by Kylie Brant
“There’s been another communication.” She crouched to retrieve her briefcase and carried it to the desk, using the precious moments to summon the resilience she’d briefly surrendered.
“What? When? At the headquarters,” he answered his own question. “Before we called it a night. I knew you were too quiet in the car.”
“Yes. Well.” She bent over the tablet and brought up the email again. Discovered she didn’t yet have the fortitude to look at the image again. “He wanted a reaction. He’s becoming more personal. Trying to show me that he’s in control. That I have no secrets from him.” And because she didn’t want Ethan to be caught unaware as she’d been, she turned and laid her hand on his arm. “He knows about Olivia.”
The muscles beneath her fingers bunched as he stared at the photo on the screen for long moments. Then he swore, a long ugly string of obscenities. “Fuck this guy.”
He shrugged off her hand and shoved away from the table, turning to stride to the window. The curtains were still open. Lights glowed in the distance below, the city adorned in gaudy sparkles. “He doesn’t know shit. How could he?”
She hadn’t gotten that far yet but considered the question now. There was no way the offender could have accessed her long-ago medical records. He wouldn’t know about her hospital stay or the condition that had caused the stillbirth. And since she hadn’t spoken to her family since she’d left Truro, Reisman couldn’t have revealed any details either.
A chill skated through her veins. Reisman may not have known facts, but that wouldn’t have stopped him from gleefully filling in the gaps of his knowledge with the ugliest speculation imaginable.
“You’re right. He had no way to learn the specifics.” She remembered what Raiker had told her on their phone call. You’re a square peg, yes. But he’s going to try to work you into the familiar round hole he has for his victims. If the UNSUB believed he’d discovered a significant transgression in her past, the next step would be blackmail.
But she suspected it’d be emotional rather monetary extortion.
“What’s he trying to do with this? Where would he even have gotten that image? There’s no way he traveled to Ottawa.” Ethan hadn’t turned away from the window. His tone was lethal. And Alexa was reminded, with a sudden searing dart of regret, that her pain was Ethan’s pain. Her grief was his grief.
Her throat filled. It took a minute before she was able to answer. “The offender seeks weakness to exploit. I suspect he scrutinizes the news releases, so there’s no way he’s unfamiliar with your name. So, he’s put two and two together, understands that we have a past.” Reisman hadn’t, she recalled. He’d never shown a shred of recognition at Ethan’s name. At her urging, she and Ethan had gone to his father first, all those years ago. And although Ethan had wanted to do the right thing and go with her to tell her mother, Alexa had done it alone because she’d thought she’d known how bad it would be.
She’d grossly underestimated the ugliness of the scene. Her mother’s cold condemnation. The invective Reisman had hurled at her. The eruption of violence when he’d lunged for her, hands at her throat.
The memory never lost the ability to wound.
Ethan’s father had overridden his son’s objections and gone to the house alone for her things. She’d thought her world had changed that day. But fate had far more in store for them a few months later.
“As for the image…” It took a moment to steady her voice. “Many cemeteries have a search function to facilitate remote access of gravesites.”
“He isn’t going to be in a position to ‘exploit’ anything.” He faced her then, his expression implacable. But she recognized the temper he was suppressing. Like a bomb, waiting to detonate.
“He’ll try. His focus is me, and I assume that won’t change. He shook me up a little.” She managed a small smile. “I’m all right now. We’re close. I can feel it. And he doesn’t know how much we’ve learned about him. The advantage is ours.”
It took long minutes for him to respond. “I know I can’t let this get to me. And it won’t be allowed to affect the investigation.” Fury seeped into his next words. “But I hate him using her like this. It defiles her memory.”
She nodded. “I know.” Her voice was soft. “It’s as if he’s stealing a piece of Olivia away, just by thinking of her.” The next words were torn from her, accompanied by a familiar pang of loss. “I never even got to hold her.”
He was in front of her in two quick steps. Had her wrapped in an embrace in the flash of an instant. “Neither did I. I wasn’t even there. Not in time. I’ve never forgiven myself for that.”
