a man of high hopes.” He withdrew his hand and reached to the bedside table to turn off the light.
Darkness fell, but there was just enough light coming in from the streetlights for McKenna to make out her lover’s sculpted silhouette. She mourned the loss of his baby blue gaze.
The mattress creaked beneath his weight as he shifted closer. Uncontrollably drawn to him, with a real need to explore what was so damn fine, McKenna’s hands went to his chest. There she found the heat she knew would greet her, and she relished the burn.
The face she had thought angelic was close enough for her to feel his breath on her cheek. She turned her head toward him to offer easy access.
Sensation had tripled in the dark, awakened by anticipation. He swept her hair back from her face with his fingers, and she quivered. When he brushed her lips with his, without lingering, she wanted to break the standoff and tug him closer.
“Damn you,” she whispered for what had to be the tenth time. Giving in to her body’s demands, she reached for his shoulders.
“Soon,” he whispered, his husky tone hurling more flames in her direction.
He felt solid, hard, as his body rolled onto hers, spread-eagle on the bed. There was only the briefest time to recognize how well they fit together and how good being beneath him felt.
He didn’t have to move to let her know that he shared her excitement. His stiffness in all the right places made that perfectly clear. His hard length, and the friction of being pants to pants below the waist and skin to skin above, was a sensation like no other.
It would have been lying to say she hadn’t known how good this would be.
McKenna stifled another moan when his lips feathered across her left cheek in a downward path that would lead to her throat. His next move was a soft bite to a supersensitive spot below her ear. He did the same thing again a bit lower, and afterward placed a kiss in the valley between her breasts.
She was coming unglued. Her heart could not have beat harder. Catching her breath was a chore. She shook like a schoolgirl, fearing to move, not wanting to lose one gloriously sexy, unbelievably scary minute.
When his mouth grazed the lace covering her breasts, McKenna shoved her fingers into his hair. Her treacherous legs opened, urged into moving by the swift rise of another far-off internal beat that was pounding her insides to a pulp.
Hot breath on her nipples...
The sensation of her lacy bra being removed by the guy’s strong hands...
Followed by a flick of his tongue over one raised pink bud.
She could not remain still. Can’t.
This was too much. And too little.
“What are you waiting for?” she demanded breathlessly, the question loud in the darkened room.
“This,” he replied, dragging his mouth to the other breast, where he closed his lips over that swollen tip of her raised flesh.
McKenna bucked beneath him. Her hands fisted in his hair.
God...
He stroked a hand over her jeans, over the sweet spot pulsing between her legs as he first licked, then lightly suckled her. Shudders of delight shot through her. His mouth was crazy hot.
Did he make a sound? Could the cry have been hers?
“Can’t wait much longer,” she whispered.
“We might have to,” he warned as his hand stopped moving and the sound of knocking filled the room.
McKenna heard little over the sound of her own harsh breathing, but quickly realized that those knocking sounds weren’t due to the pounding of her heart. They came from the door.
In the most untimely interruption imaginable, someone wanted in.
* * *
Kellan swore beneath his breath and lifted his head. Drawing back, he sat up and looked to McKenna. “You were expecting company?”
“No.”
He believed her. Using his extraordinary senses, he perceived that this visitor was a man. Presumably the elusive Detective Miller.
It was likely that the officers at the crime scene they’d visited earlier had told Miller about them. It was also a good bet that the phone call McKenna made to the police department had been forwarded.
Maybe the idea of McKenna on a Harley was grounds enough for the detective to assume this was an emergency.
“Mac?” the newcomer called out softly between knocks. “McKenna? Are you there?”
“He’ll go away,” McKenna said, her body motionless on the lavender-scented sheets.
Kellan perched on the edge of the mattress, waiting for McKenna’s next instructions and wondering what this detective meant to her. Friend? More than that? There was a new tension in the room that suggested lover. Was that title current, though, or a detail from McKenna’s past?
When the knock came again, a jolt of anger hit Kellan. This was his time with McKenna. The importance of his agenda could not be overstated. He and the woman beside him had already opened a physical dialogue that might lead to the success of his mission. After all these years, he had also been enjoying himself.
“He won’t like finding you here,” McKenna said. She was looking to the door.
“Does he have a key?”
“Yes, but he won’t use it. Not now, without my permission.”
A liaison in the past tense, then?
“You don’t think being seen with me tonight might be considered cause for concern?” Kellan suggested.
“There’s always that,” she conceded.
The knocks ceased for several seconds before the doorknob turned. Kellan stood as the sound of a key grated in the lock. Gracefully, quickly, with McKenna’s welfare in mind, he moved toward his shirt.
The man spanning the doorway looked like a cop, Kellan decided. It was all there—height, professionally short hair, wiry frame, condemning expression on a good-looking face. The scent of metal—his badge, and a gun hidden under an armpit—accompanied him. Underneath all of that, Kellan detected an almost feral nervousness.
The detective stopped dead in his tracks, trying to see into the darkened room. Once his eyes had adjusted, his focus landed on Kellan. Soon afterward, he flipped the light switch and transferred his gaze to the unmade bed, then to McKenna, who now stood at the window.
“Am I intruding?” he asked no one in particular. There was an explicit warning in his tone.
“Just leaving,” Kellan replied calmly, sweeping his jacket
