by Jill Shalvis
He found himself grinning. “Nice costume.”
“Got it from eBay. It came from the set of Game of Thrones.”
He didn’t care if it’d come from the moon. He loved the leather skirt¸ the straps wrapped up her calves, and especially the corset barely containing her breasts. He wanted to pull on the tie of the corset and unravel her. “You going to be a warrior princess for Halloween?” he asked.
“No, but I’m hoping someone in Lucky Harbor will want to be—”
Lightning burst.
Olivia jerked. “One, two, three,” she whispered, and cringed as thunder rolled through the shop. “That’s awfully close,” she said shakily. “Too close.”
“Hey.” He pulled her into him. “It’s okay. We’ve had worse.”
“But what if the power goes out?”
“It probably will,” he said.
She chewed on her lower lip, looking worried.
“You afraid of the dark?”
At this, her spine snapped straight. “No.”
He smiled, and she sagged. “Okay, maybe just a little,” she said. “I blame the Sleepy Hollow marathon I just watched.”
“I could get your mind off of being scared.”
She met his gaze. “That’d be like jumping from the frying pan into the fire.”
True enough. He looked at the collapsed shelving unit at their feet. Cheap laminated plywood, and poorly constructed at that. “New?”
“Yes.” Olivia gave the pile a little kick. “And it’s a piece of crap.”
“Yeah,” he agreed. “But it’s more how it was put together that was the problem.”
“Hey,” she said, then sighed. “And true.”
He picked up a small plastic bag with three screws in it. “Here’s problem number one. You’re supposed to use all the screws, Supergirl.”
“Well, now you tell me.”
He laughed, which he realized he did a lot around her, and crouched low to gather the pieces together.
“I didn’t see that baggie of screws. Do you need my tool kit?” she asked.
He looked up at her. Up those long, bare legs to the leather kick-ass costume that made his mouth water. “You don’t have a tool kit.”
“I do now,” she said proudly. “Brand new, too. Got it yesterday at the hardware store.” She went to a closet and pulled out a small toolbox with a variety of dollar-store tools in it. She lifted the cheap battery-operated screw gun. “Look at this baby. It’s what I used to put the shelves together.”
“Cute,” he said, enjoying thinking about her sitting right here on the floor, piecing the shelving unit together. “But let’s use all the screws this time.”
“Good idea.” She revved the screw gun. Annie Oakley meets Xena, Warrior Princess.
“You can direct,” she said, “but I get to do all the screwing.”
He grinned. “A guy’s greatest fantasy.”
But he did indeed direct, and she screwed, her brow furrowed in concentration, lower lip being tortured between her teeth as she worked.
It was sexy as hell.
“You like doing things for yourself,” he said when they’d gotten the shelving unit back together and she stood there, hands on hips, staring proudly at her finished product.
“Always have,” she said. “It’s the city rat in me.”
“I thought you were a country kid.”
She stilled briefly, then turned away. “I’m a hybrid.”
He came around the shelving unit to look at her. She was studying the shelves, her expression faraway, lost in memories. “How did you lose them?” he asked softly.
Her head jerked to his. “Who?”
“Your family.”
Her face closed up. Just closed up entirely. “I…don’t like to talk about it.”
He nodded. That was something he could understand all too well. “When my dad died,” he said, “I couldn’t talk about it, either. He was such an important part of my life for so long. It was always him and me against the wave of estrogen in my house growing up. We were a team.”
“But you love them,” she said. “Your sisters.”
“Yeah, of course.” He gave her a small smile. “They’re family, you know?”
She just kept staring at him, and the oddest feeling came over him, the feeling that she really didn’t know. “You’ve been on your own for a long time, haven’t you?” he asked.
Still staring at him, she hesitated and then nodded. She opened her mouth to say something, and he leaned in to hear her over the driving rain slanting against the windows because he didn’t want to miss a word.
But in the next blink, lightning again lit up the shop, and again she jerked.
