by Ana Barrons
“Hannah?”
She braced herself to refuse him once again, knowing it would take all her willpower. “Hmm?”
“You can be a royal pain in the ass sometimes.”
She smiled. “Takes one to know one.”
They stood like that for several moments. John’s arms were around her, and Hannah felt a sense of contentment she hadn’t felt in a very long time. But it wasn’t long before the feel of those strong arms around her made her nipples harden and the soft place between her thighs grow hot and moist. John nuzzled her neck through her hair, and she struggled not to cry out from the erotic charge that shot through her body. She couldn’t contain the soft gasp that escaped from her chest or the tightening of her fingers on his arms. He responded with a groan of longing.
All she had to do was say the word, and she would have John’s big, hard body all over her. Inside of her. She pushed away the image with difficulty. “A fire would be nice,” she said. “And some of that coffee we never got.”
Behind her, John expelled a long breath, kissed the top of her head and eased his arms from around her. “Oh, I don’t know. I’m pretty damn warm as it is.”
She fixed them both decaf coffee while he brought in logs from the porch and got a blaze going. He was squatting in front of the fire with his back to her when he said, “Is it Bradshaw? Are you serious about him?”
She wasn’t sure what to say to that. After all, she had been seeing Thornton exclusively for the past several months, and she owed him some loyalty. “If you’re asking whether we’re engaged, the answer is no.”
He let out a long breath. “Well, that’s something. Are you planning to get engaged?”
“No. I don’t think I’m cut out for marriage.” Or being in love. Was that what was going on here? Was she worried she’d fall in love with John if she let him make love to her?
“Maybe the right guy hasn’t come along.”
“Or maybe he has but I just wasn’t interested.”
“Ever lived with anyone?”
She sighed. He might as well know the truth. “The only men I’ve ever lived with have been shrinks. One clinical psychologist and one psychiatrist, who had actually been my therapist for a short while. What does that tell you about me?”
He stood and brushed the wood dust off his jeans, then sat beside her on the couch and took a sip of his coffee. He waited to speak until she was looking at him. “It tells me you were desperate for a father figure who cared for you and offered you the acceptance and understanding you were deprived of after your mother died.”
“I had Arthur for that. And they weren’t old enough to be my father.”
“You lived with shrinks, so you know all about transference. It didn’t matter how old they were, or even if they were men. And by the way, if you were trying to shock me, it didn’t work.”
“Oh, right,” she said, shaken by his matter-of-fact reaction. “Tell me you don’t think it’s a little…let’s say, unusual to hook up with men who knew me too well to really—” She stopped.
“To really what?”
“Obviously, they knew I was a head case,” she said, unwilling to say it out loud.
“To really what?” he persisted. “To really love you?”
Stupid, stupid, stupid. “I’m sorry I mentioned it.”
He took the mug out of her hands and set it down, then gripped her shoulders so they were face-to-face. “That’s it, isn’t it? You figure if someone probes deep enough into your psyche to know who you really are they couldn’t possibly love you. Being loved is somehow threatening. Maybe because you’d be obliged to return the favor?”
She pushed away from him. “Those relationships were about sex, not love. Just like they all are. And I’m really tired, so I think—”
He drew her to him and wrapped his arms around her. “Then why aren’t we naked in your bed right now?” he asked, hooking a leg around her hip and pulling her on top of him.
“Do you have a constant hard-on?” she murmured, feeling the wetness between her legs, wanting him, but so afraid of what she was feeling.
“Only when I’m with you.”
Yeah, right. “We’ve known each other for ten days.”
“So what? I was attracted to you the second I laid eyes on you.”
Those quiet words did as much to weaken her resolve as the explosive chemistry between them. She pushed herself up and off him before she gave in. With a frustrated sigh, he sat up and pulled her in beside him. She didn’t fight it.
“It takes me a long time to trust someone, enough,” she said. “A byproduct of my damaged psyche, I guess. And I’ve already told you more about my past than I’ve told anyone, outside of therapy.”
“Then I’m flattered.” He reached over and wrapped a lock of her hair around his finger in a gesture that felt more intimate than a kiss. “How do I win your trust, Hannah? I’ll do anything.”
“Just give me time. And be honest with me. That’s the main thing. I’ll be honest with you too, I promise.”
“You drive a hard bargain,” he said.
“How did you get in here?” Ty asked. He sounded like a little mouse.
“Same way you did,” the voice said.
Ty still couldn’t move. “What do you want?”
“Shelter. Just like you, it would seem. Did you run away from home?”
“No. I’m just… I don’t want to go home tonight.” Now his teeth really were chattering.
“Is your friend all right? I got him to breathe, you know. Otherwise he would have died right there.”
Ty relaxed marginally. So the freak had actually saved Christian’s life. “He was alive when the ambulance came?”
“Mmm, I think so. I didn’t stick around. I was just about to light a fire but you’re standing in the way. Care to sit down?”
