to bury him.

She answered his words with a feverish kiss, but he wanted more than that from her. "Tell me," he growled in her ear.

"Tell you what?" she uttered.

"Tell me you want me inside you."

She released an erotic sigh and her voice came weak and breathy. "Yes, I want you inside me. I want you deep, deep inside me."

Then she looked hard into his eyes, voracious with desire, but also commanding, saying,
Don't play any more games, don't ask me to say anything else. Just do it
. Her silent demands excited him more than anything he could ever remember.

He moved his hands to her hips and pulled her down to meet him, drinking in the hungry sexiness of it when she began to grind against him in a hard, sensual rhythm. He worked at the buttons on her dress as she moved, then pushed the flowered fabric aside. Opening the lacy bra, he reached in to caress her full, round breasts. When she began to release a low moan, he kissed her and a passionate moment later felt her biting his lip.

And then he wanted to moan and it killed him to hold it in. So he clenched his teeth and closed his eyes and leaned his forehead against hers, all while she gyrated against him in hot little circles.

"I need you in me."

The words sounded as gentle as a leaf wafting from a tree, but the power in them was enough to paralyze him. He needed to be in her, too … as soon as possible. Grazing his hands over her thighs and up under her dress, he found more lace beneath his fingertips. Smoothly, he slid his fingers inside the fabric, taking hold of it. Then he gave one brisk yank, ripping the lace free. Her gasp filled him with a perverse sort of pleasure before he whispered, "Unzip me."

Her ragged breath alone was enough to drive him wild as she lifted off him and undid his shorts. "Hurry," he urged, his own voice sounding so throaty he barely recognized it. She reached inside and took hold of him, and he let out a rough gasp of his own.

He waited, impatient as a teenager, but she went still and looked him in the eye. He reached up to brush a strand of hair from her face. When she finally spoke, her voice came out broken. "Max, there's nowhere … no one else I'd rather…"

He couldn't stand to watch her struggle with the words, so he stopped her with a truth of his own. "I know, love. Me, too."

And then she was lowering herself onto him, taking him deep inside her. She released another of those long, low moans, and Max reached up to cover her mouth with his hand, quieting her.

His fingers were in her mouth then and she was sucking them, and she was moving on him again, now with him in her. Max began to lose track of space, time, reality. All he knew was that Kimberly had taken control and was making love to him. Sweet, slow, desperate love. Using her whole body, her whole self, her undulations filled with a smoldering hunger he'd never seen in her before. He basked in it, letting it happen, watching her love him, pushing up into her, wanting her to feel it deep in her core.

Biting her lip, she arched toward him, her lovely coral-tipped breasts near his face. He took one pebbled nipple in his mouth as she continued in those slow, sexy circles … and then he felt her coming—her body convulsing over him, around him, her sweet tiny sounds too faint to need to cover, too beautiful to want to. She collapsed against him and he wrapped his arms around her, thinking,
You're so beautiful,
when he came, too, in shocking waves of heat that made him shudder against her limp body. "Oh God, babe," he whispered, breathless.

"I love you, Max," she said.

He tightened his hold on her, not ready to hear those words, yet at the same time, he let his heart fill with them.

He didn't say it back. He felt stunned and speechless.

Max just prayed that she understood, prayed that she knew how much he felt in this moment, prayed that it would be enough to get her—to get them
both
—through the night.

And at the same time, he prayed desperately that there would be a tomorrow.

* * *

At some point, they both slept. He awakened her with kisses—kisses to her shoulder, to the curve of her breast. She climbed onto him again in the small confines of the space, and she stayed faultlessly quiet, but he thought he could almost feel the exquisite torture of her silence as she moved against him.

Hours later, he awoke blissfully satisfied. Before even opening his eyes, he found himself ruminating about the other morning after they'd made love. In his mind he saw her dreamy eyes and romantic expression next to him in bed. He hadn't been ready for it then, but he was ready for it now. After what they'd been through together in the last twenty-four hours, he felt closer to her than he ever had. And on top of it all, he'd forgiven her for the Carpenter case.

He didn't know how or when exactly, but somehow through the course of the day yesterday, he'd let go of his hurtful grudge. He wished he'd told her now, before they'd made love. Even if he hadn't been able to say "I love you," "I forgive you" might have been almost as good under the strange circumstances of their relationship. He knew he needed to get better at saying how he felt, but he decided he'd work on that as soon as they got out of this. Right now he had other things to concentrate on.

Like figuring out what they were going to do.

And before that, waking Kimberly and drinking in that dreamy look in her morningtime eyes. But it wasn't quite morning yet—his digital watch read
4:30 a.m.
Still, he didn't want them sleeping any later—if they were to formulate any kind of a plan, they'd better start working on it now. He nudged her softly and waited as she slowly lifted her head from his shoulder and eased her eyes open. Then she turned to him and met his gaze.

"Jeez, Tate, did you have to rip off my panties?"

Max flinched, stunned. Okay, that wasn't exactly dreamy or romantic. Maybe he didn't know Kimberly as well as he thought he did—she was becoming less predictable by the day. "Well, you didn't seem to mind it at the time," he pointed out.

"I was feeling … a bit desperate."

"Has your situation changed in some way I don't know about?"

Kimberly's situation hadn't changed, but her attitude definitely had. After last night with Max, it would have been easy for her to wake up feeling all loveydovey toward him, but she knew a lot about herself and one thing she knew for sure was that loveydoveyness would make her weak and spineless and girlish. If they were to stay alive, she needed her professional wits about her today. So she'd decided to put on her game face bright and early without giving her spongier side time to start absorbing everything she felt when she looked in his eyes. Max had said yesterday that he liked her tough side. Well, today that's what he would get. It was imperative if they were to have any hope of getting out of this mess with their lives.

"We need a plan, Tate."

"I'm fresh out at the moment, Brandt."

"Well, I'm not. Listen up." Her change in attitude had imbued her with a strength she hadn't thought she'd be able to muster under the current circumstances. She surprised even herself with how bold she felt at the moment.

"I'm listening," he said.

"There's a heat duct overhead." She pointed at it.

"True enough."

"And so I'm thinking … what if we could somehow crawl through it and get out? They do it in the movies all the time."

"I don't know, Brandt—this isn't a movie. And that thing looks like it was manufactured in the Dark Ages. I think
Hollywood
uses sturdier heat ducts."

"Maybe so, but do you have any better ideas? Besides, it's the middle of the night. Carlo and his goons might have let down their guard, expecting us to be asleep. If we're gonna do something, it seems like now's the time."

Max tilted his head as he stared at her in the pale light. "That's your plan?"

"My point is, Tate, we can stay here and wait for Carlo's boss to shoot us, or we can take a chance in the heat duct. I say we go now and be done with it, one way or the other."

Max didn't like it, he was generally a planner. After all, a little spontaneity on his part is what had landed them in this predicament. Still, she made sense. There was nothing to be gained by waiting and the cover of darkness sure couldn't hurt. The rusty heat duct looked as if it was ready to disintegrate on top of them, but it seemed to be their only hope.

"All right, Brandt. You've convinced me."

"One more thing," she said. "Another part of my plan."

"Let's hear it."

"If we end up out of the heat duct and on the floor, and we bump into just one guy, split up."

BOOK: Hotbed Honey

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