“This is stupid,” she said, as much to herself as to him. “I don’t like you. I don’t trust you. I shouldn’t be attracted to you.”
“Same goes,” he said, a flash of something like amusement, something like anger, crossing his face. “Then again, that seems to be my usual M.O. What’s your excuse?”
But even though his words came out faintly mocking, he closed the distance between them, until she could feel the warmth of him against the suddenly sensitized skin of her cheeks and lips. “Stupidity, maybe. The situation. The circumstances. Hell, even the danger, I don’t know.”
But she did. That last choice resonated a little too well, but the moment was lost when he closed the gap between them. Their lips touched. Their breaths mingled.
And their last shreds of rationality were lost.
Chapter Eight
Meg was free-falling without a parachute. The rushing in her ears was the sound of the wind, the pounding of her heart was the feel of danger. Adrenaline. Exhilaration.
Except she had solid ground beneath her feet. It wasn’t the wind at all. It was Erik.
His lips cruised against hers, the rasp of late-night stubble on his cheeks and chin adding a rough edge to the softness, a thrill to the demand. Then she was the one demanding, parting her lips beneath his and diving headfirst into the heat.
The temptation.
She fisted her hands in his shirt and pulled him close even as a faint buzz in the back of her brain warned that this wasn’t one of the smartest moves she’d ever made.
But of the dumb decisions she’d ever made, this was the one that felt the best.
She sank into the kiss, into the man, sliding her fingers from his shirt to his shoulders, then his arms.
She felt strong, corded muscles beneath her fingers, and was faintly surprised at their leashed power. She raked her fingernails across his biceps and felt him shudder.
Then he gripped her hips in his big hands, so his thumbs rested low on her pelvis, and it was her turn to shudder. Neurons she’d all but forgotten about flared to life, reminding her of the woman she’d been before her job responsibilities and her father’s pressure to “tone it down” had turned her into someone else.
Someone she was bound and determined to outgrow, damn it. Starting now, with this surprising man who was nothing like what she’d thought she wanted, but had somehow become exactly what she needed.
She angled her head to accept more of his mouth, demand more of it, and he complied, delving deep with his tongue and gripping her hips so hard she thought he would leave marks. She moaned her pleasure, and when he stiffened and hesitated, she whispered, “More. Please, more.”
He froze and ended the kiss. Dropped his arms from around her. Backed up a step.
And looked down at her, breathing hard.
Suddenly ashamed for no reasons she could pinpoint besides the quick chill of his eyes and the rapid beat of blood beneath her skin, she crossed her arms over her chest to form a pitiful barrier, acutely aware of the rasp of material across her tender nipples. She swallowed hard and fought for humor
when she couldn’t read his expression. “I don’t suppose you’d care to drop the purchase offer, huh?”
His eyes blanked in an instant. “Is that what you want?”
She’d meant it as a joke, but as passion drained, all of the complications rushed in, reminding her that this wasn’t about the man-woman stuff, had never been about that.
It was about NPT. About someone wanting it, or not wanting him to have it. If he backed out, maybe things would settle down. Maybe the danger would pass.
Maybe nobody else would get hurt.
So she nodded. “That’s what I’ve always wanted.” A small internal voice reminded her that a few moments earlier, her wants had had very little to do with molecular biology and everything to do with chemistry. Man-woman chemistry. Erik and Meg chemistry.
His voice slapped like an accusation when he said, “Is that why you kissed me?”
She fell back, confused. Anger flared on the heels of that confusion. “You kissed me first. What’s your excuse?”
“I’m an idiot.” He jammed one hand in his pocket and gripped his cane with the other as he paced away, then back, his uneven stride growing jerkier by the moment. “I—”
He cut off the word with a click of teeth and blanked his expression to the point that he barely looked human anymore. He could’ve been a statue.
A wax figure. “Never mind. It’s not your problem. You’re just doing what you think you need to do to save your technology from unethical bastards like me. It’s not like you’re planning to kill someone.”
