Bear Claw Bodyguard (12 page)

“Sounds like we’re in the clear,” Jack said to her.

His voice was clear and undistorted, as if he was looking right at her. She didn’t want to think about the picture she probably made—huddled, bedgraggled, wearing a dead man’s hat and shirt—didn’t want to think about anything really, so she nodded without looking up, and concentrated on breathing. Nice and steady. Breathing meant she was alive. Slow and steady meant she was okay.

In. Out. In. Out. In. Out.

After a minute or two more of that, the spins slowed and then receded, and she lost the need to faint, puke or have quiet hysterics. Instead, chilled, she crossed her arms, curled into herself, and concentrated on not rocking back and forth like the traumatized survivor of some mass tragedy when really, they had been damn lucky so far.

Hopefully that luck would hold. Either way, though, she needed to pull herself together. Just because she could trust Jack to look out for her didn’t mean she should give him too much work to do in that regard.

Exhaling a long, shuddering breath, she uncoiled, straightening to lean back against her rock and look at him. He was still wearing the camouflage jacket over his ragged button-down and jeans. The faux-military look probably should have given her the shakes after what they had just been through—and the fact that he was wearing dead guy clothes—but instead, her system leveled off at the sight of him, the reality of him.

When their eyes met, a frisson of awareness moved
through her, reminding her of the impression she’d gotten back in the lab, that something was different. His gaze had always been direct and confident, but now it seemed more wholly focused on her.

“You okay?” he asked.

Perhaps for the first time with him, she didn’t weigh her answer for wimpiness before giving it. “I’m shaky.”

He tipped his head. “Me, too.”

“I doubt that, but appreciate the thought.” She paused, swallowing to clear the gritty taste of stale fear. “Do you think it’s safe to go back to the crash site?”

Glancing at the radio, he considered the question for a moment, then tipped his hand in a “maybe” gesture that leaned toward the affirmative side. “The way I figure it, worst-case scenario is that the first transmission we overheard, the one about a business associate not getting the job done, means they went looking to confirm that we died in the crash, and know that we didn’t. But given that their response to that was to order an evac, and they don’t know yet that we messed with their equipment, they don’t have any new reason to come after us. Not to mention that they probably assumed we tried to hike out, or maybe got picked up already.”

“They could have tracked us from the crash,” she said, not yet ready to feel reassured.

“If they did that, they would have known we headed for the encampment.” He shook his head. “No, I really think we’re going to be okay here, Tori. We’ll keep the radio on and our eyes open, obviously, and we’ll set a hell of a perimeter around wherever we camp, and make damn sure there are a couple of ways out…but unless something changes drastically, I think our best bet is going to
be going back toward the site, grabbing our gear from the cache and finding someplace to hole up for the night.”

She thought about it for a moment, but couldn’t see a better option, and couldn’t really fault his logic. “Okay, I’m in. But first…” Reaching over, she tugged on the sleeve of the camo jacket. “Should we get this stuff back to the dead guy, in case they look a little harder for him, and actually find him this time?”

“Good thinking.” He paused, glancing in the direction of the corpse. “You want to hunker down here and I’ll go take care of it?”

She suppressed a shudder at the thought of the man’s bug-eyed stare and silent scream, but shook her head. “Thanks, but I’m coming with you, partner.”

That earned her a raised eyebrow, but he didn’t comment or contradict. Instead, he nodded slowly. “Okay, then, partner. Let’s get moving.”

T
HEY RETURNED
the dead man’s clothes and set off for the crash site with Jack in the lead. He kept them roughly parallel to their original track and watched intently for signs that they were being followed, but didn’t see any red flags. More, just before they got all the way out of radio range of the encampment, the chatter indicated that the Shadow Militia was moving out.

Part of him hated like hell to hear that because the bastards had disappeared into thin air before, which meant there was a chance they were about to do it again. Granted, he and Tori had a ton of new info to add to the conversation, but still, there were no guarantees.

That was the thing, though, wasn’t it? Life didn’t come with guarantees.

Maybe that wasn’t the most original revelation ever, but hell, he’d never claimed to be all that original a guy. He had followed the family tradition by playing high school football, joining the Bear Claw P.D. and then marrying his high school sweetheart—or at least trying to. And when that last part hadn’t worked out the way he’d hoped it would, he’d tried to find a woman the same way he built most of his cases, piece by piece and detail by detail, trying to make it all fit every step along the way. But just as there was no guarantee that methodical police-work would solve every case, there was no saying that the slow-and-steady approach would bear fruit either. It sure hadn’t done so yet.

