KILLING ME SOFTLY

by Jenna Mills

  As I got older, my taste for the unknown intensified. The higher the risk, the higher the reward. There was no surer way to get me to do something than to dare me not to. Once, I spent the night in the abandoned morgue of the old Lady of the Lake Hospital. The teenage guys did it all the time. As far as anyone knew, I was the only girl who'd ever lasted more than twenty-two-and-a-half minutes.

  I've always, always thrived on fear. It's never stymied me. Never stopped me. Until Cain.

  He's just a man, I know that. He's got a reputation, that's true. But rumors have never frightened me. They make me want to know more, to find the truth. That's how it started with him. The more I heard about the untouchable police detective, the more I wanted to touch. The more my brother said stay away, the closer I wanted to step. The more Cain himself tried to stop me, the more I wanted…

  The more I want. That's the problem.

  I've never wanted like this. It's not just hunger or a thirst, but more of a necessity. Like breathing. Except when I'm around him I can't do that. Everything inside of me riots. And for the first time in my life, I'm scared.

  Because of the tenderness.

  Because of the knowledge, the realization, that for the first time in my life, someone has the power to hurt me. Destroy me. If I let him touch me one more time, kiss me, take what I so desperately want to give, deep inside I know it will be like putting a brand to my flesh. There will be no turning back.

  Even if it comes out everyone was right about him after all.

  That's why I stood him up.

  My instincts are razor sharp, always have been. But with Cain … I don't know anymore. The hum in my blood drowns out everything else, the caution, the instincts. When I look at him, I don't see the suspected dirty cop everyone else sees. When I touch him, I don't feel a ruthless monster. When I kiss him, I don't taste a man without conscience.

  And that scares me.

  After walking so many hours, I should be relaxed, but as I step onto my front porch, the pinball game inside me shifts into high gear. Inhaling the scent of jasmine twined around my porch rail, I lift my key to the lock.

  The door is ajar.

  Slowly, I reach for my mobile phone. Call 911. That's the smart thing to do.

  On a rush, I kick open the door, feel my heart stall in my chest.

  Moonlight slants through the shutters, revealing Cain sitting across the room in Granddaddy's old recliner. The shadows playing against his face do nothing to mute the hard glint to his eyes. Esmerelda is sprawled in his lap, arched into the curve of his hand. Even from across the room, I can hear the purring.

  The survivor in me, the one who for the first time in my life fears the fire, demands that I turn and walk away. Slowly, I step into my house and close the door. Cain eases the cat from his lap, and stands. I go to him.

  He does not meet me halfway.

  I don't care. The move is mine. I know that, see it in his eyes. He's furious with me. But it's not a fury born in anger or violence, but some place deeper. The place that has seen fear, knows its taste and feel and power.

  The same fear that's shredding me from the inside out.

  No words are spoken. No words are necessary. I step up against him and push up on my toes, press my mouth to his.

  For a moment, there's nothing. No response. And I know it's taking every ounce of strength he has to restrain himself. But then the storm breaks and a sound tears from his throat, low and primal, and with the stealth of a lightning strike his arms close around me and he takes control of the kiss, his hands fisting in my hair, his mouth crushing mine in urgent demand.

  His body is like a rock, hard and unyielding, and as I press myself to him, I feel his erection straining against my abdomen, and everything inside me turns wet and wanting.

  And he knows. Without another word he lifts me from my feet and I wrap my legs around his waist. The world falls away, but I don't care. There's only Cain, the way he makes me feel, the way he makes me want.

  Mouths locked in both battle and surrender, he carries me from the living room to my bedroom.

  Life will never be the same.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Bayou de Foi, present day

  During the long hours of the day, Renee had learned to push the memories aside. But at night, when she lay in exhaustion, that's when the memories attacked.

  He'd come to her then, in the brutal quiet of her dreams, as demanding as he'd once come to her in her bed. Hours later she would awaken, nightgown damp and tangled, sometimes torn, body slick and heart racing, trembling from the aftermath. Imaginary, she'd always told herself.

