Parker glanced at his watch, noticed it was after six. That would explain why his stomach was growling.
After six? Shit.
He shoved himself to his feet. He’d been so focused on his work that he’d forgotten about meeting Rae. Bad enough he’d taken a gamble by making it clear he had no intention of letting her off the hook after just one night, he’d really screwed up by not even showing up this afternoon.
Chances were she hadn’t either, but he hated the thought of her thinking he’d just been stringing her along. Hated that almost as much as he hated waiting for Braxton to get back to him about the woman calling him.
Putting an end to that last thought before it started eating another hole in his gut, he went looking for Rae. He’d only made it as far as the hall outside his office before he stopped.
Quinn headed toward him, favoring her right leg. “Whatever you did, you need to apologize and make it really, really good.”
“Apologize to who?”
Quinn rolled her eyes. “Rae.”
“Where is she?”
“Kicking everyone’s ass in the training room. Braxton and Blair are the only ones who’ve had reason to steer clear of the training room. The rest of us haven’t been so lucky.”
He glanced at her foot. “Rae gave you that limp?”
“Yes and no. It wouldn’t have happened if I’d kept my mouth shut instead of speculating out loud about…” She averted her gaze, a light flush creeping up her face.
“And what is it that I’m apologizing for?” He wasn’t banking on Rae being annoyed he hadn’t gone up to the roof this afternoon. It was more likely kissing her in the elevator had ticked her off.
He’d been careful on the short flight home not to get too close, and by the time they’d hit the field office he’d been just a little bit desperate. He hadn’t planned on kissing her at all, half convinced just easing into her space and leaning up against her would be enough.
Then he’d stepped in and caught the scent of his soap in her skin from her shower that morning and playing it cool had gone to hell in a lust-driven hand basket. He might have been okay if he hadn’t looked at her mouth and felt all the heat in his body sink straight to his groin.
Parker pulled open the door to the training room, motioning for Quinn to precede him. Inside, Darcy was sitting on a bench against the wall, her head back, eyes closed.
Drew was on his back in the middle of the training room mat. “Uncle,” he murmured, dragging himself to a sitting position. When he spotted Parker, he stood. “Thank Christ.”
A few feet away Rae pivoted, her expression promising only one thing as their eyes locked—a world of pain.
Drew clapped him on the back as he passed. “Good luck.” He lowered himself onto the bench next to Darcy.
Quinn quickly joined them.
Parker arched a brow. “Not going to make your escape?”
The look she slanted him said she’d rather part with either Slice or Dice—her treasured daggers—than miss whatever came next.
“She’s got a vicious right hook,” Darcy said.
Drew nodded. “And that foot sweep you never see coming. I swear she can bench press two-fifty with those legs of hers.”
“Keep talking and you’re up again when I’m done with him,” Rae warned.
Parker hadn’t even made up his mind to take a step onto the mat and she already had him defeated. “Worried they’re going to give away all your good moves?”
“Just don’t put too much faith in their tips.” There was just enough bite to her words to give him pause. Rae was definitely more than annoyed. She looked downright furious and now that he exclusively held her attention, every molecule of anger was focused on him.
If he had a white flag in his pocket, he might have dug it out right then.
From the corner of his eye, he saw Quinn nod for him get on with it. Right. He didn’t need to put himself in Rae’s path to know how this was going to go down. Didn’t matter that a layer of sweat glistened on her forehead or that she was already breathing hard. She wanted his ass on a platter.
Between the anger and determination darkening her eyes, there wasn’t a hope in hell he was going to come out of this the victor, or even still standing if she had her way. Which basically left him with only one option—playing dirty.
Buying himself a little time, he toed out of his shoes. “I’m not really dressed for this, actually.” Jeans didn’t lend themselves well to sparring situations. He noticed Rae had changed out of the clothes she’d been wearing earlier.
“Were you properly dressed for engaging that telepath demon?”
He cocked his head, his voice deliberately intimate. “Is this about what happened in the elevator this morning?”
She circled him slowly, the lines around her eyes tight enough he wouldn’t be surprised if they were giving her a migraine.
He could have said, Because of the kiss, but that wouldn’t make the others as curious. Wouldn’t make her eyes narrow to such deadly slits.
If she wanted to kill him now…
“Unless you’re still worried about walking in on my shower, because I think you and I are well past that kind of embarrassment after last night.” He watched her closely, searching for a sign she was going to strike.
There wasn’t one.
One second she was treading counter-clockwise and the next she was up close and personal and not in a good way. The only thing that saved him from eating the mat was Drew.
“So on a scale of one to ten, Rae’s what, an eight, eight-and-a-half in the sack?”
Parker used that one millisecond her attention shifted to Drew to make his only move. He let his body drop, taking with him all the momentum that carried Rae into him as they collided. She would have expected him to block, not cave on the first strike, which allowed him to hook and arm around her waist as he went, rolling her beneath him.
He didn’t know if it was shock or anger that kept her there, her chest rising and falling quickly.
