Surrender the Dark (16 page)

“McCullough? The pup’s been fed, now it’s our turn,” she said, stepping into the room. “Are you ready—” She stopped both words and movement upon coming face-to-face, or rather face-to-back with Jarrett’s prone body. His half-dressed, sleeping body. He was sprawled facedown across the top of the comforter wearing only a pair of sweats. His hands were clutching the pillow he’d balled up under his head, his hair was a damp rumple of waves.

Considering his various aches and injuries, she couldn’t see how that position was even remotely comfortable, but the gentle steady breathing she heard told her otherwise.

Either that or he’d pushed himself so hard, he’d likely just dozed off where he’d fallen after washing up.

She frowned at the thought. He was so good at covering things up, she’d gone long periods that day forgetting
just how bad off he’d been a mere five days ago, how much he must still be hurting despite his attempts to prove otherwise.

Had it only been five days since she’d found him in that cave? It seemed longer, much longer.

“And not nearly long enough,” she murmured, thinking of the message she’d just copied, printed, and then deleted from Hal’s hard drive.

She took a step back, intending to leave the room and let him get some much-needed rest. He’d be angry—furious—that she hadn’t woken him immediately upon hearing back from Zach. The message was encoded, but she’d deciphered enough from having typed the original message to know that Zach himself had received the transmission and was waiting further word.

Jarrett, though, was in no shape to conduct a plan the magnitude of which she knew was necessary to warn the Bhajulis of the impending attack. And she knew enough about the time frame they were operating under to know that another hour wouldn’t make that much difference.

But instead of backing out of the room, she found herself walking over to the bed. She needed to refill the water pitcher, she told herself, ignoring the fact that Jarrett could now get his own water.

She reached for the pitcher, but her attention got caught by the way his hair had tumbled over his forehead. It did little to soften the frown that creased his face even in sleep. His hand clenched the fistful of pillow so tightly that his biceps had contracted, the ridge of the vein bisecting it clearly visible.

Rae’s hand dropped to her side as she gave in to the need simply to stare at him.

His shoulders were wide and densely muscled. She resisted the urge to press her hands against his bare skin, to work the strain from his muscles, to ease the ache he must feel in his shoulder and ribs. Her gaze drifted to the string-tightened waist of his sweats, now riding low on his hips, then naturally continued over the taut curve of his buttocks and the well-developed legs she could picture from memory.

Tension and need and want coiled and tightened inside of her until she thought she’d explode from trying to contain them, to manage them.

“This is pathetic,” she mumbled, wrenching her gaze away. She turned to leave, the water pitcher forgotten.

“Hey.”

The muffled sound of his gravelly voice had her spinning around guiltily. At the last second she thought to cover her actions and moved for the water pitcher. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to wake you,” she said hurriedly.

Faster than lightning, his hand snaked out and snagged her wrist, tugging her down onto the bed.

“Jarrett, your leg!”

He rolled on his hip as she fell and caught her other arm. Both her wrists held in his hands, her palms splayed on his chest, he tugged her close so she was on her side facing him.

“That’s better,” he said, the sleepy quality of his voice not disguising the smugness.

“Better than what?” she asked, still short of breath,
though not entirely from the unexpected fall. “You know as well as I do that I could be off this bed in ten seconds flat.”

“I also know you could have avoided falling altogether.”

“So my skills are a little rusty. I hardly expected to be blindsided in my own bedroom.” Wrong thing to say, she acknowledged immediately. His pupils dilated swiftly, providing an excellent window for the desire he made no attempt to hide. Either in his eyes, or in the pressure he exerted against her stomach.

“If you’d turned around when you realized I was asleep, you wouldn’t have had to worry about an attack at all,” he admonished.

Her eyes narrowed as she accurately read between the lines. “Just how long were you awake?”

“From the moment you tapped on the door frame.”

“You rat!”

“I guess. Among other things.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

The beginnings of a smile curled his lips. The effect was lazy and seductive and all the more dangerous for how quickly it worked on her. “Because,” he answered, “I finally figured out that catching you off guard is practically the only way I can get you to call me by my first name. And I’ve gotten to like it.”

