Authors: Jenna Mills
Jorak Zhukov, son of a war-torn country, Harvard graduate, and suspect in the murders of an elite force of
U.S.
operatives, was a planner, a meticulous, diabolical criminal with aspirations far more sinister than playing cat and mouse.
His interest in
Elizabeth
was beginning to feel a hell of a lot more personal than strategic.
The thought of that man getting his hands on her, of him carrying out some sick fantasy, twisted him up inside. He wanted to go to her, not let her out of his sight, make damn sure Zhukov never had the chance to carry out his little scheme, whatever the hell it was. And yet Hawk knew his presence would only deepen the danger. He didn't trust him
self with her right now. She was better off—safer—at her parents' house. With Aaron.
His goal had seemed simple enough. Make her remember. Make her admit. But he'd overlooked a fundamental truth. In bringing the past back to life for her, he would bring it to life for himself. In making her remember, he would remember. In making her admit, he had to admit.
And in admitting, he lost every shred of objectivity.
For two years he'd insisted he felt nothing for her. For two years he'd let the sting of rejection overshadow everything else, not just the blinding intensity of their lovemaking, but the fascination that had lashed through him the moment she'd walked into her father's study, all dressed to the nines with her hair pulled from her face, revealing those provocative green eyes. The chemistry had flared immediately, a teasing, back and forth, in-your-face banter that had fired his blood and his imagination, disabling everything he'd taught himself about survival.
Now the truth grated at him. What started out physical had transformed itself into something wild and glimmering and completely impossible. At least for him. He wanted Elizabeth Carrington not just in his bed, but his life, not just for an hour or a day or a week, but as far forward as he could see.
And that, he knew, could never happen.
The truth of who and what they were would always stand between them.
"What do you say, Wes? Up for a set?"
Hawk glanced at the small stage, saw the microphone standing like a lonely soldier and felt the call of oblivion. Music, with all its hard, untamed edges, had always provided a release.
"I'm here, aren't I?" He pushed back his chair and started for the stage but stopped abruptly. The sensation washed over him for the second time that evening, the prickly awareness of being watched. He narrowed his eyes and searched the swelling crowd, but like the first time, found nothing.
Even here, he realized, even here, he felt her.
Swearing under his breath, he ignored the tightening deep inside, the one that had grabbed him the moment he'd seen
Elizabeth
again, all polished and poised and beautiful, standing on that stage in
Calgary
. The moment he'd touched her again, tasted her.
"Ladies and gentlemen,"
Logan
said, "I've got a treat for you tonight. An old friend, one of the original Dogs, Wes Monroe."
Cheers and applause rose from the blur of the crowd. Hawk took the mike and looked out into the darkness. At one time the band, gigs like this, had been an important part of his life, the family he'd never had. After his mother joined Steven's household, she'd frequently worked evenings, and Melanie had had a fondness for meeting up with Hawk after
"Evenin'," he said, and anticipation thrummed deep. He hadn't sung with the Dogs since his first stint with
Elizabeth
. The last time he'd taken this stage… God, a few hours later he'd taken a hell of a lot more.
"A-one, a-two, a-one, two, three." On cue,
Logan
brought his guitar to life, strumming a riff from the Stones. Abe let loose on the drums, Mac joined in with the bass and Hawk closed his eyes and let go.
The words, not sung in years, returned with a vengeance. To his own ears they sounded torn from somewhere inside him, torn deep, but
Elizabeth
had once admitted she thought of his voice as crushed velvet.
He wanted to crush something, all right, but velvet wasn't even close.
Glancing at
Logan
, he signaled anther tune, this one a Clapton. The band responded, moving through each subsequent song effortlessly, as though two days had passed since they last performed together, not years. Hawk held the mike close to his mouth and kept his eyes squeezed shut more often than not, preferring his own images, his own instinct, to seeing the crowd.
Six songs raced by, and the anxiety he'd pushed aside nudged a little closer. Thirty minutes, he knew. Time for Aaron to check in. "One more," he mouthed to
Logan
, then instructed him which to play.
The moody music seared through him. "In the still of the night," he began, shoving the hair from his face, "when the world has gone to sleep, she'll come to me then. She'll come to me still." The words he'd written two years before scratched against a throat already raw, came out like sandpaper.
"It's a dangerous impulse," he rasped, wrapping both hands around the mike, "to touch the shadows, to make love to the past, and somehow think it could be the future."
Spotlights glared down on the stage, casting the bar in darkness, but still he stared. The past dominated his line of vision, the woman in black leather, moving toward him, slowly, sinuously, never breaking eye contact with the man who no longer trusted what he saw.
"In the darkness I can feel her still," he gritted out, "feel her always."
She stepped from the darkness, the past, took the stage with a confidence that stripped the breath, the words, from his throat. And then, oh, dear sweet Lord in Heaven, with a smile that stopped his heart, she put her hands to his and took over.
"A dangerous impulse," she added in that low, honeyed voice, the one that oozed of hot summer nights and long hours in bed. "The only kind worth indulging."
The bar, dark to begin with, faded, leaving not the past, but
Elizabeth
, dominating not his dreams, but standing next to him. In leather. Sweet heaven, leather. Just like before. Her hair was long and loose and more than a little tangled. Her black top dipped low, drawing his eyes to the small diamond teardrop arrowing down between her breasts. Her pants fit snugly, conforming to every curve of her body.
