Shock Waves (22 page)

Dark spots clouded Ethan’s vision. Shock thickened his throat. Christ have mercy, there was no way in the world she could know. “And what happens?”

Brenna’s eyes went wild. She shoved the hair back from her face and shook her head, but nothing chased away the devastation in her gaze. He’d seen that look before, too many times to count, at too many funerals. Too many trials. It was the look of someone who’d just lost a loved one to a heinous act of violence, that bottomless, stunned, confused look. Dazed. The kind that reached inside and twisted his guts into tight knots.

It was the look he’d denied himself after Kristina, and after Allison.

“You go down,” she said on a rush, then blew his mind. She reached for him, touched him of her own will, put her hands to his chest and stared up into his eyes. “Everything turns red, and you go down.”

The pain in her voice, the anguish in her eyes, gutted him. He fought it, fought her, fought a truth that couldn’t come to pass.

“No.” Damn it, no. “That’s not how it’s going to happen,” he said, and then he couldn’t help it, couldn’t just sit there and watch her fall apart, watch her look at him through those dark, raw eyes, certain that tomorrow death would come calling, and there wasn’t a damn thing they could do about it.

He moved without thinking, hauling her against him and taking her mouth with his. He couldn’t say why, just knew he couldn’t sit there and pretend one freaking second longer, couldn’t deny the irrational insanity that had gripped him the first moment he’d heard her voice.

Her lips were soft and moist, trembling, but they moved against him with a hunger he’d never expected from her. There was a sound low in her throat, one he didn’t recognize but that fed his own hunger, fed his need, and instinctively he lowered her to the blanket and deepened the kiss.

Need fired through him, the need to touch, to taste, to take Brenna to a place where no one could ever, ever hurt her again. Including himself. He forced himself to go slow, be gentle, when his hands wanted only to explore every inch of her.

“I’m not going to let that man touch you,” he promised against her open mouth. And he wouldn’t. No matter what it cost him in the end, he would not let this incredibly brave, foolishly selfless woman pay the price of his stupidity.

The words were intended to ease the horror he’d seen in her eyes, but instead she went very still. He could feel her breathing, labored, choppy, but her hands no longer curled against his flesh.

He pushed up on his arms to look down at her. “Brenna?”

She lay there with her hair fanned out beneath her, cheeks flushed, mouth wide and bruised, swollen and damp from his kisses. “No,” she whispered. “This isn’t about me. I’m not your problem.”

The denial, soft, laced with a sickening smear of resolve, pushed him close to an edge he’d trained himself to avoid. “Problem?” The word came out harder than he’d intended, but damn it, for a woman who claimed to see what others couldn’t, she wasn’t very good at seeing what was right before her eyes. “Is that what you think you are?”

It was dark outside, the moon casting little light into the
abandoned room, but still, a shadow washed across
her face. “I wasn’t part of the plan,” she said, and this time it was sorrow that tinged her voice. “You said that yourself.”

The hell with that. Even the boldest of defense attorneys had learned never to throw Ethan Carrington’s words back in his
face. Because even though she was
correct in recounting what he’d said, she didn’t have a damn clue what he meant. That was the problem with words. They could he shaped and
twisted, forced,
patched together to create any lie known to mankind. Evidence, however, didn’t lie.

Holding her gaze, he took her hand and drew it to the bulge at the front of his shorts. “Does that feel like a problem to you?”

Her eyes went dark. “Yes,” she whispered, but her tongue moistened her lips. “A very big problem.”

Her smile, slow, tentative, stunned him. “Tell me you don’t want me,” he forced himself to say, because damn it, that was the right thing to do. No matter how badly he wanted her, needed her, he didn’t want it to be one-sided, and even though he knew with a few more deep kisses and carefully placed touches he could make her see that this problem was a good problem, a very damn good problem, the choice had to he hers. “Tell me to stop, and I will.”