  But never quite believed.

  Now she realized what had seemed devastatingly intense and real during the nighttime visits had been nothing more than tattered shadows, muted echoes of what she'd once shared with this man. She arched into him, loved the feel of his body pressing down against hers. He was hot and hard and slick, and everywhere he touched, she burned.

  This, she realized. This is what she'd forced herself to forget. Because to remember would have destroyed.

  "I'm here," she whispered again. Her legs fell open and she could feel him between her thighs, heavy and straining. Her body hummed and begged, as though she'd been holding her breath for eighteen months, her body shutting down one cell at a time.

  But now oxygen flooded her, and even as she wept, she rejoiced.

  He ripped his mouth from hers so fast her heart never had a chance to prepare. Breathing hard, he pushed up on his arms and glared down at her, exposing her to eyes more decimated than should be humanly possible. Damp hair fell against his forehead, but did nothing to soften the lines of his face. His shoulders rose and fell with each choppy breath, as though he'd been sprinting for his life through the swamp, mile after mile after mile. And abruptly stopped.

  "I can't." The words sounded dredged from a tortured place. "Not like this."

  Her body screamed from the sudden loss, demanded that she bring him back. All of him. She could still feel him between her legs, his erection pushing against her, and despite the struggle vibrating through his taut muscles, she knew he wanted her, too.

  "It's okay," she whispered, lifting a hand to his face. "I'm not some fragile—"

  "Non!" He grabbed her wrist, pulled her hand away. "You deserve better."

  She swallowed hard, tried to breathe. He was a man rumored to be amoral, without conscience. And yet here he was, denying himself what he so obviously wanted, because she deserved better.

  The tarnished nobility, the cutting knowledge that she alone possessed the ability to put an end to his private hell, shredded her.

  "This is what I want," she said with the ferocity screaming through her blood.

  Propped over her, he held himself very still. "Don't cheapen yourself, Renee."

  The words stung. "I'm not."

  For a moment he said nothing, just stared down at her as if he didn't know whether to push her away or pull her in for more. Moonlight whispered in from a crack in the heavy curtains, revealing the sheen of perspiration against his nude body. She could feel the strength of him, longed to return her hand to his back and slide it along his flesh, feel the curve of his buttocks, pull him closer. But the way he looked at her held her motionless.

  The silence worked between them, broken only by the hard thrum of her heart. His heart.

  Then he swore softly and released her wrist, lowered his hand to her face and cupped her cheek. Again, it was the gentleness that stole her breath.

  "Do you have any idea what you do to me?" he asked in that black-magic voice of his, and she would have sworn she felt the question whisper through her. "How you make me feel? Make me want?"

  Everything inside of her went painfully still.

  "I look at you lying here," he said on a rough breath, "all soft and warm and willing, some kind of twisted deliverance I don't come close to deserving, and I'm half out of my mind with the need to tear your pajamas off and be inside you…"
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  Her heart slammed hard against her ribs. "Cain—"

  "But I can't," he said hoarsely. "I can't."

  Shadows flitted across his face, but in a blinding second of mercurial light, she saw the truth that punished, the moisture in his eyes. And she knew.

  "It's her, isn't it?" she said, and her heart, her voice, broke on the question. "Savannah."

  He winced as though she'd struck him, rolled from her and swung his feet to the floor, sat hunched over on the side of the bed. The urge to go to him was strong, to press against his back and drape herself around him, hold on tight.

  Tell him the truth.

  She put a single hand to his back, felt his muscles convulse.

  "She's here," he ground out, "like a fucking cosmic joke. Hell, I don't know, maybe it's some perverted payback, retribution for how badly I screwed up, but, damn it, every time you so much as walk into the room, every time I kiss you, touch you … it's her. Her I taste. Her I feel."

  Her, he wanted.

  Her, Savannah.

  Her, Renee.

