The Griffin Marshal's Heart (U.S. Marshal Shifters Book 4) Read online

  Maybe she didn’t want anything long-term. Maybe she was just cold, scared, and tense, and the chemistry between them was just too tempting to ignore. Maybe all she wanted was a spot of warmth and togetherness while the storm was still veiling them from the rest of the world.

  But he didn’t think so. Nothing about the way she looked at him was casual. Nothing about what was between them felt casual.

  One of them had to say no. And she had more to lose than he did—so much more. So if she wouldn’t say no, he had to say it: he had to look out for her when her own bravery would have her rush in without counting the cost.

  He found the trunk and then had to grope along it to find the lock. His bare hands had stung at first in the cold, like they were being pricked all over with needles, and now they were starting to go numb. It took him three tries to feel out where the lock was and then three more tries to actually get the key into it, he was shaking so badly.

  And once he got the trunk open, he had trouble making out what was inside it. The snow was still blowing into his face, making his eyes water, and leaning in too far made it feel like the stab wounds had turned into red-hot irons. He couldn’t be sure what he was looking at, but he could at least see shapes, so he grabbed all of them that he could carry and then slammed the trunk closed.

  He made his way back to the passenger side door leaning against the car and sliding along it at an angle, the better to make sure his hands stayed full and he didn’t drop anything. He felt something sliding between his fingers when he had to struggle with the door, but then it was creaking open against him, and he realized Gretchen had leaned over and opened it from her side.

  Getting back into the warmth—getting back to her—felt like heaven.

  Which was exactly why he had to be careful. He would make a mistake here, a mistake they both wanted him to make, if he let himself slip for even a second.

  “Brr,” he said, letting out an awkward laugh. “I don’t know if you know this, but it’s a little nippy out there.”

  “It looks brisk,” Gretchen said. She started the ignition again, sending a very welcome blast of fresh heat across him.

  “Kind of chilly.” He rubbed his hands together to try to warm them up, and when he got a little bit of feeling back in his fingers, he started actually examining his haul.

  It wasn’t exactly a complete survivalist’s kit, but it was close.

  Gretchen slid over closer to him, a wide smile finally chasing some of the lingering shadows out of her face. She was putting aside his little disappearing act, then. At least for now.

  “God, I love you, Martin,” she said.

  Cooper fought off a completely ridiculous surge of jealousy. Firstly because it was absurd and secondly because, hell, right now he loved Martin too.

  One fluffy flannel blanket. Two bottles of water. A first aid kit. Chemical hand-warmers. Granola bars, loaded with peanuts for protein and chocolate chips for extra glucose. A spare cellphone charger. A heavy-duty flashlight with extra batteries. And a jug of—

  “Is that cat litter?” Cooper said, baffled. “Does he have a cat?”

  She shook her head. “You pour it out on the road, on an icy patch that you can’t get around. It gives you better traction.”

  “I would never have thought of that.”

  “I’m pretty sure he picked it up from Colby—Colby Acton, he’s another Marshal on our team. He grew up in California, and I don’t think he’s ever gotten over being mortally offended at snow. He knows all the tips for driving on ice.”

  “I know you turn into the skid,” Cooper offered.

  “And?”

  “That’s it.”

  “Okay. I’m definitely not letting you drive, then.” She offered him a granola bar and a bottle of water and then dug into her bag and came up with the cookies Martin had given her. “We’ve got these too. They won’t be very good, but they’ll at least have more chocolate. More sweet chocolate,” she added, forestalling any attempt he was going to make to bring up the bar she’d given him.

  She was right about the cookies—they were scorched on the bottom—but they were still better than any food he’d had back at Stridmont.

  With her, he thought, it would always be a little easier to taste sweetness. She’d always be more powerful than the bitterness, even if he couldn’t figure out how to explain that to her.

  The idea made his eyes burn, and he turned away. He couldn’t even look out the window: they were now completely cocooned in snow.

  “What is it?” Gretchen said.

  Keeping a secret with her only a few inches away from him suddenly seemed ludicrous. She was too perceptive to miss that he was hiding something, so if he kept his mouth shut, he would just end up worrying her. That seemed like a funny way of trying to keep from hurting her.

  He said frankly, “I like you too much.”

  He was still looking at the snow when he felt her hand touch his shoulder.

  “I know what you mean,” Gretchen said. “I like you an inconvenient amount too.”

  Knowing that—or at least suspecting it—didn’t make hearing it any less incredible.

  He wanted to bridge the tantalizingly short distance between them; he wanted to know the taste of her mouth and give her everything she wanted from him. He wanted a lot of things that were probably impossible.

  Cooper turned back around to face her, and what he saw in her expression changed him.

  She looked so completely, incredibly sure of herself. It was the confidence he’d known she was capable of—the kind he’d noticed her lacking when she had first come back from meeting with the driver of the black car. Since then, he had seen more of her, enough to see the cracks in her armor, enough to know the little ways she sold herself short, but seeing this—

  This was like he was seeing who she was really meant to be. He’d seen a beautiful shadow of her confidence before, and now he was seeing the real thing.

