Ready To Burn (Due South Book 3) (33 page)

“Yeah. Very, very much.”

Her fingers, still tangled in the hair at his nape, tightened. “Then let me come home with you. I don’t want to be alone tonight.”

Shit. He didn’t want to be alone, either. Knowing before he’d suggested taking her home she’d refuse, and he wouldn’t be strong enough to make her, Del closed his eyes. “Fine. But so you know, you’ll pay for scaring the crap out of me this evening.”

Her brow crinkled. “I scared you?”

He touched his lips to the cute wrinkles in her forehead. “Seeing you wobbling along the road in the dark—”

“I was not wob—”

Del cut her off with a kiss—a kiss that lasted long enough to set his heart pounding again.

“You taste like champagne and trouble.” He brushed his thumb along her kiss-wet lower lip. “And you were wobbling, baby. All I could think about was something happening to you while you were on the way to my place.”

“Something…? Oh. Like Jessica.” Her mouth pinched shut, her eyelashes flickering down. “I’m so sorry I scared you.”

She wrapped her arms around his waist and hugged him. The wave of tenderness flattened him in its path, turning the blaze of fear and lust fueling him only moments ago into a smoldering wreckage. He had to tell her the truth about the kind of man he really was and how
he
was so scared, knowing she’d want nothing more to do with him.

But not now, not tonight. She looked at him with adoration—he couldn’t bear to see her opinion of him change, couldn’t stand to disappoint her.

“Shaye?” He held her close.

“Yes, Hollywood?” came her voice, muffled against him.

“Think you can walk to my place?”

Her head twisted from side to side on his chest. “Nope.”

Yeah, he didn’t think so either.

With a sigh, he disentangled her arms and turned around, crouching down and gesturing with his hands. “Hop on.”

Chapter 17

Shaye’s idea of the world’s worst thing to wake up to? A cot and a row of vertical metal bars. The second? Finding herself in an unfamiliar bed, clad only in a tee shirt. With a headache throbbing like a radio with the bass turned up too high. A headache that pounded even harder, as a psychopathic bird began to screech.

Shaye cracked open an eyelid. Metal bars. Slammed the lid shut, got brave, and then looked again. Her brain finally ceased tossing thoughts of jail cells and handcuffs around. Ahhhh. Just the struts of a bunk bed.

Bunk bed?

Rustling noises came from beside her, followed by a muffled curse uttered in a rough tone. Basil and warm, sleepy-man smell crept into her nose.

She was in Del’s bed.

Curled up, facing the wall and wearing…Shaye ran a hand over her stomach and up to her breasts, finding both covered in a loose, multi-laundered knit fabric.

Wearing Del’s tee shirt.

Her hand skimmed down again and encountered high-cut lace, not the beige support panties she’d worn under her party dress. Oh, crap. But she’d arrived at Del’s in her party dress. At least, she thought she’d been wearing a dress when Del poured her through his door and into his bedroom.

A big hand landed on her hip, and a hot, hard male snuggled up behind her.

“I can hear you thinking, Shaye. Oops—” Warm breath misted against her ear. “I mean…cupcake.”

Shaye squeezed her eyes shut.
Cupcake
. She’d ordered him to call her cupcake and then…she groaned. She didn’t remember anything after stripping off her dress.

“Oh. My. God.” Her shoulders hunched forward. “Did I fall asleep on you?”

His lips, pressed against her shoulder blade, curved. “You did. And you snore. I believe it’s a Harland thing or so Dad told me when he mentioned West’s complaints about Piper when she has a cold.”

“Ugh.” Shaye exhaled through her nose, not wanting to be responsible for knocking Del unconscious with what must be truly awful morning-breath. “Sorry.”

“Not a problem, cupcake.”

She grunted and turned her face more into the pillow to breathe before she got dizzy and lost consciousness. “Why am I not wearing my underwear?”

“They
are
your underwear, just not the ugly things you had on under your dress. I had to strip you out of your clothes. Don’t you remember?”

