by Lara Adrian
Tori was draped across him where he had been resting on the sofa in what he now recalled was her friend’s apartment. The heat of her closeness, the scent of her, filled his senses with a new, and not at all unpleasant warmth.
“Shit,” he muttered savagely and released her at once.
He could hardly summon his voice for anything more. Sitting there while Tori stared at him, Ethan panted in abject horror as he tried to blink away the images and reassure himself that he was unscathed.
He was alive.
The nightmare vision wasn’t real.
Not yet, anyway.
He had to get moving. If the run-in with the assassin wasn’t omen enough to tell him he needed to go, then the recurrence of the dream he’d been having with more and more frequency in the three years since Phoenix went dark sure as hell was. He needed to bail, head to ground as soon as he was able.
Ethan moved to a better sitting position so he could drop his feet off the sofa, but a sharp tug of pain in his shoulder slowed him down.
“Careful,” Tori admonished him. “You’ll tear the sutures. You need to sit still for a while.”
He glanced at the bandages taped loosely over his wound. His chest was bare. “Where’s my shirt?”
“You can’t wear it. It’s soaked in blood.” Tori said it like an accusation. “What’s really going on with you, Ethan? Or should I call you Daniel Gonzalez?”
How the fuck did she know that name? A pivot of his head and he saw his wallet and cell phone lying on the table at the other end of the sofa.
The pistol he’d retrieved from his assailant was there too. Someone had emptied the rounds from it and set the bullets on the table with the rest of his belongings. “You went through my things?”
She scoffed. “I’m not sure whose things they are. Maybe you want to tell me why your photo is on someone else’s ID? Is the gun his too?”
Ethan ground out a curse and heaved himself up to his feet. His vision spun, dizziness pouring over him. He pushed past it and pinned Tori in a glower. “Where’s your friend?”
“She went to get takeout a few minutes ago. We didn’t get a chance to bring anything home from the market for dinner.” Tori crossed her arms over her breasts. “Don’t change the subject. Why are you walking around with a loaded gun, more than two thousand dollars in cash and a burner phone? Who is Daniel Gonzalez?”
“I don’t know,” Ethan muttered. “Just the name the fake ID came with.”
Tori gaped at him warily, disgust in every nuance of her pretty face. “Are you dealing drugs?”
“Christ, no.”
“Why else would you be skulking around like this, telling me lie after lie, getting stabbed and refusing to go to a hospital or the police? You’re acting like a criminal, Ethan.” She shook her head, her lips turned down, eyes shadowed with mistrust. “You’re acting paranoid, like you’re on something. Or like you’re having some out of control anxiety issues that are far from normal. Either way, you’re acting to me like someone who needs professional help.”
“For fuck’s sake, Tori. I’m not crazy. I’m not some paranoid crackhead either, if that’s what you think.” He blew out a sharp sigh. “I’m not a criminal, and I’m not dealing drugs or anything remotely like that.”
“Then what? Talk to me, damn you! Explain what’s really going on, so I can understand.”
He considered the hired gun who’d come after him today, and the threat that man still posed as long as Ethan allowed him to keep breathing.
That would-be killer had seen Tori too. Ethan knew it in his gut, in the chill that seeped into his bones at the thought of his enemies ever getting close enough to touch her.
He couldn’t let that happen.
As for the fiery vision, he was determined to prevent that too…if he could stay alive long enough to figure out what it meant.
“The less you know, the better, Tori.” He stepped past her. “I have to go now. Being around me is only putting you in danger. It might be too late already, but I’m not going to risk it.”
He walked over and began picking up his things. He slid the wallet into his shorts pocket, then put the phone in another cargo compartment before gathering up the rounds and the emptied pistol. His blood-stained T-shirt was draped over the back of a kitchen chair.
When he headed for it, Tori hurried around the sofa and got there first. She held the shirt in a tight fist, shaking it at him as she spoke. “You’re in no shape to go anywhere, and I’m not letting you leave this apartment until you give me the truth.”
