Martin stood two dozen feet in front of the window that looked into Juliet’s office and tried to talk himself into leaving without speaking to her. After a half-dozen hours of dream-ruined sleep, he’d awakened making deals with himself. He could get out of bed if he didn’t leave the apartment. He could leave the apartment if he stayed away from the library. He could go to the library if he didn’t go to her office. He could see her if he didn’t speak to her.
Plenty of agreements, and every one of them broken. Hell, he couldn’t even keep a promise to himself. How the hell could he be expected to treat Juliet fairly?
Treating her fairly, in light of what he now knew, translated to one thing: staying away from her. She deserved better. With what little he knew of himself, he deserved nothing.
But here he was, a few strides away, watching her like some kind of lovesick—or just plain sick—fool. She hadn’t noticed him. Ever since he’d arrived, her attention had been focused on something on her desk. She seemed a thousand miles away, and he wished she was, literally as well as figuratively. Then she would be out of his reach. He would never know she existed, and she would be safe from him.
Abruptly, she looked up, her gaze locking with his. He tried to look away, but instead, for one long, greedy moment, he continued to look at her, to study her, to want her. She was so sweet, so innocent. He was neither and suspected he had never been.
Finally he forced himself to break the eye contact, to turn his back to her. He still felt her gaze, though, even when he crouched on the pretext of finding something on the shelves, even when solid wood and a forest of paper blocked him from her sight. He stared blindly, wishing she’d never come to this town, wishing he’d never come, wishing he’d gone over the side of the mountain with his damned car if this was what he had to live with. Pain, fear, doubt. Ugly truths and impossible wants. He wished—
She crouched beside him, her pale summer dress brushing the floor, the faint scent of her fragrance competing with the smells of papers and inks. “Can I help you find something?” she asked, her voice impossibly soft, her tone unmistakably hurt.
“No. I can find—” He pulled a book from the shelf, but he couldn’t read the title because his peripheral gaze was on her, a soft blur of colors, scents, sensations.
“Interested in college? Since part of my salary is paid by the local college, I feel obligated to recommend them first. However, that one’s good, too. I believe you’re a little old to become a cadet or to think about a career in the military, but since you can’t prove your age…”
Finally he forced his gaze to the book. It was a catalog for the U.S. Naval Academy. His face burning, he let her pull it from his hands, then sank back to lean against the bookcase behind him.
“What’s wrong, Martin?”
“Nothing.”
“Has something happened? Did you find out anything?”
“I don’t want to know anything. I don’t want to know who killed Olivia—” because damned if it might not have been him “—and I don’t want to know anything else about myself.”
She sat down, too, gathering her skirt close. “You remembered something, didn’t you?”
He shook his head.
“What is it? What do you remember?”
“Nothing. Not a damn thing. The doctor says I may never remember anything. The shrink, however, says these things usually resolve themselves. One minute I know nothing, and the next I know it all. One minute I’m the freak, and the next I’m—” He clamped his jaw shut to keep from finishing the sentence, but he couldn’t stop the words in his mind. A murderer.
“One minute you’re a man with amnesia, and the next you’re a man with a full set of memories. The amnesia doesn’t define you, Martin. It’s a condition you have. It’s not who you are.”
No, the memories determined who he was, and the few he had now weren’t pretty. His only comfort was that anything else he remembered could only get better. After all, what could possibly be worse than killing a man?
Only one thing that he could imagine right now: telling Juliet that he’d killed a man. Last night he’d thought he could do it, and she would understand. She would make excuses that they both could believe in. She would say that was another life. He’d been a different man. That past was ended. It had nothing to do with the man he was today.
But that was in the night, in the shadows where he’d lived too much of his life. In the hard light of day, the truth and his wishful thinking were about as far apart as they could get. The truth was, a woman like Juliet should stay hell and gone from a man like him. She shouldn’t have an affair with him. She sure as hell couldn’t be allowed to fall in love with him. They didn’t stand a chance, not in the long run. Better to accept that now, while he could, while he might survive it, while she would survive it.