“I don’t remember anything. My brain hurts.” She lied, because, hello, it’d all come back in Technicolor gloriousness.

Del carrying her back to his place—and at some point she’d dozed off on his back. Del setting her down on his bed, slipping off her shoes, helping her into his tee shirt. Del tucking her under the sheets and stroking her hair as she dropped into unconsciousness, er, fell asleep.

Heat washed over her face at the memory. He’d been so sweet, so gentlemanly, and so...kind.

“Bird-Brain’s early morning wakeup call probably isn’t helping,” he said.

“Bird-Brain?”

“Noisy feathered bastard on the deck who thinks this is his personal B&B.” He tugged her earlobe and moved away. “Anyway, I’ll go feed him and make coffee. Stay here, I’ll bring you a cup.”

The loss of his warm skin pressed to hers made her chest squeeze tight. Aside from a head the approximate size of an over-inflated beach ball, this was the best morning she’d had in…ever. It shocked any lingering drunkenness out of her system to admit how much she wanted to wake next to him every morning.

Del hauled on clothes and padded out of the room. She uncurled from the mattress edge and sat up, cupping a hand over her mouth and exhaling. She sniffed. Pulled an eww-nasty face. Thank God she’d been facing away from the poor man.

The family room sliding doors screeched open, and a short whistle and a low murmuring cut through the morning silence. Del talking to the kaka.

For some reason, this sent a flurry of warm fuzzies scurrying through her. The man she’d first met on the ferry a month ago would never have bought a supply of peanuts for an unwanted morning guest. The lonely guy, the prickly, proud man who couldn’t stand to be in the same room as his father—well, she’d just heard him call Bill “Dad” for the first time.

Shaye slithered out of bed and shuffled to the bathroom. She glanced in the mirror and gripped the edge of the sink to prevent falling on her ass.

Holy-freaking-guacamole, she looked worse than little Zoe dressed up as a zombie.
Ugh
. She patted down her hair, which had started to frizz, and splashed cold water on her face. Contemplating Del’s toothbrush, she crinkled her nose. Either get over the squick factor of using his toothbrush—considering how much their tongues had been in each other’s mouths, it was ridiculous to be squicky at all—or breathe dragon breath on him.

After a lightning-fast brush, a gargle of mouthwash, and dry-swallowing two painkillers, Shaye tip-toed down the hall. She sneaked a glance to the left while she crossed the open area between bathroom and bedroom. Del was in the kitchen, his back turned, stirring two steaming mugs.

He twisted to drop a teaspoon into the sink, giving her a glimpse of the cut muscles jutting above the low-slung waistband of his jeans. The aroma of coffee was almost as good as sex.

Oookay. In a showdown between a cup of coffee and a cup of
smooshed up against Del’s illegally hot, naked bod
…her gaze slipped to his denim-clad ass. He hunkered down to wipe something off the floor, and the tight mounds flexed. Good lord…what had she been comparing again?

Shaye hurried into the bedroom and crawled onto his bed, stomach quivering with anticipation. Now that her eyes worked with only tiny toothpicks stabbing into her skull instead of pickaxes, she appreciated the front view of him as he walked into the room carrying two mugs.

“You look more alive.” He placed one of the mugs on a chest of drawers and handed her the other.

“Uh-huh.”

She took the mug without looking down, her eyes apparently agreeing with her previous conclusion that a cup of Del beat a cup of wet, ground beans any day. They refused to stop staring at the hard ridges of his abdominal muscles and the sparse trail of dark hair disappearing under the halfway undone zipper of his jeans.

“Almost…perky, in fact.”

He grinned his dimple-infested grin at her, she just knew it. But, nope, she had enough to deal with—
she could not quit staring at Del’s crotch
.

“Uh-huh.” Some willpower returned and she tore her gaze away.

He sat on the edge of the bed. “Drink your tea. It’ll help with the head.”

She glanced down at the insipid green liquid in the white mug. “Tea?” She sniffed it. “Green tea?”