  The backs of her eyes burned and her mouth twisted. As some broken voice deep inside demanded that she walk away now, while she still could, she curved her arms around his waist and pressed her face to his back, absorbing the feel of him, the heat and the strength and the pain.

  "It's been almost two years," she said into the deathly quiet. She hadn't thought it possible for words to form when her heart didn't even beat. "Surely there's been someone else since then."

  His body tightened on the words, and with her palm splayed against his stomach, she could tell that for a moment he didn't even breathe. Then, slowly, he turned toward her and took her hand, drew it to the slick warmth of his chest.

  "Not here," he said holding her open palm against the wiry hairs above his left nipple. She could feel the thrumming beneath the flesh, hard and fierce and erratic. "Here there's been nothing." He'd been living on autopilot. He didn't say it, but she could see the darkness. "Until you walked into my life."

  The admission crested through her, scalding like sweet poison.

  "I don't know what's real anymore," he went on, and his voice was ravaged. "What's imagined. What's cursed."

  Yes, he did. Trying not to shake, Renee lifted a hand and felt the telltale wetness beneath his eyes. "Because when you look at me—"

  "My heart sees Savannah."

  The words came at her through a vacuum of time and space, and for a moment everything fell away. She was kneeling on his bed. He was naked, his body twisted to hers. His hands were on her face. Hers were on his. And for that one fraction of a moment, time disintegrated and they were lovers again, drunk on each other and the insatiable need that kept bringing them back for more. Always more.

  But then the moment shifted and reality poured in, and deep, deep inside, she started to bleed. "You resent me for that."

  His eyes met hers. "Nowhere near as much as I resent myself."

  "And you feel you're betraying her." The irony twisted deep.

  Cain took her hands and pulled them from his face. "Mais oui," he bit out, standing. Gruffly he reached for his sweatpants and jerked them up his legs. "And I just can't do it."

  The room tilted. She wanted to reach for him, reached instead for his pillow and hugged it to her chest, watched him pace to the adjoining bathroom and splash water on his face.

  "What about Angel?" she asked with near militant defiance, and even as the question left her mouth, she didn't know what she wanted more. Admission—or denial.

  Admission meant Angel had told her the truth, that the agony she'd just heard in his voice and seen in his eyes was an act, an illusion designed to manipulate her.

  But denial … denial meant Angel had lied, and that the agony was real.

  He looked at her through the mirror. "Angel?"

  "I met with her in the Quarter." She stood, grateful for familiar, solid territory. "A prostitute. She knew things about you, said you used to be one of her regulars."

  "And you believed her?"

  She lifted her chin, let the silence speak for her.

  His eyes glittered. "The dark place, cher," he said turning toward her, and almost sounded amused. "It can get you in trouble."

  A tremor ran through her. She refused to call it hope. "You haven't been with Angel since—"

  "Jamais." Never.

  "What about while Savannah—"

  Through the darkness, his eyes met hers. "There was never anyone else. Savannah knew that."

  "You two hadn't been lovers for long."

  "The intensity of a relationship cannot be measured by time," he said, then swung toward the closet and narrowed his eyes. She heard it then, the faint scratching coming from behind the door.

  "Mon bebette," he muttered, striding from the bathroom toward the door. He opened it and went down on one knee. "How did you get in there, girl?" he asked.

  She stood there staring, trying to breathe, as she felt the punch clear down to her soul.

  Cain rose, bringing the big calico with the unmistakable green eyes up with him. "Does it really feel like," he asked, turning toward her, "you've known me less than a week?"

  Esmerelda. Her heart swelled at the sight of the big cat cradled in Cain's arms. She'd wondered. She'd wondered what had become of the cat she'd found as a kitten abandoned along the side of I-10. She'd tortured herself with thoughts of Esmy left alone in her house, starving to death. Or worse, turned out on the street or surrendered to the fate of an animal shelter.

