In For the Kill (McClouds & Friends #11)(149)

“You don’t understand!” she said fiercely. “I’m the one who wants more! I’m the one who wants it all!”

He frowned at her, perplexed. “What ‘all’ are you referring to, Sveti? Sex? Servitude? My heart’s blood? It’s yours already. So what?”

“Love,” she said softly.

Heat welled up from someplace very deep, racing through the secret channels inside him like sap through a plant. “Love,” he repeated stupidly. “You lost me. I’m dizzy. I’ve got whiplash. Help me out here.”

She reached out and seized his hand, and pressed it over her heart. “Love,” she repeated more loudly.

The edges of his hand pressed the lush swell of her breasts. Her skin was so warm, though she had goose bumps. She wore no bra, just clingy, drapey layers. A few inches to the left or right, and he’d be stroking one of her taut dark nipples.

“That was never an issue,” he said. “You want it, you got it. Hell, you always had it. You’re the one who needs to talk about love, Sveti.”

“So let’s talk.” She placed her hands on his, pressing it to her chest. Her heart thudded against his palm. Steady, rapid, and strong. As if she were offering it to him. The heat, the strength. The certainty.

He didn’t dare breathe. She clasped his hand to herself, as if she received some mysterious message in the contact. Who knew, maybe she did. He had a hard time swallowing the mind-reading hoo-ha the others talked about—Edie’s drawings, Miles and Lara’s wild tales. But Sveti was an ambassador from the Land of Weird who had absolute credibility for him. He’d believe any crazy thing she told him. Just please God, if she would just tell him the one thing he burned to hear.

“Do you feel it?” she murmured.

He laughed. “I feel a whole lot of things. Be specific.”

“My love,” she said. “I feel it coming out of me, like one of those high-power search beams. The kind you can see from space. Blazing straight at you. It feels so hot. So soft.”

“What . . .” He stopped. He couldn’t talk. His throat was vibrating.

Sveti touched his face, stroking her fingertips over his cheek and jaw.

“So. What, ah . . . what changed, for you?” he finally forced out.

She cupped his cheek. “Almost dying makes you see things so clearly. So did all that time in the hospital. I saw how selfish I’d been.”

“Selfish?” His voice cracked. “You? The sacrificial virgin, out to save the world at any costs?”

“Yes, exactly. At any cost. That was the heart of the problem,” she said. “The cost was too high, and I didn’t get that until it was too late. I was so stupid, Sam. Always insisting on my own agenda. Using your feelings for me for my own purposes. It wasn’t right, and I’m sorry.”

“Oh. Okay. You’re, uh, forgiven.” He discarded several vapid follow-ups to that and shook his head, defeated. “It was complicated.”

“Maybe it was,” she said. “But it isn’t anymore.”

He covered her hand with his own. “Just tell me what you want. Keep it really simple. I don’t have a lot of brain cells left.”

“Okay.” Her fingers twined with his. “I don’t want a boy toy, or a friend with benefits. I want you. Always, and forever. I want you in my bed, all night, every night of my life. I don’t want crumbs. I want the whole cake. I want to gorge on cake every day. I want—oh!”

His kiss lifted her off her feet. Their combined weight sank his feet deep into the soggy sand. The surf lapped below his knees, but his legs were braced against the sucking pull of ice water. She made a surprised sound that swiftly turned into a sweet moan, a boneless yielding. She molded her body to his, twining her legs around his thighs.

He felt rooted, connected down to the center of the earth.

They drank each other in. Her crotch rubbed against the bulge in his jeans. Her lips were so soft. Her slender limbs so strong, around his.

With her perched on his thighs, his hands were free to move all over her as he sought to convince himself that this was not a fantasy or a dream. He splayed his fingers under her shirt to feel the pansy-like softness of her skin. Her spine felt prominent. Ribs, too. She needed feeding up. “You’re so thin,” he said accusingly. “What’s with that?”

“Missing you,” she said. “It was awful. Kills my appetite.”

“We’ll fix that quick,” he said. “With lots of cake.”

She laughed. He captured the happy sound in his hungry kiss.

Time dissolved, swirled, measured by the rhythm of the surf. He was wet to his thighs, but he barely noticed. At some length, he noticed flashes of light out of the corner of his eye. He turned to look.

Fireworks, shot off from Tam’s terrace. Oh, for the love of Christ.

Sveti laughed, delighted. “How sweet! They’re celebrating for us!”

“And probably monitoring me with a rifle scope, too,” he growled.

“Don’t be silly. Oh, look! I love pinwheels.”

Colored sparks twinkled and glittered as they drifted down toward the beach, winking out on their way.

“I guess it’s better than shooting me where I stand,” he observed.

“No one’s really mad at you,” she scoffed. “They were a little miffed about you staying away when I was laid up, but they all love you.”