Shock Waves (17 page)

He told himself to stop. He told himself this was not the right time, not the right woman. But as he
stared down into
her heavy-lidded eyes, darker now, like sapphires against ivory velvet, he also told himself to shut the hell up.

Then he kissed her. Slowly. Tenderly. A mere brush of mouth
to
mouth. “Shock waves,” he muttered, then went in for more.

Chapter 10

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B
renna waited for the tight grip of panic. The wave of revulsion. That desperate, clawing sensation in her throat. The blind need to push him away, to twist from the prison of his arms and put space between them. To breathe.

But none of it came.

Instead she did something she never thought she’d do again. She curled her arms around his waist, held on tight and kissed him back. Because his arms weren’t a prison, and his mouth didn’t punish. In his embrace she didn’t feel stifled or dominated. She didn’t feel threatened. There was only pleasure, gentle waves rolling through her like the turquoise tide washing against the glowing white sand.

And God help her, she wanted.

She wanted this kiss, this moment. She wanted this man. She wanted everything that she’d told herself she couldn’t have, a normal life, a normal relationship, normal intimacies with a man, not muddied and soiled by the ugliness of touch.

Shock waves,
he’d murmured, and she felt them. Not the dark violent kind that normally ripped through her like the vicious cut of a sickle, but slow, persuasive. Drugging almost. Making her ache to feel everything, all those hazy sensations she’d grown not to trust.

His mouth moved against hers with a strength that was both tender and strong. He urged her to open to him, explored her, tentatively at first, then more boldly, as though the same rhythm that drummed through her possessed him, as well.

From somewhere deep inside, she heard the hum, the low sound of pleasure and desire, and it staggered her. She leaned into him, drank of him, wanted … him. Intimate strangers, they were. She’d been sharing her bed with him for weeks, waking with the burning ache, the relentless need to find the man who ruled the dark hours she spent alone in her bed, twisting, turning, crying out when in dreams she saw him go down. Not because he was a good man and didn’t deserve to die, but because—

Because what? It made no sense to want a man she didn’t know, to burn for him. Not even to her, a woman who lived in a world that made sense to no one around her. She knew things, saw things, felt things that most people called nonsense. Hocus-pocus. Witchcraft.

The draw she felt toward Ethan Carrington defied not only logic but it defied the parameters of her world, the rules she’d tacked into place to prevent the disillusionment from striking again, that bottomless, suffocating feeling of standing on the outside looking in, while life danced on without her, no matter how hard she pounded her fists. No matter how much she bled. No matter how much she hurt. Or wanted.

“Not going to let him hurt you,” Ethan murmured against her open mouth. He changed the angle of his, pressing his lips deeper against hers as his hand slid inside the open back of the dress Jorak Zhukov had insisted she wear. It was slinky and skimpy and clung to Brenna’s body in a way nothing ever had before. She’d slipped it on then stared at herself in the mirror, cringing the second she’d realized the direction of her thoughts.

Maybe if Ethan Carrington saw her like this, in a sophisticated black dress with her hair combed and a soft blush of
makeup on her face, he’d look at her the way he’d looked at the woman in the picture.

She moaned again, low from her throat, where the truth stuck like glue. She wanted Ethan to look at her like that, with that warm glow in his eyes, the reverence that made her heart ache.

The truth she thought again, and this time moisture stung her eyes.

Wanting was dangerous. She knew that, no matter how tempting it felt to have Ethan’s roughened hand skim the exposed flesh of her back, to feel his fingertips brush low, to imagine them brushing elsewhere. God help her, she’d learned. And she’d hurt.

But she wouldn’t cry. Not again. Not over Ethan, she thought, ignoring the ache in her heart. Not over a life she was better off not wanting.

Because wanting didn’t matter. She knew that. She’d wanted her mother to stay in her life, but that hadn’t stopped her from leaving. She’d wanted the kids at school to accept her. She’d wanted the police to believe her. She’d wanted Adam to love her.

