“If you were, you would have already.”
“Maybe I’ve been busy building my career.”
“Or maybe you’ve been busy hiding from relationships. Why would that be?”
She pulled her hands free, stung by how close he came to her reality…and how neatly he circled back around to the subject of her freak-out in the conference room. She stood up, silently inviting him to leave.
Greer stood up too, rising next to her, towering over her, breathing her breath, which now came in fast, shallow pulls of air. He lifted his hand to her neck, capturing her rapid pulse. He lowered his head, holding her gaze until he was too close for her to focus on, watching her lips as his mouth brushed hers.
She shivered at the contact. Her body tightened from her breasts to her thighs. Breathing became a struggle. She wanted to press in to him, wanted to feel his arms around her, wanted to prove to him she hadn’t been hiding from men…just from every man who wasn’t him.
She caved first. Tiptoeing as she leaned in to him, she wrapped her arms around his neck and drew him closer. She moaned. He growled in answer. His hands moved over her, touching her shoulders, her neck, lifting her chin. His lips parted and his mouth opened. She wanted to feel his tongue inside her, to know the taste of him. She was glad when he backed her up against the wall; she needed its support.
He broke from the kiss. He kissed the space between the corner of her mouth and her chin, then her throat, then the curve from her shoulders to her neck. She arched in to him. He pressed his lips to the soft flesh below her collarbone. Her hands were on his biceps. She felt them bulge as he lifted her.
She wrapped her legs around his waist. Gripping his face, she lifted it for a kiss. She started to tug at his shirt. He set her down so she could pull it up. She stood between his bare feet to push it up. He leaned forward, catching her mouth with his, his shirt still fisted in her hands. He wrapped his arms around her body, surrounding her in his strength.
She moved her body against his, reveling in the waves of movement they shared, body to body, mouth to mouth.
Too soon, he paused, drawing a long breath as he leaned his forehead to hers, the back of her head hard against the wall. He took his shirt all the way off. Gripping it in one hand, he set his fists against the wall, caging her between his arms.
She watched his face as her hands slipped down his neck, over his collarbone to the light fur on his chest.
“Admit you will be mine,” he demanded.
She smiled, shocked that he’d gone all primitive. “I’ll admit no such thing.”
He made a small predatory smile as he caught her throat in one hand, then slid his fingers around the nape of her neck and lifted her chin up with his thumb. He kissed her, his mouth open, hungry. “Admit it. Because you will.”
“No.”
“Mine to protect, mine to cherish, mine to hold, mine to lift up.” He looked at her. “Mine to follow.”
She shook her head. “What kind of man says things like that?” She frowned. “What kind of man even does those kinds of things?”
“The kind of man I am. A man who’s been alone so long that he isn’t really living.”
“You really scare me, Greer. You don’t want the part of me I can give you. You want all of me.”
He nodded. “I do. I want all of you.”
“I can’t do that.”
“You can’t do that yet.” He drew back. Heat rolled off him like a tin roof in the summer. “I’ve waited this long; I can wait longer.”
She watched him walk out of her room, taking his heat and leaving her hunger.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Greer startled awake. It was still dark out. He’d opened his window before he went to bed. The fresh air calmed him; it was a normal temperature.
His body was hot, but the sheets were cool. He spread his legs to find the places his body hadn’t heated. The cool cotton against his bare skin gave him a hard-on, which only increased his heat. The hunger Remi had started was spreading like a coal fire through his body. And he knew she wouldn’t be coming to help him.
He checked the clock. Two a.m. He leaned his head back on his folded arms and closed his eyes, clearing his mind, emptying it of any content, then slipping into the forced nothingness. He could sleep on demand. It was a skill he’d developed long before the Army, one his grandfather had taught him in his early teens. He used it tonight, as he did most nights.
Greer sat in Sally’s room at the clinic in town. The machine monitoring her vital signs quietly beeped, its green screen illuminating the dim room. He looked at the bed where Sally lay. A sheet had been drawn up over her face. The machine began to scream as the beeps merged into a solid flat line.
Greer jumped up and grabbed her shoulders through the sheet, shaking her, shouting at her. The monitor went silent. Sally reached up and pulled the sheet down. She stared at him from empty eyes. No, not empty. Where her eyeballs should have been were white, glowing beams of light. Her hands reached for his. They were like ice.
“Sally, stop it. You’re not dead,” he shouted at her.
She sat up and pointed to her parents, who’d come to collect her from the clinic and bring her back to the community. She silently mouthed, “Help me!”
Greer shot out of bed, stumbling across the room, more asleep than awake. His heart was beating as if it had stopped for a time and was racing to catch up. His body itched with sweat and fear. He realized finally he’d been having this dream for a while now. It was her eyes he’d been seeing. Sally’s dead eyes.