Jolie couldn’t breathe. Not with Dace watching her with that arrested expression, as if she’d just verbalized something he’d been thinking. Knowing the truth didn’t mean she was ready to hear him agree with it.
“You don’t think you were meant to be a mother.” His careful rephrasing of her words had her raising a hand.
“Don’t try HNT active listening now, Dace. Not on me.” Because looking at him made it difficult to think, she half turned away, focused on the heap of luggage on the floor. She needed to get some sleep. Summon unconsciousness that would let her forget at least for a while. And if she had to rely on one of those pills the doctor had pressed on her at the hospital to beckon slumber, well, there were worse crutches.
“Maybe you think I wasn’t meant to be a father either.”
“I never thought that.” Seeing him with his family, his mother and sisters, nieces and nephews, had always made her feel like a child with her nose pressed against the window of a candy store. His relationship with his family was easy, natural, born of long familiarity and a deep-seated love. And although they’d all been kind to her, she’d always felt out of place around them. The boisterous teasing, the commotion of family get-togethers, the openly curious remarks had all felt slightly suffocating. She’d faced down armed gunmen with barely a flicker of emotion, but one of Dace’s upcoming family events would tie her stomach in knots for days beforehand.
“So this is all about you. Things would have been different if it had been Sheila who had gotten pregnant. Or Lindsey. Or Meredith.”
The names of his former girlfriends had her flinching, a buried reaction from the time when she’d had a right to feel jealousy. But she couldn’t dodge the truth in his words. “Yes.”
“That is such crap, Jolie.”
The change in his tone had her head whipping around to face him. There was incredulity in his expression, heat in his eyes. “We both read the research. We hadn’t done anything to increase Sammy’s risk of SIDS. His death was tragic. But it wasn’t our fault. It wasn’t yours, just because you happened to be the one to find him.”
A sliver of pain lodged deep at the reminder. They’d alternated shifts so one of them could be home with Sammy as much as possible. Dace had left the house forty minutes earlier on the day she’d awakened and checked on their son. On the day she found him not breathing in the crib they’d selected with such care. The memory of that morning still throbbed like a wound.
“He wouldn’t have been any less dead if you’d had first shift that day instead of me. Or would you have blamed me, if the situation was reversed?”
“Of course not!” The denial was out of her mouth before she could consider the words.
He gave a nod. “Of course not. But it’s okay to blame yourself. That makes no sense at all.”
She struggled to keep her voice pitched low. How incongruous that the first real discussion they’d had about their son’s death was held in near-whispers with a sleeping federal agent downstairs. “I don’t blame myself for Sammy’s death.” She didn’t, exactly. What she deserved blame for was tempting fate. For reaching for something she’d known better than to hope for. “You don’t get it. I did everything right.” There was a catch in that last word and she stopped, waited for her voice to steady before continuing. “I stopped smoking as soon as soon as I knew I was pregnant.” Even before she’d decided to go through with the pregnancy. And that implication was particularly elusive.
“I followed all the rules.” She heard the plaintive note in her voice, was helpless to temper it. She’d thought she could shore up her complete ignorance about babies by reading everything she could lay her hands on. Making lists of things to remember. Careful notes on what to avoid. But education was no match for lack of instinct. And there she’d failed miserably. “You had to show me everything.”
She didn’t hear him move. But suddenly he was behind her, his hands on her shoulders. Slowly, inexorably, he overcame the resistance in her body to draw her back against his chest. “My experience with diaper changing wasn’t exactly something I came by willingly.” His voice was in her ear, tinged with humor. “My sisters’ offspring have all perfected the art of instant elimination the moment their parents walk out the door.”
That surprised a laugh from her, and a bit of tension eased from her body. He rested his chin lightly on the top of her head. His arms slid down her arms to link around her waist. “Inexperience didn’t make you a bad mother. It wasn’t some kind of sign from the fates when your milk didn’t come in, and we used bottles instead of breast-feeding. It just was. You can’t read hidden meanings into things neither of us could control. We stumbled through the first few weeks after Sammy was born the same way most new parents do. Scared to death and in a sleep-deprived fog.”