  Never once had she imagined Cain—

  The sight of them—Cain, tall and battle scarred, bare chested and barefoot; her cat, fat and happy and perfectly cared for—did cruel, cruel things to her heart. It thrummed low and deep, and in that one instant everything crystallized, the lies and the truth, the deceit and the hope.

  "Her body was never found," she whispered, and even as she saw him stiffen, even as the voice of the survivor warned her to stop, now, while she still could, the risk taker she'd once been refused to cower. "What if she's still alive? Injured, maybe. Broken." Just saying the words hurt. But she had to know. "Waiting to come back to you."

  "That's not going to happen," he practically growled, and the cat began to squirm.

  She stepped toward him. "How do you know that?" she asked, hating the desperation in her voice, and only when she saw the condemnation move back into his eyes, did she realize how the question must have sounded.

  "Unless I killed her." The quiet words blasted like a shout. "Is that what this is about, cher? Another game, another trap, bait me with memories and see if I slip?"

  "No!" The word shot out of her. She crossed the room and reached for him, froze when he stepped back.

  "You said it yourself," he ground out. "It's been almost two years. Eighteen months, three weeks and two days to be exact. Without one word." He paused, pierced her with his gaze. "If Vannah was alive, she would have found some way to contact me. Even if she was hurt. She would never have stayed away, not as long as she had a single breath left in her body."

  Silently, Renee brought a fist to her mouth, felt everything inside of her go cold.

  "And if by some miracle she survived," he went on in that brutally quiet voice of his, "but never let me know, if she stayed away when one phone call would have cleared my name … then she is dead to me anyway."

  Denial shouted through her, but words wouldn't form. Because deep inside, she knew he was right. She was dead to him, dead to herself, had been from the moment she'd come to in a small clinic in Mississippi, bandaged and broken, scared and confused, and chosen to call her grandmother, and not Cain.

  "I was wrong to come here," she whispered through the tightness in her throat. Not trusting herself to look at him one second longer, she did the only thing she could.

  She turned and walked away.

  Across the hall, a door closed. Saura Robichaud pushed aside her laptop and slipped from bed, went to investigate. She opened her door and look
ed both ways, saw nothing but the big calico cat slinking from her brother's room.

  Relief washed hard and fast. She hurried downstairs to Cain's study and looked for any signs that the reporter had been poking around while she thought the house slept.

  Satisfied all was secure, Saura made her way back upstairs, but paused outside the guest room. At first there was nothing, just silence, but then she heard the sound of running water from the adjacent bathroom. Only then did she return to her bedroom—and the Internet database awaiting on her laptop.

  A long-forgotten hum buzzed through her. She climbed into her big canopy bed and crossed her legs, pulled the computer into her lap and let her fingers fly across the keys. It all came back to her, the routines that had once been so familiar. Once she'd thrived on the high, fed on the adrenaline. Adrian had always teased her, said she was like a woman possessed.

  Adrian.

  Her heart clenched on the memory, and deep inside, she cried. Not on the outside, though. Those tears were gone. Dried up like a sunbaked riverbed.

  Sometimes it all seemed like a dream. After a lifetime of being invisible, Adrian had seen her. And not just seen her, he'd loved her. Wholly and unabashedly. It had startled her at first, then frightened. No one had ever loved her like that. Other than Cain, she wasn't sure anyone else had ever loved her, period.

  She'd tested Adrian, pushed him away as hard as she could, and when he refused to go away, she'd resorted to throwing dragons in his path. But like water working against rock, he'd worn her down, and gradually she'd begun to trust. Him. Her heart. The future. He'd known her as no one else ever had—her hopes, her dreams, her secrets, even the one she'd never confided in Cain.

  It was that secret which drove her now. That secret which seduced her back to the world she'd abandoned … that of Femme de la nuit.

  Her brother was a smart man. Cautious. Intuitive. But he was also fractured in ways only someone else who was broken could realize. And he'd been alone for so very long. That kind of solitude could warp a person, lead them to imagine things, see what they wanted—such as truth where there was none.