Hush: A Thriller Part 25

That got a rise out of him, as it was meant to do.

"d.a.m.n it." He put the ketchup down. "This is serious."

"You want serious? Fine. Here's serious: I think I can figure out what to say without you trying to coach me. So stop." She ate tuna.

Clearly exasperated, he looked at her for a moment without replying.

"Eat your food," Riley said, not quite maliciously, and ate more tuna.

He ate a couple of forkfuls, then said, "You're beautiful."

For some reason, that didn't sound like it was meant to be a compliment. "Thank you." She narrowed her eyes at him.

"You're smart, too."

"You want to get to the point here?"

"You're lying to me."

"What?" Riley's eyes didn't widen. She didn't choke on her tuna, but it was close.

Her first thought was, Pot, meet kettle. Her second was, Oh, c.r.a.p.

He said, "It's time to come clean."

Riley's chest tightened as guilt bubbled up inside her. Finn was looking at her, his blue-gray eyes holding hers like he could see inside her head. Okay, she told herself to quell the little curls of panic that were starting to twist through her veins, he might be able to read her easily but there was no way he could know. Anything. At least, not anything important.

Keep your mouth shut. Stand your ground.

"How did you know?" she asked on a shaky-sounding breath.

Putting down his fork, he looked suddenly grim. "Talk to me, Angel. I'm listening."

That angel did funny things to her insides. Actually, she discovered unwillingly, he did funny things to her insides. Just like she was still in her yellow dress, he was still wearing the charcoal suit, but he'd unb.u.t.toned his collar and lost the tie. Against the white shirt, his throat looked brown and strong. Stubble darkened his square jaw. His mouth was tense, and his eyes were bloodshot, with the faint lines around his eyes noticeably deeper than before. He looked dark and tired and irritable, he was a federal law enforcement officer who was taking advantage of their forced proximity to interrogate her every chance he got, and he had just accused her of telling him lies.

And, oh, yeah, dangerous or not, she wanted him. Bad.

It was stupid. She wasn't proud of it. But there it was.

"All right, I did lie," she confessed, her eyes wide as she held his intent gaze. "Earlier. When I was in the bathroom, and you didn't come back, and I said I wasn't worried about you? That just wasn't true. I was worried about you."

For a moment his expression didn't change. Then it did: his brows snapped together and his mouth compressed and he looked dire.

She grinned. A big ol' pure Texas s.h.i.t-eating grin. She couldn't help it.

Their eyes held. Hers, she knew, twinkled. His did not.

Then his face relaxed, and he smiled. Not that little uptick that she'd started to think was all he was capable of, but a real smile. Even if it was a little wry.

"Funny." He went back to eating his meat loaf. She took a couple more bites of tuna. Then he gave her a level look and said, "Sooner or later, I'm going to find out."

She devoutly hoped not. In fact, she was going to do everything in her power to make sure he did not.

Ignoring the p.r.i.c.kle of apprehension that slid like goose b.u.mps over her skin, she shook her head reprovingly at him. "Like I said, one-track mind."

The waitress returned then, with their check and an offer of coffee. Riley declined. Finn paid, and took his coffee to go.

Outside, it was dark. It had cooled off a little from earlier, but the humidity made the air feel thick. The moon looked like a fuzzy white cotton ball in a field of midnight blue. A few stars played peek-a-boo among the scudding clouds. The night smelled of approaching rain. To the west, the flickers of lightning were bigger and stronger now.

When they were in the car driving the short distance back to the hotel, Finn looked at her and said, "You'd be better off telling me whatever it is you're hiding before I figure it out on my own."

Riley had been reluctantly admiring the strong masculine lines of his profile against the glow of the hotel's security lights.

Almost glad to have her thoughts diverted, she frowned at him as he turned into the parking lot. "You think so?"

He sent her an impatient look. "Cut the c.r.a.p. I know there's something. You need to tell me."

"Newsflash, Mr. Agent Man: I don't know what you're talking about."

He'd just finished parking. At her response, the muscles in his face contracted, his mouth hardened, and as he shot a look at her his eyes glinted steel blue.

"Yeah, you do. Come on, we don't want to hang around in the parking lot."

As they were walking inside, with his hand on her arm and him a pace behind her, looking for all the world like he was escorting a prisoner to jail, it occurred to her that spending the night alone in a hotel room with a man she'd decided might very well be dangerous wasn't something any minimally prudent woman would do.

She kept walking anyway.

He didn't say anything else, and neither did she. Kicking off her shoes, she went into the bathroom as soon as they reached the room. When she came out, he'd taken off his jacket and had his gun on the nightstand between the beds. He was standing at the foot of the bed nearest to the door and was in the process of unb.u.t.toning his shirt.

