Page 29 of Dangerous Secrets

He hung up.

Nick drove, concentrated on watching Charity in front of him and on what Jake had said.

Not dying young. Wow. Now there was a thought. Though come to think of it, he was thirty six. Maybe he was too old to die young.

For the very first time in his life, Nick thought of the future. Not the immediate future, like making Delta or joining the Unit. No, the long term. Being forty, and fifty and sixty. Christ, maybe seventy and eighty. The thought that he was going to die young was so ingrained in him that he had never given a thought to becoming middle-aged and then old. Wasn’t going to happen.

But—just suppose it did? Just suppose he lived. And he had money, to boot. Well, that changed things.

Suppose, like Jake insisted, he quit doing dangerous jobs and got married and settled down with a family?

Of course, it was easy for Jake to talk. He had the most beautiful wife in the world and three great kids. Marja was a stunning beauty. Platinum blonde, a head taller than Jake, a great mother and a fantastic wife. Everyone assumed that with his billions, Jake had bought himself a trophy wife, but the truth was he had met Marja, a Swedish exchange student, while still studying and trying to survive on a grant at MIT. He and Marja were a love match.

It never even occurred to Nick that he could have that. Good thing, too, because he’d never met anyone he could feel about the way Jake felt about Marja.

But just suppose . . . he eyed the car in front of him, which Charity was driving just a little too fast for her ability and hertires. It was just like her—flares of unexpected fire under a soft, unassuming exterior.

Suppose he settled down? And just suppose he settled down with Charity? Living with that beautiful woman in that beautiful house in a pretty, peaceful town.

Nick waited for the feeling of constriction, of claustrophobia that always took him when he thought of settling down. It wasn’t coming.

Charity zipped down her street and pulled too fast into her driveway. Nick gritted his teeth and parked right on her back fender. If she wanted to get out again, she was going to have to ask him. And as far as he was concerned, she wasn’t getting her hands on another steering wheel until the weather cleared.

He was at her door before she could get out, hand outstretched. “You drive way too fast,” he complained as he helped her out. Damn, that sounded like a whine in his voice.

She laughed up in his face and poked him in the ribs. “And you drive way too slow. Boring. You might as well be driving a junk car instead of that beautiful car.”

Nick had worked as a development test driver for a car manufacturer one summer. Once he’d gotten a racing car up to 175 mph on the straightaway.

He smiled down at her. “I guess I’ll just have to work on my driving skills.”

Chapter Nine

Parker’s Ridge

Midnight, November 20

“More?” Nick whispered into Charity’s ear Sunday night. From behind her, he shifted a damp lock of her hair to one side and licked the skin just behind her ear. She shivered.

More?Good God, he was buried so deeply inside her it almost—but not quite—hurt. How on earth could she want more? More of anything he could give her?

She was already completely his, completely in his grip. He was arched around her back, one muscled thigh between hers, opening her up. One hand held her breast, the other was holding her labia open around his penis.

“This feels so good, I don’t even want to move,” he murmured, his lips so close to her ear she could both hear his voice and feel the vibrations in his chest against her back. “But maybe—” the hand at her groin moved, opened her even further “maybe you want more.”

His hips tightened against hers and, impossibly, he slid in a little further, to a place deep inside herself she had no idea existed.

Heat blazed from her groin and she could feel herself getting wetter by the second, just from having him there, inside her, hot and heavy and unmoving. So still she could have sworn he wasn’t even breathing.

Everything about this was a delight. His big, strong hands, powerful yet delicate. Capable of touching her just so. His chest hairs tickling her back, the rough hairs at his groin scratchy against her bottom. The strong, hair-roughened legs against hers. And of course, the biggie. Literally. His penis buried in her to the hilt.

She closed her eyes as her body spasmed helplessly around him. He reacted instantly, growing even longer and thicker inside her in the space of a heartbeat.

More. He’d asked her if she wanted more and was giving it to her. She hadn’t answered him, but her body had. And his had responded.

He withdrew, just a little, the friction against the walls of her sheath like painless fire, then moved back in. Oh, God, she was starting that delicious slide into orgasm already. How did he do it?

She’d always been so slow to climax. A lover or two had even complained about it. She wasn’t slow now. All Nick had to do was touch her, enter her, and she was primed to go off.

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