by Amy Olle
He turned his head and looked out the passenger side window. “A lot of places.”
“How about your parents? Where do they live?”
“My parents are dead.”
A slash of grief sliced her heart. “Leo, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.” She smoothed a clammy palm down her thigh. “Do you have any brothers or sisters?”
“No.”
Another pang struck the center of her chest. He was alone in the world? That made her incredibly sad, and she abandoned the small talk.
She wasn’t sure why she’d bothered to try it in the first place. She’d always sucked at it. In school, she’d been consumed by her studies and never really connected with the other kids. It didn’t help that her parents had enrolled her a year early, and then when she skipped first grade, her awkwardness among her peers had only deepened. Two years younger than everyone else, she’d lacked their emotional maturity and didn’t develop physically along with the other girls. At sixteen, she left high school to enroll at MIT, which only replaced her high school ills for college ones.
Until five years later, when she was twenty-one and halfway to earning her PhD, and a handsome classmate took a sudden interest in her. She should’ve realized something was up when Aron King asked her out on a date, but she’d been so elated by the male attention, she’d thrown all her common sense and sound judgment away for a chance to be with him.
Six years later, her foolishness still mortified her. Doubt brewed inside her as an impending storm of insecurity she was helpless to protect herself against.
Until Leo’s hand brushed hers. “You okay?”
She risked a glance at him. “I’m sorry if I was rude, asking you all those questions.”
For a moment, his expression turned agonized. She cut a quick look to the road and then back, hoping to make a study of that expression. But he’d turned his face to the window once more.
“It’s not rude.” A surprising softness filled his voice. “I like that you want to know more about me.”
Her insecurities melted like butter on a hot sidewalk. From the passenger seat, he watched her with a concentrated stare that made her pulse skid. By the time she turned onto her street, the tension between them pulled unbearably high and tight.
She parked on the street a block from the old Victorian house, which had been converted into apartments years before and where she now rented one of the units. As they walked, the warm summer night air aroused a smattering of goose bumps across her skin, or maybe it was the way Leo’s eyes roamed over her body, like hot, questing hands.
In the dark, his heat and hunger teased her, stoking her desire as they ascended the brick walkway to the home’s front entrance and climbed the stairs to her second-floor apartment.
At her door, his hands moved to her hips while she fumbled to insert the key in the lock. When he bent his head to nuzzle the spot below her ear, the slow burn of her passion ignited.
She threw open the door and dragged him inside her apartment. He buried his hands in her hair and as he backed her into the room, his mouth seared a scorching path down the side of her neck, to the swells of her breasts. She yanked up the edge of his T-shirt, and he reached behind him to haul it over his head.
In the darkened room, she glimpsed a tapestry of tattoos spanning one pec and shoulder before his hard body pinned her against the wall and his mouth recaptured hers.
God, he gave good kisses. Soft but not sloppy, fiery but not domineering. While he tasted and explored her mouth shamelessly, he yielded often, then rewarded her each time she took her pleasure in him.
She kicked off her black flats, and they separated long enough to rid her of her top and capri pants. His hands spanned her rib cage. One thumb brushed the underside of her breast while the fingers on his other hand danced along the waistband of her underwear. Then they trailed lower.
When he stroked her through her panties, a vicious moan vibrated in her throat. She placed her hands on his shoulders and shifted, giving him better access. With each soft glide of his fingers, the coil of sensation in her belly wound tighter.
Reaching between their bodies, she fumbled with the fastening of his shorts. His hard erection pressing against the fabric of his briefs filled her hand, and he groaned. At the sound, her hunger swelled. She was hurtling toward the cliff, but she wanted him to go there with her.
She dragged her mouth away from his. “Wait.”
He drew back immediately. His chest heaving with his heavy breathing, he pressed his palm to the wall and squeezed his eyes shut, as though he were in pain.
She ducked under his arm, slipping out from between his body and the wall. He turned with her and she took his hand in both of hers to guide him down the hallway. In her bedroom, she led him to the bed.
He sat heavily, but even before he landed, he wrapped his arm around her waist and hauled her to him. With a swiftness she found mildly alarming, he freed one of her breasts from its bra cup and lightly brushed the pad of his thumb over her nipple. When his hot mouth covered the pebbled peak, her head fell back.
The fog of arousal closed around her once more, until, with a pang of regret, she extracted herself from his arms. “I… I… just need a minute.”
At the bathroom door, she glanced back over her shoulder. When her gaze tangled with his, he straightened, suddenly alert, and an odd expression chased across his features. He appeared startled, stunned even.
And worried. Definitely worried.
He must’ve felt it, too, the pain of their bodily separation. It was more than delayed gratification. It physically hurt not to touch him.
She offered him a reassuring smile.
In the bathroom, she flipped on the light and fumbled through the cabinet drawers, searching for the box of condoms she’d bought last year but never used. She’d been entirely too optimistic about the new guy in IT.
Though she’d been on the pill been for years, ever since she was diagnosed with mild endometriosis as a teen and her doctor prescribed the hormones to help regulate her periods, striking up a conversation with Leo just then about past partners and STD screenings didn’t hold much appeal. Besides, he’d already made it clear he didn’t want to talk tonight.
