CROSSFIRE (26 page)

"You don't have to be here," she forced herself to say. "I'm not a charity case."

He spun around and was across the room so swiftly her heart didn't even have a chance to beat. "A charity case? Is that what you think this is about?"

She stared up at him, looked at the dark blond hair falling against his wide cheekbones, those hot burning eyes, and felt something inside her reaching, reaching. "Last time—"

"—was a mistake. Isn't that what you said?"

The hurt came fast, stabbed deep. Memory bled through. The night they'd made love had started at the bar, as well. She'd gone to him that night, on a dare. She'd stood quietly in the shadows, watching him on the stage, her take-no-prisoners bodyguard, singing with the voice of a fallen angel. He'd held the mike close to his mouth, and as she'd watched, she'd been blinded by the desire to take the place of the mike, to feel him hold her so tightly, to feel his lips moving against hers.

To this day she didn't know what compulsion prompted her to take the stage, sing with him. Once there, though, the look of raw shock on his face had given her all the confidence she'd needed.

He'd dragged her out of the bar then, too, but at the time she'd thought him angry with her. The second they stepped inside his house, though, she'd realized her mistake. He pulled her into his arms before the door even closed and took her mouth with his.

They'd never even made it to the bedroom. Not the first time, anyway.

"A surprise," she said now. "I … I never knew I could feel like that, want like that." So badly that she thought she might just die from it.

The planes of his face tightened. "And now?"

She swallowed hard. She had no practice at this, at telling a man she wanted to make love with him. "I looked in the mirror," she said. That morning, at his house, while still wearing his ratty gray Army T-shirt. "Like you asked me to. I looked in the mirror and realized you were right." The rhythm of her heart changed, deepened. A certainty she'd never felt before seduced. "I don't want to be afraid anymore, Wesley. I'm tired of pushing away what I want most."

Tired of being a coward, of running from life, rather than living it.

The admission cost her, but Wesley gave nothing in return. He just stood there staring at her, wooden, soldier-like. But then the dead calm of his eyes supernovaed, and the glitter returned, the glitter from the night in
Calgary
, when they'd stood in the cold rain, the glitter from the white marble bathroom, when he'd challenged her to take a little risk, so intense now, it scorched to the bone.

"The black dress, Ellie. The one from last night. I want you to put it on."

The words were matter-of-fact, but the breath jammed in her throat, anyway. "Why?"

His smile was slow, languorous. "So I can take it off."

Chapter 13

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H
er hands shook. She put the shimmering pearls to her neck, fumbled with the clasp until it locked snugly. In the full-length oval mirror she saw the black iridescent strand drape over her collarbone, highlighting the deep-V cut of the dress, the exposed triangle of flesh beneath her breasts.

Anticipation whispered louder. She'd never dressed for a man before, knowing he stood downstairs, waiting to slide the slinky fabric from her body. And that she would let him. More than just let him, she thought, glancing at her nightstand, where inside a drawer, a small blue box waited.
Let him
sounded too passive.

There was nothing passive about the truth burning through her. The thrill, the lure of the forbidden, tickled deep.

With a slow smile, she twisted her hair off her face and pinned back the stragglers. Just a few more minutes, she knew. Just a few more minutes, and that tight little box she lived her life in would shatter. She stared at the woman
in
the mirror, the glow to the green eyes she'd trained to show no emotion, the flush to the ivory skin she protected
from
the sun. The sparkle to her shoulders, where she'd dabbed the glitter lotion Miranda had given her for Christmas. The form-fitting black dress that Wesley had dared her to order.

The one he would soon peel from her body.

For so long she'd lived in denial, but from the moment Wesley had blazed back into her life, all those defenses she'd tacked into place had splintered into a need she didn't understand. The need to reach out to a man who held the world at bay. The need to discover what lurked behind that simmering sexuality. The need to find out, once and for all, if he'd been right, if she'd planned the living out of her life.

Need, she'd come to realize, could be the most dangerous foe of all.

Not now, though. She was done fighting, wanted only to touch and taste, to discover. To live. To lo—

Startled, she turned from the mirror and lit the candles on her nightstand, turned off the overhead light and walked into the hallway.

Downstairs the flickering light of an army of candles stopped her cold. They were everywhere, short and tall, thin, thick, plain white and multicolored, winking from her coffee table, her mantel, from a decorative pedestal near the back door, where a massive ivy normally sat, all wavering valiantly, transforming the darkened room into a twinkling realm of shadows.

The soft sounds of jazz registered next, drifting from her stereo and straight through her heart. Humming only minutes before, it slammed hard now, bringing not pain, as it had a few days before, but a sense of awe like nothing she'd ever known.

And then she saw him, and flat-out forgot to breathe.

He stood at the window, much as he had when she'd gone upstairs to change. Only, somehow, he'd changed as well. He still wore the faded jeans that hugged his long legs in all the right places, still wore the wrinkled ivory button-down from the club. But the way he was standing … no longer was it the soldier, the loner bracing himself against the world.

"Wesley."

Slowly he turned to her, and even more slowly, smiled. Not just his mouth, though of course it curved in the carnal way that heated her blood. But his eyes, they smiled, too. Not a bright happy smile, but a dark, glittering smile, brimming with masculine approval. And desire.

"I'd offer you a rose—"

"I don't want a rose," she answered before he could finish.

He didn't move, just watched her with the sharply honed intensity of a man who'd come to expect what he wanted most to be snatched away.

