Dark Deceiver (12 page)

Because he'd never known anything else.

But it didn't matter. None of it mattered. He was what he was.

And he knew what he had to do.

 

Autumn stroked Kade's muscular back, her hand sliding up and down the cotton, feeling the tense vibrations beneath her palm. For more than an hour, he'd stood here, staring out Myrtle's window, even though the sun had set and he could probably see little through the glass but his own reflection. He'd clearly taken all he could take of blood and miracles, and she didn't blame him for being unnerved by it all. She was suffering from a bad case of emotional whiplash herself.

Larsen had almost died!

Then they'd saved her…
all
of them. Autumn still didn't understand how her own involvement could have possibly mattered, but it seemed to have made a difference. Every time she thought of watching that bullet rise out of that gash, she got chills and tears in her eyes. She'd witnessed a miracle. She'd helped
create
a miracle. And if she never did anything worthwhile for the rest of her life, this day would be enough.

She looked back at the sofa where Jack sat hugging his wife. He looked much worse than she did now, with the bandage on his head and his arm in the sling. Her happiness for them was so great, her eyes welled up all over again and her heart soared with the pure joy of knowing Larsen was fine.

She glanced back at Kade. If only he could share in the happiness instead of being unnerved by it all.

“Myrtle's taking a nap,” Tarrys said, closing the bedroom door behind her and joining them in the living room. “The healing exhausts her.” She stopped behind the lone empty chair, resting her arms on the back as she addressed Larsen. “How about you?”

Larsen smiled at the small woman. “I feel a little tired, but otherwise pretty amazing, all things considered.”

“What happened?” Tarrys blanched and straightened as if embarrassed to have asked the question. “Forgive me…but I would like to know.”

“Tarrys, stop that,” Larsen scolded. “You're not a slave anymore. If you want to know something, ask. If it's not a question we want to answer, we'll tell you so.”

A slow smile lit the former slave's delicate features. “My thanks. I know that my will is my own now. But the knowing is easier than the doing.” Her smile disappeared. “Was Charlie injured?”

Jack smiled and squeezed Larsen's shoulder. “Charlie's fine. He didn't get there until the ambulances were arriving. He's still at the hospital with his brother. Harrison's going to be there for a couple of days while they repair his leg, but he should be fine. All in all, we were incredibly lucky.”

He turned to look at Larsen, so much deep, rich love in his eyes that a lump formed in Autumn's throat just watching the two of them. She'd always wondered what it would be like to feel that strongly for someone. Now she thought she was beginning to understand.

She turned back to Kade and was lifting her hand to resume stroking his back when she caught his reflection in the window. Alarmed, she stepped forward where she could see his profile. At the sight, apprehension shivered through her. He looked angry.
Furious.
His dark brows low and straight over hard eyes, a muscle leaping in his jaw with the rhythmic clenching of his teeth.

“Kade? What's the matter?”

If he were another man, she might have been frightened by the look of fury on his face. But he was Kade and he wouldn't hurt her. She knew that.

But when she reached for him, he reared back, turning that mask of rage on her.
“Get back. Get away from me.”

Her heart lurched. Autumn stumbled back, staring at the man who'd suddenly become a stranger. “Kade?”

Jack came up beside her, pushing her behind him. “You doing okay, big guy? You've been through a lot today. We all have. Why don't you have a seat?”

But Jack's words weren't working. If anything, Kade was getting angrier.

She watched Jack's stance shift ever so slightly, as if he were bracing himself for Kade's attack. Which was ridiculous. Of course Kade wouldn't attack him. But second after second, the tension built, the air growing so thick she could hardly breathe.

Then suddenly, without a word, Kade whirled and stalked to the door. He left, slamming the door behind him.

Autumn stared at the place he'd been, her heart pounding in her chest. Then ran for the door.

“Autumn!” Jack called. “Give him some time.”

