Dateline: Kydd and Rios (20 page)

“Oh, yes, Josh. I missed you. Every day and every—”

His mouth slid over hers, stealing her words with tenderness. She turned her head, and his tongue slipped between her lips, its lazy, sweeping track a sweet counterpoint to the urgency of his arousal pressing against the soft swell of her tummy. Holding her with just the passion of his kiss, his mouth consuming hers with deep strokes, he moved his hands between their bodies and worked his zipper down. Then he replaced his hands with both of hers, guiding her in pushing his pants and underwear off his hips and down his thighs, where they slid from her grasp to the floor.

“And every night,” he murmured, “I thought of you and how you had loved me.”

His breath whispered across her lips, then stopped as her hands journeyed over him. When she lingered too long, he showed her what he wanted, where he needed her touch. A ragged sigh tore from his throat as she closed her hand around him.

“Sometimes,” he said hoarsely, “I hated you for running away, and sometimes I hurt until I thought I’d lose my mind.” A surprising, soft smile curved his lips and warmed his eyes to smoky blue. “Which could happen at any moment. Come on, Nikki,” he growled. “Wrap your legs around me. Pour the life back into me.” Kicking out of his pants and leaving her slip in a creamy white pile on the floor, he slid his hands under her bottom and lifted her into his arms.

Nikki clung to him, drawn by his strength and her own pulsing need for immediate sensual survival. The pleasure coursing through her knew no limits and only one irresistible destination. She covered his face with hot kisses, trailing her tongue across his cheek for a taste of her lover, letting her hair fall over his shoulders and encase them in a golden veil. They needed a safe, secret place for their shared rediscovery of what love had been, what it would be again, a place that went no further than their skin and yet opened to an endless universe inside.

Her fingers tunneled through his hair as her mouth opened over his, drawing his breath into her. At his first step, she linked her ankles at the small of his back and sank into the small rocking explosions of his body against hers.

Josh tightened his arms around her. He’d won her back, and all he’d had to do was run a gauntlet of danger, desperation, and lethal weapons. All he’d had to do was slam his back against a wall and put his life on the line. And he’d had to wait, but the waiting was over. She’d never been an easy woman to hold on to at any age, but he’d won her back for tonight, for a second chance. He wanted to shout his victory, wanted to laugh aloud in triumph, but the wild sweetness of Nikki in love turned his shouts into hungry groans, turned his victory and his triumph into raw desire.

He lowered her to the bed and pressed her deep into the mattress with his weight, his mouth plundering the hidden delights of hers and capturing her soft moans of pleasure. The languorous glide of her foot down his thigh and calf fascinated him with memories of the release to come, but he didn’t want to take her yet, not until he’d tasted and savored every creamy, satiny inch of her.

He started with a tantalizing journey to her breasts, turning his head from side to side to take them both in from rise to peak. He wanted to consume her as the heat she generated consumed him, completely but slowly, leaving mere heartbeats between the sizzling bolts of ecstasy.

Nikki was on the verge of a precipice, needing only one special touch of his mouth to make her fall. But he teased her, played with her, and drew her pleasure almost to pain before he took the peak of her breast into his mouth. Her softly murmured sighs urged him on. The melting of her body beneath his intoxicated him. She was open so fully, her legs already around him, her arms stretching above her head in a feline response to the erotic strokes of his tongue.

“Ah, Nikki . . .” He slowed the teasing caress, his muscles straining with the effort not to take her.

“Help me, Josh,” she whispered, her eyes drifting open, revealing the pale green fire within. “Help me.” She lifted her hips and pushed at the white lace panties still between them.

The delicate force of her body torched his arousal to a fever pitch, and with one sure move, he slipped the scrap of lingerie off her legs. Then, with aching slowness, he slid his fingers back up the same silky length, molding the slender curves of her thighs and going farther to the alluring mystery nestled in between.

