turned her head aside, unable to reason under his blatant scrutiny. “I don’t understand.”
“Mackenzie…” He sounded regretful. “I wouldn’t be here if I’d had any other choice.” He lifted his head, listening. Soft, surreptitious sounds came from outside.
He released her arms and stealthily levered himself off her, pausing to stroke two fingertips over her mouth. “Shh.”
There was a metallic clatter. Sounded like a garbage can lid to Mackenzie. Cats, she thought. Or rats.
Devlin was holding himself very still above her. She compressed her tingling lips, waiting. Rain pelted the windowpane. A truck drove by on the street out front, its engine grinding. Her heartbeat hammered. Distant honking and gleeful shouts from the neighborhood’s night people brought the outside world into their tense little cocoon.
She rose to her elbows. “Don’t move,” Devlin whispered. He stood and crossed to the window, as silent and skulking as a cat. The shade was up, the drapes open. He slithered to one side and peered outside, then slowly drew the curtains shut.
“See anything?” she asked when he remained by the window, watching from the side. Finally he reached past the curtains and closed the blind with a snap.
“No.” But his face was drawn into a worried frown.
She sat up on the edge of the bed and rearranged her rumpled clothing. One of her shoes had come off in the chase. Two buttons had popped off her silk blouse and the sleeves of the short fitted jacket that matched her skirt had been torn at the seams. Her blouse hung loose, concealing her bulging waist, so she pulled off the jacket and folded it meticulously before she set it aside.
She looked up and saw Devlin watching her, his head cocked. “I’m nervous,” she said, feeling defensive. Anxiety tended to turn her into a fuss-budget. After the divorce, her teenage bedrooms had always been surgically neat.
He shrugged. “Listen, I know this seems crazy, but you have to trust me—”
A loud bzzzz silenced him. The intercom buzzer at her front door had gone off.
Devlin cursed a single epithet.
She winced at the harsh word. Not that she didn’t hear it every day out on the street a thousand times over—just never in her bedroom. And how telling was that? she wondered. Her sex life was drab and unexciting, exactly like her last relationship. But now was not the time to worry over it!
“Don’t answer that,” Devlin said when the buzzer rang again in a loud, annoying blat.
After a couple of seconds, she heard the faint buzz at her neighbor’s door. Her bedroom shared a wall with Blair Boback’s living room. “They’re trying all the apartments.”
“Damn.” Devlin grabbed Mackenzie’s arm and towed her to the front door, heedless that she’d lost a shoe and was staggering crookedly. He stepped over her upended purse and listened at the door, then looked through the peephole. Abruptly, he drew back. Though he didn’t change expression or tense up, she sensed the freeze in him.
The lobby door clanged open and shut. “One of the other tenants buzzed them through,” she guessed. A large part of her was frightened more by Devlin than the interlopers who’d just gained access to the building. They could be harmless. Devlin was…not.
He squinted at her, his left eye practically swollen shut. A blue shadow ringed it. “Them?”
“Them. Him. Her.” She tried to act defiant. “It could be the entire roster of the New York Jets, for all I know.”
Her doorbell ding-donged. She jumped. He tightened his fingers, digging them into the fleshy part of her arm as he put his mouth to her ear. “Don’t answer.”
“But…”
Bam, bam, bam. They were pounding at her door, so forcefully the hinges rattled.
She shoved her damp bangs off her face with the back of one wrist. “Let me look,” she whispered.
Devlin shook his head.
“Is someone after you?”
“Shh. I’m listening.”
The uninvited visitors had moved to the next apartment. Mackenzie pressed her ear to the door. Low rumbles interspersed with a higher-pitched, and increasingly excited, response. “My neighbor,” she said, so worried she had to resist smoothing wrinkles from Devlin’s creased leather jacket. Her fingers itched to smooth his hair. “Blair Boback.”
Devlin’s face was grim. “I hope she’s smart enough not to let them into her apartment.”
Mackenzie smiled mirthlessly. “Oh, yeah. Blair’s street savvy.”
They heard Blair’s door close. Devlin watched through the peephole. “Going upstairs,” he said. “How many apartments in this building?”
“Only eight.”
He released a breath and leaned against the wall—big, dark, wet and punk-tough against her peach-and-cream-striped damask. “When they don’t find me upstairs, they’re going to come back to your door.” Again, Devlin swore. “They must have seen which building I went into.”
“They?”
He didn’t answer.
“They might be canvassing the entire street.”
“Maybe.” He paused. “Here’s what I want you to do. Open the door, chain on, when they come back. They ask about me, you say you know nothing and shut the door. Be convincing.” He gave her the hard look again, his fingers squeezing her arm like barbecue tongs. “Very convincing.”
She spoke tentatively. “What if I don’t want to—”
He was fast. Before she could blink, he was standing directly in front of her, both hands on her now, dragging her close against his chest. He glared, their faces inches apart. His jaw was clenched, his nostrils flared. It wouldn’t be a shock if he snorted and pawed the ground like a bull. The move was supposed to be intimidating—and it was—but the greater threat was the way he made her feel.
Alive. Scared, but so incredibly alive. Her heart was pounding, her blood racing. She was sharply aware of every pleasure point on her body. The distant yearning she was so familiar with had become a strange and potent hunger….
“You’ll do it,” Devlin said grittily.
“Or what?” He’s a criminal, she reminded herself. Not the cool high-school bad boy you remember. The potential for trouble that she’d once found so fascinating had been fulfilled. And there was nothing alluring about knowing that he’d committed actual crimes.
Devlin’s lips came down on hers, knocking out every objection with one striking blow. He didn’t kiss—he attacked. His mouth was hot and his tongue was wicked, thrusting against hers with no pretense at pretty seduction. His teeth ground against her lower lip as he bit and sucked and drove his tongue deeper. The shock was staggering. She hadn’t known that a kiss could be so un-apologetically savage and still turn her molten with desire.
This
