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nipple with the blunted edge of his tongue until she started to moan. He could feel the blood
rush headlong to his groin. Slipping his other hand into her flannel pajama bottoms, he stroked
the moist flesh between her legs.
Take those off.
She was soaked, swollen, ready for him. And all he could think of was that he wanted to
drive the image of Matt Donovan right from her head.
Come here. Right here.
Either she hadn t seen his gesture in the dark, or she was pretending to misunderstand, so
he cupped his hands along the inside of her thighs and pulled her to the place where he wanted
her. With a silent shudder of anticipation, she leaned her arms against the wall above his head.
You re going to come as soon as I put my mouth on you, he said.
You re pretty darn sure of yourself.
DARK TIDES Celia Ashley 77
Yeah, he said, I am.
And with good reason. Nothing could have held her back. Nothing. No sooner had he
run his tongue along her slick flesh to circle the swollen bud of her clitoris and she was done. He
controlled her with his hands, keeping her where he wanted her even after, bringing her to climax
again until she was shaking and her skin sheened with sweat. Yes, and it was his name she
called, and again when he mounted her and drove himself deep for forgetfulness, for lust, for
comfort, for love, it was his name. His name.
Curled against him beneath the mounded quilt and blankets, she promptly fell asleep in
his arms. You don t love him, do you? Caleb asked her as he had asked before, now that it
was safe to do so, when he knew her dreams were not of a husband who had abandoned her,
when he knew that she would not wake to answer either way.
* * * *
Two hours later, he woke up as if someone had shouted in his ear. He could almost feel
the reverberation of noise, the shattering of the quiet night. For a moment he thought that Meg
had yelled in her sleep, but she was still slumbering soundly, her head on her arm and the
blankets tangled around her waist. With care, he freed the quilt to pull it up over her shoulders,
then he got out of bed.
Naked, he shivered in the darkness. He was wide awake, alert to the night around him,
straining to hear anything that might indicate they were not alone in the house. Reaching up, he
fingered the place on the back of his skull where the knot had been. Though Meg assured him
the bruising had long since yellowed and faded away, there was still tenderness there. Tonight, it
throbbed.
Snatching his clothes from the bottom of the bed, he thrust his legs into his pants, then
pulled the shirt on. Time, he mused without humor, to check the defenses.
Caleb moved through the house in near silence, not bothering to turn on the lights as he
went. No need to alert anyone to his actions, to light their way to him or to escape unnecessarily.
His eyes were used to the darkness, his body to the places he needed to be where he would not
betray his presence. He thought, briefly, of the man or men who had tried to kill him, and the
threat he had anticipated from them that had not yet come.
Deal with one threat at a time, Caleb Hunter, he reminded himself.
Matt Donovan s little love notes were not what they appeared to be. They were, as far as
Caleb was concerned, menacing in the extreme. Screw what he could and couldn t remember.
He knew that a man did not break into the home of the wife he d walked away from, leaving
behind as the sole indicator of his presence reminders of a life they no longer shared. There was
something distinctly warped about that. Did he hope for a sweet little reunion? Over Caleb s
dead body, if it were true, but he knew that it was not.
He continued through the house, checking the attic door, the basement door, all the
exterior doors and windows, the simple but effective devices he had set up to give warning of
entry or merely indication of it. All appeared in order.
Relaxing a little, he turned on the light over the stove in the kitchen and filled a pot with
water, setting it on the stove to heat. A cup of that tea Meg liked, what was it called?
Chamomile. A cup of chamomile tea might settle him down to the point where he could sleep
again. She swore by it. That, and warm milk. He remembered that. His first night in the
house she had made him a cup of warm milk to help him sleep.
He remembered, too, scalding his mouth, reminding Meg of her husband, who used to do
DARK TIDES Celia Ashley 78
the same thing.
Shit.
With a flick of his wrist, Caleb turned off the burner. He didn t want anything he did to
remind her of Matt. Not anything.
Lifting his eyes from the knob on the stove, he spotted the mug on the counter and
reached to put it away. Fingers hovering in the air above the receptacle, he realized that he
hadn t taken one out of the cabinet. A spoon lay beside it. Bending closer, he saw what looked
like a skim of overheated milk clinging to the concave metal. The mug held its own residue of
whitish liquid.
In the two hours he d been asleep, Meg had not moved from the bed, he would swear to
that, and he had been the last one to climb the stairs. The kitchen had been neat and orderly at
that time, the way Meg liked to leave it before she went to bed.
Stepping away from the stove, his gaze swept the kitchen. Everything else appeared to
be as it had been last time he passed through. Except the towel. The dish towel on the handle of
the oven was bunched and folded over on itself. Caleb took another step away, feeling his heart
rate increase in thudding increments.
What kind of game was this bastard playing? And how the hell had he gotten in?
There was only one possibility. He d been here all along, hiding in some location they
hadn t discovered. Caleb stared at the cabinets, wondering if they could hold a man undetected.
Grabbing the heavy flashlight Meg kept on the shelf, he spun it around in his hand and rushed to
the lower doors, yanking them open one by one, half expecting to find Matt Donovan twisted
like a contortionist around the pots and pans. Not surprisingly, he found nothing. No use
bothering with the upper cabinets. They would never support a man s weight.
The pantry was clear, as was the area behind the door near the porch, where once he had
found Donovan s jacket hanging, much as if Meg expected him to walk back in one day in need
of it. Moving into the hallway, he began to systematically recheck each room, every piece of
furniture that possessed a door, every corner blocked from view.
Come on, he ground out between his teeth. Show yourself.
Nothing.
Nothing anywhere.
Fuck.
In the room Meg utilized as a studio, Caleb turned on the overhead light. The room held
multiple cabinets where she stored her paints and brushes, cleaners, canvas and various types and
sizes of paper. He yanked open the door to each one, without result. Breathing heavily in the
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