by Cindy Dees
“Yes,” she whispered. “Yes. Yes. Yes,” she gasped in time with his thrusts.
“More?” She’d reduced him to monosyllabic grunts, but he’d be damned if he didn’t check in with her and make sure she was still okay.
“Yes!”
Thank goodness. He wasn’t sure how much longer he could hold on to his control, not to mention his sanity. He turned his desire loose then, surging up into her body with abandon, reveling in going so deep he touched her womb. Her hips rose to meet his, matching his abandon, as the two of them frantically sought something just beyond their reach.
He, of course, knew what lay just over the edge, but he wasn’t sure she did. Just a little bit more. A little bit further. One more nudge. One last, powerful surge into her, and she shattered, crying out, a long, keening sound of pleasure torn from the depths of her soul. And that was all it took. The sound of her orgasm ripped through him and he yelled hoarsely as the mother of all orgasms exploded through him. His entire being convulsed around where their bodies met. His soul emptied into hers, and his body shuddered violently as he gave her everything he had, everything he was.
They stilled, and she stared up at him, awe written on her face. He knew the feeling. He had no words at all for what they’d just shared.
She said in a small voice, out of breath, “So that’s what all the fuss is about.”
Startled, he threw back his head and laughed. Eventually, he managed to splutter, “That is, indeed, what all the fuss is about.”
“Oh. Oh my. That was very nice.”
“Nice?” he echoed. “I must be losing my touch if that was just nice.”
She swatted his upper arm. “Behave yourself. You know full well that was amazing.”
He pressed down to kiss her gently. “It was. Thank you.”
“Um, I think I’m the one who should be thanking you. It has never been like that for me before.”
“Well, then we’ll have to do it again. There’s a whole lot more to show you where that came from.”
She smiled up at him then, and it was as if she bestowed a benediction on him. It flowed through him like soothing waters across his parched soul. Maybe he was going to be all right someday, after all. Maybe there was hope for him yet. If a woman like her could look at him like that, maybe there was still some small part of his soul that hadn’t been corrupted and destroyed by war.
He rolled onto his back, gathering her in his arms and taking her with him. He pulled the covers up over them both and found himself staring up at the wood planks of the ceiling in the dim glow from the fire. A deep, profound silence filled the cabin and filled his soul. He couldn’t remember the last time his mind was quiet like this, really, truly calm.
In combat zones, he had to be on high alert 24/7, always anticipating, always planning, always wary. But here, tonight, with snow falling all around them, and Anna drowsy and content in his arms, he could almost believe that he could let down his guard, and that everything was going to be all right.
He drifted off to sleep, and even as he slipped into unconsciousness, he registered shock at being able to go to sleep without hours of tossing and turning. Who knew the love of a good woman cured so many ills?
* * *
Brett was jerked from dreamless slumber some time later by an unholy scream that had him leaping out of bed, taking the knife from under his pillow with him in one lightning-fast roll. He crouched, feral, every nerve jangling, the drive to kill surging through his veins.
Another scream, from within his bed.
His brain was about two steps behind his killer instinct, and he took an aggressive step toward the intruder before he remembered.
Anna.
They’d made love.
It had been incredible.
She’d fallen asleep in his arms.
A third scream, ripped from her throat, sent literal chills down his spine. He threw down the knife and leaped forward, tearing off the blankets and gathering her in his arms.
“Anna, baby. Wake up. What is it? Talk to me!”
Chapter 10
The blood. My God. The blood was everywhere. Covering her until her T-shirt was crimson, drenched with it. A huge puddle of it spread on the floor, sticky and hot against her bare feet. Eddie stared up at her in shock and accusation, his hands grasping the butcher knife she’d buried in his belly. God, the slide of cold steel into his gut had felt so good against her palm. So wrong, but so right—
“Anna. Wake up!”
Someone was shaking her.
She thrashed, horrified, frantic to escape the blood.
“Wake. Up!”
Reluctantly, she opened her eyes, unwilling to face the carnage she had wrought. The human life she had spilled in a gush of scarlet death.
Brett.
What was he doing here—?
Oh.
She’d fallen asleep draped across his chest after the best sex and only orgasm of her entire life.
The recriminations slammed into her then. She didn’t deserve to be happy. She’d sacrificed that right when she’d taken Eddie’s life. She was supposed to suffer. To isolate herself and punish herself when the law had not done it for her. The police called it an accidental death. Eddie had charged her in a drunken rage while she’d been chopping vegetables for stew. She turned around. He’d impaled himself on the knife with the force of his charge. The police had ruled there wasn’t anything she could have done. Accidental death.
But she wondered differently. Could she have moved the knife? Yanked it out of the way? There had been a millisecond of hesitation on her part, and that had made all the difference. It wasn’t that she’d consciously decided to kill him. She’d just...frozen. Panicked. And he’d rammed into that blade.
“Anna. Talk to me. Tell me about your dream.”
“It was a nightmare. A terrible, bloody, awful nightmare.”
He nodded sagely. “Ah, yes. I know those well.”