  A guy could fall in love.

  But why was he thinking that? Didn’t he know he already had? For him, the deal had been sealed the moment she had reached out and shaken his hand. Everything since then had just shown him more and more of what an amazing person she was.

  “You keep getting these looks on your face,” Gretchen said, smiling a little. “Like nothing I’ve ever seen before.”

  “I’m just looking at you.”

  “People look at me all the time. It doesn’t change their lives.”

  “Maybe they don’t see you the way I do,” Cooper said.

  This time, there was no stopping their kiss. He couldn’t bring himself to pull away, not now, not with that I know what you mean ringing in his ears, not with being face-to-face with her shining, golden confidence. He was completely willing to believe she was right to want whatever she wanted. He trusted her.

  So much for caution.

  Fuck caution, anyway.

  They pressed against each other clumsily, their bodies fighting to get closer despite the console between them. Her breasts pressed against his chest. She was leaning accidentally against the bandages still wrapped around his ribs, and the twinge of pain was sharp, but Cooper had never cared less about anything in his entire life.

  She tasted smooth and rich, like the aftermath of the chocolate, and there was a kind of raspberry tinge to her lips that he felt like came only from her. She was opening herself up for him, letting him sample her, linger on the sensations she was giving him, but she was also taking everything she could from him, as if she was just as eager to breathe him in as he was with her.

  He had his hands in her short, silky hair, and hers were on his shoulders, leveraging herself up so that she could meet his mouth even more firmly and they could kiss even more deeply.

  If he’d had some idea of getting his sanity back during all his, he knew better now. Having kissed her, he could never want to turn back the clock to a time when he hadn’t. There would be no way to get her out of his system—there wouldn’t even be a
way for him to want to. Even if all this crashed and burned, he would never regret it. He had never been as happy as he was in this moment—disconnected from his griffin, stranded in a blizzard, hunted, and a prisoner. She made up for everything.

  12

  He kissed her until she was breathless.

  It was only when Gretchen could feel herself panting for air against Cooper’s lips that she made herself pull back. She could feel the slight burn his stubble had left on her, and she liked it. Liked it a lot, actually.

  All of the guardedness had once again left Cooper’s face. His cheeks were flushed, his lips reddened a little with her own lipstick, and his green eyes were sparkling. He grinned at her, and he looked years younger than she’d ever seen him. It made her heart hurt a little.

  “That’s the best way to keep warm that I’ve ever heard of,” Cooper said.

  “Me too. It’s killing me to stop.”

  “You don’t have to stop,” he said, gratifyingly sincerely.

  She had to pull back even further to make sure she didn’t try to nibble that innocent smile right off his face.

  She didn’t even know why she was resisting, but some part of her knew. It hadn’t been fear or reluctance that had made her stop kissing him. It had been professional alertness.

  Separated from him, the heat in her blood had time to cool down, and when she got her brain back, she realized what had set off her internal alarm.

  The shaky rumbling of the car had stopped. The air vents had stopped blowing out heat.

  They were out of gas.

  Cooper frowned, recognizing the problem at the same time she did, and he put his hand up to one of the vents. Nothing.

  “Well, shit,” he said quietly. “I thought we’d have longer than that.”

  “Me too.”

  She wrapped her arms around herself, like she was futilely trying to hold in whatever heat was already trapped under her parka. She was taking a kind of obsessive inventory of all the warm clothing they had on hand, and she didn’t like how little time she had to spend doing it.

  She exhaled. “I should have stopped for gas. I should have made sure we had a full tank.”

  “We’re in the middle of nowhere. It’s not like we’ve had a lot of options. The storm hit sooner than expected and all at once, and we were both focused on putting as much distance as possible between us and the fear gas guys. I would have done the exact same thing.”

  Maybe he was only trying to make her feel better, but she found herself believing him. And that did make a difference.

  Well, it made a difference to her feelings. It wouldn’t make much difference in determining whether or not they froze to death out here. Her job now was to make sure that didn’t happen.

  “Right,” she said crisply. “We’ve got a blanket, we’ve both got coats, and we’ve got Martin’s hand-warmers. That gives us a pretty good chance, but we’re going to have to start conserving all the heat in this car right away.”

  There was an obvious way to do that—one that came to mind immediately and with her hind-brain’s glowing approval—but she didn’t know if it would be too much too soon.

  On the other hand, if it kept them alive, it would be exactly enough at exactly the right time.

  She could at least phrase it professionally. I think we need to share body heat sounded a lot better than I think we need to cuddle.

  “I think we need to share body heat,” she said.

  By the look on Cooper’s face, he’d heard cuddle anyway and was already visualizing what she meant. His cheeks flushed, but he nodded. “Backseat?”

  “If you’re not sick and tired of being in the back of a car.”

  The corners of his eyes crinkled when he was happy. “Not with you.”

  They couldn’t afford to open the doors again, not when it would just let in a gust of cold air to steal the little heat that they still had, so Gretchen had to wriggle back into the backseat over the central console.

  Cooper followed behind a little more awkwardly—he was lean, but his shoulders were broad and he was tall enough that there was just a lot of him. Getting him into the back seat through the narrow space between the two front seats was like playing a really weird game of Tetris.

