He was silent for so long, she finally looked up. And she found him still watching her, his elbows on his knees, hands loosely clasped together.
God, how many times had he sat exactly like that as they'd talked— sometimes well into the night. This man was her best friend, and had been for years. Good old reliable Dave, always there when she'd needed a shoulder to cry on. Or someone to have sex with after years of zero intimate contact due to terrible prior emotional and physical trauma.
Sophia had always loved Dave's smile, but he wasn't smiling now. His mouth was tight and the muscle was jumping on the side of his jaw. The hardness in his eyes and on his face—the edge that she'd seen repeatedly since he'd been knifed—was back. And she realized it wasn't so much an air of danger as it was determination and self-confidence—or perhaps more correctly, a lack of his previous uncertainty and self-doubt.
For years, she hadn't thought of him as being particularly attractive, but he was. It was true, he wasn't the most handsome man on the planet— his face was a little too long, the bags under his eyes too pronounced, making him look, always, just a little bit sad. But the bright intelligence and gleam of humor that shone in his eyes was tremendously appealing— although there wasn't much humor there now, as he finally answered her.
“Everything,” he whispered. “They told me everything, Soph. So now you don't have to. Because now I know.”
She laughed. It was that or start to cry. “And that's why you risked your life,” she said again. “To find out something that I could have told you— that I would have told you, if you'd asked? What happened, Sophia, after that bastard killed your husband and claimed possession of you and everything you owned? What exactly did he do to make the experience even more of a nightmare? I would have told you everything. But no. You had to go to Kazabek and maybe get yourself killed.”
“I've been back there,” he said. “Dozens of times since—”
“Oh!” she cut him off. “God! Is that supposed to make it okay?”
“It is what it is,” Dave pointed out. “It's not like you didn't know.” He faltered. “You did know, didn't you? That I've gone there on assignment?”
And there they sat, staring at each other, as Sophia realized the problem. Her problem—because it was entirely hers. Her eyes ached with a renewed rush of unshed tears, and she fought to keep them from falling.
“No,” she said. “Actually, I didn't.”
“Jesus.” Dave was aghast. “Really? I mean, I know I didn't talk about it. Not with you, because, you know, Kazabek. Not your favorite place in the world, but… I thought…” He shook his head. “I'm so sorry. I didn't—”
“You're not supposed to go to Kazabek,” she interrupted him. “You're also not supposed to get stabbed in a parking lot.”
“Well, yeah,” he said. “That's kind of a given, across the board.”
“No,” she said. “You're not. You. Dave.”
It was clear that he didn't understand.
“It's my fault,” Sophia told him. “Entirely. So don't you dare apologize again. I don't know what I was thinking, but I was thinking it—”
“Thinking?” he repeated. “Soph, you lost me.”
She tried to explain. “Like, I wanted the biggest excitement in our lives to come from … from … deciding what color tile to use when we re-do the bathroom. From, I don't know, having the toilet clog. From outsmarting the coyotes to keep them out of the trash. I didn't want to be here—worrying if you're going to get an infection from being stabbed—let alone worrying about who's going to stab you next. Or shoot you. Or … God only knows what they're going to do next! I didn't realize I was signing on for that.”
He misunderstood. “I know. And I should have told you more extensively about the situation with Anise—”
“This isn't about Anise freakin’ Turiano!” She cut him off. “It's about who you really are. What you really are. Please, please don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that you deceived me, because you didn't. I'm the one who lied. To myself. About you. Because you're not the man I thought you were.” Dear Lord, she was completely messing this up, and that last bit in particular had come out totally wrong. “The man I thought I knew.”
That wasn't right, either. And Dave couldn't have looked more devastated and wounded if she'd taken out a gun and shot him point-blank.
“How can you say something like that?” he whispered, before she could even attempt to try again, “and then claim it's not about Anise?”
“It's not,” she said, desperate now to explain that which she hadn't even completely figured out for herself. Her head was filled with so much noise, so much chaos, and her stomach churned and boiled. “What I meant was …” She stopped for a moment, trying to organize her thoughts, to find the right words. “When we first got together—” She defined it more specifically: “When we became lovers, it was because I wanted to be with the man I had lunch with for all those years. The … the Dave who has to watch his weight and forgets to get his hair cut. The Dave who would rather talk to me on the phone for hours in his Las Vegas hotel room than hit the tables in the casino. I didn't want trips to Kazabek, and death threats and knife wounds. I didn't want James Bond. I wanted … to feel safe. I wanted a relationship with someone who's… I don't know …”
“Boring?” He supplied the word.
“No,” Sophia said. “Well, yes, but in a good way. Normal, Dave. I wanted normal.”
And great. Her explanation had made him feel even worse.
“And in a company filled with exceptional men,” he said quietly, “I guess I fit that bill. Wow. Okay. That answers a lot of questions, like what exactly is someone like you doing with a guy like me.”
“No,” she said. “Don't you see? I thought you were the exception.”
He didn't say it, but she knew what he was thinking. He was the exception—by being, in her eyes, unexceptional.
“For the record, I'm hardly James Bond.”