“You do? What do you have nightmares about?”
“Things that would make your toes curl and give you worse dreams than you had tonight,” he answered bitterly.
“Nothing could be worse than that.”
“Trust me,” he retorted.
She shook her head in denial. She’d murdered her husband. Nothing was worse than that. She won, hands down.
They stared into each other’s eyes, each unwilling to share their private horror, each convinced that their own nightmare was worse. God knew, she wasn’t about to share hers with him. She couldn’t very well insist that he share his with her. Eventually, the terrible tension between them eased as they each carefully tucked away their personal hells into drawers in their minds and closed and locked them tightly shut.
Brett shoved a distracted hand through his hair. “Christ, those screams of yours unnerved me. I’m gonna go get a drink of water. You thirsty?”
“I guess so.”
She watched him pull on his jeans, skipping underwear. Leaving the fly undone, he padded barefoot into the other room. Hubba, hubba.
She heard the woodstove door open and the thud of him tossing more logs onto the fire. The faucet ran in the kitchen, and then his shadow loomed in the doorway, tall and lean and sexy as hell.
She didn’t deserve him. Sleeping with him had been a colossal mistake. She took the glass of water he handed her and drained it in silence. She handed it back to him and he disappeared into the other room, moving with ghostlike silence.
How long she waited for him to return to the bed with her, she didn’t know. But he never came back.
Just as well. She didn’t have any idea how to explain to him that he’d given her the best night of her life, which made it the second worst night of her life.
She lay in the bed, staring up bleakly at the ceiling until gray lightened the wood planks. The snow must have
stopped falling because a little while later brilliant sunshine streamed in through the window. She knew the ground would be covered with a fluffy blanket of blindingly white snow, reflecting the sunshine like a sheet of sparkling diamonds draped over the earth.
The cold was deep this morning, and even the fire in the other room couldn’t hold it back. Shivering, she hurried into her clothes and stepped into the main room. It was empty. Both Brett and Reggie were gone. She hurried to the front door and was startled to see his truck was gone, too.
The tracks from his tires were about eight inches deep. With his tracks having broken a path, her car ought to be able to manage that. She stomped into her boots fast and wrapped her coat tightly around her. She had to get out of here before he came back. Before he demanded answers and explanations of what had made her scream in her sleep like that. Before he wanted to make love again, and her resolve to deny herself undeserved pleasure was tested beyond its puny limits.
She opened the door and gasped as the cold bit into her face. She’d forgotten what true winter felt like in her years in California. It cut the flesh away from her bones and sank down into them. She already felt as if she was never going to be warm again. Or maybe that was the ice in her soul freezing her from the inside out.
Her car didn’t want to start, but finally caught sluggishly. She revved the engine to keep it from stalling and sat for an endless, terrifying minute to let it warm up a little before she started down the mountain. The road wasn’t exactly treacherous, but had she not had Brett’s tracks to follow, she would never have been able to stay on the road. She would definitely have ended up stuck in the soft ground beneath the new snow.
The main house came into view, and the road she was on merged with the main driveway, which someone had already plowed this morning. She accelerated on the scraped asphalt and held her breath until she made it to the main road without spotting Brett’s truck.
Thank God. A clean escape.
Her cell phone rang, and she jumped about a foot in the air. In severe trepidation, she picked it up to look at the caller ID. Please don’t be Brett. Please don’t be Brett...
Vinny Benson from the junk shop.
Thank God.
She picked up the phone. “Hey, Vinny. Whatchya got for me?”
“I found a really cool dresser that would make a perfect sink cabinet in your bathroom. Just saw a hole out of the top for a sink and take off the back, and it would be awesome. Can you come over today to see it? I already have another customer trying to buy it from me.”
“Um, sure. I’m balancing the books at the diner today. It’ll take me a few hours, but I can head over after that.”
“Great. Call me when you leave so I know when to expect you and can make sure to be here.”
“Will do.”
Guilt gnawed at her as she made her way back to town. What kind of ingrate had the best sex of her life and then snuck out the morning after as if it had been a shameful thing? She was a horrible person. Brett had shown her vulnerability that she sensed he’d never shown anyone else, and she was spitting in his face by running away from him like this. Maybe she should call him. Apologize.
Crud. She didn’t have his phone number.
She could turn around and go back. He would never have to know she’d fled.
But then her resolve hardened. She. Didn’t. Deserve. Him.
And that was the bottom line.
* * *
Brett mentally kicked himself. He should have known she would bolt if he left her alone. Whatever demons haunted her had been riding her hard last night. He’d never heard a woman scream like that, but he would never forget the agony and terror in that awful sound.
Christ. He’d made a complete fool of himself, letting down his guard and revealing what a complete mess he was. No wonder she’d run screaming from him. Literally.
He fed Reggie the breakfast he’d gone to town to get for her and then headed for the cupboard where he kept his liquor. Who the hell cared that it was barely 9:00 a.m.? He needed to drink until he couldn’t feel a damned thing.
