Run From Fear (21 page)

“You can’t save me, Jack. You can’t save any of us.”

As he watched, a tiny pinprick of red formed on the front of her shirt. She shuddered and gasped as though in pain, and the stain grew until it was soaking her hands. Desperate, he grabbed at sheets, pillows, anything to stop the flow of red gushing from her body, soaking his hands and arms.

“You can’t, Jack. You can’t save me.”

“NO!” he shouted. “I won’t let him hurt you. I won’t let him hurt you this time.”

“Jack! Jack! JACK!”

He jolted awake, shaking and sweating like a racehorse. He was on his knees, hovered over the bed. He heard a rustling sound.

“Jack! Wake the hell up.” He winced and jerked back as a small fist connected with the side of his face.

He reached up and snapped on the lamp and realized he had Talia pinned to the bed and he had a pillow pressed against her stomach.

The first screams had jerked Talia from sleep. She’d lain in bed for several seconds, frozen with fear. Was Jack being attacked? She grabbed her Taser from the nightstand and crept down the hall. If there was an intruder, Jack would want her to get the hell out, but she couldn’t just hide like a coward if there was something she could do to help.

The incoherent cries got louder as she went down the stairs, and she quickly realized they weren’t noises made in the heat of combat but those of someone in the throes of a nightmare. She flicked on the hall light, and when
she opened Jack’s door, she saw that he was thrashing around, groaning.

“Jack?” she called. He turned toward her but didn’t wake up. She came closer, put her hand on his shoulder, and gave him a little shake. “Jack, wake up.”

Without warning, he reached out and grabbed her, and the next thing she knew, she was pinned under two hundred and twenty pounds of muscle clad only in a pair of boxer shorts. She knew Jack, awake, would cut off his own hand before he hurt her, but in the state he was in now she wasn’t taking any chances.

She struggled, yelling his name as she landed whatever blows she could on his arms and back and tried to buck him off of her. But he was too big, too strong.

She watched as he grabbed a pillow. Oh, God, was he going to kill her in his sleep? Was he having some god-awful PTSD flashback like Owen on
Grey’s Anatomy
?

But instead of covering her face with the pillow, he shoved it against her abdomen, groaning and muttering something that sounded like her name and “no, won’t let you.”

She yelled his name, louder this time, and his eyes flickered. “Wake up!” she yelled, emphasizing her point with a punch.

His body jerked, and he froze for a second, trying to get his bearings. Still not letting her up, he reached out and flicked on the bedside lamp. His eyes were open, but they still looked foggy, confused, as though he wasn’t quite sure where he was.

“Jack? Are you all right? Can you let me up?”

He didn’t answer but threw the pillow across the room and without so much as a word yanked her tank top up
her stomach. He would have ripped it off her if she hadn’t grabbed the hem with both hands.

Panic surged through her. God, please not this, not Jack.

It took her a moment to realize Jack wasn’t trying rip her clothes off. Instead, he had his hand on her stomach, his index finger tracing the scar under her sternum as he whispered, “No blood. You’re okay. There’s no blood.”

Talia stopped struggling and covered Jack’s big hand with her own. “Of course there’s no blood,” she said softly. “I’m okay now.”

His gaze snapped to her face, and she recognized the moment he became fully aware of what was happening. His eyes widened and he scrambled back. “Jesus, I’m sorry. I didn’t hurt you? I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

He was awake but strung tight as a wire, his muscles twitching under tawny skin that glistened with a layer of sweat. He swung his legs over the side of the bed and rested his head in his hands.

Talia pushed herself up to sit next to him and laid a tentative hand on his shoulder. “I’m okay. You didn’t hurt me.”

“Bet I fucking scared the shit out of you, though. Jesus, I’m sorry—”

“You startled me, that’s for sure.” Her hand moved unconsciously up and down his back, trying to soothe him. “But I know how it is. I know how bad the dreams can get. I don’t think I got a peaceful night’s sleep for the first year after I was attacked.”

“I haven’t had one this bad in a while,” he said. “You were bleeding, so much blood, and you kept telling me I couldn’t save you. And she—” He snapped his mouth closed. “You were dying.”

Her heart twisted at the sound of his voice, like the words were being ripped from his chest.

He turned to her, his eyes blazing in the shadows cast by the small lamp. “I know you don’t want me to think of you that way—”

She shook her head and her hand stilled on his back. “I was upset. I shouldn’t have taken it out on you—”

“But I can’t help it,” he continued as though she hadn’t spoken. “I failed, and you almost died. And I don’t want to remember but it fucking haunts me. What if I can’t save you next time?”

She wanted to say there wouldn’t be a next time, but after what Detective Nolan had revealed tonight, Talia knew she’d have to be a fool to believe that. So she sat silently, stroking the sweat-slick skin of Jack’s back until his heart slowed enough that it didn’t feel like it was going to jump into her hand and his breathing slowed to something approaching normal.

