A Cry in the Dark

by Jenna Mills

  Through it all, Liam had never left her side. Never stopped touching her. A hand in hers, a palm at the small of her back. But other than a barked word here or there, he’d said very little. His eyes were distant, his face a grim mask she barely recognized.

  At the hotel she’d been greeted by the property’s celebrated owner, Derek Mansfield, who’d insisted she stay at the Stirling as long as she needed to. Cass, his police detective wife, had supplied three bags of necessities—jeans and tops, underwear, makeup and lotions, shampoo, everything Danielle would need to get through the coming days. There was even a bag of clothing for Alex.

  Because still no one knew he was missing.

  Danielle had quickly fabricated a story about him visiting her sister in Philadelphia.

  The ache in her chest deepened. It amazed her that she could function for the world at large, while horror gnawed away at her, moment by moment, like destructive acid. Her little boy. God, she hadn’t been separated from him for more than eight or ten hours since his birth.

  Now it had been almost a week.

  She should have gone to the room Mr. Mansfield had provided, three floors below Liam’s. There she could be alone. There she could have sunk to the floor of the shower or curled up in the bed and let go. She could have screamed into her pillow or pounded her fists against the mattress. She could have cried the tears she’d been fighting.

  But when the elevator had dinged at her floor and the doors had slid open, she hadn’t been able to step into the hallway, nor could she when she’d looked into Liam’s eyes and seen hell.

  They wouldn’t let me pass. His words from the night before haunted her. I kept shouting over and over that my wife was in there, that she needed help, but then they pointed to the black body bag and—

  Caution told her to leave it alone. Leave him alone. But caution had never come easily to her. She’d wrapped herself in a blanket of it for the past two years, but that blanket was singed and tattered now, threadbare. It no longer shielded her from the hot Gypsy blood that ran through her veins.

  The need to touch consumed her. The need to strip away the aura of darkness and bare the man inside, the one who still blamed himself for his wife’s death. In a fire. Set by Titan.

  The priestess is your strength, the old fortune teller had promised. The priestess urges you to trust your intuition.

  That intuition was shouting now. Screaming. She couldn’t just sit there a watch Liam unravel, not when she knew his involvement in her life was accelerating the process. He’d been her rock from the moment he’d shown up at her front door.

  Now it was her turn.

  Frowning, she glanced at the sidebar across from the bed, where four postcards sat in a neat line and a bottle of fine aged scotch stood tall and barely touched. Too easily she could see him here in this room, night after night, pacing, standing at the window, fingering the postcards, consumed by a fire that burned hotter and more deadly with every passing day, a fire that had already claimed at least one life.

  A fire dangerously close to consuming another.

  Quietly she crossed to him, stopped just short of touching. “It wasn’t your fault.”

  The muscles in his back went rigid. He’d showered after she had, emerged from the bathroom with a pair of faded jeans hugging his hips and a wrinkled white button-down, untucked and unbuttoned. It was a completely casual look, but it only emphasized the hard lines of his body.

  “Liam.” Her voice broke on his name. Her heart broke on his silence. “There was nothing you could have done.”

  He spun on her so fast her heart didn’t have a chance to beat. “Nothing I could have done?” His eyes flashed with an intensity she’d never seen, not even from him. “I’m a trained agent. I should never have left you, not when I know what Titan is capable of.”

  “I’m not Kelly,” she said quietly, then, trusting the intuition that flowed through her, she lifted a hand to his face. He hadn’t taken the time to shave, leaving his whiskers thick but surprisingly soft. “This isn’t the past.”

  He brushed by her and strode barefoot across the small room. At the sidebar he grabbed the scotch and twisted off the cap, brought the sleek bottle to his face. But he didn’t drink. He breathed. Deeply.

  He said nothing.

  She watched him, the rigid lines of his body, the misplaced curl of damp hair at his nape. It made him look boyish and vulnerable in a way she’d never imagined possible.