His gaze followed his dark hand against her creamy skin until he began to slide within, pleasuring her and easing the way for greater pleasure. At that moment, he lifted his gaze to hers and bathed himself in the sultry fire in her eyes. Her quivering response to his touch, and the unconscious track of her tongue across her lips made waiting any longer an impossibility.

He leaned over her and with his tongue followed the wet trail she’d left on her mouth. He kissed her gently, sweetly, lingering until he knew she was ready.

“You are beautiful,
querida mía
,” he murmured, his voice rough with emotion. “More beauty than I’ve ever known.
Tanto que te quiero
. I love you so much . . . so much . . .”

He entered her then, sliding into her satin heat and watching enchantment steal her breath even as it stole his own. She held him deeper with each rhythmic surge, until his name was a cry on her lips and her body was molten gold in his arms. His kisses became wilder as they neared the peak, his breathing labored, his thrusts stronger, his love boundless. The gift he demanded, the gift she gave, was everything of herself. The gift she accepted in return was everything he had to offer. She took the exquisite pleasure he gave with his body. She took the boundless love he gave with his heart.

And when he surged into her for the last time, they poured their lives into each other.

Nikki held him, knowing she’d found her home and her love in his arms, in his smile, in the words he whispered so sweetly. She knew she’d never leave him, and she hoped and prayed that this time he would ask her to stay.

“I think you’ve put on some weight.”

“Tell me something I don’t know,” Nikki drawled, walking onto the back porch with the day’s mail in her hands. “I’ve been eating nonstop for a week.”

“How’s your tummy?”

“My tummy is fine.” She slanted him a look over the top of one of the letters, an impish grin on her face. She tapped the envelope on her nose. “Another apology from David. I really should call him, put him out of his misery.”

“Let him sweat it out awhile longer. Firing Nikki Kydd,” Josh scoffed. “The man’s got more nerve than brains.” He reached for her as she passed the hammock.

Nikki felt his arm encircle her waist, and in the next moment she was tumbled backward into the hammock. “Josh!”

“Nikki!” He feigned amazement, trapping her with his leg thrown over hers. A wolfish gleam lit his eyes, and he wrapped his arms around her, capturing her completely. “You have put on weight. I can’t feel your ribs.”

“Don’t!” she gasped, stifling a giggle under the ticklish foray of his fingers.

He desisted, pressing a light kiss to her forehead. “What do you want to do today?” He settled back into the hammock and pushed the floor with his foot, setting them to swinging.

Nikki snuggled up to him, feeling herself fill with the love they’d found, but her words were serious. “I think one of us should find a job, before we sink so far into poverty we’re living on beans and rice.”

“I’ve got a job,” he said, his hand absently trailing up her arm. He smiled at the concern in her voice and thought back to the notebook she’d carried and worried over their first year together. She’d written every day’s expenditures in that book, trying to balance them with an unreliable flow of earnings, trying to keep them solvent. Some things would never change, he mused. Like his love for her.

“Hah!” she exclaimed, rolling over to face him. “That rag you work for isn’t going to keep paying you indefinitely. Sooner rather than later they’re going to want to see some results from this little sabbatical you’ve declared for yourself.”

He looked up at the sweet angel face over his, at the silky silver-gold ponytail tracing the delicate curve of her cheeks and hanging across her shoulder, and he knew he had everything he wanted. “You worry too much. Besides, I’m not on sabbatical. I’m on vacation.”

“Forever?”

“No, just until the weekend. Panama is heating up again. They want me to go back down and cover the elections.”

Suddenly Nikki wished she hadn’t brought the subject up. They’d been living in a dream world these last few days, a world made up of the two of them, the house, and the Gulf of Mexico under sunny skies. She’d known it couldn’t go on forever, and she’d wanted something solid to hold on to in the future. But Panama! Panama was no future at all.

“Don’t go,” she blurted, and was instantly embarrassed by the ridiculous outburst. She sank down into the hammock, the tips of her fingers touching her mouth.

