Shock Waves (23 page)

From outside, a warm tropical breeze whispered over their bodies, bringing with it a soft musky scent and drawing her attention to the pounding of the surf beyond the tangle of vegetation. Ethan said nothing, though, just kept looking at her through those profoundly sad eyes.

Then he spoke. And when he did, when his hoarse voice scraped over her, the only sound she heard was that of her heart breaking. “I can’t offer you tomorrow, angel. You need to know that.”

Emotion scratched her throat, unearthing a truth she’d lived with for countless days and weeks, months. Years. “I stopped believing in tomorrow a long time ago.” She heard the emotion drenching her voice, but didn’t try to strip it away. Facts were facts, and facts were the commodity this man prized above all others. “Tonight, Ethan. That’s all I want.” Slowly, she lifted
a hand to his face and let her fingertips trail along the stubble of his whiskers. “Can you give me that?”

He grabbed her hand, drew it to his mouth. “You deserve more.”

Then give it to me!

But she’d seen the dream, seen the beach turn to red, and knew that tonight was all they had.

“Life isn’t about deserving,” she said. “Life is about making the most of each moment.” She shifted beneath him, cradling him between her thighs. In some place
deep inside her,
some place buried, repressed, regret bled through, but she
pushed it aside. “They’re all we really have.”

His eyes were dark. “Sweet Mercy,” he rasped, “you deserve so much more.”

Never in her wildest dreams could she have imagined that it would come to this, that she would find herself lying half naked on the floor of an abandoned luxury resort, begging the man she’d seen running down a beach drenched in red to make love to her. The first morning she’d picked up the phone and jabbed
out his number with shaking fingers, she’d been driven only by the knowledge that she had to contact him. Warn him. After years of holding herself apart from the world, with nothing more than a simple touch, a gentle brush of shoulders between strangers, she’d connected with Ethan Carrington and couldn’t let him walk unknowingly into the line of fire.

Now
she
stood in the line of fire, and for the first time in her life she couldn’t find one single part of her body to care. To protest. Instead she smiled up at this man who’d come to her in her dreams, at the thick raven hair and gleaming green eyes, the hard jaw covered by several days’ worth of whiskers, and on pure instinct, she lifted a hand to the back of his head and urged it toward hers. “Then don’t say no.”

Chapter 13

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E
than was a strong man. It wouldn’t be hard, he told
himself.
Just push up from her arms and untangle their legs, roll away. Walk away. It wouldn’t be hard. But as he looked at her lying beneath him, watched the moonlight play with the soft lines of her face, watched it shimmy in her eyes, not whitewashed sapphire like usual, but dark, glimmering, full of promise, he saw something else, something that completely demolished his capacity for rational thinking.

Salvation.

“Like I could.” For the first time in his life, he’d flat-out lost
a
test. A challenge. He’d commanded himself not to touch this woman, not to complicate an already impossible situation, but as his mouth took hers, he knew he was about to go down hard.

Honor, sanity, rational thought, they crumbled like the shards of white granite beneath the weathered columns flanking the hotel. There was only need and hunger, a driving, relentless passion that blinded him to everything but the beautiful woman sprawled beneath him, a woman who had every reason, every right, to hate him, fear him, resent him. But didn’t.

He moved his mouth restlessly against hers, reminding himself to go slow, when there was nothing slow about the rapid slamming of his heart. Or the thrumming of his pulse. He wanted to touch every inch of—

Touch. It hit him on a rush, the devastating impact of touch she’d told him about. “Angel,” he rasped against her open mouth. Dark thoughts clouded in on him, of what this could be doing to her. “What,” he managed, forcing his hand to quit caressing her breast, “about the shock waves?”

Beneath him, she again curled her legs around the backs of his thighs, again dug her nails into his back. “They’re wonderful,” she staggered him by saying, then stunned him even
more by sliding a single hand between their bodies and finding him jutting against her thigh. She curled her fingers around his width, and slowly started to torture him.

Ethan almost lost it right then and there. In a rush he relieved her of the rest of her dress and slipped down her panties, almost groaned when he felt the moist heat of flesh pressed against his. She was the most amazing woman he’d ever known, and in a moment she would be his.

Tonight, Ethan. That’s all I want.

He could give her tonight. He could give her every second of every minute of every hour. He could make them powerful, make them memorable, make them last until the sun brought the day neither of them wanted to arrive.