She gave a short laugh again, a part of her amazed that the memories could bring as much comfort as pain. She let her head rest against his chest. Heard the reassuring steady thud of his heartbeat. “I don’t think you slept for the first three days after his birth.” Exhaustion had worked on her, but Dace had been alert to every hitch in Sammy’s breathing. Every squeak heard over the baby monitor.
“Well, I eventually perfected the art of pretending not to hear him wake up, didn’t I?”
She pinched one of his arms, satisfied when she felt him flinch. “You did become quite masterful at that, yes.” She hadn’t ever really minded. There had been a rare peace in the times she’d spent rocking her son as she fed him. And if it had never stopped feeling a bit foreign, there had also been joy in those quiet times she’d never regret.
Dace still didn’t understand. The certainty pierced her heart. He could probably only fully comprehend once he’d met Trixie. But even knowing that didn’t stem the surge of desire. He was a protector to the core, a cop, with that Marine toughness as much a part of him as his eye color. Maybe that was why his unexpected tenderness could so easily undo her.
She turned in his arms, tipped her chin up to look at him. The strong stubborn jaw was stubbled, the scrape already healing. His chestnut hair was ruffled, probably from his habit of jamming his fingers through it when he was poring over case notes. But it was what she saw in his shockingly green eyes that had her pulse stuttering.
Desire.
A smoky tendril of heat suffused her. She spent her life exerting control. Over her emotions. Her environment. Her relationships. But her body made a mockery of that restraint as it softened against his. A shrill of alarm sounded in the recesses of her mind. It would be a mistake to forget all the pain in their relationship and focus on the purely carnal satisfaction she could find with him.
Their gazes tangled. Her throat abruptly dried. If memory served, when it came to carnal satisfaction, they’d been pretty damn combustible. He stroked a lazy path up her spine, and she shuddered in response. Now was the time to heed caution and step away, before there were any more regrets between them.
His head dipped, and his teeth closed over the cord of her neck, testing not quite painfully. Reason clouded. They knew where all the mines were buried in their relationship, didn’t they? Surely they could sidestep them to focus on the parts that were separate from the regret. Dace was no more anxious than she to relive the pain of their past.
But this aspect of it…She dragged her lips along his jaw, felt the scrape of whiskers against her mouth and the sensation cemented her decision. He was the only man who’d ever made her feel like this. Want like this. It wasn’t the frankly sexual passion between them that was to be feared. It was fooling themselves that it could be more.
His lips moved over hers then and there was a flare in the pit of her belly, hot and immediate. He knew how to kiss a woman, deep and devastating. With a single-minded intensity that had the rest of the world dimming. Inner fires flaring. She opened her mouth beneath his and dove into the flames.
His flavor was dark temptation, lethal to her senses. She slid her hands inside his T-shirt to skate up hard-muscled sides, her fingers flexing in remembered pleasure. She’d always enjoyed the contrasts of them, his sinewy strength against her softness. And she’d enjoyed stripping him of that strength, torching his control until desperation turned his breathing ragged, his hands hard and frantic.
He cupped her face in his palms, but there was nothing gentle in the gesture. His mouth devoured hers, their tongues tangling, breath mingling, teeth clashing. Swinging her around, he walked her backward until she felt the wall at her shoulders, and still he didn’t lift his mouth from hers. Her muscles melted, hot wax under a molten flame. Here was the hunger she remembered. The hint of savagery that called forth an answering wildness.
He urged her legs apart with his knee, then stepped between them. His erection pressed against her belly and she squirmed against him, wanting to feel him where she was empty and aching. As if aware of her frustration, his hands went to her butt and he lifted her. With her legs locked around his hips, she rocked against his hardness, feeling his reaction even if she couldn’t manage to drag her eyes open to watch it.