“Martin, talk to me, please. Tell me what’s wrong.”
He looked at her, so pretty, so worried, and smiled bitterly. “Everything’s wrong, darlin’. You’re wrong. I’m wrong. This whole damn relationship is wrong.”
A woman walked past on the opposite side of the low bookcase, giving them a curious look, distracting him for one blessed moment from the hurt that turned Juliet’s eyes liquid blue. The moment passed, though, and he had nothing to look at but her. Nothing to think about, nothing to feel, nothing to regret but her.
“Would you come in my office, please?”
“No.”
She had started to get up but sank back again at his blunt answer. “So you’re giving up.”
Giving up hope. Giving in to the past.
It was possible, the shrink had told him ten months ago, that there was a hysterical aspect to his amnesia. The head injury he’d suffered in the accident hadn’t been severe. Medically they wouldn’t have expected such a blow to cause anything more significant than a headache, certainly not full-blown generalized amnesia. Dr. Jeffers had suggested that his subconscious had seen the blow as an opportunity to be free of a life he no longer wanted to live and so had blocked off all those memories, giving him a chance to start over.
Some chance, when he remembered just enough to keep him trapped in that past he’d no longer wanted.
“I don’t have anything to give up,” he said flatly.
She opened her mouth as if to speak—to offer herself?—then thought better of it. After a moment of awkward, hurtful silence, she murmured, “I don’t understand.”
“There’s nothing to understand, darlin’—”
“Don’t call me that. My name is Juliet.”
He acknowledged that with a nod. Endearments at a time like this were more than a little cruel. “I don’t want to know anything. What’s hard to understand about that?”
“Why don’t you trust me enough to tell me what’s happened?”
“I trust you. It’s me I don’t trust. You shouldn’t, either.”
“I do trust you.”
“You do, huh? Well, hell, what do you know? You’re a timid little librarian who lives her life with her computers, who doesn’t do well face-to-face and whose only friends use fake names and live somewhere out in cyberspace.” Who was looking at him now as if he’d struck her. Whose eyes were so full of unshed tears that he was drowning in them. Muttering a curse, he scrambled to his feet. “Do yourself a favor, darl—Juliet. Stick to your computers and stay the hell away from me.”
He left the library, feeling sicker than he’d ever been. Leaving the sidewalk for the shelter of a weeping willow, he leaned against the trunk and ground his palms against his stinging eyes. He was one hell of a bastard who didn’t deserve to even know her…which was the point of this whole ugly mess. He needed to know that Juliet was safe, and the one thing in the world she needed to be safe from was him.
There was a soft rustle of sound, followed by the certain knowledge that he was no longer alone. Gritting his teeth on a curse, he dropped his hands from his eyes and slowly opened them. Juliet was standing primly a few feet in front of him. She still wore a wounded-angel look, but she wasn’t crying. Her lip wasn’t trembling, and she didn’t look as if she might dissolve into a sorrowful pool of tears.
“Most people I meet never get to know me well enough to figure out what hurts most. You did it in only a week.” She didn’t wait for him to speak. It was just as well. There was nothing he could allow himself to say—no deliberate insults, no apologies, no pleas for forgiveness. “I suppose this was for my own good. Better to hurt me now than later?”
He still said nothing. He simply stared at her.
“Did I give you the impression that I was expecting anything from you? Did you think I believed the things you said last night?”
I kissed you because I’ve been wanting to ever since the first time I saw you. Because you’re a beautiful woman and you’re sweet and you have a voice to make a man ache. I did it because I wanted to. Because I wanted you.
Her smile was tremulous. “Frankly, I thought you were crazy. I thought you’d been alone too long. I thought you felt more comfortable with someone not too demanding and easy to please, which, of course, describes me perfectly. I didn’t think it meant anything spec—”
“You are so damned naive.”
She blinked and closed her mouth.
“I meant every word I said last night—and, darlin’, if you thought that kiss was nothing special, then you’re even more innocent than I thought.”
