by Maggie Price
A dull thud whipped his head sideways. Adrenaline pumping, he tightened his hand on the Glock and turned a corner. When he stepped into the living room he blew out a breath at the sight of Tory kneeling in front of the fireplace. Another thud sounded when she added a log to those already burning on the grate.
“Can’t sleep?” Although he’d kept his tone soft, he saw her jolt at the sound of his voice.
“No.” The unnatural way she shifted to look across her shoulder at him evidenced her stiff muscles. “I decided to start a fire,” she said, her voice a husky whisper. “Thought maybe I’d have more luck dozing on the love seat.”
“Did you have another nightmare?”
“Sort of.”
Guilt resurfacing, he moved across the room. “It’s going to take time to work through what happened in that parking lot.”
“I know.” Placing a palm on the table, she levered herself up. “I’m still feeling kind of…off balance about it.”
It was like a fist in the solar plexus, watching her turn to face him. Her tousled hair framed her face, then gushed to her shoulders in a waterfall of gold. Those shoulders—and the rest of her—were draped in a long robe of milky white silk that snugged across her breasts and clung to her lean hips.
Having never known her to sleep in any attire other than thigh-skimming T-shirts, he about swallowed his tongue.
“Sorry I woke you.”
“Not a problem,” he managed when he found his voice. Scrubbing his free hand across his bare chest, he noted his heart now pounded for a far different reason.
Her gaze flicked to the Glock. “You planning on shooting someone, Lieutenant McCall?”
“If it hadn’t been you in here, maybe.” He laid the automatic on the table. And, because he’d seen the flicker of discomfort in her eyes when she stood, he moved to the fireplace. “I’ll put more logs on.”
“I can—”
He snagged her fingers, squeezed them. “I know you can.” In the fire’s buttery light her skin had a soft, fragile glow brought on by exhaustion. “You probably wrenched every muscle during the attack. So house rule number one is I do the heavy lifting around here. Got it?”
“We have house rules?” She raised her chin. “Guess you were too busy threatening to arrest me to mention them.”
He saw the stark white bandage peeking out above the robe’s high neck, and struggled to keep his voice light. “Getting you here whatever way I could took priority.”
He pulled a couple of logs out of the wood box and added them to those flaming on the grate. That done, he made a circle motion with his index finger. “Turn.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Why?”
“It’ll be easier for me to massage your back if you’re not facing me.”
“This is a safe house, McCall, not a spa.”
“That’s one sharp observation from a crack P.I.”
When she didn’t budge he sidestepped her and slipped his hands beneath her hair. He could feel her nerves snap as he began to knead shoulder muscles that were taut as wire.
“Look, McCall—”
“House rule number two,” he continued, increasing the pressure of his thumbs. “Back rubs are permitted for the walking wounded.”
“I don’t want…. Ahhhhh.”
“Feel good?” With each pass of his hands across her shoulders, the white silk flowed like warm water.
“Like…heaven.” The husky purr in her voice notched his internal furnace up a couple degrees.
When her head tilted back, the familiar weight and texture of all that glorious hair cascaded across his bare arms. An image popped into his brain of her lying beneath him, thick waves spilling gold across the pillow, her face flushed, her dark emerald eyes filled with desire for him. Only him.
Her muscles went pliant while his fingers moved along her spine in soothing strokes that, for him, were anything but soothing. The cool, clean scent of her was waltzing through his system, and needs long denied had the blood in his brain pounding like thunder. It didn’t help that he knew every curve and slope of the body that had turned as soft as warm wax while his own muscles bunched tight.
“Think you can keep this up for about an hour?” she asked, her throaty voice misting over him like fog.
“I’m good for it.” He wondered how long he could last before he took off to take a cold shower.
She arched her spine like a long, sleek cat, and he went rock-hard. Another minute or so of this and he’d be in the shower.
“So,” she murmured. “Why hasn’t the cop with the keen observation skills mentioned the robe I’m wearing?”
He stilled his fingers against her spine. “Because seeing you in it makes the cop think about the gorgeous, sexy body underneath that robe.” Against his palms, he felt her heartbeat hitch, then quicken.
Greedy now, he slid his hands down her sides, settled them at the slope of her waist. “When we were together you slept in T-shirts or nothing. Never silk.”
“The robe isn’t really mine.”
Because he couldn’t help himself, he inched his mouth close to her ear. The soft sweep of her hair against his cheek had him closing his eyes. “If the robe doesn’t belong to you, maybe you should take it off?”
Tugging away, she turned and met his gaze. He felt a dark, primal satisfaction when he saw the flush in her cheeks and unsteadiness in her eyes.
“I meant the robe isn’t one I had before today. It’s a get-well gift your sisters packed in my suitcase.”
“Those girls are damn thoughtful.”
“And not very subtle. They packed pushup bras and thong panties to take the place of my usual style of underwear.”
His lungs clogged. “Thong panties?”
“In assorted colors. And styles. That had to have been Carrie’s idea. I bet she spent an hour at Victoria’s Secret.” Tory raised a palm, dropped it. “I love your sisters, you know that. But they’re wasting time and money. We need to make them understand that what was between us is over.”