“I'm sorry,” she said sharply. “Did I misunderstand you just a few minutes ago when you reassured me that your going to Kazabek was no big thing and—”
“So what does this mean?” It was typical of Dave, to bulldoze right to the bottom line. His eyes were dark with his hurt, and with something else, too. Anger. “You don't want James Bond, and apparently you feel I'm enough like James Bond to warrant this discussion, so … What are saying, Soph?”
“I don't know,” she said.
“Are you breaking up with me?” he asked. “Because…” He struggled to compose himself, as he nodded his head. “That's probably a good idea.”
“No,” she said, closing her eyes. “That's not—”
“If these people are after me, then—”
“I'm just trying to be honest with you, while I wrap my head around the reality, which is different from what I'd imagined—”
“It's better if we're not together,” Dave said.
“I don't want to break up!” she said. “I love you!”
“Do you?” he asked quietly.
“Yes.” God, she was going to be sick again. She had to close her eyes and grit her teeth.
“Because it sounds like you're not sure you really know me. It sounds like you think I'm a little too much like Decker, and if you're going to be with a Decker, you might as well go for the real one—”
“Oh, my God!” she said. “How could someone so smart be so stupid? This has nothing to do with Decker and even if it did? He's made it very clear that he doesn't want me!”
Oh, wrong, wrong, wrong thing to say, as true a statement as it was.
“I'm sorry.” She said it right away, but it was too late. The damage was done.
Dave was already standing up. “Hokay,” he said. “That's great.”
“Dave, please, wait. I'm so sorry—”
“No,” he said. “I think we better end this conversation before … I'm exhausted. I didn't sleep on the plane and you're ill, and we're clearly not—”
&nb
sp; “I don't want Decker,” she told him as the tears she could no longer hold back slid down her face. “I want you.”
“Lunch me,” he reminded her. “Fat me. Boring me. I get it, Soph. I do. But I'm not the man you thought I was, and frankly? This current version of me is not sure how to give you what you want. So I'm going to go for what I want. Which is you, safe, while I find and neutralize the threat. If that's too James Bond for you? So be it.” He opened the door, but then, instead of walking out, he came back over to her, in a move that was classic Dave. “Come on. Let's get you into bed. You'll be more comfortable. I'll move the trash can close, in case you need to…” He was so gentle, his hands so warm as he helped her to her feet, helped her out of the bathroom and over to the bed. “I'll sleep out on the couch.”
“You don't have to—”
“Yeah, I do,” he said, then used the words she'd said to him earlier. “I, uh, need some space, too.”
He was lying. Sophia knew that what he really needed was the ability to wake up before she did, and leave—on some crazy mission that wouldn't just neutralize the threat but would probably get himself neutralized as well.
It was now or quite possibly never—and he had to know before he left. So as he took most of the throw pillows off the big bed, as he pulled back the covers so she could climb in, Sophia blurted it out with absolutely no lead-in, no setup, no warning. “I need to tell you that… I'm pretty sure I'm pregnant.”
Even after their hellish day, Tracy Shapiro still smelled incredibly good.
Decker stood there, in the hall of Sam and Alyssa's house, as she got closer. And closer.
She spoke, firmly, decisively, clearly, concisely. “Go into the bathroom, take off your clothes, and get into the shower.”
“This is hardly the time or place—”
“I'm willing to bet that with you, it's never the time or place,” she countered, “which makes here and now as good as any. I'll get my computer. And my phone. We'll hear if Jules or Alyssa contacts us. Until then, all we're doing is waiting. And getting cleaned up. So go on. Get cleaned up. Leave the door open.”
“I'm not—”
“I didn't say you could talk.”
When he opened his mouth to speak again, she reached between them—they were standing so close she didn't have to reach too far. She grabbed his entire set of equipment, with a grip that wasn't exactly gentle, but wasn't exactly not. Regardless, he nearly went through the ceiling.
Jesus! He just managed to bite back the word as he reached down and caught her wrist.
But Tracy said, just as sharply, “And I certainly didn't say you could touch me.”
It was the moment of truth—he knew it as well as she did. Whatever was going to happen—or not happen—depended upon what he said or did next.
But then she stood on her toes and kissed him—just a brief, delicate flutter of her soft lips against his. “Shhh,” she whispered. “It's okay.”
So he let go of her wrist and just stood there, silently, hands at his sides, breathing hard, as her tear-his-balls-off grip turned into something else, something far more like a caress, yet still absolutely possessive. He closed his eyes as she touched him, cupped him, stroked him.
“Do you like this?” she whispered, and when he opened his eyes to look at her, he saw that she was smiling just a little—the corners of her mouth quirking up. Probably because she'd just asked him a question, yet had told him not to speak.
He nodded—one short jerk of his head—as he held her gaze.
“Me too,” she murmured. “Go figure. So go ahead—into the bathroom. Take off your clothes and get into the shower.”
Decker hesitated, because it meant he'd have to pull away from her. And his response to her question—did he like this?—had been an understatement. Like was hardly the right word. It was possible he'd never before been this overwhelmingly hard for anyone—not in his entire life.
“Do it. Now,” Tracy said in that take-no-shit, commanding-officer tone, and he moved, pulling free from her grasp, which left him feeling cold and almost bereft.