* * *

She didn’t want him to stop. She didn’t want him to roll from her, to lose the weight of his body, so hot and hard, pressed against hers. She didn’t want to go one second longer without feeling his mouth taking hers in that gentle, demanding way that was all Ethan Carrington. Only Ethan Carrington.

Without feeling what came next.

The realization robbed her of breath. She wasn’t sure how they’d gotten from sitting down to dinner to lying sprawled on the blanket with Ethan propped above her, staring down at her through those penetrating eyes, desire blazing hotter and brighter than the dizzying array of stars decorating the night sky. She only knew her heart pounded and her body yearned, and the darkness she’d been waiting to press down on her, the darkness that always, always came, the darkness that had twisted Adam’s passion into rage, had not come.

Brenna grasped at the frayed edges of everything she’d ever believed about herself—that she wasn’t capable of this kind of intimacy, that she wanted nothing to do with the jumble of emotions swirling through her. But no matter how hard she tried to deny, to understand, to cling to what she’d once believed as gospel, denial slipped through her shaking fingers, leaving her with only the truth.

She didn’t want him to stop.

The fact that he was willing to, despite the unmistakable ridge pressed into her thigh, despite the heat in his eyes, made her all the more certain.

The last time a man had stopped, it hadn’t been because he’d asked her what she wanted.

It had been at the point of a gun.

“There aren’t any cameras here,” she whispered, glancing around the sprawling room that had once been a luxurious hotel suite. A broken marble fireplace gaped dark against the cracked plaster, like a toothless old lady.

“Cameras?” Confusion narrowed Ethan’s eyes.

She swallowed hard, tried to breathe. “Cameras,” she said again. “Jorak. He’s not watching. We don’t have to pretend.”

“Pretend?” The word sounded torn out of him, ripped from somewhere dark and disbelieving, much like the word
problem
had sounded only minutes before. “Is that what you think this is about?”

She wanted to say yes. She wanted to believe yes. But the word would not form.

“I’ll tell you when I was pretending,” he growled, lowering himself over her. His mouth brushed hers, not in a lingering kiss but whisper soft. “Whenever I stopped,” he said, placing little kisses along her jawbone, then nibbling over to her ear.
“Whenever
I lay awake all night holding you, rather than running my hands along your body.”

Her heart kicked hard. No one had ever spoken to her like this. No one had ever touched her like this, not on the outside, certainly not on the inside. “Ethan—”

“I pretended when I made myself stop kissing you,” he went on, “last night at dinner, earlier today in the
cenote.”
He shifted, his big body settling between thighs she instinctively
spread for him. Lifting a hand to her neck, he splayed his
fingers wide. “And worst of all, I pretended last night when I found you standing in the rain but wouldn’t let myself touch.”

The tiny cry escaped before she realized it had formed. She’d wanted him to touch her last night. She’d stood there in the fine mist, aching, wishing the dreams that had yanked her from her sleep, the ones that had left her gasping for air, with the
embers of a dying scream burning in her throat, wishing those
dreams had been different dreams, dreams of the way she felt when he so much as looked at her, touched her. That he would walk up behind her and pull her into his arms, tell her—

Tell her this wasn’t pretend.

“This,” he said, returning his mouth to hers, “is not pretend.”

And Brenna was lost. All those walls she’d tacked up between herself and the world, herself and Ethan, crumbled, and she reached for him, held him to her, let her hands run along the hard planes of his back. His flesh was hot to the touch, sending a different kind of shock wave singing through her.

“Yes,” she whispered, loving the way his mouth played hers, the feel of his lips slanting against hers, their tongues rubbing. Heat arced through her, stripping away the fear she’d once felt.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” he said, sliding a hand to her chest, where his fingers toyed with her nipple.

“You’re not,” she managed, arching into his touch. She wanted to thrash, to glory in the sensation of his hands playing with her breasts, the stunning dance of color that dimmed her vision. She closed her eyes to it, let the pleasure wash through her.

