Sanctuary Island (17 page)

Neither of them spoke, but the silence was perfectly comfortable.

Soon she realized that if she stood here much longer, staring up into his focused, interested, intense eyes, she was going to do something crazy.

Suddenly needing to move, she pushed away from the kitchen counter and found a smile. “So are you ready to head out?”

“Well, now, city mouse. We might be a touch more casual out here on the island, but I still probably need to put some real clothes on.”

He spread his arms out to the sides, holding the quilt at his back like a superhero cape, and Ella’s gaze dropped as if magnetized.

The chiseled lines of his bare chest were shadowed and mysterious in the dim morning light filtering through the window above the kitchen sink. A narrowing V of crisp, dark gold hair drew her eye down his flat, hard stomach, disappearing into his pants.

He’d obviously been in a hurry when he pulled on the faded pair of jeans, which hung low, exposing the cut of his lean hip bones. They were zipped, but he hadn’t bothered to do up the button at the top of the fly, and Ella felt all the blood in her body pooling low down in a languid, honeyed rush.

She didn’t even know she was planning to speak before she said, “Do you have to?”

Grady stilled, alert tension entering his big, rangy frame, like a stallion scenting the wind for danger.

Swaying toward him, Ella felt the core of herself warming to his nearness. Her body knew what it wanted and her mind … her mind was telling her she’d never felt this level of connection with another living soul. His quiet stillness called to her, made her feel safe and crazy and brave enough to take a huge risk, all at the same time.

The knowledge that this was every bit as big a risk for him pushed her forward.

She took a step toward him, holding her breath against the moment when Grady would take a step back. But he didn’t. He stood his ground, every muscle and sinew tensed, practically vibrating with stress—but he didn’t move.

He wasn’t wearing his gloves. But she’d seen him without the gloves already—felt the gentle scrape of his scar-roughened fingers along the back of her hand, the curve of her cheek—and Ella wanted more.

She wanted to see everything, to know all of him. On a level deeper than rational thought, she understood how difficult it would be for him to expose himself that way.

Baby steps, she decided, capturing Grady’s left hand, the one with the deeper scars, between both of her smaller, smoother hands. He didn’t resist, but he didn’t take over, either, as she cradled his hand and brought it up to her face.

Staring up into his set, expressionless face, Ella pressed his hard palm to her cheek.

The simple touch unleashed a shiver that coursed over the surface of her skin, and something flared hot and fierce in the depths of Grady’s eyes.

Light-headed, giddy, no thought in her brain except for him, Ella turned her face far enough to press a kiss to the center of his palm. The scarred skin was raised under her lips, a strange mix of smooth and rough.

“Do you feel that?”

His throat clicked when he swallowed. “The scars themselves are pretty numb. But the edges can be sensitive. Hard to tell pain from pleasure.”

That sounded like a challenge.

CHAPTER 16

Ella let go of his hand, satisfaction roaring through her when he didn’t pull away.

Nestling her cheek more firmly into the cup of his palm, she touched the part of his body that had been tugging at her attention since he’d first opened his door to her.

Her hands skimmed his lean waist, the taut flesh under her fingertips hot and silky, before her grip settled gently on the jut of his hip bones above the line of denim. She didn’t even try to stop her thumbs from finding the divots of his hips, the gorgeous planes of his muscular body drawing her in.

Grady shifted his weight under her touch. The muscles in his outstretched arm went tight, corded with trembling tension, but his touch on her face stayed soft and warm. Almost tender.

Keeping the caress light, she traced her way up over the bellows of his rib cage. His chest expanded and contracted under her hands as he sucked in an audible breath. “Ella, what are you…?”

“Shhh,” she hummed, the way she’d calmed the mare yesterday, and like magic, she felt some of the tension melt out of Grady’s body.

“I thought you wanted to get going,” he tried, his voice strangling on the rush of words. “Pour yourself some coffee and I’ll put on a shirt.”

Ella shook her head, skimming her fingers up, up, feeling the broad slabs of powerful muscle under her hands. “I like you like this.”

