Up in Flames (22 page)

Oh, no, not nearly the end. Her head spun, trying to fit the facts into place.

He wanted her. That much had been obvious five minutes ago, but he was talking about a different kind of wanting. More like a longing that was beyond his control. A shiver of delight slid down her back. As old-relationship baggage went, dealing with an uncontrollable desire for her was about as good as it got.

“Thank you,” she said quietly.

He barked a forced laugh. “Right. Thanks for telling you about my one-night stand right after I made love to you, and while you’re still naked in my bed.”

“She doesn’t matter.”

“Uh-huh. Do the rest of the human females know about you?”

“Zane, shut up. I’m saying I know what you’re talking about. Okay, quid pro quo—I lived with a guy a couple of years ago, a very nice man I actually considered spending the rest of my life with.”

That got his attention. He stopped, staring intently. “What happened?”

She shrugged, skipping the story of Maggie’s battle with power and celebrity that had revealed his shallowness. “Life. He didn’t stand by me when I needed him.”

“The prick.”

She smiled because he looked like he meant it. “It’s okay, I didn’t really care. It turns out I was with him for all the wrong reasons.”

He was so still, so intent, that she knew he could have finished the story, but wanted to hear her say it. “Which were?”

“All the qualities that made him nothing like you.”

The seconds went by like minutes as he absorbed it. Finally, he said, “I’m sorry it didn’t work out.”

“Really?”

“No.”

She patted the sheet beside her. “Come back to bed.”

She thought he might refuse, but after a moment’s hesitation, he slid in beside her and pulled her beneath him. He pinned her in place and kissed her, his growing erection a reminder of what she had missed over the past ten years. When his lips trailed down her neck, she arched to give him better access.

His teeth nipped her earlobe and his tongue touched the soft skin behind it. “You realize I’m just taking advantage of your bad judgment,” he murmured, sending shivers skating down her back. “From what you told me, you have a history of making bad decisions about men.”

“Are you bad?”

“I’m the worst.”

She gripped the firm muscles of his butt and dug her nails in, while whispering hoarsely in his ear, “Prove it.”

The answering growl that came from his throat vibrated against her breast as his mouth skimmed down her body and his hand parted her legs. His fingers were as unerring as his mouth, finding the places that ached for his touch and teasing lightly before his long, hard strokes had stars bursting behind her closed eyes. She was breathing hard and straining for ways to offer more so he could take it, when he rolled her onto her stomach. She groaned into the pillow, clutching it to her for something to hang on to as he slid against her wetness, driving her higher and higher, until he filled her and pushed them both to a breathless peak. He reached down to touch her as he pumped into her, finally igniting an explosion that shook her from head to toe, leaving her weak and panting on the bed. He collapsed beside her, his skin hot and moist against hers.

“God, Zane . . .” But she didn’t have any words for what she felt and left it unfinished.

He kissed her forehead and pulled her close, tucked beneath his chin against the warmth of his chest. Her body felt wrung out, the sting of her scratches forgotten. She fell asleep that way, thinking through the pleasant haze in her mind that she’d wasted ten years of her life dating nice boys, a mistake she wouldn’t make again.

Thinking, too, that she and Zane had finally gotten everything right.

Zane woke to the uneasy feeling that something was wrong.

He raised himself gently to one elbow, careful not to disturb Sophie. Early morning sunshine broke through the blinds he’d neglected to close, painting striped lines of light and shadow on the bed. Bars of sunlight touched her bare shoulder with honey and turned the dark fan of hair on her pillow to burnished copper. The wonder of having her there beside him seemed more like a dream than reality.

She lay spooned against him, warm and soft, her face peaceful in sleep. He didn’t want to leave the bed, didn’t want to ever move his hand from the swell of her breast, or his morning arousal from the curve of her bottom where it pressed against him. His world should feel like perfection, but the tickle of something wrong persisted in the back of his mind.

He listened without moving, hearing nothing but the raucous calls of two blue jays arguing in the tree outside his window and the annoyed chittering of a chipmunk. Remembering how Emmett had broken into his house, he stiffened, listening for the creak of a floorboard. The house was prone to the usual squeaks and groans of older homes, advertising every footstep, but he heard nothing for the full two minutes he listened. And if his brother had been creeping around outside, Zane reasoned that the animals would have gone silent.

He decided the uneasy twist in his gut must be from the unaccustomed feeling of waking up next to a woman without the urgent sense that he needed to leave before she got the wrong idea and expected him to stay. He didn’t have that fear with Sophie. Just the opposite—he hoped she’d want to stick around, that she’d feel comfortable in his home.

A bad feeling to encourage.

Lifting his hand slowly, he stroked her hair, moving a tendril off her cheek. He wasn’t sorry when she opened her eyes. She looked up at him without surprise, as if she needed no time to adjust to waking in his bed. As if waking next to him was the most natural thing in the world. It warmed him, and made his voice a bit gruff when he said, “Good morning,” and dropped a kiss against the side of her mouth.

“Morning.” She turned in his arms to face him, then, with a smile, reached down between them and wrapped her hand around the erection probing hungrily between her thighs. “I see you’re wide awake.”

He half-closed his eyes at the sudden pleasure. “I am now,” he growled, pushing into her hand.

Her smile spread and she kissed him. He took it as a signal, pulling her close. Moments later their hands were bumping and getting in each other’s way as they rolled on the bed, touching and tasting as if they hadn’t done the same thing just a few hours before, until she straddled him and reached for a condom. He stilled, watching with a pounding heart as she rolled it on him, smoothing it with long strokes of her fingers that made him groan deep in his throat. When she eased herself onto him he held her hips and rocked deep, doing it again and again as her eyes closed and a breathless “Oh!” escaped her mouth.

