I held the basement door open for Naomi, and we stepped onto the tile of the hall alongside the kitchen and garage. Naomi padded in front of me towards the stairs back up to our room, crossing the gold-drenched floor of the foyer. The long windows overhead soaked everything in warm light.

Rebecca was coming down the stairs, impeccably dressed in a pearl-gray suit and heels so preposterously high they would make a normal woman stagger. She gave Naomi a once-over, then turned those judgmental cool eyes on me, as if she knew exactly what we had been up. "I'm going with Liam to pick up Josh from the airport."

He nodded.

"Have you heard anything from Nicholas?" Rebecca was the only person in the universe who called the youngest Delaney brother Nicholas.

"He's on a mission. Can't come home." I glanced longingly up the stairs at Naomi's adorable ass, wrapped in the damp spandex of her swimming suit, as she continued up to the second floor.

Rebecca shook her head disapprovingly.

"It's not his fault," I said, because even if I didn't care about the woman's approval, I didn't want her to think less of one of my brothers. "SEALs don't really get those kinds of choices."

Her beautiful face was unmoved. "Are you coming with us?"

"No." I nodded to Joe, who was crossing the foyer towards them. "But Joe, and a Rook and Castell team, will be with you."

"Whatever will you do by yourself in this fortress?" she asked archly. "Have a good morning, Rob."

"Well, we do have cable." I smiled tightly at her before I continued up the stairs. She didn't approve of my rekindled romance with Naomi. As proper as she was, she probably wouldn't have approved of what we'd just done in the hot tub, either, but she would mind it less if I did that kind of thing with Kate.

When I stepped into my room, I could hear the rush of the water in the shower and see the wisps of steam already escaping from the open bathroom door. I locked the door behind me and left my trunks on the rug, eager to see Naomi again. I could imagine her in the shower, with the water streaming across her petite, athletic curves.

The Delaney beach house was fully furnished, but had an empty feel to the rooms because no one was ever here anymore. My brothers and I were too busy in the military, and before my father Mitch had been attacked, he'd lived in the city for the last several years. Perhaps the house where he'd raised us boys had been too full of painful memories once we grew up and fled the rich, indolent life we'd been raised for. The emptiness of my childhood room, now filled with expensive furniture but no personal touches, always made me feel a bitter twist of nostalgia.

But when I stepped onto the radiant-headed, Italian tile, which was warm under my bare feet, and saw Naomi's olive skin as a blur through the steam, the traces of sadness faded. Naomi smiled at me, her three-cornered grin radiant. "Join me?"

I stepped into the tub, the hot spray hitting my sore muscles, and she handed me a shampoo bottle.

"I see, you're putting me to work." I squeezed a palmful of shampoo and began to work it through her long, dark hair, massaging her scalp. I liked the way her eyes drifted shut when she was pleased.

Water beaded like new freckles on her olive skin. I took the opportunity to drink in her beautiful face while her eyes were closed, while she couldn’t laugh at me and push me away. We were two messed-up human beings, fighting more than we made love and making love more than we talked. I knew it was all crazy.

But our long shared history made loving her feel inevitable, hopeless, no matter how ridiculous our relationship might look to people like his grandmother. I stuck my hand under the stream of water to wash away the foam, kissing the water-freckles as her eyes slowly opened, as if waking from a dream.

"You know, I'm a big believer in equality," I said, kneeling in the tub to kiss the faint curve of her belly, the paler skin where her thigh joined her hip.

"You'll make me fall right over," she said, resting her fingers in my hair.

"But I'll catch you," I promised. I pushed her gently down onto the tan tiled bench at the back of the shower as the hot water coursed over us both, separating her reluctant thighs with my hand. I paused, quirking an eyebrow at her. "May I?"

She grinned at that. "You may, if you must."

"We do what we must, because we can." I returned to kissing her legs, sliding down between her thighs until I could pulse into her core with her tongue. Naomi wrapped her legs around me, making a small sound of pleasure, and I rested my hands on her thighs, holding her still for me to please.

Naomi's moans seemed almost to come in time with my movement, spurring me to greater efforts as she leaned her head back against the tile, shaking her head back and forth as her long dark hair danced across her breasts.

Her toes lifted off the floor. She pushed me away half-heartedly. "Stop! That was lovely, but I can't take it anymore."

I kissed the inside of her thigh. "Are you sure? You can't take just a little bit more?"

There was a mischievous gleam in her golden brown eyes as she reached for me. "Maybe just a little."

The water streaming over our bodies made our skin slick as our hands fumbled with each other, trying to find the right position in the shower. I was so tall, and she was petite. Se held my cock in her hands and raised her eyebrows at the impossibility of finding a way to line ourselves up.

Naomi slipped on the tile, and I caught her with my hands around her waist.

"You need some of those non-slip rubber treads for the tub."

"I do not want to talk about bathmats right now," I told her. Taking a seat on the tile bench, I drew her towards him. "You've put me off long enough, being so inconveniently short."

"The problem is that you're so inconveniently tall." But no matter how much Naomi disapproved of my height, she kissed me anyway. Her kisses deepened, her fingers sinking deep into my shoulders, hard enough for me to feel her need.

Naomi straddled my lap, her arms around my neck. I began to rub myself against her until she moaned again.

