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morning in a sweat," he continued. "The perp's face, those shots, roaring in my head. I put on my clothes, drove a hundred and twenty miles and knocked on my mother's door at four in the morning. Not a smart thing for a guy to do when the woman in question has two sons who are cops. I probably took ten years off her life, making her think one of us had been killed.
"But she knew. She looked at my face and knew. I was too manly and old to let her undress me and put me in a tub of course." He smiled against her temple. "But she ran me a bath, fed me, sat with me, and held my hand when I finally fell asleep on her couch next to her. I know she didn't let go. Not until I woke up and felt I could face it, because I'd managed to get through the first night, thanks to her."
"You're not making that up." She lifted her head, looked hard at him.
"No, I'm not." He smoothed back her hair, kissed her brow.
"How many times...?"
"Seven times in twenty years," he said. "Once it was a woman. Once it was a fourteen-year-old kid." He framed her face in his hands. "Just some advice. Give yourself time to accept it, mourn it. Let it run around in your head awhile, wait a few days to analyze. In our line of work, there's no walking away. Sometimes the choice has to be made, and sometimes it's made for us. I can tell you from experience, the first way is a lot harder to live with than the second. It's that simple. Okay?"
She nodded, thinking, and he brushed his thumb over her lips. "Let me get you something to wear, if you're ready to get out."
Violet was, and she waited in the tub until he brought her one of his T-shirts. He didn't let her dry herself. He had her step out onto a soft floor mat, and then rubbed her gently with a thick terry cloth towel. A dark heavy cotton that had his musky smell, the T-shirt was so large it fell to mid-thigh and slipped off one shoulder. When he had it on her, he picked her up, carried her out onto the back porch where the sun was setting on the marsh in a glory of rose and gold, a confirmation of life, and miracles. She looked at him as he settled her, his face intent, and knew it was a confirmation of something else, something too clearly present in this past hour to be anything else.
Of love.
Chapter 19
After they ate, he curled up behind her on the bed in his room, stroking her hair until she fell asleep watching the moon rise over the marsh out the window. When she woke, its light was streaming in. She held her hand up to it, watched the play of silver on her pale skin.
I'm alive.
A large hand lifted into her vision, entwined its fingers with her own, and she felt Mac's broad chest pressed into her shoulder blades.
And I'm not alone.
In that quiet moment she saw what she was and could be to him - Mistress, lover, woman. What she already might be to him. Everything. A humbling, terrifying and exhilarating thought all at once.
"Okay?" he murmured, his voice like a soothing stroke over every raw nerve, drawing a curtain over the things she could not bear to face right now, that her consciousness would have to accept a small piece at a time. A bullet firing, a man's face turning into meat, the stop of a heartbeat.
"Let it go for tonight, sugar." His hand whispered down over her back, the curve of her waist, her hip, his fingertips smoothing over her skin like raindrops sliding down, the touch of something natural, expected, known. Something that sustained life. Hope.
"Do you know what I thought when he lifted the gun, and I knew it was going to fire?" She kept her eyes on the movement of the waters through the marsh grass, stirred from the movement of some creature who dwelled there, she expected.
She could have chosen not to tell him, knew it probably was not wise to tell him, but in the loneliest hour of the night, there was only truth, and a trust that she could tell him anything.
"What, baby?"
Her lips curved at the endearment, one a Mistress didn't often get to hear. Her alpha male.
"I thought, 'What if I never see Mac again?'"
She looked up at him then and found him leaning over her, those silver eyes so close and alive, silver filled with moonlight. "That was the last thought I had before that gun fired."
His arms closed around her and he lifted her up against his chest, enclosing her in his heat and strength. Warmth. Life. He was pure, pulsing life. She kept her arms tucked into her body, letting him hold her completely, surround her, her forehead and lips pressed to his chest.
"Make love to me, Mackenzie," she whispered. "Please. Nothing but you and me."
He eased her back, looked into her face. He didn't ask if she was sure, but he gave her that moment. She reached up, touched his jaw.
The kiss took her under, into a warm, languid world of pleasant dreams and slow thoughts that drifted into waters that turned her, spun her in a dizzying eddy of light and sensation. She opened her mouth and tasted him, the moist heat of responsive flesh, and his arms increased their hold upon her, so she felt the beat of his heart and the arousing stir of his cock against her hip and stomach.
He eased her to her back, his silhouette over her, and the moonlight gave her another glimpse of his expression, intent, devoted to her, worshipping her, cozening her, desiring her. He could have held back, let her only see the gentleness, but as if he knew instinctively what she needed, he revealed that flare of male desire, the impatient lust to take, and her blood stirred, suddenly eager for his passion, the brutal strength of a taking.
She brought his head down to her breast and then took her hands beneath the covers to find the hem of the T-shirt she wore, get it out of the way. Before she could, he had bracketed her breasts in his larger hands, stretching the soft fabric tight over the taut points, and brought his mouth down on one to torture her through the cloth. Dampen it with his mouth, lick and suckle her through the rub and caress of the cotton.
"Mac." Her voice was a breath of sound in the quiet bedroom. His knee pressed between her thighs, and she spread open for him, cradling him, gasping as he seated his cock against her sensitive clit and pubic bone. She was naked beneath the shirt. And he had come to bed naked, making himself available to her in any way she needed him.
