Seeing Red (19 page)

He let out a slow smile, his eyes hot and hungry, and bent back to his task, and this time let her take the plunge. When her knees collapsed, she fell right into his arms on the floor. Engine still revved, she tumbled him over to his back and tore at his clothing just for the joy of having his hot, sleek, hard flesh beneath her fingers, and then her mouth. She kissed his shoulder, a pec, making her way past his rib cage, his quivering belly, swirling a little lower until he hissed out a breath. And when she got to the prize and took him into her mouth, he let out a guttural, rasping moan. His hands came up and fisted in her hair. “Red—”

She shut him up with a single swirl of her tongue and was well on her way to driving him as insane as he’d driven her when suddenly she found herself flat on her back, his big hard body towering over hers, his eyes glittering as he reached out and picked something up off the floor.

The condom.

He tore the packet open with his teeth, his eyes never leaving hers as he covered himself, as he nudged her thighs open and made himself at home between them and cupped her face in his hands.

“I love you,” he said, and began to move. He took them both right out of themselves and back again, wild and free, simple and beautiful.

And terrifying. So damned terrifying.

S
ummer lay beneath Joe, listening to him breathe. Her heart was still beating so wildly in her chest she thought maybe her ribs would crack.

He’d said he loved her.

She’d spent the last twelve years avoiding emotional attachments. She hadn’t put a name to it, or really even made a conscious decision to do so, but that’s exactly what she’d done. Until now. Now she faced the very dilemma she’d never wanted.

She’d let a man into her life, and not just any man, but one that knew her better than anyone else, giving him the tools he needed to break her heart.

How did they move on from here? Could they really pretend he hadn’t said what he had in the thick of the moment? And surely, that was all it had been.

Though
she’d
been in the moment many times and had never felt the urge to let those three little words fly.

Joe rolled with her so that she lay sprawled over the top of him. He slid a hand down her back to cup her butt. “Now you can cut off the circulation to
my
legs and other vital parts. Seems only fair.”

There was a teasing light to his voice, thank God. “Complaining?”

“Hell, no.” He added his other hand to her ass.

From outside the wind still whistled and howled, brushing tree branches against the windows. Even with all the noise, she could still hear his heart still pumping strong and steady beneath her cheek with enough force to provide electricity to the entire town. She lifted her head and stared down into his face. “Do you need a glass of water?”

“Sure, if you could give it to me intravenously.”

Okay, good. Lighthearted fun, which happened to be right up her alley. She went smug. “Can’t move, huh?”

“That would be because you’re holding me down.”

“Which is handy if I want round two.”

He laughed and she licked his nipple, and his laugh turned into a moan as she felt his body stir.

“I need a recovery period,” he said.

“You’ve had it.” Because her world felt right again, or at least not upside down anymore, she sat up on him.

“Ooof,” he said, but his hands went gamely to her hips.

She looked into his face. Unlike her, he was not still grinning broadly. In his eyes sat his entire heart, and it made hers clench. He’d tried to warn her, he’d even tried to joke it away, but she was doing the one thing she’d meant to never do again, and that was hurt him. Her smile slowly faded. And her own heart began to swell until it felt like she might pop a rib. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, and got up.

Behind her, she heard him sigh, and when she turned around, he was pulling up his Levi’s. He reached for his shirt, then his gun. When he was dressed, he looked at her.

She wrapped herself in a chenille throw from the back of the couch and turned away to stare out the window into the black, stormy night. Her earlier euphoria had drained right out of her. Holding on to any pretense seemed exhausting.

“You okay?” He spoke quietly from behind her.

He’d come out into the night to rescue her when he hadn’t necessarily wanted to see her. He’d given her a mind-blowing orgasm—two actually—when he hadn’t meant to have sex with her. He’d given and given, and she’d taken and taken. It was a terrible pattern, a revealing one that filled her with self-loathing, and yet she didn’t possess the courage to stop the madness. “Did you mean it?”

“Yeah,” he said, knowing exactly what she was asking. “I meant it.”

“Joe.” She felt hot, cold. Anguished.

He let out a sigh and moved to the door.

“Joe, wait.”