Neither did she.
Snatching up the box, she ripped into it. Optimism won out once again and she removed three of the foil packets before turning toward the door.
Then she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. Her hair was disheveled, so she shoved her fingers through it. The effort didn’t improve the mess, so she snagged the hairbrush off the vanity and yanked it through her dark tresses. Once done, she wiped a dark smudge of makeup from under one eye.
Her critical gaze dropped to the mismatched bra and panties she wore, and for the first time in her life, she wished she owned a sexy negligée or lingerie. Or at the very least had coordinated her underwear that morning. Before she started cataloging all the other imperfections visible in that mirror, she flipped off the bathroom light and returned to her bedroom.
Her eyes took a moment to adjust in the dark. Leo lay on the bed, exactly where she’d left him, with his feet hanging off the end. With every step she took back to him, her heart tripped.
He didn’t sit, or stir, and at the bed’s edge, she stopped.
“Leo?” she whispered.
Nothing except the deep, rhythmic sound of his breathing.
She went to the night table and switched on the lamp. Soft light flooded the room.
His eyes remained closed and his mouth hung slightly ajar while his chest rose and fell in a steady pattern. She gaped, too stunned to know what to do.
“Leo?” She didn’t whisper that time, and instead injected her voice with strength.
He didn’t stir.
Disappointment tore at her heart. The first time she picked up a guy at the bar and he passed out drunk before they did it? She moved to his side, intending to nudge his shoulder to try to wake him, but when she gazed down at his sleeping form,
a soft gasp slipped through her lips.
His broad shoulders and lean, well-muscled torso didn’t surprise her, but the angry scar that zigzagged through his smooth, tanned skin did. It was an old wound, jagged and severe, running along his side to his hip bone before disappearing beneath the waistband of his shorts. Emotion clogged in her throat as she tried to imagine the scenario that’d brought about its mark on his body.
As she watched him sleep, her disappointment morphed into something else entirely. Sadness? Longing? Regret?
All of it.
The troubled frown had released its hold on his features, and while she enjoyed her first glimpse of the well-defined muscles on his chest and stomach, she realized now that he was actually quite thin. Too thin.
Unable to resist him, she dropped a kiss on his forehead. Then she retrieved a nightshirt from her dresser, pulled it on, and climbed onto the bed to lie beside him. Lying in the dark, she listened to the sound of his breathing until her eyelids grew heavy. When a deep sigh eased from him and he settled deeper into sleep, her heavy heart lifted a little.
At least he’d found his peace.
Sometime later in the night, a noise woke her. It took her a moment to recall where she was, and that Leo was in her bed.
He groaned as though he were in pain and she sat up in the bed, a bubble of fear ballooning in her chest. Was he sick? Or hurt?
He mumbled something she couldn’t understand. Was he dreaming?
She gave him a shake. “Leo, it’s time to wake up.” She spoke in a soft voice, not wanting to startle him but very much wishing to rescue him from the pain of his dreams.
But he didn’t wake up.
His body rigid, he rolled toward her, and she realized he was crying. Crying so hard he wasn’t making any sounds at all.
Her heart hammered beneath her breastbone.
“Leo, wake up. Please wake up.” She brushed back a lock of hair that’d fallen across his forehead.
With a flash of movement, his arm shot out to snatch her wrist and he bolted upright in the bed. Air wheezed through his lungs and fire blazed in his eyes, burning into her, as he glared at her. Her heart in her throat, she stared back, and bore witness to a million heartbreaks.
Then he collapsed back on the bed.
“Don’t go.” He fumbled through the sheets until he found her hand. Clutching it tightly, he pulled it to his chest. “Please, Rose, don’t leave me.”
His plea was fierce and desperate, and hearing it, a little piece of her heart broke off and crumbled to dust.
With her free hand, she rubbed his damp forehead. “I won’t leave you, Leo. I promise.”
Chapter Four
For Leo, sleep was another battlefield. Littered with the landmines of his memories, he preferred the nightmares to the dreams, because at least when he woke from a night terror, he experienced a moment of relief.
Not so with his dreams. Soft and hope-filled, they appeared either as memories of what he’d lost or longings for a future that would never come, and when he awoke, all he was left with was the sharp ache of grief, and more regret than all the liquor in the world could obliterate.
Every time he awoke and remembered, he relived the sickening realization that they were gone, and they were never coming back. And every time, he reached for the bottle he always left beside the bed. As he did now.
But when he rolled to his side, the pain between his temples shifted and a wave of nausea knocked into him. He groaned as his head started to throb. When he tried to recall the previous night, a black hole of nothingness formed where his memories should have been.
He pressed the heel of his palm to his forehead and rubbed. Obviously, he’d been drinking. A lot. Enough to black out.
With his self-disgust, a curse fell from his lips. He’d never drunk so much he’d blacked out, and not for lack of trying either. How the hell had it happened? He remembered checking in at the hotel, the repulsiveness of Owen’s task, the overwhelming compulsion to drink, and that moment of weakness when he succumbed.