She shook her head against his chest. “You couldn’t help that. Neither of us could.” They’d been two scared kids trying to do their best to navigate their new responsibilities. Muddling through their quickie marriage, moving to married housing on the university campus where Ethan would play hockey. But for all their fears and ignorance of the enormity ahead of them, there had been aching sweetness, too. Out of self-preservation, Alexa rarely allowed herself to recall it. The lust that had still burned between them, hot and reckless. The first time they’d watched their baby on the ultrasound. The awed look on Ethan’s face when he’d first heard the heartbeat. The way he’d kissed her, slow and achingly tender when he’d first felt the baby move.
“I always thought I did something wrong,” she whispered. It was a shameful secret she’d never fully put aside. “Like I wasn’t careful enough. Not knowledgeable enough.”
“You read every book in the library on pregnancy. You set the alarm so you’d remember to take your prenatal vitamins.” His arms tightened around her. “But I know what you mean. I felt the same way. Like I should have been able to prevent what happened. But it wasn’t us, Lexie. There was nothing we could have done differently. Sometimes life just sucks.”
“I was no help afterward. All of the arrangements fell to you.” He’d been an eighteen-year-old grappling with the sudden stillbirth of his daughter and a critically ill wife. She hadn’t been aware of much of anything for days. There had been no chance to attend the funeral or the burial. No chance for a goodbye she wasn’t ready to say.
“It was mostly a blur.” She felt him rub his face in her hair. “Dad was there. He walked me through everything. But when I was at the funeral home I felt like I needed to be at the hospital with you. When I was with you, I was afraid…” Ethan paused for a moment. When he continued, his voice was thick. “I thought for a while that I was going to lose you, too.”
Her breath hitched once. Because although she’d gradually gotten better, he had lost her months later. And every time regrets had reared over that decision, she’d beaten them back with the knowledge that she’d done the right thing.
But that certainty was becoming infused with doubt. He’d accused her once of playing God with his life. And hadn’t she, in a way? Because they couldn’t agree on the best way to move forward, she’d made a decision and forced him to live with it. And there was no way to know, even given the distance of time, whether the sacrifice had been necessary.
Chapter Nineteen
Ethan lifted his head. Cupped her face in both his hands. And the emotion on his face had her throat clogging. “I spent more time than I care to remember cursing you for leaving. But there was never a moment that I regretted meeting you.”
Alexa’s heart did a slow, lazy roll in her chest. “You’ll never know how hard it was to force myself to walk away,” she whispered. Decisions, made for all the right reasons, could still haunt for a lifetime.
His face lowered slowly to hers. She closed the distance between them and brushed her lips lightly over his. Once. Twice. And then settled her mouth more firmly and sank into the kiss.
The gesture began achingly tender. Filled with shared pain and memories. But when Alexa drew away, when her eyes slowly opened, what she saw in Ethan’s pale blue gaze had her pulse stuttering.
Desire.
A smoky tendril of heat
suffused her. The emotions she’d sought to wall off minutes earlier tumbled forth at the first taste of him. There was too much between them, and their proximity for the last few days had chipped away at the intervening years. The pain was still fresh. The chemistry still existed. And the desire was just as hot and heady as it’d been all that time ago.
Restraint had been too hard-learned to surrender it easily. But with Ethan’s arms around her Alexa felt it slipping away even as their lips met again.
Ethan stroked a lazy path up her spine, and she shuddered in response. Now was the time to heed caution and step aside, before there were any more regrets between them. And she would, in a moment. Or perhaps two…
His head dipped, and his teeth closed over the cord in her neck, testing not quite painfully. Reason clouded. Neither of them had escaped unscathed from the hurt of their past. But this aspect of it…She dragged her lips along his jaw, felt the scrape of whiskers against her mouth and the sensation had her senses humming. She’d long thought there was something wrong with her…something permanently broken, because no other man had made her feel like this. Combustible and alive.