His eyes raked her. He was looking tall and dark and ill-tempered, and his sheer size made the s.p.a.ce feel surprisingly small.

"It's all yours." She indicated the bathroom, and started to walk past him toward the sitting area, with some thought of turning on CNN and trying to catch the day's news.

She didn't make it past him. His hand shot out to flatten against the wall. His arm formed a barrier in front of her nose, stopping her in her tracks.

Frowning, she looked up at him. "What?"

His eyes were hard. "If you're involved in this scheme of George's, you're looking at prison. That's if the system gets you. If I go away, if somebody who's not part of the system gets hold of you, they'll torture you to get the information they want out of you and then they'll kill you. You understand that, right?"

Riley cast her eyes heavenward. "You are a broken record." Since his arm blocked her from the sitting room, she turned to go the other way.

His other arm shot out, trapping her between them. Her eyes narrowed. She faced him, scowling and prepared to verbally blast him. He didn't quite have her pinned to the wall, there was still some room, but her body brushed his and her hands came up to flatten against his chest to hold him off and her breath caught as her heart started to pick up the pace. His eyes were unreadable as he looked down at her, but she could see the quickening of the pulse in his throat, feel the heat coming off him.

"I don't like bullies," she said. "Get out of my way."

He made a sound that wasn't quite a laugh. "I'm trying to save your a.s.s here."

"Is that what you're doing?" She glared up at him. He was way bigger than she was, taller, wider, strong enough where any thought of a physical contest between them was laughable. Their bodies barely touched, but where they did she knew it. Beneath the cool smooth cotton of his shirt, she could feel the tension in his muscles. She could feel the electricity surging between them, and she could tell by the tightening of his jaw and the darkening of his eyes that he did, too. "Funny, feels to me like you're trying to intimidate me."

"Does it?" His eyes slid over her face, his mouth tightened, and then his arms dropped and he made a be-my-guest gesture indicating that she was free to walk away. She didn't. She didn't want to. She stayed right where she was, her hands pressed to his chest, her face lifted to his pugnaciously. Because now the heat that was rolling off him was enveloping her, too, and her body was quickening and tightening and she was finding it harder to breathe. "What I'm trying to do is help you. You need to trust me."

When h.e.l.l freezes over, is what she thought as all the reasons she shouldn't flashed through her mind. But her hands were closing on his shirt front and her heart was pounding like she was running and the dark, restless gleam in his eyes was melting her bones.

She didn't trust him, not one bit. But what she did do was go up on tiptoe and kiss him.

- CHAPTER -

TWENTY-FIVE.

His mouth was warm, and firm, and stayed perfectly still as hers found it. Riley kissed him softly, parting her lips, moving them against his, loving how unmistakably masculine they felt, loving the rasp of his stubble against the soft skin of her cheeks and chin. Her lids were lowered so that she couldn't see his eyes, but she could see the sharp flare of his nostrils and the sudden tensing of his jaw. Her hands were fisted in his shirt, and she could feel the deepening of his breathing in the rise and fall of his chest, feel the hardening of the muscles beneath.

His mouth moved on hers, kissing her back but only barely, a feather-light molding of her lips that had her mouth clinging to his, wanting more. He deepened the kiss, licking into her mouth, and she shivered and kissed him back. As one hand came up to thrust deep into her hair, he took a step forward so that she had to take a step back, which brought her shoulder blades up against the cool plaster of the wall. Riley felt his long, strong fingers shaping the back of her skull. His other hand gripped her hip bone. She sensed desire on his part, and resistance, too, and was excited by both. Even as her body throbbed with arousal, even as her heart started to slam against her breastbone, even as she swayed so that she was arching up against him, he broke the kiss and lifted his head to look down at her.

"This your way of changing the subject?" The hot, dark glitter in his eyes, the growl in his voice, the rigidity of his body, told her how turned on he was. There was no mistaking his erection: it pressed against her, hard and thick even through the layers of their clothes.

She imagined it inside her, filling her, thrusting deep, and her blood turned to steam.

"What if it is?" Heart pounding, she stared up at him, almost taken by surprise by how much she wanted him. The chemistry had always been there between them. Now it was all but tangible, wrapping around them, flowing from her body to his. He felt it: there was no mistaking that, and yet he was resisting it still for some reason of his own. The hand in her hair tightened. So did the one on her hip. He was holding her in place, studying her face with unnerving intensity. It was clear from the increasing desire that blazed in his eyes that he was getting a pretty accurate read on what she was thinking about yet again.

And that would be s.e.x. The air was laden with it. It was there in his eyes for her to see, and she had no doubt at all that it was there in hers.