Somehow, he kept singing. She kept singing. Their hands still joined, their bodies straining closer. The words came from memory, the past. Just like before. And when the music died and the crowd roared their approval, he grabbed her hand and dragged her from the stage.
Fury, with all its cold, jagged edges, bit through him. "What the hell are you doing here?"
She lifted her chin, gave him a slow, heated smile. "Looking for you."
He was so hosed. "You're supposed to be at your parents' house." Where he knew she would be safe. "Where's Arrow?"
She gestured toward the bar. "There," she said. "With Jagger."
Hawk twisted to see his two best men sitting on bar stools, watching intently. With his trained eye, he could tell they were packing. "Son of a—" He broke toward them, but
Elizabeth
held him back.
"I asked them to bring me here."
"They should have said no."
"I didn't give them a choice."
"We all have choices."
She stepped closer, sliding an arm around his waist. "And I've made mine."
Everything inside him went very still. He stared down into her slumberous green eyes, and realized just how cruel temptation could be. "Be very clear here,
Elizabeth
. What are you saying?"
She didn't hesitate. She pushed up on her toes and brushed her mouth over his. "Last night you dared me to do something unexpected, unplanned, maybe even unorthodox."
He pushed back from her, bit back a stream of words she would not want to hear. "I'm not interested in playing truth or dare with you, sweetness. Not anymore." Couldn't. Not when so much lay at stake.
She lifted a hand to his face, let fingers feather across the whiskers along his jaw. "I'm not playing."
He tried to back away, found she had him against a wall. Only a few months before he'd told Miranda lightning never struck in the same place twice.
Now he had to wonder.
"What's the matter?" she asked slowly, provocatively. "This isn't part of
your
plan?"
His own words splashed against him like acid. His plan. God, no. She wasn't supposed to follow him. She was supposed to accept his rejection, just as he'd accepted hers. Following him here, touching him, offering him everything he'd ever wanted, was definitely not part of his plan.
All that control he'd tried to piece together betrayed him, crumbling to his feet like harmless little pebbles. "Plans?" he asked, drawing her against his body.
"You
know what they say about plans."
She tilted her face toward his, revealing long, dark hair teasing killer cheekbones. "They're made to be broken."
Ah, hell. Not just broken, shattered. "Come on." He took her hand, headed for the door.
* * *
Time dwindled. He watched the headlights of the sleek black Toyota Camry cut through the darkness, slide neatly into a spot on the street outside her town home. Moments later came the light, just one, glowing softly, from the front window.
In the shadows, he waited for the show to begin.
Monroe
was a careful man. He wouldn't rely on the security system, not after the breach the night before. Too easily he could picture the man slinking through the town house, his back to the wall and a gun in his hand, checking every room.
Laughter mingled with the warm, late-summer breeze.
Monroe
could try, but in the end he would fail. The trap had already been laid, meticulously, with great cunning. No one could see what was coming. He'd made sure of that. No one suspected his greater plan.
The time for waiting was over. The time for action had come. And this time, this time there would be no escape, no inept idiots who didn't know how to carry out a mission. He'd take matters into his own hands. It was the only way.
If you want something done right,
his father had taught,
you do it yourself.
It was a lesson he'd learned well, a lesson, tragically, that had ultimately defeated the very man from whom he'd learned.
This time there would be no defeat. Not for him. Only retribution. Those who misbehaved always, always had to be punished.
Another light then, illuminating the main room of her home, where a chenille sofa sat opposite an antique armoire. Shadows then, his and hers, moving into the room. But not touching. They circled each other, predators on the prowl.
The kill, he knew, would come swift and soon, and the dance of this night would be nothing more than memory.
"The last laugh, Father. I promised you I would have the last laugh, and I will."
Anticipation tickled like the touch of a skillful woman. His body responded in kind. In his hand, he caressed the silk stocking he'd taken from her room in
Calgary
. He doubted she'd noticed. She'd been too blinded by the bodyguard. What a shame, too. What a shame for them both. The oldest vulnerability known to man would soon claim another victim.
Wesley Monroe would not always be there to stand between him and Elizabeth Carrington.
And after he was done, after he'd touched and tasted and punished,
Monroe
would never stand between them, ever, ever again.
* * *
Elizabeth
watched him prowl the length of her town house, moving silently from the kitchen to the living room window. In his hand he still held his gun, drawn before they'd opened the door. In every hard line of his body, she saw a barely concealed restraint she didn't understand.
She didn't know what she'd expected, only knew it wasn't this. She'd never invited a man back to her place before, never sat next to a man in the darkness of her own car, knowing that every mile they covered brought them that much closer to her bedroom.
Her throat tightened. Going to him had cost her, and yet she'd realized that not going to him, clinging so ridiculously to a flawed plan, could cost her even more.
But, God, she'd never anticipated this. She'd never stopped to think that maybe, just maybe, Hawk no longer wanted her. Maybe she'd killed that desire the night she'd accepted Nicholas's marriage proposal, not even bothering to tell Wesley, leaving him to read it in the newspaper.
Maybe he'd been telling her the truth, she realized numbly. Maybe she'd already given him all he wanted from her.
An admission.
Everything inside of her twisted, but she kept her chin at a fierce angle. Later she would fall apart. Now she had to be strong, not let him see the regret that warred so violently with determination.