Terms of Surrender

by Kylie Brant

  “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

  He seriously doubted it. Shifting to a more comfortable position, he ordered his flagging concentration back to the case. “What?”

  “We know the feds would have looked at recent parolees with bank robbery sheets first. No doubt they’ve run them upside down and sideways. But now they’re focusing on the terrorism angle. By following this lead, we may be able to uncover something before they even get around to kicking over the same rocks.”

  “If we get lucky.” Her enthusiasm was contagious. They’d never worked a case together before. Had never been assigned to the same precinct. But they seemed to share a wavelength. He felt as comfortable bouncing ideas off her as he did with Jack, whom he’d known since they’d both been rookies. “We make a good team.”

  Her expression shuttered. She handed him the wit report to place back in the file and rose. “Better team on the job than off it, I’d say.”

  The reference to their past had his temper flaring, quick and hot. In a dim corner of his mind he recognized that the anger was too close to the surface after all this time. Too easily summoned. “Is it really that easy for you, Jolie? Push it aside, don’t think about it. Encounter a problem and, hey, just walk away and forget about it, right?”

  “Easy?” Like him, she kept her voice low, but her laugh was bitter, her eyes hot. “When was anything ever easy between us? Our biggest mistake was in thinking we could turn what we had into something more. Before you came along, I knew what my boundaries were.” She thumped her fist against her chest for emphasis. “I accepted them. You think it was easy to ignore a lifetime of caution and reach for something that was never meant to be? It wasn’t smart. And it sure as hell wasn’t easy. Neither was living with what happened because I forgot the danger of wanting more.”

  Her sudden fury blindsided him. She was a master at keeping her feelings locked behind a veneer of control. Her outburst offered a rare glimpse into the thoughts she kept so tightly guarded. His temper faded as he focused on what she’d just revealed. “Why’s it a danger, Jolie?” His voice was as nonthreatening as he used with HTs. “What’s so bad about wanting the kind of life other people have?”

  With eyes flat and hard, she retorted, “Because I’m not like other people. You know what happened at my fourth foster home if we reached for more at the dinner table? We got a leather strap across the back of our hands. It didn’t take long to get the message. Accept what you’ve got and be happy with it.”

  …my fourth foster home… He filed the words away to be examined later. She was still talking. Pacing the small confines of the room.

  “I’m a good cop. Good on HNT.” She shot him a humorless smile. “Believe me, I know what my limitations are. My biggest mistake was allowing you to convince me to set them aside.”

  That was a sharp, jagged pain in his heart. “What are you saying? That Sammy was a mistake? That you wished you’d never gone through with the pregnancy?”

  The anguish on her face made her earlier misery pale in comparison. “You don’t get it, do you? I don’t regret Sammy. How could I? But you screwed up bigger than I did. Your mistake wasn’t in wanting a child.

  “It was wanting me to be its mother.”

  CHAPTER 9

  Jolie couldn’t breathe. Not with Dace watching her with that arrested expression, as if she’d just verbalized something he’d been thinking. Knowing the truth didn’t mean she was ready to hear him agree with it.

  “You don’t think you were meant to be a mother.” His careful rephrasing of her words had her raising a hand.

  “Don’t try HNT active listening now, Dace. Not on me.” Because looking at him made it difficult to think, she half turned away, focused on the heap of luggage on the floor. She needed to get some sleep. Summon unconsciousness that would let her forget at least for a while. And if she had to rely on one of those pills the doctor had pressed on her at the hospital to beckon slumber, well, there were worse crutches.

  “Maybe you think I wasn’t meant to be a father either.”

  “I never thought that.” Seeing him with his family, his mother and sisters, nieces and nephews, had always made her feel like a child with her nose pressed against the window of a candy store. His relationship with his family was easy, natural, born of long familiarity and a deep-seated love. And although they’d all been kind to her, she’d always felt out of place around them. The boisterous teasing, the commotion of family get-togethers, the openly curious remarks had all felt slightly suffocating. She’d faced down armed gunmen with barely a flicker of emotion, but one of Dace’s upcoming family events would tie her stomach in knots for days beforehand.

  “So this is all about you. Things would have been different if it had been Sheila who had gotten pregnant. Or Lindsey. Or Meredith.”

  The names of his former girlfriends had her flinching, a buried reaction from the time when she’d had a right to feel jealousy. But she couldn’t dodge the truth in his words. “Yes.”

  “That is such crap, Jolie.”

  The change in his tone had her head whipping around to face him. There was incredulity in his expression, heat in his eyes. “We both read the research. We hadn’t done anything to increase Sammy’s risk of SIDS. His death was tragic. But it wasn’t our fault. It wasn’t yours, just because you happened to be the one to find him.”

  A sliver of pain lodged deep at the reminder. They’d alternated shifts so one of them could be home with Sammy as much as possible. Dace had left the house forty minutes earlier on the day she’d awakened and checked on their son. On the day she found him not breathing in the crib they’d selected with such care. The memory of that morning still throbbed like a wound.