“For what?” His eyes glittered with dark emotion as he rounded on her, stalked back across the room to go toe to toe. “Round two? You need me to screw you blind again?”

Embarrassed, she tried to turn away but his hands came up to hold her still. “You don’t like it worded like that? Well, here’s a bulletin. I don’t like feeling it.”

“It’s not like that.”

“No, it’s not. It’s not like that at all, not for me. Red, when I’m in you and you look at me…” He let out a rough sound and backed away. “I
feel
like Superman,” he admitted. “How’s
that
for being embarrassed? You make me feel like a damn hero.”

She hugged herself, silent as she contemplated his words. He
was
a hero, in her eyes. He was the only one always there for her, no matter what, and yet she didn’t know how to say it.

“You said for me to wait. What for, Red? For you to stop shoving me away when I get too close? You to open up and talk to me? Christ, I’m only human here. I see you hurting and it kills me, but you won’t let me in.” He turned away. “I have to go.”

“Did you…did you love me like this back then, too?”

He was quiet so long she wasn’t sure he’d answer, then he slowly turned and looked at her, eyes solemn, hair wild, no dimple in sight. “That was years ago. What I felt then no longer matters.”

“Yes, it does.”

He looked away, into the night. “You were all I had. You were everything to me.”

She thought maybe now she understood for the first time how much she’d really hurt him, and felt sliced in two. “What could we have done? Gotten married and lived happily ever after, and forgotten the warehouse fire ever happened?”

He shoved his hands into his pockets, the same hands which had taken her to bliss and back only moments ago, and now they were as apart as strangers. “I don’t know.” He shrugged. “I didn’t believe in happily ever after. All I know is I believed in you, and how you made me feel. Which was alive.” He slowly shook his head. “When I’m with you, it just bursts out of me. But I’m a selfish SOB. I need it back and I need to know, Red. Is this going anywhere other than your living room floor?”

Her breathing had already gone to hell. At his question, her chest tightened. Admitting her burgeoning emotions to herself was hard enough. “What if I know I have feelings, I just haven’t been able to sort them yet?”

“Then sort them. But I know you, Red. You’ll tell yourself it’s not real, it’s just temporary. You’ll tell yourself whatever you have to so that when you leave, you can do so without looking back.”

She gaped at him. “You think I’m pushing you away so that I can leave again?”

“I don’t know what I think.” He waited, giving her a chance to help him.

But she couldn’t seem to think under a spotlight.

“You know, Summer,” he finally said. “No one can disappoint me quite the way you can.” And with that knife to the heart, he walked out the door.

She clung to the doorway and watched him get to his Camaro before she remembered something that pierced through her pain. “Joe.” She ran after him in her blanket, blocking him from getting into the car, getting wet all over again.

“Go inside,” he said, sounding exhausted.

“Wait. I forgot to tell you something.” She grimaced because she couldn’t believe it. “Several somethings actually.”

As wet as she was, he looked at her. “What?”

“I forgot to tell you about the phone call I got earlier. I think I said something about it at the bar—”

“Tell me.”

“I was asked to go away. They even said please. Can you imagine?” She forced a laugh. “A polite stalker.”

He suddenly had his fire marshal face on. “This happened when exactly?”

“Earlier.”

“Did you recognize the voice?” he clipped out, no longer her giving lover, but a man on the job.

“It was a text message. Out of area phone number.”

“Let me see it. Don’t tell me you erased it,” he said when she just stared at him.

“I didn’t.” She had to smile. “It’s just that you look so tough and in charge when you talk in your cop voice.”

He narrowed his eyes. “The phone, Red.”

“Right. I left my purse in your car.” She brushed past him and bent inside the car, feeling around on the floor where she’d tossed it earlier.

She felt him watching her, and wondered if her blanket was covering her bare butt or not. “Got it,” she said, and pushed herself to her knees in his driver’s seat, rifling through her bag, her hair in her face. “Here.”

“Scoot over.” He added his hands to the command, giving her a little push so that he could climb in after her. He shut the door, creating a tight intimacy she didn’t know how to face after all they’d said to each other. The air felt charged, and not just sexually, but emotionally.