For a long moment, she stared at him, obviously confused. Finally, carefully, she said, “Maybe I am, because I don’t have a clue what’s going on here. But I still want to help you. I can keep things strictly business between us—”
“But I can’t.”
She stared a moment longer, then shook her head. “I don’t understand,” she said in a small voice. “Just tell me what’s wrong.”
“What’s wrong is that I want you more than you can even begin to imagine. What’s wrong is that you’re sweet, naive and innocent, and I’m not. What’s wrong is me in your life.”
She made an obvious effort to steady her voice. It trembled, anyway. “What did you remember, Martin?”
“Nothing important.”
“But important enough for all this. What is it?”
He let himself touch her then, just the simple brush of his palm across her hair. “Trust me. You don’t want to know.” He sure as hell didn’t.
“I do trust you, and I do want to know.”
She sounded so sure, but he knew she wasn’t. Once he told her, once she knew the truth, it would change the way she looked at him. It would definitely change the way she felt about him.
“Please, Martin.”
He looked away, folded his arms across his chest, then met her gaze evenly and blurted his confession. “I killed a man. Maybe I regretted it later, I don’t know, but at the time, I was glad. I killed him, Juliet, and I was glad.”
Juliet wanted to look away to hide the shock that she knew must be on her face, but he expected that of her. Instead, she looked straight into his eyes, never wavering or flinching. Details. Before she reacted to this news, she needed details. “How did you figure this out?”
“I’ve suspected it for a long time. After last night, I’m sure.”
“And what happened last night? Another dream?”
His only response was a shrug. With his arms folded, he looked both chagrined and incredibly stubborn.
“It was a dream, Martin. Dreams are generally not real.”
“This one was.”
She rested one hand on his forearm, her fingers curving over taut muscle. “I had a very vivid dream once that took place in colonial Massachusetts. In it, I was an American spy in the Revolutionary War. It didn’t mean that two hundred years ago I was a spy in the war. All it meant was that the dozens of Revolutionary War novels I’d been reading had had a really strong impact on me.”
“Yeah, well, I haven’t been reading any murder mysteries lately. This wasn’t just a dream, Juliet. I killed a man. I know it.”
She wanted to argue, but she respected him too much. If he truly believed this dream was a replay of an actual event, it might well be true. “But you don’t know who this man was, or when or where it happened, or under what circumstances.”
He shook his head.
“Then it could have been self-defense.”
“And it could have been cold-blooded murder.”
She studied him for a long moment. She didn’t doubt that he was capable of killing. She believed everyone was, with the right threat. But cold-blooded murder? Not Martin, with his charming grins, his sizzling kisses and his empathy for mistreated kids and abandoned puppies.
But he had been Martin only since last June. The man he’d been before that could have been capable of anything.
It wasn’t a comforting thought.
“We know you weren’t arrested for it, or you would have been fingerprinted. Maybe the man’s death was ruled self-defense and no charges were brought against you.”
“Or maybe they never caught me and his murder is still unsolved.”
He really believed this. He was convinced that he was a killer. How did she feel about that?
Juliet believed anyone who had died at Martin’s hand had deserved his fate. She believed he would never hurt anyone unless that person was threatening harm to someone else. She believed that if he had killed some unknown man, he had paid ever since with guilt and remorse. She believed that he was a better man than he believed himself to be.
Didn’t she? Or was she kidding herself because he was handsome, because his grin was charming and his kisses were sizzling, because he empathized with others less fortunate than him? Because she was falling for him?
No. If she were rationalizing, somewhere deep inside she would still be the slightest bit afraid of him, and she wasn’t. She’d known from the first night he’d shown up at her door that he’d been no stranger to violence, but she wasn’t afraid. He would never hurt her, unless he broke her heart or tried, as he just had in the library, to protect her from himself.
“You can’t make judgments about yourself based on bits of a dream, Martin. Until you know who the man was, how he died and why he died, you can’t blame yourself for his death. You could have been protecting yourself or others from a madman. You could have saved the life of an innocent woman or a helpless child. You could have been a hero.”
