Forged in Fire (26 page)

She convulsed, clamping down, milking him as wave after wave of contractions swept through her. And then his own release slammed into him. He drove into her one last time, his balls tight against her ass and bucked—straining. His climax boiled up and out as he lodged himself deep, spilling himself into her swollen, convulsing depths.

Gave her everything he had to give. His seed. His heart.
His life
.

When he regained awareness, his cock still twitched. Tremors shook his arms. His knees were actually weak.

“Christ,” he said, shocked at the breathlessness of the word.

He rolled his sweaty forehead against her neck and breathed in the thick, earthy scent of strawberries and sex. Contentment spread through him. Finally. He had her exactly where he needed her. In his arms. Their bodies merged. Their minds mingling.

His cock, still locked within her sleek depths, twitched. His hips flexed.

She hummed in contentment. “I can’t believe we did it here. In a closet, for God’s sake. It’s a bad cliché.”

“It could be worse,” he murmured, licking the damp skin of her neck. “The towels will come in handy.”

The taste of her, salty and seasoned with strawberry hit him like a shot of whiskey. His cock hardened. His brothers hadn’t exaggerated the potency of the bond. It was a natural aphrodisiac. He thrust again, the door rattling behind them.

She groaned, her arms tightening around his shoulders. Her head turned, her mouth seeking the sweaty skin of his collarbone. He doubted he tasted nearly as good.

“Towels?” she repeated absently. Her thighs tightened around his hips and she arched into his next thrust. “What do towels have to do with anything?”

He grunted. Kept the roll of his hips slow and lazy. But the urgency was already building.

“For cleanup,” he managed. Christ, she felt so perfect. Sleek and hot and tight.

“Cleanup?” She gasped as he pushed into her again. “What do we need to clean—” Suddenly, her breath caught. She froze in his arms. “Why would we need to clean up?”

This time the question emerged sharp enough to skewer him.

Zane frowned at the change in her tone, but his hips were already moving.

Only this time his thrust tore a curse from her. She shoved two determined palms against his chest and leaned back. “Stop it.”

Shit
. But Zane’s hips stilled.

“What did you mean?”

He suspected she already knew, and didn’t like it. Her body had tightened to rigidity. He reached out with his mind, tried to reestablish that earlier connection between them, but she’d locked herself down tight.

“I didn’t wear a condom,” he told her carefully, hoping she hadn’t picked up on his fierce satisfaction.

She flinched. The link cracked open and allowed a wave of horror to roll through.

Hell
. His stomach tightened.

He’d never been so careless before. Never. Not even during the horny days of adolescence when he’d been a walking, talking erection. And Christ, he hadn’t planned this. Condoms simply hadn’t entered his mind. But the lack of protection wasn’t a big deal. If there were ramifications, they’d adjust their time table.

“You’ll want to clean up before we get dressed,” he said delicately, feeling like he was tiptoeing around an unstable batch of dynamite.

“Oh,
God
.” Her voice thinned. She banged the back of her head against the door.

Frowning, he ran a palm up the naked length of her spine. Her damp skin was already drying. Proof she was no longer in the mood.

Damn. He sighed, his cock still hard and twitchy inside her. “Look, it’s not a big deal. If you get pregnant we’ll get married immediately instead of waiting.”

Which suited him just fine.

A vision took root in his mind, an image of her belly rounding, filling with his child. Christ, he hoped she was pregnant, hoped she carried a little carbon copy of herself. A baby girl he could spoil for the rest of his life.

His cock swelled at the thought. His hips flexed. Except another wave of horror rolled through her. She shoved her hands hard against his chest.

“Are you crazy?” She tried to shimmy up his body, to disengage them, but she slipped. The movement drove his shaft deeper.

He groaned and leaned forward, pressing her into the door. Without volition his hips pushed forward, deepening the penetration.

Her breath escaped in a hiss. “Hell no! We are not doing this again. Let me down!”

“Then stop moving,” he gritted out.

Frustration boiled as she locked up in his arms, as inflexible as stone. He stepped back and her legs loosened, releasing him. As he pulled out of her he could feel the gush of fluid that followed—his and hers. Reaching out in the darkness, he snagged a towel off the closest shelf and pressed it into her hands.

His frustration eased as she took the cloth. Her hands were shaking and there was a panicked hitch to her breathing.

It was a damn shame he couldn’t read her thoughts now. At least then he’d know what the hell was going on in her mind. “Look if you’re worried about disease—”

She choked on a strangled sound. “It’s a little late for that, don’t you think?”