“Maybe I won’t,” he said softly, staring at the ceiling.

“What?” She pushed herself back up and looked at him, surprised.

“Maybe I won’t go,” he repeated, his gaze shifting to meet hers.

“Why not?”

He tried not to smile. She sounded wary, unsure, a little off balance—just the way he wanted her. He shrugged, negating the importance of her question.

“Well,” she said, “maybe I should give your editor a call. If they need someone down there and they’re willing to pay . . .”

“I don’t think so,” he drawled. “I did some checking. The Panamanians won’t let you in the country. Something about actions unbefitting a journalist, a belief held by more than half of Latin America. You’re persona non grata just about everyplace south of the Rio Grande, Nikki. Nobody wants you within striking distance of their government.”

“Me!” she gasped, her professional ire rising to flaming heights. “What about you? You’re the one who skullduggered around and tore Travinas to bits!”

“Skullduggered?” He cocked an eyebrow.

“You know what I mean.”

“Yes, I do. But as far as they know, I did everything according to standard journalistic practices and—”

“Standard journalistic practices!” she interrupted, shock showing in her eyes. “Passing yourself off as Juan Alonso and infiltrating—”

He lifted his head and silenced her with a quick kiss. “Shh, Nikki. It doesn’t matter. You’ve got the rest of the world to choose from.”

She let his words sink in, felt them mollify the worst of her anger and take the edge off her wounded pride. She ignored the other realms of her emotions, the parts that had waited patiently and in vain for him to ask her to stay. She’d taken each day’s love as it came and slowly accepted a hard truth: Kydd and Rios were a byline, stolen moments of time for sharing love and friendship, but not the stuff of her latent dreams.

“Great,” she said, hiding the hurt with sarcasm. “What am I supposed to do with the rest of the world? Central America is my beat. Maybe I should get on the phone to David and tell him I’m ready to come back to work.”

“I had something else in mind.” He was losing her again, and he wasn’t going to allow that to happen. “Something that should appeal to your predilection for living on the edge.”

“I’m not going to the Middle East.” she said flatly, crossing her arms over her chest. Then, almost reluctantly, she added, “I didn’t want to go back to Central America either. The edge has . . . lost its charm.”

“What do you want, Nikki?”

“The middle ground.” She half lifted her hand in a gesture toward the neighboring house. It was a new kind of risk, exposing her weakness for him to see. He’d fallen in love with a wild young girl, someone who’d met danger at his side, someone who’d gone to any length for a story and her mother’s freedom.

But she’d changed, been tempered by the passing years and the acceptance of her own mortality. She had her mother. Now she wanted other things.

Josh followed the direction of her gesture to the quiet house next door, then looked back at her. “Not much action over there. Not much fame. Damn little glory. Are you sure, Nikki?”

“I’m sure of what I want.” She hesitated and looked at him. “But I’m not sure how, or if, I can get it.”

Josh lay very quiet, watching the steady rhythm of her pulse and the lifting and falling of shadows across her face. The hammock slowed in its swaying, and still he watched her.

She forced a fleeting smile to her lips. “Crazy, huh?”

He nodded in agreement, his face solemn, his eyes dark and searching. Then he leaned close and whispered in her ear. “I love you.”

“I know, but—”

“No reservations, Nikki. I love you,” He kissed her cheek and settled back into the hammock. It was time to pop the proverbial question.
The
proverbial question. “I’ve been doing a little thinking.”

Chicken, he thought, giving his head a shake. He’d have to do better than that.

Something in his manner told Nikki he’d been doing a lot of thinking. She gave him a quizzical glance. “Thinking about what?”

Josh did an internal check of his pulse and decided to slide into the question. “You.”

“Me?”

“And me.” He wondered how long he could drag the moment out, and whether or not it would help or hinder his cause. Despite her recent track record, and her most recent confession, he knew Nikki had the heart of a free-lancer. She was used to being on her own, in charge of her own life, coming and going as she pleased.