While he looked at her text message, she looked at him. He’d been tense before their little tryst on the floor, but then afterward had become more relaxed than she’d ever seen him.

Now he was tense again. She knew he was shocked that this had happened, and frightened for her safety. Bundled in with that was anger and frustration that he couldn’t fix it for her right here right now, all complicated by what they were, or weren’t, to each other.

Finally, he lifted his head and looked at her. “Is this your first call from this number?”

“Yes.”

“Your first threat?”

“Well, it’s not exactly a threat—Yes,” she said at the irritation in his face. “It’s my first prank.”

He nodded, pulled out his own cell. “Kenny,” he said into it. “We need to meet—Yeah, I know what time it is. Bring caffeine.” He clicked off and looked at Summer across the console, his eyes dark and unreadable.

Distant.

She’d done that. “Joe—”

“I want you to come home with me.” He glanced at the house behind them. “I don’t want you to be alone.”

She took in the small cottage, lit in the night like a beacon, with darkness all around. The other cottages either weren’t filled at the moment, or their occupants long asleep.

“I’m going to go into work after I drop you off,” he said. “But I’d like it if you stayed on the boat until daylight, and then kept me informed of your day as you go.”

“I’m sure I’m not in any real danger—” At the unbroachable look in his eyes, she broke off. He wasn’t going to bend on this. “Okay. I get it. I don’t like it, but I get it.”

He let out a long breath. “Nothing about any of this is fair, I know.”

She closed her eyes and nodded, surprised into opening them again when he touched her jaw. She turned her cheek into his palm and closed her eyes, unbearably reassured by just the feel of his callused fingers on her.

“I was an ass in there,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

“You weren’t.” She kissed his palm. “You weren’t. It’s me. I’m the ass.”

A low, rough sound escaped his throat, one that might have been pleasure, pain, or a combination. His eyes were shadowed as they met hers, lit only by a quick flash of lightning that burst around them. Then he pulled away. “Let’s go get you a change of clothes.”

Afterward he drove south on I-5, toward Mission Bay. Given the amount of alcohol she’d consumed, and the energy they’d burned on her living room floor, she was beat. And punchy with it. “We didn’t really solve anything,” she said softly as he drove. “And yet you’re sort of stuck with me.”

“Or you’re stuck with me. Depends on how you look at it, I suppose.”

“Maybe we should start over,” she said. “We could even pretend we don’t know each other.”

“What, to buy you time to sort through your feelings?” he asked dryly.

Damn it, maybe. “It’s not a bad idea.”

He slanted her another glance.

“This has nothing to do with you, you know. I’m just not a successful dater. In fact, usually, once I—” She broke off at his expression and decided she’d probably let her mouth run a moment too long.

“Once you sleep with him, he’s gone, is that is?” he asked.

“Maybe we shouldn’t talk.”

“No, maybe we should. I don’t want to be your dick-of-the-week, Summer.”

A laugh burst out of her at that. “Well, then. How about we take this one day at a time?”

“I think with you, we’ll go minute to minute. And now that you’ve turned me around so many times I don’t know whether I’m coming or going, are you going to tell me the other thing you needed to tell me?”

“Oh my God, I’d nearly forgotten.”

“What now?”

“Did you know Braden’s leaving?”

“What do you mean, leaving?”

“He’s with Chloe tonight. It’s their good-bye. He said he isn’t the stick around type.” A stab of guilt went through her because she’d become the same type. “I thought you’d want to know.”

“Yeah. I want to know.”

He said this so grimly she frowned. “What aren’t you telling me here?”

“Nothing I’m supposed to.”

Her heart sped up, and her stomach dropped. “I know Braden’s quiet and sort of mysterious, but he wouldn’t hurt anyone. If you could have seen the way he looked at Chloe tonight…”

He swore at that, muttering to himself, then glanced at her again. “He has a police record.”

“He’s been arrested?”

“Yes. And his name isn’t Braden Cahill. His real name is Brian Coldwell. Did you know that?”

“No.” Her thoughts raced uncomfortably. “You’ve been busy,” she said slowly.

“It’s my job.”

“You’re good at it.”

“Not good enough.” He slapped an open palm on the steering wheel in frustration, shook his head, and sped up.