She’d wanted her grandmother to slip from this world peacefully in her sleep, at the end of a long life, not at the violent tip of a butcher knife.

“No,” she said now, pulling back from Ethan even as her heart begged her to stay. “No.”

He let her go. Just let her go, didn’t try to hold her, didn’t try to keep her close. Just let her step back from him. His eyes were dark, his mouth swollen and moist from where he’d possessed hers.

The quick slice of pain made no sense. She was the one who’d ended the kiss. She was the one who’d pulled back. She was the one who’d said no. But standing there looking at him, so tall and commanding in that black tuxedo, with his raven hair mussed from where she’d run her fingers through it and his eyes gleaming, with his expression hard and unyielding, she felt as though something precious and fragile had just shattered.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and his voice was rough. “Sometimes relief makes a man do stupid things.”

Stupid things.
The hurt cut deeper, swirled darker. “Relief?”

He cleared his throat and looked away from her, toward the window, where somewhere out there the wind whipped the surf into a frenzy. It roared louder than the choppy rhythm of her heart, punctuated by the rumble of thunder in the distance.

“When I came out of the shower and you weren’t there—”

He broke the words off abruptly, still staring into the darkness beyond her shoulder, and her pulse did a cruel little stutter step.

“You what?”

Something brief and unfathomable flashed through his eyes, gone before Brenna had a chance to see what it was.

“I was worried,” he said simply. “I didn’t know where you were.”

“Games,” Brenna told him. Jorak himself had come for her the second the water of Ethan’s shower had rumbled through the pipes. She’d turned to find the man all in white standing behind her. He’d snatched the photograph of his wife, muttered something vile under his breath, then dropped the frame and taken Brenna by the wrist. The flash of pain had staggered. The rush of hatred, pure and black and evil, confirmed what she’d known all along. The showdown was coming, and when the smoke cleared, only one man would be left standing. Only one man
could
be left standing.

Someone was going to die. Soon.

Ethan glanced toward the far right corner of the immaculate room of alabaster tile and Corinthian columns, where the unblinking red eye of a camera recorded their every move. “He’s not going to win.”

Brenna swallowed hard. She hoped not. God, she hoped not. Still frowning, Ethan turned and took in the rest of the room, for the first time studying the long, gleaming table set with a white cloth, fine china, expensive silver and glimmering crystal. Candles flickered intimately. Domes covered two plates.

“Is this supposed to be my symbolic last supper?” he drawled, returning his glare to the camera.

Brenna moved without thinking, laying a hand on his arm. “No,” she said. No. “This isn’t how it ends.”

He swung back toward her, all hard lines and dark places again, all that burning passion from moments before completely extinguished. “Ah, that’s right,” he said, and even his voice was different, not the man’s voice, the quiet Virginia drawl that had seeped into her bloodstream, but the hard, bludgeoned edges of the prosecutor. “This is all like some recycled movie to you.”

She pulled back from him, physically, emotionally and every other way imaginable. “Not a movie.”

“No?” he asked, blasting her with the full focus of his attention. She instinctively took a step back, but he took an equal one toward her. “Then what would you call it?”

A nightmare. His life. Inevitable. “The beach,” she said, sidestepping a question that had no answer, not for a man like Ethan Carrington, who was already retreating behind the wall of fact and evidence upon which he relied. For a few minutes, there, a few lethal minutes, there’d been no walls, no defenses, no memories of the past or visions of what was to come, only a man and a woman reaching for each other. Wanting each other.

But that was gone now, leaving the stripped-down truth of who and what they were.

“It happens on the beach,” she clarified. “The final showdown.”

His jaw hardened. “The beach.”

“That’s where she is,” Brenna added, her heart twisting on the words, the reality. “The woman.”

Ethan’s eyes went wild, for just one fraction of one heartbeat, as though her words had manufactured a ghost. Then he muttered something hot and hard and broken under his breath and turned from her, stalked to the table and lifted one of the domed lids. Then he laughed. It was a full, rich sound, and it hurt. “You son of a bitch.”

