Read Dateline: Kydd and Rios for Free Online

skin was like satin, warm and vibrant beneath his fingers and palm.
    “Nikki, I want . . .” His voice trailed off, soft and husky and full of doubt.
    She looked up at him, her eyes accusing and sad in the fluid band of light shining through the shutters. Tears spiked her gold-tipped lashes. Her mouth trembled, beckoning to him in all its soft sweetness. Another sigh swelled his chest.
    She shouldn’t have looked, Nikki thought. Looking only made leaving him harder. Pain had etched harsh lines at the corners of his mouth and darkened the depths of his eyes. A heavy sweep of ebony hair curved around his ears and lay across the collar of his rumpled khaki shirt, needing a woman’s touch, a woman’s caress. She wanted to smooth the worried frown from his face, starting with the tight muscles of his jaw, then sliding her fingers up to ease the tension from his brow. She’d comb through his silky black hair and caress the strong column of his neck. With a growing and oddly desperate ache, she wanted to touch him like a woman, just once. For she was leaving him tonight.
    Don’t
, a warning voice cautioned, and Nikki obeyed, despite the barest pressure from his hand on her shoulder. The last thing she wanted was his pity. To save herself from doing anything foolish, she lifted her chin and whispered, “I hate you.”
    Josh slowly shook his head. “No, you don’t,” he murmured, brushing her hair back from her face, it was far too late for leaving her. Months ago, his silver-haired waif had begun weaving her magic spell around him, drawing her web ever tighter, capturing him completely. His last crazy shot at freedom had backfired. For he was there with her now, in the warmth and the darkness of the tropical night, and he wasn’t letting her go.
    The doubts, the rights and wrongs, faded under his increasing need to have her. Tonight Nikki belonged to him. He’d waited so long.
    With the slightest movement, he brought them closer, his body nudging hers, his other hand sliding around her waist, fingering the narrow leather belt holding up her shorts. “Ah, Nikki.” His breath blew softly across her cheek. “There’s so little time left. Let me stay with you tonight. Let me stay with you . . . like this.” He pressed their bodies together, rubbing against her, letting her feel his arousal. “Please.”
    Nikki froze beneath his gentle aggression, her senses instantly alert to the new, strange pressure of his body next to hers. She knew, and didn’t know, what his hardness meant, doubted if what she thought she felt had anything to do with her. But his breath was warm on her skin, teasing a path to her ear.
    “Please, Nikki,” he whispered seductively, then gently gnawed on her neck.
    A thousand shooting stars burst inside her at the tender explorations of his teeth and tongue. They shimmered down to the tips of her fingers and settled into a heavy sweetness between her thighs. Shocked by what he asked, by the power he had over her, she started to back away, but his hand immediately tightened against the small of her back.
    “Don’t,” he commanded huskily.
    “Josh, I—”
    “One kiss, Nikki.”
    Even as he spoke, his mouth moved over hers, and his hand swept up her neck to cup her face. His lips brushed hers lightly, tentatively. He couldn’t force anything from her, but in his heart he knew he didn’t need force. He’d seen her eyes in unguarded moments when she looked at him with longing. Tonight he would teach her what she’d been longing to learn and, in the teaching, heal his soul.
    Finding courage in her acceptance of his chaste kiss, he opened his mouth over hers. Finally, after all these many months, he put into action the dream that had haunted his nights and slid his tongue across her lips. She tasted sweeter, felt better, than anything he’d dared imagine. His body tightened; hers softened.
    Nikki’s shock hit an all-time high when she realized exactly what he was doing. Josh, her Josh, was