“Come on, quit playing around. I have to get dressed.” With a bitter twist to his mouth, he dropped his hand from her face and stepped away from her, hitching the quilt higher over his left shoulder. “I’m not going out like this—I don’t want to scare anybody.”

“Stop.” The sharpness of her voice startled Ella. Grady, too, if the way he paused and stared at her was any indication. “I mean it,” she insisted, her palms already aching with emptiness, the buzz of desire demanding that she get her hands back on him right now, immediately, if not sooner.

“Stop what?”

The genuine confusion on his face struck at Ella’s heart. It was a long moment before she could speak.

The words felt huge, too big to force out of her throat, but she managed it. “Nothing about you is ugly. I don’t know how you got those scars, but they’re part of you. I’m starting to know you, a little bit, and I promise—anyone who’d be turned off by any part of you isn’t worth your time.”

Grady stopped, eyes wide and intense on her face, and Ella lifted her chin. She meant every word, and she wouldn’t back down.

She saw the moment when his control evaporated. And as his lips brushed against her mouth, like a whisper, like a dream, his arms slid around her shoulders and Ella felt the whoosh as the quilt dropped to the floor.

*   *   *

Once, during location training in the Colorado mountains, Grady and his partner had gotten lost in a sudden fog so intense that it had turned the familiar forest training grounds into a thick, damp cloud full of hidden obstacles.

Trees and branches loomed out of nowhere to bash them in the face; rocks and gnarled tree roots leaped up from the ground to trip them. It had taken Grady and Tom seven hours of fumbling through the forest—the forest they would’ve sworn they knew like the back of their hands, the forest they had extensive maps of in their packs—before the fog finally lifted.

The moment when the fading afternoon sunlight finally speared through the dense gray and burned it away in a burst of blinding glory was etched into his memory for all time.

When Grady kissed Ella Preston in his kitchen, he felt his heart expand exactly the way it had that day in the forest.

She opened her mouth, inviting him in, and every thought was wiped from Grady’s mind in a blast of hunger.

For long moments, all he knew was the clean taste of her mouth, the soft heat of her body leaning into his chest, the silk of her hair tumbling over his hands—the thunder of blood through his veins, and the heavy throb between his thighs.

But then she wrapped her arms around his back and her fingers found the slashing edges of his worst scar, and it was like a bucket of cold water cascading over Grady’s head.

He jerked back, stumbling a little as his heel caught in the folds of the blanket at his feet.

“Don’t.” Grady swallowed, wishing his voice weren’t so wrecked. But there was nothing he could do about it.

Ella pressed her kiss-swollen lips into a brief line before making an obvious effort at a smile. “You’re right, I was pushing. I do that, sorry.”

Busy slowing down his heartbeat and getting his lungs under control, Grady didn’t have a lot of strength to spare for regulating his tone. “It’s fine. Let’s just go.”

She flinched a little, but caught herself before Grady could do more than drag in a breath to apologize. “No problem! Take all the time you need, if you want a shower or something … not that I’m saying you need one!”

“A shower might not be a terrible idea—preferably freezing cold.”

Grady watched as hectic pink flushed up her neck and into her cheeks. Squeezing her eyes shut tight, Ella said in a stifled voice, “I’ll wait in the car. I really am sorry.”

“You don’t need to apologize.” He was starting to feel stupid about overreacting to a simple kiss. So she touched his shoulder. Big deal. Not like plenty of doctors and nurses and physical therapists hadn’t touched it after the accident. Granted, it had been a while.

And not one of those medical professionals had made him feel the way Ella Preston did.

She huffed out a frustrated breath, face drawn and tight. “Oh really? I invited myself over, forced my way into your house while you were half asleep, and then climbed you like a tree. Seems pretty apologyworthy to me.”

When she put it like that, Grady felt embarrassment scorching the tips of his own ears. “I’m not mad about any of that. Promise. You can climb me anytime.”

She cut her eyes at him as she tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “So long as I don’t touch you. Right?”

Grady froze, not sure what to say. Before he could figure it out, Ella smacked a hand to her forehead and grimaced. “There I go again! Seriously, do you have a muzzle lying around anywhere? I’m an idiot. We barely know each other. I don’t have any right to pressure you about anything.”

