by Julie Miller
“I can’t imagine coming back from the place where you were, Jillian.”
She flicked the braid behind her back and crossed to the opposite side of the bed. “You make it sound like I did an amazing thing. I got into the party scene and used cocaine because I was so freaked out that my parents had died on their way to see me play an exhibition game. It’s a wonder I ever graduated from high school.”
He shot a pillow at her across the bed, which she deftly caught and set into place. “Yet you did graduate. You got a college degree and a master’s in physical therapy. And you’ve been sober, what, ten years?”
“Eleven.”
“I’d say helping others, especially the ones who are most needy, is your drug of choice now.”
She grabbed the edge of the bright red top sheet and folded a neat hospital corner. “I would have said running and shootin’ hoops was my regular fix. But I guess saving the world one person at a time keeps me out of trouble.” Her relaxed, graceful movements stuttered to a halt as her green-eyed gaze darted over to his. “Well, sort of.”
She hurried around the bed to complete the other corner, and plucked the bedspread out of his hands. “I’m just kind of going through a bad spell right now, with…Loverboy and Blake and Troy and…” She hugged the cover to her chest and laughed, but he couldn’t detect any real humor. “I’m sorry that my problems have turned your life upside down, Michael. Sometimes I wish you never would have found that letter. I never meant to get you or Mike or Troy or anyone else hurt.”
Michael pulled the cover right back and tossed it onto the bed. Something closer to the Neanderthal in him pushed aside rational thought. He snatched the front of the jacket she wore, an edge of the collar in each hand, and pulled her right to him. Close enough for toes to touch. Close enough for breaths to mingle. Far enough away that he could see deep into the expressive kaleido-scope of moss, jade and emerald in the irises of her eyes.
“I can’t imagine you dealing with that bastard on your own. His actions are already escalating, and I’ve seen firsthand where that kind of diseased relationship leads.” He smoothed the damp silk of her hair off her cheek. “No woman should be at any man’s mercy like that.”
“Michael, is this…?” She slid her hands around his wrists, eliciting sparks of heat against his skin. Those Irish eyes were so vivid, so vulnerable. “Is that the cop talking? Or the man? Because I really don’t want to misread what’s going on here.”
He traced the edge of the bandage on her chin, carefully avoiding the neat row of stitches underneath. “I always thought we were the same guy. I want to protect you for Mike’s sake. He needs you.” He pressed his thumb against the soft pink swell of her lips and the desire to claim those beautiful lips throbbed inside him. “Sweetheart, I’m fifteen years older than you. But I’m sure not feeling like a daddy watching out for his little girl.”
“I sure don’t feel like a little girl around you.” She smiled beneath his touch. “You’re not who I would have thought I’d want. But I do. I can’t help it. I do.”
“You’re good for my ego, Miss Legs.” He stroked his thumb across her lips, denying himself the pleasure of touching them with his own. He needed to think here, not just react. This was more than lust he was feeling for Jillian, more than duty that had him making a bed for her under his roof. “But I never thought there’d be another woman in my life after Pam died. I don’t know what to make of whatever’s going on between us.”
A tug on his wrist pulled his thumb away from its distracting exploration. “Do you feel like you’re betraying her by feeling something for me?”
“No,” he answered honestly. “I know that chapter of my life is over. I’ll never forget her—she gave me my son and fifteen beautiful years of marriage—but I don’t know what it is I feel for you. I don’t want to get it wrong. You’ve got enough to cope with—hell, we both do. I don’t want to complicate things more than they already are. I thought I was done with relationships, that I would be a cop and a dad for the rest of my life—and I was fine with that. But then you come smiling in and waking things up and making me think I’m not quite so—”
“Don’t you dare say…” her face crinkled up in an adorable attempt to hide another yawn “…over the hill. See? You are in the prime of your life, Captain. I’m the one who can’t keep up.”
“It’s two in the morning. Some old…” He saw the eyebrow of reprimand arch up and smiled. “Some wise man I am. Keeping you up talking when you need your rest.” Fisting the jacket collar in both hands, he pulled her forward and pressed a kiss to her forehead. His lips lingered against her smooth, cool skin as he fought the magnetic desire to pull her body into his, to feel her supple curves aligning with his harder angles, to feel her generous spirit consume his closed-off heart and breathe life into it again. He kissed her again and pulled away, because that was what she needed right now. “I’m at the end of the hall if you need anything.”
She wrapped her arms around her waist in a posture he was beginning to recognize as a tell for when she was feeling vulnerable. And it made every instinct in him want to hold on tight and shield her from whatever made her afraid or unsure. But she needed protection right now, a chance to recuperate. And as long as his head wasn’t in the right place, he wouldn’t be any good to her.