Quinn jumped to her feet. “I think that’s our cue.”
Drew gave Darcy and Quinn a confused look.
“Eight out of ten? You really want to be sitting here when she kicks Parker off?”
Cringing, Drew joined them. “Good point.”
As they filed out of the room none of them, Parker noticed, looked half as worn out as when he’d walked in.
“That was completely uncalled for.” Rae spoke through her teeth.
“I should have let you body slam me into the mat?”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Oh, you mean the shower thing. I really did mean what I said about us being past—”
Rae snapped her legs around him, rolling until their positions were reversed and her knee jammed into his diaphragm.
“Don’t hold back,” he wheezed. “Tell me how you really feel.”
Rae cursed under her breath, easing up on the pressure. When she slid off him, he caught her around the waist and pulled her back on top of him.
Long strands of red hair had worked free of her ponytail, and he wrapped his finger around one, tugging gently.
She didn’t resist and for a moment he wondered if she planned on smashing her forehead into his. The anger still burning bright in her eyes made it unwise to rule out the possibility.
Angry, upset, or excited, she still was the most stunning woman he’d ever met. Her ice blue eyes reached places inside him he thought had been lost to the lust demon that changed him. She brought out the best, and even the worst in him, made him feel more alive than anyone else without even trying, and he loved her for that.
Loved her period. The shake-him-to-the-core, scare-him-down-to-his-bones kind of love.
He wasn’t sure if he’d fallen in love with her all over again, or if he’d unearthed feelings he’d buried long ago. Either way he wanted them to start over, to try again, in and out of bed, and he knew that if he had even a shot in hell of making it happen, h
e needed to tell her everything.
“Someone’s been calling me.”
She went still atop him, and he tightened his grip in case she even thought about moving.
“I don’t know who it is, but they’ve been calling me for a few weeks. I thought maybe it was just someone who hadn’t adjusted well to being initiated, or someone who’d become tainted by the demon’s essence.”
“They called when we were in the stairwell that night?”
He nodded. “It was just a bunch of vague bullshit in the beginning. That I couldn’t trust the network, that they betrayed me.”
“Parker.”
He heard the doubt in her voice even before he saw it in her eyes. She had every reason to doubt him, he knew that, but it still stung.
“Braxton is working on tracing the number so I can figure out who is trying to play games with me.”
“That’s all they said, that you couldn’t trust the network?”
He shook his head, wishing he could have left it there. The dread he’d been carrying around, trying hard to ignore, pooled like grease in his stomach.
“She said—”
“The caller is a woman?”
He bucked and rolled her beneath him, dropping his forehead to hers. “This would be easier to get out if you didn’t interrupt.”
“Sorry.”
He closed his eyes and then sat up. Needing some kind of connection though, an anchor, he laced his fingers though hers. He felt her watching him as she moved closer, though it took another thirty seconds to speak past the sudden knot in his throat.
However he’d managed to distance himself from the last call and his conversation with Blair, he wasn’t doing such a bang-up job of it now.
“She said tainted or not, my mother couldn’t have killed my sister in cold blood, that she wouldn’t have just snapped like that.” He let out a breath. “So I talked to Blair, asked if she thought she could have hurt someone she cared about.”
“What did she say?”
“That she would have run the other way before intentionally hurting anyone.”
“Just because Blair—”
He didn’t let her finish. “I know. Believe me I know. It’s just….” He finally lifted his head to look at her. “I’m not letting this suck me back in, I swear I’m not.”
“But you want to believe her.”
He closed his eyes and lifted her hand to his face. “I’m trying real hard not to.”
“There you two are…” Adrian trailed off as he walked into the training room.
Rae tugged her hand free and climbed to her feet, meeting Adrian halfway.
“Braxton’s lead on the restraints paid off. Apparently they were delivered to Vanessa Pembrook.”
Parker recognized the name from the file of people who’d worked with Hurst during the first run of his experiments. He’d also failed to reach her and she hadn’t yet returned any of his messages.
“That was about a month before the first child disappeared. She retired from the network a couple of years ago. Gage is on his way back from assignment, so I rerouted him to Grand Junction, Vanessa’s last known location.”
“This could just be Hurst wanting us running all over the place.” The guy was smart, smart enough to pull off the first round of tests right under the network’s nose and smart men took precautions. Parker wouldn’t put it past him to take steps to keep the network off his back the second time around.
“Agreed. Which is why it doesn’t make sense to dispatch a whole team to track Vanessa down before we know how involved she is.”
Rae frowned. “Grand Junction is only a few hours from Red Crossing.”
“Meaning maybe Burke is involved after all. It hadn’t seemed likely in the beginning since he was holding a steady job as a bartender…” Parker trailed off.
“And now you’re not so sure,” Adrian finished, nodding. “Gage’s plane won’t be landing for at least another six hours, and by then it will be the middle of the night. There’s a good chance we won’t accomplish much until tomorrow morning.”
Rubbing the back of her neck, Rae nodded at Adrian. “You should go back to your hotel and get some rest. I’ll stay on top of things here.”
