Deep inside, something broke and gave way. She stared at him, at his impossibly full mouth, lips that had no business being moist but were, eyes that glowed not with their customary fierce intelligence but a desire that heated her blood.
And in that place inside, the one she’d turned her back on, had taught herself not to trust, she started to bleed. “What happened to you, Ethan?” The question broke on the way out, smashed to smithereens by the emotion jammed in her throat. “What turned you into such a hard, cynical man?”
His eyes narrowed in on her face, locked on her, reducing the world to one man, one woman, one moment. “No matter who you are or why you walked into my life, we may never leave this island alive.” He slid his thumb along her lower lip. “What’s so hard and cynical about a man wanting to spend what could be his last moments making love to a beautiful woman?”
The question did cruel, cruel things to her heart. The yearnings it unleashed, shattered. “You don’t want to make love to me.”
“Are you sure about that?” he asked in a thick drawl that sent her bones into meltdown.
Slowly she looked from his mouth to his eyes, found them hot and burning. Instinct demanded that she turn away from him, run into the bathroom and lock the door, but no power on earth could make her move, not when he lowered his face toward hers. Then his mouth was on hers, and for a blinding heartbeat nothing else mattered.
Chapter 6
S
ensation assaulted her. Not the cruel, suffocating kind that had once prompted her to draw a gun on the man she’d thought she loved, but the whirring, bone-melting kind that jumbled every protest hammering through her. She tried to rip herself from the dream, as she’d trained herself to do, but this was no dream, and her body refused to obey. Ethan’s arms came around her and pulled her to his chest, still warm and damp from his shower. She braced herself for the onslaught that inevitably came with intimate touches, but found only a longing that stole her breath.
“Kiss me back, damn it,” he murmured, and through the haze of passion, she heard an edge to his voice, a razor-fine desperation, completely at odds with the smooth, always-in-control attorney.
His hands cruised up her back, one of them tangling in her hair, just like she’d imagined while standing naked under the spray of warm water. For a gossamer moment time slowed, and she could no longer just stand there, not when the need to respond swamped her. She opened to him, accepted him, let herself taste that which she knew would ultimately destroy.
His lips were amazingly soft for such a hard man—persuasive, urging her mouth to open to him, yield, give back all that he was giving her. Whiskers scraped her jaw but didn’t hurt. Need, hot and boiling, drenched, drowning out sanity.
He muttered something under his breath, a jumbled sound of male frustration, and deepened the kiss, pulling her farther into his embrace. His body surrounded her, engulfed her, and before she realized her intent, she’d lifted her arms to curl around his back. The hard, smooth planes she found there had her fingers digging deeper, loving the hot male feel of him.
Time, still for a delirious heartbeat, lurched violently. Liquid heat pooled between her legs. She’d known this man less than twenty-four hours, but in his arms, with his mouth roughly claiming hers, hours felt like eternity. Because of the dreams, she knew. Their intensity. The nighttime images had bound their lives together, long before she’d stepped from behind the tree and tried to warn him of the danger lying ahead.
Now she arched into the kiss, welcomed the feel of his lips moving against hers, his tongue sweeping into her mouth. The truth stunned her. She wanted him. Despite everything, the circumstances that brought them together and the distrust that kept them apart, she wanted to know this man intimately. To run her hands not just along the hard planes of his back but all of him. To have him do the same to her, to feel his roughened palms slide along her arms and chest, caress her breasts, slide along her stomach, lower still.
That knowledge gave her the strength to twist away.
She staggered from him, brought the back of her hand to her mouth and wiped away the evidence of what they’d just shared.
“Someone hurt you,” she said, and barely recognized the ragged edge to her voice. Emotion clogged her throat, but she refused to let it invade her eyes. In his kiss, the gentle intensity of his embrace, she’d found a truth she’d not seen before, one that changed everything. “Someone you trusted.” And because of that he would never trust again. “I’m not that person.”
* * *
Ethan felt his nostrils flare but refused to let any other trace of reaction break through. He stood very still, watching her in a puddle of early-afternoon sun, pale hair falling with a hint of curl, cheeks and lips flushed without the aid of makeup, the look of pure, stricken honor in her eyes. They weren’t whitewashed now, but dark and haunted.