“A hero,” he repeated, his voice edged with scorn. “Don’t think that, Juliet. I’m not hero material.”
She smiled gently. He could be her hero. “The fact that you worry so much about the kind of man you used to be suggests to me that you couldn’t have been the kind of man you fear. That knock on the head didn’t give you morals and ethics, Martin. You already had them.”
“So what am I hiding from? If there isn’t something awful in my past, why can’t I remember?”
“I’m no expert on amnesia,” she said, though she had waded through countless sites on the subject, “but I know the workings of the mind aren’t that simple. You’ll recover your memory eventually, and I’ll bet you dinner at Randolphs that there’s not going to be anything awful in it.”
Mention of the most expensive restaurant in town brought him a faint smile. It wasn’t the sort of place either of them could afford on even a semiregular basis, but the return of his memory would be an event to celebrate.
It could also be goodbye.
At last he uncrossed his arms and slid one around her waist. “I hope you win.”
So did she—not just the bet, but a chance, a wish, a future. Everything.
His expression grew more serious. “I’m sorry.”
Finally she was able to look away, lowering her gaze to his chest. “It’s okay.”
“No.” His fingers gently forced her chin up. “I thought—I still think you would be better off away from me. You don’t know what you’re getting into.”
“No one ever really knows that, do they? Everything’s a gamble.”
“But you can improve the odds in your favor by getting involved with the right kind of man.”
“And what’s the right kind?”
“Someone normal, average, who knows who he is, what he’s done, where he’s going. Someone whose life isn’t full of questions and fresh out of answers. Someone you can trust.”
She moved a few feet away and rested one hand on a branch just above her head. A slight breeze blew past her, rustling the leaves, brushing her skirt against her legs, bringing with it the lovely scent of flowers. “You just described the last guy I dated. He was an account rep with the company I worked for. He was an up-and-coming executive, bright, ambitious, with a desire to get ahead and make a name for himself. In the business world, he was perfectly normal and average.”
A strand of hair fell across her face, and she brushed it back, catching it behind her ear. “We went out a half-dozen times. He spent a lot of money on me, said all the right words, made all the right moves. We seemed well suited, and the sex was incredible. I imagined myself well on the way to falling in love with him.” She hadn’t been, of course. She hadn’t dated since the illness that had led to her mother’s death, and she’d been lonely, hungry for companionship, affection and sex, and he had been so very charming. She’d been more in love with the whole relationship than with him.
“One evening, when he came over, he said he had something to ask me. I actually thought it might be a marriage proposal. I was a little giddy and excited and frightened and trying to decide what my answer would be when finally I heard what he was really asking. He wanted me to hack into the computer of his rival in the company. They were competing for a new account, and he needed the inside track to be sure he got it. That was why he’d gone out with me, why he’d gone to bed with me.” She smiled and realized that it wasn’t forced or embarrassed at all, but rather relieved. Neither the story nor the man responsible for it still held the power to hurt her. “By your standards, he’s exactly the right sort of man for me. By mine, he doesn’t come close. I’d much rather take my chances on someone with questions and no answers.”
Martin came to stand in front of her, his hand resting on the branch next to hers. “I knew the first time I saw you that the men in Texas were blind or fools or both.”
“Thank you.”
Then, his expression fading into bleakness, he returned to his earlier subject. “I don’t want to hurt you, Juliet. I don’t want to disappoint you. I sure as hell don’t want to frighten you.”
“Hurt and disappointment are a risk in any relationship.”
“But they’re a bigger risk in ours.”
“So maybe the payoff is bigger, too.” And maybe the heartache would be bigger. Maybe the emptiness would be emptier, the loneliness lonelier.
Moments rustled past on the breeze as they stared at each other. Finally he blinked, gave a little shake of his head and almost smiled. “Do something for me, would you? Expect something from me. Believe everything I said last night and today about wanting you.”