Except as the level in the whiskey bottle went down, his traitorous feelings increased. What was up with that? The liquor was supposed to dull it all into background noise. He might never forgive Anna if she’d managed to ruin his only escape from all the pain.
He fell asleep on the couch and was disgusted when he woke up to realize it was midafternoon, he was stone-cold sober and he was out of both whiskey and beer. Another one of his old man’s tactics to force him to get out and mingle with people was that Brett had to do his own grocery shopping. Scowling, nursing a headache and feeling as antisocial as he’d felt in a long damned time, he climbed in his truck and headed for Sunny Creek.
He wasn’t looking for her. Really. But she drove the only red hybrid car in town, and when he was stopped at the traffic light and a red hybrid crossed in front of him, headed south out of town, it was impossible to miss. Where was she headed?
Not that it was any of his damned business.
Although it wasn’t like he had anywhere else to go. The liquor store would be open for hours, still.
What the hell.
He turned right at the light and followed her toward the south end of town. He dropped back out of habit and training so she wouldn’t spot him. The road curved to the east out of Sunny Creek and through McMinn Pass on a nasty little stretch of road that wound up into the McMinn Range and then down the other side of the chain of steep granite upthrusts. That floofy little car of hers was wholly inadequate to be driving the McMinn road at this time of year. Particularly not with how unpredictable the weather had been for the past few weeks.
Irritated with her for taking unnecessary risks, he followed far enough behind that she was just a red dot ahead on the dangerous road. Although maybe her daredevil tendencies shouldn’t surprise him. After all, she’d taken him for a test drive, hadn’t she? And he was a crap ton more lethal than some car.
Flurries started to fill the air, and he accelerated, halving the distance between himself and Anna so he wouldn’t lose sight of her. The road twisted up into the mountains and over the high point of the pass, and then began the treacherous, winding descent down the other side.
Brett was concentrating hard, squinting to keep sight of Anna’s taillights, when a big, dirty, dual-wheeled pickup truck roared up behind him, practically drove into his backseat for a second and then whipped around him in a no-passing zone.
He swore at the reckless driver who accelerated past him and roared on down the mountain. The other driver was going awfully fast. A thin layer of snow had accumulated on the road, making it just slick enough that braking would be tricky.
His gut tightened. Intuition whispered a warning at him. That truck was barreling down the mountain toward Anna too fast for safety. He accelerated his own truck, trying to catch up with the other truck. The warning in his gut grew more strident. He caught sight of the truck ahead, and it was overtaking Anna way, way too fast. Surely the guy saw her car.
Aw, hell. His gut was shouting at him now. That truck wasn’t bearing down on her that fast by mistake. No, no, no, no, no, no, no...
Frantically, he fumbled in his back pocket for his cell phone. He had to warn her! Tell her to pull over and stop. That he was right behind her. Just get out of the way of that—
He saw the moment the truck ahead of him pulled out to pass Anna. No. Not to pass her. To get inside her on the road and bump her toward the steep drop-off to her right.
“Hit your brakes!” he yelled helplessly at Anna, watching in horror as her little car swerved and then righted itself. The truck swerved right again, slamming into her left rear tire hard.
Her car swerved...and started fishtailing violently. She must have hit her brakes—too late—because the tires locked up and her car went into a skid, sliding sideways toward the edge of the road
. She disappeared around a curve, and the truck beside her accelerated with a roar of its engine audible even back here.
Please, God, let the guardrail stop her.
Slowing carefully as he approached the curve, so as not to go off the road himself, he started around the bend.
No sign of the homicidal truck. And then he saw that the guardrail on this stretch of road was missing. A voice inside his skull started screaming, and the sound grew louder and louder as he stopped his truck. He jumped out before the wheels barely stopped turning. He raced over to the edge of the embankment and looked down in horror.
Long skid marks showed where her car had slid much of the way down a steep embankment. The marks stopped about three-quarters of the way down and turned into big splat marks in the rocks. That was where her car had rolled. Heart in his throat, he traced the marks to the bottom of the ravine.
Anna’s little red car was upside down, at least two hundred feet below.
His heart stopped. Literally stopped. He couldn’t breathe, and a ten-ton weight crushed his chest.
Flashes of his men down. Blown to barely recognizable bits. Blood. Muzzle flashes from the insurgents lying in wait to take out any survivors. Die. They would all die for this...
He slipped and skidded down the steep slope, sitting on his butt as the loose scree carried him downward in a terrifying rush. The scream in his head was replaced by a chant repeating over and over.
Be alive. Be alive. Be alive.
He saw the white curtains of airbags hanging in the windows first. Please, God, let those have done their jobs. Let her be alive...
“Anna!” he shouted hoarsely.
He backpedaled hard, digging his heels into the wet, soft dirt, lying out almost flat on his back in an effort to slow his tumultuous descent. Her car had landed at the bottom of a ravine, and the last few yards before he reached her car, the hillside flattened out to a gentle slope. Still, he ended up all but sliding in the back window of her car before he managed to slow his momentum. He looked around fast. No puddles to indicate any leaks from the car, which meant there was probably no imminent danger of fire.