But she was right behind him, and he could feel her watching him from the doorway as he unfastened the makeshift bandage around his arm and shrugged out of his overshirt. His shoulder holster and sidearm hit the floor with a thud as he wasn't quite careful enough with it, in his haste to pull off his T-shirt.
The pain as he raised his arm made his eyes water, but he didn't give a shit. He just pushed it aside—both the pain and his analysis of whether or not it heightened his completely fucked-up sense of pleasure. At other times, he would've been way too far inside of his own head, but not now.
He was completely present, here in this little room, and he hesitated only slightly before he lifted the elastic waist of his shorts over his raging hard-on and slipped them down and off his legs.
He was doing what she'd told him to, and he looked up at her as she made a little sound of approval—a little “Mmm,” as if he were something being wheeled in on a dessert cart.
He loved the way she was looking at him, but the fact that he loved it made him feel self-conscious, so he turned and stepped into the shower. The water was too hot, and he adjusted it before he turned back to reach for the shower curtain.
“Leave it open.”
He put his arm back down, as she added, “Do not move. I'll be right back.”
Tracy vanished—he could hear her heading swiftly down the stairs. She was going to get her computer and her phone, as she promised. Jesus, with her out of the room, he was suddenly shaking, his knees actually weak. He knew he should shut the curtain—that doing so would further break the spell, but he didn't move. He didn't want to move.
He knew, also, that he should take himself in hand, literally—and remove sex from the table. But he didn't do that, either.
Instead he stood there, as the warm water ran down his face, down his body. His head and shoulders and arm stung, as did dozens of other little scrapes and cuts all over him, but he didn't care. He just wanted to get clean so that Tracy would touch him again.
Please Jesus, let her come back and touch him again.
His arm screamed as he pushed the water out of his face, squeegeeing it back through his hair.
“I said don't move.”
She was back, putting her computer on the lid of the toilet, then closing the bathroom door behind her.
As he watched, she opened the mirrored medicine cabinet to peruse its contents, then rifled through both the closet and the cabinet under the sink. Whatever she was looking for, she didn't seem to find it. She didn't seem particularly perturbed, though, as she then took off her shirt and untied the rain jacket from her waist, leaving herself clad only in her underwear. And yes, her bra was, just as she'd described it, a relatively sturdy piece of equipment—white, like her panties—but sexy just the same.
Of course, Tracy Shapiro would've been sexy in a burlap sack.
The clasp of her bra was in the front, between her perfect breasts, and she reached as if to unfasten it as he watched, transfixed, as water pounded on his back.
“Don't look at me.”
He obeyed, averting his gaze, but… “Permission to speak.” His voice sounded rough and almost unfamiliar to his ears. He didn't wait for her to grant her permission, because he was afraid she might say no. “That doesn't work for me. The not looking …”
She changed her directive. “I agree. Don't stop looking at me and … Wash yourself.”
He found the soap by feel as she held his gaze, her own hands still on that front clasp. She waited to open it until he was lathering himself, and then there she was, in her incredible, full-breasted glory, her nipples tightly peaked, a rosy shade of dark pink on triangles of pale that were shaped like a bikini top—a contrast to her lightly tanned arms, stomach, and chest.
She smiled then—probably at the gone-to-heaven expression on his face—but then immediately wiped it away as she got back into this role that she was so obviously
enjoying playing.
But that moment of reality was jarring. What in hell was he doing here?
This was not a casual hookup with some beautiful stranger. This woman worked with him. For him, really, although she'd argued against that point rather persuasively.
He'd always liked her.
And after the past few days, he really, really liked her.
He liked her point-blank, in-his-face opinions and questions. He liked her seemingly mindless chatter—because it wasn't mindless. She always had a point, even if it took her a while to get there. He liked her quicksilver smile and her melodic laughter. He liked the way she rolled her eyes and waved off the many things she considered inconsequential.
And he loved her matter-of-fact adventurousness when it came to sex. It shouldn't have surprised him that she'd be into something like this, but it did.
The way she looked naked was mere icing on the cake. Outrageously delicious and perfect icing, sure, but a total bonus.
But icing or no, it seemed unlikely that this was going to end well. How were they going to be able to look at each other when they next went into the office? How—
“Stop thinking,” she ordered him curtly. “I can tell that you're having second thoughts, so just stop it.” She stepped out of her panties and into the shower with him, closing the curtain behind her, cocooning them into what felt like a warm and completely private world.
She pushed her way under the water, gasping as she let it run down her face and her incredible body, as she reached up to push her fingers through her now-wet hair.
“I don't think I can do this,” he said, as he tried to shift back. But there was nowhere to go and his ass bumped the cold tile.
She pushed the water from her face, as if surfacing from a swimming pool, and blinked at him with long, dark eyelashes that were matted and glistening, making her look like a mermaid, escaped from the sea.
“I'm sorry,” she said, one elegant eyebrow raised. “Did I give you permission to speak?”
“May I have permission to speak?”
“No,” she said, holding out the soap to him. “Wash me. And don't stop until I tell you to.”
Dark of Night Page 30