It was a subtle shift, but Talia could feel it the second the last dregs of the nightmare slipped away. Jack turned to her, his gaze raking her up and down, taking in her thin tank top that left her arms, shoulders, and a wide expanse of her chest bare. Glowing with heat so intense she felt it sizzle on her bare skin.

The air in the guest room was charged with electricity. She snatched her hand from his back as though it burned her, suddenly intensely aware that he was wearing nothing but boxers. His muscles coiled with tension, his fingers curling into fists as though it took a physical effort not to touch her.

A battle he lost. Talia’s mouth went dry as he reached up with one big hand, slowly, carefully, as though she were a wild animal he didn’t want to scare. The brush
of his calloused fingers against her cheek sent a wicked shiver down her spine. She sat there, frozen, as his thumb traced across her bottom lip.

“What I wouldn’t do for you…” he whispered, his eyes dark and stormy. He slid his hand into her hair and leaned close enough for her to feel the heat of his breath across her cheek.

Blood roared in her ears, and her heart pounded against her ribs as her lips tingled in anticipation.

To her shock, he dropped his hand and leaned back. “You better go, because I’m about two seconds away from doing something I know you don’t want me to do.”

Talia was motionless for several seconds, her fingers clutching the edge of the mattress as every muscle in her body coiled tight. What exactly would he do? What if she did want it?

The images flashed in her brain, naked skin against skin, tangled limbs, mouths and hands and fingers exploring.

The jolt of heat that shot through her was so powerful, beyond anything she’d ever experienced, stunning in its intensity.

Terrifying.

She leaped from the bed and bolted from the room, not stopping until she was up the stairs and safely behind the locked door of her bedroom.

And spent the rest of her sleepless night cursing herself for being such a coward.

God, what a goatfuck
, Jack thought the next morning as he pounded away at the heavy bag at Gus’s gym, trying
his damnedest not to stare at Talia with his tongue hanging out while a trainer ran her through speed drills.

She’d bolted from his room like a terrified rabbit, so fast she practically left skid marks on the hardwood floor.

Really, what had he expected? He’d as good as told her he was about to throw her across the bed. He hit the bag hard enough to feel the jolt all the way up to his shoulder. Like she was going to turn to him, throw herself into his arms, and beg him to do all of the things he’d been dying to do to her from the second he’d walked into Suzette’s two weeks ago?

Only in his dreams. And he’d had several of them last night after she left. Of her, naked, over him, under him, clutching him to her as he sank into her wet heat. Dreams so vivid that when he woke up, he swore he could taste her mouth on his, smell the sweet musk of her need.

Except when he opened his eyes, it wasn’t her naked skin brushing his but a cotton sheet, and the hand wrapped around his cock was his own, stroking himself to a depressing climax just to ease some of the tension building inside him.

He hit the bag again and dropped to the mat for a series of push-ups, sit-ups, then several minutes of high-speed jump roping. Anything to take the edge off, to stave off the edgy, restless feeling that had him aching with frustrated need, walking around in skin that was two sizes too small.

He knew the signs, knew himself well enough to recognize he was nearing the breaking point. In the past, when he got like this over anything—a woman, a mission—if he didn’t get a handle on it, quick, an explosion would be imminent.

But there was nothing he could do to quench the raging need he had for Talia. God, he was so focused on protecting her, who would have ever thought he’d have to worry about protecting her from himself?

He couldn’t have her, and he couldn’t find any relief elsewhere. Not only was it impossible for him to leave her side long enough, the idea of using another woman as a substitute for the one he really wanted was even more depressing than the idea of jacking off alone for the next decade.

He had to make do with punishing workout sessions and his own right hand and hope that he could keep the wolves at bay.

They worked out for nearly two hours, Talia keeping her distance while Jack got himself to the point where the blood was too busy rushing to the muscles he’d worked to near exhaustion to pool in his groin.

They went back to her place to clean up and she met him in the kitchen, a tight smile pasted on her freshly scrubbed face, her eyes fixed firmly on his face in a way that said she was trying not to remember how close to him she’d been in his near-naked state less than twenty-four hours ago.

She didn’t have a lick of makeup on and was dressed in a long-sleeved navy shirt with a blue and gray scarf around her neck and close-fitting jeans, yet one look at her undid any progress made from the workout and the cold shower that followed.

“We should get going,” she said, trying to keep any trace of tension out of her voice. “I told Rosie we’d pick her up in fifteen minutes to go to the shopping center.”

As if the day could get worse, now he had to go sit
in a froufrou department store, imagining Talia getting undressed and dressed over and over again while she looked for the perfect outfit for the upcoming engagement party.

Jack made a mental note to give Danny a punch in the nuts for forcing the issue.

Talia could practically see the waves of tension emanating from Jack as they drove over to Stanford to meet up with Rosie. The last thing she was in the mood for was shopping. She was exhausted. After she’d left—no, fled—the guest room, she’d spent the night tossing and turning in her bed, feeling like the world’s biggest coward even as she told herself she wasn’t even close to being able to give Jack what he wanted.