Meg got the distinct impression he wasn’t talking directly to her anymore. It seemed more like he was talking to himself, or maybe to a memory. Part of her wanted to soothe him, to smooth the unhappy wrinkle between his eyes. The rest of her wanted to walk away and forget the taste of him, forget the corpse-cold look in his eye as he stared at her now.
Instead she retreated to the place she’d found after her parents’ divorce, and again when her father told her she couldn’t be herself and be taken seriously as an academic. In that place—that hard, practical place where data mattered and emotion didn’t—she found the strength to say, “You’re right. That’s your problem, not mine. You wanted to kiss me, I wanted to kiss you. We kissed. I’m not going to make a federal case out of it, and I’m not sure why you are. But I can say one thing for sure—your response just now has cured me of wanting an encore.”
“Well, that makes one of us,” he said. He jerked his head to the elevators. “Come on. Let’s hole up for the night. Maybe this will all make more sense once we’ve had a few hours of shut-eye.”
She wasn’t sure whether “this” referred to the kiss, the attacks or their continued stalemate over the NPT sale, but she agreed with him on one count, at least. She was done in. Suddenly exhaustion pounded at her from all sides, as though fatigue had been
waiting at the edges of her consciousness, ready to swoop down the moment she dropped her guard. “Fine. You going to run me home, or should I catch a cab?”
He looked at her strangely. “For God’s sake, I’m not leaving you alone just because I’m mad. Not after Raine and the text message. He said my other girlfriend was next. He may have got the relationship wrong, but the sentiment’s clear. Whether or not the earlier attacks were directed at me, you’re officially a target.”
Meg shivered and twined her fingers together as the last of the heat faded from her core. But she didn’t argue. There was nothing to argue against. She might not like Erik or his methods—or, more honestly, she liked some parts of him too much and others not nearly enough—but he was right. It wasn’t business as usual anymore. “What do you suggest?”
Faint surprise flashed in his eyes, followed by something darker, as though her capitulation only confirmed his deepest suspicions. “The way I see it, we have two choices—your place or a hotel. Either way, I think we should get the hell out of here as soon as possible.”
Because all of the attacks so far had come in or near the hospital.
Meg suppressed another shudder and focused on one omitted detail. “Why not your place?”
“Not an option,” he said flatly. When she would have pressed—out of sheer stubbornness more than anything—he held up a hand. “Hotel or your place? Either way, I’m staying with you.”
The thought of him bunking on her couch, or worse, in an adjoining hotel room, lent a new frisson of energy to the worry. “I’m not sure I want you as my protection.”
He scowled and advanced on her until they were nearly nose-to-nose, until he filled her vision, looking large and angry and masculine, capable of protection, of violence, every inch the cop he’d once been. “Sorry, babe. You don’t have a choice. I’m the one with the gun.”
Though she knew he wasn’t threatening her, she fell back a step and bumped into the conference table. “I thought you said you didn’t carry anymore, that the recoil messed with your balance.”
“I said I didn’t like to carry,” he corrected her. “I never said I couldn’t. I can and will if the circumstances require, and these do. So I’ll ask again, your place or a hotel?”
“My place,” she said finally, because the narrow house had three different floors. She could get away from him if she needed to, away from his presence and the memory of that chilly transformation, when he’d gone from aroused to stone-cold in an instant.
He tipped his head in assent and gestured toward the elevators. “You go. I’ll cover you.”
And he did just that as they left the building, eyes probing every niche, every shadow. Oddly, instead of making her feel safer, his vigilance made her feel more endangered.
More exposed.
EDWARD WATCHED from his vantage point at a small pastry shop down the street from Boston General. Open late, the six-table restaurant had allowed him to watch in comfort, with the added benefits of strong coffee and delicacies he’d paid for singly, much to the waitress’s amusement.
Let her laugh. The moment Falco and the doctor emerged, Edward tossed his napkin, drained his espresso and dropped a decent tip on the table before he strode out into the night and hailed a cab.
“Where to?” the driver asked once the door was shut, closing Edward in with the scents of cheap plastic and too many other people.
“Wait one moment.”