With sudden urgency, Jolie bunched his shirt in her fists, dragged it up his torso. Dace finally moved his mouth from hers long enough to rid himself of the garment. Her head lolled against the wall, her fingers dancing over the remembered planes of his chest, the hollows beneath his ribs. The ridges of bone and sinew.
She felt his fingers on the fastenings of her shirt and her breath caught. Held. There was something exquisitely sensuous about focusing on touch alone. The languid slipping of one button from its hole. The inch of exposed flesh bathed by Dace’s clever wicked tongue. Another button. Skin prickling in anticipation of his lips long seconds before it, too, was tasted.
He took his time. Each button was released with exquisite care. Each bared expanse of flesh meticulously explored. Jolie forgot about her own exploration, the teasing journey she’d been mapping along his biceps, across his chest. She clutched at his shoulders, fingers digging into his flesh, and shivered each time his mouth found a new square of flesh to map through taste alone.
This rollicking in her pulse was familiar, but no less heady for it. Every brush of his lips, every teasing slide of his tongue was a dark promise of pleasures to come. But it also fueled a quiet desperation in her system. She wanted to feel him, all of him. Flesh against flesh. Their bodies sealed so closely that not even a breath of air could fit between them. And she wanted him quaking, too. Wanted to unleash the primitive nature he battled to keep leashed. She wanted, quite frankly, to strip him of every defense, even as he stripped her of clothes.
To that end, she relaxed her fingers, went on a quest designed to unharness his control. He released her fourth button and her senses scattered when his tongue delved into her cleavage, danced along the top of her bra where flesh met lace. It took all the strength she could muster to concentrate on finding the places that made him shudder. The soft velvety skin beneath his arms. A fingernail scraping over one male nipple.
And the feel of his touch faltering, the hiss of his breath sucked in was its own reward.
Her reach was constrained by their position but she was thorough in her investigation. She brushed her fingers over his back, feeling the flesh punctuated by vertebrae. The muscles beneath her fingers quivered under her touch like an impatient stallion’s.
His hands began to hurry a bit as he pulled her shirt up to undo the bottom buttons. With one practiced movement he released the front clasp of her bra and spread the fabric aside.
Her nipples were knotted, awaiting his touch. And when it didn’t immediately come, Jolie managed to drag her eyes open, a demand on her lips.
It went unuttered. Dace was staring at her, and she felt seared by his gaze. It painted her face, her breasts, causing her nipples to tighten even more. The look was a little possessive, slightly cruel, a man surveying a woman he meant to take at his leisure. She knew from experience he’d pleasure and take pleasure in return, and that knowledge sparked comets of heat through her veins.
Eyes locked on him, she arched her back, a carnal invitation, and watched the color slash across his cheekbones. His jaw tightened. Intuitively she knew he was battling against the urge to rush the ending, an urge she wouldn’t protest. But she saw the moment he won the battle, saw the slight curve to his lips as he reached out a finger to brush it lightly over her nipples.
She jerked against him in involuntary response, and her reaction seemed to ignite something inside him. He slid a hand up to cup one of her breasts, capturing the taut bud between thumb and forefinger, before lowering his mouth to take the other nipple between his lips.
Kaleidoscopic colors wheeled behind her eyelids. Jolie leaned back while pressing closer against him, and he responded to her unspoken demand by suckling strongly from her. The slight scrape of teeth against her flesh had hunger leaping forth like an uncaged tiger. Her earlier plan to make him ache, make him need was forgotten. Her fingers twisted in his hair, urging him to take more.
She was a master at maintaining her guard, lest she reveal vulnerabilities it had taken her a lifetime to hide. But unlike any other man she’d ever met, Dace could dismantle that guard with mind-numbing ease. That fact had always dismayed and alarmed her by turn. But the flip side was that he could get closer, could make her feel things no one else ever had. Still frightening. Terrifying, even. But also rewarding because her physical response to him was just as keen.