Ethan stalked closer to her, saying nothing. He took one end of the wheat-colored cotton and gave it a slow tug. Tori didn’t let go.
As he pulled, inch by inch, she drew toward him, still clutching determinedly to this final piece of him.
“You have every right to hate me,” he murmured. “You could’ve left me out there today. You should have, Tori. Instead, you’re killing me with your tenderness. With your kindness.”
She didn’t speak, just swallowed hard as she stared up at him. Ethan closed the distance between them even more, until only a breath of space remained.
A storm of conflicting emotion roiled in her indigo eyes.
Confusion.
Anger.
Mistrust.
But there was affection there as well. Something even deeper than that.
She still cared for him, and now that they were standing together, gazes locked in a hold that no lies could penetrate, Ethan could not deny that he still felt something for her too.
He felt it as if no time had passed since that morning in her bungalow kitchen back in Portland.
He reached up, tenderly stroked her cheek.
“Ethan…” His name was a whisper on her parted lips, a sigh. Her gaze darkened, her breathing picking up tempo as he indulged in the feel of her velvet skin. “I wish I could hate you. But I’ve missed you…”
A low groan curled up from the back of his throat at her soft admission. He’d missed her too. He had to touch her, wanted to do so much more.
He hadn’t realized how powerful that yearning was until now, when he was standing before her with nothing but silence and three years of lies and heartache between them.
Ethan wrapped his hand around her bare nape, smoothing the callused pad of his thumb along the side of her delicate neck. “Damn you, Tori. I never thought I’d touch you again. I thought we’d never see each other after I left. It would’ve been the best thing for both of us.”
He lowered his head and took her mouth in a crushing kiss.
Tori’s gasp at the moment of contact seeped out of her an instant later on a slow exhalation.
She melted into his kiss, their lips and tongues joining with a familiarity—a rightness—that rocked Ethan to the core. He’d never known this kind of fierce connection with a woman before.
And it didn’t exactly reassure him to realize his feelings for Tori Connors hadn’t faded in the least since the last time he’d held her in his arms.
Heat poured through him with each delicious thrust and sweep of her tongue against his. Need coiled in him, rendering him stiff and ready to bury himself inside her. Ethan dragged her deeper into his embrace, bruising her mouth with the force of his desire.
He couldn’t help it. His body’s reaction to her was too intense and too demanding to be denied.
All the years he’d been kept from her burned away under the ferocity of their kiss, and it was all he could do not to tear her clothes off right where she stood.
“Oh, my God, Ethan,” Tori rasped.
Her shivery response skated over his mouth as he pulled back and bent to kiss her throat. She moaned when he caressed her small breasts. Gasped when he let his hand drift lower, to the heated juncture of her thighs.
He cupped her mound over the fabric of her shorts, wringing a shaky sigh from her and a shudder that raced over her from head to toe. She dropped her head against his good shoulder as he indulged in the growing
inferno between her legs.
Her mouth fastened onto his skin, her teeth biting down on a cry as he worked one finger inside her panties. Silky wetness slicked her cleft.
“Ah, fuck,” he uttered hoarsely. “You’re so soft, Tori. Always so ready for me when I touch you.”
He could have lost himself in her body’s sweet response.
Hell, he’d been more than halfway there before he picked up the sound of someone approaching the apartment door. A key jiggled in the deadbolt.
Ethan reacted on pure instinct. Letting go of Tori, he swept her behind him in less than a second, prepared to protect her with his body and his life.
But as the door swung open, it was her friend, Hoshi, who stood there. She had a carry-out bag gripped in one hand, the key still held in her other.
Her dark, almond-shaped eyes slid to Tori in question, then to him in blatant disapproval. “Is everything all right in here?”
Ethan cleared his throat. He didn’t have to look at Tori to know her cheeks were likely flushed with color and her lips moist and kiss-swollen.