  “You don’t want to do that,” she said above the rapid-fire beating of her heart.

  “No?” He pivoted toward her, scorched her with those hot eyes of his. “You sure about that?”

  “It’s not the answer.”

  “Funny,” he bit out. “I don’t recall hearing a question.”

  Darkness crept in through the window and swirled around the room, but she made no move to flick on a lamp, and neither did he. “That’s not true,” she whispered. “You live the question. You’ve lived it every day for the past three years.”

  A hoarse sound broke from low in his throat and squeezed the breath from her lungs. “What question?”

  The same one that had chased her from Philadelphia to Chicago, the question that had prompted her to turn her back on everything she knew and loved. The question whose answer could only lead one pla“How do you live with yourself?” Her voice was soft, but the words echoed through the room. “How do you forgive?”

  He swore softly. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “But I do,” she said, turning her back on the unnatural caution that had defined her for too long. She crossed to him and lifted her hand to the bottle clenched in his, capped it, then curled her fingers around his. “You’re not the one who needs to be punished.”

  He staggered from her, the gulf between them widening, bridged only by their outstretched arms, the bottle they held.

  “You don’t want this and we both know it,” she said. He was too strong for that. Too honorable. Drinking was the easy way out. It dulled the senses this man kept finely sharpened.

  “If you did, this bottle wouldn’t still be full.”

  The muscle in the hollow of his jaw twitched. “You don’t have a damn clue what I want.”

  Nothing could have stopped her, not even the warning shrieking through her veins. The need was too great. The pull too strong.

  “Yes, I do,” she whispered, then closed the gap between them and pushed up on her toes, lifted her mouth to his.

  There was a sharp hiss of breath between them, a low mutter, then the bottle dropped to the rug beneath them and his lips found hers.

  This time the ragged little cry was hers.

  Magdalena had warned her. Magdalena had warned that he was a man of driving passion, and deep in her bones Danielle had known as much, even while he’d stood behind the wall of his control. But all that was gone now, just as she’d hoped. His arms went around her like steel bands, much the way they had when she’d run across her yard to him, when she’d dropped down on her knees to hold him. She’d wanted his mouth then, needed to taste him, to absorb the strength and ferocity that defined him, to assure herself that she was alive, that he was alive, and somehow, some way, they were going to come through this nightmare intact. Together.

  She tasted all that now, and more. His mouth slanted against hers greedily, the whiskers of his jaw scraping against her in a way that affirmed he was real and vital, that he was holding her. That he needed her as badly as she needed him.

  And she did need him. The realization staggered her, but she couldn’t fight it anymore, not when she tasted the ashes of his restraint, the sweet warmth of promise. She twined her arms around him and pressed into him, absorbing every hard, hot line of his body. Her hands itched to cruise along his flesh, to feel every inch of him, as though in doing so she could magically heal them both.

  For now she contented herself with pressing her fingers against the planes of his back, concealed by the soft, wrinkled cotton of his sh
irt.

  “Danielle,” he murmured against her open mouth, then changed the angle of his kiss. His mouth was hot against hers, demanding, urgent.

  It was the urgency that got her, the urgency that swept through her with the same intensity the fire had swept through her attic. She felt the flames lick through her, lick deep, lick from her bres down between her legs.

  “I’m here,” she whispered, bringing her hands to the front of his shirt, so she could slide it back, down his arms. His skin was hot to the touch, driving home just how alive and vital he was. That the moment was real, not one of the dreams that had destroyed her sleep since the second he’d walked into her life.

  She’d forgotten. No, not forgotten. She’d never known this kind of passion, this kind of blinding need. She’d never craved like she did now, as though she would simply shatter if this man didn’t touch her. Hold her.

  Need her.

  As she needed him.

  “Don’t stop,” she murmured, shoving the shirt from his body. And then there was just his chest, all big and hard, with smooth muscles and springy hair. She lifted a hand to the flesh there, let her fingers explore a flat nipple. “Don’t ever, ever stop.”