He lifted his mouth, and the cooler air tightened her nipple almost painfully. She met his lips with her own, all pretense stripped away. She felt alive again in his arms. Desperately, achingly alive. And the heat careening through her veins warmed where she’d been cold and empty for too long. There was a claim sometimes leveled at SWAT units that they were adrenaline junkies. Maybe that explained her reaction to Dace. There was danger here—a history fraught with complications and heartbreak. But sensation heightened unbearably everywhere they touched. Pulse points were sharpened to razor-edged keenness.
When he swung her into his arms, she opened her eyes dazedly, her wits completely dulled by the passion-induced fog. Dace moved toward the door, flicked off the light and was striding down the hall before she quite knew what was happening.
He glanced down at her as he carried her through the doorway to his room, pushing the door closed behind him with his foot. But if he was waiting for an objection, he wasn’t going to get one from her.
Jolie trailed the nail of her index finger over his shoulder, down his defined bicep, over to his chest to trace a teasing circle around one flat nipple. His eyes slitted in response, and a small smile curled her lips. She leaned upward to nip at his collarbone before he opened his arms and she found herself falling.
Dace had her stripped almost by the time she hit the mattress. Following her down on the bed, his arms framed her body, his mouth demanding on hers. The room was shrouded in darkness. But there was a slash of moonlight slanting through the blinds, painting the bed with a wide pearly glimmer. It sheened his body with an otherworldly glow that furthered the sense of intimacy. The black velvet shadows wrapped them in a sensual cocoon that kept the rest of the world at bay, swept aside the past.
There was just sensation. The stroking of his healing palms over her skin, hot and demanding on her curves, gentle on her wounded leg. The contrast kept her off-kilter, her emotions swinging between lust and tenderness.
An alarm shrilled in the recesses of her mind. Danger. There was a risk in feeling anything deeper than the need to assuage the savage hunger clawing through her system. Dace trailed a finger up her leg, circled teasingly around the heat centered between her thighs, and the inner warning bells were silenced. Her life had been full of denying herself any indulgence. She wasn’t going to deny herself this.
Dace leaned in for a kiss. Deep. Wet. Rawly carnal. His palm covered her mound, which was damp and aching. He sent his tongue in search of hers at the same time he parted her slick folds and entered her with one exploring finger.
Her hips arched, twisting beneath him at the dual assault. Her blood was churning in her veins, frothing and crashing like white water. There was primitive demand in his kiss. In his touch. It was a demand she reciprocated.
Jolie’s hands streaked over his body, tempting, teasing, reveling in the sensual warmth of sleek skin covering sinew and muscle. He moved his leg over one of hers, as if to hold her in place, and she was reminded that he was still half dressed.
There was something intensely vulnerable about lying naked beneath a man who was still clothed. She’d never allowed herself to feel vulnerable with any other man. Not even this much. Her fingers trailed along the flesh above his waistband, felt his stomach muscles quiver beneath her touch and knew she wasn’t the only one susceptible to these sensations.
He parted her legs and eased another finger inside her, catching her bottom lip with his teeth as he intensified the sensual assault. She dragged her eyelids open, caught his eyes on hers. Knowing. Slightly predatory. It was a game they’d played before, each intent on being the first to drive the other just a little crazy.
She unfastened his jeans, scraping her thumbnail down his zipper, pressing lightly against the hard length of him straining beneath the fabric. She saw him swallow a groan. Then he found the taut cluster of nerves between her legs and began a slow rhythmic circling.
Her vision grayed, sensation arrowing straight to her womb. It took a great deal of effort to continue the game, to gather her scattered senses and work the zipper of his jeans down. Slow. Excruciatingly slow. One tooth at a time.
His touch became more urgent. He lowered his head, took a beaded nipple between his teeth and worried it gently. But there was nothing gentle about her response. Her back arched off the mattress. She had always been far more impatient than he. Anticipation, she thought, was vastly overrated.
She felt him smile against her breast, and the gesture of male satisfaction acted to steel her resolve. Pushing his jeans open, she reached inside them to squeeze his hardness and felt his body jerk involuntarily against hers.
