Lover Beware

skin, more connection. “I’ve never killed anyone. I’ve drawn my weapon, fired warning shots, but I’ve never had to aim to kill.”
    “Warning shots weren’t going to work with them. But you handled it. You talked them down. Lily. I’m coming apart.” He nuzzled the side of her neck, then licked it.
    A delicious tremor shimmered through her. The air was suddenly hot. Her fingers dug into hard muscle covered by cloth, and she wanted the cloth gone. He could smell her reaction, she realized. He knew how desperate she was for him. “What is this? I feel like I’m rattling at top speed over bumpy ground. Like everything’s about to shake loose. Is it you? Are you doing this, or is it me?”
    “It’s us.” He gathered her face in his two hands and tipped it toward him. His eyes shone in the dim light. Normal eyes once more, or so close to it she couldn’t tell the difference.
    “Us, Lily. This is what we bring to each other. I need you.”
    She stared at him in a vast, humming silence, her skin and bones and need a thin bridge stretching between one moment and the next, when everything would change.
    “There’s a hotel.” His hand trembled as he brushed her hair back. “Six or seven blocks from here. It isn’t what I want for you, for our first time together, but I don’t know if I could make it to my apartment, or yours.”
    He needed her. “Yes,” she said. And her voice came out clear and strong, just as if she knew what she was doing.
     
    LILY WOULD HAVE insisted on driving if she’d been sure she was in better shape than Rule. They were lucky the traffic was so light.
    They rode in silence. She kept waiting for doubts to surface, for common sense to point out all the reasons this was a bad idea. What did sex really mean to Rule? She didn’t know, couldn’t guess. She wasn’t sure what this meant to her, either. Though she tried to persuade herself her hunger was fueled by reaction, the aftereffects of adrenaline and danger, her decision felt vast. Like she was taking a leap off a crumbling edge, straight out into darkness.
    Yet for all those seven blocks, and the minutes she waited in the hotel lobby while Rule procured a key, the urgency thrummed in her and the doubts never spoke. She wanted this, wanted Rule with a ruthless clarity that didn’t shut down thought. Just dismissed it.
    The hotel was about ten bucks a night above seedy, but the elevator worked, their room seemed clean, and the door locked. Other than that, Lily only gathered a quick impression of orange—a tangerine bedspread, faded peach wallpaper, a bad print of a New England autumn scene hanging above the bed. Then she was in Rule’s arms.
    “I want to make this right,” he said, nuzzling her hair. “Ah, you smell so good. I wish you could know…” He put his hands on her shoulders, slipped her jacket off, letting it fall to the floor, and kissed her.
    The urgency remained, the pleasure and the sense of having opened a door on a vast unknown. But something new lapped over her. From his mouth she absorbed the knowledge of his delight, a wordless rejoicing. His hands stroked with slow intimacy over her back, her hips, telling her they were alone now, and they had time. All the time they needed.
    Still her fingers trembled as she found the buttons of his shirt and, one by one, undid them. She ran her hands up his chest to his neck, leaning back slightly so she could see his face—the heavy-lidded eyes, the smile on his beautiful mouth. And she touched his hair, ran her fingers through it, testing the weight, the curl. Such freedom, to touch as she wished.
    He glanced down at her shoulder holster, his expression wry. “Would you mind taking care of that yourself? I don’t like guns.”
    That made her laugh, and laughter made her fingers less clumsy, so she was able to unfasten the buckle and lay her weapon in its holster on the bedside table. Rule came up behind her then and put his arms around her waist, pulling her to him. He’d slid off his shirt while she took care of her weapon, and she felt the heat of his skin through the linen of her shirt. The hard length of him nestled against the small of her back.
    Her breath caught. He bent and grazed his teeth along the cord of her neck. A shock of pleasure vibrated through her and wrecked her breathing. He ran his hands over her body slowly, luxuriously, breasts to stomach, pubic mound, thighs—and her vision hazed.
    He unfastened her shorts and pushed them