She nodded. She had set her bag down when she’d keyed in the alarm. She started toward the stairs without it, and then came back, looking at him sheepishly. “I can’t help it. I need it in the room, and I need the door to the room locked.”
He put his arms around her and drew her close. “Guess what?” he asked huskily. “I locked the door to the room last night.”
She smiled. “You slept here?”
“I did. I couldn’t be close to you, but I could sense you near me, and dream and imagine having you beside me,” he told her.
He loved her eyes. They were great pools of brilliant blue, ever-changing in their depths, like the colors of the ocean when the sun was out, when a storm was coming, when night fell. Now they were tender, and soft, and sparkling, as well.
She pulled from his arms and headed for the stairs, turning back when she was halfway up.
“Well?” she demanded.
“Well!”
He raced after her. By the time they reached the bedroom door he caught her. He kissed her long and hard and deeply against the door, drawing her hands over her head and pressing against her. His heart thundered; he felt as if he were on fire, and still, he had to kiss her there, breathe her in and wonder how he had lived all the years she had been gone.
At last, his mouth still firm upon hers, tongues thrusting in a wantonly hot and probing kiss, he turned the doorknob, and they staggered into the room, laughing around the kiss. She drew her shirt over her head and let it fly and pressed against him again, her fingers looping beneath his waistband.
“The door,” she whispered against his mouth.
“The door,” he whispered back.
Still entangled, he backed his way to it and slid the bolt. Then he pushed her forward, and in a second they were on the bed. He released her bra, and her breasts tumbled into his hands and a spasm went through him, hardening him instantaneously. He covered her bare breasts with the curve of his hand, the molten caress of his tongue, and worked his way down. They were still half-clad, and entangled in their clothing, and they disentangled themselves while they made love, touching, stroking with fevered lips and tongues. Finally they were both fully naked and he rose above her and thrust within her, and for a moment he caught her eyes, and the honesty within them, and then she wrapped herself around him and they began to move, undulating slowly, then frantically, and when he came, he knew that sex had never been better, and that there would never be anyone in his life like Kelsey Donovan again. She’d been the ghost in his heart since she had left, and it seemed that all his life, he had been waiting for her return.
Exhausted, sated, they fell against one another. Entangled in one another’s arms, they slept.
He sat in Cutter Merlin’s chair at Cutter Merlin’s desk, and he felt elated. An alarm system!
They were such fools.
So clever, and they knew nothing. The invisible could see so much while unseen. Even alarm codes.
Nothing. They knew nothing.
He was brilliant, and the last episode on the beach was going to give him everything that he needed. Everything.
Because it was time. Kelsey knew. Even if she didn’t know that she knew, the whereabouts of the reliquary were in her mind.
The time had come.
A spasm of anger ripped through him. She was up there now, in her room, with Beckett. They were probably naked. Sweating and copulating. He could imagine the feel of her skin. The feel of her breasts. And that bastard Beckett was with her. He was tempted to get the shotgun that they still hadn’t found, and go in, guns blazing. He’d see the look on Beckett’s face when he fired straight between his eyes. And then Kelsey would be there, naked on her knees in the spill of the cop’s blood, and she would be begging him; she’d do anything for her life….
He couldn’t do that. He still didn’t have the reliquary.
He had to stop thinking about her.
In her room.
Locked in. It irritated him beyond all reason that she locked that door. Why? Why the hell would she lock the door in her house, when she was alone, and when she was with the cop?
And why…why in hell sleep with the book?
Kelsey, in the room, naked, sweaty, making love to the cop.
He winced.
The reliquary was the prize.
But he had waited long and patiently.
The prize would come now as he chose it.
Well, the cop had to go to work. Investigating him! Ha ha, that was a laugh.
The cop would go to work.
And he would be alone.
With her.
It was time.
He smiled suddenly. He rose and moved in silence through the house. He knew the house so very well.
There were things he could do this night that would ensure all would come to him tomorrow.
15