Jared tossed the car keys on the desk and swore liberally. “I never should have taken you to Livingston’s house with me. Never. I had a bad feeling about the place the second we got there—but did I pull back? No. I let you walk in there and face Meredith.”
With each mile that he’d driven to get them back to the hotel, reality had sunk in a little deeper. Just minutes earlier, Rachel had practically been killed, and—damn—it was all his fault.
“Hindsight is such a wonderful thing, isn’t it?” she murmured.
Rachel looked the pillar of strength standing there. She had her arms folded over her chest and her eyes focused. She even had her mouth set in that stubborn line. The facade worked, temporarily.
Until Jared glanced at her arm.
“What the hell is this?” He caught her wrist, shoved up the loose sleeve of her T-shirt and examined the reddish marks on her forearm.
Rachel didn’t answer. She didn’t have to. Because Jared put it together immediately. And it turned his stomach.
“Meredith did this to you.” The cursing reached a whole different level and intensity. “Hell, I can’t even protect you while you’re in the same house with me.”
Rachel pulled her arm from his grip and slid her sleeve back in place to cover the marks. “It’s not your job to protect me, Jared. As I recall, you were busy taking care of Livingston at the time. Besides, these are just bruises. They’ll go away in a couple of days.”
A spark of rage shot through him. “But the memory of that bastard putting them there won’t.”
“I know,” she whispered. “I know.”
She sank onto the edge of the bed and folded her hands in her lap. Only then did Jared realize she was trembling. But not just trembling. She was shaking. Hell, here he was ranting and venting, and he had forgotten all about what she might be going through.
He went to her immediately and wrapped his arm around her. While he was at it, he checked her eyes to make sure she wasn’t going into shock. She wasn’t. But Jared saw things in those green depths that made him want to tear Meredith limb from limb.
“It’s over,” Jared said softly, hoping his words would soothe her enough to stave off a panic attack. He brushed a kiss on her temple and felt her pulse hammer against his mouth.
“It’s never over,” Rachel countered. “Any idea how many hours of therapy I’ve had?” She didn’t wait for him to answer. “Too many to count. Plus, the hypnosis and the various medications. You name it and I’ve tried it. Nothing’s worked. I’m still too terrified of guns to protect myself. Talk about a genuine wuss.”
“You’re not a wuss. You have a phobia. Lots of people do. But that didn’t stop you from standing up to Meredith today. I know how much it cost you to do that.”
She waved him off. “I don’t want your sympathy.”
“Good, because this isn’t sympathy. This is me telling you that we succeeded this morning. You managed to get the info about Dr. Sheridan, and we both made it out of there alive.”
“Yeah, thanks to you. I froze, Jared. When I saw that gun, I was seven years old again. I was right back in that room with my parents’ bodies, and I was just as ineffective today as I was then.”
“You were a kid when that happened—you were supposed to be ineffective. If you’d tried to confront that burglar, he probably would have used that gun on you.” The reminder didn’t do much to settle the acid churning in his stomach. “And even with all that baggage from your past, you still didn’t have a panic attack today.”
She shrugged. Not a casual, dismissive gesture—every muscle in her body was still knotted. “I’ll repeat what you said earlier about Meredith. The day’s not over yet. I still might go medieval on you, so you might want to hold back on those compliments.”
Because there was a slight touch of humor mixed in with all the other emotions, Jared smiled and pushed the hair away from her face. “No way. Because of you, we’ll soon find the doctor. And the baby.”
Of course, that last part was wishful thinking. He’d phoned Tanner with the information on the drive back to the hotel, and he had no doubt that Tanner would find Dr. Sheridan, in time. There was no guarantee that Sheridan would lead them to the baby, but then, there’d been no guarantees of anything right from the start.
Rachel lay her head on his shoulder and slid her arm around his chest so she was holding him. “Thank you for stopping Meredith and for getting me out of there.”
“No problem.” He went for a cocky, light tone, hoping it would help. “Consider it my knightly deed for the day.”
Jared skimmed his fingers over her cheek. Rachel turned, moving into his touch. And he suddenly found his fingertips on her mouth.
They didn’t stay there for long.
Just like that, she brushed his hand aside, and Jared saw her eyelids flutter down. That was the only warning he had before her mouth came to his. Not some gentle kiss of reassurance.
Not this.
This was hot and needy. Pure, uncut passion. Rachel wound her arms around him, pressed herself against him and made love to him with her mouth.
Jared took everything she offered. Everything. The silky heat of the kiss. The intimate contact of their bodies. The promise of more. Much more. But then, he felt her hand on his arm.
She was still trembling.
“Rachel,” he warned. Somehow, he managed to untangle himself from her. “We shouldn’t be doing this.”
She stared at him, her breath coming out in short spurts. “Sorry. I thought...well, I just thought...” She shook her head. “Obviously, I thought wrong.”
“No. You didn’t.” Jared started to explain, to tell her that he’d pulled away not because he’d wanted to but because she was responding to leftover adrenaline. But the words didn’t come.
“You need to rest,” he finally managed to say.
Because he was watching her so closely, he saw the emotions run through her eyes. Not hurt, exactly. Something deeper. Something that sent him reaching for her. Rachel stopped his hand before he could touch her.
They sat there. In silence. Their gazes connected. Jared could still hear her breathing even over the heartbeats that pounded in his head.
“There are rules about this sort of thing,” he said. “I can’t—”
Jared knew anything he was about to say would be a useless explanation. Rachel knew their situation as well as he did. She was scared—yes. And coming down from a terrible ordeal—definitely. Still, that didn’t change what was going on between them now.
