Rarities Unlimited 02 - Running Scared

she answered with a subtle, repeated roll of her hips that redoubled their pleasure. Though both of them trembled with leashed ecstasy, they kept the rhythm easy, dreamlike.
    Then she could bear no more and arched back, stretched and shivering on a rack of exquisite pleasure. His smile was as elemental as the release he felt washing through her. When she lay spent and boneless on top of him, he rolled her over and began moving again. Slowly. Thickly. Her eyes opened, dazed with a pleasure that was both old and burningly new. She shifted, rising up, taking more. Giving more.
    This time they went blind together in a hot darkness that smelled and tasted of intimacy.
    When she could take a breath without echoes of ecstasy shivering through her, she lifted her head and nuzzled his jaw. Tiny touches of her tongue filled her need to taste him, just as slow strokes of his hands over her back answered his need to feel her close and warm against him. She was just drifting off to sleep again when his bedside telephone rang.
    “Sugah?” she drawled.
    “Hmmm?”
    “Kill it.”
    “I’d rather kill the idiot who put in the override code in spite of my instructions.”
    When she started to slide off him, his arms tightened. Taking her with him, he rolled closer to the phone and hit the conference button. “What?” he demanded.
    The man at the desk talked fast, saying one of the three magic names that would allow him to keep his job. “Ms. Cherelle Faulkner left an urgent message for Ms. Sheridan. As you are the only one who knows Ms. Sheridan’s whereabouts, I thought it prudent to tell you right away.”
    Risa stiffened and reached for the phone. With casual strength, Shane caught her hand and held her in place.
    “Not yet,” he said very softly. Then, loud enough for the phone to pick up, “What number did she call from?”
    “It was blocked, sir.”
    “Why am I not surprised. One moment.” He let go of Risa’s hand, hit the hold button at the base of the phone, and said, “Would you rather have the message in private?”
    She closed her eyes and shook her head.
    He brushed a kiss across her eyes and whispered, “Thank you.”
    “For what?” she said unhappily.
    “Trusting me.”
    With a wry turn to her mouth, she looked at their bodies tangled together. “All things considered, it would be stupid not to.”
    “There are many kinds of intimacy. Of trust.”
    She met his level green eyes. “I trust you not to hurt Cherelle.”
    “If I can avoid it, I won’t, because it would only hurt you. But if she puts you in the line of fire again . . .” Shane didn’t finish. He didn’t have to. The subtle flattening of his features said it all. “I fight for what matters to me. You matter, Risa.”
    “So do you. Jesus, it scares the hell out of me.” She let out a shaky breath. “How did this happen?”
    He smiled crookedly. “I guess we both stopped running at the same time.”
    “Yeah.” She brushed a kiss over his whisker-rough jaw and released the hold button. “Sheridan here,” she said. If her voice was husky instead of crisp, she couldn’t help it any more than she could help noticing the easy strength and living warmth of the man underneath her. “What’s the message?”
    “Good morning, Ms. Sheridan. The message was taken by our VoiceWriter service and has an ‘urgent’ flag stamped on the exterior. Would you like me to open the envelope?”
    “No.” She hesitated, then told the front desk what everyone at the Golden Fleece had already figured out for themselves—Shane and his curator were an item. “Send it up to Mr. Tannahill’s private quarters.”
    “Right away, Ms. Sheridan.”
    Risa disconnected from the call and, more reluctantly, from Shane. She began pulling on clothes that would look like they’d been worn yesterday, stripped off in haste last night, and dumped on the floor next to the bed until morning.
    “There’s a robe in the bathroom,” he said, watching her with lazy male lust.
    “Stop smiling,” she muttered. She felt as though every extra ounce on her breasts and hips was jiggling a neon message of excess.
    “I don’t think so, darling. Looking at you makes a man pleased. So much woman to enjoy.”
    She looked up, saw the smoky concentration in his eyes, and knew that he meant it. “And here I thought you liked swizzle-stick models.”
    She snapped on her bra and settled it in place with a casual shimmy that made his breath thicken. “Why the devil did