It was her turn to smile. But a moment later a moan escaped her lips as he began to stroke his fingers inside her more insistently, his thumb pressing more firmly. Her body was betraying her.
With a shaking hand, she pushed aside his formfitting briefs to take his warm, pulsing erection in her fingers. She had time for one lingering stroke before he lifted his head from her breast, caught her hand in one of his. He pinned it on the pillow beside her head, his other hand never pausing in its sensual ministrations.
“Not…fair,” she gasped. Her muscles tightened as she struggled against giving in to the vortex of desire, sucking her in to the inevitable conclusion.
Placing a stinging kiss below her ear, he murmured, “When have you ever known me to play fair?”
She couldn’t summon an answer. Sensation slammed against sensation. There was an urgency in his touch, a demand. And while she could fight the sensual assault, the conclusion couldn’t be denied.
He was saying something else, his voice a ragged whisper. But the sound slipped away, as evasive as wisps of fog. Nerve endings spiraled to concentrate where he was touching her so intimately. Her control tenuous. Teetering.
And then it snapped and she shattered, falling headlong into a pleasure too long denied.
Breath panting and uneven, she was aware of his movements beside her, swift and jerky. She heard a slight sound, realized he was donning protection and the realization had reason returning.
But then he was beside her again, sleek, lean naked flesh a temptation she couldn’t resist. And the longing, just satiated, began to climb again.
She leaned over him, intent on mapping his body with her lips, one inch at a time. But now he was the eager one. His muscles quivering with tension, he urged her astride him, his eyes dark with passion. The skin over his cheekbones was drawn tight.
She rose above him, guiding his entry, and then he hesitated. His face lay half in moonlight, half in shadow. But she saw the sheen of perspiration on his forehead. Felt his muscles bunched beneath her. Then she moved, taking him inside in one long stroke, and the tether on his restraint snapped.
Her hips were clutched in hard desperate fingers as he urged her to a faster pace. And while minutes earlier she’d been intent on teasing, torturing, now she found herself as hungry as he. She braced her hands on his shoulders and met every lunge of his hips, each a little more desperate than the last.
The position felt familiar. So was the hot avid gaze he pinned her with as they strained together. Her blood began to pulse again, scorching rivers under her skin. Need coiled in her belly. And the urgent pace he set was familiar, too. Familiar and welcome.
As she saw his face pass into the light, then back into shadow, there was a moment when the past and present melded so completely she couldn’t separate the two. It caused an instant of panic, nebulous, but just as quickly dissipated by the urgency of their movements.
The rhythm quickened. Breath shortened. The climax shook her first, startling in its intensity. In the throes of her own pleasure she felt Dace finish and melted, bonelessly, when she heard him groan a word that almost sounded like her name.
* * *
That sliver of moonlight was keeping Dace awake. He should get up, adjust the blinds, but he couldn’t summon the energy.
He stroked Jolie’s hip, one arm curved around her to keep her close. She’d always slept deeply after great sex. And the sex, he recalled, had always been mind-blowingly great.
It was when they were out of bed that problems evolved.
Because he didn’t want to examine the sneaky little doubts that were circling in his mind, he pushed them aside. There were other, more pressing things to concentrate on. Like what Jolie had revealed earlier.
Four foster homes. Probably more, the way she’d phrased it. He kept his touch light as he traced patterns on her skin, staring sightlessly at the ceiling. She hadn’t ever told him much about her past prior to joining the force, but apparently most of what she had told him had been a lie.
That should piss him off. It did piss him off. But it also explained a hell of a lot, and he’d waited a long time for an explanation. Now he had at least part of one, and he could guess at the rest. It didn’t change anything but at least he could start to understand. Would understand better when he could pry more out of her.
But it didn’t matter. He told himself that and tried to believe it. The past was past. Over. Just like they were over, in any way other than the physical.
But if it didn’t matter, he’d release her. Let her roll away and curl up into a ball, the way she always slept if allowed to. Alone, even when someone else was lying beside her.