Desire made her bold, whereas always before, fear had made her recoil. Now, with Ethan, she let her hands travel, as well, sliding over his buttocks, loving the firm feel of the muscles there. She wanted to feel the heat of his skin beneath his shorts, but knew that would cone soon enough.

“So soft,” he murmured, kissing his way along her jaw and down her neck. Longing flooded her, and again she twisted, wanting his touch in a way she’d never imagined possible. His fingers were talented, playing with her nipple, tracing small circles that made her breasts ache for so much more. The sensation streamed through her like an arrow, pooling between her legs.

“The buttons,” she whispered, and he needed no more encouragement than that, just slid his hand to the column of small discs and immediately fumbled them free, allowing the cotton sundress to fall open.

She wasn’t wearing a bra. She’d had one on under the nightgown she’d worn when fleeing the compound, but she’d shed the restrictive garment in the seductively dark confines of the
cenote,
and she’d not put it back on.

Cool air whispered across her exposed breasts, and lying there with her eyes closed, she waited for the return of Ethan’s fingers or his mouth. But one second turned into two, two to three, and she restlessly looked up at him, found him hovering above her, staring down at her through those hot, dark eyes of his. The lines of his face had gone soft, drawing her attention to the whiskers shadowing his jaw. His lips were slightly swollen, moist.

A flash of modesty swept through her, but she forced it aside. No man had ever looked at her like this. Only one had ever seen her breasts, and he’d been all over her like a starved mongrel.

“Hey, now,” Ethan said, lifting a hand to her face. “What’s wrong?”

She blinked up at him, couldn’t stop herself from turning her cheek into his palm. “Wrong?” Everything felt amazingly right to her.

The heat was still in his eyes, but tempered by hesitancy. Concern. “You just checked out on me.”

Breathe, she told herself. Just breathe. The past was just that. That night had nothing to do with this one. Nothing to do with Ethan. “Touch me,” she whispered, swallowing against the tightness in her throat. “Please.”

A hard sound broke from his throat. “You’re going to kill me yet,” he muttered, but then dipped his head toward her chest, and his mouth opened against her nipple, his lips sucking gently, and Brenna knew he wasn’t going down alone. Pleasure licked through her, hot, swirling, an urgent sensation that had her wrapping her legs around his and holding on tight.

“Yes,” she whispered, digging her fingers into his back. His other hand was sliding down her stomach, between her legs, and then his fingers were there, discovering just what his kisses did to her. The heat. The wetness. He pushed inside, one finger probing gently, sending a wave of delirium to every pulse point in her body.

Desire and need crashed through her, blinding her to everything else. She grabbed for the fabric of his T-shirt and yanked it up his back, toward his shoulders, working with him as he helped her rip away the unwanted cotton. Then she slid her hands between their bodies and fumbled with the clasp of his shorts. Using two fingers now, he lifted his hips for hers, giving her the access she needed to pull down the zipper.

“Easy,” he said, but was wrong. There was nothing easy about the frenetic rhythm of her heart, the urgency clawing at her.

“Don’t make me beg,” she rasped, and suddenly the tongue sliding around her nipple stopped, the fingers inside of her stilled, and he pulled back and stared down at her, swore softy. Almost reverently.

“You’re sure?”

His voice was rough, and it did cruel, cruel things to her heart. “I’ve never been more sure in my life.”

He trailed his other hand along her collarbone, then up her neck, to her jaw, and she would have sworn she saw sorrow flicker through his eyes. “I don’t have any protection.”

She blinked, but then the haze cleared, and she realized what he was saying. Reality slammed home, the magnitude of what they were doing, the fact that she could create a child with this man.
A child.
Something she’d always yearned for but quit dreaming of years ago.

“I’m safe,” she said after a rapid calculation of her cycle.
She felt the twist down low, the moment of protest, but didn’t
know whether it stemmed from fear of the unknown or acceptance of the possibilities.