Last winter when he crashed his car into a tree, he’d thought he’d hit rock bottom. But this was a new low for him.
Movement at his side startled him, and he stilled. Slowly, he turned his head to find a small, scantily clad feminine form at his side.
Oh fuck.
His gaze darted around the room, taking in the soft blue comforter draped over their bodies, which matched the lampshade on the bedside table, a table with delicate woodworking identical to that of the dresser and headboard, all of which were painted the same creamy-white color. A girl’s bedroom.
His head landed with a thud against the headboard. Apparently rock bottom had a basement.
The form beside him stirred and his head snapped back to her. Long dark hair fanned out across her pillow, a tangle of deep brown and golden chestnut. She was turned away from him, so he couldn’t see her face, but his gaze followed the trail of smooth, bronzed skin from her slender neck and shoulder farther down, to the shapely leg and bare foot sticking out from under the covers.
A punch of lust struck him so hard it would’ve knocked him on his ass if he weren’t already lying down. The yearning was potent, palpable. After all, it’d been four years since he’d been with a woman.
Four fucking years.
Until last night.
And he’d been too fucking drunk to remember it? What the hell was wrong with him?
He didn’t remember anything. Not how he met her, or when or where. Not how he got to her bedroom. Not the sensation of being buried deep inside her.
Self-loathing took on a new potency as his gaze strayed back to her exposed leg. The smooth, well-toned thigh and the gentle curve of her calf. Her small, narrow foot with the toenails painted pink.
Lust and want and need warred inside him.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
He threw off the girly blanket and launched himself from her bed. Panic mounting, he searched the room for his cell phone. Tracking it to her nightstand, he lunged, seizing the device with shaking hands. He tapped the screen to open the GPS program. While the app traced his location, he dragged a hand through his hair and tugged at the ends.
Then something brushed his leg and he wrenched away with a yelp. Hand over his racing heart, he looked down to find a fuzzy gray kitten twining between his ankles, purring with the steady rumble of a fine-tuned motor.
On his phone, the address had popped up on the map: 44 Harpers Way. With a few flicks of his finger, he panned out to pinpoint the dwelling on the city’s north side, minutes from his hotel downtown.
When the hairs suddenly lifted on the back of his neck, he looked up to find her watching him with big, solemn eyes. She had a small, square-tipped nose and a plump, kissable mouth, which turned up at the corners with her hesitant smile.
A memory struck him with the force of a concussion blast, of her looking back at him over her shoulder while that same soft smile played on her lips, and in that moment he knew, absent of even the tiniest shred of doubt, that she was going to be the end of him. One way or another, when it was all said and done, she’d either usher him to his death, or she’d be the one to bring him back to life.
In his hand, his phone buzzed, and he looked down at the display to see Owen’s name flashing on the screen.
Prue stared at the man standing in her bedroom, wondering where the guy she’d brought home last night had gone.
Sober now, and alert, a hardness clung to him as a cold, inscrutable mask. The sharp intelligence still gleamed in his arresting eyes, but no passion simmered amidst their green and gold flecks.
The cell phone in his hand whined with a soft buzzing sound.
He bent his head to check the device, and when he looked up again, a tremor of panic chased across his face. “I’m sorry. I need to take this.”
She nodded because he seemed to want her permission.
He pressed the phone to his ear. “Hey, what’s up? You got that address?”
&nb
sp; Turning at the waist, he scanned the room, then crossed to her writing desk in the corner. He plucked a pen from the desktop and raised the tip to his palm.
“Yeah, I’m ready.”
The pen moved with his writing before it stopped suddenly. His panicked gaze latched on to her face. As she watched, a storm cloud gathered around him, sucking all the air in the room into his sphere.
Her heart started to pound. Why was he looking at her like that?
“Yeah, I’m here,” he said. “I will. Today. Right now. I’ll update you as soon as I… know something.” He listened to the caller, then said, “You didn’t tell me. What’s your sister’s name?”
His hand dropped to his side and his thumb slid over the phone’s screen. The display went dark.
She licked her dry lips. “Is everything okay?”
“What’s your name?”
She wanted to lie, but she didn’t know why. “You know my name.”
“I want to hear you say it.” He bit out the words.
“It’s Prue.”
His shock gave way to something else, something darker. The hairs lifted on her arms.
“Prue what?” A muscle ticked along his jawline.
“Why are you—”
“Your last name,” he snapped. “What. Is. It?”
“L-Lockhart.”
A nasty curse shot from him.
Alarm drove her to her feet. “Leo, what is going on?”
The words died in her throat when his gaze raked boldly over her body, zeroing in on all the places her flimsy sleepshirt didn’t provide cover. Her heart performed a series of perilous flips.
Then his eyes returned to her face with enough force to knock her back a step. “You’re Owen’s kid sister?”
She blinked at him. “You know I am.”
“What are you talking about? I have no idea who you are.”
“Of course you do. We’ve met before. Several times.” She spoke around the sand filling her mouth.
“When?”
“When you came home with Owen on your first leave, and at your graduation—”