  Not just kissing her, not just touching her, but being there, standing strong and unyielding no matter how hard she pushed. How hard she denied.

  He tangled his hands in her hair, urged her head back, dragged his mouth along her jawbone. “You have no idea,” he said huskily. “No idea what I thought when I saw that smoke.”

  But she did. She knew, because she’d seen it in the decimated look in his eyes, tasted it in the ferocity of his kiss. “None of that matters now,” she said on a shattering wave of warmth.

  “The hell it doesn’t,” he gritted out, and then he was gone, ripping away from her, pulling away with such force that she fell back against the bed.

  She lay there, staring up at him through the haze of passion and shadows, trying desperately to breathe. “Liam—”

  “Shh. Not another word.”

  Hurt broke from her heart and filled her throat, tried to flood her eyes. A bone-deep cold replaced the glowing embers of heat. “Don’t push me away,” she said, and her voice broke on the words. “Don’t pretend this isn’t what you want.”

  “I’m not pretending.”

  The slice of pain was like a knife across her throat. Slowly, dazed, she lifted a hand to her neck, fully expecting to feel the warm, sticky trickle of blood against her fingers. “No?” she asked. “Then what would you call it?”

  Dangerous. That was what Liam called it. That was what he called her. He stared down at her, sprawled on the dark purple comforter, with her hair, damp and tangled, spread around her. She wore simple clothes. There was nothing sexy or erotic about them. Just a crimson scoop-necked T-shirt and a pair of loose-fitting black pants. But in them, she looked like a centerfold torn straight from the pages of his darkest fantasies.

  The breath sawed in and out of him. He tried to slow it down, to cage the beast he’d mistakenly let loose, but he couldn’t look away from her. She made a beautiful picture lying there on his hotel bed, staring up at him through those fascinating sea-green eyes that had captivated him from the first moment he’d seen her, not b and bruised as they’d been at her house, but flashing with challenge.

  He was a strong man. He’d trained himself not to feel, not to want. And not just after Kelly’s death, either. He’d started the training early on, sometime in his early teenage years, after he’d begun to stand between his mother and his drunken father. He’d promised her, promised himself, that he would never let anything control him like that. Own him.

  Destroy him.

  Clenching his jaw, he glanced down at the elegant rug, where the bottle of scotch lay untouched, then back at Danielle.

  She pushed up on her elbows. “I never took you for a coward,” she whispered.

  He felt the muscle clench in the hollow of his cheek, the need begin to boil. “Don’t push me, Danielle.”

  Her eyes flashed. “Why not?”

  Because he was only freaking human. “I’m trying to protect you, damn it.”

  “Protect me?” Rather than stinging, the question was soft, gently probing. “Or yourself?”

  He winced. “This isn’t about me.”

  Through the shadows, a sad smile played with her lips. “Are you sure about that?”

  “Yes,” he said, and prayed that he was right.

  Her gaze flicked to his groin, where the hard evidence of his desire lingered. “I don’t need your protection. I need—”

  Her words died abruptly. Violently.

  So did the fire in her eyes.

  He’d seen devastation before. He’d seen its human toll. He’d seen the dull, glazed look on survivors. He’d seen it on others and in the mirror, but until this moment not on Danielle, this gutsy woman who kept her head high long after most women, most men, would crumble.

  And he couldn’t stand it. Couldn’t ignore what he saw, not when it reached inside of him like a claw and twisted.

  “What?” he asked in a voice no longer hard with restraint, but gentle with remorse. “What do you need?”

  Three days after the fire that had destroyed his home, he’d been allowed back inside. He’d walked among the ruins of the comfortable two-story, kicking through the debris, squinting to recognize the charred remains. The fire didn’t have to touch directly to destroy. The heat could do the trick. He remembered seeing one of Kelly’s silk floral arrangements, still jutting up from an urn she’d found at a flea market, but only the stems remained. The flowers had been completely incinerated.