“I call you Jarrett all the time.”

“No, you don’t.”

His obvious confidence in that fact rattled her. He kept track? Rae was already dealing with her body’s riotious reactions to being pressed against the very body it
had spent the last five minutes lusting after. She wasn’t up to the cerebral maneuvers required to analyze this latest puzzle piece. “So what’s wrong with your last name? You don’t like it?” It was a ridiculous argument and yet she couldn’t seem to let it drop.

“I like my last name fine. I just don’t happen to like the way you say it.”

Honestly perplexed, she asked, “What’s wrong with the way I say McCullough?”

“Nothing, when you say it like that.”

“Like what?” she exclaimed. “McCullough, McCullough, McCullough. What difference does it make?”

His smile disappeared. “Because when you say it like
that
, it makes me feel like your boss or your professional colleague.”

The steam left her argument as swiftly as his smile had left his face. “And when I call you Jarrett?”

He let go of one of her wrists and reached up to trace a finger along the crease of her lips. “When you call me Jarrett,” he said, his voice no more than a deep rumble, “it makes me feel like your friend.”

It wasn’t until he said
friend
that she realized she’d expected him to say
lover.
Lord knows his body was screaming it. And his expression wasn’t what she’d call friendly. It was the sort of look that could drive mercury straight through the top of a thermometer.

Friend. She felt another wall tumble around her heart. Did he have any idea how much more provocative an invitation that was?

Her heart pounded in a hard, steadily increasing rhythm, and she swore she felt each separate second tick
by as she looked him squarely in the eyes. “You are my friend,” she said, the honesty in that statement hitting her even as she spoke.

“I don’t have many of those, Rae.”

“Neither do I. Jarrett,” she added on a whisper.

Jarrett skated his fingers across her cheeks and into her hair, cupping the back of her head, pulling her to him.

His kiss wasn’t gentle, but it was slow, and incredibly thorough. His tongue took swift possession of hers and then coaxed it back into his mouth. When she boldly pressed past his teeth, he groaned and pulled her tongue deeper.

Rae’s answering moan came from deep in her throat, and she instinctively pushed her hips closer to his. His hand dropped to the small of her back and pressed hard.

She moved against him, remembering his wound just in time to keep from lifting her knee up to his thigh. The deprivation of the contact she so desperately needed drove her higher, intensified her desire for touch and taste.

Her hands explored his chest, then she slid them up to his shoulders, threading one arm under his head while
letting her other hand run down over his biceps and forearm.

He broke away from her mouth and dragged his lips and tongue over her chin and down her neck. He pressed her onto her back, neatly capturing her roaming hand over her head, pinning her. His eyes were a haze of smoke and desire as he stared at her. She struggled to keep from bucking her hips up off the bed in search of the sweet pressure of his body.

“Jarrett.” She didn’t care that she pleaded.

The flash of his teeth as he smiled stunned her with an unexpected blaze of hot sensuality.

“You can have anything you want when you say it like that,” he promised. He let go of her hand, freeing his to explore at will. His will.

He got no argument from Rae.

Carefully, holding her gaze, he drew his hand down the center of her body, then slowly up again. His fingertips brushed her skin, circling one breast and then the other. Rae didn’t have to look to know her nipples were pressing tautly against her shirt. He continued his maddening teasing until she almost screamed at him to touch her. But when every inch of her breasts had felt his touch, he let his hand drift away.

He flattened his palm on her stomach, then lowered his face to hers.

“I’m going to touch you,” he said roughly, then kissed her hard and fast until she squirmed under his hand.

“Yes,” she said on a gasp when he released her mouth.

“I mean really touch you, Rae.” He let his fingers dip under the hem of her sweatshirt. “And then I’m going to taste you. All of you.”

Rae was so close to the edge, even the prospect of uncovering her scars didn’t daunt her. “I want you too,” she whispered. “Badly.”

His hand inched upward and she began to tremble. Then his fingers encountered the first ridge of scar tissue, and for a second his features clouded, desire replaced by surprise.

