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Realizing he had come from his lover and dared to touch her, to make her body burn, riot with such need that she couldn’t resist it, destroyed her.
Staring through the windshield all she wanted to do was find another hole to curl up in and sleep.
“We’re almost to the house,” Graham promised.
The back roads he was taking were unfamiliar to her. Hell, she thought she’d traveled all the back roads into and out of Somerset and the Lake Cumberland area in the past six years. Yet Graham was showing her routes she had no idea existed.
“You’ll endanger Kye,” she whispered.
“Kye’s not home. I’ve already ensured her protection.”
Turning her head to look at him, she frowned, remembering a time that Kye had disappeared once before.
“This has happened before, hasn’t it?” she said. “You’ve had to do something where you had to send Kye away.”
“I have safeguards in place,” he stated rather than answering her. “She’s my sister. Just like Dawg has safeguards in place. Unfortunately, a man is only human. None of us foresaw you leaving the county without letting anyone know where or when you were going.”
Should she feel guilty?
She didn’t think so.
“I wanted to go shopping.” A bitter smile crossed her lips as she held the bottle of water in a desperate grip. “Dawg didn’t tell me he had a guard dog watching over me while he was gone.”
But she should have known. She should have thought.
“Not a guard dog, Lyrica.” Graham shook his head as he made another turn onto a more familiar road. “He left others to protect you. But I guess someone just wasn’t watching when you left town, because no one called me to let me know you couldn’t be reached until Kye asked to borrow my phone.”
Lyrica sat up then, turning sideways in the seat, her eyes narrowing on him suspiciously. “Dawg would not have left you to watch out for me while he was out of town, Graham. That’s not the same as some damned party,” she informed him with amused mockery. “You’re not family.”
“No, I’m your last defense.” His expression was hard, cold. “I’m the only person Dawg trusts who still has the contacts and the equipment needed if the unthinkable happened. I’ll get you back to the house, get you out of sight, then I’ll find out why no one contacted me and if anyone has contacted Dawg, why he didn’t call me. And he would have. Give me a few hours and we’ll know where we stand. Then we’ll know where to go from there.”
Know where to go from there?
“Twilight zone,” she whispered, shaking her head. “I’m in the freakin’ twilight zone.”
“Hell, twilight zone beats a casket any day of the week, don’t you think?”
Yeah, it beat a casket, but Lyrica was wondering at the cost. She knew herself and she knew that being alone with Graham wasn’t going to be a good idea.
Weary, her gaze blurry with exhaustion, she watched as he pulled the car around to the back of the house, then into the little-used garage. He stored the Viper there in the winter, but other than that, Kye had mentioned once, the garage wasn’t often used.
“Here we go. Hungry?” Shutting off the motor, he turned to look at her, concern filling the golden, almost amber color of his gaze.
“I need a shower.” She sighed. “I wasn’t exactly sitting in a bed of roses.”
“No, baby, you weren’t.” She didn’t pull back when he reached out and tucked her hair behind her ear. “Come on, let’s get you into a shower and I’ll fix you a bite to eat so you can sleep.”
Graham had to force himself out of the car. Moving quickly around the vehicle, he was there as she pushed the door open. He reached in and helped her easily from the low-slung little sports car, her delicacy amazing him even when it shouldn’t.
He couldn’t help pulling her against him as he watched her stumble just a bit. Dammit, she was exhausted, frightened, and living on sheer nervous energy at the moment.
“I’m fine,” she assured him, though she didn’t move, didn’t attempt to push out of his arms. Instead, she leaned against him, her head pressed against his chest, her weight settling against his naturally.
He was in trouble here, he admitted. But hell, he’d admitted that six months ago when she lay beneath him, giving herself to him so sweetly.
“Come on, little bit.” Swinging her into his arms, he almost grinned at the little sigh she breathed out. Her arms went around his neck, her head settling comfortably against his shoulder.
Damn her.