But she couldn't do that. In the instant before he turned, Kade had met her gaze. In his eyes she'd seen an ache, a misery so profound she'd felt her heart tear. She ran out into the hallway, turned toward the elevator and stopped. Halfway down the corridor, Kade stood, back against the wall, his head tilted as he stared at the ceiling. His body shook so badly she could see it vibrating from there.

She started toward him with wary steps, unsure of her reception. But as she neared, he turned toward her with eyes so bleak, they tore at her soul.

“Do you want some company?” she asked.

“I want you.” His words were low and raw.

She didn't move, but kept her gaze firmly on his and nodded. “I'm here for you.”

In some corner of her mind, she wondered if she'd just agreed to go to bed with him. And realized that whether that's what he'd asked, that's how she'd answered. She wanted him. All of him. For now and always, or at least for as long as he wanted her.

A
utumn didn't reach for him, nor did he reach for her. But he turned and they walked together to the elevator, not speaking again until they were in her car.

Autumn turned on the ignition. “Do you want to come back to the houseboat with me?”

“No. My apartment. I'll tell you how to get there.”

They drove in silence except for Kade's brief directions. Autumn found a parking space on the street and together they took the elevator to the fifth floor. Kade let them into his apartment and turned on a light to reveal an attractive room with simple, clean lines, the earth tones relieved by the colorful splashes of modern art that dotted the walls.

Kade went to the kitchen and flicked on a light, his back straight and tense.

Autumn shoved her hands into her back pockets, suddenly unsure of herself. He'd said he needed her, then hadn't said a word to her other than “Turn left” or “Turn right” since. Had he only been looking for company? Was she supposed to just hang out and watch TV?

He pulled a bag of carrots and a bag of celery out of the refrigerator, grabbed a knife and started chopping.

Autumn eased closer until she stood in the kitchen doorway. “What are you making?”

He chopped two more carrots, cutting them into tiny chunks, before answering. His gaze flicked to hers, then back to the carrots. “I don't know.”

Oh, Kade.
In his eyes, she'd seen an isolation so profound he didn't know how to breach it, even with her standing here. He was chopping carrots, she suspected, because he had to do
something.

He did need her. More than she'd realized. Probably more than he knew. He needed the touch of another, but was too strong, too alone, to know how to ask.

So she made the move he didn't know how to make. She pulled her hands from her pockets and went to him.

“Don't stab me, okay?” she said softly as she walked up behind him, slid her arms around his waist and pressed her cheek to his back. He didn't answer, didn't quit chopping, but he accepted her comfort with a tremor that rippled down his body.

He felt so good against her, solid and warm. More than anything, she wanted to reach that deep loneliness she sensed inside him and banish it. He wasn't alone anymore. He wouldn't be again, unless he wanted to be.

But first she had to break down the thick walls he'd erected around himself.

She slid her hands beneath his zipped jacket to tug at the shirt tucked into his pants. For a moment, he stilled while she pulled it free, then resumed chopping. The warm skin of his abdomen caressed her palms, making her breath catch at her own bold move. His abs were rock hard, delighting her fingertips and heating her blood. She wanted to feel more of him, see more of him. Taste him.

But despite the increasingly urgent pressure of her hands beneath his shirt, Kade didn't respond. Though he allowed her this pleasure, he gave her no indication he shared it.

Autumn's confidence faded. She'd acted purely on instinct, but she was the first to admit she had way too little experience with men to think she knew how to please one. She pulled her hands from his shirt and stepped back, embarrassed.

The knife went silent. “Don't stop.” His words, though low, ached with a need beyond the flesh.

She stared at his stiff, proud back, as a tenderness almost beyond bearing engulfed her. He needed her. The thought trembled through her with the sweetness of a warm wind on a cold day.

Gathering her battered confidence, she closed the distance between them and slid her hands over the soft leather that covered his back, making large circles designed to calm and comfort.

But the play of muscles beneath her fingers was anything but calming. Her pulse accelerated as she drank in the scent of leather and warm male. She wanted more. Needed more.