  But it was the pictures he thought of now, the photo albums he’d found in a pile of sooty water. He’d squatted down and flipped through the collection of pictures spanning years and miles and lifetimes, only to discover the heat had melted away the images. The colors dripped and blurred, fused together, leaving nothing.

  This was the first time he’d witnessed the effect up close and personal. His question, born in unrefined sincerity, stripped the frozen mask from Danielle’s face. But rather than leaving an undiscernable blur, it etched her features in sharp relief. Gone was the haze to her eyes. Gone was the alabaster quality to her cheeks. Gone was the slight part to her lips.

  The tears stunned him. They flooded her eyes with emotion. Her skin flushed. Her mouth fell open, her bottom lip started to tremble.

  And, God, he knew. This was Danielle. This was the woman from deep inside, the woman she shielded and protected, the one she’d buried so many years before. It was the girl who’d lost her mother and her father at an unbearably young age, who’d been shuttled from foster home to foster home, who’d lived on the streets, survived ugliness someone so young should never see, the woman who’d born a child and lost a lover, said goodbye to her siblings and tried to start her life over again.

  Deep inside, where the vulnerable little girl had grown into a tough but vulnerable woman, the hurt lingered, and the need still burned.

  “I…” Her mouth worked, but little sound came forth.

  Her voice was hoarse, and it destroyed what little restraint he had left. “Danielle,” he said, then lowered a knee to the bed. “Hey.”

  She gazed at him through eyes huge and dark and devastated. “I can’t do this anymore,” she whispered hoarsely. “I can’t pretend I’m okay when in truth I’m dying inside.”

  Beyond, dusk had given way to night, leaving the room in shadows. But he didn’t need light to see the truth, not when it slammed into him like a crowbar to the skull. All afternoon she’d been tough and brave, dealing with facts, focused only on how the fire had impacted him. The memories it had dredged up. The emotions it had stoked. But now he realized all that had been a smoke screen. When the need was his, she could reach out, and she could help. Heal.

  But when the need was hers, she denied it.

  “I need my son back,” she said, finally answering his question. “I need to feel alive.�
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  Because like him she’d fallen, and she’d hurt. Like him, she held herself responsible for the sins of the past.

  “I think you do, too,” she whispered, and her raw honesty, her courage, punished him. Sprawled there on the bed, propped up on her elbows with her hair falling into her face and her eyes trained on his, she was letting him see the vulnerability she so skillfully hid from the world.

  “Foolish woman,” he muttered, but he didn’t pull back as he should have. No power on earth could have made him turn from her now, deny the truth that scorched everything he was. Everything he’d taught himself to be. Not when she looked at him as if she needed to feel his touch as badly as he needed to feel her.

  “You are alive,” he murmured, lowering himself to her, taking her face in his hands and returning his mouth to hers. “You’re alive and you’re beautiful.”

  She pulled him down with her, twined her arms around his neck. “Show me,” she whispered. “Make me remember what it’s like to feel alive.”

  Chapter 14

  She’d picked the wrong man for the job, but when he tried to tell her that, Liam’s thoughts blurred and the words refused to form. He slanted his mouth against hers, drank in the taste of her, the intoxicating mixture of courage and vulnerability, and knew that even if it killed him, he would find a way to give her what she wanted. To show her, help her remember what it was like when the darkness parted and the light poured in, when physical sensation brought pleasure and not pain.

  He started with his hands, let them roam the curves of her body, exploring, memorizing. She was soft and yielding, and wherever he touched, she arched into him.

  “Like that,” she murmured, echoing his movements with her own hands. They skimmed along his back, rode lower to slide over the back of his jeans, and pressed.

  He wanted to go slow. He wanted to give her tenderness. He wanted to kiss and touch and taste every soft, smooth inch of her. But her jerky movements made it clear she did not want the same thing. She twisted beneath him, reached for one of his hands and dragged it to her chest.