Frowning, he felt along the wall for the light switch. He needed to see her face. Figure out what the hell was going on.

She flinched as bright white light flooded the room. Avoiding Zane’s gaze, she dropped the towel she’d been using to mop between her legs and bent to snatch her blouse off the floor.

“Beth,” Zane said softly, his stomach tightening at the red flags burning across her cheekbones. Jesus, he didn’t want her ashamed of what had happened between them. He touched her arm, his stomach knotting even tighter as she jerked away.

Dropping his hand, he forced calmness into his voice. “Talk to me. What’s going on?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” She yanked up her underwear. Her slacks quickly followed, then her bra.

Zane watched with regret as those soft, sweet curves were hidden from view. “Not to me.”

“You didn’t wear a condom.”

He studied the shake in her fingers, the fragile paleness of her face. This wasn’t about a condom—or lack thereof.

“I’m clean, if that’s what you’re worried about. I haven’t infected you with anything.”

“Yeah, well. What if I’m not! This is stuff we should have talked about before, you know… we… well before.” She swooped down and snatched up her blouse, slipped it on.

Zane didn’t have the heart to tell her it was inside out. “I don’t care.”

Her head snapped up. Startled eyes locked on his face. “You what?”

“I don’t care if you infected me with something.”

Her eyes softened, filled with warmth. But just for a moment, then that odd panic flared again. “You should care. You don’t even know me.”

He swallowed a curse at the edge of hysteria in her voice, and flashed back to what he’d heard outside Ginny Clancy’s room. How Beth always broke things off before her relationships had a chance to develop. That skittishness had worked in his favor after she’d broken it off with her ex—since it had kept her single and uninvolved, but he couldn’t chance her retreating from
him
now. He needed to proceed with caution.

She must have really have loved the bastard to still be reacting to his betrayal after all these years.

He buried the sting of jealousy beneath a layer of calm. “Look sweetheart, if you’re pregnant, we’ll just get married sooner. If you—”

“I never said I’d marry you! We haven’t even known each other a full day. It’s too soon to think about marriage.”

The need to touch her, to soothe her, to reestablish their bond, overrode his caution. He stepped up, took her hands. “We know the important things about each other. The rest will come.”

“Really?” Her voice went eerily flat, her hands utterly lifeless between his. “What’s my favorite color? Where do I live? Do I like my job? How many kids do I want?”

He squeezed her fingers. “Those aren’t the important things.”

“How many kids I want isn’t important?” She wrenched her hands free.

“That’s not what I meant.”

“You don’t know anything about me,” she continued in that emotionless monotone, her gaze never straying from his face.

Frustration rose, and his voice emerged harsher than he’d planned. “I know you don’t like lying. You do the right thing, no matter what it costs you. You’re loyal, you’d go through hell and back for your friends. I know you’re practical. That you’ll stand up for yourself when you have to. I know you have a core of compassion.” His gaze dropped to her belly. “I know you’ll make a wonderful mother.”

There was no change in her expression. “And you know all this, how? By this soul mate connection you claim we share?”

His jaw tightened at the disbelief in her tone. “I don’t deny I recognized you the moment you stepped into the gate room, but the qualities I listed didn’t come through our connection. They came through observation.”

“We don’t have a connection. What we have is good ol’ fashioned lust, which isn’t enough to build a marriage on.”

A flash of hurt mixed with his frustration. How could she so easily dismiss what they’d shared only moments before? Zane studied her tight face. There was a hell of a lot more between them than lust, but she wasn’t going to believe that. Not anytime soon.

“Marriage is hard enough when the couple’s in love.” A distant look filtered through her eyes. “When they know each other, when they accept each other’s foibles.” Her gaze focused again, centered on his face. “You don’t even know what my foibles are.”

He frowned, rocked on the balls of his feet, and his scrub bottoms slipped down to his ankles. For the first time, he realized he was standing there naked. He bent over to yank them up.

“What I feel for you goes deeper than lust. We’re connected.”

Her snort of disbelief hung in the small room.

He turned to her, his hands fisting at his sides. “We’re connected, Beth. Whether you’ll admit it or not, there is a link between us. You felt it when I was inside you. You felt me in your head, just as I felt you inside mine.”

She frowned, dropped her gaze. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Bullshit.” He stepped forward, caught her chin and forced it up. “You were picking up on my thoughts, just like I was picking up on yours. That’s part of the bond. The connection we share. It will strengthen as we spend more time together. You can deny it all you want, but in your heart you know we’re connected.
You felt it.
”

She jerked her chin loose and stumbled back. “I didn’t feel anything other than lust. Do you seriously think some mystical connection is going to hold us together once the chemistry fades? I bet your family is full of divorces.”