Rae instantly slammed her hand down, pinning her shirt to her chest. “Don’t.”

He jerked his gaze from his shirt-covered fingers to her face. “I’m sorry, Rae. I didn’t mean to stop.” Heat filled his eyes again, along with the glittering determination she knew would be next to impossible to deter. “I don’t want to stop.”

“I’m not sure I can let you go on,” she said.

“I didn’t realize—” He broke off, and for the first time Rae could recall, he seemed at a loss for words.

“I told you they weren’t pretty.”

He looked at her steadily. “I didn’t expect them to be.” He massaged the skin beneath his fingers, still splayed over her rib cage. “I don’t want this between us any longer, Rae. And there’s only one way to get past it.”

Without giving her time to think, he slid down and lowered his head to her stomach. He pressed a hot kiss to the exposed strip of skin below her belly button. Then he started his way up.

He kissed, licked, and nipped at the taut skin above
her navel. Rae began to writhe under him, petrified about what would happen in the next couple of seconds but unable to stop the pulsating need she had for him to continue. She was hot and damp and her heart pounded in fear and desire.

She knew the second his lips hit the first scar. He paused for the tiniest of seconds, then slowly dragged his tongue along the four-inch strip of pink shiny skin.

She shivered at the odd sensation. She had no nerve endings on the scars themselves, but the skin just around them was hypersensitive. As he began on the matching scar running diagonally along her opposite rib, she twitched uncontrollably under him.

He’d steadily pushed her shirt higher and higher, never lifting his mouth from her skin. Her hand had long ago cupped his head, her fingers tangled in his still-damp hair. She writhed and moaned, no longer caring what he saw as long as his mouth reached the tips of her breasts … soon.

When he got to the edge of her bra, though, he stopped. After a long moment, he pressed his face into the shallow valley of her rib cage and took several deep breaths. It took her a moment or two, because her own breathing was deep and erratic, to realize he was trembling. Shaking actually.

She froze, then tugged at his hair while lifting her own head. The sight of his dark hair and rough-skinned hands against her pale, far-from-perfect skin rocked her so hard, she gasped. That brought his head up, his blazing eyes firing into hers.

The emotion she read there was so passionate, so furious, she couldn’t begin to decipher it.

“Are you okay?” she asked, wondering now if she’d accidentally hit him on the thigh or banged into his ribs. “Are you hurt?”

“Yeah.” The word was a raw epithet. Then the fury in his eyes evaporated, leaving behind a void of desolation. He pushed up on his elbow and dropped his gaze to her exposed stomach and rib cage, placing his hand almost reverently in the center. She felt the fine tremors that still raced through him, all the way to his fingertips.

He traced each of the eight weltlike scars that underscored each of her ribs. “Who in the name of God would do something like this?” he asked on a tortured whisper.

Rae flinched, but didn’t attempt to hide herself. Strangely, that was the last thing she’d have tolerated right now. “People do some pretty inhuman things in the name of their God. You of all people should know that.”

He looked at her again. “I do. But this is different. I didn’t know.”

Rae felt removed from this scene, as if she were standing outside her body, discussing something that was no longer attached to her. “You didn’t want to know.”

That punch hit him square on target. He visibly flinched and paled. Rae almost regretted her words, but they were the truth. His reaction proved it if there had ever been any doubt.

“I want to know now,” he said, so quietly she almost didn’t hear him.

Now she flinched. “I won’t relive it, Jarrett. Not even for you. It took more—”

“Guts,” he said. “And strength. Damn if you aren’t the strongest person I’ve ever met.” He nodded when she shook her head. “Yes, Rae. And I don’t mean just because you survived what happened two years ago. What you did just now, with me, took courage. Real courage. Especially considering our past …” He stopped, dropping his head, visibly swallowing hard. With his gaze focused downward, he said, “I don’t want you to relive any of this. I want to understand your strength, to know how you came through such a thing, but I think you just showed me. You’ve been doing that all along.” He took a deep breath. “Whatever happens, I want you to know one thing.” He raised his gaze to hers. “At no time in my life have I ever wanted or cared for another person as much as I want and care for you.”