“Don’t tempt me, McCoy. I still have the baseball bat. ” Tense, narrow-eyed, and now spitting mad, she faced him like an enraged little fairy. All she lacked was the little gossamer wings fluttering for effect.
“Did you find your comb?” He changed the subject quickly.
She wasn’t fooled, but at least she let it slide.
“No. ” Ruffling her fingers through her hair, that little confused look filled her face again before she turned back to the coffeepot and flipped it on. “I must have moved it without thinking. ”
Which wasn’t like Keiley. Then again, the atmosphere between them had been more than a little strained lately. He shouldn’t have stayed out late, no matter how hard he was trying to avoid looking at himself in the mirror. He just had to do it again the next morning anyway. And it wasn’t as though he could forget the hungers that raged through his mind.
The missing comb bothered him, though. His mind refused to let it go.
“Have you lost
anything else?”
“You’re not an FBI agent anymore, Mac,” she reminded him as she took cups out of the cabinet. “You are now a farmer and horse and cattle breeder. Remember?”
“You know what they say, Kei, you can take the boy out of the agency—” He shrugged.
“Well, un-agent. ” She pulled the refrigerator door open and collected eggs, butter, and bacon. “I’ve just misplaced the comb without thinking. That’s all. I’ll find it before long. ”
Maybe he was going a little overboard, Mac thought, but it felt funny. Keiley didn’t just lose things. For all her fussy feminine girly stuff, she was so organized she made his back teeth clench at times.
“I’ve been distracted lately,” she finally admitted. “It’s been a long month. ”
He heard the note of censure in her voice and felt an edge of guilt. Guilt wasn’t something he liked feeling in his marriage. It meant he was failing her. That he had hurt her, and the last thing he Wanted to do was hurt Keiley.
Hell, he had said one could take the boy out of the agency, but this had nothing to do with his work as an agent. It had to do with his sexual past. One could take the man out of the club, but the club still lingered in him. The needs were beginning to eat him alive. But if he wasn’t wrong, Keiley’s were now eating at her, as well.
Restraining the dominance knotting his gut was becoming harder by the day. Restraining his sexual hungers was becoming impossible. And it was giving his delectable little wife the impression that his back was made for her delicately shod feet to walk right over.
“I’ll try not to be late again,” he promised, watching her back tense as she laid bacon in a pan.
“Doesn’t matter. I’ll just make certain I don’t make any more plans to surprise you. ”
Damn, that one hurt. Mac winced. He liked her surprises. When she met him in silk, stockings, and heels and smelling of a faintly musk and floral fragrance that made his dick pound and his hands ache to touch her.
No more surprises meant no more wild sex on the coffee table, the couch, or the chair. That didn’t suit him at all.
“I could always surprise you instead,” he suggested.
“You could. ” She nodded. “You could start by telling me what has you wound up tighter than one of your studs during breeding season?”
She glanced back at him too fast for him to contain his reaction. Hell, he had been out of the agency too long. He knew she caught the flash of guilt in his eyes, the telltale wince of his expression. The tightening of his lips.
“It’s been a busy month, Kei. ” That was his story and he was sticking to it. For now. Until he knew for certain where she was headed with it. In the past three years he had watched her grow in sexuality and confidence. He’d pushed the boundaries needed to help her deal with the gossip and the people of a quickly growing community and helped guide her toward the friends he knew would aid in that. Now, Keiley was making her own steps. For the past year, she had been pushing herself and him.
And it appeared she was beginning to reach for an even higher goal.
His dick tightened painfully at the thought, every muscle in his body tensing in preparation for it.
“As I said, it would surprise me. ” She turned back to the bacon, but her shoulders were straighter, her back still tense.
That damned sleeveless t-shirt was riding up her back, too, flashing skin. Skin he could be kissing right now if he weren’t such a jackass. If nightmares and desires weren’t haunting his dreams and pushing his own tension higher. A tension Keiley was obviously reading well. And reacting to as their marriage progressed.
In the past three years she had found a place within the social structure that existed in Scotland Neck. As an independent computer analysis and programming expert, she had joined the Business Council in town. She was a part of several charities and worked several hours a week as a volunteer at the local women’s shelter. She was thriving here. The years she had spent under suspicion because of her father’s embezzlement at a high-level D. C. accounting firm, and his subsequent imprisonment and death, were slowly being forgotten.
On the surface, their marriage seemed perfect. In a lot of ways, it was perfect. If it weren’t for the darker sexual hungers that filled him, then the unnatural stress beginning to grow between them would never have been there.