“I want to finish this conversation, Michael. I think it could be very important…” another yawn “…for both of us.”
He felt disjointed, incomplete, keeping his distance like this. He was a grown man—his body could simmer with want and he could walk away and deal with it. But his brain was a different thing. He needed to think. He needed to understand what he was feeling before he could give her the answers she needed. “When we’re rested and thinking clearly. I promise. Good night, Jillian.”
“Good night.”
Walking away from that wounded, worried face was one of the hardest things Michael had ever done.
SHE HADN’T HAD THE NIGHTMARE for a long time. Try as she might to wake herself, Jillian’s body and mind were too tired, her emotions too raw and unsettled, to will it away.
Jillian couldn’t think clearly as she tumbled through the doorway and landed in a heap on the floor. The room was dark, the smell was foul. Too much cologne couldn’t mask the body odor and incense that reeked throughout the apartment.
The slam of a door jerked her to her senses. The hand on her arm jerked her to her feet. “Did you and your boyfriend help yourself to my stash?”
“No!”
Isaac Rush’s hard fingers pinched her arms. His pockmarked face twisted with contempt. “He didn’t pay, sugar. You’re gonna have to.”
“I don’t have any money.”
He picked her up and tossed her onto the bed like so much trash. “You think I’m giving it away for free here?”
“Isaac, no.” Jillian scrambled to get away when he sat at the foot of the bed and kicked his shoes off. Her arms and legs tangled in the covers and she fought to free herself. “I don’t do that. Blake said he paid you. I want to see Blake.”
“Blake’s already gone, sugar. Left you to take care of the bill.” He reached out and touched her foot. She jerked it away and backed against the headboard. Isaac laughed as he crawled farther onto the bed. “That’s not how a man takes care of his lady.” Striking as quick as a snake, he grabbed her ankle and dragged her back down on the bed. She kicked with her free foot, but he got hold of that ankle, too. And then she was flat on her back and he was on top of her. “I could set you up for life, baby, if you’d just spread those long legs and be with me.”
“I don’t…I don’t want to.” She shoved his face away from hers, kicked at his legs, twisted her knee.
Her shoe clipped his shin and he swore. He slapped her across the cheek. “Everybody pays!” The blow rang through her skull and brought tears to her eyes, killing the fight long enough for him to unzip her jeans. “One way or the other, everybody pays.”
“Stop.” She smacked
at his shoulders and tried to roll him off her. She was vaguely aware of a door opening, of someone else entering the room.
“Sugar, we’ve got something special. You know we do.”
She was more aware of his hand tugging down her pants. Jillian clawed at his wrists. “Stop!”
A shadow loomed up behind Isaac, and suddenly he flew across the room and she was free. Blinded by tears and panic and darkness, she could only hear the scuffle, the grunts and protests as she scrambled off the bed and fastened her jeans. Her rescuer grabbed a syringe from the nightstand and followed Isaac into the corner. It had never been this bad before. She’d never been this terrified.
Before she could even think to run, the black man who’d gotten rid of Isaac was back. Mr. Lynch. Oh, God. Did he want something from her, too? He grabbed her arm, but Jillian’s scream was quickly muffled by the clamp of his hand over her mouth.
He’d dragged her all the way to the lobby doors before he let her speak again. “What are you doing? Where are you taking me? Where’s Blake?”
“That pig of a boyfriend got you into this mess. I’m gettin’ you out.” He threw open the door and pulled her onto the front stoop. “I never believed it was right to pay like that. You ain’t even legal age yet. You’re too good for this life. Too young.” He shoved her away and turned for the door. “Go home, girl.”
Jillian ran back. “I won’t leave without Blake. Isaac will hurt him when he finds out I took a hit and didn’t pay.”
“You’re not paying that way.” He caught her by the arm and hauled her all the way down the stairs. “Your boyfriend’s long gone. Isaac’s my problem. You don’t ever come back here.”
“But—”
“You don’t belong here, girl.” When she didn’t move, he pushed her away. “Get out of here!”
Once Jillian found her feet, she ran. She ended up on her brother Eli’s doorstep.
The next day she was in court, her skin crawling with a terrible need.
Then she was in her small room at the Boatman Clinic, going through withdrawal. In Dr. Randolph’s office for meeting after meeting, and talking and hugging and healing.
For a moment, Jillian breathed fresh air. Her body relaxed. She rolled over in the bed.
And then the merciless talons from her past dug into her mind and sucked her back down into the nightmare.
She couldn’t escape. Not ever. Not really. The fear was the same, the helplessness real.
