Dance with the Devil Read online

  This time, he kissed her.

  It was better than she'd expected. His hand slid up her back to cup the base of her skull, tugging at her hair, tipping her head so he could draw his mouth along the curve of her throat. She shivered, and against her skin, she felt the curve of his smile.

  She'd called him here for this, but now faced with the idea of getting naked with this guy, Kathleen started to withdraw. His hand on her hip kept her still. She looked into his face.

  If he was going to kill her, she thought, it wouldn't be the worst way to die.

  She took his hand and led him to the bedroom, where she pushed him gently until he sat on the edge of the bed. She undressed herself in front of him until she stood naked. Jake said nothing, but he didn't have to. All he had to do was look at her.

  "You have no idea who I am," she whispered, "so why do I feel like you're looking right into me?"

  If he had an answer for her, he kept it to himself. At least with words. He replied with his touch. The stroke of his tongue against hers as they kissed. The movement of his lips and teeth all over her, making her sigh and tremble and finally, after a long, long, time, so long she'd almost begun to fear it wouldn't happen, he made her shatter.

  Later, quietly, she pulled the sheets up over both of them to keep the chill from settling on their bare skin. He slept, or she thought he did, which was the only reason why Kathleen turned on the pillow to allow her fingertips to trace the edges of his dark hair.

  "Who are you?" she whispered, not expecting an answer.

  "Who do you want me to be?"

  Caught, embarrassed, she withdrew her hand. He pulled her closer, tucking her against him so that her face pressed the side of his neck. He stroked her hair. When she tipped her face to look up at him, certain that in the dark all she would find was shadows, she saw instead the gleam of his gaze as he took her in. As he had that first night in the pub, Jake looked at Kathleen as though she were something precious to him. A treasure.

  Again, she tried to pull away, but he didn't let her go.

  "How would she live without him? With dreams all gone black and white, with bruised knees and bloody palms, with an open space in the puzzle of her life that only one piece would ever fit."

  Her own words, spoken aloud, always sounded so strange even when she was reading them. Jake had spoken from memory. Kathleen drew in a long, shivering breath.

  "You've read my book," she said.

  Jake breathed into her hair and was silent for a second or so, before he said, "I've read all of them."

  13

  This was not love.

  She wouldn't allow it to be. Not so soon, not with a stranger she'd met in a bar. That's not the way love grew. She didn't write romance novels, but she didn’t need to in order to know that.

  Still, it was something, and they fell into it together as easily as slipping into a warm bath. He didn't ask much of her, for a start. When she was at her keyboard, typing as furiously as she could now that suddenly the block had broken and she had more words in her head than she could manage to get out through her fingers, Jake brought her tea and biscuits and left them on her desk without a word. If the tea went cold before she could drink it, he brought her a fresh cup. Sometimes, he brought coffee, always exactly how she preferred it, and she never asked him how he knew what she was craving. He just...knew.

  This morning she had stumbled into the kitchen about eleven, eyes still gritty and hair tangle-tumbled all over the place. She'd been up until four am finishing a chapter that had never wanted to end. Now she yawned and accepted the mug of coffee he handed her.

  "Morning." Jake leaned against the counter, one leg crossed over the other.

  His bare feet killed her. So did the way his jeans hung low on his belly, exposing the tiniest hint of that V shape of his muscles. His chest beneath the unzipped hoodie. Mostly, the way he looked at her over the rim of steaming coffee, his hazy blue-green eyes taking in every inch of her dishevelment as though she were a goddess.

  She sipped and yawned again. Then she put the mug on the counter next to him. She took his from his hands and set it on the other side of him. She put herself up against him, her lips on his, and his hands went at once to the swell of her rear beneath the silk kimono.

  "Morning," Kathleen murmured into his mouth.

  He was already hard, and this killed her, too. This swift and urgent arousal, rising heat between them. Constant. Consistent. Undeniable.

  She tugged open his belt, then pulled down the zipper to get her hand inside. He wore no briefs beneath. Kathleen let out a low huff.

  "You look like such a good boy," she said, "but you're so very, very bad."

  Jake laughed, then groaned as she freed him from the confines of the denim. Her slow stroke pushed his hips forward. She shivered, watching his head tip back to expose his throat to her. She watched the ripple of his skin as he swallowed. Still stroking, she let the tip of her tongue trace along the knob of his Adam's apple and up to just below his ear. She let her teeth press his skin, offering to bite.

  Jake twisted, sinking his fingers into her hair and turning them both so Kathleen was the one pressed against the counter, her hands flat on it. She leaned forward to press her cheek to the cool marble, angling her body in an invitation Jake wasted no time in accepting. He slipped up the hem of her kimono and was inside her a half a minute after that, so deep they both gave low, grinding moans.

  Slow, slow, slow he moved, his hands gripping her hips. Fingers curling against her flesh. All she had to do was close her eyes and let him fuck her, just like that, she didn't even have to touch herself to get off, that's how good it was with him. Effortless ecstasy.

  He said her name, over and over, toward the end. Low, urgent, whispered and rough. It sounded like a prayer. She could say nothing, form no words. All she could do was breathe as the pleasure consumed her. All she could do was give in.

  They fumbled a little bit, after, but in sync, him grabbing a clean dishcloth from the drawer while her robe fell back around her calves. Jake slipped a hand inside the folds of it to press the cloth against her while they both chuckled and he kissed her. Lightly at first. Then deeper. They fit together so right that even this, the aftermath, was comfortable and easy and effortless the way everything else was with him.

  This was not love, she told herself as she watched him move away from her to pull up his jeans. When she listened to him talking about his plans for the rest of the day. When he turned to find her staring at him, and he kept speaking but he smiled, too, and his eyes caught hers and stayed there as though he would never stop looking at her.

  This was not love, she told herself when later he put on some music in the living room and without a word took her hand to dance. When sitting next to her on the couch he pulled her close and let his fingers tangle in the tendrils of her hair that escaped the ponytail. When he made her laugh so hard she couldn't breathe and had to beg him to stop.

  This was not love.

  14

  "You look different," Derek said.

  Kathleen, who'd been carefully unpacking a bag of wrapped gifts for Callie's birthday, looked up. "I do?"

  "Yeah. It's something in your face. It's like...you're happy in your eyes, or something." His lip curled, and he looked away from her. "I hope you didn't get her those dolls we talked about."

  "She asked for a Little Miss Me doll, Derek. Specifically. With links." Kathleen set out another few boxes. Outfits and accessories for the doll. "Why, did you already get her one? I can exchange it, then, but the outfits should fit whatever one you got her."

  When he said nothing, she paused in setting out the gifts to look up at him. "What?"

  "Of course I didn't get her one. They're like, fifty bucks."

  Kathleen hesitated, looking over the stack of carefully wrapped packages. She'd dropped close to three hundred dollars on this small selection of presents, and had thought nothing of it. She'd gone through the list Callie had sent and bought eve