CROSSFIRE (27 page)

Shadows flickered against the valley of his eyes, the fading bruise. "I lied."

She stopped moving, stopped breathing. "About what?"

He slid a hand up her neck, to cup the side of her face. "About what I wanted."

Emotion jammed in her throat. "The admission?"

His hold on her tightened. "I thought I knew," he said. "When your father asked me to fly to
Calgary
, I thought, ah, finally.
Elizabeth
won't be able to run from me this time."

The call of survival demanded that she pull away, put distance between them, quit drowning in the feel of his body pressed to hers.

An equally strong call kept her in place.

"But then we were in the plane," he gritted out, "and we started going down…"

Memories came whizzing back, of those frantic moments when the plane had gone quiet and they'd sunk through the sky, the unwavering calm and determination with which Wesley had wrestled the Lear. Wrestled destiny. Her heart had hammered violently against her ribs, and yet, calm had blanketed her.

"If anyone else had been flying that plane," she whispered, "I wouldn't be standing here right now."

He skimmed a finger along her cheekbone. "Sweet God, Elizabeth. They say when you face death, when your time is up, that your whole life will flash before your eyes. That you'll see moments from your past, glimpses of a future you may never have."

She lifted a hand to his face, eased the dark blond hair from his cheekbones. "That's only natural."

"But that's not what I saw!" He tore away from her, backed away. "I saw you, damn it! Your life, not mine. I saw you that first day in your father's office, in that chic little pantsuit that shouldn't have been sexy, but was. I saw you the first time you flew the Lear by yourself, the thrill on your face when we left the ground and took flight." He paused, swore softly. "At your sister's grave," he added, and his voice broke. "That day you asked me to take you there. You tried to be so brave, damn it. You went down on your knees and laid the daisies against the tombstone, all the while trying not to cry."

Shock paralyzed her. "Wesley—"

"Do you know what that did to me?" he demanded. "Do you know how hard it was to stand there and be your bodyguard, to watch you struggle not to fall apart, and not step forward and pull you into my arms?"

Oh, God. The room started to spin. Blindly
Elizabeth
reached for the pedestal and braced herself, struggled to understand.

"And then," he continued, "and then the night that changed everything." His eyes were hot again, burning. His hands curled into tight fists. "I saw you walk toward the stage in black leather. Saw you inside my pathetic little kitchen, fighting to get my clothes off as fast as I took yours off. Saw you beneath me. Saw you over me. Saw you come undone."

Deep inside, something broke and gave way. She struggled for breath, but it wouldn't come. Words, but they wouldn't form.

"You," he ground out. "You're all I saw."

And she couldn't do it. Couldn't just stand there and listen, not when every word he said lashed at her heart with an intensity she'd never known possible. "Wesley," she said, and went to him, didn't hesitate, just pushed up on her toes and took his mouth with hers, poured all the broken edges inside of her, all that desire so long denied, into a kiss that had nothing to do with sex, but everything to do with the emotion she'd faced in the mirror upstairs.

"All I wanted," he said against her open mouth. "You."

"I'm here," she said, twining her arms around him. "I'm not going anywhere."

The kiss changed then, slowed, deepened. Before, he'd removed the pins from her hair one at a time, but now he fumbled with the twist, threaded his fingers through the long strands until they came tumbling against her shoulders.

"So beautiful," he murmured, and pulled back to look at her. Candlelight danced across his wide cheekbones, emphasized the deep set to his eyes. They glowed now, shone like a light from which she could never turn. "So damn beautiful."

Everything inside her reached for him, wanted. Ached. "Don't make me wait," she whispered, lifting her face to his. She'd been waiting too long. "Make love to me, Wesley. Make me lose control."

Before she simply shattered.

For a moment he just looked at her, looked hard. "Be careful what you ask for," he said in that hypnotic voice of his, then moved with a lightning quick stealth. He had her in his arms before she'd realized he moved, then turned and carried her through the flickering light of the candles.

* * *

This was when he woke up. This was when he always, always woke up, body straining, tangled in the sheets, right there on the brink. Alone, though. The bed empty, Mean Joe and Ditka having long since abandoned the war zone for safer terrain.

He would lie there in the darkness, breathing hard, as though he'd just been through rigorous physical conditioning rather than about to make love to the only woman who'd ever stolen his breath and stopped his heart.

There were never candles. There was never the scent of vanilla. And God help him, she was never still in his arms by the time he reached her bedroom, watching him with those fascinating eyes, filled with a mixture of desire and vulnerability that could tangle a man up for the rest of his life.

Her antique four-poster bed waited in the middle of the room, the deep purple comforter already turned back. Moonlight streamed in through a nearby window, mixing with the candlelight. She'd done this for him, he realized. When he'd sent her upstairs to put on the dress, she'd readied more than just herself. She'd readied her room. Her bed.

Never in his wildest imaginings had he foreseen this.

He wasn't waking up tonight. He wasn't going to sleep. He wasn't dreaming. He was … living. Loving.

The word speared deep, but he ignored the flash of pain, focused instead on the amazement. Very slowly he lowered her to the plush cream carpeting, all the while keeping her in the circle of his arms. He had a promise to keep.

A dress to remove.

She smiled up at him, slowly, provocatively, blasting the remnants of the control that had started to crumble downstairs. Downstairs? Hell, who was he trying to kid? What little control he possessed had long since shattered, not while the plane was plunging toward the earth, nor when he'd seen her up on the stage in Calgary, not when she'd had him kicked out of her engagement party, not when they'd made love, but farther back still, the moment she'd walked into her father's study.

From that day on he'd been toast.