She pushed herself down on my lap. I drew a breath in at the feel of Naomi enveloping me, warm and tight, her body magnifying the comforting warmth of the shower. I leaned back against the tile, feeling the steam in the room and the steam of our bodies meeting. She slowly lifted herself up until my tip brushed against her, suddenly cool without the cover of her body, and then she sank down and I exhaled again.

I couldn't take it anymore. I slid my hands under her perfect ass and began to help her rise up and then down my shaft, faster and faster, until we were both panting. Naomi leaned forward, her lips parted, and pressed her forehead against my shoulder as she moaned my name.

There couldn't be anything better in the world than that. Hearing my name on her lips, I came, wrapping my arms tight around her waist, losing myself in her.

I kissed her neck, I kissed her wet hair, until she raised her head and met my eyes. For a second, I thought I saw joy and wonder there, like it was amazing that we had found each other again after all this time.

Then Naomi smiled that mischievous smile again, that smile I loved, but I wanted to know what she was thinking the moment before.

"I am starving," she said. "Do you want to go to Abby's? Are we allowed to leave Castle Delaney if I have my handsome knight with me?"

"I thought you hated seafood," I said. She slid off the bench, and I reluctantly watched her go.

"I'm trying to be open to new things," she said.

"Well, then, I have some thoughts," I said.

"About crab cakes?"

"No. I think you should save your willingness to experiment for me." I hugged her tight against my chest, dropping a kiss in her hair, and then let her go.

Naomi grinned, not acquiescing but certainly not disagreeing, either. "I think we should discuss what you have in mind another day. Right now I really want some french fries."

"Right now, you're really maddening. How can you think about food right after that?" I followed her into the bedroom, where she drew her clothes out of a duffel bag; her body still glimmered from the shower, and I went back to get a towel.

She turned in surprise when I brushed the soft towel across her back. I knelt, wiping the towel with loving attention across her petite breasts, her flat belly, her legs. "Someone has to take care of you," I mock-scolded.

She drew in a breath as if my touch excited her, even padded in terrycloth. I stood, draping the towel around her shoulders to keep her warm until she dressed, and kissed her upturned little nose.

"I can always think about food," she said seriously.

"Maddening," I repeated, just to see her smile.

We were still playfully bickering ten minutes later as we made our way down the stairs. The big house felt too quiet with my family gone; once Josh was here, we would move Mitch into Castle Delaney, and I knew we'd never have another quiet moment with Naomi until we had sorted out exactly why someone had tortured my father, what they were trying to retrieve. Who they were.

Naomi swung open the garage door in front of him and took a step down the stairs. It was darker than it should have been in the morning, as if the windows in the bay doors and the skylight had been covered over.

I realized something was wrong. I grabbed for Naomi's arm to yank her back out of danger, stepping forward to slide my body between her and the deep darkness of the garage. My fingers wrapped around her upper arm, but before I had a firm grip, she was yanked away. Naomi cried out in surprise and pain.

Electricity jolted through my body. I went rigid, my body locked up even though my mind still raced, pain tingling through every nerve of my body. Taser.

I fell down the steps to the floor, my body folding up the second the electricity stopped. Every nerve in my body kept screaming. I tried to scramble up, bending my body forward but my muscles contracted wildly and I couldn't sit up. I threw myself to my side, my temple slamming into the cement.

I got my feet beneath me and charged up and forward, searching for a human target, someone to hit.

I was frantic to get to Naomi. We had to get out of the garage. Into the house, into the safe room, or out into the clear sunlight of the day. Someone had gotten the jump on us. We needed to get out of their trap so we'd have a better chance to fight.

I slammed into another man, a big body – not Naomi – and I slammed my forehead into the solid plastic wrapped around the other guy's head. Night vision goggles.

"Get him off me!" the guy yelled, trying uselessly to push me away. I locked my arms around the man in a bear hug, dragging him back towards where I knew the garage door must be, trying to angle the man between me and the other assailants. I had to get to the door, get some light in here and take away their advantage.

The taser hit me again. My body screamed, but I felt my new friend's body jittering too, the two of us locked together and into the flow of electricity.

For a second, the tazing stopped. My limbs stopped jerking. The other guy went down underneath me, and I could hear him cursing.

I staggered to my feet. My seeking hand found the doorknob for the external door that led out to the drive.

"Naomi!" I shouted. If I could get her out of here, nothing else mattered. The knob turned in my hand, but I couldn't get the door open. I threw my shoulder into it, already knowing it was desperate. The doors to the house were all reinforced steel to keep anyone from breeching the house from the outside.

All I could hear in the eerie darkness was the gasp of her rough breathing, muffled as if someone were holding her tight. Since I couldn’t get the door open, I charged forward again, searching for a target.

I grabbed a hard shoulder, swept with my other hand and found no Naomi, and then hammered the guy in the face with my fist. The other guy grunted, falling away, grabbing me around his waist as he recovered. I kneed him hard in the stomach.

. "God, he's a beast. Let's get him something stronger."

There was a sharp pain in my chest. I stumbled forward anyway, toward the voice, toward someone to attack to protect Naomi, but instead I found myself stumbling into a darkness that drew me deep into its web.