Bound By Passion: No Desire Denied / One More Kiss / Second-Chance Seduction. Cara Summers

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СКАЧАТЬ 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.

       10

      “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. And he’d never been this careless on a job.

      Vi had agreed with his assessment of Nell’s exhaustion, because she’d hurried her niece upstairs, so that she could shower and change and get some rest. The dog had gone with the women.

      In the parlor, Daryl drew his finger down to where he’d sketched the stone arch. “If you were here, you would have been out of range of the floodlights. I’ll bet he was wearing night vision goggles.”

      “Which means he’s either a pro or he’s had military training,” Reid said.

      “Agreed.”

      Reid wanted badly to pace off his nerves. Another first for him. He never paced.

      “While Vi was patching you up, I updated Sheriff Skinner. He’s got a man stationed there right now to guard the area.”

      “At first light, I want to search for the bullet.”

      Daryl met his eyes. “My thoughts exactly. It might shed some light on who we’re dealing with.” Then he tapped on the sketch again. “By then, Skinner will have volunteers patrolling the hillside and searching for any casing. He said he’d have no trouble getting the manpower. Edie’s a popular woman in Glen Loch, and no one wants trouble at her granddaughter’s wedding rehearsal. Everyone in town’s grateful for the economic boost that this wedding business has given the local community.”

      “Nell СКАЧАТЬ