"Be very, very sure,
Elizabeth
." His voice was soft, coarse, but somehow it still managed to break her heart. "Once I take off that dress, there's no turning back."

The dark promise tingled through her. He didn't move, though, so she stepped toward him. It was her move, she realized instinctively. She was the one who'd not just turned from him before, but had run as far and fast as she could. "I don't want to turn back."

The lines of his face went harder. "There are things about me you don't know—"

"And there are things you don't know about me." She took another step, another breath. Regret jammed in her throat. She'd done this to him. She'd hurt him in ways she hadn't known possible. That's why he stood there now, looking at her with desire smoldering in his eyes, but refusing to let his body take one step. Somewhere inside, that young boy still lived, the one who'd craved love, who'd found the support of a good man, only to have the promise of a future yanked from beneath his feet, leaving him no choice but to join the Army to pay for his education. He'd seen the worst humanity had to offer, but through sheer force of will, he'd survived.

And now he directed that will toward her. He stood there in the flickering light of the candles, staring at her as if she'd become the enemy, as though she was the one with a weapon in hand, ready to betray him like so many had before her. The way she herself had done not that long ago.

All but his eyes. The truth glittered there, the unchained desire she'd dreamed about for years.

Swallowing against a painfully tight throat, she took another step and forced a teasing smile. "Do you have a terrible disease?"

Dark blond hair fell against his cheekbones. "No."

"Are you secretly married and have five kids stashed away in another state?"

"No."

The flash of relief was ridiculous. "Do you not want me?"

His eyes flared. "God, no."

"Then that's all I need to know," she said, and closed the distance between them. She didn't touch, though, no matter how badly she wanted to put her hands on the hard planes of his chest and spread them over his shoulders. She just looked at him, standing there framed by her window, thrill-a-minute Hawk Monroe, her bodyguard, the only man who'd ever reached her, touched her, made her want more.

"You were right," she said, and temptation took over. She lifted a hand to his face, let her fingers trail over soft red and gold whiskers. "Two years ago I made the worst mistake of my life."

She saw him wince, saw him brace, felt her heart scream in protest.

"Not in making love with you," she clarified, allowing her thumb to strum his lower lip. "The mistake was walking away. The mistake was not waiting to see how far the wave would take us."

A purely masculine sound broke from his throat. "Ellie—"

"I want that now." She let all the emotion bleeding from her heart, all the emotion heating her blood, slide into a slow curve of her lips. Then she indulged. She lifted her free hand
to
his chest, pressed her palm over his heart and absorbed all that heat. "I want you." The admission thrilled her, even as it terrified. She'd never offered herself to a man before. She'd never put everything she wanted right out there on the table between them, where it could be scrutinized.

And rejected.

She dipped her thumb inside his mouth. "This moment, this night. Can you give me that?"

At first he said nothing, did nothing, just stood there and watched her. Then slowly, his mouth closed around her thumb and pulled her deep. His hand came next. He lifted it to her face and slid his fingers along her cheekbone to one of the pins she'd secured a few minutes before. "You know I prefer your hair down."

Heat swam through her. "Yes, I know."

He plucked the pin free, let a curl fall against the side of her face. "Trying to torture me?"

The smile came all by itself, languorous, decadent, wicked, just like his. "Maybe."

Another curl fell loose. "You know what they say," he said, and his voice pitched low. "About payback?"

Oh, yes. "Why do you think I did it?"

Surprise registered in his eyes, for just a heartbeat, quickly replaced by pleasure. His gaze dipped from her face along her neck, lingered on the strand of black pearls, then cruised lower still, to the bodice of the black dress.

"I used to imagine what this dress would look like on you. What it would feel like," he added, "to do this." He lifted a hand, traced his index finger along the triangle of flesh beneath her breasts. They puckered at the promise, ached.

"And like this." Leaning closer, he skimmed his mouth along her collarbone, sending moist heat swimming through her.

"What else?" she asked, breathless.

He looked up at her, and his eyes heated. "To take it off."

It shouldn't have been possible. It shouldn't have been possible for words to electrify every nerve ending in her body, to send need humming through her. And yet, when he talked to her in that crushed-velvet voice, when he looked at her with the promise of what lay ahead gleaming in the amber of his eyes, she knew anything was possible.

A hook behind her neck and a zipper at her lower back. That's all that kept the dress on her body, all that kept her from standing before him in nothing but the black thong she'd slipped on when she changed clothes.

But he reached for neither.

"Wesley…"

He skimmed a finger along her lips. "We have all night, Ellie." He drew her against his body. "Let's make it last."

That's what she wanted. For this moment to last, not just during the dark hours of the night, but into the day and beyond, she wanted to preserve the way her body felt pressed to his, the rightness she felt as his hand slid along the exposed flesh of her middle back. Everywhere he touched, she burned.

And everywhere she burned, she knew would never be the same.

They started swaying then, moving in slow circles to the jazz drifting from the stereo. At the auction, in the white marble bathroom, surprise and uncertainty had combined to make her stand woodenly in his arms. Not this time. This time she curled her arms around his body and splayed her hands against his back, absorbed the solid warmth of him, the strength he exuded simply by being. She loved the feel of him pressed close, all heat and hard muscle, the barely concealed restraint. When the cage broke open…

His mouth played along her neck, nibbled up to her ear, sent shivers racing. "There is something you need to know," he murmured. "Something
I
need you to know."

The quietly grave words sliced through the haze of desire. She wanted to stay right where she was, with her face resting against his chest, but instinct warned her to tilt her head toward his, meet his gaze. "What?"