No Holds Barred

Greed didn’t even come close to describing the desperate hunger she was feeling or the urgent need to satisfy it.

Here. Now.

Had she said the words out loud?

Had he?

ALL DUNCAN KNEW WAS THAT HE couldn’t think. She flooded his senses, blocking out everything else with her taste, her textures, her scents. He couldn’t separate them. Couldn’t possibly name them all. Couldn’t resist taking more, asking for more.

When she wrapped her arms and legs around him, as much demand as invitation, he was helpless to do anything other than take them both deeper. No other woman had ever made him feel helpless. Now she was taking him places he’d never been before, making him feel things he’d never felt before.

And why had he waited so long to let her do it?

Here. Now.

The idea of laying her on the hood of his car and quenching the desire, the need that had gone from flame to inferno in seconds, flashed brilliantly into his mind. He wanted, wildly wanted to turn the image in his mind into reality.

Here. Now.

But he couldn’t. With the words still thrumming in his mind and pounding in his blood, he reached deep for control and found it. Easing away, he settled her against the car’s fender before he stepped back. His pulse was still racing. His heart slammed like a hammer against an anvil in his chest. And he still wanted her. He had to figure that wasn’t going to stop any time soon.

So he had a problem. An even bigger one than he’d anticipated. “That isn’t what I came here to do.”

“Ditto.” She’d folded her arms across her chest, but she was no longer using the car for support. When he noticed he still was, he stepped away.

“We have to figure out a solution to this,” she said.

“Agreed.”

“I have to think.”

Duncan thought the time for that had passed.

“So.” She walked around to the passenger door and opened it. “You can take me to my apartment, see that I’m safely locked in and then go away.”

Duncan slid behind the wheel and then drove them out of the alley into D.C. traffic. He could go along with one out of three of her directives. But he figured he’d have a better chance of making his case in her apartment.

4

PIPER STOOD IN HER KITCHEN watching Duncan open a bottle of red zinfandel. He’d picked it up with the pizza on the drive back to her apartment.

“We have to talk. You have to eat,” he’d said by way of explanation.

She couldn’t argue with either point. And she figured she needed to save up her energy. If she was going to argue with Duncan about anything, it was going to be about what she was sure he wanted to “talk” about.

The mind-blowing kiss they’d indulged in.

In an alley. A very public place.

She’d made the move, but at least they knew what they were up against. And she hadn’t been the one to call a halt to it. She’d always been able to before. That aside, they had to find a solution. They both worked in D.C. They were adults. And they wanted each other like gangbusters. No way they could ignore the elephant in the room.

She made her living arguing cases, negotiating solutions, and if she’d learned anything from law school and from working for Abe, it was the value of a preemptive strike.

So while they’d driven home, she’d tried to review her options. But it was damn hard to weigh them objectively while they’d sat so close in that tiny car. Every time he’d shifted gears, his arm had brushed against hers, and each time it had, “here” and “now” had blinked on and off, little neon letters in her mind.

Now he filled all the spare space in her kitchen. She could even smell him above the spicy aroma of the food.

He’d given her no chance to send him away as he’d cut a path through the little throng of reporters that had been waiting at the mouth of the alley. And she had to admit that she was happy not to have had to enter her apartment alone tonight.

He poured the dark red wine into two glasses and handed her one. “I have a proposition for you.”

“Ditto,” she said. She just had to figure out what it was. Exactly.

“Mind if I go first?”

“Go ahead.” The only thing better than making a preemptive strike was learning what your opponent had in mind and then adjusting your strategy.

“Cam has been bugging me to take a few days off and go up to the castle to see what I can figure out about the rest of Eleanor Campbell MacPherson’s missing dowry and about that intruder he believes was breaking into the library. I want you to come with me.”

Surprised, Piper stared at him, her mind racing. Duncan Sutherland knew a bit about making preemptive strikes himself, it seemed. “Why would I want to do that?”

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