There was a flare in the pit of her belly, hot and immediate. He knew how to kiss a woman, hot and devastating. With a single-minded intensity that wiped her mind clean and had the rest of the world dimming. Inner fires flaring. She opened her mouth beneath his and dove into the flames.
His tongue glided along hers. His flavor was dark temptation, lethal to her senses. Her fingers danced up the front of his shirt, undoing buttons along the way until she could slide her hands inside the fabric to skate her fingers over his hard-muscled chest, her fingers flexing in pleasure.
He cupped the back of her head in one palm, but there was nothing gentle about the gesture. His mouth devoured hers, their tongues tangling, breath mingling, teeth clashing. Swinging her around, he walked her backward until she felt the wall at her back and still he didn’t lift his mouth from hers. Her muscles melted, hot wax to molten flame. His hunger summoned an answering recklessness.
He urged her legs apart with his knee then stepped between them. His arousal pressed against her belly and she squirmed against him, wanting to feel him where she was empty and aching. As if aware of her frustration, his hands went to her butt and he lifted her. With her legs wrapped around his hips, Alexa rocked against him, feeling his reaction even if she couldn’t manage to drag her eyes open to watch it.
His lips lifted from hers for a moment, and immediately her system mourned the loss. She felt his hand in her hair, and her eyes fluttered open to see him drawing the pins from it one by one, dropping them to the floor. When he had the strands free, he threaded his fingers through them, his gaze slitted.
With sudden urgency, Alexa pushed the shirt over his shoulders, and he finally shifted enough to shrug out of the garment one arm at a time. Her head lolled against the wall as her fingers discovered the planes of his chest, the hollows along his ribs, the angles where bone met sinew.
He began unfastening her shirt, and her breath caught. Held. There was something exquisitely sensuous about focusing on touch alone. The languid slip of each button from its hole. The inch of exposed flesh bathed by Ethan’s clever, wicked tongue. Her skin prickled in anticipation of his lips long seconds before it was tasted.
He took his time. Each button was released with deliberate care. Every inch of bared skin treated to the same sensual exploration. Alexa lost herself in the teasing journey she mapped along his biceps. Across his shoulders, her fingers flexing on the cut muscles of his delts, iron beneath her touch.
The rollicking in her pulse felt new. Heady. Every brush of his lips was a promise of pleasures to come. But it also fueled a quiet desperation in her system. She wanted to feel him, all of him. Flesh against flesh. Their bodies sealed so closely that not even a breath of air could fit between them. And she needed him quaking too. Wanted to unleash the primitive nature he’d learned to restrain. She wanted, quite frankly, to strip him of every defense, until there was no guard, no pretense between them.
To that end, she went on a quest to unharness his control. He released her fourth button then, and her breath caught as his tongue delved into her cleavage. Danced along the top of her bra where flesh met lace. It took all the strength she could muster to concentrate on finding the places that made him shudder. The soft velvety skin beneath his arms. A fingernail scraping over one male nipple.
And the feel of his touch faltering, the hiss of his indrawn breath, was its own reward.
She brushed her fingers along his spine, feeling the flesh punctuated by vertebrae. Her fingers faltered when they discovered a knotted ridge of skin below one shoulder blade. It was a reminder of all that had transpired since she’d last seen him. Their romance had lasted less than two years. Their separation, two decades. How, then, could the passion ignite this quickly? This immediately?
His muscles quivered beneath her touch like an impatient stallion, and his hands hurried a bit as he pulled her blouse up to undo the bottom buttons. With one practiced movement, he released the front clasp of her bra, and, with the air of a man contemplating a feast, spread the fabric aside.
Her nipples were tight knots awaiting his touch. And when it didn’t immediately come, Alexa dragged her eyelids open, a demand on her lips.
It went unuttered. Ethan was staring at her with a searing intensity. It lingered on her face. Her breasts. The look was a little possessive. Slightly cruel. A man surveying a woman he meant to take at his leisure. She knew intuitively he’d pleasure and take pleasure in return and that certainty sent comets of heat through her veins.
