I would never get to kiss Jace again.
All at once, the air seemed too thick to breathe. I was going to marry Brian, and he would want to kiss me, but that would never be like kissing Jace, and every time he tried it, I would remember what kissing was supposed to feel like.
I was going to spend the rest of my life married to Brian but thinking about Jace. Because that was the right thing to do, and I’d made far too many bad decisions recently. But before that happened, I had to know...
“Is it hard for you to say no to me?”
“You know damn well it is.” He stepped closer, and I sucked in a short breath.
“I’ll try to make it easier.”
He chuckled, and the sound slid down my spine to pool in more sensitive places. “I don’t think you even know how.”
That was true. I had no idea what I was doing. All I knew was that Jace was the only thing in that cellar that didn’t terrify me. As little sense as it made, he felt safe and right. Even though every word he said and every look he gave me shortened the fuse on a bomb that would eventually explode and take us both straight to hell.
“I’m not doing it on purpose. I just...”
“I know.” Jace closed the space between us, and his hand slid behind my head. “Some things just can’t be helped.” He leaned down, and I closed my eyes as his mouth met mine. Jace took a slow taste of my lower lip, and when he pulled away I rose onto my toes, chasing him without thought.
Wrong or not, I needed more.
I touched my lip, trying to pretend I could still feel his touch, and when I looked up, the heat in Jace’s eyes burned right through me.
He bent toward me again, and that kiss wasn’t sweet or slow. It was fiery, and hungry, and desperate. It was his hand in my hair and mine on his neck. It was lips, and tongues, and even a little teeth. That kiss was a problem—no use pretending otherwise—and no wrong in the world had ever felt more right.
Finally, Jace tore himself away from me and stepped back, panic alive in his eyes. As if that kiss might never have ended at all if it hadn’t ended right that second.
My heart beat so hard, my chest ached. Everywhere he’d been touching me a second before felt suddenly cold and aching. I wanted nothing more out of life in that moment than to rise onto my toes and kiss him again.
“There. Now we’re even.” He was breathing too hard. His eyes were dilated and his fists were clenched, as if he wanted to reach for me but was fighting the urge. “You messed up, and I messed up. That couldn’t be helped, but now it’s over. This is over, Abby.”
I nodded, because he was right. Whatever this was, it had to be over. “Okay. Now what?”
“Now I take care of that.” He gestured over his shoulder at the bulletin board, and that time, when I stared at the creepy pictures of myself, it was to get him out of my head. To forget what we’d just done. Again.
“You don’t need to see any of this. Go upstairs and let me—”
“No.” I frowned, still staring at the board. Something was…off.
“Just let me clean this up, and you can...”
I didn’t hear the rest, because he’d just identified the problem without even knowing it. “This shouldn’t be here,” I murmured, still scanning the pictures.
“That’s why I want you to go upstairs.”
“No, this shouldn’t be here now,” I insisted. “That bulletin board is proof of stalking, which would tell any cop worth his badge that what happened here was more than an animal mauling. If those pictures were hanging when the police came, they would have taken them as evidence.”
“You think someone put these up after the cops left?”
I shrugged. “Or someone put them back up.”
“Maybe they left a signature.” Jace leaned over the table, careful not to touch it. He inhaled deeply, then moved down the length of the wood, taking in all the scents. “There are too many to distinguish. Strays. Several of them. And at least half a dozen humans. A couple match the scents from the bedroom—they probably belong to the occupant. I assume the rest belong to the police.”
“Wouldn’t cops have worn gloves?”
“Good cops would have. Assuming they recognized this as a crime scene. But if the pictures weren’t here when the police were, they probably just saw this as some hunter’s man cave.” He shrugged, forehead furrowed. “I have no way of knowing which scents belong to the good guys and which belong to the bad guys.”