With Every Breath (29 page)

Nobody found him.

It was nearly three in the morning before the phone rang, with Kenny Halverson reporting in on the fruitless search. This time Maddie
did
doze. The phone jarred both of them. Joe dug the phone out from beneath the cushion.

This time his end of the conversation was grunts and terse monosyllables. When he disconnected, his face looked odd, and she knew.

"They can’t find him."

He rammed a hand down onto the phone antenna, frustrated, angry. Spooked. "What the hell happens to the goddamned things up there?"

Things.
Bodies. She knew he was talking about bodies. Her parents’, Rick’s. She flinched.

"He’s alive," she moaned.

"No. There was too much blood for him to have gone anywhere," Joe muttered, almost to himself. Then he broke off suddenly.

He didn’t want it to occur to her to ask too many questions tonight. And there were questions—Jesus, were there questions. But he didn’t want to deal with them just then. She needed peace, a small respite of peace, so she could get her legs underneath her again.

He traced the bumps of her spine with his thumb. The gesture was idle.

She knew he meant it as comforting, the way he had when he had held her after Leslie’s revelation. But then she heard his breath change infinitesimally.

"What is this, Joe?" she whispered. Intimate, she answered herself, too intimate, something just a little

above and beyond being friends, and she knew both of them were frightened by it. "I need to know now. I need ..." Something solid and real and namable to hold on to, she thought. She needed shelter in this storm. But it had to be solid. It had to be strong.

Joe hesitated a moment too long.

"It’s wanting," he said finally. "I don’t think it becomes dangerous until you get too used to having whatever it is that you want."

She wasn’t sure if she believed that or not.

"Come on, I’ll show you where the other guest room is," he said after a moment, and his voice was strained. "No use sitting up all night. They're calling the search off until dawn, when they can see better."

Maddie hesitated. And then she shook her head. "No, Joe. Not yet."

She angled her head back to look at him. He was studying the starfish picture with a strange, almost-bemused expression. Then his eyes came down to hers and darkened. Not with that warning-off look she’d come to recognize, not with anger or self-recrimination.

With ... wanting.

He moved his free hand to cup her jaw and then he lowered his mouth very slowly to cover hers. Finally, she thought. She hadn’t realized how long she’d been waiting for him to kiss her until he’d finally done it.

And it was like kissing no one else in her lifetime. It was sweet, even as it had the air of the forbidden, the intensity of something long craved. It felt as though he was giving in to something he wanted more than sense. His mouth played over hers cautiously, as though he were trying to determine how far he could sink before he would drown, tasting her carefully, as though he was afraid he’d enjoy the experience too much.

Maddie held herself very still for a moment, not

responding, giving herself a mental chance to pull away. Rick was out there somewhere, in the darkness beyond the glass, on the island. But she found a bizarre comfort in knowing that, in leaving the guessing behind, in being sure. And she realized she needed some counterpoint to it all, to the terror of finding him on the other side of her door, to the horror of running through the reeds with Josh. She needed something clean and life-giving after the smell of decay that had hung over Angus’s shack. She needed. She needed so much.

She opened her mouth a little. His own hovered over hers for a moment.

"If we do this—" he began hoarsely.

"Yes," she managed. "We have to."

"I want to. I want to anyway." Tonight had taught him something, he realized. He was already in too deep. There was no backing out anymore, not without pain. He would already hurt intolerably if something happened to her.

That being the case, he reasoned, there was no sense in fighting himself any longer.

His mouth came back and his kiss hardened and his tongue came in to meet hers. Maddie wrapped her free arm around his neck, held him, held on.

And then everything changed.

The dam burst, the violence of the day crept in, and the need, the hunger, became paramount. She dug her fingers into him. And only sensations existed, smells and tastes and the way his eyes looked up close in the half-darkness when she let hers open to slits. His gaze was suddenly hungry and uncompromising, defiant.

Someone began groping—him? her?—and arms tangled and weight shifted until both his hands were free and she was sitting astride him, a knee tucked down on either side of the seat cushion. And his teeth closed, not

gently, over her collarbone, and his hands moved over her back. If it was wanting, only wanting, she thought, then that was safe enough, and she needed it then like she needed breath.