"Sleeping with me isn't going to fix anything." He said it as a warning, in a voice that was noticeably rougher and thicker than before. Besides the heat, there was a careful, calculating kind of caution in his eyes that was echoed in the hardness of his jaw, in the way he was holding her, holding himself back from her. She got the impression that part of him wanted to pull back, walk away, and yet he couldn't quite bring himself to do it.

"Who said I was going to sleep with you?" If she sounded breathless, well, that was because she was. The kiss had been an impulse, a mixture of desire and opportunity and, yes, a need to stop him from badgering her and get the balance of power between them back on a more equal level. The excitement it had roused in both of them was enough to render the reason for it moot. A maelstrom of emotions churned inside her: terror for Emma, grief for Jeff, anxiety for Margaret, fear for her own safety. But they were all receding into the background as, right now, in this moment, the man in front of her was rapidly becoming all she could think about, all she could see.

"Then what the h.e.l.l is this?" The hand in her hair moved down to cradle the back of her neck.

"A kiss." It gave her some satisfaction to echo the words he'd said to her not so long ago.

"A kiss." There was a flatness to his voice, a patent disbelief. "And that's it?"

"I haven't decided yet."

Something dark and dangerous glinted in his eyes. His face hardened, and so did his hands on her. All of a sudden the wall at her back made her feel penned in. His big body looming over her made her feel penned in. Even as aroused as she was, she didn't like the sensation, didn't like her sudden awareness that, physically, she was helpless against him and he could pretty much do whatever he wanted to do with her. Quick fantasy flashes of herself at his mercy might make her go all tight and shivery inside, they might make her pulse rate quicken and her bare toes curl into the carpet, but the reality of it awakened her pride, her fighting spirit, her innate sense of inviolable self that had never, ever knuckled in to anybody and never would.

His eyes slid over her face. "Better decide."

"I'm thinking."

"Think fast," he said, and lowered his head to kiss her again.

For a split second there, before their lips touched, while his hand that had been gripping her hip slid slowly up her rib cage toward her breast, she nearly panicked. She had the sensation that she was plunging deep into something she had no experience of, something that was already more than she had bargained on.

You started this, she reminded herself, and it was true, she had, but she could tell, from the fierce tension in his body, from the restless glitter in his eyes, from the way he was holding her, handling her, that she wasn't in charge. And then she had a blinding flash of insight in which she realized why she had always preferred gentler, more pliable men: she'd been the one directing the course of events. Always, all her life, she'd been the one to figure things out, the one to dictate what would happen next, the one to decide.

With Finn, she wasn't. What was happening between them was outside her comfort zone. He was outside her comfort zone.

And that scared her.

She almost pushed against his chest, almost demanded to be let go.

But then his mouth covered hers, and he kissed her, slow and sweet and not scary at all, and she was dazzled, and tempted, and finally lost. Eyes closing, she slid her arms around his neck, and went on tiptoe and kissed him back with increasing abandon as her body ignited and then went totally up in flames. He was barefoot, which actually didn't ease the size differential much but did allow their toes to touch. His were warm, and a glance down showed her that they were long, and tan, with nicely trimmed square nails, and made a noticeable contrast to her own paler, more delicate, coral-painted ones. She could feel the long, firm muscles of his legs beneath the well-tailored suit pants. Higher up, the stiff ridge of his erection was impossible to miss. It was there between them, aggressive in its sheer size, blatant in letting her know what he wanted. She responded to it instinctively by moving closer, fitting herself against him, and then reaching down to touch him. She stroked a questing finger along the iron-hard bulge, and it instantly seemed to grow larger and harder still until it tested the restraint of his pants. He made an indecipherable sound under his breath and grabbed her hand and pulled it away from him, settling it back on his shoulder, kissing her with an almost savage intensity as he leaned into her, full-body crush, pressing her back into the wall. Only now, instead of being dismayed at finding herself trapped, she was on fire for him, loving the way he felt, the heat and solid strength of his body, the size of him, the weight of him.

Her head spun. Her knees felt weak. Her body molded itself to his, arching up so that she could feel the hardness of his muscles-all his muscles-wedged even more completely against her. He shifted so that the iron hardness she'd stroked nudged the notch between her thighs, settled there, rocked into her, making her mindless, making her move against him, making her shudder and quake.

She wanted him so much that she was woozy with it. The blazing s.e.xual attraction that had raged between them from the first was now a wildfire that was out of control.

His hand found her breast, and any last hope of rational thought she had left vanished. She was blindsided by sensation, by her own white-hot reaction to his touch. The hungry demand of his lips on hers, the hot urgency of his tongue filling her mouth, the pure pleasure of having his hand on her breast and his body rocking into hers, drove everything else out of her mind. Her bones turned to water. Her muscles dissolved. Deep inside, her body throbbed and clenched. She shivered as he caressed her through the delicate layers of her dress with its built-in bra. Then his thumb found and rubbed her nipple. It stiffened and stood up for him, and the resultant ripple of desire had her arching up into his hand as she wordlessly begged for more.

