The Mysterious Stranger (The Confidence Game 3)

His knees gave out and they went down in the sand. “Say it again.”

She kissed his cheekbone and whispered it into his skin. Kissed his forehead and repeated it. Kisses landed all along his jaw and he wrapped his arms around her to hold onto the miracle of it and breathe the terror that had consumed him out.

“I’m fucking in love with you, Aurora Rae. It’s the only real thing in my life.”

They would’ve kissed then. They were one misplaced hand, one desire-filled sigh away from tearing each other’s clothes off. But this wasn’t the right place for that memory and he wasn’t fit to put his rank mouth on her.

A hand in her hair, he brought their foreheads together. “I need you.” His voice was broken as if he’d been shouting for hours and Rory’s warmth was thawing him. “I need to be with you, inside you, have all the ways of you, but not here. It’s not safe and I’m a fucking mess.”

She kissed his lips anyway, a soft, quick, close-mouthed brush, a promise that made him gasp. Glorious, maddening. His body, beaten and abused, shouldn’t be so ready to take, to give, but he no longer had the discipline to hold back. He shifted his hips, let her feel him.

She put her teeth to his neck and shuddered. It was another promise.

He was less steady on his feet than either of them liked, but the cab of the truck was warm and she had a blanket, and had brought food and water. The smell of fried drumsticks made him feel ill, he’d have to take it easy. “You raided the kitchen.” She had coffee in a thermos and half a fruitcake. “What day is it? How long was I out here?”

“Eight, nine hours.”

He rubbed his eyes. His hand shook. It felt like he’d been gone a week, a lifetime. “I thought they were coming back to finish me off.”

The basket of food was between them on the seat and then it wasn’t, Rory’s arms were around him and he clung to the safety of her.

“I was so scared I wouldn’t find you.”

How did she even know where to come looking?

She slipped out of his arms and took the wheel. “I know a place we can rest.”

He must’ve passed out then, in the warmth, with a full belly and his thirst slaked. When he woke it was light and she’d pulled the pickup into a small tumbledown barn alongside an old cabin.

“No one has been here for a while judging by the dust and the spiders,” she said. “We should be safe here for a few hours. If they come searching for you, they won’t come this way. You couldn’t have found this place in the dark or walked this far in the state you were in.”

He reached for her hand. “Call Tres now. We’re done here.” Eight hours to wait for an extraction. Would he have survived eight hours in the sun as dehydrated as he was and then the time it took to search for him? “How did you find me?”

She told him about Beth, the information she picked up from the men when they returned. She’d saved his life. And he would lay his down for hers. Would’ve done it from the time they were kids without understanding why.

He told her about Mike’s information. She told him about finding the money all hooked up to transport. Abundance wasn’t broke. It wasn’t a crime to store money outside of a bank, but it sure looked like Orrin planned to bank a profit while he starved his town. Didn’t matter what his intention was, how many military grade weapons he had stashed away, with attempted murder alone, they had enough to get investigators and counselors in here.

Tres answered their call with, “Underworld Undertakers. You slay ’em, we bake ’em. No DNA left unburned. How can I help you?”

By getting them the hell out of here. He’d have access to an airport Starbucks in the next twelve to twenty-four hours but until the FBI were at the front gates, all he needed was Rory. If he could manage to stay awake, he’d hold on to her until the good guys arrived.

Inside, the cabin was surprisingly neat and tidy, there was running water, a clawfoot bath, and a handmade quilt folded in a cedar chest to lay on the saggy mattress of an old brass bed. It was a long way from a Grand Master, but it looked like heaven.

Rory unloaded the pickup and he ditched his filthy shirt, washed the blood off his face, peeled the remains of his socks away from the gashes on his feet and heated water for the bath. She made up the bed with linen smelling of the cedar. He didn’t want to be far from her and he felt less shaky than earlier. He stood in the doorway and watched her. Let himself look at her in a way he’d always avoided, his eyes dwelling on her booty as she bent to tuck in a sheet.

She was real. She’d come for him. She said she loved him.

He was barely conscious of the decision to move but there he was, a hand to her ass, smoothing up her back as she straightened, pulling her against him, and cupping her breast, arousal soaring when she sighed and melted against him.

“Did I tell you I’m fatally in love with you, Aurora Rae Archer?”

“You told me. Did I tell you I’m outrageously, endlessly in love with you?”

“You might’ve mentioned it, but I’m not sure my head’s on straight. I’ve had a rough night.” He rubbed his thumb across her raised nipple and her head dropped back on his chest. “We don’t need to take this anywhere. Maybe this is not the moment.” He wasn’t in great shape and this was hardly the right time.

“You should rest.”

Sensible advice except she sounded so disappointed and it might wreck him worse than another beating to walk this back.