  “He wouldn’t have been any less dead if you’d had first shift that day instead of me. Or would you have blamed me, if the situation was reversed?”

  “Of course not!” The denial was out of her mouth before she could consider the words.

  He gave a nod. “Of course not. But it’s okay to blame yourself. That makes no sense at all.”

  She struggled to keep her voice pitched low. How incongruous that the first real discussion they’d had about their son’s death was held in near-whispers with a sleeping federal agent downstairs. “I don’t blame myself for Sammy’s death.” She didn’t, exactly. What she deserved blame for was tempting fate. For reaching for something she’d known better than to hope for. “You don’t get it. I did everything right.” There was a catch in that last word and she stopped, waited for her voice to steady before continuing. “I stopped smoking as soon as soon as I knew I was pregnant.” Even before she’d decided to go through with the pregnancy. And that implication was particularly elusive.

  “I followed all the rules.” She heard the plaintive note in her voice, was helpless to temper it. She’d thought she could shore up her complete ignorance about babies by reading everything she could lay her hands on. Making lists of things to remember. Careful notes on what to avoid. But education was no match for lack of instinct. And there she’d failed miserably. “You had to show me everything.”

  She didn’t hear him move. But suddenly he was behind her, his hands on her shoulders. Slowly, inexorably, he overcame the resistance in her body to draw her back against his chest. “My experience with diaper changing wasn’t exactly something I came by willingly.” His voice was in her ear, tinged with humor. “My sisters’ offspring have all perfected the art of instant elimination the moment their parents walk out the door.”

  That surprised a laugh from her, and a bit of tension eased from her body. He rested his chin lightly on the top of her head. His arms slid down her arms to link around her waist. “Inexperience didn’t make you a bad mother. It wasn’t some kind of sign from the fates when your milk didn’t come in, and we used bottles instead of breast-feeding. It just was. You can’t read hidden meanings into things neither of us could control. We stumbled through the first few weeks after Sammy was born the same way most n
ew parents do. Scared to death and in a sleep-deprived fog.”

  She gave a short laugh again, a part of her amazed that the memories could bring as much comfort as pain. She let her head rest against his chest. Heard the reassuring steady thud of his heartbeat. “I don’t think you slept for the first three days after his birth.” Exhaustion had worked on her, but Dace had been alert to every hitch in Sammy’s breathing. Every squeak heard over the baby monitor.

  “Well, I eventually perfected the art of pretending not to hear him wake up, didn’t I?”

  She pinched one of his arms, satisfied when she felt him flinch. “You did become quite masterful at that, yes.” She hadn’t ever really minded. There had been a rare peace in the times she’d spent rocking her son as she fed him. And if it had never stopped feeling a bit foreign, there had also been joy in those quiet times she’d never regret.

  Dace still didn’t understand. The certainty pierced her heart. He could probably only fully comprehend once he’d met Trixie. But even knowing that didn’t stem the surge of desire. He was a protector to the core, a cop, with that Marine toughness as much a part of him as his eye color. Maybe that was why his unexpected tenderness could so easily undo her.

  She turned in his arms, tipped her chin up to look at him. The strong stubborn jaw was stubbled, the scrape already healing. His chestnut hair was ruffled, probably from his habit of jamming his fingers through it when he was poring over case notes. But it was what she saw in his shockingly green eyes that had her pulse stuttering.

  Desire.

  A smoky tendril of heat suffused her. She spent her life exerting control. Over her emotions. Her environment. Her relationships. But her body made a mockery of that restraint as it softened against his. A shrill of alarm sounded in the recesses of her mind. It would be a mistake to forget all the pain in their relationship and focus on the purely carnal satisfaction she could find with him.

  Their gazes tangled. Her throat abruptly dried. If memory served, when it came to carnal satisfaction, they’d been pretty damn combustible. He stroked a lazy path up her spine, and she shuddered in response. Now was the time to heed caution and step away, before there were any more regrets between them.

  His head dipped, and his teeth closed over the cord of her neck, testing not quite painfully. Reason clouded. They knew where all the mines were buried in their relationship, didn’t they? Surely they could sidestep them to focus on the parts that were separate from the regret. Dace was no more anxious than she to relive the pain 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 cemented her decision. He was the only man who’d ever made her feel like this. Want like this. It wasn’t the frankly sexual passion between them that was to be feared. It was fooling themselves that it could be more.

  His lips moved over hers then and there was a flare in the pit of her belly, hot and immediate. He knew how to kiss a woman, deep and devastating. With a single-minded intensity that had the rest of the world dimming. Inner fires flaring. She opened her mouth beneath his and dove into the flames.