“One,” she said shakily. “Two—”
The crack of thunder had her taking a quick step closer to him, and then…
The lights flickered and went out.
Her hand slipped into his. He immediately pulled her closer. “It’s okay,” he said. “I’ve got you.”
“I’m not scared,” she said, and then pressed her face into his chest. “I just don’t want you to be.”
He smiled into her hair. “Sweet.”
Her arms slipped around his waist as she pressed even closer. “That’s me. Sweet Olivia.”
She was trembling, and he stroked a hand down her back. “Come on, Supergirl. Let’s lock up and get you home.” He grabbed her coat and held it out for her.
“I need to change.”
He eyed her in that mouthwatering costume and shook his head. “Leave it on,” he said. “You might have to protect me on the way home.”
“Don’t be silly.”
“Okay, then leave it on because it’s the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen.”
She buttoned her coat over the costume without another word. “My truck,” he said. “I’ll drive.” They braved the stormy night together and ran hand in hand to his truck.
Inside her warehouse, her place was dark and the usual frigid temperature. “You have candles?” he asked as they stepped inside. “Or a lantern?”
“Candles.” She moved forward, bumped into something, swore, and was ripped from his hands.
He flicked on a penlight from his pocket and once again found her sprawled on the floor.
“Not a word,” she said as she hopped up and dusted herself off. “I don’t want to hear it.”
“What did you trip over?” He aimed the light at the floor, but there was nothing.
“My own feet, if you must know,” she said. “And I said I don’t want to talk about it.”
He smiled. “Remind me to keep you in the center of the boat when you’re out on the water. I don’t want to lose you overboard.” He continued to direct the light around the place, curious about her. It looked just like her store. “It’s nice in here.”
“So on top of a screwdriver and some duct tape, you also carry a flashlight. What else do you keep in your pants?”
He grinned, and she blushed. “You know what I mean!” she said, clapping a hand to her cheeks. “Oh, never mind. Candles. I’m getting candles.”
She moved to an antique hutch and opened some drawers, pulling out two armfuls of candles, which she spread around the place. “Here,” she said, handing him some more. “I’ll start lighting them.” She struck a match along the matchbox, and it sizzled, went whoomp, and burst into flame.
He startled. It pissed him off, but he did. There was no getting around it, and there was no missing it either. He’d just jumped like a goddamn baby because a goddamn match had been lit.
Over the small, flickering flame, Olivia met his gaze. She didn’t say a word, just slowly touched the tip of the match to a candle and then repeated the process on the other candles until the match’s flame got too low and she had to blow it out.
She didn’t light another.
The five candles she’d lit brought a little glow to the place, and some desperately needed warmth.
Or maybe that was the look in her eyes.<
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She set the matchbox down and came to him. “I’m scared,” she said.
Bullshit. She wasn’t scared. But then she slid her arms around him again, and he couldn’t think beyond the fact that she was clearly cold. Letting out a low sound, he pulled her into him. “You’re shaking.”
“That’s you,” she said softly.
Well, hell.
She slid her fingers into his hair and met his gaze. “What’s going on, Cole?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing is why you’re jumpy around flames?”
“I’m never jumpy.”
She ticked the moments off on her fingers. “You fell off your boat at a spark. You froze at my shop at another spark, and then just now with a flame.”
“Maybe I’m just a fucking pussy,” he said.
“Or maybe things are bothering you.”
His gaze locked on hers. “And you think badgering me about it will help?”
A bolt of lightning lit the room like day for one single heartbeat. Thunder immediately boomed, shaking the ground and rattling the windows. She shivered and shifted closer. “I think I know something that will help.”
Chapter 15
Olivia pressed closer to Cole, tilting her head up to see his face. But it was dark, and he’d closed his eyes.
It was a technique she knew well. She’d just never had it used against her before.
“Not talking about it,” he said. “Not right now.”
She got that. She could understand that. “You’re wet,” she said softly.