Okay, they hadn’t known each other very long, but it had been an intense few days. Still, as dedicated as Grady was to living like today was the last day of his life, he wasn’t completely ready to strip himself bare for Ella.

Some adrenaline junkie he turned out to be. But he felt splayed open and raw; it was taking everything he had to stand in front of her with no shirt, no blanket, nothing to cover up the visible marks of his past.

But he already wanted to punch himself in the face for shying away from her touch.

“It’s fine,” he repeated firmly. “You startled me, but it’s not a problem.”

Ella sighed, looking away. “Yes it is. This was a mistake. My mistake.”

Suddenly, a cold shower seemed way less necessary. “A mistake,” he muttered, hearing the echo of her words after their first kiss, back on Jo Ellen’s front porch. “Let me guess. It didn’t mean anything, either.”

A spasm of memory crossed her pretty face. She looked like she wanted to duck her head, but instead, she met his glare with eyes wide open. A trickle of respect dripped through Grady’s anger.

“No.” Ella swallowed visibly. “This time … I didn’t mean for that kiss to happen, but I won’t pretend it meant nothing to me.”

His frozen heart kicked back to life. Nerves fired sporadically down his spine, making his skin buzz with awareness like the electricity in the air before a thunderstorm.

He wanted to tell her how long it had been for him—how long it had been since he believed he’d ever even want this again.

Closeness with another human being.

Throat working, heart hammering, all he could bite out was, “It meant something to me, too.”

She swayed toward him for one brief, charged moment, her hungry gaze dropping to his mouth. Grady’s fingers itched with the need to touch her, to wrap around her arms and pull her in close.

But instead of falling into him, Ella stepped back. Shaking her head, she said, “I can’t,” in this scratchy voice. “Grady. It’s not that I don’t want to—at this point, it would be stupid to pretend I’m not incredibly attracted to you. But my sister and I are leaving Sanctuary Island in a week and a half. If this meant nothing, then maybe I could go ahead with it, have some fun, and head back to Washington without a second thought.”

“I understand,” he told her. And he did.

Grady wondered when he’d turned into a naïve schoolgirl. He knew she was leaving. She’d never so much as hinted that she might stay. How had he let himself forget that this whole visit was nothing more than a reluctant vacation from her regularly scheduled life? None of this was real to her.

Trouble was, Ella was just about the most real thing Grady had seen in years.

“But I still need your help.” She turned pleading eyes on him, trying on a tremulous smile that only made him want to kiss her more. “Can you show me your Sanctuary, if I swear to keep my hands to myself?”

Grady did himself the favor of taking a moment to actually think about it. Being near Ella, showing her his island—that was going to be damn difficult, knowing that she had no intention of pursuing the simmering attraction between them.

Then again,
he mused as he watched her nervously tuck a lock of hair behind the delicate pink shell of her ear,
intentions change
.

He’d defy anyone to spend time on Sanctuary Island without falling in love with the place.

Grady didn’t question exactly why it was so important to him that Ella fall for the island. But it was—and showing off the place he loved most on earth to her wasn’t exactly going to be a chore.

As for being forced into close contact with her for days on end … well, maybe his original plan of counting on the magic of Sanctuary wasn’t such a crazy one, after all.

“Of course I’ll show you around the island.” The grin came easily, his heart lightening now that he had a plan. “I promised, didn’t I? Although your meddling mother gave me a talking-to about what kinds of things to show you. She won’t let me take you cliff jumping! Can you believe it?”

Ella’s eyes glazed over. “Cliff jumping,” she echoed faintly. “Dear Lord. Is that what you do for fun?”

Grady shrugged. “If you know the right spots, it’s safe enough. And what a rush! Okay, let me grab a shirt. You go on, get some coffee—we’ve got a lot to see before lunch.”

Ella smiled at him, face lit up like he’d handed her the moon, and Grady had to turn and almost bolt up the stairs to keep from grabbing her again.

The plan was to make her fall for the island, to let her come to him, like a wild yearling. He could be patient. He’d been trained to move carefully, with deliberation, keeping his senses alert for danger and mapping out trouble areas beforehand.