It wasn’t just adrenaline he saw in her response. He saw heat. The same need that he felt racing through his body. Too bad their mutual needs were racing in the same general direction.
And it was really too bad that he wasn’t going to do a thing to slow them down.
There would be hell to pay. No doubt about it. But Jared figured whatever the price, it’d be worth it. After all, this was Rachel.
Rachel waited for Jared to give her another get-some-rest snarl.
That didn’t happen.
Instead of a snarl, Jared reached out and laced their fingers together. Gently.
“Jared?”
It wasn’t even close to a warning, but he didn’t let her finish, anyway. He pressed his fingers to her mouth and shook his head. “If you’re planning to stop me, Rachel, do it now.”
That warning wasn’t much of a deterrent, and she certainly didn’t stop him. Nor would she. Rachel had known that the moment she started this.
Jared settled things. He reached for her and kissed her. It was one of those hard, slow, long ones. One that fed the passion she already felt. The heat seeped from his mouth all the way to her toes.
“Well?” he asked.
“I’m not stopping anything.”
Rachel braced herself for a frantic onslaught, for the fire and energy she’d felt during the toga kiss. But Jared surprised her when he gently took her by the shoulders and laid her on the bed. He didn’t continue the kiss. Not on her mouth, anyway. Instead, he worked his magic on her neck, trailing a line of kisses to her breasts.
“Let’s see if I can remember exactly how to do this,” he teased.
Oh, he knew. He knew every inch of her body, and he seemed ready to prove it.
Jared planted her hands on the bed just above her head. He slid his fingers up her shirt, inch by inch. Because she was watching him so closely, she saw his eyes darken. “You’re not wearing a bra.”
“It’s still drying in the bathroom.”
“A convenient place for it.” He slid up the T-shirt. “It saves me a step or two.”
But it didn’t seem as if saving time was a huge priority. Those slow, clever kisses continued at a very leisurely pace. He ran his tongue over her skin. And drove her mad.
When she reached for his shirt, Jared simply clamped onto her hands again. “That wasn’t what I had in mind.”
“Oh, yeah?” Her breath was thin and shallow now. Every inch of her was humming from anticipation. “So, what exactly are we doing?”
She should have known that he wouldn’t skirt around a challenge like that. Jared unbuttoned her jeans and stripped them off her. Her panties soon followed. And then he showed her what he had in mind.
Jared placed one very wet kiss on the inside of her thigh. The upper, upper inside. A place where his hot breath was just as arousing as the kiss. Then, he latched onto her hips and put his mouth to work right on the feverish center of her body.
Rachel almost jumped off the bed.
“Come here,” Jared murmured, his voice a gruff whisper. “Let’s do something that doesn’t have a thing to do with stopping.”
Rachel quickly realized he planned to finish what he’d started. While the idea greatly appealed to her, she wanted more. “I prefer making love to be a mutual satisfaction kind of thing.”
“Don’t think for a minute that I won’t be enjoying this. I will.”
She tried to go after his zipper, but Jared stopped her by gripping her wrist. He kissed her, stealing her breath.
Rachel managed some profanity. Nothing that even she could understand. But then, words weren’t needed. The way he used his mouth said it all, and her response let him know that. She slid her leg over his shoulder, pressed herself closer to his mouth and just took what he offered.
Jared was very good at offering.
He kissed. Nipped. Used his tongue until the pleasure closed around her. Rachel grabbed onto handfuls of the sheet, trying to anchor herself.
She felt the upward spiral start. The rise. The swirl of sensations so immense, so right that her body could hardly contain it.
Then, Jared somehow took her even higher.
He savored her, and let her know that this gave him as much pleasure as it did her, even though Rachel thought she could argue that case later. And when he was done with her, when she could take no more, he gave a clever flick of his tongue and sent her flying. In that last desperate second, she called out his name.
Jared gave her some pleasant aftershocks with a few more of those well-placed kisses. Still, Rachel forced herself to come back to earth as quickly as possible so that she could return the favor.
With her body still trembling and her breath racing, she held Jared’s shoulder to get him moving in the right direction, but he stopped her again.
A groan escaped from deep within his chest. He took her hand, kissed it and moved off the bed. Out of her reach. He walked to the other side of the room, turned and looked at her.
“Get some rest, Rachel.”
“Hold on.” She didn’t intend to let him get away that easily. “Are you saying that you’re not going to join me on this bed?”
He nodded. Not easily. But it was a nod. “It’s for the best.”
“Says who?”
“Me,” he clarified.
It was some clarification, all right. And it riled her. “I know what you’re doing, Jared. You’ve given me some great sex, but what you haven’t given me is yourself.”
He stared at her. “What the hell does that mean?”
“I repeat, you gave me great sex. Still, you’re holding back. You figure if you don’t make love to me—really make love to me—if you only give instead of take, then you’ll be able to stop yourself from getting too close to me again. It doesn’t work that way.”
He groaned again and pressed the back of his head against the wall. “I know what’s happening between us, damn it, but I also know it’s something that’ll have to wait. We have too many things to work out first for us to get into a discussion about our future.”
True enough. There were more obstacles than she cared to consider. But even the obstacles couldn’t make her put aside what she felt for Jared.
No.
She was falling in love with him all over again, and that scared Rachel almost as much as the other obstacles they faced. But admitting that to herself didn’t do a thing to help answer one huge question.
What was she going to do about it?