She had to swallow before she could answer. “All right. And you do something for me. The next time you have one of those dreams, come to me. No matter how late or early. We’ll talk.”
After a moment, he solemnly nodded. It was the only answer he offered.
“I have to get back inside. I haven’t gotten much work done this morning.”
“Let me take you to lunch.”
She hesitated, wanting very much to say yes. “I’d better work through lunch, or I’ll feel guilty. You’re coming over this evening?”
He nodded.
She started to leave but stopped with her hand on his. “Everything will be all right, Martin. Whatever you remember, whatever we find out, it’ll be okay.”
“I hope you’re right, darlin’.”
She was a dozen yards away when he called. “Hey, how’s Hunter?”
“He’s stubborn and smelly and manipulative as hell.” Then she grinned. “He’s all right.” So was Martin. And so was she.
* * *
Martin stopped inside the door of the deli and gave the room a quick survey. It was lunchtime, and most of the tables were occupied, with only a few empties here and there. Eating alone was one thing he’d never minded, not from the start, even when he’d been treated like an oddity on display by everyone around. He figured he’d spent most of his life doing things alone. It just came too naturally to him.
He intended to spend as much of the near future as possible with Juliet, even though he shouldn’t. Even though she claimed she understood the risks. Even though he did believe she was better off without him. If she had let him walk away from the library without an argument this morning, maybe he would have been able to manage, but when she’d come after him… Well, a man could be strong for only so long. Maybe he could stay away from her if she cooperated, but if she was willing to take a chance on him, wasn’t taking his own chances the least he could do?
He was heading toward a table near the television mounted on one wall when a table across the room caught his attention. Hal Stuart sat there, the remains of a sandwich in front of him, and across from him was none other than Maxwell Brown. On impulse, Martin turned in their direction, taking the nearest empty table.
The idea of Hal and Maxwell as friends was a difficult one for Martin to get his mind around. The two men knew each other socially, of course. They were both prominent in town. They were just different. Maxwell’s interests seemed focused entirely on his business—even in the middle of the night—while Hal’s biggest interest was himself.
Maybe their lunch was business and not social. Hal was a lawyer. Maxwell could be one of his clients. Or perhaps Maxwell had some business with the city council and hoped to win Hal to his side. Whatever the purpose, Hal didn’t seem in a particularly good mood, and nothing Maxwell said changed that. In fact, there were a few times when, judging from his body language, Hal’s responses to Maxwell were definitely hostile and, once, bordering on threatening.
Interesting. Something was definitely going on with Hal. Whether it was in any way connected to his mother’s murder was another question entirely, but something was wrong. After lunch and before work at the church, he would stop by the courthouse, Martin decided, and find out what he could about Hal. Maybe there was nothing to learn…but maybe there was.
Before Martin finished his sandwich, Maxwell Brown left, greeting other diners on his way out. He was well known in town, not only from his diversified business interests but also from his generosity. There was a clinic over at the hospital with his name on it. His various companies supported more than a dozen of Grand Springs’s Little League teams. He was a major contributor to the Grand Springs Historical Society and one of the top-level supporters of Olivia Stuart’s own favored charities. No fund-raising effort was complete without Maxwell Brown.
Back at the table, Hal was scowling at everything and nothing. When his gaze settled on Martin, his face darkened and his expression turned contemptuous. He tossed a stingy tip on the table, then came to Martin’s, sliding in across from him. “I had a talk with Chief Sanderson about you and that woman.”
“You did.”
“If you two don’t stay out of police business, he’s going to lock you—”
“That’s not what the chief told you, now, is it? It’s no crime to ask questions about a murder, you know. If it was, why, the chief would have to lock up everybody in town.” Martin watched Hal’s face turn red and finished quietly, “I had a talk with Chief Sanderson, too.”
“This case is none of your business. You’re interfering with the real investigation and making it more difficult to find the man who ordered my mother’s murder.”
“We’re not interfering with anything.” Except possibly Hal’s peace of mind. Why was that? “You know, if my mother had been murdered, I think I would appreciate all the help that was offered in solving the case, no matter where it came from.”