Her hands slid down to his waist and with unsteady fingers, she lifted the back of his shirt, pushing up the leather, exposing the strong, fine lines of his back inch by delicious inch. Emboldened by his need for her touch, Autumn leaned forward and planted kisses on one side of his spine and then the other, feeling the muscles quiver beneath her lips, though Kade himself remained rigidly still, his vegetables forgotten.

She shifted her kisses to his spine. But when her tongue darted out to taste the ridge of bone, he jerked, arching away from her.

“Autumn.”
The word came out on a strangled laugh.

Autumn grinned, delighted. “You're ticklish. Put down the knife before you stab one of us.” But when she tried to kiss him again, he pulled out of the grip of her hands, turned and hauled her into his arms.

The look on his face was part humor, part surrender and all desire. With a groan, he covered her mouth in a kiss that exploded through her, sending chills of need tearing through her body.

The kiss was hard and urgent, his lips moving over hers with hot demand and something more. A desperation. In his kiss, she tasted the darkness of his self-imposed prison and the confusion that still swirled within him. He needed her, she realized, to lead him out of that darkness.

Love for him swelled until she could hardly breathe around it.

When his tongue slid into her mouth, she welcomed it, twining her arms around his neck and pressing herself against him, feeling the hard ridge of his arousal.

Excitement and need heated her blood, pooling dampness between her legs. This was what love was all about, she realized. This fierce tenderness combined with a desire so intense she thought it might tear her limb from limb. This need to give herself up to it…to
him…
in every way.

Kade's big hands roamed her back, then slid down to her bottom where they gripped and kneaded. Desire spiraled out of control, spiking in a gasp as he rubbed her against his erection, telling her in no uncertain terms what he wanted.

Was she ready for this, ready
finally
to know a man in that way? To know Kade in that way?

Oh, yeah.
More than ready.

Autumn gripped his face with her hands and drank of him as he devoured her, telling him silently of her love, her need. Comforting him even as she stole comfort in the knowledge he needed her. He wanted her.

She felt his hands on her braid, his fingers tugging it loose.

“I want your hair against my skin.” His tongue slid across her lower lip, then dove back into her mouth with a sound of pleasure. As the kiss grew more frantic, she felt his fingers slide against her scalp and shoulders as he unbraided her hair.

He pulled away and she groaned in protest until her passion-dazed eyes focused and she saw the look on his face. He watched her with an expression of such softness, such caring, she wondered if he, too, were falling in love. Tears stung her eyes at the sweet perfection of the thought.

With gentle hands, he lifted her unbound hair over her shoulders. “You're so beautiful,” he whispered, the truth shining in his eyes.

For the first time in her life, she
felt
beautiful.

With excruciating deliberateness, he leaned forward, grazing his lips across her cheek, sending shivers of pure delight tingling through her body. Tenderly, he trailed kisses along her jaw, then down the sensitive skin of her neck. The shivers intensified a hundredfold, tightening her nipples, sending more damp heat to pool between her legs. She clung to his shoulders, tilting her head to the side, encouraging his gentle, exquisite attack. Need built inside her, pulsing and growing until it was alive in every vein, every muscle, demanding release. Here. Now.

With this man.

As his lips pressed against her neck, he pushed the blazer off her shoulders and let it slide to the floor. Then his fingers moved to the top button of her shirt.

Autumn kept her eyes closed, drowning in sensation, reveling in the feel of his lips pressed against her upper chest, moving downward with the release of each button of her shirt.

When he pushed the shirt off her shoulders, she opened her eyes to find him watching her with sharp desire. His hands cupped the pink lace of her bra, his thumbs sliding over her sensitive nipples, nearly buckling her knees.

He leaned forward until his lips brushed her mouth. “I want you, Autumn McGinn. I want to be inside you. I
need
to be inside you.” His mouth slid across her cheek to tug at the lobe of her ear. “If you don't want that, tell me now. Before I go any further.”