He wondered how the hell things could be over when the thought of the body under that robe clad in various-colored thongs had him fighting to get breath into his lungs.
“I’ll talk to them,” he said after a moment. “Tell them no more surprises. In your suitcase or mine.”
“They left something in your suitcase, too?”
“A super-size box of condoms. In assorted colors.”
“Well.” He noted the hand she raked through her hair wasn’t totally steady. “Goodness.”
“Can’t say I’m surprised,” he commented. “Considering what they had waiting for us when we got home after we eloped. I had no idea there was a strip poker board game.” Memories of erotic hours spent rolling dice, dealing cards and peeling off clothing spiked his pulse rate. “Then there was the paint-on body chocolate they left on the nightstand.”
Tory shifted her gaze to the fire, then closed her eyes. “We should change the subject.” Her voice didn’t rise above a whisper.
Firelight shimmered in her hair; her scent churned in his blood. Before he could think, he’d lifted a hand and had taken a fistful of gold. Nudging her gaze back to meet his, he saw the change in her eyes, the faintest deepening of green that told him she was remembering, too. “That chocolate tasted good,” he murmured. “But not as good as you.”
“Bran, no.” Her palms settled against his bare chest. “This isn’t what I want.”
“A cop who ignores the evidence is a bad cop. Your breathing’s unsteady and your pulse is jumping.”
“Because this…is crazy. We don’t work.” Her eyes shimmered like pools of heat as her fingers flexed against his flesh. “Can’t work. Your sisters know that. We know that.”
“You’re right.” His fingers fisted tighter in her hair. “Everybody knows.”
Swamped by memory, filled with need, he settled his free hand against her waist. Beneath his palm, he felt her tremble.
Inching her closer, he dipped his hea
d. “Let me,” he murmured. “Let me taste you again.”
Chapter 7
With her palms flat against Bran’s broad, muscled chest, Tory felt the rapid pump of his heart. The heat.
One of his hands molded against her hip; she could feel the steel in his long, skilled fingers through the robe’s slippery silk. His other hand was buried in her hair. The blue eyes gazing down at her simmered with desire. And that mouth—wide, generous and seductive—hovered above hers, ready to take.
A whip-quick pulsing excitement had her fighting the need to step fully into his arms. Press the entire length of her body against that heat. It was all so achingly familiar that she shuddered, responding to both the memory and the man.
She could see them tumbled in bed, rolling over crisp, white sheets. Could all but feel his hands slicking across her damp flesh that softened as needs sparked into flames as hot as those leaping in the fireplace a few feet away. She knew if she surrendered now the ride would be swift, hot and shattering. And the heart she’d spent months building walls around would be lost to him again.
When he buried his face in her hair and murmured her name, she realized those walls hadn’t managed to free her from him at all. Otherwise, she wouldn’t be struggling so desperately against the urge to stroke her hands over every magnificent inch of him.
Why did she have to want a man with whom it was impossible for her to share a life? A husband who had acknowledged that impossibility by walking out?
That cold, hard reality snapped her back.
“No,” she whispered hoarsely, pushing from his hold. “You maybe want me now physically—”
“No maybes about it.” His voice mirrored the raw emotion glinting in his eyes as he moved in on her.
She countered with another step in retreat, then another. Her calves collided with the love seat, blocking her escape. She all but heard her nerves fray. “Sex is the last thing we need right now.”
He eased forward, stopping when they were eye-to-eye, mouth-to-mouth. “Speak for yourself,” he said softly.
She could barely speak at all with his musky scent sliding around her, into her.
“A relationship built just on sex won’t last,” she finally managed. “You acknowledged that the day you walked out.” The words burned her bruised throat and darkened his eyes.
“That day,” he began, “I’d just found out from a patrol cop that you’d spent a couple of hours at the jail bailing out your brother. Dammit, Tory, that was the final straw. You’re my wife and you didn’t come to me for help. The entire time we lived together you never came to me. Refused to lean on me. For anything. Never gave one indication you needed me. You think that’s easy for a husband to swallow?”
Her mind shot back to that awful day when she’d stood in the doorway of their bedroom, watching him shove clothes into a suitcase. The pain was still there, like a dull-edged knife through her heart.
“Rehashing this won’t get us anywhere.” She dug her nails into her palms, remembering there had been as much hurt in his eyes as she’d held inside her. “I used to think we were too much alike. Now I wonder if we’re too different.” She shook her head. “Everything’s too jumbled in my brain to make sense of. All I know is we don’t fit together like married people should.”
“Not when you think marriage is all about power and control.”
“I never said that.”
“You didn’t have to.” His brows drew together. “Growing up, I watched my parents stand together as equal partners. That doesn’t mean they didn’t depend on each other for certain things. It’s easy for me to see now how they worked in tandem when it came to raising six kids. If either mom or dad went into orbit over something one of us did, the other made a point of calming things down. They were, still are, a team. Equals. That doesn’t make either of them weak. Or needy.”