“Good for hangovers.” His smile slipped, and he looked down at his hands resting on his thighs. “I should know.” A short pause while his fingers bunched into fists. “And so should you.”

She sipped the bitter tea, the runaway urge to jump Del and see how gravity-defying his jeans were disappearing. What man over the age of eighteen didn’t have a hangover story or two….or three? But something about the rawness of his tone sent warning prickles up and down her spine.

“Del? Join me?” She hated the slight quaver in her voice, but she couldn’t seem to steady it.

She patted the mattress and held out the mug. Del placed her cup next to his on the dresser, and took a quick, fortifying sip of his coffee. Then he ducked under the top bunk and crawled onto the bed next to her. He lay on his side, his hand propped under his head, the lengthwise gap between their bodies like a canyon.

“I know this is a sore point, after what happened to your dad,” he said. “But I need to tell you about the last year of my life. Before I came here, before I met you.”

His Adam’s apple bobbed in the strong column of his throat, his chest heaving as if he had to struggle on every inhale. As if he was about to say something he’d never, ever be able to take back.

Shaye didn’t want to hear it. Not while he was looking at her with his beautiful storm-cloud eyes. Not now she’d started to believe Del could be her Mr. Perfect, right under her nose this whole time.

“You don’t need to explain about your life a year ago.” Though she couldn’t meet his eyes in case he read her truth there—who he’d been in LA didn’t matter so much as who she hoped he was now. “You’re not the same man.”

“No.” The corner of his lip quirked up. “I’m trying to be a better man, but—”

Shaye pressed a finger to his lips and wriggled across the canyon-sized gap until she could slide her leg over his. “Forget buts, unless we’re talking about your bare one. Just show me how much better you are, Hollywood.”

She replaced the finger with her mouth, touching the tip of her tongue to the closed seam of his lips until he caved with a hoarse groan and returned her kiss. Del’s tongue danced inside her mouth, transferring the rich taste of coffee to hers. The buzz bubbling through her veins couldn’t solely be attributed to a second-hand shot of caffeine.

He gathered her closer and rolled, covering her with warm skin and denim. The weight of him, the sheer bliss of all his hardness bearing down against her softness…she wanted to absorb him into her very pores. Shaye wrapped her arms around his neck and hung on as if gravity might somehow reverse and tear them apart.

Their breaths mingled before his lips crushed hers with a soul-searching deep kiss. She hooked her legs over his and arched her hips, grinding against him.

“Sure about this?” he groaned into her mouth. “I don’t want to make you feel worse.”

With her throbbing happy-place sparking off all kinds of pleasurable sensations, she was light-years away from
worse
.

“Worse would be if I can’t get your pants off in the next thirty seconds.” She tried to grip his jeans between her toes to pull them down, but the damn things were too snug on his amazing ass. Oh, she could fill notebooks of cheesy poetry about Del’s ass. “Help a girl out.”

“Maybe you should finish your tea,” he said, but he lifted his hips and reached behind to tug them down.

“Maybe you should shut up and help me get us both naked.”

His grin could’ve started a kitchen fire. He dipped his head, caught the hardened nub of her nipple gently between his teeth, and tugged, his tongue making a wet patch through the cotton fabric.

“Helping?” He switched to her other breast.

“No. Not really.”

Suckling at her nipple, Del caressed the breast he’d abandoned. Pretty sure her eyes were crossing, Shaye moaned and fisted his hair.

He shifted down her body and hiked up the tee shirt. She wriggled with him, helping to remove it. As soon as he’d flung it away, his mouth dropped to her breasts again, his tongue tracing circles on her skin. Hot, wet kisses trailed from her breasts to her stomach as he inched down the bed. His tongue flicked once in her belly button, and then his teeth grazed over her tattoo.

“Everything about you is sweet.” He dragged his hand to her mound, the pressure from the heel of his palm against her core making her hips jerk up. “So sweet, I found out too late your sweetness is more like salt.” Curling his fingers over the waistband of her panties, he tugged them down around her thighs.