When he came down to it, he’d solved a handful of his most successful and most satisfying cases through luck and lightning-strike flashes of intuition rather than doggedness. Which meant…hell, he didn’t know what it meant in relation to Tori, but he knew one thing for damn sure: watching her shuffle across the encampment, out there in the open by herself, where any number of guys within a hundred feet of her could have caught on and gunned her down before he drew a bead, had been one of the worst things he’d ever lived through. And the knowledge that she could have died dozens of times over out there had slapped him across the face with his not-so-original revelation, along with the addendum that given the lack of guarantees in life, he should be careful not to miss out on something special because he was too set in old patterns that didn’t always work.

Tori might be a flash of lightning rather than an eyewitness statement, but through the course of a solid and
satisfying career, it was the lightning flashes that stood out and made him smile. Why hadn’t he seen that before?

“We’re getting close to the cache, aren’t we?” she asked from behind him, sounding slightly winded but far stronger than she had right after their escape from the encampment.

Sure enough, when he looked back at her, her eyes had traded dull shock for focus, and her lips had gone from being pinched and on the verge of trembling to a bow of determination. Warmth and respect centered in his chest in a devastating one-two punch, and he thought again of lightning.

“Yeah, it’s just over that next ridge and off to the west.” Forcing himself to focus on their surroundings—because if a trap had been set, this would be the place—he got his rifle off his back and used the sight to scan the area. When nothing set off warning bells, he continued onward with her right behind him, both of them treading carefully and staying alert.

They reached the cache without incident, retrieved their gear and then moved higher up the cliff above the roadway to a cave he’d scouted earlier. With a wide mouth, a crevice leading out the back, an eagle’s-eye view of the roadway and the busted-up SUV and a flat, wind-smoothed floor, it fit the bill of an overnight campsite, and then some.

Together, they set a security perimeter, then pulled out the basics for an overnight, setting up an efficient, workable camp with minimal hassle, moving around each other as if they’d done this a hundred times before. And although she’d been the one to say the word, it really did feel like a partnership.

How long had it been since he’d had a partner? The
rookies didn’t count, and even his two prior detective-grade partners had been more along the lines of guys he hooked up with for this case or that, while working on his own most of the time. As for women…yeah, he’d dated, even had relationships. But a partner? He hated to admit it, but he had to go back to college and the first few years after, when he and Kayla had done the same things, wanted the same things.

It hadn’t escaped him that Tori had a lot of the qualities he’d loved the most about Kayla back then: she was smart, sassy, spunky and not afraid of dirt, sweat or bugs. Better yet, Tori had brought those qualities into her adult life rather than outgrowing them, and she didn’t apologize for that, or anything else really.

She had a bone-deep integrity he admired and a grit that had seen her through the day they’d just had. If she could get through that and still be focused now, she should be able to do most anything. Which made him picture her back out in the Forgotten with him, only this time there wasn’t any militia and the trees weren’t sick; it was just the two of them, their backpacks and the mountains for as long as they wanted to stay out there together.

And he so shouldn’t be thinking along those lines. Especially not when he was supposed to be assembling the collapsible propane stove they were going to use in lieu of starting a too-bright, too-smoky fire.

Not wanting to know how long he’d been sitting there, staring off into space, he bent over the disassembled stove and got to work. He was so intent on the job that it took him a minute to realize that Tori was sitting motionless a few feet away from him with a couple of carbon dioxide ampoules and the second of the inflatable mattresses in
front of her. And she was staring at him—not accusingly, but rather bemusedly, as if she were coming to some startling new revelation.

Yeah. He knew how that felt.

“Listen,” he began. “I’ve been thinking—” He didn’t get any further, though, because she gave a small, strangled sob, lurched across the short distance separating them, and kissed him.

It wasn’t a kiss of passion so much as one of connection, affirmation. Her lips were closed, her hands fisted in his shirt and hair, her body sprawled partly atop his.

Surprise was quickly followed by the heat that hadn’t fully died since the night before when he’d truly gotten a taste of her. More, there was exultation because this wasn’t the cautious, reserved Tori who had ridden up the mountain with him, not making eye contact. Now she clung to him, shaking, as if things had changed for her, too.

She broke the kiss and pressed her forehead to his as she whispered, “I’m so glad it was you there with me today. If it hadn’t been…” Drawing in a shuddering breath, she shook her head slightly, the movement transmitting from her to him through the slide of skin against skin. She pulled away and kissed his cheek. “Thank you.”

