“Oh, honey, no. If I’d been able, I would have come back for you, even if I had to crawl. I thought you were dead.”
“DeBruzkya did that to us,” she whispered. “I can’t let him get away with that. I’m sorry if that’s not what you want to hear, but I’m not going to let him walk away.”
“I’m not going to let you sacrifice yourself.” But even as he said the words, Robert could see she’d made up her mind. She had every intention of using her connection to DeBruzkya to take him down. He could feel his control over the situation slipping through his fingers, like sand through the inept fingers of a child. He was a doctor and scientist, a highly trained ARIES agent; he’d accomplished some amazing things. And yet something as simple—and as complex—as keeping this woman safe eluded him.
They were standing face-to-face with scant inches separating them. But Robert knew those inches were fraught with a chasm of pain. A chasm he had every intention of traversing no matter what the cost.
Need twisted brutally inside him, as painful as any wound, as dangerous as any bullet. He didn’t intend to kiss her. But one moment he was holding her lovely face in his hands, wanting—needing—to ease her suffering. And in the next instant his mouth was on hers. He tasted tears and grief, but both those things were laced with the heady spice of desire. And in an instant the moment transformed, from one human being comforting another to a man kissing a woman he cared deeply for.
The earth moved beneath his feet when she made a sound at the back of her throat and opened to him. He hadn’t expected her to kiss him back, and for an instant he was stunned. The rush of pleasure made him dizzy. He’d known kissing her would be good, but he hadn’t expected it to burn. He hadn’t expected it to shake his world. Turn him inside out. Make him forget all the reasons he couldn’t get involved with her.
He marveled at the silky feel of her tongue against his, the taste of almond and apricot mingling with the sweet taste of her mouth. Gentle was forgotten as desperation and the need to protect what was precious, the need to possess what was his, took over. She matched him strength for strength, returning everything he gave her and adding something more that was uniquely hers. The combination took his breath.
Robert wasn’t a fast lover. He preferred to take his time with a woman. But when she moved against him, when she sighed in his ear and made a mewling sound in her throat, his control broke. He ravaged her mouth. His teeth clicked against hers. He knew better than to rush this moment. But the urgency pushing through him was more powerful than any need for restraint. When she threw her head back, he kissed the delicate line of her jaw, her throat, the point of her chin. He ran his tongue along the ridge of her collarbone until she went liquid in his arms.
Aware that he was breathing hard, that his pulse was raging out of control, he took her hands in his and backed her toward the support beam a few feet away. All the while he kissed her deeply, never giving her respite or time to change her mind.
The support column stopped her backward progression, and he pressed against her. Her body was as soft and warm as a breath. His senses drank in the essence of her like a man dying of thirst. A few feet away, the fire seemed to swell and spark, filling the room with heat. Aware of the pump of blood through his veins, the hot burn of lust in his groin, he loosened the blanket she’d anchored just above her breasts. A violent shiver ran the length of her when it slipped down and dropped at her feet.
Her beauty impacted him solidly, humbling him, and for an instant he felt like an inexperienced teenager. “I’d forgotten how beautiful you are,” he said.
“You always make me feel like the most beautiful woman in the world.”
“You are.”
“Meaningless flattery.” She smiled, but he could see the zing of nerves in her eyes.
“Meaningful,” he corrected. “Very meaningful.”
Her body was familiar and yet it wasn’t. Her pregnancy had produced subtle changes that intrigued him so that he wanted to explore every exquisite inch of her. He touched the tiny mole just above her left breast and remembered touching it a hundred times before. He ran his fingers over the thin white scar on her right hip. The scar hadn’t been there before, and he wondered if the injury had been one of the horrors she’d suffered the night of the explosion. Wanting to take away all the old pain—the new pain, too—he touched it gently, lovingly, and tried to erase the injury it had left upon her heart.