by Cynthia Eden
He didn’t believe in miracles. Didn’t believe in heaven or hell. Just believed in the power he possessed.
But something had brought Jessica back to him.
And a quick kill wasn’t in the cards for her. That was why he’d let her escape. He could have killed her, and Gabe would have returned to her broken body.
That’s not the way for her.
He’d lost Jessica once, he wouldn’t lose her again.
CHAPTER SIX
YOU DIDN’T HAVE TO GET ME A HOTEL ROOM FOR the night,” Eve murmured. She was so tired that she worried she’d collapse, but sleep was the last thing she wanted to do right then. If I close my eyes, I know I’ll just see him. “Especially a room like this.”
Talk about swank. The place was huge, and it just . . . smelled expensive. Everything gleamed there, and she was afraid to touch anything.
“I chose this room because it’s the safest one. It has a private elevator, accessed by key card. I’ve got a guard downstairs. No one will be getting up here tonight.”
Because he was in full-on protective mode. She had realized that fast after they left his building.
“Wade will find out what happened to the security at my place. The guy we’re after took it off-line, but he would have left some sort of trail behind.” Gabe nodded. “We’ll find that trail.”
Maybe. Will that happen before he finds me again? Eve shook her head. “I can’t just wait for him to come after me. I need to do something.”
Gabe stood just a few feet away from her. They’d talked with the cops for hours, waited while the PD conducted their investigation, but there had been no sign of her attacker. He’d just vanished.
“If he’s really the Lady Killer—” Gabe began.
“He is!” She was dead certain. “I told you, he called me ‘Jessica.’ ” There was finally someone out there who knew her—and that man wanted her dead. Figured.
“And did you remember anything when you saw him?” Gabe seemed to be choosing his words very carefully. “Did anything come back to you? Any flashes? Any memories?”
Her eyelids flickered. “Yes.”
Surprise flashed on his face and he took a step toward her. “What?”
“His voice . . . what he said, it was familiar.” Terror rose, but she shoved it back, hanging tightly to her control. I’m safe. I’m with Gabe. “He wanted me . . . to beg. When he said that . . . I—I could have sworn I’d heard those exact words before. ‘Beg me, beg me,’ ” she whispered.
A muscle jerked in Gabe’s jaw. “What else?”
“For an instant it seemed as if my feet were in the sand, and I—I thought I heard the ocean.” Okay, now that sounded absolutely insane. She realized that. No wonder shrinks were being shoved her way every time she turned around. She’d been in a penthouse¸ for goodness’ sake, not on a beach.
“Dauphin Island,” Gabe said with a nod.
Goose bumps rose on her arms. She remembered that place from the newspaper stories she’d read. Four of the Lady Killer’s victims had been found on Dauphin Island, after a hurricane rolled through and uncovered the bodies—or what had been left of them—from beneath the sand.
“You think I was there.”
“Jessica Montgomery was. She had a home on the island.”
Jessica . . .
“I want to go there.” Eve stepped forward. Grabbed his shirt. She probably grabbed it a bit too hard. “I need to go there.”
His gaze searched hers. “From what Sarah was able to determine, that island is the killer’s hunting grounds. He feels most powerful there. He may—”
“Attack again?” Her voice held a brittle edge. “Like he’s not doing that here.” Her hands had fisted around the material of his shirt. She had realized that with the killer out there, she had no safe place. So whether she was in Atlanta or down at Dauphin Island, she’d be vulnerable. He can get to me. “I want to go down there. I want to see her home.”
If he wouldn’t take her, then she would go on her own. She’d hitchhike, walk, crawl if she had to do it, but she wasn’t just going to keep on in this terrible void of nothing while that psycho hunted her.
Gabe studied her, then said, “I’ll put in a call to Pierce Montgomery. We’ll need his okay to get you in her place.”
Pierce. Her breath came faster. She’d run out on him earlier and hadn’t looked back. Mostly because there had been pain in his eyes, so much pain as he stared at her.
