I’m rewarded for that with a musical Kara giggle. “Now that deserves a medal of valor. Or a knighthood. Perhaps both.”
“Do either get me a few more hours in bed with you?” I flash a roguish smirk. “Maybe a few days? Weeks?”
Her own gaze flares. “I doubt Alameda will approve a Kara sabbatical, Professor.”
There’s the flirtation killer. Still, I work to keep my tone light while replying, “Oh, I strongly doubt they’ll refuse.”
Her eyes widen more. “Wait. What?” she charges. “What’s going on?”
I grunt and twist my lips. “It’s probably nothing. Just an email that came in overnight.”
“An email from who?” she demands.
My grunt turns into a low, protesting rumble. Still I reply, “Chairperson of the university’s board.”
“Who said what?”
She’s quieter about that one. I abhor being the cause of her overly cautious tone.
“They think a few days away from my duties might be a good idea.”
She gasps. It’s not quiet. Or cautious. “Why?”
“It’s just a suggestion. Not an order, per se. But I’m not in much of a position to challenge them at this point. Not if I want to keep my job.”
She pushes up and away, out of my lap. She doesn’t go far but gets in enough inches to show me all the energy of her frustration. “You love your job.”
I resist the urge to kiss her. This woman…how she knows so much of me already. How she values what she sees too.
“Yeah,” I say gently. “You’re right. I do love my job.”
“And they’re issuing this decree, keeping you from it.”
“Not a decree.” I push out a heavy breath. “A suggestion. Remember?”
Kara’s having none of it. “What the hell are they thinking? This isn’t the first ‘celebrityship’ that campus has seen. Don’t you remember them rerouting the cafeteria lines when that Microbio grad student had her boy-band lover in for a visit? And when they closed the locker rooms when everyone thought he’d dumped her for the volleyball team coach? You want me to go on with the examples?”
“I could probably do the same thing,” I return. “Hell, I’ve been on staff at Alameda for a bunch of them. But this is different and we both know it.”
“Because of me.” She pushes back even farther, taking the sheet with her like a protective force field. “Because of my getting sloppy about watching for cameras and thinking we were flying under the radar.”
“All the things that make it just as much my fault.” I turn and crawl up the mattress until I’m resting on my haunches in front of her. “You get that, right? There are two of us here, Kara. Two halves of the magnet. Two bands of the storm. Two people who were in the control booth that day and not being more careful…about everything.”
She regards me with an incisive expression. “You’d still do it all again?”
I run my fingers up the outside of her leg and celebrate the tremors I cause beneath the luxurious sheet. “I wouldn’t change a goddamned thing.”
“Funny… You’re the god they should fear.”
I sit back again, shaking my head, betraying the chaos in my head. I can’t fully wrap my mind around her words, despite my intuition that they’re true. “I mean, even if half of this insanity is real, that’s not what I’m about.”
Kara cocks her head once more. “If this insanity is real?”
I tighten my jaw. “You know what I mean. We have to admit that maybe I’m not…” I falter for half a second. “That Z isn’t… Well, that he won’t come back. That he was just some cleaned-up bum off the alley, looking to case out some of the apartments in the building.”
“Right,” she rebuts as the tension climbs up her face. “Because bums off the street wear bespoke Italian suits and smell like their cologne cost just as much.”
“Sure. If they’ve recently rolled someone, it’s a possibility.”
“A possibility you’re going to believe, other than the truth that’s staring you in the face.”
“Not exactly in my face,” I reply and sweep an arm out toward the peach and green mosaic of the hills. Across the ravine, a few early-riser joggers make their way along the Montlake Drive trail. “It’s been twenty-four hours, Kara.” Not that I’m keeping track or anything. “And we still haven’t heard from him.”
Maybe that’s me being judgmental. And unreasonable. It’s not like I could text the guy, telling him I’m here instead of the apartment. But if he’s really Zeus, does he need an address?
“Which gives you the perfect excuse not to believe a word he told you?”
“Well, I don’t disbelieve him.”
“But it’s easier for you to write him off as a random crazy instead of believing his claim. It’s even easier for you to believe I’m a demon than to admit his truth about your heritage.”
As soon as I lower my hand, I encase her other knee with my palm. Without giving it another thought, I push back on her legs, giving me room to occupy the space between them.
I keep going until the fit is flawless. Until it’s all so, so right again. Until I can feel her heartbeat with my own, our pulses perfectly matched. Until she’s circling her arms around my neck and her legs around my waist and her core against my erection.
The DNA in my blood doesn’t matter anymore because there’s nothing in it but her.
My silent assertion from before? About her being all mine? I was wrong. So wrong. So twisted around.
Because I’m all hers.
“I think the only truth that matters is right here,” I tell her. “And right now.” I dip in, meshing her mouth beneath mine with slow, adoring rolls, until we drag apart with reluctant sighs. “I also hope nobody comes looking for us. Not ever again.”
“Hmm.” Her breaths take on a dreamy lilt. “What a nice thing to wish for.” She delves her hands into my hair, kneading my scalp with steady languor. “We could be hippies. Live on the beach. In a yurt.”
With my face pressed against her neck, I chuckle. “With our dog named Bubba?”
“Well, of course. But Bubba will have to get lost when I want to have my way with you.”
“Who says we’re doing that inside the yurt?”
“Ohhh.” Her laugh is high but husky as I bite and nuzzle my way to her ear. “So, right out on the sand? I enjoy how your mind works, Maximus Kane.”
Her praise inspires me to new action. After a decisive yank and a forceful swoop, I roll us both all the way over, off the mattress and onto the floor. My wicked laugh mingles with Kara’s stunned shriek, and we kiss with deeper passion as the white fabric billows then settles around us. Her mouth is warm and wide, ready for me to explore and savor. Her body is bare and beautiful, ready for me to touch and tantalize. But the best part of it all is her passion, returned to me with fullness and fire…especially the flames that call to me from her eyes.
Surrounded by that awesome blaze, I’m able to find words to fill my parched throat. “I think we should pretend this is the sand.”