Emotion scratched his throat and burned the backs of his eyes. He ignored it, determined not to let tomorrow ruin the moment, the feel of Brenna twisting in his arms, squeezing him with her fingers and driving him mad with need. He sprinkled kisses along her jaw and down her neck, until he found her breasts, those beautiful full breasts with the softest pink nipples he’d ever seen. He had to taste more of them, more of her.

The moan rumbling in her throat almost
pushed him over
the edge. He slid his hand between her legs once again, and like the last time, found her hot and wet and ready. She uncurled her fingers from around his thickness and stopped the
torture, shifted restlessly until he pushed against the heat.

“Your hand,” he managed, fumbling through the darkness
for her fingers, threading them with his
and extending their arms over her head. “Hold on tight.”

Her lips curved in a lazy smile, and he felt his heart twist, hard. He’d never seen her like this. She’d always been so serious. So grave and somber. But now she gazed up at him
through heavy-lidded, slumberous eyes, with her cheeks flushed and her lips swollen, that gorgeous blond hair tangled from his hands, and he damn near forgot to breathe.

“Tonight,” she whispered, and he couldn’t deny them any longer, couldn’t wait. He gave. He rocked his hips and pushed inside, found her warm, tight, and pulled out a little, pushed again. He loved the dazed look that came into her eyes, the dark, doused look that came only from passion, and he pushed harder, breaking through the tightness and thrusting deep inside.

Her cry, low, shocked, stopped him cold. Or maybe that was
the stark realization that he hadn’t just pushed through tightness, but something else, something no other man had touched.
And for a shattering moment he couldn’t think. Couldn’t move. Couldn’t so much as breathe.

Brenna was a virgin. Or at least she had been, until she’d risked her life by walking into his, only to wind up here, now,
like this, naked on the dirty floor of an abandoned hotel room, with her dress in a heap beside her and a man on top of her,
taking a gift to which he had no right.

Shame flooded him. He pulled back from her, pulled himself from deep within her. Or at least he tried to. Her legs, curled around the backs of his, clamped down hard, and her hand, fingers entwined with his, squeezed. “Ethan—”

“You should have told me.” His voice broke on the words. Something else came dangerously close to breaking on the truth.

The light in her eyes, hazy with passion only a few minutes before, dimmed. “Told you what?”

There was a fierce clawing inside of him, a push-pull be
tween burying himself as deeply as possible and never letting her go, and pulling out and walking away, pretending this moment had never happened. “You’ve never been with a man
before.”

The dim light of the stars showed moisture glisten in her gaze. “Until you.”

The simple honesty rocked him.
“Brenna—”

“It was my choice,” she whispered, lifting her free hand to his face. A finger swiped beneath his eye, and in some shell-shocked place, he felt the slide of moisture. “I wanted it to be you. Tonight.”

He was still buried inside of her, and when she arched up against him, he pushed deeper. And when a soft sound of satisfaction rumbled low in her throat, he pulled out a little, thrust back in. Gently, at first, stronger as he saw the light in her eyes return, the elusive smile curve her lips.

With the moon shining in on them, they moved together. He returned his mouth to hers, kissed her deep while their bodies found a rhythm of their own. Her fingers curled into his back, and he felt her tense, felt her brace, and knew he could hold back no longer, not when he’d finally found a place where the past didn’t burn, and the future didn’t taunt.

He buried himself deep, and she accepted him, all of him, without question or challenge or reservation, without judgment, but with an earthy sensuality that whispered through every pore of his body. He collapsed on top of her, and when he started to roll away, her grip tightened, and she held him that way, her legs wrapped around his, her arms curled around his middle, their slick bodies joined intimately, the light of the moon spilling in on them, reminding him that soon, tomorrow would come.

But not now.

* * *

Contentment drifted through her like the foggy mists that often claimed the land surrounding her grandmother’s house. On those dewy spring mornings she would steep a cup of green tea and take Gryphon out into the deeply wooded area, savor the solitude.

She didn’t feel solitude now. The contentment was the same, but her body hummed with a soul-shattering vibrancy. She could literally feel the rhythm of her heart as it pounded against Ethan’s, his against hers.

Outside, through the warped and peeling French doors hanging crookedly against their frame, the night had grown darker, warning that soon morning, with its palette of pinks and oranges, would break. It always happened that way. Dark always preceded light. Normally that thought brought comfort.

Now she refused to let herself imagine those first peachy hues of dawn when the birds would again start to sing.

“How?”

The question, spoken in that thick, sleepy voice of his that made her blood sing all over again, startled her. She glanced up at him, and through the darkness saw the glow of his green, green eyes. “How what?”

His hand, still against her back, slid up to tangle in her hair. “How can there have been no one?”

