He put her between the sheets and stripped off his own clothes, then got into bed beside her. She wished she had a king-size bed, so he would be more comfortable. Hers was a queen, but she suspected his feet hung off the end.
They turned toward each other like a magnet and steel, the force irresistible. He stroked her breasts, making her nipples tingle and her breath shorten. “You need to sleep,” he muttered, but he was rock hard.
She closed her hand around his erection, stroking him with the same slow touch he was using on her breasts. “I need you more,” she said.
He put on a condom and rolled on top of her. Sweeney spread her legs, taking him between them. He prodded the entrance to her body, his shaft thick and hot.
Sweeney didn’t wait, couldn’t wait. She clasped her legs around his and lifted her hips so that he slipped inside her.
Pleasure seemed to spread smoothly through her body, without the sharpness and urgency of the night before. His strokes were slow and deep, as if he wanted to savor every inch of her. She found the rhythm and joined him in it, and despite the lack of urgency, it seemed only moments before the heat and friction grew to intolerable levels. She clung to him, her nails digging into his back, small cries breaking from her throat with each move he made into her. He hooked his arms under her legs, bending over her with his weight braced on his hands, holding her legs spread wide so that he had full access to her and she could control neither the speed nor the depth of his thrusts. She felt as if he went straight into the heart of her, and she climaxed on the third deep stroke. He held himself there and shuddered violently as his own release took him apart.
Sweeney dozed, but roused a little when he carefully withdrew from her and rolled out of bed.
“Where are you going?” she murmured, reaching out to caress his back.
“To the bathroom, to get my bag, and to turn out the lights,” he replied, and the answer seemed so prosaic she chuckled, turning her face into the pillow as lassitude claimed her again.
Still, she wasn’t quite asleep when he returned. She went into his arms, shivering a little at the wash of cool air on her bare shoulders despite the heat that surrounded her everywhere below. “Let me wear your T-shirt,” she said sleepily, and he leaned over the side of the bed to pluck it from the floor.
She sat up and pulled it on, then settled back into his arms. “Okay, now I can sleep.”
“It’s about time,” he grumbled, but she heard the amusement and physical satisfaction underlying his tone, and she went to sleep feeling more secure than she ever had before.
She came awake with a jolt, heart hammering, every muscle tense.
She couldn’t have been asleep long. She had the sense that very little time had passed, certainly no more than an hour. Something had wakened her, something that made her skin prickle, her reaction much as it would have been had she slept in a cave thousands of years ago and woke to the sound of a tiger prowling at the cave entrance. She listened intently, wondering if the comparison was apt. Was someone in the apartment?
Her mind replayed the undefined, unfamiliar noise. She hadn’t imagined it. It hadn’t been loud, nothing more than a scrape, a whisper of a sound. Like a footstep. Like a window sliding up. Either of those, or both. Coming from the studio.
She shook Richard and felt his instant alertness. “I heard something,” she whispered.
He moved like oiled silk, rolling naked, soundlessly, out of bed. As he stooped down, he motioned for her to join him, holding a finger to his lips to indicate silence, both gestures plainly visible in the colorless light coming through the window.
She tried to imitate how he moved, without any jumps or jerks that would make noise. She got out of bed without any betraying squeaks from the mattress, only the whisper of the sheet marking her departure. His T-shirt, which had been bunched around her waist, settled down over her hips but did nothing to protect her from the cool night air washing around her bare legs. She noticed the chill and then promptly forgot it, her attention riveted on the open door of the bedroom, expecting at any moment to see a dark, menacing form come through it.
Richard stooped down to the small bag he had brought, never looking away from the door as he reached inside the bag. When he straightened, light glinted dully on the big weapon in his right hand. With his left, he reached out and tucked her behind him.
Gripping her wrist to make sure she stayed with him, and behind him, he glided soundlessly to a position behind the door, but not so close that it would hit him if someone shoved it completely open. Then they waited.
She couldn’t hear him breathing, but her own breath seemed to echo in her ears and surely her heart was pounding hard enough to be audible. Carefully she breathed through her mouth, to eliminate even that small sound. And she listened.
She could hear the clock ticking in the living room. She heard the distant wail of a siren. She didn’t hear a repeat of that scraping sound.
But Richard didn’t relax, didn’t move from his alert stance. He was closer to the door, his body blocking her; did he hear something she couldn’t?
Then she felt, sensed, someone just on the other side of the doorway, not stepping into the bedroom but looking into it.
The door opened back toward the wall against which the bed was positioned. Because of that, he couldn’t see the complete bed, just the foot of it, unless he came further into the doorway. Sweeney was acutely aware of the empty bed. Would he look at it and know they had heard him and were somewhere in the apartment, or would he assume no one was at home and she simply didn’t make her bed? Would he stroll into the bedroom, or—