  His flavor was dark temptation, lethal to her senses. She slid her hands inside his T-shirt to skate up hard-muscled sides, her fingers flexing in remembered pleasure. She’d always enjoyed the contrasts of them, his sinewy strength against her softness. And she’d enjoyed stripping him of that strength, torching his control until desperation turned his breathing ragged, his hands hard and frantic.

  He cupped her face in his palms, but there was nothing gentle in 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 shoulders, and still he didn’t lift his mouth from hers. Her muscles melted, hot wax under a molten flame. Here was the hunger she remembered. The hint of savagery that called forth an answering wildness.

  He urged her legs apart with his knee, then stepped between them. His erection 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 locked around his hips, she rocked against his hardness, feeling his reaction even if she couldn’t manage to drag her eyes open to watch it.

  With sudden urgency, Jolie bunched his shirt in her fists, dragged it up his torso. Dace finally moved his mouth from hers long enough to rid himself of the garment. Her head lolled against the wall, her fingers dancing over the remembered planes of his chest, the hollows beneath his ribs. The ridges of bone and sinew.

  She felt his fingers on the fastenings of her shirt and her breath caught. Held. There was something exquisitely sensuous about focusing on touch alone. The languid slipping of one button from its hole. The inch of exposed flesh bathed by Dace’s clever wicked tongue. Another button. Skin prickling in anticipation of his lips long seconds before it, too, was tasted.

  He took his time. Each button was released with exquisite care. Each bared expanse of flesh meticulously explored. Jolie forgot about her own exploration, the teasing journey she’d been mapping along his biceps, across his chest. She clutched at his shoulders, fingers digging into his flesh, and shivered each time his mouth found a new square of flesh to map through taste alone.

  This rollicking in her pulse was familiar, but no less heady for it. Every brush of his lips, every teasing slide of his tongue was a dark 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 wanted him quaking, too. Wanted to unleash the primitive nature he battled to keep leashed. She wanted, quite frankly, to strip him of every defense, even as he stripped her of clothes.

  To that end, she relaxed her fingers, went on a quest designed to unharness his control. He released her fourth button and her senses scattered when 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 breath sucked in was its own reward.

  Her reach was constrained by their position but she was thorough in her investigation. She brushed her fingers over his back, feeling the flesh punctuated by vertebrae. The muscles beneath her fingers quivered under her touch like an impatient stallion’s.

  His hands began to hurry a bit as he pulled her shirt up to undo the bottom buttons. With one practiced movement he released the front clasp of her bra and spread the fabric aside.

  Her nipples were knotted, awaiting his touch. And when it didn’t immediately come, Jolie managed to drag her eyes open, a demand on her lips.

  It went unuttered. Dace was staring at her, and she felt seared by his gaze. It painted her face, her breasts, causing her nipples to tighten even more. The look was a little possessive, slightly cruel, a man surveying a woman he meant to take at his leisure. She knew from experience he’d pleasure and take pleasure in return, and that knowledge sparked comets of heat through her veins.

  Eyes locked on him, she arched her back, a carnal invitation, and watched the color slash across his cheekbones. His jaw tightened. Intuitively she knew he was battling against the urge to rush the ending, an urge she wouldn’t protest. But she saw the moment he won the battle, saw the slight curve to his lips as he reached out a finger to brush it lightly over her nipples.

  She jerked against him in involuntary response, and her reaction seemed to ignite something inside him. He slid a hand up to cup one of her breasts, capturing the taut bud between thumb and forefinger, before lowering his mouth to take the other nipple between his lips.

  Kaleidoscopic colors wheeled behind her eyelids. Jolie leaned back while pressing closer against him, and he responded to her unsp
oken demand by suckling strongly from her. The slight scrape of teeth against her flesh had hunger leaping forth like an uncaged tiger. Her earlier plan to make him ache, make him need was forgotten. Her fingers twisted in his hair, urging him to take more.

  She was a master at maintaining her guard, lest she reveal vulnerabilities it had taken her a lifetime to hide. But unlike any other man she’d ever met, Dace could dismantle that guard with mind-numbing ease. That fact had always dismayed and alarmed her by turn. But the flip side was that he could get closer, could make her feel things no one else ever had. 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, all pretense stripped away. She felt alive again in his arms. Desperately, achingly alive. And the heat careening through her veins warmed where she’d been cold and empty for too long. There was a claim sometimes leveled at SWAT units that they were adrenaline junkies. Maybe that explained her reaction to Dace. There was danger here—a history fraught with complications and heartbreak. But sensation heightened unbearably everywhere they touched. Pulse points were sharpened to razor-edged keenness.

  When he swung her into his arms, she opened her eyes dazedly, her wits completely dulled by the passion-induced fog. Dace moved toward the door, flicked off the light and was striding down the hall before she quite knew what was happening.

  He glanced down at her as he carried her through the doorway to his room, pushing the door closed behind him with his foot. But if he was waiting for an objection, he wasn’t going to get one from her.