As for himself, Ethan couldn’t even try to hide his rampant erection.
“Let me help you with dinner,” Tori blurted as she ducked around him. She shot him a meaningful look over her shoulder. “We’re not finished here. And don’t think I’m going to let you dodge my questions after a kiss like that.”
He didn’t have the words to deny her. Still weathering the need that had slammed into him like a hurricane, he wanted nothing more than to haul Tori back into his arms and do what she threatened—to finish what they had started.
As she pivoted around to follow her friend into the small kitchen, Ethan considered that this would be an ideal opportunity for him to walk out the door as he’d planned, before things got any more complicated with Tori.
Hell. Things had been nothing but complicated with her, starting from the moment he first laid eyes on her that St. Patrick’s night four years ago.
And like it or not, the fact that his assailant saw Tori with him earlier today meant it might already be too late to shelter her from the secret, dangerous life he’d been hiding from her all this time.
He might have no choice but to trust her with that secret, and hope he could convince her to get as far away from him as she possibly could.
7
Tori pulled Ethan’s T-shirt out of the dryer and tried to shake out the wrinkles.
Not that a few creases were going to get any notice next to the frayed knife hole and the rusty ghost of a bloodstain that still clung to the light-colored cotton after it had twice gone through the cold water wash. Better than nothing, and since Hoshi was even more petite than Tori, Ethan’s current replacement clothing options were essentially nil.
Walking back up the short hallway of Hoshi’s apartment, Tori heard Ethan running water in the bathroom. The door was cracked open a bit, just enough that she could see him standing at the sink, rinsing his face and hair at the tap.
He took her breath away, just like that. Just the sight of him, standing bare-chested, almost in arm’s reach, doing something as mundane as scrubbing a hand over his face and scalp, left her immobile. Mesmerized. Afraid to move a muscle for fear it might shatter the illusion and he would be gone again.
As though he were still nothing more than a figment of her desperate, far too forgiving imagination.
Their kiss had been real enough.
Tori’s senses still vibrated from the intensity of it. She licked her lips, recalling the hungry way Ethan claimed her mouth.
And just thinking about that made her also relive in vivid detail the way he’d touched her, with strong, masterful fingers that still knew exactly how to stroke her into a frenzied state of need.
That need simmered within her even now, banked embers that surged with new heat as she watched Ethan reach for a towel on the hooks behind the door.
His gray cargo shorts hung low on his athletic form, baring the lean cut of muscle and hip bones she used to enjoy following with her tongue. Ethan had become leaner than she remembered, wilder looking in many ways.
His sandy brown hair was shaggier than he’d ever worn it. The squared line of his jaw and the angled slope of his cheeks were shadowed with dark stubble.
As for his body, that seemed leaner and wilder too. His abdomen had always been delectably firm and muscled. Now he was rock-solid everywhere she looked, his chest and arms corded with planes of firm sinew that flexed and bunched in fascinating combination as he moved.
She’d stared too long, too blatantly. Ethan’s hazel gaze spotted her through the wedge of space.
Tori’s cheeks fired, but it was much too late to feign disinterest. She approached the door as he slowly opened it all the way. “I washed your shirt. The blood’s there to stay, unfortunately.”
He shrugged and took the shirt out of her loose grasp. “Thanks.”
She gave him a nod, then gestured toward his wound. “Doing all right?”
“I’ve come through worse.” His sensual mouth quirked into the small smile that had always done bad things to her self-control. “Couldn’t have asked for better field medics.”
She didn’t want to return his smile, dammit. She didn’t want to feel the heat or the concern that coursed through her as they faced off in the open doorway of the small bathroom.
She stifled all of those unwanted impulses as best she could, and gave his wound a quick visual assessment instead. “Those bandages have been on there long enough now. The sutures need to breathe for a while.” She pointed to the closed toilet seat. “Sit down. Let me have a look.”
