A Darkness Absolute (Casey Duncan #2)(14)

I remember when my parents caught me digging out a snow fort with a friend, and I was grounded for a week and forced to read the medical file on two kids who’d suffocated in a collapsed snow fort. That was life with my parents—when I tried something dangerous, I didn’t get a lecture, I got coroner’s reports. Which put me in good stead for being a homicide cop, however much they’d hate to think they helped me into a career so obviously beneath me.

My parents were … difficult. That’s really all I can say. They died in a small plane crash a few years ago, so there’s no point in being angry or bitter. If a part of me finds a small irony in the fact that they’d died doing the kind of thing they’d warned me off … Well, I don’t dwell on it. I loved my parents in my way, and I think they loved me in theirs, but I’ll never know for sure, and there’s nothing I can do about that.

As for what Dalton wants me to do now, the question comes down to this: do I trust him? The answer is: unequivocally. When it comes to safety, he can be as paranoid as my parents, but he deals with that through education—not the kind that comes with coroner’s photos but the kind that says, If you’re going to build a snow fort, here are the ways to make it safe. When he sees me looking skeptically at his shelter, he finally does speak, grunting, “Roof’s only a foot thick. It collapses? You can dig out.”

We go inside, and he turns on the flashlight and motions for me to give him my hands. When he pulls off my gloves, I say, “They’re fine, Eric. I can feel them,” but he examines my fingers and then my toes, warming them with his body heat, careful not to rub. Then he checks my eyes, which feels like he’s checking a horse, pulling up my lids and peering in without a word.

He hands me the water, and I drink some more. As our bodies heat up the insulated shelter, he pulls off his snowsuit. I do the same, and he sits there, cross-legged, ignoring the water pouch as I hold it out. Instead, he runs his hands over his face and through his hair and exhales as if he’s been holding his breath all this time.

I crawl over to him, and when he looks up again, my face is right there. I say, “I’m sorry,” and his hands are in my hair, lips on mine.

I lift my mouth to his, my lips soft, but it’s not that kind of kiss. It’s the kind that says he’s been going out of his mind since he flew back into Rockton and found me lost in the woods, midstorm, with the psycho who captured Nicole.

Now I’m here, and I’m safe. He’s built this shelter, and I’m finally safe.

So, no, it’s not a quiet kiss, or a soft kiss. It’s the kind that has me flat on my back in two seconds, and undressed in not much more. It’s hunger and need, edged with residual terror and panic. And I feed right back into it, my own terror and panic of the last twenty-four hours finding release in rough kisses and rougher hands and finally, proper release, deep and shuddering as I collapse onto the snow-packed ground.

Dalton hovers over me, breathing hard, his eyes closed. I reach up and put my hands against his cheeks. When he opens his eyes, I say, “Hello.”

He chuckles. “Missed that part, didn’t I?”

“Kind of.”

“I was worried.”

“I know.”

He rolls onto his back and flips me onto his chest.

“I hate worrying,” he says. “Fucking hate it.”

“But you’re so good at it.”

He pushes my hair back, and I feel the tremor in his fingers as he says, “You were gone, and the storm and then Will and Nicole and…” He swallows. “I was so fucking worried.”

I bend down and kiss him. “I’m sorry. I really am. Sutherland bolted, and I wanted sex.”

He sputters a laugh at that.

“Well, not with Sutherland, obviously,” I say. “But I wasn’t able to go to Dawson City with you this time, and it was a long three days.”

“You missed my scintillating conversation.”

“Nah, just the sex. So, see, the problem was this: if you came back and Sutherland was gone, we’d have had to go after him right away.”

“It could have waited five minutes.”

“It’d been three days, Sheriff. I wanted more than five minutes.”

“Pretty sure you didn’t just get more than five minutes.”

“I made an exception for your mood. You owe me. I will collect. Anyway, the point is that I went after Sutherland so I could get sex when you came back.”

“Not because you wanted to impress me? Have him waiting when I returned?”

“Mmm, yes. That, too. But the sex excuse is funnier.” I stretch out on him. “I made an error in judgment. The weather was good when we left. Perfect, in fact. Now I know not to trust that. It literally changed in a heartbeat.”

“It does that.” He pulls one of the emergency blankets over us. “I overreacted, and I’ll apologize for that. Obviously, I can’t insist you stay in town. That’s not right.”

“As my lover, no. As my boss, you totally can. I distinguish between the two just fine, Eric.”

“Are you telling me you wouldn’t have done the same under your old boss?”

“I didn’t want sex from my old boss,” I say with a smile, but then add, “No, I would have still left. This was simply employer-employee insubordination. Feel free to punish me for it. As for how you punish me, you can blur the employer/lover line there.”