Now need ripped through him like a blowtorch. He looked at her standing there in the moonlight, the ambassador's beautiful, untouchable daughter, with her hair falling around her face and that killer black dress hugging her body, and reminded himself to go slow, be gentle. He'd already screwed up once. His passion had been too hot, and he'd sent her running as far and fast as she could.

This time he planned to show her in excruciating detail just how good it could be. They could be.

Moonlight whispered across her face, played with her shoulders. "I like," he said, teasing his finger over the glittery sparkles. Then the pearls. "You remembered."

She pushed up on her toes, brushed a kiss across his lips. "I thought you might want to take them off, too."

He almost lost it right there. Instead he lifted the iridescent strand and fingered the pearls.

"I think," he said slowly, then lifted his eyes to hers. "I'll leave them on."

* * *

Dark promise glowed in his gaze, making
Elizabeth
's knees go weak. He would leave them on. Leave the pearls around her neck, while he took everything else off. "What will you leave on?" she asked in return.

He skimmed his hand to the back of her neck, where the clasp of her dress waited. "What do you want me to leave on?"

That was easy. The answer whispered free, brought with it a sense of freedom she'd never known. "Nothing."

"My shirt maybe?" he asked, fingering the clasp.

Narrowing her eyes, she went to work on the buttons of the wrinkled button down. "No."

"My jeans?" he asked, skimming his other hand to the small of her back, where the zipper waited.

"No," she murmured, releasing the last button. She put her palms to the hard planes of his stomach and slid upward, over his chest to his shoulders, where she eased the white cotton from his arms, smiling at the barbwire tattoo circling his right bicep. She'd dreamed of that tattoo, of putting her mouth to it and—

The scar jarred her. She'd seen it before, in the hotel room in
Calgary
, the nasty slash where a bullet had ripped in beneath his shoulder. Only a few inches lower and he would never have rocked her world again. He wouldn't be standing here now, about to slide the dress from her body and make her forget everything but the moment, the man.

"I wanted to do this in
Calgary
," she admitted, putting her mouth to the scar. There she kissed, gently. "I wanted to do this two years ago."

Wesley just stood there. "
Elizabeth
, don't."

"Don't what?" She glanced up at him. "Kiss you? Tell you the truth?"

Don't break my heart.
The answer gleamed in his eyes, but he gave it no voice. "Don't cross lines you don't want to cross."

"I'm not," she said, then returned her mouth to the hot, jagged flesh of his scar.

He swore softly, then turned her in his arms, so that he faced her back. She felt his warm breath fan against her flesh, and shivered. His mouth came next, skimming along the exposed flesh of her shoulders. "A sock, maybe?"

She absorbed the feel of his rough hands skimming along her body with a gentleness that made her want to cry, not knowing what came next, and loving every second of it.

"I thought you wanted nothing between us," she reminded.

He slid a hand lower, to the curve of her waist, the small of her back, lower, then finally, at last, with his other hand flicked the clasp at her neck and released the black halter.

She almost came unglued right then and there, had never wanted anything more than she wanted this night with this man. And more. With a steadiness she didn't come close to feeling, she turned, let the slinky fabric of her dress slide down her chest, baring breasts she'd not covered with a bra.

His eyes went dark. "
Elizabeth
."

It was just her name, the name she'd been called all her life, but the way he said it, the way he looked at her, curled through her like a seductive mist. Everything inside her tingled, melted. Wanted. "Wesley," she whispered, then urged him down for another kiss. Their mouths met, melded. All that hot, untamed emotion inside of her, she poured it into the kiss, wanting him to know, but not knowing how to say. "Please."

Against the small of her back she felt his other hand, felt the slide of the zipper. The dress loosened against her body, slipped against her hips.

Anticipation licked hotter. Her heart hammered hard. She fumbled with the fly of his jeans, worked his zipper down. "Not yet," he muttered, tearing his mouth from hers and stepping back. The slinky black fabric slid down her body, pooled at her feet, leaving her standing there in strappy black sandals and thong panties, and nothing else.

Once,
Elizabeth
would have rushed to cover herself, she would have caved into herself, grabbed the nearest blanket. But now she lifted her chin, let a slow smile curve her lips.

For a moment Wesley did nothing. He just stood there in a puddle of moonlight, shirtless with his jeans unzipped, and looked at her. Never before had a gaze felt so much like an intimate caress. She shivered, itched to step closer and slide the hair from his face, see the depths of his eyes.

But he did that then, shoved the hair from his cheekbones and scorched her with his eyes. They were hot and burning, as always, but the light of the candles revealed a tenderness that lashed at her heart. And the moisture. Oh, the moisture. It glinted in his eyes, looked dangerously close to tears.

Never in her life had she felt so beautiful. So wanted. So … cherished.

"In the still of the night," he murmured in that crushed-velvet voice of his, and everything inside her went still. The song, she knew. He'd written it for her. "When the world has gone to sleep, she'll come to me then. She'll come to me still."

Emotion jammed into her throat. "Wesley—"

The hair fell back against his cheekbones. "It's a dangerous impulse," he went on, singing softly, achingly softly, "to touch the shadows, to make love to the past, and somehow think it could be the future."

Her heart thrummed hard. "A dangerous impulse," she echoed, and closed the distance between them. "The only kind worth indulging."

And then it was all over. All the waiting, the anticipation, the longing. He folded her in his arms, took her mouth with his. The kiss was hot and hard and devastating, all that unchained emotion channeled into a melding of their mouths. She kissed him back with everything she had, knowing no matter how hard she tried, she would never be close enough to this man. Never make up for what she'd done to him before.