By Request Collection April-June 2016. Оливия Гейтс
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was intricately carved and painted with some sort of scene; she couldn’t imagine a more delightful way to have discovered its beauty. She felt her lips curve at the thought. So at least some part of her body was working.
Duncan stirred at her side. She angled her head, pleased to discover that it was also working, and met his eyes. For just a moment, she lost track of time again and there was just the two of them. Nothing else. No one else. She could have lain there just like that for a long time.
Too dangerous, she thought and searched for something to say.
Duncan beat her to it. “Do you think that qualified as monkey sex?”
She blinked, and then smiled at him. “I highly doubt that monkeys know how to do what you just did.”
“Thanks, I think.” He kissed the tip of her nose, then drew back to study her for a moment. He’d never felt so relaxed with her before. He wasn’t sure he’d felt this comfortable with any woman. “You surprise me.” Stunned would have been a more accurate word, he thought. And when he saw the slight frown flicker over her face, he gave her a quick hug. “In a good way.” In every way. She’d been wild in a way he’d never imagined. And more responsive than he’d ever dreamed. “I don’t think I’ll ever look at this library—or any library—in quite the same way again.”
The smile lit her face again. “Me, neither. So … are we in agreement?”
“About what?” For a moment he’d become totally focused on the way the light played over her features.
“About my proposal—sex on demand. It’s the best solution to what’s happening between us. It’ll keep everything simple and neat.”
Duncan traced a finger along her jaw line, felt her tremble. “You like simple.” He liked it himself. Especially in his personal life, he’d always preferred it to complicated. But whatever they called it, he knew that what he’d just begun with Piper MacPherson was going to be as complicated as hell. He lifted the strap of her bra, rubbed the red lace between his finger and thumb. Who would have thought that beneath those conservative suits she was wearing something this… provocative?
“Duncan.” She raised her hands to clasp the sides of his head, then waited for his eyes to meet hers. “I need you to focus on this because we have a lot on our plates.
We should get at least this part settled, and I have the feeling that half of your mind is on something else.”
“It is,” he said. “But I can multitask.” There was some satisfaction in seeing her eyes widen as he fished into the pocket of his jeans to get another condom, then sheath himself in it. “If I recall, our deal is sex on demand, anytime, anyplace?”
“Yes.”
“Okay then.” He settled himself between her legs and then entered her in one smooth stroke. “This time it’s going to be a long, slow ride.”
And it was.
TAKING A HIKE HAD BEEN Duncan’s idea. Piper had been motivated to agree when she realized that after making love three times, she would have been perfectly content to lie curled up with him on one of the couches in the library until they’d recovered enough for round four.
The sex on demand she’d fantasized about at nineteen was supposed to be convenient, not addicting. One of its benefits was they should actually be able to get some work done. So far they hadn’t made much headway in the Lightman files. So it was probably a good idea to take a break and clear their heads.
It was one of those perfect days in the Adirondacks. The sun was high in the sky, the lake a perfectly matching blue below them. By the time she’d showered and changed, Duncan had already packed their lunch into a backpack and was waiting for her on the kitchen terrace. The man was meticulously organized.
His pace was brisk, but in spite of the fact that his legs were longer, she had no problem keeping up with him. The path he’d chosen was a familiar one that wound upward through the woods to the cliff face bordering the lake.
“Have you visited those old caves lately?” Duncan asked.
“No.” She’d run along the cliffs frequently when she was in high school, but she’d never climbed down to revisit the caves after that summer he and his brothers had visited. She shot him a sideways glance. Maybe he’d forgotten how she’d frozen on the cliff face that day. “It was never one of my favorite places. If you’ll recall, playing damsel in distress wasn’t exactly my cup of tea.”
“I do. After the first time we played pirates there, Reid and I tried to talk Cam out of playing it again. We thought it was too dangerous for you girls.”
“Good thing you didn’t tell us that. And I take it you didn’t convince Cam, either.”
He laughed as they came to the part of the cliff path that cut inland through the woods for a bit. “Not much chance of that. Cam was attracted to adventure and danger even back then. And Reid and I were certainly not immune to it. Plus, we got to take turns killing Cam in order to win back the treasure and rescue little Nell. Not a bad day’s work. We did reach a compromise on the safety issue. After the first time, Reid made sure that Nell always drew the short straw and then offered to climb with her to the cave before you or Adair jumped in to protect her yourself.”
Piper thought back, seeing the game through a different lens now. “As I recall, Reid spent a lot of his time that whole summer making sure that Nell was safe.”
Duncan nodded. “Six was a little young to be rock climbing, not to mention some of the other things we did, and it turned out to be good practice for him. Even at ten, he already knew he wanted to go into the Secret Service. Now he’s working on the vice president’s detail.”
She heard the pride in his voice and asked, “When did you know you wanted to be FBI?”
There were a couple of beats of silence before he glanced sideways at her and replied. “I probably decided the day the FBI came to our house and arrested my father for embezzling from his family’s investment firm.”
Surprise had her stumbling. But Duncan gripped her arm just in time to help her regain her balance. “How old were you?”
“Nine. It was the summer before we all came here. My father had always put his business as his first priority, especially after my brothers and I were born. He traveled and entertained a lot. He even kept an apartment in Manhattan. Every time he came home for any length of time, he would make my mother very unhappy.”
He took a bottle of water out of the backpack, handed it to her, then fished another one out for himself. “I’d hear her crying in the middle of the night, and I felt helpless because there wasn’t anything I could do.”
She studied him as he sipped water. “Makes sense that you’d want to protect her. So you admired the FBI agents who took him away and wanted to grow up to be like them.”
He began to walk again, this time veering off the path to take a shortcut to the cliffs. “I may not have been fully aware of it at the time, but I wanted to know what made someone do what my father did. Not just the stealing part. Greed is one of the things that makes the world go round. I wanted to know why he made my mom cry.”
Understanding moved through her and tightened something around her heart. “So you were attracted to behavioral sciences.”
“Ultimately.” They stepped out of the trees into the sunshine. A few feet away, the earth fell away in a sheer drop to a strip of sandy beach below. “Sorry to put a dent in your white knight theory.”
He hadn’t. But she was prevented from pointing that out to him when her cell phone rang.
He put a hand on her arm before she could answer the call. “I meant