Ethan did as she asked while Tori washed her hands. He parted his legs to allow her space as she moved in close to inspect the injury. Carefully, she peeled away the tape and gauze and uncovered his wound.
“The puncture was deep, but it could’ve been much worse.” She wet a fresh washcloth and dabbed gingerly around the area, knowing it still had to be very painful. She was satisfied to find only the expected inflammation and fluid leakage along the seam. “If you take care of it, you should heal up just fine.”
Ethan didn’t say anything. He watched her intently, his muscled chest rising and falling in a slow but heavy rhythm.
As she stood between his spread thighs, Tori was suddenly acutely aware of the intimate position they were in. Against her will, her heart began to gallop, all of her senses tuned to this man she should not want, but could not seem to deny.
She felt, more than saw, his hand lift toward her. Before he could make contact, she abruptly withdrew, moving out of his reach. Despite her desire, she was still angry and suspicious of him. Still hurt.
She tossed the used tape and bandages in the nearby waste can, then rinsed out the cloth and folded it over the edge of the sink. Without looking at him now, she cranked the hot water and viciously scrubbed her hands.
Ethan rose, and came up close behind her as she cut the tap and picked up the hand towel.
God, she couldn’t think with him so near.
All she could hear was the drumming of her pulse in her ears. All she could feel was the heat of his bare chest behind her, the warmth of his breath against her nape.
“Hoshi thinks I was crazy to let you kiss me today. She says I’m crazy to be anywhere near you.” She lifted her gaze to meet his reflection in the medicine cabinet mirror. “Maybe she’s right.”
Ethan took her shoulders in his strong grasp and slowly turned her around to face him. “Did it feel crazy to you when you were kissing me?”
Tori arched a brow at him. “You kissed me, as I recall it. And no, it didn’t feel crazy.”
It felt electric, intoxicating. It felt like taking her first breath of air after three years of waiting to exhale.
Ethan’s gaze bore into hers, intense, too powerful to break. “There has never been anyone who’s affected me the way you do. No one.”
She huffed a short sigh and shook her head. “Too bad you didn’t feel that way whe
n you left my house that morning without any explanation.” Once the words slipped out of her mouth, she couldn’t stop the rest. “How could you do that to me, Ethan? Do you know how that wrecked me? Do you even care? I didn’t know what happened to you, or where you’d gone. Were you dead? If you were alive, were you stricken with some awful condition that made you forget where you belonged?”
He let her rail, gave her time and silence enough to get it all out. She’d held that anger and fear—the ache—inside her for so long, it left her trembling and breathless to have finally let it out.
“You were gone, and all I had were questions. No scenario I imagined for what you did made any kind of sense. I look at you now, Ethan, and I have more questions than ever. Then you go and kiss me like you did today—as if you still have the right to touch me, to be inside me…” She shook her head and whispered a harsh curse. “I gave you my heart, Ethan. My whole heart. You’ve given me nothing but lies and pain.”
“I never wanted anything bad to happen to you,” he said, his deep voice more solemn than she’d ever heard it. “I hate that I hurt you the way I left. There was no other way. I couldn’t give you the truth then, for many reasons. Not the least of which was out of concern for you. From the moment I saw you in the pub that first night we met, I’ve wanted only to keep you safe. To protect you, Tori.”
She scoffed quietly. “I never needed your protection. I’ve been taking care of myself for a long time.”
“Yes, but that doesn’t mean I care any less.” His gaze searched hers, a flicker of uncertainty in his typically unflinching confidence. “Do you remember the brawl that happened while we were dancing that night at the pub?”
“I think so.” She’d been more focused on the attractive stranger who’d been staring at her for half an hour before he finally strode over to talk to her.
“I wasn’t looking for a relationship,” he murmured. “Damn, Tori, you were so pretty. And then you smiled at me. That smile killed me. Still does. But I might not have made my move that night at the bar, if it wasn’t for the fight that broke out.”