Ty’s muscles began untwisting. Okay, so maybe the guy wasn’t so bad after all. He just looked weird, but if he had wanted to hurt him, he could have stuck a knife in him already. He moved away from the voice, closer to the entrance in case he wanted to make a fast escape, and lowered himself slowly to the ground. He heard rustling and then the snap of a lighter and instinctively scooted farther away. The guy’s face was going to scare the shit out of him, he had no doubt about that. Sure enough, he looked over to where the flame was catching on a small pile of branches and shrank back from those cold blue eyes. To make things worse, the guy was smiling at him. He wanted to puke.
“We’ll be nice and toasty in a little while,” the man said. The flames were catching quickly, and Ty began to feel some heat. “So who built this place?”
“M-me and Arthur and some other people.” God, he sounded like such a weenie, stuttering and squeaking.
The man nodded, scanning the structure with his eyes. “Boards nailed together to support the structure, rope stretched across them for the evergreen branches to rest on—this is quite ingenious. Do people come here often?”
“No,” Ty said, determined to sound more confident. “They built a better one closer to the school. It’s bigger and it has a loft and stuff. Nobody really comes here anymore.”
“Ah. That’s good.”
Ty suddenly noticed that the guy was wrapping a length of rope around his fists, tugging at it, testing it, then unwrapping it and starting over. His gut froze into a hard little cube—he had said exactly the wrong thing about the hut. He swallowed with difficulty. “I mean, yeah, sometimes kids come here, you know.” He was desperate to take back his stupid words. “Like if they just want to get away from it all and, uh, drink all night. You know.”
The man just smiled.
Chapter Seven
John lay back on the couch with his eyes wide open. The fire had died down to a few burning embers that popped out the occasional spark. Hannah had dozed off more than an hour ago, and had sleepily acquiesced when he pulled her into his arms. He stroked a hand over her hair and tucked her in closer to his body. She burrowed her face deeper in th
e hollow of his throat and curled her legs tighter on his lap. He willed his cock to stay put.
He stroked her hair again and let himself enjoy every delicious sensation, the warm breath on his neck, the softness of her body pressed against his side, the lilac smell of her hair. He couldn’t remember ever feeling so deeply contented with a woman in his arms. He had no business holding her, of course. He was using her for his own purposes, trying to get her attached and keep her that way until he’d wrung every last drop of information and forced every possible bit of testimony out of her—if they got to that stage—that could lead to his father’s exoneration and freedom. Nothing else could matter. Not her feelings, and certainly not his own. And while he was deceiving and using her, and quite possibly traumatizing her all over again, he had to make her believe he cared.
She would despise him when it was over.
In spite of his intentions, he felt a surge of protectiveness toward her. The string of anonymous bouquets didn’t sit well—he knew too much about stalkers not to be disturbed by it. Granted, this could all be a student prank, but that possibility didn’t resonate with him. He found the wording of the first note particularly troublesome.
Lovely girl, you have no idea how much I’ve missed you all these years. Soon we will be together again.
A high school boy with a crush on her wouldn’t refer to the past. And if it were a prank, John would expect sexual overtones if not outright lewdness. If the flowers were, in fact, from an old lover who planned to see her again soon, why hadn’t he signed the note?
The mutilated squirrels were even more alarming. People who tortured or mutilated small animals often moved on to killing people, i.e., the classic serial killer. And whoever this person was, he was fixated on Hannah.
She stirred and he sensed she was about to wake up. He slid an arm under her knees, carried her into the bedroom and laid her gently on the bed. She rolled onto her side and curled into a ball. When he was satisfied that she was asleep, he tucked the comforter around her and left the room, pulling the bedroom door closed behind him.
He went back into the living room and spotted the wilted yellow flowers on the lamp table. He plucked the note from the bouquet and read it again. I’m here for you, my Lovely. As though the person who sent the flowers already knew about the crisis with Christian. Tomorrow he would get the first note from Hannah’s office and compare the handwriting to see if they were both from the same person.
Ironically, all of this was the perfect entree into her past. He couldn’t have come up with a more brilliant ploy: make her think someone from her past wanted to harm her so he would have to dig around in her psyche. It suited his purposes beautifully.
Except that he was more and more convinced she really was in danger.
Until Hannah got the police involved, he intended to be on the alert for a stalker. He would stay over as many nights as she let him, and in the morning he would fix her coffee and breakfast, show her he was devoted to her, even if they weren’t sleeping together yet.
And he would exploit her fear to get into her head. Maybe, just maybe he could put things right for his family.
And be honest with me. That’s the main thing.
He winced, as he did each time her words invaded his consciousness.
He sat on the couch, leaned back and closed his eyes. Working undercover for the FBI had come naturally to him. Playing the supportive lover? Hell, he’d been scoring with women since he was fourteen years old. He had learned young to leave first, before they had a chance to figure out he was a phony and dump him. His emotional survival had demanded that he guard the soft tissue around his innermost heart, the part that had been so deeply and irreversibly traumatized. It was no surprise that he had studied psychology, or that he had ultimately chosen a profession so demanding it was next to impossible to devote himself to a serious relationship.
To get what he wanted from Hannah, he had to convince her it was safe to tell him everything about her past. So far, knock on wood, she was confiding things she hadn’t shared with anyone other than her therapists. It was almost as though she recognized the connection between them.