And when she’d found out about Pauley, the pain had overwhelmed her.
After her attack, there could be no more pretending. No more calling it a coincidence. Pauley was murdered by a mysterious attacker with a knife, then that masked man had come after her.
His death is on me.
“He died because of me,” Eve said.
Gabe frowned at her.
“Pauley. That bastard—he was hunting me at the shelter. He found me, and Pauley got in his way. His death is on me!” Her voice was rising. She shook her head and tried to grab her control back even as she forced herself to let go of her clawlike grip on Gabe.
“His death isn’t on you. His death is on the man who stabbed him.”
I had the knife in my hand.
Gabe seemed to read her thoughts. “The police are going to check that weapon. If they find Pauley’s blood on it, if they find any evidence we can use, you can bet that Wade will be calling us first thing.”
She made herself nod. “Pauley—” Eve broke off because saying his name hurt. “He mentioned a sister once to me.”
“Gina.”
Surprise pushed through her. “Yes.”
“I’ve already contacted Gina, and I’ve made arrangements for Pauley’s body to be sent back home to her.”
“How did you find her?”
He laughed then, the sound low, sexy. “Baby, finding people is my business. Gina wasn’t trying to hide from anyone, so tracking her down took me all of thirty minutes.” His laughter faded. “And I knew you’d want him to go home.”
She did. She wanted him to have peace. “Thank you.” It seemed like she was always saying that to this man.
“Don’t thank me,” he said, the words curt. “Dammit, I’m the one who put you at risk.” And he was the one curling his fingers around her shoulders. “You wanted to go with me, but I left you at that penthouse. I left you. If he’d killed you, what the fuck would I have done?”
She couldn’t read the emotion glittering in his bright blue eyes, and a new, desperate tension seemed to fill the air around them. “Gabe?”
“I won’t leave you again. Wherever we go, we’ll go together.”
Eve’s breath left her in a quick rush. “Dauphin Island.” That was where she wanted so desperately to go. If Jessica’s life had been on that island, then she had to see the place.
But Gabe hesitated. “If it’s really the Lady Killer, if he’s the one after you, then he’ll follow you there.”
She already knew that.
“If he follows,” Gabe continued, “then he’ll find me at your side.” A grim promise.
She’d been on her own for so long. Scared and constantly trying to hide the fear that seemed to eat at her day and night. “Why are you doing this?”
His jaw hardened even more. “It’s what I do.”
“But I can’t even pay you.” Her laugh was bitter. “I have nothing. Pierce Montgomery—if he is my brother—he didn’t even recognize me. So there’s no money coming in from that end.” She licked her lips and said once more, “I have nothing.”
“You have one hell of a lot more than you think.”
He was so close to her. The heat of his body was warming her and chasing away the cold that had wanted to consume her.
“And as for Pierce Montgomery . . . maybe there’s a reason why the guy didn’t choose to recognize you.”
Choose?
“A lot of money is at stake in the Montgomery family. With Jessica dead, all of that money is his, but if his sister suddenly comes back from the
grave . . .”
He’d have to split the fortune. But she shook her head. “There was real emotion in his voice when he talked about Jess—Jessica.” There had been so much pain there. The man had seemed to long for his sister. Us against the world. Wouldn’t that bond matter more than money?
“You should get some sleep.” A new note had entered his voice. Gruff. Guarded. “You take the bed and I’ll take the couch.”
She didn’t want to sleep. If she slept, more nightmares would just come to torment her. Images that didn’t make sense to her but still left her terrified.
He turned his back on her and paced toward the window. “Go. If we’re going to Dauphin Island, then we should leave tomorrow. I don’t want to stick around the city while someone is hunting you.”
She glanced toward the bedroom.
Then back at him.
When she took a step, Eve wasn’t heading for the bedroom. She was heading for Gabe. The thick carpet swallowed her footsteps, but as she drew closer to him, she saw her reflection in the window’s glass. He had to see it, too, and the stiffening of his shoulders told her that he knew she was coming in close.