“Enough.” Even as his blood burned from the caresses, he eased away from her, catching her wrists so she couldn’t go too far as she drew back, surprised, her cheeks going from the pink of desire to the deeper flush of mounting embarrassment. “No,” he said when she started to say something, “it’s my turn. I don’t want to argue semantics with you, so I’ll start by saying ‘You’re welcome’ and that yeah, I did my job. But you’ve got to know that you stopped being a job that first night, Tori, when you
held it together during the shooting and then refused to leave when your bosses pulled the plug. And every day since then, guarding you has been less about the job and more about me admiring your determination and wanting to help your investigation in any way possible.” He paused as she went even wider-eyed, then went ahead and said, “Plus, it’s been about protecting you because I don’t want to imagine a world without your energy and enthusiasm in it… And most of all, I’ve been right there with you every step of the way these past few days because there’s nowhere else I’d rather be.” He paused. “I want to be here for you, Tori. I want to be with you.”

Her eyes darkened. “But last night…”

“Was last night, and I think the things that have happened today have put what’s going on between the two of us in a different light. At least they have for me.” He raised an eyebrow in question.

She nodded slowly, new color flooding her face, coming not from embarrassment this time, he thought, but from desire. “Me, too.” It was a whisper but carried the force of a shout.

Heat leaped within him, flaring from the lust he’d been suppressing for days, which already eclipsed the feelings he’d had for any of the women he’d dated in the past few years. This was it, he thought. She was what he’d been waiting for, what he’d needed. Who would have guessed it?

Not him, that was for sure. But while they might not look like they should work given the evidence, the lightning said he needed to make the leap. So he shifted, touched his lips to hers and took them both under with a kiss that had nothing to do with gratitude or the adrena
line of having gotten into and out of the encampment undetected, and everything to do with the two of them, then and there.

When he pulled away, her eyelid fluttered open to reveal pupils dilated with desire. Still, though, need, tension and a hint of nerves strung him tight as he said, “Will you lie down with me, sweet Tori, and finish what we started last night?”

Tori. Couldn’t. Breathe.

It was a first for her really. Always before, she’d rolled with the flow of an encounter, letting it stay simple and easy. But there was nothing simple about the way her heart shuddered in her chest, and there was nothing easy about the emotions that churned inside her. Because she might have thought last night that she could be Jack’s lover for as long as it felt right, and then walk away unscathed, but in the light of day she knew differently.

She liked and respected him, had gotten attached to him, and it was the attachment that worried her. Kneeling there on the sandy cave floor, in a universe that suddenly seemed to have contracted down to the two of them and the question that hung between them, she couldn’t remember what it had felt like to be anywhere else, couldn’t remember wanting to be with anyone else.

Who are you and what have you done with the real Tori Bay?

She didn’t have an answer for that. Worse, she wasn’t sure she cared just then, wrapped in Jack’s arms with her lips moist from his kisses and her ears ringing with the rasping request that suddenly seemed like the sexiest, most romantic thing a man had ever said to her.

He was meeting her on her terms, wanting to be with her tonight, in the indefinite “now” that had them here together, and safe, thanks to him.

He might not want her gratitude, but he had it. Without him, she wouldn’t have been able to stay on the case, wouldn’t have seen the glory of Bear Claw Canyon at sunrise, wouldn’t have put all the pieces of the investigation together into the workable, if terrifying, hypothesis that they needed to bring back down to the city. And she most certainly wouldn’t have lived long enough for the hypothesis to matter.

The heat pumping in her veins now didn’t come from gratitude, though, or from her bone-deep relief at being alive. Both of those things were inside her, of course…but the flames of desire were so much stronger, overriding even the part of her that wanted to recall that they’d had good reasons for sleeping in separate beds last night.

She wanted what he was offering: her. Him. The two of them together in the small, safe place he had made for them.

“Yes.” The word was a breath, a shape of lips that barely grazed each other.

His eyes fired and his fingers tightened where they were splayed at her hip and shoulder, but he held back. She could feel the effort it cost him in the rigid tension of his arms and neck, hear it in the rasp of his voice as he said, “Tell me.”

Her stomach coiled on a surge of desire that left her wet and aching. She took a breath that did nothing to settle the inner churn, and said, “I want this, Jack. I want to make love with you.”

Triumph and fierce, flattering joy lashed across his fea
tures, and then his lips came down on hers in a kiss that was equally ferocious and joyful, and made her heart sing. Her pulse stuttered as their tongues touched and slid, and his hands found their way to her waistband and then beneath her shirt. His fingertips were hot on her skin, and the faint rasp of masculine calluses sent new heat flaring from the points of contact and outward, curling to her breasts and bringing a blush of moisture to her cleft with a poignant intensity that had her sagging against him with a soft moan.