He felt his desire for her rise inside him like an untamed beast. Until the time was right, he would stay as close to her as he possibly could without pressuring her for more. The only thing he would not do to win her trust was stay away from her completely.
He rose and walked quietly into the bedroom.
Ty sat with his back to one of the wooden posts, fighting to keep his eyes open. He tossed another stick on the fire. It was plenty warm in the hut, and it would have been okay to let the fire go out for a while, but he didn’t want to be sitting in the dark with the freak. He had lain down an hour or so ago—Ty wasn’t exactly sure when because he didn’t have a watch on—and seemed perfectly at ease on his back, his head propped up on his arms. Ty wished he could lie down and sleep too, but he was terrified that as soon as he lay down the guy would jump him, tie him up, maybe force him to give him a blowjob or something…
He gagged.
And he knew he had to get out of there, cold or no cold.
The hole was just a couple of feet behind him. All he had to do was stand, take a couple of steps and pull himself out. Fast. Before the guy knew what was going on and could grab his legs and pull him back down.
Hail Mary, full of grace…
His heart was pounding so hard he felt like he was going to pass out. He mentally counted to three and tried to stand without making any noise, but he stepped on a dry twig and heard it crunch under his foot. His gaze shot to the figure on the other side of the fire. Thankfully, he hadn’t moved. He stepped back, his eyes still trained on the sleeping man, then reached up through the hole and grabbed on to a couple of thick branches. He tried to pull himself up with his arms, but his heels kept slipping off the dirt wall. Damn. He needed to turn around so he could leverage himself better, but he was scared to turn his back on the guy.
In the light of the dwindling fire he could see the guy beginning to move. “Oh, fuck,” he blurted and turned to scramble out, but his legs were so rubbery his feet kept slipping down.
“Leaving?”
The hairs on the back of Ty’s neck stood up when he heard the voice. “I…uh, I have to take a leak,” he said.
“Here, let me help you.”
Ty spun to face him and was shocked to find him standing right there. He pushed his back into the earth wall and thrust his palms out. “No. No, I don’t need any help.” His voice sounded hoarse. “Really. I’m fine.”
The man seemed to be studying him, that same little smile curving his lips. “I was just going to give you a boost,” he said. He clasped his hands and held them at knee height for Ty to step into. “Go on, it will make it so much easier.”
And let you pull my leg out from under me? “No, it’s really okay.” He was shaking, and sweat ran down his spine in a steady stream. “I’m just sort of funny that way, you know, I like to do everything myself.” If there had been anything in his stomach, it would be all over his feet by now. “Just, uh, go ahead back to sleep. I’ll be fine.”
The man tilted his head to one side. “I need to take a leak too. I’ll follow you up.”
Ty felt pee begin to run down his leg.
Holy Mary, mother of God…
Without a word he turned his back on the man, stuck his toe in an indentation and reached up…
And felt a hand grasp his foot.
Pray for us sinners…
Chapter Eight
Hannah opened her eyes as the dawn light was spreading across her wide plank floor. She felt wrapped in a warm cocoon, safe and contented in a way she hadn’t been since she’d fallen asleep beside her mother as a child.
Where had that thought come from? Had she been dreaming about her mother? Ghostly images crowded her brain, pulling her back under.
A woman with long dark hair and soft golden-brown eyes, smiling at her with such love…snuggling on her lap
in front of the fire…strong arms lifting her and laying her on the bed…a shiny ring falling to the carpet…I love you, I love you, I love you…screaming…drops of blood…Edna down on her knees with towels trying to soak up…
The child tries to scream but nothing comes out. “Shhhhh,” her mother whispers, stroking her hair. “I’m here.” Whimpering…strong arms turning her, holding her to his chest…
His chest.
John’s chest. John’s arms around her, his hands stroking her hair, comforting her. As she surfaced, her senses came alert. Bra strap digging into her back, soft cotton covering the broad chest her body was snuggled against…
He had held her through the night, fully clothed.
And she felt him slip a little further through the crack he’d chiseled in her defenses.
She tilted her head back and found herself looking into heavy-lidded hazel eyes in a face so handsome it took her breath away. The hardness pressing into her thigh told her he was fully aroused. Oh God, she wanted him. If he made a move right now, she was his.
“You okay?” he asked, his voice gravelly from sleep. “You had a bad dream. Do you remember any of it?”
“I was with my mother.” The images rushed back at her. “It was wonderful, at first. She was holding me on her lap in front of the fire.” She smiled up at him. “Just like you did last night. I felt so totally contented and safe. Really safe.” She shuddered. “But then it all changed. He was saying it, over and over…”
John pushed the hair off her face. “Don’t rush it. Just let it come back to you. Close your eyes if it helps.”
“I don’t want to see it again,” she whispered. “She tried to scream, but nothing came out.”
“Who?”
“The little girl. The ring fell and he kept saying it over and over…”
“What was he saying?”
“I love you.”
John jerked back. “What?”
“That’s what he was saying… Or chanting, it was more like chanting after a while. Over and over, while he…” She tried to swallow and couldn’t.