“Eve . . .” His voice definitely held a warning edge. “Go to the bedroom.”
“I don’t want to sleep.”
His hands lifted. Pressed to the glass. “And you don’t want to be around me much longer right now. My . . . control . . . isn’t what it should be.”
“You always seem to have perfect control.” Did she resent that? Eve knew she had no right to resent anything when he was helping her so much, but she did. Her control was barely holding on, while he always was—
“I keep thinking about what could have happened to you. On my watch. I think about him hurting you.” His hands fisted over the glass. “And it makes me want to destroy him.”
Her hand lifted and she touched his shoulder. He was so tense beneath her touch, his muscles locked and hard as stone.
“And I just keep thinking about you.” His voice was deeper, rougher. “About how much I want you and how I need to keep my hands off you.”
“Because I’m a client?”
“Because there could be someone out there with a claim on you. A lover. A husband.”
She stared at her hand on his shoulder. Her left hand. Her ring finger was bare, and there was no sign of a tan line to indicate that she’d once worn a ring. “I don’t think there’s a husband.”
But a lover? If there had been a lover, wouldn’t he have come looking for her?
“Any lover . . .” Gabe said, the words close to a snarl, “who didn’t move heaven and earth to get you back in his bed would be damn insane.”
Her breath caught.
“I’m trying to keep my hands off you . . .” His head turned and he looked over his shoulder. At her hand. “But then you touch me, and all my plans shoot to hell.”
She couldn’t move.
“Eve.” He shook his head. “You need to stop touching me. You need to walk away in the next five seconds because that’s about as long as I’ll be able to stop myself.”
She could barely draw in a breath. Eve was still scared, but it was a different kind of fear now. Not terror because of that bastard out there. But a wild, rushing fear because she didn’t know what would happen next with Gabe. “St-Stop yourself from what?”
He turned toward her. Caught her hand in a steely grip. “From taking what I want.”
Eve stared into his eyes, and mentally, she counted . . .
Five.
Four.
Three.
Two.
One.
“Eve . . .”
“Time’s up,” Eve told him, then she leaned forward, making sure that her breasts brushed against his chest because she definitely wanted to touch him, and her lips pressed to his.
It was the adrenaline driving her. Adrenaline and desire. She hadn’t desired a man since she’d woken in that hospital—not until she met Gabe. She’d looked into his eyes, gotten caught in his gaze, and wanted.
She wanted him right then. Naked. In her. Wanted him to lift her up against that window’s glass and plunge into her.
Because then she wouldn’t be a victim. She’d be a woman taking her pleasure. A woman with her lover. A woman just like any other.
His hands closed around her waist and he pulled her against him. There was no missing his arousal, and for a moment a darker fear surged through her.
No, no, I won’t let this be taken from me!
She parted her lips. Her tongue slid over the crease of his mouth. She licked lightly and then—
He growled low in his throat. It was such a sexy, animalistic sound. His tongue slid against hers and the kiss became wilder, hotter. She didn’t know what her other lovers had been like, but Gabe Spencer sure knew how to kiss. Just his touch was setting her on fire.
She wanted his clothes gone. Wanted hers out of the way. Passion, lust, was burning so brightly within her, and she was afraid the feelings would vanish and she’d be cold again.
But Gabe was lifting her into his arms. Carrying her. His strength had her gasping into his mouth because he held her so easily, and he just kept kissing her. Tongue. Lips. He was perfect. She could feel heat pooling between her legs.
I’m getting wet for him.
And he was definitely aroused for her.
He shifted her body, and in the next moment Eve felt the soft dip of a mattress beneath her. He pulled back and stared down at her with eyes that glittered.
She kicked off her shoes. Her legs were bare, and the dress she wore clung so tightly to her. She wanted that dress gone. Quickly, she sat up and twisted, trying to find the zipper.
“Let me.” His words were a sensual growl as his big hands slid behind her and he eased the zipper down. His fingers—the tips slightly callused—followed the trail of the zipper down her spine, and she shivered at the delicious feel of his hands on her.