She was alive.

She was alive and she needed to feel her blood move to prove it. She moved her hips against him and took his mouth again and again, and felt more than heard the guttural sound in his throat. He grabbed the hem of her sweater suddenly and dragged it up over her head, growling again when he met with her bra. It had a center clasp and he thrust a thumb beneath it impatiently, popping it, and his hands cupped the sides of her breasts.

Then there was only the wet heat of his mouth, tugging on her nipples in rhythm with the throbbing between her legs, and that tumbled her past the point of no return. Touching him, being with him, was as natural and elemental as walking, breathing, sighing.

He pushed her away.

She cried out and would have fallen backward if he hadn’t come with her, swooping up out of the chair, easing her down onto the floor beneath him. He knelt over her, and she didn’t want to know what it cost him in pain.

"There’s a comfortable way to do this," he said, his voice raw, "and a not so comfortable way. There’s a civilized way, and ..." He paused for breath he seemed to need badly. " ... the way I feel right now."

She gasped as his hands touched her again, his fingers curling over the waist of her jeans.

"If you’re as smart as I think you are, you’ll run like hell," he warned.

"No."

"I hope to God you don’t. I want you to stay ..." He bent closer to kiss her again.

" ... here ..."

"... right here ..." Mouths touched, clung for a moment.

"On the floor."

"I’ll try not to hurt you."

"You won’t."

"I might. I need you to make me feel..."

"... good again." His tongue, she thought. His incredible tongue.

"Whole."

"Safe."

"There’s no such thing," he said fiercely.

She shook her head slowly, side to side, as his mouth moved over her throat. "You’re wrong."

"In every one of your pictures, there’s ugliness."

"In every one of my pictures, there’s something beautiful and good."

She reached for a handful of his hair and dragged his mouth up to hers again. She wondered how she could feel so brave when she felt so terrified, so much on the brink. And everything inside her leaped with his kiss again, exhilarated by the risk of wanting this particular man, weak with the promise of all the goodness his strong heart offered. For all the hardness of his shoulders, his arms, for the rock-solid tension of his thighs as he leaned over her, Maddie was aware of how fragile he really was. Hope and goodness were the single things that could unman him.

She pulled at his hips, trying to bring him down upon her. And he finally came with a groan and a grimace, dragging her jeans down her hips. It was impossible to stop, he thought, because her breasts were the way he’d known they would be, satin and smooth and a full, perfect handful, pebble-hard nipples responding to his touch. And there were no games, no coyness, just

everything lush and good, ripe and willing, opening to him, for him.

So much of him wanted to take her, fast and hard, right there. It was almost an overpowering need, but he took the time instead to get her tennis shoes off, if not with finesse, then at the very least expeditiously. He took the time to get her jeans all the way off, to appreciate the delicate lace of her panties, to slide a hand over her breasts one more time. He took the time to watch her shudder—for him—and she didn’t even know a thing about football. All she knew was that he was a cop, and suddenly, these days, he was not a very good one.

And still she gave. She gave to something inside him, maybe to the need she sensed there, maybe to that wretched, bitter part of him that still wanted to believe that the world was good even as he saw in it all the stark black-and-white grimness of what it really was.

Her skin was flushed, warm, dewy with the heat inside her. foe let his mouth roam, still holding back, until need was a scream inside him, until he throbbed with every heartbeat, burned with every pulse, and his hands shook. Her own fell away from him, and she arched back, craving. He used his teeth and his tongue, his mouth and his hands, until she began writhing and finally cried out, her hands thrashing as she reached for him again.

She dragged at his shirt, clawed his own jeans off. He understood her mindless hunger, her impatience, and he fed on it, then he fanned the flames. She levered herself upward, using his shoulders to pull herself, and then she pressed against him, skin to heated skin. She wrapped her legs around him.

"More." She swept a hand through his dark hair again, met the deep blue of his eyes. "Please," she said again. "Just... now."

