Dark Embers (17 page)

Morning would come soon enough, he reminded himself, and with it his mountain of responsibilities. Tonight—what little of it was left—he would let them all go, and do nothing more than enjoy the feel of Phoebe in his arms.

For the first time in far too long, it was enough. Perhaps if he’d been less aroused or more alert, the thought would have alarmed him. Instead, it comforted him and he relaxed slowly, letting Phoebe’s sleep-warmed body chase the unfamiliar chill away.

CHAPTER TWELVE

P
hoebe woke to a hard male arm draped across her waist, a rough palm curved around her breast. She squirmed a little, fought toward consciousness, and realized that someone was pressed against her, holding her tightly enough to make her feel trapped.

Alarm raced through her at the realization, followed by panic that made her heart race and her mouth grow dry.

Memories swamped her, ancient history that in guarded moments she liked to pretend had never happened. Her muscles tightened to the point of pain; her mind sought desperately for a way to escape. Shoving the heavy arm off her, she scrambled to her feet and backed rapidly away from the bed.

So acute was her panic that she was halfway across the room, her breath coming in heavy, uncontrolled pants, before she realized she was safe. That the memories were just that, and the heavy male body pressed against her own belonged to Dylan. As the knowledge flowed through her—ripe with relief and a shaky desperation she was ashamed to feel—she slammed the door shut on the memories before any more could escape. Before she could think his name and be totally overwhelmed.

Still, she was naked, and so was Dylan. Anger began to rise. Yes, she’d slept with him on the airplane; yes, she’d chosen to take him for a lover. But that didn’t give him the right to take advantage of her while she was in a sleep so deep she’d been almost unconscious. Didn’t give him the right to make love to her when she was unaware.

Part of her wanted to scream at him, to wake him up and demand to know what had happened. Before she could do that, though, sanity slowly seeped back in, kick-starting her brain into actual, nonpanicked thought. Judging from the feel of her body, nothing had happened between them—despite the fact that they were both naked. She wasn’t sore or tender; there was no telltale wetness between her thighs. Maybe he really had just climbed in behind her and held her through the waning hours of the night.

It was a strange thought. Yet the more it settled around her, the more sure Phoebe became that that was exactly what had happened.

She should get some clothes out of her suitcase, find a bathroom that wasn’t attached to this room and take a shower. She would feel better when she was girded by her usual work uniform of jeans and a T-shirt. Less vulnerable. More in control.

Sure, she’d let him in yesterday when she’d fucked him—she deliberately used the crude word to describe what had passed between them—but that didn’t mean she had to keep the door open. She could close it, lock it, refuse to lower her guard again. Having sex with him certainly didn’t mean she had to let him inside more than her body.

Convinced she’d come up with a plan to keep her emotional distance, Phoebe headed toward her suitcase with absolute resolve. Take a shower. Get to work. Do what Dylan had paid her very well to do. And keep her mind and heart locked away where no one could reach them. It was the only safe thing to do.

And yet she walked right by her suitcase, moved closer to the bed—to Dylan—despite her plan to the contrary.

Every instinct she had told Phoebe to move back, to leave him be, but she couldn’t do it. Even knowing that she was invading his privacy, as she feared he had invaded hers, didn’t stop her. Instead, she stood over him and just looked, her eyes cataloging his features in the already overfull Rolodex of her memory.

He looked different in sleep—not younger, but more relaxed. Less guarded. Happier, the lines that bracketed his mouth and the corners of his mouth easing just a little.

She reached out a hand to trace the remnants of the line, stopped herself right before her finger connected with those too-pretty features.
Sex is one thing
, she reminded herself. Tenderness was quite another.

Still, she was transfixed by him, unable to look away until she’d memorized every individual piece of him—though she didn’t know why it mattered, any more than she understood the strange pull she felt toward him.

Her eyes swept down his chest, and once again she was struck by how battered he was, by how many, many scars he carried on his chest and arms and stomach. The doctor in her recoiled at the knowledge of the pain he had suffered, even as she was fascinated by how he’d survived. The shapes of the scars, the locations; more than one should have been a killing blow. And yet here he was. Hot, sexy and more alive than any man had the right to be.

Shaking herself out of what she could only hope was a lust-induced stupor, Phoebe started to turn away. And then froze as she caught sight of the tattoo around his arm. The tattoo she’d been fascinated with since the first time she’d seen it—the one that she had spent more than a few minutes studying and kissing the day before.

It looked different this morning, thicker, though the rational side of her brain told her that was impossible. It wasn’t like he’d left his niece’s deathbed the night before and headed to the nearest tattoo parlor. Even if he had, it would be much redder, bumpier.

She did touch him then, unable to resist any longer, particularly with this new puzzle to solve. Keeping her touch light, she traced one finger around the fascinating symbols that made up his arm-band. She moved slowly over a familiar curlicue, one she had spent much too long the day before tracing with her tongue. Moved on to the strange pattern of angular shapes that had fascinated her.

And knew, with a strange and eerie certainty, that his tattoo had indeed changed between the last time she had seen it and now. There were more symbols, symbols she swore she had never seen before. Symbols that flowed in a straight line and wrapped all the way around his arm, forming a second band that had definitely not been there the day before.

Phoebe jerked backward, a little frightened and more than a little leery. Her suspicions were impossible, ridiculous really, and yet the proof was right in front of her. Stomach jumping, already-frazzled nerves now completely shot, Phoebe stumbled to her suitcase. She grabbed her toiletry case and the first outfit she came to, then fled the room like the hounds of hell were after her.