Then the dress was gone. He’d pulled it off her and tossed it to the floor. For a moment Eve was self-conscious. Her body wasn’t perfect. Not with those still pink scars on her shoulder, her stomach, and her thigh. She’d never be perfect.
“You are so fucking beautiful.”
He made her feel that way.
Eve slid back down on the bed, stretching out before him. She still wore her black bra and panties, and Gabe was just . . . watching her. Staring at her with a blue gaze so intense and hungry.
His hand lifted. His fingers traced along the edge of her bra strap, down, down to the lacy cups that held her breasts. She’d been so proud to find that bra in the thrift shop. Something nice. Something feminine.
But she’d never imagined a man like Gabe would see her wearing only that underwear set.
Her nipples were tight aching peaks. She wanted him to kiss them. “Gabe . . .”
His eyes were on his hands. The hands touching her with such careful restraint.
He still has his control.
“Take off my bra, Gabe,” she heard herself say. “I want your hands on me.”
The black of his pupils expanded, swallowing that bright blue. And then he was pushing the bra aside, expertly unhooking it as she arched toward him and—
His mouth closed around one nipple.
Her breath hissed out, and her panties—they definitely got wetter. And while his mouth was on that breast, his other hand slid to the other aching peak. He strummed her nipple, a rough caress of his fingers, and she nearly bolted right off the bed.
Pleasure. Need.
“Gabe!”
He licked his way to her other breast. Sucked the nipple. Had her gasping and trying to hold back a moan.
“So responsive . . .” His dark voice made her shiver. “So . . . delicious . . .”
Then he was kissing his way down her stomach.
Some distant part of her couldn’t believe this was happening. She’d only known Gabe for a few days. She shouldn’t be doing this.
Sex was too intimat
e, she shouldn’t be with a stranger. Yet . . . he was the only one she wanted.
I don’t care if I’ve known him for a few days or forever. I want him.
He parted her legs. Slid between her splayed thighs. His hot breath blew against the crotch of her panties.
“G-Gabe?”
He kissed her through the panties.
Her hips jerked.
Instantly, his hands were on her hips, holding her down, keeping her just where he wanted her.
“I told you . . . delicious . . .” And he kissed her through the panties.
Eve’s eyes squeezed shut as her body shuddered. It was too much. Oh, damn it was—not enough. And he wasn’t done. One hand stayed locked on her hips, and the other hand shoved her panties to the side. When he jerked the crotch of the panties, the back of his fingers slid over her clit. His touch had her whole body tensing because she knew her release was close.
She couldn’t remember what a climax felt like, but she was sure that she’d be finding out very soon.
He put his mouth on her. Eve’s head tipped back as she gasped out his name. He was licking her, kissing her sex, stroking the most intimate part of her body, and it was incredible.
No, there was no room for fear or embarrassment. There was only room for pleasure.
And when his thumb pressed to her clit just as he licked her once more, her climax hit. It wasn’t some gentle bubble of release. It was a full-on avalanche of pleasure, enough to wreck her, enough to make her moan and shake and shudder and wonder why the hell she hadn’t been having sex sooner.
Because the others weren’t him. I need Gabe.
“Look at me.” His demanding voice had her eyes flying open. She hadn’t even been aware that she’d closed them.
Gabe had risen above her and now stared down, his face etched into tight lines of lust.
As she stared at him, his hand lowered to the snap of his jeans. He yanked them open—
His phone rang.
No. No. Absolutely not! She shook her head. That had not just happened. She locked her legs around his hips and pushed toward him. She wanted Gabe inside of her, right then. Right there. To hell with anything else. This was too good.
The phone rang again. Louder. Longer and—
Someone was pounding at the door. Not the bedroom door, but the main door that led to their room. Only no one should have been given access to that room. They were supposed to be safe there. Gabe had said a person would need an access card just to get on the elevator that reached their floor.