Eyes locked with his, she arched her back, a carnal invitation. Alexa watched the color slash across his cheekbones. The glint in his eyes and his shadowed jaw gave him a sinister cast that was more exciting than frightening.
His jaw clenched, and she sensed that he was battling the urge to rush to fulfillment, an urge she wouldn’t protest. Alexa saw the moment he won the struggle, noted the slight curve of his lips as he reached out a finger to brush it lightly over her nipple.
Alexa slipped a hand behind his neck. Obeying her unspoken command, he sucked strongly from her. The slight scrape of teeth against her skin had hunger leaping forth like an uncaged tiger. Her fingers twisted in his hair, urging him to take more.
Her childhood had built a wariness in her, a guard beyond her years. She’d spent decades turning her defenses into a fortress. But Ethan had always been able to dismantle it with an ease that was alarming. He could make her feel things no one else could. Still frightening. Terrifying even. But also rewarding. Because her physical response to him was just as keen.
He lifted his mouth, and the cooler air tightened her nipple almost painfully. She met his lips with her own, an edged blade of desperation slicing through her. She felt alive in his arms. Achingly alive. And the heat careening through her veins chased away the chill that solitude could bring. There was danger here. Alexa wasn’t too far gone to be aware of it. Their shared history was fraught with heartbreak and complications. But it faded in the face of the sensation that heightened unbearably everywhere they touched. Every pulse point was razor-edged.
When he swung her into his arms, she opened her eyes dazedly, her wits completely dulled by the passion-induced fog. Ethan moved to the door, flicked off the light and then turned to cross to the bed. He laid her on the mattress and followed her down quickly as if to stem a protest. He wasn’t going to get one.
Alexa trailed the nail of her index finger over his shoulder and down his defined bicep over to his pec to trace a teasing circle around one flat nipple. His eyes narrowed in response and a small smile curled her lips. She leaned forward to nip his collarbone as he swiftly stripped off her clothes. Pressing her down on the bed, his arms framed her body, his mouth demanding on hers. The room was draped in shadows except for the jeweled glow from the city lights through the window. They spilled a soft rainbow of color over the bed, a contrast to the shro
ud of shadows enveloping them.
She savored the tactile onslaught. The stroking of Ethan’s heated palms over her skin, hot and demanding on her curves. He trailed a finger up her leg, circling teasingly around the heat centered between her thighs and leaned in for a kiss. Deep. Wet. Rawly carnal. He sent his tongue in search of hers at the same time he parted her slick folds and entered her with one exploring finger.
Her hips arched, twisting beneath him at the dual assault. Her blood was churning in her veins, frothing and crashing like whitewater. There was primitive demand in his kiss. In his touch. It was a demand she reciprocated.
Alexa’s hands streaked over his body, tempting, teasing; reveling in the feel of sleek skin covering unyielding muscle. He moved his leg over one of hers as if to hold her in place and she was reminded that he was still half-dressed.
The realization had her eyelids fluttering open. There was something intimately vulnerable lying naked beneath a man who was still partially clothed. Her fingers trailed along the flesh above his waistline; she felt his stomach quiver beneath her touch and smiled, slow and knowing. It was heady to realize he was as susceptible to the barrage of sensation as she was.
He pressed against her clit with his thumb, rubbing rhythmically even as he continued exploring her with his finger. Her vision grayed, sensation arrowing to the pit of her belly. It took effort to gather her scattered senses and work his zipper down, with more than a hint of desperation.
His touch grew urgent. He lowered his head, took a beaded nipple between his teeth and worried it gently. But there was nothing gentle about her response. Her back arched off the mattress in an involuntary reaction.
She felt him smile against her breast and the gesture of male satisfaction steeled her resolve. Pushing his fly open, she freed him from his boxer briefs and took him in her hand, squeezing firmly. His body jerked against her. She had time for one heated glide down the length of him and up again before he lifted his head from her breast and caught her hand with his free one, even as his knowing dancing fingers continued exploring her.
