Desert Ice Daddy by Marton, Dana (best motivational novels .txt) 📗

If only they had the time.

Another moment passed before other thoughts caught up with him again. “About the guy. I know what I did appeared savage. Hell, I was—”

“Thank you for saving my life.”

Did she not mind what he’d done? But then why the get away from me speech? God, women were hard to understand at times, which hadn’t bothered him all that much in the past. But he wanted to understand Taylor. “Why do you want to send me away?”

She didn’t look like she was keen on giving him an answer. Looked on the exasperated side more than anything.

“Come on, Taylor.”

For a moment she flattened her lips together. Something shifted in her eyes. “You have nothing to do with this.”

He expelled the pent-up air in his lungs. “Everything that has to do with you, has to do with me,” he said quietly. It was as good as a confession, but he had to make her understand.

“You’re hurt,” she said.

“So are you.”

“You’re hurt worse.”

The corner of his mouth twitched up. “Is this a contest?”

“This might get—” She stopped as if to search for the right word. “If things go badly here…I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

His heart went wild banging in his chest. “Because?” he asked quietly.

“Because I care about you.” She looked away. “So there.”

Digesting that took a while. She cared about him. That was good. Great, in fact. He could build on that.

“Nothing’s going to happen to me. Or to you. Or to Christopher. I swear,” he said and reached out to put his fingers under her chin, turned her head, then bent his head to fit his lips to hers.

SHE COULD GET USED TO THIS. Kissing Akeem. Taylor settled against him, burrowing against his solid chest. His lips were warm on hers, gentle. Which was what she needed. The pain in her shoulder disappeared. He turned the kiss into something more urgent and demanding. Which was what she wanted.

He tasted her as if he never wanted to stop. And at this moment that was fine with her. There was such comfort in his touch.

Oblivion.

She gave herself over to the pleasure, her emotions exhausted from the day’s events. She wanted the energy that vibrated through him and into her as he explored her.

How easy this was, she thought, and wondered if it would have been like this before, if he’d taken her seriously back then, if she hadn’t run off when he’d seemed reluctant.

She didn’t wonder long. What he was doing to her felt too good to spend mental energy second-guessing the past.

They pulled apart reluctantly. He rested his forehead against hers for a moment.

“Are you okay?” He searched her eyes in the moonlit night.

She hoped he couldn’t see the heat in her face. The wound was fine, nothing but a dull throb that felt tight when she moved. Her head, however, was seriously spinning from his kisses.

She simply nodded. “What do we do next?”

Then caught herself and prayed he didn’t think she meant what might follow kissing. Nothing was going to happen along those lines. They weren’t on a date. High time she remembered that.

But he understood her without explanations and rose to look over the edge. “They’re down there.” He sat back down after a moment. “We wait until they give up searching, then we go down and find a back way into the building from where they shot at you. I bet that’s where they’re keeping Christopher.”

She peeked out, and after minutes of straining her eyes could finally see one shadow that was deeper than the others. It might have moved a fraction of an inch.

She pulled back down. “So we’re stuck here?”

“If we try to climb down now, they can pick us off easy as anything.”

“Remind me again why we came up here?”

“We needed a place to hide. And I wanted to get a better idea of the layout of the refinery. At least now we know the exact relation of the buildings to each other. We can make a plan.”

That made some sense. “But we could be stuck up here for hours.”

He nodded.

“I’m going to go crazy.” She stretched her legs, her arms, her back.

Silence settled between them as he watched.

Minutes passed before he spoke. “Why did you run off with Gary and marry him?”

SHE LOOKED AWAY, and for a moment Akeem didn’t think she would answer, didn’t know why he’d asked the stupid question in the first place. The night was filled with awareness between them and the last thing he wanted was to discuss Gary with her. And yet, part of him needed to know.

“He wanted me,” she said after a while. “He did anything to get me. I was just so dazzled that he wanted me that badly. You have no idea how nice that felt.” She shook her head.

The words You had pushed me away, You didn’t want me, hovered in the air between them.

“I was an idiot.”

That earned him a smile. Which elicited another confession.

“However much Gary wanted you, I wanted you a hundred times worse.”

Her eyes went wide. “You did?”

“I’ve been kicking myself since for not going after you when you ran off. Somebody should have.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“I was nobody. I had nothing to offer. And I figured Flint would kill me if he ever found out that I lusted after his baby sister.”

She flashed a rueful smile. “I was hardly a baby. Flint did come after me, you know.”

He shook his head. He hadn’t known. Flint had never said anything about that.

“I didn’t come back with him.”

Would she have come back with Akeem? was the question that hung in the air between them.

“I’d been naïve and idealistic. Things were off with Gary from pretty early on. But I was too determined to make it work.” She drew a deep breath. “I had to learn that not every mistake can be fixed. Some mistakes you just have to walk away from.”

He watched her in the moonlight.

“You probably don’t know much about mistakes.” She gave