He growled a low curse, earthy and reverent, and caught her up against his chest, gathering her close and lifting her easily as he rose to his feet. Under any other circumstance, with any other man, she would have raised hue and cry at the idea of being carried anywhere. Now, though, his powerful move reminded her of the way he’d swaggered across the encampment, walking among their enemies without flinching. The memory—and the echo of fear it brought—had her tightening her arms around his neck and pressing her cheek to his.

He lowered her gently to the air mattress she had already inflated and padded further with one of the two sleeping bags that had been among the supplies they’d been carrying around in the SUV. More than once, she had inwardly rolled her eyes at the mountain of gear that Jack and his ranger friend had deemed necessary for their daily trips into the Forgotten.

Now, though, she was grateful for the forethought…and the softness at her back as he followed her down and eased alongside her, so they were facing each other, bodies aligned.

Last night he had wanted to dissect things, as if trying
to talk himself into—or out of—a decision. Now, though, with the decision made, he said nothing as he cupped her cheek, leaned in and took her mouth with a kiss that was somehow sweet, gentle and possessive all at the same time.

If their prior kisses had been storms—all thunder and passion—this one was a love song that made her want to believe in forever, at least for a little while. She shuddered and clutched at him even as she did her best to return the seduction and give as good as she was getting. Which was very good indeed.

Maybe a small but persistent alarm was going off inside her, warning that she was in too deep, that she needed to pull back and regain her normal perspective. If so, she ignored it because she trusted Jack and he knew the score. They would be fine.

“So sweet,” he murmured, then kissed her lips, her cheeks, then blazed a path down her throat to the hollow of her neck to nuzzle there, planting soft, insistent kisses that tightened her skin and set off starbursts behind her closed eyelids.

She tipped her head back, exposing herself to his lips, and luxuriated in the sensations as his hands skimmed up beneath her shirt and found her breasts and the hard points of her nipples, which he worked in rhythm with his kisses and the gentle roll of his body against hers. Her shirt came off and then his, and they were belly to belly, skin to skin, and although she was caressing him, kissing him, learning his body and the places where her touch could make him shiver and groan, he was utterly in charge, dominating her, not with his superior size or strength, but with the things he was making her feel.

Warning. Dangerous.

This time she heard the alarm, heeded it, knowing that she didn’t dare give any man power over her, even one she trusted as much as she trusted this one. And this wasn’t the hot and heavy lovemaking she had expected based on the explosive kisses they had shared leading up to this point. He was worshipping her, imprinting himself on her. She felt entirely feminine, entirely wanted. But she also felt naked and needy, and knew that if he got up and walked away at that moment, she would have watched him leave. Worse, she might even have asked him to stay.

The realization put her off-kilter. Or maybe she’d been that way since the night before, unable to regain her balance when things hadn’t gone the way she had hoped they would.

They were going that way now, though. Which meant it was time to put the two of them back on more even footing.

“Hey,” she said, bringing his eyes up from the V of her breasts, “my turn.”

Before he could anticipate the move, she shifted up and over him, bearing him back beneath her. He had proven aptly before that he could handle her weight, but he let her have the leverage, lying back and looking up at her with a heated expression that she interpreted as
Bring it on.

Excitement flared in her bloodstream and the warning smoothed to a cautionary note as she rose above him and kissed his jaw, his throat and then shifted lower, trailing her lips along the downward-pointing arrow of masculine hair on his leanly muscled chest and washboard abs.

He arched and groaned—a short, sharp noise that reverberated off their rocky surroundings—and his hands came up to cradle her head. His fingers sifted through
her hair, flexing as her lips cruised along the verge of his waistband and she lightly scraped her fingernails down his thighs.

She might have intended to seduce him and equal the balance of pleasure between them, but as she trailed her hands back up, stroking the strong columns of muscle and absorbing his groan, she was thoroughly seduced herself.

Her blood burned as she palmed the long line of his erection, which strained tautly beneath his jeans and then, when she loosened them and tugged down his boxers, sprang free into her hands. Her breath trembled when she took in the long length of him, ruddy and engorged for her, with a thick, corded vein that throbbed in time with the fast, excited beat of his heart. And her inner muscles pulsed, yearned, when she encircled him with her hand, covering the wide, blunt tip of his hardness and then taking a long stroke downward, reveling in his harsh groan and the way he shifted restlessly against her, thoroughly at her mercy as she touched him, worked him, stroked him and brought him breathlessly to the edge, and wound up bringing herself there as well.