He ungritted his teeth. “That mystical connection, as you call it, is exactly why my family has never had a divorce. Not one. My parents just celebrated their fortieth anniversary.” An edge sharpened his tone. “You’re big on knowing each other? Well, the men and women in my family know their partners at a deeper level than what you’re talking about. They can share thoughts, share minds, share emotions. You can’t hide anything when you share a consciousness. That exchange while I was inside you is just a taste of what we could have.”

“But it’s not real,” she whispered.

“It’s a hell of a lot more real than your version of love. And I can damn well guarantee you’d never find me in a closet with another woman.”

She flinched, dismay overtaking the flatness as she realized he’d heard her conversation with Ginny Clancy.

Swearing, he reined his temper in. “Look—”

She didn’t wait around for his apology. Instead, she scrabbled for the door handle, yanked the door open and fled before he could stop her. Zane started after her, but the memory of her face stopped him. He wasn’t going to convince her of anything while emotions were flying high. Swearing, he spun around, fought the urge to drive his fist through the wall.

He hadn’t lost her. Once she calmed down and had a chance to think, to remember, to relive what had just happened between them, she’d realize how special it had been. He needed to back off. Let her come to that realization on her own.

Logically, he knew letting her go was the smart thing to do. So why did it feel like he was making the biggest mistake of his life?

Chapter Twenty

Beth fled the closet, panic rising like a flash flood. With each step, liquid trickled down the inside of her thighs. The uncomfortable, wet stickiness reminded her of what had happened. What she’d let happen. What she’d actively encouraged and participated in.

Her mother’s face rose in her mind, the deep lines of exhaustion creasing her forehead and bracketing her mouth. The dull cast to skin wan from too much time spent indoors. She remembered the way her mother would stagger into the living room between shifts and collapse into their broken-down recliner, soaking her aching feet, too tired to get up and head into her bedroom for a nap.

Raising a child on her own, with no emotional or monetary support, had leeched the life out of her. She’d been so busy providing everything—a home, food, clothing, health care, the hundreds of odds and ends a family needed to survive—that she’d stood on the sidelines while life drifted by.

Although, in truth, life hadn’t passed her by. It had ground her up instead, drained every ounce of strength and ambition, and then spit her out. Surviving from day to day had withered away Rebecca Brown’s energy reserves until she’d had nothing left with which to fight the cancer that had eventually taken her life.

After everything she’d witnessed her mother go through, how could she have been so foolish? How could she have made the same mistake?

She’d promised herself she’d be more careful, that she’d make sure her children were born into a committed relationship. That she’d protect herself and her children by making sure their father stuck around for the long haul.

Her experience with Brad had reinforced lessons burned into her through her childhood. But at least with him she hadn’t had to worry about an unplanned pregnancy. She’d gone on birth control long before they’d become lovers. But then she’d never gone up in flames with Brad, either. Or lost control, or allowed passion to sweep her away. Unlike Zane, who’d swept her away so completely, she hadn’t even thought about birth control.

Hadn’t thought about anything except feeling him move inside her.

Her steps slowed. Her hands dropped to cup her belly. Was their child already growing inside her? A dark-haired, green-eyed little boy?

She flashed back to that odd vision while he’d been carrying Kyle.

Or a dark-haired, purple-eyed little girl?

Some deep maternal instinct whispered
yes
. She was carrying his child.

The hard knot in her chest loosened beneath an unexpected surge of warmth. Of wonder.

She’d always wanted children, had enjoyed Kyle’s company during her visits as much as she’d enjoyed Ginny’s. She loved watching the world through Kyle’s innocent eyes. Loved his uncomplicated take on life. Yeah, she’d always wanted kids.

Only not like this. On her own. Unprepared. In the same situation her mother had been in. Although….

Beth frowned, her steps slowing even further. She wasn’t actually in the same situation. Her mother had been uneducated and ill-prepared for the job market. She’d never finished high school, nor had she gone back to pick up a GED. Her lack of education had convinced her the only jobs she was qualified for were menial ones. Jobs that paid little better than minimum wage, which meant she had to pick up extra shifts, or second jobs in order to support them. Perhaps, if Beth’s father had been alive… but he’d died within months of the divorce, leaving her mother to struggle along on her own.

But if her mother had tried for a higher-paying job, she wouldn’t have had to work so many extra hours. A job like, say, clerical support at PacAtlantic.