She found a bathroom attached to the next bedroom, and turned the shower on. As she waited for it to warm up, she focused on everything—anything—but the suspicions that were battering her mind from the inside out. Did everything she could to ignore the picture Gabe had presented before he’d fled the room the night before. Tried to convince herself that the image formed by the shapes in Dylan’s tattoo were simply her imagination.

The room around her was extravagant, a deep, dark green that matched the bedroom it was attached to. Emeralds the size of a baby’s fist were embedded in the walls, forming a kind of crown molding that was as awe-inspiring as it was beautiful. Even the shelves next to the sink were beautifully made, each one holding a variety of rich creams and soaps and shower gels to choose from.

She sniffed a few in an effort to find the one most pleasing to her. After deciding on a vanilla, ginger and honey concoction, she reached into the towel closet and came out with the softest, most luxurious towel she’d ever felt. Dylan certainly knew how to live; even the shower itself was a hedonist’s delight, with six showerheads located at different spots on its marble walls, all designed to hit her body at a different spot.

But when she stepped into the now-steaming water and let it run over her hair and down her back, she couldn’t help going back over the puzzle that was Dylan. Blood with unknown properties that no one had ever documented before. Skin that looked and felt normal, but that was thicker than anything she’d ever tried to pierce with a needle. Tattoos that shifted from one day to the next.

Again, her mind danced around something she couldn’t quite grasp, a thought niggling at the back of her head that she couldn’t tap into, no matter how hard she tried. She tried to grab on to the elusive shards of it, but just when she thought she had it, her mind shied away.

An ache started deep within her—painful, frightening, intense. Phoebe instinctively jerked her thoughts away from it, stopped trying to figure out what it was that she was missing, and immediately the pain dispersed.

There had to be a logical explanation for what was going on with Dylan. Sure, if she hadn’t seen it with her own eyes, she never would have believed it. But she had seen it. Which meant there was a reason for it, one that didn’t involve things that went bump in the night, no matter what her fertile imagination was trying to tell her. She’d just have to dig until she found it.

She poured some shampoo into the palm of her hand, then ran it through her crazy mass of curls. A bunch of the curls had knotted together while she slept, thanks to Dylan’s curious hands on the plane the day before, and it was going to take a hell of a lot of conditioner to get them out.

Muttering a few choice curses, she closed her eyes and tilted her head back to let the water do its job. Then jumped as something rock-hard and solid brushed against her.

Opening her eyes despite the soap streaming down her face, she gasped as her startled gaze collided with Dylan’s hot one.

For long seconds, the only sound was the water hitting their bodies and the marble. Neither of them moved as they adjusted to each other, though Phoebe nearly whimpered at how right he felt against her.

She didn’t know how long she would have stood there, eyes locked with his, body tuning itself to his. But as the water continued to hit her, a huge wad of suds streamed directly into her right eye.

Yelping at the sting, she jerked away, turned and began to flush out her eye.

“What are you doing?” she managed to squeak once the soap was gone. “I thought you were asleep.”

“I woke up, and you were gone.” He pulled her into his arms. “I wanted to see what you looked like first thing in the morning, warm and sleepy from bed.”

Suddenly there was a desert in her mouth, one she had to fight through in order to answer with a flippant, “You’re too late—I’m no longer warm or sleepy.”

“Yes, but you are wet and snippy. That’s almost as good.”

She laughed despite her nervousness—it was hard not to when he was so cute.

Cute
, she said to herself as he adjusted all six shower nozzles so that they covered both of them. Two days ago, she’d thought he was a motorcycle-riding madman, and now she was calling him cute. Maybe she needed her head examined.

“Maybe, sweetheart.”

She stopped at his wry tone, eyes wide. “What?”

His look was completely innocent. “I was about to say that as cute as you look with all that soap streaming down your face, maybe you should let me wash it off you.”

She eyed him suspiciously, wondering whether he really was able to read her mind, or whether she was just going a little bonkers.
A lot bonkers
, she reiterated, as he touched her and her heart beat double time.

“Come on, Phoebe. You know I won’t hurt you.”

She didn’t know any such thing. If there was nothing else that life with her father and stepfather had taught her, it was that men were capable of infinite deception—and destruction.

She swore she heard Dylan’s teeth grind, but then he was easing her head back under the spray, gently massaging the remaining lather from her curls. As he did, he stroked her scalp softly, until shivers that had absolutely nothing to do with being cold ran down her spine.

“See,” he murmured, when the water ran clean. “Painless, right?” He reached for another bottle, his big body rubbing lightly against hers as he squeezed a small amount of conditioner onto his palm.

Then his fingers were back, his strong, calloused hands slowly running the conditioner into her hair. Despite her determination to remain on alert, she felt her muscles relaxing, her body sagging. It felt so good to have him care for her—
he
felt so good with his long, beautiful fingers and sexy hands. He was setting every nerve ending she had on fire, not just where his fingers touched, but throughout her entire body.

Something moved inside her—something unfamiliar and powerful and a little bit frightening. She tried to figure it out, to understand it, but Dylan was doing such wonderful things to her that she couldn’t focus on the odd feeling.

He nudged her again gently, and she obligingly tilted her head back so that the warm water could lazily stream over her head and down her body. His fingers continued their talented massage, and arousal—sleepy, seductive, wonderful—awakened in her once more.

When her hair had finally been rinsed clean, Dylan grabbed the bottle of shower gel she’d selected and squirted some in his hands. Then slowly—so slowly that she wondered how long she could stand it before she went insane—began to lather her up. His talented fingers slid down her neck, over the slope of her shoulders to her arms, lingered at her elbows before slipping around to the small of her back.