That earned him a startled look, but the cabbie shrugged. “Meter’s running.”
Edward watched as Falco’s Mercedes emerged from the Boston General underground lot. “Follow that car.”
“You some sort of a stalker or something?” But the cabbie said it with a laugh.
Edward snorted. “Hardly. We’ve been at an office party. The boss asked me to make sure they get home okay, but not to make a big deal about it, if you know what I mean.”
The driver glanced in the rearview mirror, making Edward worry that the lie was too elaborate. Then the cabbie’s eyes slid away and he steered them out into the sparse midnight traffic on Kneeland Street. “Bummer. I was hoping for something more exciting.”
“Sorry to disappoint.”
They tailed the Mercedes to a row of neat, narrow houses just outside überexpensive Beacon Hill. “Don’t pull up too close when they get out,” Edward warned. “The boss didn’t want his top VP to know I was checking up.”
“Gotcha.” The driver rolled to a stop in the lee of a big green van, so they were partially blocked from view as Falco and the bitch emerged and walked up a brick path toward her house. They walked near each other but not together, separated by a telling empty space, and by their stiff, stilted postures. The cabbie noticed it, too. “Looks like they had a fight in the car. That, or the drink’s wearing off.”
“Either way, I’m just making sure they get home safe.” He watched as the doctor unlocked the front door and Falco shielded her with his body, just like a good little cop. They went in together. The door shut. The lights snapped on inside. Edward leaned back and smiled. “That’ll do. You can drop me at the closest T stop.”
The driver’s reflection in the rearview mirror looked faintly insulted that his fare would rather take public transport the rest of the way home. In reality, Edward planned to switch cabs at the station, then again at least once more before giving his home address. Just in case.
But as the cab rolled back onto the street, those practicalities were lost in a wave of satisfaction.
It wouldn’t be long now.
ERIK CHECKED every room in Meg’s house, from the lower-level storage and guest room, through the main level with its open kitchen and sitting area, up to the top floor, where he discovered a sybaritic master suite that gave him way too many ideas. The bed was neatly made with a green knitted spread that contrasted with the rich burgundy paint on the walls and the brass accents of the headboard and bedside lamps.
He shouldn’t be able to picture Meg lying there, beckoning him closer.
Because he could, because his system still revved from the kiss they’d shared back at the hospital, and from the surge of mindless, near-violent anger that had consumed him when she’d asked him about the NPT deal in the heat of the moment, he realized he’d done it again. He’d fallen in lust with a woman who didn’t want him, but rather wanted something
from
him.
“Idiot.”
“Did you find something?” Her voice came from the doorway, startling him. Inflaming him.
He spun on her, gun in one hand, cane in the other. “I thought I told you to stay by the door.”
“That was nearly ten minutes ago. If there was someone here, you’d’ve found him by now.”
He hated the logic, hated the way she stood framed in the doorway with the soft hallway light spilling over her shoulders, touching her cheek and chin with a reflected rosy hue. Tension snapped in the air between them, a sudden acknowledgment of
where they were, an awareness of the big bed a few paces away and the pounding, unfulfilled ache of their earlier kiss.
If he were the man he’d once been, he would have damned the consequences and taken her. He would have crossed the room on strong, whole legs, swept her up into his arms and carried her to the bed. Hell, maybe they wouldn’t have even made it to the bed the first time. Maybe he would’ve taken her up against the wall, pounded himself into her until he could think straight again. Until they both could.
But he wasn’t that man anymore. He could no more cross the room unassisted as he could lose himself in a woman he didn’t trust. So he slid the safety on his weapon—a small drop piece that was all he could handle these days without fighting the recoil—and stuck it into his waistband at the small of his back, where it made an awkward, half-familiar bulge.
Then he leaned on his cane and crossed the room, expecting her to be smart enough to move before he got too close. She didn’t, of course, because her agenda was different from his. She’d followed him upstairs with a plan. A purpose.
She wanted to seduce him out of his goal.
He stopped just shy of where she stood, looking up at him with wide eyes and wide lips that beckoned him with a faint hint of tension. Of moist heat.