That small sound encouraged him to thrust harder, to make her gasp again. She did, then surprised him by laughing and falling forward onto his chest, giving him a new angle as she braced her hands on his pillow. “Mmm, right there,” she whispered, smiling and closing her eyes. It drove him crazy, watching the smile on her face change to an openmouthed gasp, and her eyes squeeze tightly as her body clenched around him and spasms of pleasure took them both, until he couldn’t move anymore. Her arms collapsed and her head settled in the crook of his neck.

He’d been wrong before when he’d wanted to stay spooned against her forever. This position was preferable. So were maybe a few others he could think of. Too bad they wouldn’t get a chance to try them.

Keeping her with him exposed her to Emmett, a danger he wouldn’t allow. But just for one minute he imagined how nice it would be to have Sophie with him every day and safe in his arms every night. As if they were a couple.

The niggling sense of something wrong crept back into his mind, and this time he knew what it was. It was Sophie.

He and Sophie could never be a couple. They’d conveniently skirted the issue of what had driven them apart the first time. He’d never been stupid enough to deny that the attraction they’d felt ten years ago hadn’t been overwhelming and real. But so had the reason she’d left him, and the reason he’d harbored so much disdain for her during all these years. And that hadn’t changed.

Even ten years ago, Sophie had had plans and lofty goals. She was smart enough to achieve them, too. She had never let anything stand in the way of her education, including romantic relationships. Or his lack of ambition. A boyfriend who worked as a grease monkey in a garage could never be part of that life.

She was miles above him, educated at private schools and sheltered from the real world, while he’d grown up in the gritty reality of child neglect and state assistance. He was so far down the social scale that just looking at him should have made her dizzy. But it had never seemed to matter to her. She understood what it was like to feel like an outsider, not fitting in when she was in B-Pass because for most of the year she went to a different school in a different town. And when she was home, she was one of the “commune kids,” a derogatory tag that set her apart. They’d bonded instantly.

Their friendship had grown gradually that summer, finally exploding into passion. Then the real world had smacked him down. Or rather, she had.

She was leaving for school. He had no plans. No solid idea of what he was going to do with his life, just the knowledge that he couldn’t find it at a university. To Sophie, that translated as having no ambition, the one prejudice she couldn’t get around. All that time she’d been slumming, wasting time with someone who would never live up to her standards. She asked him to try it, to take a class. Something. Anything. He’d said no.

It had been like slamming into a brick wall. Nice knowing you, I have to get on with my life now.

He’d been insulted, and lashed out, quoting his dad’s beliefs about women using men to get what they want. At the time, he’d believed it, thinking she’d used him to get some sexual experience without any danger of it affecting her rigid life plan. He’d been partially wrong—she hadn’t used him. She wasn’t that insensitive. But she
was
that rigid, determined to let nothing distract her from her lofty goals.

He had no reason to believe that had changed. Maybe he’d been wrong to hate her for years when she’d only given in to the same attraction he’d been unable to resist. He didn’t hate her now. But he couldn’t pretend anything had changed. Dr. Larkin would never belong with a no-degree landscaper who had a questionable reputation.

He wasn’t sure she’d acknowledged it yet. The look he’d seen in her eyes last night and this morning struck terror in his soul. She’d been amazed and moved, and hadn’t tried to hide it. Had seemed, in fact, to embrace it, as if she’d found something she’d been searching for. It scared the shit out of him, because he’d felt it, too. It had hit him like a revelation when he’d lifted her in his arms last night and held her close. The feeling sang through every nerve in his body:
mine
. She belonged to him, finally and completely. For a few seconds, it had been enormously fulfilling. She was everything he’d ever wanted, and the look in her eyes said she wanted him, too.

He’d mistaken wanting for having.

It couldn’t happen. It wouldn’t last. Not when she discovered his greatest shame, something he’d lied about even ten years ago for fear the cute, smart girl he was so attracted to would turn her back on him: he’d never finished high school. His father’s trial had made school too uncomfortable, and he’d left a full year short of graduation, promising himself he’d go back later. He never had. She didn’t know yet, but she’d find out eventually, and when she did she’d lose all respect for him. Dr. Larkin and a high school dropout? It was laughable. And a dropout named Thorson? She might as well throw her degree in a shredder.

If he needed another reason for why they could never be a couple, there was Emmett. His brother was constantly on the lookout for ways to destroy anything Zane cared about, and a girlfriend would be a prime target.

No, indulging his feelings would end in more heartbreak than he could bear. It was already difficult enough to deny what he felt. He had to make her believe he’d acted on pure lust, nothing more. The fact that he wished it
could be
more was his own problem.

So was the fact that he wished it could last longer than one night. It couldn’t, not with Emmett already stalking her. And not with Sophie’s infuriating insistence on publicly defending him. For her own good, he needed to separate her from the investigation, and from himself.

He needed one piece of information first, before he cut that tie. He got it while she was in the shower. A police officer had delivered her cell phone to the house a half hour before, and she’d left it on the coffee table. As he suspected, her brother-in-law’s number was in the directory.

Cal picked up after one ring. “Hi, Sophie.”

“It’s Zane Thorson.”

He could practically feel the frost come through and collect on the phone. “Where’s Sophie? Why do you have her phone?”

“Relax, she’s fine.”

“Let me talk to her.”

As if he was holding her hostage. Jesus. “She’s in the shower. Look, I just called to find out who was after her last night. Who was the black car registered to, the one that ran her off the road?”