Her throat tightened. Even as he’d thrust deeply into her body, carrying her to a mystical place she’d only imagined existed, she’d known this moment was coming, known a man like Ethan Carrington would never be content knowing only the outcome. He would never be satisfied with a destination, not without knowing how he’d gotten there.

But while his question was from the prosecutor’s bag of tricks, his voice was not the hard, take-no-prisoners tone that made him so successful in the courtroom. It was the man’s voice, surprisingly hoarse, heart-stoppingly tender.

The smile started in her heart, streamed to her mouth. She’d never imagined something so complex, so impossible, could be so devastatingly easy. “It was never right before.”

Confusion clouded his gaze. “I find that hard to—” He broke off abruptly, his jaw going tight. “But it has been wrong.”

It took effort, but Brenna kept herself from wincing. She wanted to roll from his arms and grab her sundress, cover herself, even though darkness concealed her nakedness. Yes, it had been wrong before. Horribly, grossly, disgustingly wrong.

“Angel,” Ethan whispered, and though she didn’t want to look at him, didn’t want to see the truth he’d just stumbled across, when his finger tucked under her chin and he tilted her face to his, she swallowed hard and looked up into his eyes.

His voice was disturbingly quiet. “Did someone hurt you?”

Images
slaked back over her, and this time she did try to pull away, but Ethan didn’t let her, just held her steady and kept his eyes on hers, so intent, so … caring. “Yes.” She closed her eyes to the truth, but the memories were there, as well—stark, suffocating. “I … I—” God, she’d never told anyone, not even her grandmother. “I told you about my mother.”

She heard him let out a rough breath, heard the stream of hot, violent curse words under his breath.

“She wasn’t just murdered. She was—”

Ethan crushed her against his chest before she could force the ugly word past her throat. His whole body engulfed her, enveloped her. He drew her between his legs and held her with his arms, but there was more, he was holding her closer than that, deeper. “Ah, God,” he was murmuring. There was a sickened edge to his voice she’d never heard before, as if his heart was breaking and he didn’t know how to stop it. “Ah, God, no.”

For one of the few times in her life, the urge to fight, to deny, to run, did not consume her. There was only Ethan and the feel of his body against hers, the comforting words he murmured into her hair, words she’d waited a lifetime to hear. “I didn’t know what it was at the time,” she admitted. Just that it was ugly and wrong and … that it hurt. That she never wanted a man to touch her like that. Never wanted to feel like that. Hurt like that. Be violated like that.

“Of course you didn’t,” he muttered and kept stroking her, stroking, stroking, running his hands through her tangled hair. “You were seven years old.”

The tears started then, a lifetime of them, rushing from her chest and scraping against her throat, spilling from her eyes. “And then Adam—”

Ethan stopped rocking her. Stopped stroking. Stopped murmuring. He eased back and took her face in his hands, killed her breath with the fierce look that streaked into his eyes. “Adam?”

She nodded, bit down on a lip that wanted to tremble. “Dave Brinker’s partner.”

Ethan’s eyes flashed. “So help me God, if he laid one hand—”

“No.” She cut him off before he could continue. “It wasn’t like that.” Not exactly.

He didn’t move, other than the brutal tightening of his jaw. “Tell me.”

Her heart kicked hard. She looked up into his eyes, then out toward the night, where the stars grew dimmer and the roar of the ocean grew softer, the breeze more gentle. Soon. Soon morning would break.

“He asked me out.” She turned to look at Ethan, knew that no matter how hard it was to admit the truth, this man would settle for nothing less. She saw it in the glint to his eyes, every rigid line of the body that had loved her so thoroughly through much of the night. “I thought he was interested in me.”

That was the galling part. Her own naiveté.

“And?”

“He wasn’t.” After all this time, shame still flooded her. “He was jealous. Jealous of the time Dave spent with me. Jealous of the partnership we’d formed.”

Ethan swore softly.

“We went out several times.” Dinner, movies, all the normal things she’d never done. “I never realized he’d wedged himself between me and Dave until it was too late. I thought the three of us were working together, that the information I was giving Adam, he was also feeding to Dave.”

Ethan closed his eyes, opened them a moment later. “But he wasn’t?”

“I should have seen it,”
she said, and this time she did pull away; push to her feet. She stood and walked to the French doors, stood there naked against the waning tone of the night.
“I should
have realized he was only using me.”

Ethan came up behind her and put his hands, so big and capable yet heartbreakingly gentle, to her shoulders, drew her against his chest. “Don’t blame yourself.”