While far from exciting, her job as engineering support boasted a generous salary and excellent benefits. She wouldn’t need to work extra shifts to make ends meet. In fact, she made more than enough money to support a family. Plus, the company’s medical insurance would cover any clinic bills. Sure, once the maternity leave was up, she’d have to find some kind of child care, but she’d be able to afford that as well.

In fact, raising this child alone would be imminently possible. Monetarily, at least.

Emotionally was a different matter. Raising a child by herself would be exhausting. The nightly feedings, walking the floor when the baby was colicky or fussing. The helplessness and worry when the baby was sick.

Zane’s calm face rose in her mind. He’d insisted what he felt for her was more than lust, insisted they shared a connection beyond the physical. If she were pregnant, she wouldn’t be raising this child on her own. Zane wouldn’t let her. He’d just keep coming back—calmly, assuredly, ignoring her attempts to push him away.

He’d be there for her and their child, whether she wanted him to or not.

And it wouldn’t matter if they were married, or living together, or not sharing a home at all. He would always be there for her. Just as he’d been there for Cosky when he’d needed help painting Marion’s house, just as he’d been there for Ginny and Kyle and Chastain’s family when they needed rescuing.

Zane had a core of honor which made him incapable of skirting his responsibility, even when the responsibility wasn’t actually his. The knowledge settled, warm and comforting, inside her: Zane would never abandon his child, or his child’s mother. He’d come running with one phone call.

Of course, how long it took him to arrive depended on multiple variables. Like how far away he was and whether a phone call would even reach him. Best-case scenario? He lived in San Diego. It would take him hours to arrive in an emergency and how often would he actually make it up to visit? A half-dozen times a year? Plus, he faced deployment at a moment’s notice, missions which could last for months at a time. No matter what, she’d still be raising this child on her own.

You could marry him
, an insidious voice whispered,
at least you’d be with him when he was on base. Your child would have a father more than a couple of times a year.

Assuming he made it back from those deployments. SEALs took the most dangerous missions. No matter how highly trained, how imminently capable, there was always the possibility they wouldn’t return.

Her thoughts shifted to Cosky. Those bullets could have brought Zane down just as easily. It could be Zane fighting for his life in the ER. Someday, it probably would be. If she married him, how often would she be waiting in a hospital, terrified of what the surgeon might say? How many times would their children have to fear they’d lost their father?

The urge to run hit. To escape this man who made her body hunger in ways she didn’t understand. Who wrung emotions from her she didn’t want to feel. Who was dangerous to her in the most elemental of ways.

Before things have a chance to develop, you back off. You claim you want a relationship based on trust, forged from friendship, yet you break things off before anything has a chance to develop
.

Beth stopped dead in the hall and scrubbed her hands down her face. Oh God. Was Ginny right?

Here was a good man, an honest man, a dependable man. A sexy-as-hell man, who curled her toes and gave her chills and only had eyes for her. Who’d made it crystal clear he wanted to marry her, to start a family with her. Who insisted she was his soul mate.

Yet she was the one in full flight. She was the one throwing up excuses as to why they shouldn’t be together.

Wasn’t there something wrong with this picture? Why wasn’t she giving him a chance?

She raised shaky hands and pressed them against her temples. She might lie to Zane, but she couldn’t lie to herself. Something had passed between them in that closet. Something beyond sex. She had recognized him inside her mind, had heard his thoughts, experienced his hunger.

In the distance, down the long white corridor, a male figure in periwinkle scrubs ambled toward her. Was he a surgeon, on his way to update the others about Cosky or Mac?

Which brought to mind Zane’s teammates. It would be difficult to find two more suspicious men than Cosky and Mac. Yet Cosky had trusted Beth’s nightmare and taken down the hijacker at the airport—all because Zane’s intuition had warned them something was about to happen. Mac had contacted the feds on nothing more substantial than Zane’s supposed dream. For such cold, pragmatic men to trust Zane’s psychic abilities so completely… well, those abilities must have come into play before, and often enough to instill immediate belief. Immediate trust.

And Zane claimed that ability… that same psychic intuition had recognized her.

Something
had
happened in that closet. She
had
heard his voice inside her head.…

Maybe, it was time to stop running. Maybe, just maybe, she should turn around and see where this connection between them led. She didn’t have to marry him. She didn’t have to decide anything right now. They had time to get to know each other. She’d just let things flow, and see what developed.

Dropping her hands, she started to turn when the approaching figure in the periwinkle scrubs caught her attention. Beth frowned, watching him stride closer. Something about the way he moved looked familiar. He walked with a loose amble, a roll through the hips and knees—unhurried—which seemed odd for a doctor in a trauma unit.