Stuart got to his feet and gave Martin one of those arrogant, straight-down-his-nose looks that Juliet had gotten the other day. “You expect me to be grateful for the ‘help’ of a part-time handyman who doesn’t even know his own name and a mousy little computer clerk who’s afraid of her own shadow. Get a grip on reality, Smith. Go back to your little painting-and-hammering job, and leave the police work to the police.”
He should have been put firmly in his place, Martin acknowledged as he watched the other man walk away, but Hal’s insults didn’t bother him—at least, not the ones directed at him. He was too curious about Hal’s overall response to take offense. Why was he so dead set against anyone but the police—who’d made zero progress in the last six months—looking into Olivia’s death?
It was a question he puzzled over through the afternoon and finally asked aloud of Juliet as they sat on her back steps after dinner. It was a warm evening, the dinner dishes were done, Hunter was enjoying the freedom of the backyard, and Martin was enjoying Juliet, almost too much to bring up business. When he did, she seemed almost as reluctant to answer.
After a long silence, she glanced at him. “Maybe he’s afraid that we’ll mess up everything—that something we do could jeopardize the police investigation.”
“What investigation? For all practical purposes, the case is closed. Until something happens, it’s sitting in the files with all their other unsolved cases. They have no leads, no clues, no theories. Entire weeks go by that they don’t put in even a minute’s work on that case.”
“Maybe he has more faith in them than we do. Maybe he’s kidding himself that they’re making progress.”
“Maybe he doesn’t want a new perspective on the case.”
She looked at him, waiting for more.
“The first rule in a murder investigation is to look at who profits. Find out if there’s a life insurance policy, how big it is and who the beneficiaries are. Look at the will and see who’s inheriting. Find out who stands to gain from the victim’s death and investigate those people first.”
“And you learned this…?”
He shrugged. It was easier than saying, I don’t know. “Hal was never a suspect, even though he profited from Olivia’s death. No one ever looked at him. Everyone in the department knows him. Half the officers grew up with him. He’s an attorney, the ex-mayor’s son, a council member. Hell, he’s the city council’s liaison to the police department. He helps them get their money, goes to bat for them whenever they need anything. It’s damn hard to suspect someone you like and respect in a murder.”
“But you and I are strangers. There’s no friendship to get in the way. So maybe he’s afraid that his relationship with his mother and any actions he might have taken regarding her can’t stand up to closer scrutiny.”
Martin nodded, then watched the dog for a time. In twenty-four hours, Hunter had marked the entire yard, dug two holes and broken enough ground-hugging branches off a bush at the back of the house to allow himself to wriggle into its shade. At least he had better manners indoors, or Martin would probably be looking for a new home for him.
When Juliet spoke, her voice was soft, as cool and welcome as a breeze on a hot summer day. “Do you really think Hal is involved in Olivia’s murder?”
He wanted to answer in the negative, but gut instinct held him back. “I don’t know. I think he deserves a closer look. His behavior is odd. Everyone in town likes and respects him, which suggests that he’s a decent guy, so why is he so hostile to us? What sets us apart from everyone else?”
“Our interest in Olivia.”
“His sister excused his behavior as grief over her death. No matter how much he loved her, ten months later, he should have some measure of control.”
“Unless it’s guilt and not grief. But why would a decent guy play any part at all in his own mother’s murder?”
That question had Martin stumped, too. They knew Hal had been in trouble that had required twelve thousand dollars from Olivia to fix, knew that he had expensive tastes which his income probably didn’t cover. But was simple greed reason enough to kill his own mother?
“I went by the courthouse before work. There’s never been an arrest warrant issued for Hal, and he’s never been sued. He’s never married, so there’s no divorce. Other than his condo on Greeley, which is mortgaged, and a one-third share in his mother’s house, which isn’t, he doesn’t own any property in the county. He’s late paying his property taxes every year, but so is half the county.”
She didn’t ask how he knew that that information was public record. Most of the public didn’t.