Swearing softly, he shoved a hand through his hair. “Are you sure about that, angel?” he asked, careful to keep all the hard edges from his voice.
She lifted her chin. “I’m sure.”
Sure of what, he wanted to demand but didn’t dare. Sure that someone he’d trusted had betrayed him, or sure she wouldn’t share his bed. The answer didn’t matter, he told himself. She was just chasing shadows, knitting together loose ends he’d carelessly shared with her during the long hours of the night, to come up with an obvious conclusion.
Or, he reminded himself, Jorak had told her the truth.
He spun from her and stalked across the room, slammed his hand against the doorknob, not at all surprised to find it locked. He’d decided to make the most of the game, but now he felt like an animal in a cage grossly too small, and the urge to do something intense and physical ground through him.
She’d kissed him back, damn it. Hotly. Explosively. Just as he’d expected. Jorak only hired the best. Anyone in his employ would be willing to go the distance for their boss. A woman sent by Jorak to masquerade as his companion, to slip through his defenses and earn his trust, would be eager to slip between the sheets and twist in his arms, making him so mindless with need that he’d slip up and reveal something he shouldn’t.
But she’d stopped. She’d thrown on the brakes like a freaking bucket of cold water. And then she’d lanced him with her quiet statement about hurt and betrayal.
He spun back toward her and stalked across the cold tile. He saw her eyes go wide, saw her take a step back, but neither stopped him. “Who the hell
are
you?” he demanded in a rough voice that appalled him. “And what do you want with me?”
He expected her to turn from him or retort with some vague, cutting words. He didn’t expect her eyes to go soft. He sure as hell didn’t expect her to lift a hand to his face and gently cradle his jaw.
“You already know,” she said softly, and he refused to believe it was pain he heard in her voice. Slowly she slid her index finger to his lower lip. “Whether or not you let yourself believe is entirely up to you.”
He tore away from her, refused to look, refused to see. She was wrong. He didn’t know who she was. Didn’t know what she wanted. Didn’t know what he wanted. If he believed her, if he ignored the facts and accepted her riddles as truth, then the implications would violate everything he’d ever believed.
“I’m not the problem here, Ethan,” she added in an eerily quiet voice. “I’m not the one you need to trust.”
“No?” he asked. “Who, then? Who do I need to trust?”
Standing by the bed in the damningly soft sundress, backlit by the afternoon sun streaming through the windows, she looked more ethereal than real. But she
was
real, damn it. And beneath that white cotton, she wore pale-yellow panties and a flimsy bra. And beneath the slinky fabric, her skin was damnably soft.
“When was the last time you looked into the mirror?” she asked, derailing his thoughts, “Really looked?”
The question zinged into him. The frustration he’d been holding in check shoved a little harder. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“I think you know.”
More riddles. “Answer my question.”
She glanced toward a dark wood table beside the bed, where a pale but sharply beautiful orchid arched, fragile yet somehow strong. Enduring.
Damn the flower for reminding him of her.
“Haven’t you ever wondered why facts and evidence are so important to you?” she asked, glancing back toward him. Her voice was soft, but a cutting precision lanced the question. “If you relied more on yourself, your instincts and what you feel, you wouldn’t need those crutches anymore.”
Crutches.
The word, and all that it implied, stung. “Is that what you’ve done, angel? Is that why you’re here with me, because you trust yourself so much?”
Her mouth, those beautiful soft pink lips he’d tasted and claimed not five minutes before, dropped into a frown. “I’m here with you because I couldn’t let you walk into danger without trying to warn you.”
“Why? Why was warning me so important?” Why did she just keep looking at him like that, with wisdom and sorrow clashing in her eyes? And, God help him, why did the need to pull her back into his arms, pick up where they’d left off, burn through him? Still. As it had from the moment he’d first laid eyes on her. Hell, from the moment he’d first heard her throaty voice. “I’m a complete stranger.”
She held his gaze a heartbeat before answering. “Are you? Are you sure? Is that why you want to make love to me, because we’re strangers?”
No, he wanted to make love to her because—
The answer stopped him cold.
