Fatal Strike (McClouds & Friends #10)(61)

She swatted that away. “So you’re inexplicably cured, then?”

“Who said anything about inexplicable? I just explained it.”

“When?” She shook her head, frustrated. “What cured it?”

“You did,” he said.

“Me?” She squinted, uncomprehending. “What?”

“You fixed it,” he said. “You cured me. Pulled me together, somehow. When I’m with you . . . hell, I don’t know. It’s like, the better to see you with, my dear, the better to smell you with, you know?”

She snorted, helplessly. “Oh, come on. Give me a break!”

“No. Totally. You’re the one who gave me a break. I don’t know how else to describe it.” He lifted a handful of her hair, pressed his nose to it, inhaled with obvious gusto. “Mmm. I feel better. Thanks.”

“Ah . . . you’re welcome.”

For some reason, his admission scared her. She felt so small and lost. The thought of having had such a powerful effect on him, with no idea how or why, unnerved her. Like she’d suddenly found herself with a loaded gun in her hands. Vast, unexpected power, and she had no idea where it came from, or what to do with it.

“No pressure,” he said, sensing her unease. “It’s just a feeling. But it’s a really good one. So don’t sweat it.”

“Um. Yeah.” Right. Just a feeling, her ass. It was a feeling with a million complicated implications. And dangers.

“You go to art school in San Francisco, right?” he asked.

She shook her head. She was so far distant from that previous Lara Kirk, it was hard to remember who she’d been. “I don’t know,” she said. “I did before they took me. But the things I did then, the things I thought were so important . . . they all seem so small, now.”

“So if all this was magically resolved, and Greaves disappeared from the face of the earth, you wouldn’t go back to art school? You were getting pretty famous, from what I could tell.”

She laughed at that. “No, that’s just promo spin from the website. I was maybe on track to make a decent living, but I wasn’t famous. And I wouldn’t want to live in a city now. The one thing I dreamed about, besides you of course, was being someplace beautiful in the mountains. Big towering trees. A waterfall. I went there in my mind, every day. If I could do anything, I’d go find myself a waterfall and just sit there, listen to the water rushing for a few centuries. And then we’d see.”

He gave her a smile, the amazing one that made the deep groove carve itself sexily into his cheek, that flash of gorgeous white teeth.

“How about you?” she asked. “Vital stats?”

“I grew up in Endicott Falls,” he said. “Not far from Seattle. You’d like it. It has good falls, as the name indicates. The Gorge does, too. Toward Portland, Old Highway 30. I could show you lots of great falls. We could do a tour. You can listen to them all. One after the other.”

She smiled her appreciation of the lovely, impractical thought. It was only the sweetest, most lovely thing anyone had ever suggested to her. In fact, it made her want to burst into tears again. She distracted herself by rushing into another question. “Where do you live now?”

“I don’t have a place right now. I’ve been in limbo. Not that I’m a deadbeat living out of my car, or anything,” he hastened to add. “I make good money when I put my mind to it. I’m just in a state of transition.”

“I know that state,” she said.

“My friends have been bugging me for years to buy my own place. I’ve been holding off, until I figure out what I want.”

“And have you figured it out yet?”

He took his time with his reply, shifting her so she was basically sitting on his lap. Feeling the heat of his unflagging erection, stiff against her bare bottom. “Yeah,” he said. “I’m starting to get a clue.”

She had a fleeting sensation that she might be walking into some sort of a trap, but she just kept going with it. “What, then? What clue?”

He nuzzled her neck, and the soft caress of his warm breath made her shiver and press closer to him. “It has to be in the mountains,” he said. “With some good climbing nearby. I might have to design it myself, because I want something really specific.”

She stared at his hands, which were clasped around her waist, beneath her breasts. His forearms were sinewy, the hair lying flat and shiny crosswise across the ropy muscles and bulging veins and tendons, so dark against the white tee shirt. “Specific how?”

“Huge trees,” he said, almost dreamily. “Big, old growth forest. Cedars, spruces, silver pine. With ferns and trillium and starflowers and rock lilies. A mountain stream nearby. With a waterfall.”

She caught her breath, and blushed. “Ah . . .”

“Not too close to the city, but not too far, either,” he went on. “Lots of space in the house. Living quarters downstairs, huge deck, fabulous view, fireplace. Windows everywhere. A big man-cave dug into the back, where I can do all my tech geek stuff and have a big nasty tangle of circuits and wires and shit. And upstairs, a huge loft. Vaulted ceilings, skylights, space. For the artist studio.”

“Oh,” she said, weakly. “Uh, wow.”

“An outbuilding, maybe, for the metalworking stuff,” he went on. “And a kiln out back. For the ceramic pieces.”