Adrian started to protest, but they both had seen how pronounced his limp had been moments ago.
“Like you said, we’re stuck in a holding pattern at the moment,” she pressed.
Adrian finally conceded. “If anything changes, call me.” He tipped his head at Parker. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
“I’ll walk you out.” Rae fell into step with their boss.
“Night.” Parker hung back, resisting the urge to stick with Rae until they had a chance to finish their discussion.
Deciding it was better to wait until Adrian had left, he headed back to his office, hoping he’d made the right call telling Rae, even when it might turn out to be all for nothing.
Rae sighed and turned her face up into the hot spray of water. Muscles she had worked too hard all but melted in pleasure as the heat seeped into her skin. She probably shouldn’t have pushed the others so hard earlier, but she’d wanted them to push her. Push her until there had only been room in her head for doing whatever was necessary to stay on her feet.
Now that Jordan and Darcy were keeping an eye on things around town and everyone else had gone home to grab a few hours sleep, there wasn’t anything to keep her mind off Parker.
Nothing but the shower she’d cranked up as hot as she could stand.
Arms braced on the tile wall, she dropped her head forward, letting the water slide down her spine. In another few minutes all the aches and pains would fully heal. All except the one in her chest.
“Need some help scrubbing your back?”
Apparently she’d overworked more than just her body because she hadn’t even heard Parker come into the locker room.
“Getting even?” she asked without turning around.
The sound of his laugh combined with the rush of water over her skin made for a bad combination. If only bad didn’t feel so damn good.
“Not unless you plan on soaping up and getting yourself—”
She held her hand up, stopping him there, preferably before the visual could sink in.
The echo of water around her changed a heartbeat before she sensed movement to her left. Parker stood next to her, fully clothed, his T-shirt already getting nailed from the shower and his pants half soaked.
“You’re getting wet.”
“I need to talk to you.”
Now? “It can’t wait until I’m finished?”
He shook his head, his expression bold, determined. When she made no move to shut off the water, he stepped directly under the spray with her.
“I need you to believe me, Rae. I need you to look at me and know that I’m telling the truth.”
Turning to face him, she pushed her hair back but he didn’t give her a chance to respond.
“I didn’t go looking for this. I put it all behind me. I never want to do that to myself again.” He cradled her jaw. “Or to you.”
“You’re getting wet,” she repeated.
Every second she stood there with water pounding down her back and Parker creeping in from the front, she felt more exposed, and that was without him telling her things that kept twisting her heart up.
“I don’t want to go there again, Rae. Not when it means ruining things between us a second time.”
She caught every word but it was the last two that stayed with her. He’d made it clear in the elevator that he wanted more than casual, more than she’d been willing to give. More than she’d been willing to risk.
And if there had been even a whisper of doubt in her mind about his intentions, him standing there, fully clothed in the shower, slammed it all home.
Snatching a handful of wet T-shirt, she dragged his mouth down to meet hers. Kissing him was easy, maybe even the easiest part of the whole mess. If she kissed him she didn’t have to tell
him how hard it was to even think about going down that road again. Didn’t have to lie to herself about not wanting to.
God, all of it was crazy—her, him, them getting involved. She couldn’t even tell herself things were different this time, not with their past hanging over both their heads.
So she didn’t say a damn word, savoring the feel of his mouth closing over hers. She slipped her tongue between his lips, and he groaned, yanking her against him. There couldn’t be a dry spot left on him with her plastered against him.
“Be with me,” he murmured against her mouth, and this time she couldn’t pretend he was just talking about sex.
“I can’t.” If the past was sucking him in, she couldn’t be a part of that. Not again.
“But you want to.” He dragged his cheek against hers. “You want to be with me, you want to give in.”
“There’s giving in and then there is sacrificing something more. Pieces of myself. I did it for months, Parker, praying that if you took enough from me, it would bring you back.” Her voice trembled. “And it was never enough. Every time it happened, every time you reached for me, pleasured me, you took and took, but it never healed you.”
“You don’t get it, Rae.” He opened his mouth over hers. “You’ve had to be strong for your father when you lost your mom. For Adrian, so the others in the network would accept you. For your team. For the people you save.”
He smoothed the water away from her cheek. “I don’t need you to heal me or be strong for me.” His lips feathered over hers. “I just need you to love me.”
Something inside her broke at the rough plea, and she couldn’t drag in enough air. And then it didn’t matter because he cupped her face, claiming her mouth in a kiss that stole another piece of her soul.
She closed her fingers over his, hoping that by hanging on, the emotion and lust swirling through her wouldn’t carry her away entirely. One hand left her face, sliding down her back and cupping her ass and dragging her as tight against him as she’d go.
The rasp of his clothes across her nipples shot sparks through her, and she cried out when he palmed her breast, his thumb teasing the hard nub with carnal precision. Each slow circle, drag across the tip and pull between his fingers undid layer after layer of pure want.
Dark Obsession Page 16