Her frown deepened as she watched him come closer. It wasn’t just his walk that seemed so familiar. His structure did too; the length of torso to limbs, the breadth of shoulders. It was the shoulders that clicked the memory into place. Russ Branson had been built like that. Long legs, long arms. Quarterback shoulders, on a computer geek’s frame.

A chill of unease prickled. Her gaze lifted to his face. Russ Branson had worn glasses, and combed his hair to the side instead of back, but the thin face and angular nose looked the same. So did the mahogany hair.

She flashed back to Zane’s reaction to the man. Something about Russ had set off Zane’s internal alarm. He’d been suspicious of her Good Samaritan immediately. What if Russ’s actions had never been about rescuing her? What if there had been a more insidious reason behind his interference? The hijacker who’d grabbed her would never have escaped the airport. He’d been surrounded by male passengers. What if Russ had stepped into the fray to silence a possible leak? He’d killed her attacker, after all. Zane had even mentioned how difficult it was to kill someone by hitting them over the head.

Trying to act casual, she turned and headed down the corridor at a brisk pace. Every instinct she possessed screamed she needed to find Zane. Now. The impact of her shoes bounced between the walls. Yet, nothing echoed behind her. Nothing at all.

The man trailing her moved as silently as a ghost.

Which wasn’t natural… unless… well, unless he had some kind of stealth training. Like Zane and his teammates.

She swallowed hard, increasing her pace. She was imagining things—that’s all. Even if Russ Branson had been involved in the aborted hijacking, why show up here? He wouldn’t be able to take control of the flight, so the hostages would be useless to him. It made no sense to risk exposure by showing up here, by showing up now.

Ergo, it wasn’t him. Her imagination was running wild. They’d have a good laugh over her panic attack once she reached Zane’s side.

She was still trying to convince herself of that when a hand landed on her shoulder, tightened and swung her around, slamming her up against the tile wall. With a deep breath, she filled her lungs and prepared to scream. He slapped his palm over her open mouth and leaned into her with such pressure she couldn’t close her jaw to bite him.

“Tsk. Tsk,” Russ said with a cold chuckle. “No biting. Do you feel that?”

Something hard and cold dug into her side.

“It’s fully loaded. The cartridge holds eight rounds, but I only need one. I’m a very good shot.” It wasn’t a boast, more a statement of fact. “Of course, from this distance a toddler wouldn’t miss.” Something dark and haunted slipped through the brown eyes above hers. “But a toddler wouldn’t know human anatomy. For example—” The gun dropped a couple of inches and dug back into her side. “If I were to pull the trigger here, the bullet would sever the hepatic artery leading into your liver. You’d bleed out in seconds. Which would be rather ironic, don’t you think, considering you’re seconds from the ER?” Flat eyes watched her face. “Trust me. Nobody would reach you in time.” He lifted an eyebrow. “You ready to play smart?”

When she nodded, the pressure against her side eased. “Excellent. I’m going to let go of your mouth. One scream, and you’re dead.”

Beth stared into his utterly cold, utterly empty eyes. She was dead, anyway. Scream or no scream, he had no intention of letting her live. Once she served whatever purpose he had planned, she would be as disposable as Todd, as his co-conspirator at the airport.

On the other hand, her scream would warn Zane and Rawls.

He must have read her intentions on her face, because he smiled. A chilling, anticipatory stretch of thin lips. “Go ahead. That SEAL of yours will come running. It will be easy to take him out. He’ll have no cover, while I’ll have you. He can wait for you at Saint Peter’s gate. Assuming that’s where you’ll both be headed.” A flash of rage flitted across his angular face and melted the chill from his eyes. “Go ahead. Scream. The bastard deserves a couple of rounds for all the trouble he’s caused me.”

Ice washed through her. He was right. Zane would come running and die the moment he rounded the bend. He’d never risk shooting if there was a chance of hitting her and if Russ used her as a shield….

“What do you want?” she asked when his hand dropped from her mouth. To think she’d thought him so nice at the airport, to think she’d thought he was her type.

“I want Amy Chastain.” He wrapped hard fingers around her elbow and jerked her around until they faced the opposite direction. “Amy, unfortunately, is difficult to reach and I don’t have time to wait until she’s released from this damn place. So, you, my dear Beth Brown, are my bargaining chip. If Zane Winters wants to see you again, he’ll trade you for Amy.”

Beth digested that as he tugged her back the direction they’d come. Where was Zane? The closet was just down the hall and around the bend. Had he gone back to the waiting room? Or had he headed out to look for her?