The Complete Mackenzies Collection Read online

  “I’m not the one who turned it on.” He grinned and hooked the towel away from her.

  “Water’s getting all over the floor.” She tried to sound disapproving.

  “It needed mopping, anyway.”

  “It did not!” She pushed a strand of dripping wet hair out of her eyes. “We’re going to be kicked out. Water will drip through the floor into the room below and we’ll be kicked out.”

  He grabbed her and swung her around so she was facing the shower. “Turn it off, then, if you’re worried.”

  She did, because she hated to waste the water, and it was making such a mess. “There, I hope you’re satisfied.”

  “Not by a long shot.” He turned her to face him, holding her lips against his and angling her torso away from him, so he could look his fill at her. “Have I told you today how damn sexy you are?”

  “Today? You’ve never told me at all!”

  “Have so.”

  “Have not. When?”

  “Last night. Several times.”

  She tried not to be entranced by the way water droplets were clinging to his thick dark lashes. “That doesn’t count. Everyone knows you can’t believe anything a man says when he’s in…uh—”

  “You?” he supplied, grinning.

  She managed a haughty look. “I was going to say ‘extremis,’ but I think that applies only to dying.”

  “Close enough.” He looked down at her breasts, his expression altering and the laughter fading. Still holding her anchored to him with one arm, he smoothed a hand up her torso to cup her breasts, and they both watched his long brown fingers curve around the pale globes. “You’re sexy,” he murmured, a slow, dark note entering his voice. She knew that note well, having heard it many times over the past two nights. “And beautiful. Your breasts are all cream-and-rose colored, until I kiss your nipples. Then they pucker up and turn red like they’re begging me to suck them.”

  Her nipples tightened at his words, the puckered tips flushing with color. He groaned and bent his dark head, water dripping from his hair onto her skin as he kissed both breasts. She was leaning far back over his arm, supported by his arm around her hips and her own desperate grasp on his shoulders. She didn’t know how much longer she would be able to stand at all. Her loins throbbed, and she gasped for breath.

  “And your ass,” he growled. “You have the sweetest little ass.” He turned her around so he could stroke the aforementioned buttocks, shaping his palms to the full, cool curves. Sunny’s legs trembled, and she grabbed the edge of the vanity for support. The cultured marble slab was a good six feet long, and a mirror covered the entire wall behind it. Sunny barely recognized herself in the naked woman reflected there, a woman whose wet hair dripped water down her back and onto the floor. Her expression was etched with desire, her face flushed and her eyes heavy-lidded.

  Chance looked up, and his gaze met hers in the mirror. Electricity sparked between them. “And here,” he whispered, sliding one hand around her belly and between her legs. His muscled forearm looked unbelievably powerful against her pale belly, and his big hand totally covered her mound. She felt his fingers sliding between her folds, rubbing her just as she liked. She moaned and collapsed against him, her legs going limp.

  “You’re so soft and tight,” the erotic litany continued in her ear. “I can barely get inside you. But once I do—my heart stops. And I can’t breathe. I think I’m going to die, but I can’t, because it feels too good to stop.” His fingers slid farther, and he pressed two of them inside her.

  She arched under the lash of sensation, soaring close to climax as his fingers stretched her. She heard herself cry out, a strained cry that told him exactly how near she was to fulfillment.

  “Not yet, not yet,” he said urgently, sliding his fingers out of her and bending her forward. He braced her hands on the vanity. “Hold on, sweetheart.”

  She didn’t know if he meant to the vanity, or to her control. Both were impossible. “I can’t,” she moaned. Her hips moved, undulating, searching for relief. “Chance, I can’t—please!”

  “I’m here,” he said, and he was, dipping down and pushing his muscled thighs between her legs, spreading them. She felt his lower belly against her buttocks, then the smooth, hard entry of his sex. Instinctively she bent forward to aid his penetration, taking all of him deep within her. He began driving, and on the second hard thrust she convulsed, crying out her pleasure. His climax erupted a moment later, and he collapsed over her back, holding himself as deep as he could while he groaned and shook.

  Sunny closed her eyes, fighting for breath. Oh God, she loved him so much she ached with it. She wasn’t strong enough to send him away, not even for his own protection. If she had been really trying, she could have gotten away from him, but deep down she knew she couldn’t give him up. Not yet. Soon. She would have to, to keep him safe.

  Just one more day, she thought as tears welled. One more. Then she would go.

  Chapter 12

  Ten days later, Sunny still hadn’t managed to shake him. She didn’t know if she was losing her touch or if army rangers, even ex ones, were very, very good at not being shaken.

  They had left Seattle early the next morning. Sunny was too cautious to fly back to Atlanta; as she had feared, the morning newscasts had been splashed with the “real-life romantic adventure” she and Chance had shared. His name was mentioned, but by some perverse quirk his face was never clearly shown; the camera would catch the back of his head, or while he was in a quarter profile, while hers was broadcast from coast to coast.

  One of the a.m. news shows even tracked them down at the hotel, awakening them at three in the morning to ask if they would go to the local affiliate studios for a live interview.

  “Hell, no,” Chance had growled into the phone before he slammed it down into the cradle.

  After that, it had seemed best they remove themselves from the reach of the media. They checked out of the hotel and took a taxi to the airport before dawn. The plane was refueled and ready to go. By the time the sun peeked over the Cascades they were in the air. Chance didn’t file a flight plan, so no one had any way of finding out where they were going. Sunny didn’t know herself until they landed in Boise, Idaho, where they refurbished their wardrobes. She always carried a lot of cash, for just such a situation, and Chance seemed to have plenty, too. He still had to use his credit card for refueling, so she knew they were leaving a trail, but those records would show only where they had last been, not where they were going.

  Chance’s presence threw her off her plan. She knew how to disappear by herself; Chance and his airplane complicated things.

  From a pay phone in Boise, she called Atlanta and resigned her job, with instructions to deposit her last paycheck into her bank. She would have the money wired to her when she needed it. Sometimes, adrift from the familiar life she had fashioned for herself, she wondered if she was overreacting to the possibility anyone would recognize her. Her mother had been dead for over ten years; there were few people in the world able to see the resemblance. The odds had to be astronomical against one of those few people seeing that brief human-interest story that had been shown for only one day.

  But she was still alive because her mother had taught her that any odds at all were unacceptable. So she ran, as she had learned how to do in the first five years of her life. After all, the odds were also against her getting pregnant, yet here she was, waiting for a period that hadn’t materialized. They had slipped up twice, only twice: once in the canyon, and in the hotel bathroom in Seattle. The timing hadn’t been great for her to get pregnant even if they hadn’t used protection at all, so why hadn’t her period started? It was due two days ago, and her cycle was relentlessly regular.

  She didn’t mention it to Chance. She might just be late, for one of the few times in her life since she’d starting having menstrual periods. She had been terrified when she thought they were going to crash; maybe her emotions had disrupted her hormones. It happened.