Passion flowed through her, tightening her core yet relaxing her mind, until she didn’t care that her head was spinning and she wasn’t entirely herself anymore. She only cared about the rushing heat inside her, the presage to an orgasm brought solely by his restless hands and the fierce joy of making him feel the same sort of heat that pounded inside her with an increasing tempo that would soon demand release.

Then his hands shifted to her shoulders and he urged her back up his body. “Come here,” he murmured. “Let me.”

Before she could return through the sensuous haze to
regain full control of herself, he was kissing her, caressing her, loosening his clothes and hers, and then tugging them free until they were both naked beneath the blanket, which let in wisps of the chilling mountain air as they moved, twining together while he caressed her exquisitely sensitive breasts and then down to her hips, her thighs and finally to the wet, wanting place between.

She arched against him and gasped into his mouth when his fingers found her, parted her moist folds, and slipped between, setting up a delicious friction that brought her trembling once more to the brink. Refusing to go there alone, she stroked his hard flesh. Her touch wrung a sharp hiss out of him, had him surging into her hand with a harsh whisper of, “Ah, Tori.”

Unaccountable pressure tightened around her heart, and her eyes misted at the sudden sure knowledge that he knew exactly who she was in that moment, that she wasn’t just a pleasurable interlude as she had been for too many of her prior lovers. Knowing, too, that it had been the same way for her too often before—nice guys, no harm, no foul, no investment—she pressed her cheek to his and whispered, “Jack.”

She would have said something more, would have told him how good he was making her feel or what she wanted to do to him next, but the words backed up in her throat, locked there by the intensity of his next kiss and the spiraling pleasure being aroused by his fingers. She bowed into his touch with a wordless cry as he quickened the rhythm of his touch and she did the same, until they were gasping and twining together, grinding toward the pinnacle.

He shifted over her, rose above her, and then, going a bit wild-eyed, looked around them. “Where’s the—”

“Here.” She popped the top off the first aid kit and offered the small box of condoms she’d noticed there earlier.

Grinning, he donned the protection with an aside of “Remind me to thank Blackthorn for the supplies.”

“I’ll thank him myself,” she retorted, not letting herself feel a pang that she would probably never meet the ranger in person. This wasn’t about what might or might not happen tomorrow, after all. It was about the two of them, here and now.

Finished with the necessary task, he lowered himself until his body just brushed hers with feather-light touches that teased and incited almost as much as the kisses he dusted onto her throat, her face and then finally her lips.

Not to be outdone—or have them put off balance once more—she curled her legs around his, and arched upward to slide herself along his length, finding him hard and ready, and the normally cool slickness of latex gone warm and taut against his body, fading to insignificance in the face of the pleasure that spiraled through her when he groaned into her mouth and surged against her in a primal, instinctive response to her caress.

She gasped at the flood of sensations, then moaned when he repeated the move, rolling his hips into hers so his hardness dragged back and forth across her cleft and the sensitive folds within.

“Oh!” She let her head fall back, let her body move with his, back and forth, back and forth, until the orgasm that had earlier flirted without delivering now came back to hover just out of reach, waiting for him to fill the aching hollow inside her.

As his next stroke began, she shifted her hips, angling
so that he slid deeper and seated himself in the natural pocket formed by her body.

Groaning, he slowed his thrust and then stopped, so he was poised just at the outer ring of the achingly heated flesh that was so very moist and ready for him. And then, inch by smooth, fulfilling inch, he sheathed himself to the hilt. Then he paused there, pressed his temple to hers as their breathing heaved in synchrony and their bodies vibrated with the intimate joining.

She shuddered at the delicious invasion, mouth opening in a round, soundless O of delight as his entry set off bursts of color behind her closed eyelids, detonations of heat and pleasure within her. Then, moving a little beneath him, she curled her feet around behind his calves and used the leverage to press up against him and take him just that little bit deeper, until he was hitting her sweet spots inside and out, intensifying sensations that were already almost unbearably intense.

A moan slipped from her lips and he caught it with his mouth as he shifted to kiss her wetly, deeply, one kiss leading to another and another, taking her deeper and deeper still as he withdrew and then came back into her on a powerful surge that hit those same spots. She arched and gasped in surprise as he did it again, proving that the move had been no accident.

Always before, she’d had to find that doubled pleasure herself, by making sure that she had the depth and angle right while her partner thrust as suited him. Jack, though, had not only taken the hint, he was running with it, expanding on it, experimenting with slightly different angles and depths, and gauging her responses.