His eyes darkened. "Before you can change your mind."

"No. Before I die."

Something inside him threatened to explode.

She was frenzied, strong. She was tangled around him, but he pushed her down onto her back again so he could watch her face, so he could be sure, absolutely sure, that what he saw there was sane and good and pure.

She writhed beneath him. He heard his name, something ragged tom from her throat.

He drove himself into her and watched her body jolt—and the sensation of her closing around him was something he’d waited his whole life for. He watched pleasure melt through her, and he needed so much more. He needed to know that in this, in life at its most elemental, there would be no feigned gasps from her, no overdone dragging of nails. Because he felt as though his entire soul was on the line, and he realized, amazed, that he couldn’t even breathe. Not yet. Not until he was sure.

This mattered too much.

She moved to meet him, moved in perfect counterpoint against him. He saw climax slam into her first, sharp and staggering, and even as she reeled from it, he kept on, bracing his weight on his arms, driving, needing, finally closing his eyes against the sight of her face because the sweet, sweet feel of her was nearly more than he could tolerate. She came back to him, moving with him again, shuddering and greedy, and he was filled with the taste, the feel, the smell of her—wildflowers.

He rolled with her, changing position, bringing her on top of him. She gasped and cried out, and this time her nails did dig into his shoulders as she held on to him, but it was a grip born of need, of holding on to

something she would ache without. He caught her hips and held her, pumping, watching her face change yet again. She tipped her head back, and her golden hair spilled over her shoulders, off her forehead. Her breasts were thrust toward him, and that was all it took. Something shattered inside him, something he’d long held protectively dear, and he let himself go.

He made a hoarse sound as he lost control, and she looked back down at him quickly. For a moment, their eyes held, and then they went over the edge together.

Maddie slept on the floor.

Joe knew she had to be exhausted, emotionally if not physically, probably both. She had to be, to be able to sleep like that, he thought, curled on her side on the unyielding carpet.

Joe finally eased away from her. He found one of the blankets he didn’t actually remember her throwing aside. He pulled it back over her reluctantly. He would have liked to have looked at her a moment more, would have liked to have appreciated that everything he supposed about her body had turned out to be true. But it wasn’t possible. He felt himself hardening again just looking at her, and at the moment, there was nowhere to put it. He wouldn’t wake her.

He saw a tremor scoot through her. He got up, limping badly, and built a fire.

When it was crackling strongly, he finally sat down in the chair again. His knee was swollen. He put a hand to the side of it and felt angry heat. He went upstairs to get an Ace bandage, better late than never. He came back for his jeans, pulled them on as he watched her sleep, then he went to the kitchen for a shot of bourbon.

He was doing everything he could not to think.

Finally he felt the heat of the liquor hit his belly and shoot out from there. He shook his head, put the glass in the sink, and stood very still, waiting, letting the thought bubble up, tense, cautious, waiting to see how it would feel.

He loved her.

There was the mildest scurrying of panic.

And then there was peace.

Joe blew out his breath slowly. He no longer had to fight it ... it, that physical pull, that elemental attraction that had been goading him for days. He was no longer treading water, though he was damned if he knew whether he was swimming or if he had just plain sunk. Either way, it only made sense for him to keep on doing whatever it was that he was doing. For as long as it lasted. For as long as he could.

He had finally come to terms with himself.

He limped back into the family room and sank down in the chair again, watching her, stretching his leg out. She understood his theories. And she was still in danger. He could still lose her. Josh, both of them. She hadn’t realized it yet, but he had, from the moment Lou had told him she was at Tony Macari’s place, whole and alive. There’d been the echo of a whole lot of fury left behind in that dining room. Fury ... and fear.

For a moment, the lingering panic in his chest did more than scurry. It clawed. He was in. He was in deep. And he no longer believed that he would win, would triumph, simply because he wanted to. He’d have to work at it damned hard if he was going to find the son of a bitch who was behind all this, if he was going to save her.

He waited. It didn’t take long.

He hadn’t thought it would. He was grateful that she had gotten this many hours of peace. But then one of