Page 62 of Smoky Lake

Pleasure took over the primal part of his brain and blocked out everything else. Hard thrusts, a man taking what he needed, a woman equal to it, driving him on, legs clasped around him, her body arching into the most graceful bow imaginable. He’d never seen anything so beautiful, and he knew he never would.

Her full lips whispered his name, her eyes a dark shimmer under lowered eyelids. Gil…Gil…

The word traveled through him like the call of a siren across an empty ocean. And he knew he was lost.

When a man like him fell, he fell hard and irrevocably. And now he knew why it had never happened before. Because he’d never made love with Ani Devi before.

Once he knew she’d reached her peak, he let loose a deep groan and emptied himself into the warm clench of her body. It felt like a promise in physical form. I am with you. This is us, together.

29

Ani felt like a new woman after that shaking, shuddering climax. She couldn’t keep the smile off her face. Maybe she looked like a fool, beaming at the world, but she didn’t care. God, she’d needed that.

This raw and ferociously lustful collision of bodies had nothing in common with her recent sex life. Goddamn, she felt good. Energy filled her, and she wished there was a mountain nearby to climb. She could probably bound up in just a few leaps.

In fact, there was a mountain nearby, but after all that good sex, she decided to just relax and admire it from the terrace while they waited for their pizza later that night. After a few hours of alternating sex and catching up on sleep, they took a pause from devouring each other’s bodies to order some actual nourishment.

Gil sipped ale from a Mason jar mug while she admired the shape of his mouth and remembered what it had done to her body.

He was a beautiful man. A tough shell wrapped around a caring heart. When he let that tender part of him show, she found him absolutely irresistible.

Their conversation flowed easily, punctuated by the occasional scorching glance to remind themselves of what they’d just been up to back in their room. Gil talked about what it was like growing up with a genius twin brother.

“I remember the first time I knew it was my job to keep Lachlan out of trouble. I must have been really young, like five, and there was a scorpion in our bedroom. Lachlan was so fascinated by it that he was trying to get it to climb onto his hand. But I knew it was the kind that could bite. This was in Amarillo, Texas, visiting my aunt Sally, and they had all sorts of deadly creatures. Lachlan must have known too, because we got all the same warnings from our parents. But he didn’t care, he just wanted a close-up look at it. It was crawling onto his hand by the time I saw it. I remember my whole body just went cold and I knew it could kill him. I could see the whole thing in my head.”

“What did you do?” Ani set down her slice of pizza, too fascinated to eat.

“I grabbed it off his hand and threw it against the wall. I killed it. But not before it bit me.” He turned over his hand so she could see the mark of a long-ago scar. “Just a little, more of a panic sting, but enough to hurt. I made Lachlan promise not to tell Mom. I didn’t want him to get into trouble, or have to explain why I’d touched a scorpion. Eventually it got infected and that’s why I have a scar.”

She traced it lightly with one finger. “Already a bodyguard at age five.”

“My mother gave me a lecture about that one. ‘It’s okay to watch out for your brother, he needs it,’ she said. ‘I get it. Just don’t hurt yourself while you’re at it.’ I tried to keep that in mind, but it didn’t always work. Lachlan dissected that scorpion, by the way.”

That made her laugh. “And he was already the scientist.”

“Oh yeah. He said he wanted to find the poison that hurt me so that he could make a cure for it. Already thinking about antidotes at the age of five.” His affectionate smile made her heart skip a beat. There was that tender part of him again. She had no defenses against it.

“Where do you live when you aren’t in Firelight Ridge?” she asked him.

“I’m based in DC, but I don’t spend much time there. Last year I spent a grand total of forty-two nights in my condo. I have a pile of takeout menus this thick.” He showed her with his thumb and index finger.

“I love to cook,” she told him. “Maybe someday if we’re ever both in the same place, and that place has a kitchen, I’ll make you some Tandoori butter chicken. It’s my grandmother’s recipe. It’s so hot you might have scorpion flashbacks.”

Although he smiled, the mention of “someday” cast a shadow between them. They couldn’t forget that they were in the midst of something unknown and possibly life-threatening.

She set down her glass of beer. “I’ve been thinking about our situation. I feel like something isn’t adding up.”

“Go on. I feel the same way, but I want to hear your thoughts about it.”

“Okay.” She drew in a long breath, then released it, and dove in. “Nyx said Victor was trying to identify the plant that protected the Ahtna from the virus, right?”

“Right.”

“And your theory is that maybe he wanted to synthesize the bioactive compound and sell it to a pharmaceutical company.”

One corner of his mouth drew up in a wry smile. “I wouldn’t have put it in such medical terminology, but yes.”

She continued, tracing a line across the table, one step, then another, like a ladder. All she wanted was to create some order in this mess. “Maybe Victor’s driving a hard bargain, and they’re worried about a competitor. That’s where we come in. They want us to stop, and track us to make sure we’re not a threat to their negotiations.”

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