And he would release her. In a minute. Maybe two.
It was the cop in him, he reasoned, his eyes on that slice of light dividing the shadows of the room. He was used to piecing together puzzles to see the whole. Trained to look for answers. But he hadn’t looked very damn hard when they’d been together, or he’d have known all about Jolie’s mother. All about her childhood. All about the demons that had shaped her fears, fueled her doubts. That was what had him lying here awake.
She stirred against him and his hand stilled, waiting until she gave a little sigh before she went motionless again. The warning signs had been there three years ago. It wasn’t that he hadn’t seen them. He hadn’t pried with Jolie because he hadn’t wanted to face whatever it was that had made those defenses so much a part of her. It had been so much easier to tear them down, smash through them.
His hand went to her spine, tracing the vertebrae there, so delicate to hide a will so strong. He’d spent a year and a half blaming her for walking away. Sixteen months trying to forget her altogether. It was pretty damn bitter to lie here realizing just how big a hand he’d played in their misery.
* * *
Adam Marker pulled the door open, cocked a brow when he saw the newcomer. “Don’t you sleep?”
“Not much, thanks to you.” Gee walked in, glancing at Mose sitting at the table, drinking his way through a twelve-pack. “The news is all over the media.” Tightly controlled fury was in every word. “What the hell did you do?”
“Me and Mose went hunting, is all.” Adam watched Gee look over at the high-powered rifle lying on the table in front of Mose. “Open season. Bagged us a couple more SWATs. Those cowboys will all be pissing their pants when word gets out.”
And there was a vicious stab of satisfaction at the thought. Freaking cops would all be dead before he was through. Every one of them that had David’s blood on their hands. He wouldn’t stop until they were all as cold and lifeless as his brother.
“You’re out of control. Killing two more of the SWAT unit is going to make this more difficult, don’t you get that? You need to get your head out of your ass. Nothing you do is going to bring David back. You’re just digging a hole for us we can’t hope to get out of. Call it even, pull up stakes and head to another state before you bring this whole thing down on us.”
“What have you been smoking?” Mose tittered at Adam’s retort, the sound abruptly trailing off when Gee threw him a glare. “The memorial service is the day after tomorrow. We’re prepared. You just need to do your part to ensure that nothing goes wrong.” Gee’s constant second-guessing was wearing on his nerves. But then, everything got on his nerves these days. The waiting, especially. The constant news stories about the freaking cops who had died at the bank.
There’d be new stories for the media to feed on after the night he and Mose had spent. He hadn’t missed this time. He’d remembered everything David had told him. Hadn’t rushed the shots. Kept his breathing nice and slow. A slow easy squeeze on the trigger.
But already the pleasure from the kills was fading. For every one he’d managed to kill, there were more out there deserving death. He wanted them all. Only then would David be avenged.
“You think you’re running this operation?” Gee took three quick strides and had Adam around the neck before he thought to react. “Think I can’t bury your ass before you even have a chance to wonder what hit you? One phone call from me and you’ll have a pass right back to prison. But it would be death row this time. You really that anxious to join your brother in hell?”
Adam let the fingers close around his windpipe. He waited. Calm. Deadly calm. Felt his breathing catch and labor as those fingers started to squeeze. Then watched Gee still when Mose stuck the tip of the M40’s muzzle beneath one ear.
He reached up, pried Gee’s fingers off him and shoved away. “I think you could say there’s been a shift in the balance of leadership. You try to double-cross me and you’ll never see us coming for you. Might be a bullet.” Mose punctuated his words with a little jab of the barrel. “Might be a big bang and then nothing left of you but pieces.”
He turned away, went to the window. Dawn was spreading sticky pink smudges across the horizon. Metro City was slowly awakening. “You do your part. Follow the plan. We’ll take out as many as we can.”
“And then we get back to business?”
Still too much demand in Gee’s voice for Adam’s liking, but he lifted a shoulder. “Let’s wait until after the memorial. Then we can talk about business.”