* * *
He didn’t answer her question. He didn’t continue the conversation. He broke it off as abruptly as a brittle twig snapped in two. Silence poured into the room, thick and stifling like the hot humid air outside. He turned from her, paced the spacious room like it was a cramped cage, shoved his hand through closely cropped raven hair, but didn’t look her way, didn’t speak.
She had no business being fascinated. Brenna knew that. She had no business being intrigued by this man haunted by demons he refused to see or admit. But her body still tingled from the force of his kiss. Not a physical force, but threatening all the same. His mouth had moved against hers with a hunger and urgency that rocked her, even now.
She’d never been kissed so thoroughly before, as though something grave depended upon her response.
Not even by the man she’d once thought herself in love with. The man who had betrayed her. The man who had taught her the folly of exposing herself to emotions that blotted out everything else, even the senses and images she trusted above all else.
Detective Adam Gerritson.
Chest obscenely tight, Brenna turned from Ethan and stared out the window, watched the sun blaze from high in its perch against the azure sky. The temptation to let down, to slip between the sheets and close her eyes, let herself drift, pulled at her, but she knew what would happen if she surrendered. Alone in this room, she’d be vulnerable in ways against which there were no defenses. Not with a man like Ethan Carrington.
What would he do if the dreams struck? What would he do if she cried out? What would
she
do if he slid beside her in the bed and drew her close, used that deep Virginia drawl to coax her into telling him what she saw?
He wouldn’t believe her. She already knew that. Anything she said, any response she gave him, would only deepen his mistrust.
Why then, why did the thought of being in that bed with him make everything inside her go soft and liquid?
Because the question didn’t bear answering, she didn’t even try. She just stood there watching the sun pass the time. Shadows announced the arrival of early evening, stretching and dancing across the sand, the worn, winding dirt pathway leading to the beach.
And then suddenly Ethan was there, standing between her and the rest of the room. His presence zinged through her, but before she could say anything, he drew a finger to his lips.
“Shhh.”
She heard it then, heavy footfalls coming toward the room. They stopped outside the door, and a series of clicking noises preceded the appearance of one of the guards from the airport. He strode into the room, his hand ready on the automatic weapon slung across his shoulder.
Ethan lowered his arm to Brenna’s waist and pulled her closer.
“You’ll come with me now,” the man said in his heavily accented voice.
“Come where?” Ethan demanded.
“That doesn’t matter.”
“It does to me.”
“You can obey,” the man said, reaching for Brenna, “or we can do this my way.”
The darkness slammed in the second the beefy hand curled around her wrist. She felt herself recoil, heard the sharp gasp break from her throat. Ugliness. So much ugliness. Depravity. A complete lack of remorse. Force.
“She begged,” she murmured, and the chill cut clear to the bone. Somewhere deep inside, she started to shake. The woman had begged, for her life, her children, clear up to her last shallow breath. This man had still been buried deep inside her.
“Brenna?”
Her knees went out from under her. She felt herself sway, felt strong arms close around her. “Brenna!”
Fighting the fog, the ugliness, she blinked and brought the hard lines of his face into focus, staring down at her in abject horror. “Listen to him,” she managed through the sickness swarming inside her. “Don’t … test him.”
The guard, so deceptively, disgustingly handsome, grunted his approval. “Your friend is smart.”
Ethan smoothed the hair back from her face. His hand was warm, his palm gentle. “What in God’s name is going on?”
She absorbed the feel of his touch, the quick rush of concern, the razor-fine slice of confusion. The infusion of strength. Light then, not blinding, but welcoming, pushing away the darkness of moments before.
“I’m okay,” she said, and was. The man with the gun no longer touched her. Images from his life no longer slithered through her. “Please. Let’s just go.”
And please, please don’t leave me alone with this man.
The lines of Ethan’s face tightened. “You said she begged. Who, Brenna? Who begged?”
The woman. The woman’s whose only mistake was trusting this man. Loving him.
Wincing, Brenna pushed the memory aside, having no desire to linger in the filth. “It doesn’t matter.”
“I think that it does,” Ethan said quietly, reaching for her hand. His palm was wide, his touch gentle, his fingers so thick she couldn’t comfortably slide hers between his. She clenched his palm instead, instinctively held on.