Well-honed protective devices insisted that she stay where she was, but Brenna moved forward anyway. She saw the steak first, then she blinked. Tator Tots. There, next to the thick slab of meat, sat a pile of fried Tator Tots.

Ethan swore softly. “He didn’t have to ask what I wanted for my last supper, because he already knew.”

Brenna didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Untouchable, unyielding Ethan Carrington preferred Tator Tots to the traditional baked potato, and Jorak Zhukov knew. “Peach cobbler?” she asked, gesturing to the small china bowl next to the plate.

Ethan’s mouth twisted. “My grandmother used to make
it … it
was Jorak’s favorite.”

* * *

The meal passed in silence. Brenna tried to enjoy the richly seasoned steak, but her stomach betrayed her. She wasn’t hungry. She didn’t want to eat. She just wanted—

She broke off the thought, reminded herself of the truth. Wanting only led to heartache.

“How old were you the first time?”

The question, quiet, intense, slipped through the semilit room and hit like a fist she’d not seen coming. She looked up from the three pieces of cut meat she’d been pushing around her ivory china plate with a thin gold line circling the circumference, to find Ethan watching her through those penetrating eyes. The prosecutor’s eyes.

“The first time?” Her heart kicked hard. There’d never been a first time, just a sickeningly close call.

“When you had the first dream,” he clarified. “What your mother said was a nightmare.”

Her fork clattered to the table. She swallowed hard and braced herself, but the swirl started, slow, steady, unstoppable, just like always. “Why?” she asked, but barely recognized the low scratch of her own voice. “Why does it matter? I thought you were done prosecuting me.”

“Prosecuting you?” He dropped the Tator Tot he’d been about to pop into his mouth. “Is that what you think I’m doing?”

“Isn’t it?” More darkness, swirling faster, pulling harder. “You’ve already made what you think of me abundantly clear.”

I’m a prosecutor. I don’t have time for dreams.

“Have I?” He pushed back from his chair and stood, crossed to the other side of the table. She watched him, that leggy masculine grace that reminded her of a big cat. “Then maybe you should enlighten me.”

Outside, the sky flashed, casting the room in a brilliant swath of light, then returning them to the flicker of dying candles. “You don’t believe me.”

His mouth flattened into a hard line, drawing her attention to the whiskers darkening his jaw. “This isn’t about believing.” He extended an arm toward her. “This is about wanting more.”

Everything inside of her went very still. Cruelly, horribly still. All but her heart. It slammed hard, ramming up against her ribs without regard for damage or pain.

“More?” Her blood heated, because God help her, God help them both, she wanted more, too.

“I’m not a man to rush to judgment,” he said, reaching for her hand. Slowly, persuasively, he urged her to her feet. “I prefer to gather all the evidence first.”

Evidence.
The word, the favored tool of the prosecutor, crushed that soft, hazy feeling burgeoning within her. He was just gathering facts, weighing her word, her truth, against that which he could accept.

She stood anyway, determined not to let this man know that he could cut her down so easily, with nothing more than a few words and a simple touch. She was stronger than that, had to be stronger than that. She could play the game as well as he could.

“I was seven,” she said, going into his arms. They closed around her, pulled her against that rock-hard chest of his, so close that even through the fabric of his elegant tuxedo, she could hear the steady thrumming of his heart.

“That’s awfully young.”

She refused to believe she heard compassion in his voice, knew better than to believe she felt it in the way his hands skimmed along her back. The cameras were watching. Jorak thought they were lovers. Ethan was just going along with the guise.

That didn’t explain why she curled an arm around his middle and let her open palm settle against his back, but she refused to analyze.

“What did you see?” His breath, warm, carrying the aroma of the fine Scotch he’d sipped with dinner, caressed the sensitive skin beneath her ear.