  “Ow,” Cooper said when he finally landed back there with her. “I think I sprained something.”

  “I’d be shocked if you didn’t. At least you didn’t reopen your stitches.” She fished the fleece blanket out of the front, eyeing the hand warmers for a second: no, it’d be better to save those for later. She didn’t like to think about there being a later time when they might be saved by Martin’s emergency hand warmers, but she had to.

  And for right now, anyway, she had an emergency Cooper Dawes. That was better anyway.

  “You should be on top,” Cooper said. “I’m heavier than you are.”

  Gretchen grinned. Never mind decorum: they’d already kissed each other senseless, and any plausible deniability about the sexual tension that made the air between them crackle had already gone out the window. “Do you like women on top?”

  She was rewarded with another eye-crinkling smile. It was a look she didn’t think she could ever get tired of. “I like a lot of things, actually. I’m easy to please.” He tentatively touched her cheek, caressing down the length of it in a way that made her feel like a match being struck. He made her whole body blaze into flame.

  She could almost believe that if they took this show outside, the heat between them would melt all the snow and bring on the summer.

  They shifted around, Gretchen maneuvering until she rested on top of him.

  If this was close to car sex, something she’d never had, she had to say she could see the appeal.

  Sure, it was cramped, and sure, they both seemed to suddenly have twice as many elbows and knees as usual, with all of them aimed in the wrong direction so that their ribs were being poked like pincushions. Sure, neither of them could stretch out across the length of the seat, so they were both awkwardly bent and Cooper’s neck, in particular, was turned at a deeply worrying angle. Sure, it was uncomfortable.

  But being on top of him like this, with this little dignity or grace, with the sense that they just needed it so badly: that, Gretchen had to admit, was kind of hot. In the center of all this cold, they were warm against each other, and they were willing to say that this was worth any amount of discomfort.

  They were like lovers in a snow globe, sealed away from the world. It was just the two of them and the blizzard, sealed away from everything else.

  The snow in a snow globe fell when you shook it up, and today had certainly shaken her up. Today had changed her life for good.

  And she was glad. Somehow, with him, she was happier than she’d ever been before.

  They wrapped themselves in the blanket, tucking it in on all sides so that it would hold in as much of their body heat as possible.

  “Okay,” Gretchen said when they were done. “We’ve successfully become a human space heater. But we need to strip down some layers inside the heater, because right now my parka and your coat are hurting us more than they’re helping us.”

  Bare skin on bare skin was the best answer, and she knew he knew that as well as she did. The only reason she wasn’t willing to go that far was that this was Martin’s car, and if Gretchen wound up naked in the back of her boss’s car, let alone having sex in it, she would never be able to look Martin in the eye ever again. They had to compromise. She unzipped her coat and shed it and her sweater and jeans, leaving her in just her socks, underwear, and a plain cotton tee.

  There was no way Cooper could see much of her body, given that all the contortions she was going through were hidden under the blanket. And while he could undoubtedly feel a lot of it—that was more or less the point—that didn’t explain the way he was looking at her like he was almost impressed.

  “What is it?”

  “I’ve just never seen someone undress with that kind of... fluidity.”

>   She wound up laughing despite herself. “Fluidity?”

  “You did it in two seconds! And you barely moved!”

  “High school locker rooms,” Gretchen said. “They’re great training for quick changes, especially if you’re a teenage girl in mortal terror of attracting mean girl scorn.”

  He looked gratifyingly baffled. “What could they have possibly scorned you for? You’re gorgeous.”

  “No one’s gorgeous in high school, Coop.”

  “I bet you were.”

  “I had a frizzy perm, braces, and no boobs.” She resisted the urge to add that she still had virtually no boobs: there was no need to draw his attention to that. Besides, since the boobs she did have were currently flattened against his chest by the way she was lying on him, he hopefully had a high opinion of them all the same.

  “You’re gorgeous,” Coop repeated. He traced the edge of her ear, like he was trying to warm her there. “But I’ll admit that I’m glad you don’t have the perm anymore.”

  “It was pretty bad. It was like I was surrounded by an explosion of my own hair.” She prodded him. “You have to lose some layers too. Right now I feel like I’m losing a game of strip poker.”

  “You would be losing,” he said, even as he opened up his coat and started shifting out of his clothes. “You already said you were a bad poker player. I’m a good one. Also, I’d be highly motivated.”

  She would be highly motivated too. She couldn’t see much of him—he was almost as good at the quick-change as she was—but she could feel him, and that was more than enough to get her blood stirred up. His skin was soft, like velvet laid over hard muscle, and his long, lean body laid out beneath hers was now almost completely bare. She could feel his thighs brushing against hers.

  With the two of them pressed against each other, it didn’t take long for him to get hard. His erection stirred against his briefs, nudging against Gretchen, and the thought of rubbing back against it was so agonizingly tempting.

  Maybe she could cave on her objection to having sex in Martin’s car...

  But even if her principles were going to go out the window, something else stopped her. Two things, actually.