“Needy’s all I saw when I was little. I watched my father grow to despise my mother because she refused to stand on her own two feet. She was eight months pregnant with Danny when her constant clinging got too much for him to take. So he walked. And….” Her breath had begun to hitch as age-old pain clogged the words in her throat.
“And your mother heaped all the responsibility she could on you,” Bran said, cupping his palm against her cheek. “Including Danny.”
She moistened her lips. His gaze followed the movement of her tongue. “Understanding where we both came from doesn’t change things. We’re the same people we always were. The fact we’re stuck in this house because a scumbag wants to use me to get back at you doesn’t make a difference. We don’t fit.”
He took her chin in his hand, fingers strong and firm. “Remember all the time we’ve spent at the police pistol range?”
She frowned, puzzled by the abrupt change in subject. “Yes. I also recall I usually scored higher than you. What does my being a better shot have to do with anything?”
“As I recall, we’re about even when it comes to who bested whom while blasting at targets,” he countered. “But that’s not the point.”
“There’s a point?”
“Then there’s all those hours we’ve spent at the gym, practicing self-defense moves. We both managed to hold our own while rolling around on a mat.”
“To repeat myself, McCall, is there a point somewhere in all this?”
“Hearing you talk, we don’t get along on any level. We’ve got nothing in common. Seems like those are a couple of areas where we do.”
She batted his hand away before his touch dissolved what was left of her willpower. “You’re turning this around. When we met we moved too fast. That was a mistake. You left because—”
“It was walk or throttle you.” A muscle in his jaw ticked. “I’ve stayed mad the entire three months since then. Mad and hurt. I wouldn’t let myself think about anything but the bad times we had. Seeing you again, spending time with you, reminds me there were good things mixed in.”
“Not enough.” She lifted her hands, let them fall. “We bickered over everything, not just how I dealt with Danny.”
“True,” he agreed quietly.
She blew out a breath. “I bet you and Patience never said a cross word to each other, did you? Then we got married, and you found yourself in the middle of a battle-field. That had to have been a shock.”
“You’ve definitely given me a different perspective on marriage,” he replied, his unwavering gaze locked with hers.
“I bet.” She tossed her head. She needed to put distance between them but she was trapped between the love seat and a wall of hard, muscled male. “So, we agree our getting married was abject stupidity, fueled by mindless lust. One huge mistake.”
“I’ll agree with the mindless lust part. Jury’s still out on the stupidity and mistake issues.” He angled his chin. “I made a decision last night at the hospital. I intended on keeping it to myself while I thought things through. But now I think you should know.”
His words might have been casual, but the determination in his tone had wariness sliding inside her like a band of smoke. “What decision?”
“I’m not ready to call things quits.”
The comment came so clearly, so simply, she felt a slice of panic. When he’d walked away he’d left her shattered. She couldn’t open herself up to him and risk that happening again. Never again.
“You…said you would sign the divorce papers.” She was failing miserably at keeping emotion out of her voice. “That you’d bring them to the library last night.”
“I did agree to bring them. I never said I would sign them.”
Cold anger replaced her sense of panic. “Dammit, I’m trying to end our marriage with some measure of civility. I want to buy the condo, get on with my life. You should be looking out for your own future. Instead, you’re standing here, playing word games.”
“You think I’m playing games? Think again. Since that night I came by to tell you about Heath, I’ve dreamed about you. Hot, heavy dreams.”
“Yo
u need to clamp a lid on all that testosterone.”
“I need to do something about it,” he agreed silkily. “Bottom line is, you’re still inside me, churning my system. I’m not sure how much of what I feel for you is just an echo and how much is real. Until I know for sure, we’re not calling this quits.”
“What?” Her defenses sprang up to shield her. “The hell we’re not. You’re not the only one who decides—”
As if to prove his point, he framed her face with his hands and closed his mouth over hers. It was an easy kiss, almost friendly, if not for the heat rising from it.
And an easy, almost friendly kiss shouldn’t have shot desire like a bullet through her and sent a line of fire searing up her spine.
His heated, lethal mouth didn’t merely brush her lips—it absorbed them. Somehow, her hands wound up on his hips, and she realized she was clinging to him, that his body was hard, nearly naked and pressed close to hers. She dug in her fingers as much for balance as in response to the sudden, violent want pounding inside her.
With the walls she’d put up in shambles, her lips parted, inviting him in. The familiar dark, dangerous taste of him had visions of wild, raging sex spinning in her head. Even as a moan raced up her throat and a heady rush of anticipation turned her insides to molten glass he eased back.
“There’s another area we’re a good fit,” he murmured.
She saw the desire in his eyes, heard the raw echo of it in her voice.
“I guess. Maybe.” Consumed by a dazed kind of weakness, she dropped onto the love seat. She wasn’t light-headed, she told herself. And her bones hadn’t actually melted during the kiss. She just wasn’t fully recovered from last night’s attack and she’d been on her feet too long.
She eased back into the cushions while fighting to regain both her breath and sanity. Doing that would have been easier if the taste, the scent of him weren’t humming in her blood. You’re in trouble. The words flashed like neon in her brain. Huge, blinding neon.
