a thorough, feverish fury as if he were looking for some flavor that she might deny him.
She denied him nothing. He was showing her more than anyone ever had, opening doors she hadn’t known existed. And he could give her more. More than she’d ever imagined. The very thought that he might take her here and now, with such urgent need and desperation, sent her own desires spiraling. She raced her mouth down his neck, sank her teeth into the curve of his shoulder. The flavors were amazing. Addicting.
Now. The word hammered in her blood, pounded in her mind, as she dragged her mouth free of his. The cool night air eased her burning lungs as he dealt with her clothes. She thought she’d never felt anything more erotic than the slide of her dress over her arms and head. Once free of it, she wrapped her arms and legs around him.
They’d waited too long. A lifetime. He lifted her hips; she wrapped her legs around him.
“Now.”
When she said the word, fresh needs exploded inside of him. Reid could see her eyes in the muted light, needed to see them as the last of his control shredded. He plunged into her. She surrounded him. For a moment, neither of them moved.
If he could have, he would have held on to the moment forever. But she’d weakened him when she’d begun to strip him. Unable to resist, he began to move, quickly, fiercely. The sultry sound of her moans fanned the flames as she matched him thrust for thrust until he knew nothing else, wanted nothing else. He swore once without knowing what he cursed. Then savagely he increased the pace. Faster and faster, harder and harder, they raced into the vortex of a storm—a place where neither of them had ever been. Then they shattered.
* * *
SANITY SLIPPED IN SLOWLY. Reid had no idea how long he’d stood there, pressing her into the stone arch as bits and pieces of reality trickled in. She was still wrapped tightly around him, her head on his shoulder. His breath was still coming in gasps. His heart was still hammering against his chest. He still couldn’t think clearly.
And he was trembling.
No woman had ever made him tremble before. Somehow he found the strength to angle his head so that he could look at her. Her eyes were open, dazed. A fresh wave of desire shot through him. He felt himself grow hard again inside her.
Good Lord, he needed a moment. Just a moment, he told himself. Or he was going to take her again like a madman.
Murmuring his name, Nell ran her hand down his back. There’d been something in his eyes when he’d looked at her—vulnerability. It had her nestling closer. The gesture flooded him with warmth.
“It wasn’t exactly what I’d planned.”
“I’ll take it. Gladly.” Reid tipped her chin up. “Are you all right? I wasn’t careful.”
She smiled at him. “Neither was I.”
“I wasn’t careful about something else. Protection.”
She cupped his face in her hands. “I have it covered.”
His body jerked, pressing her hard into the side of the arch. The pinging sound registered in her brain at the same instant that she felt the sting on her cheek. Reid pivoted, holding her tightly against him as he sprinted into the stone arch. Then she was on the ground, his body on top of hers and her breath whooshed out.
“Don’t move,” he said.
Not a possibility. She could barely drag in a breath. Her mind was racing to process what had just happened—the jerk of Reid’s body, the sound like stone hitting stone.
“What happened?” she asked.
“Someone took a shot at us.” He’d lifted his head and was staring beyond them through the other end of the tunnel at the wooded hillside behind the stone arch. Her lover was gone and the Secret Service agent was back.
“The floodlights don’t spill in this far,” he was saying, “so I think we’re safe for the moment. Stay put.”
When he moved, she gripped his shoulders and held tight. “You shouldn’t leave again. You said we were safe here.”
“Cell phone,” he said. “I’m calling Daryl. He can douse the floodlights.”
That was when she realized that her hand was wet. Sticky. When she saw the dark color, fear fluttered in her throat like a trapped bird. “He...hit you.”
“A scratch.” Without bothering to check the wound, he spoke into his cell. “Daryl, we’ve got a problem. We’re in the stone arch. Someone took a shot at us a couple of seconds ago. He nicked my upper arm, but Nell’s fine. I figure the shooter was in the hills behind the arch. About twenty-five feet up and maybe fifty feet to the right.”
The floodlights went out.
“Thanks. We were beneath the stones for five to ten minutes, and when we stepped out, we lingered at the side of the arch for a minute or so.”
Lingered.
She could only seem to process one word at a time. From the moment she’d felt Reid’s blood, it was as if her brain had been frozen. As he outlined to Daryl what had happened, reality sank in. While they’d made love, someone—a sniper—had taken aim at Reid and shot him.
A wave of dizziness struck her.
They’d lingered.
To fulfill her fantasy. Her fault. They’d made love right out in the open when someone was threatening to kill off her family. And Reid. Her fault again. She tightened her grip on him and held on for dear life.
“Relax,” he murmured, pulling off her hands. Then he shifted so that he could keep an eye on both entrances. “Daryl will be here in a moment, and we’ll get you safely back to the castle.”
But it wasn’t her safety that had been threatened. She’d put her subplot in front of her plot, and it had nearly cost Reid his life.
“WHOEVER IT WAS, they’re a damn good shot.” Daryl studied the extra whiteboard he’d dragged into the main parlor from Adair’s office. On it he’d sketched the clearing, the stone arch and the hillside beyond. He pointed to the place where he thought the sniper had taken his shot. “I bet he was standing right here.”
Reid’s mind flashed back to the instant he’d felt the fiery sensation sear the side of his shoulder. He remembered that, and the icy stab of fear that had pierced right to his core—and then nothing until he was standing by Nell midway beneath the stone arch. Even now, he had no recollection of how he’d gotten her there.
That was a first for him. He took a sip of the brandy Daryl had poured him after Vi had tended to the scratch the bullet had left.
A bullet meant for Nell.
In the bright lights of the kitchen with Vi and Nell, he’d seen how tired Nell had looked. There’d been dark circles beneath her eyes, and for the first time he’d glimpsed fear in them. His fault. He’d never treated a woman with less care.