“So are you.” He opened his eyes then, and with some of his usual good humor, met her gaze. “And déjà vu.”
Had it been only a week since that morning they’d dragged themselves to his boat, frozen, shivering, needing to get warm, stripping down to the skin beneath a blanket?
Why did it seem like a million years ago?
The reason was both obvious and uncomfortable. There was the amount of time you’d known someone, and then there was the way you’d spent that time.
They hadn’t had much, she and Cole, and though the time they’d spent together had been intensely intimate, bonding them, she still didn’t know his favorite color or whether he was a lid up or down sort of guy.
But she knew something was wrong. Something was haunting him from deep inside. And she was driven to help.
Odd, because he was just about the least helpless male she’d ever met. But she wanted to bring him comfort. She wanted to be his comfort. “You know what comes next, right?” she asked, keeping her voice light, teasing.
He shook his head.
“I get you warmed up.” So she took him by the hand and led him over to her bed, where she pushed him down to sit. Then she wasn’t sure what to do with herself.
He arched a brow.
His facade. That amused, laid-back expression, like Everything’s cool, no worries. He was damned good at that, so good that she imagined most people never saw past it.
But because she had that same look mastered, she could see beneath it. She didn’t know exactly what was wrong, only that something was. And if he was half as good at hiding his emotions as she was, then he wasn’t going to let go easily.
“Strip,” she said.
He smiled. “Love it when you get rough,” he said, but didn’t move.
Fine. She got that too. Holding back, building barriers. Hard to keep up any barriers without clothes, however, and on a mission, she pulled off her coat, tossing it on a chair by her bed.
His smile widened at the costume beneath. “You going to let me peek this time?” he asked.
“You peeked last time,” she reminded him, willing to let him think he was running the show. She unlaced the costume and it fell from her. This left her in leather arm bands and…neon pink panties. She bent to the sandals and he groaned.
“Leave them,” he said.
She yanked the covers down and sat on the bed, eyeing him expectantly.
Eyes on her, he stood up and toed off his shoes, then did that sexy guy thing where he one-handed his shirt off over his head. Then his hands went to the zipper on his cargoes. “You going to warm me up, Supergirl?”
“That’s Warrior Princess to you,” she said, sucking in a breath when he shucked his pants. He was commando. Cole wore clothes extremely well, but he wore nothing even better. She loved his build, all those rangy, lean muscles. There wasn’t an ounce of extra fat on him.
Still holding her gaze prisoner, he came to the edge of the bed. “In the name of honesty,” he said, his voice low and a little rough, “you should know I’m not all that cold.”
“Good. I’m not all that scared.”
This time Cole pushed her down on the bed and climbed over the top of her. He was solid and warm, so deliciously warm. She’d been colder than she’d thought, but it wasn’t his heat that had her burrowing into him. There was something about him, as if just Cole being Cole somehow reached her deep inside and…lit up her dark places.
He cupped her face and looked into her eyes, silently demanding one hundred percent of her attention before his callused fingers skimmed her breasts, her belly, and then hooked into the pink lace at her hips.
“Lift up,” he said.
She did, and then the panties were gone, sailing into the air somewhere behind them.
“There,” he said, sounding deeply satisfied as he hauled her in against him, and not particularly gently either. “Better.”
Her senses were on complete overdrive. Back on his boat, huddled with him beneath that pile of blankets, shivering with fear and adrenaline, she hadn’t been able to appreciate the situation.
She was appreciating it now.
And he was right. He wasn’t cold. He was a furnace, and she pressed close, her soft body plastered up against his hard one. He was something else, too. He was hard.
Everywhere.
Another burst of lightning, and she cringed, waiting for the thunder. When it hit, her windows rattled.
Cole breathed her name, the whisper of it incredibly erotic. She pressed even closer, feeling his hands stroke down her body.
Tender.
Cautious.
No, wait, not cautious.
Careful.
“What are you doing?” she asked.