“How long have you known I had one?” A dark, intense question.
“From the start.” She walked inside the apartment, conscious of both the corridor surveillance and the fact that the pristine surface of her Silence was beginning to crack like so much glass.
Max followed, closing the door with a muted snick that did nothing to lessen the tension that made her chest tight, the air suddenly too thin. “Then why did you let me think my shields would make no difference?”
Because she’d break if this failed, Sophia thought, scrabbling to find a mental foothold. Max, with his intelligence, his smiles, his will to find those lost girls . . . he wasn’t only right, he was the embodiment of every forbidden dream born in the forever shattered part of her psyche. This man would’ve come for her—when she’d been hurt and bleeding in that cabin where the others had died, he would have come for her.
“Answer the question, Sophia.”
She hadn’t realized she’d already become used to hearing him call her Sophie. The loss sliced a line of blood across her soul. “It wasn’t relevant.” She had to fight this pull, had to keep him at a distance. To take the chance and destroy that final flickering hope . . . no, she couldn’t bear it. “We’re colleagues—touch has nothing to do with it.”
“Now who’s playing games?” A single calm sentence that tore her defenses apart.
She looked up, saw the embers in that near-black gaze. And watched as he walked forward until they were separated by a bare foot of distance . . . to hold out a hand, his jaw a taut line, challenge in every part of him.
She stared at that hand. If she took it and his natural shield wasn’t protection enough, Max’s memories would punch into her with the force of a raging tornado—and if she somehow survived the vicious power of that telepathic blow, she’d know him without ever knowing him, all his secrets, all his yesterdays an endless roar inside her skull.
“Come on, Sophie.” A command that vibrated with masculine anger . . . and a darker, richer emotion that caressed a burn across her skin. “We need to know the answer—and don’t you dare tell me you don’t understand why.”
CHAPTER 13
At that moment, faced with a Max who was making no effort whatsoever to hide the steel of his nature, a Max who was forcing her to confront the truth of this strange, unexpected something between them, Sophia discovered she had another flaw—a hitherto unknown susceptibility to that tone in his voice. “I need to check if I sense you through the glove.” Reaching out before the fear could take over, make her turn back, she grazed the tips of her fingers across his palm.
His fingers curled inward even as she retreated—as if he’d hold her. “So?” A rough demand that rubbed the sandpaper deeper across her skin.
“I sense only your body heat.” Wild and hot and an invitation that made a sumptuous warmth ignite in her abdomen, the broken part of her craving more . . . and yet utterly terrified at taking this chance. “I’ll recite the alphabet,” she said, knowing he wouldn’t allow her to turn back, wouldn’t allow her to hide. “If I go quiet”—she tugged off a glove—“break contact.”
Max dropped his hand without warning. “Those eyes . . . the things I see in them.” A low, harsh word. “I promised myself I wouldn’t push you, and what the fuck am I doing but exactly that? Jesus.” He shoved his hands through his hair, his shoulders twisting as if he’d turn, walk away.
And she knew the decision was hers. To hide, to pull back before promise ever broke under the pressure of reality . . . or to defy fear and reach for a man who made her wish for something so impossible, it was surely a little piece of madness.
“I would know you, Max.” Soft words in a voice that had already become exquisitely, intimately familiar, gentle bonds that held Max in place. “Before . . . I would know you.” Closing the distance between them, Sophia waited until he lifted his hand . . . and then she stroked her fingers across the very center of his palm.
It was an electric shock that went straight to Max’s gut. Hissing out a breath, he curled his fingers into a fist even as she dropped her own hand and took a jerking step backward.
“Sophia?” Deep-seated instinct shoved at him to go to her, cup her face in his hands. Keeping himself in position was the hardest thing he’d ever done. “Are you in trouble?” It savaged him that he might have hurt her.
“No. I apologize—I’m fine.” But she was staring at his hand, a quaver in her voice. “I felt none of your memories. You’re as blank as a piece of wood.”
Relief was a fucking fist inside his chest. “I’ve been called hardheaded before, but never wooden.”