"Made a decision yet?" He whispered it into the ear he was kissing before trailing his lips down the side of her neck. The wet heat of his mouth, the p.r.i.c.kle of the stubble on his jaw against her skin, the warm, caressing hand on her breast, made her pulse race. They interfered with her breathing.

It took willpower, but she opened her eyes, sucked in air, strove for clarity. Her vision was instantly filled by his dark head bent low over her as he kissed her throat, by the nape of his brown neck, by his broad shoulders in the white shirt curved around her. The faint smell of menthol from his shaving cream intoxicated her. She had to swallow before she could reply.

"Still thinking." Breathy, pa.s.sion-drugged voice. Coherent answer, even if she wasn't sure it was true.

He lifted his head, studied her face. His eyes blazed down at her. His hand never left her breast.

"Oh, yeah?" The slight uptick of his mouth as it dipped toward hers was so s.e.xy it made her heart beat faster. "Angel, any time you want to call a halt, all you have to do is say 'when.'"

She didn't reply because she couldn't. She was so turned on she could barely breathe, let alone speak. Then his mouth found hers again, and thinking was out, too. All that was left to her was to feel.

They kissed, hot fierce kisses, and while they did she started working on his shirt b.u.t.tons until she had them undone and she could slide her hands up over his chest. His wide, hard-muscled chest with its wedge of dark hair was a visual treat that seared itself into her mind: honed and tanned and gorgeous, it was, like the rest of him, unmistakably, overwhelmingly male. His skin was smooth and hot, the hair covering it was crisp, and the muscles beneath could have been carved out of granite. As her hands moved sensuously over him, he thrust his tongue deep into her mouth with a growl and rocked into her until Riley thought she would come right there and then.

Her heart thundered. Her pulse pounded in her ears. She was shaken by delicious little tremors of l.u.s.t that made her want to go ahead and push him to the floor and jump his bones.

She might have done it, too, if what he was doing to her wasn't so mind-blowingly delicious, and if he hadn't been too d.a.m.ned big to move.

His hand slid inside her neckline to cover her bare breast. The heat of his hand, the abrasion of his rougher skin sliding over the silkiness of hers, the pressure of his broad palm moving sensuously over her nipple, sent a shock wave of pleasure through her. It turned her insides to something with the approximate consistency of Jell-O. Hot, thick, molten Jell-O.

Then the top of her dress came loose and she heard a kind of slither, and felt the whisper of air-conditioning on tender flesh that had until that moment been covered by layers of cloth. Her eyes opened, and she cast a slightly disoriented look down at herself to discover that the movement of his hand on the back of her neck that she'd been vaguely aware of had been him unb.u.t.toning the four small b.u.t.tons that fastened the halter neck of her dress. The entire front of her dress, built-in bra and all, had dropped, leaving her bare to the wide, snug waistband that still encased her waist.

Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s were firm and round. A nice size for her slender frame, they were creamy white with dark pink nipples, and she'd always liked them. Now she contrasted their soft fullness with the big, tanned, blatantly masculine hand that fondled them even as she watched, and felt her bones dissolve.

As her breath caught, she glanced up to find that he was watching what he was doing to her, too. He must have felt the weight of her gaze, because he looked up and their eyes met. His were darker than she'd ever seen them, heavy-lidded, smoldering at her.

"You are the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in my life." It was a husky murmur, uttered as he bent to take the nipple of the breast he was cupping into his mouth.

If she hadn't been clinging to his shoulders for support at that moment, she would have slithered right down the wall to the floor. His mouth felt so good, so scaldingly hot, so insistent, that the spiral of need he'd already wakened coiled tighter and tighter until she was pure liquid fire inside and absolutely his for the taking.

"Finn," she said, too weak with longing now even to start pulling off his clothes, which she wanted to do, or start stripping off the rest of her own clothes, which she also wanted to do, or in fact to do anything else except hold on to him as he kissed and licked and suckled her. What he was doing made her so tight and so shivery inside that she thought she might be going to die from the thrill of it.

"Riley." His voice was thick. His tone was surprising. It was absolutely serious, somber even, as if her name had weight. He lifted his head, looked at her consideringly. His eyes were narrow and hot. His face was flushed and his hair was mussed from having her fingers in it. His mouth was hard and sensual and faintly damp, as were the tips of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s from his kisses. Just looking at him made her breathless, made her dizzy, made her heart feel like it was going to pound its way out of her chest.