“We really need his credit report.”
She looked at him, her eyes wide, her expression concerned.
“I don’t want you involved in this. I can get it myself.” He couldn’t put her job at risk. Helping him was one thing. Losing her job and/or getting a criminal record in the process was totally unacceptable.
“How?”
He could make a clandestine, middle-of-the-night visit to the local credit bureau offices. Breaking in and circumventing the inevitable alarm system would be the easy part. Getting the necessary information out of the computer without Juliet’s help would be damn near impossible. Fortunately, he had a better idea. “There’s a woman who works there….”
She gave him a sharp, narrowed look. She knew his plan immediately—probably had already considered it herself.
“It shouldn’t take more than lunch, maybe dinner.” The look on Juliet’s face made him think that maybe breaking in was a better idea, after all. It wasn’t jealousy, possessiveness or anything like that. He could appreciate and deal with those emotions. No, this was uncertainty, insecurity and fear. Sliding his arm around her, he pulled her snug against him. “It would be a sacrifice, having to sit through an entire meal with any woman besides you,” he said, his tone gently teasing, “but, hey, I’m willing to do it just this once.”
Slowly, deliberately, she looked away. “Tell her the things you tell me, give her that grin, and it shouldn’t take more than a simple please.”
“What things? Should I tell her how much I want you? How much I like being with you, talking to you, watching you? Should I tell her about the first time I came to your house, when you were walking down the hall buttoning your dress? How your hair was loose and your feet were bare, and I could see just a little strip of skin all the way to your waist, how it looked so soft and pale and I would have given a year off my life to fasten those buttons for you, to touch you there, to brush my fingers across your skin the way you were doing? Should I tell her that I thought it was the most erotic image I had ever seen in my life?”
As he’d spoken, his voice had gotten thicker, huskier, and she had turned to look at him again. Her expression was soft, her eyes hazy, her lips parted just a little, just enough to tempt him. He leaned toward her, coaxed her to lean toward him and touched his mouth to hers. The heat was instantaneous, consuming. In a flash, the night went from pleasantly warm to unbearably steamy, and the ever-present ache in his groin exploded through his entire body.
He knew nothing about his past, but he knew he had never wanted like this, knew he could never forget a need like this, a kiss like this, a woman like this. The only way to satisfy this hunger was to get close, to crawl right inside her and stay forever. The only way to ease this arousal was in loving her, long and hard, tonight and always. The only way to survive the need was to hold tight to Juliet, to never let her go, to love her forever.
She stroked his tongue with her own as her thin, slender fingers curled with surprising strength around handfuls of his shirt. The soft little whimper that passed from her mouth to his intensified everything—the heat, the swelling, the desire, the pain, the torment. It gave him a sense of incredible power and humbled him tremendously.
His skin tingling with raw need, he freed himself of her mouth one small kiss at a time, then drew a desperate breath. He was shaking, trembling from the pure sweet pleasure of her mouth. “Oh, darlin’, you’re killing me.”
“Come inside.” She said it simply, quietly, her words sending one message, her voice, her eyes, her body promising another. It was the second he wanted—to strip off their clothes and bury himself deep inside her, to thrust and arouse and build and pleasure until his body could endure no more, to come inside her in the most intimate sharing two people could ever achieve.
Her hands were folded together in her lap. He wrapped his fingers around them, able to secure both of her small, delicate hands in one of his. “I don’t have any condoms.”
There was a hint of relief in her eyes that his objection was one of common sense and safety rather than lack of desire. “I do. I stopped at the store….”
He had carried in the twenty-five-pound bag of dog food this evening, while she brought the plastic bag with Hunter’s new collar and leash. She’d given no hint that it had contained anything else, certainly not anything as personal, as hopeful or as potentially embarrassing as condoms. He was surprised that she’d found the courage to make such a purchase—and found it incredibly erotic that she had.
Getting to her feet, she stood in the moonlight, slender and lovely, and offered the invitation again. “Come inside.”
Taking her hand, he went.