She forced her arms, heavy with wanting, to grasp his face. Her fingers slid through his hair. “I want you, Kade. All of you. Inside me.”

He pulled back, searching her eyes with his brilliant blue gaze, as if not quite believing the truth of her words. Deep in his eyes, behind the hard alpha pride, she saw uncertainty. And wonder. As if he weren't God's gift to women, but a man all too used to rejection and denial.

“If you want me, let me see you,” he murmured. “All of you.”

Autumn felt heat rise up her body, flaming in her cheeks. She breathed in quick, shallow breaths, her pulse racing, but she felt powerful.

A slow smile pulled at her mouth as she reached behind her and unfastened her bra. She pulled it off and tossed it to the ground, standing before this amazing man, bared and proud, offering him…everything.

As her fingers groped for the button on her pants, Kade lifted his big hands to her breasts, sliding his palms across her ultra-sensitive nipples until she was gasping for air.

His hands clenched gently around the soft mounds as he stroked one nipple with his tongue, then the other. Need shot through her, doubling when he took the second breast wholly into his mouth. She arched against him, holding his dark head against her as she drank in the exquisite feel of him. When his damp tongue slid across the hard, sensitive tip, heat spiraled so deep, so low inside her, she wasn't sure how anything could feel any better.

His mouth moved to her other breast, lavishing upon it the same exquisite attention until her hips were rocking against his chest, her fingers digging into his scalp. When he pulled back, the expression on his face was sheer triumph, his eyes burning with a fire hot enough to melt her where she stood.

With his gaze locked on hers, he slid her pants down over her hips and thighs, stopping only when he reached her knees where Larsen's blood had soaked her jeans and dried, causing the fabric to stick.

Autumn sighed with pained disappointment. “I need a shower.”

Kade pried the fabric loose and pushed the pants down to her ankles where she stepped free of them.

Kade rose to his feet, his blue eyes smoky with desire, the violence she'd sensed in him when they'd first arrived channeled now into an entirely different passion. She felt his gaze like a tender caress as his fingertips grazed her face. “You are so beautiful,” he whispered again, his words aching with emotion.

Her hands splayed against his leather-covered chest. “So are you.”

With a daring she'd never before possessed, she reached between his legs and stroked the hard, thick ridge inside his pants. He closed his eyes and threw his head back, a groan of pure pleasure rising from deep in his throat. “Autumn…” He opened his eyes and pulled her hard against him, his kiss barely controlled.

The metal zipper of his jacket pressed against her abdomen, reminding her she was the only one un-clothed. She needed to feel the warmth of his skin beneath her fingertips. And she needed to feel not quite so exposed.

“You have too many clothes on,” she murmured against his mouth, then reached for the zipper of his jacket, but his hands snatched hers and gently pushed them away.

“I'll do it.” He turned away from her and retreated to his bedroom.

Autumn followed and watched as, back turned to her, he shed his jacket, then pulled his polo shirt over his head and tossed it on the floor. Her breath caught in her throat as her gaze took in the sight of his muscular back, perfectly proportioned, with wide shoulders narrowing to a trim waist.

He glanced down at himself, then turned toward her, a rueful look on his face. “We're both going to need showers.” Blood stained the skin of his abdomen, but did nothing to hide the hard muscles. Standing there, shirtless, covered with blood, he looked like a warrior of old returning from battle. Deadly, dangerous and very, very sexy.

The flash of devilish amusement in his eyes set the butterflies to flight in her stomach. “We'll share one.”

The very thought made her legs tremble, but when he held out his hand to her, she hesitated less than a heartbeat before placing hers in his palm, giving him her heart, her body and her unquestioning trust.

He led her to the bathroom, turned on the shower, then pulled her into his arms, his eyes shining with desire and tenderness. She'd always felt too big, too clumsy and ungainly. But in Kade's arms, pressed against his far larger frame, she felt feminine and perfect. Beneath his gentle touch she felt delicate and cherished.

Loved.