Red carnations were raining down all around her, stinging her sinuses with their perfumey scent. The horrible sound of fists pounding on bruised and broken flesh spasmed through her body. A man’s voice whispered disturbing, indistinct words in her ears about love and need and being his. Then he just said her name.
Over and over again.
“Stop it.” Jillian thrashed from side to side, bound by the words, tortured by the promise behind them. “Stop it!”
And then she was running. Pushing her way through the sea of flowers and running through the darkness. The voice pursued her.
Jillian. Jillian.
“No!” she cried out. A light flashed on, searing through her retinas and bringing her pain. “Please, no.”
With light came a new scene, more grisly and frightening and confining than the last.
She was trapped on an elevator now, the walls and floor red with blood, not flowers. A dark figure lay slumped in the corner, its moans of pain matching Jillian’s own mewling cries.
This was her. Her fate. Her punishment.
Jillian. Jillian.
“Leave me alone!”
The elevator doors opened, but there was no place to run, nowhere to hide. A faceless man walked in, carrying a bouquet of bright red flowers. “You’re not alone. I want you. I love you.”
“No.” She backed into the corner, raised her hands to fight.
“I love you.” The flowers had vanished and his hands were on her now.
“No.”
“I love you, Jillian.” His hands crept around her throat.
She struck out at his featureless face. “No!”
He raised his fist into the air. “Love me.”
“No.”
She felt his rage like a fist in her gut. “Love me!”
“No!”
“Love me!”
“Jillian!” Hands were truly on her now, battling with her flying fists and twisting body as her screams tore through her. “Jillian, wake up!”
“No!” Jillian panted for breath. Sweat beaded between her breasts and at the small of her back.
Her eyes focused on the light from the lamp on the bedside table. Then coal-black hair with sprinkles of silver registered. Her wrists were bound against her pillows, her body pinned in a spread-eagle position. She saw broad shoulders, an unshaven chin and midnight-blue eyes.
“Michael?”
“Are you with me?” Those piercing eyes scanned every nuance of her changing expression as she found her way back to the football-themed bedroom in Michael Cutler’s house.
As she found her way back to the blessed security of Michael watching over her. “Michael!”
He released her as soon as he knew she was herself. As he pulled away the covers that wreathed her body, she pushed herself up and threw her arms around his neck.
“Michael, it was awful.”
“Shh.” He absorbed her momentum, catching her around the waist and falling backward onto the bed, pulling her to rest on top of him. He smoothed the sticky hair away from her temple and pressed a kiss there. “It was a bad dream. Just a dream. You’re safe.”
She shifted her ear to the reassuring thump of his heart and turned her nose into a crisp mat of sooty curls and the clean, familiar scent of his warm skin underneath. He loosened her hair and sifted his fingers through it, then slipped his hand beneath the weight of it to palm the nape of her neck. Jillian wasn’t sure how long they lay together that way, with Michael gently rocking her back and forth, feathering kisses against her hair and neck and down across the jut of her shoulder.
When she finally sighed an unfettered breath and wiped the remnants of tears from her swollen, hot eyes, he shifted his grip to frame her face and tilt her eyes up to meet his. A hint of a smile played on his lips. “You gonna clock me again?”
“Did I really hit you?” He tapped the edge of his jaw and her gaze flew to the spot. A red mark. She felt her own cheeks turn a similar color. “Oh, no. I’m sorry.”
She made a graceless attempt to find a place to put her knees and climb off him. But he foiled her escape by simply smiling and rolling onto his side, dumping her onto the bed beside him and throwing his leg over both of hers to let her know he had no interest in breaking the contact between them.
And there was plenty of contact. Lots and lots of places where their bodies touched or the thin barrier of her tank top and panties, and his black boxer shorts left little to the imagination. Jillian let Michael’s deep, drowsy voice mesmerize her while her body took note of all the glorious, intimate contrasts between them.
“That’s why I held you down. Hope I didn’t scare you. Just protecting myself.” The crisp texture of hair along his muscular thigh and calf tickled her smoother skin like the soft lick of a cat’s tongue. His left hand had settled with a possessive claim around her bottom, trapping her soft feminine center between the heat of his palm and the unyielding hardness of his body. “You scared me plenty enough for both of us. Your screams woke me. You were really fighting a demon of some kind. Do you need to talk about it?”
“I haven’t had the nightmares for a long time,” she admitted, feeling the dark shadows of memory and imagination being chased back into the corners of her mind by her own growing response to the heat and strength of the man holding her. Jillian rubbed her palms across the angles of his neck, chest, shoulders and arms, waking a primal feminine power inside her to feel his muscles jump and bunch beneath each stroke of her hand.
“You were exhausted. That doesn’t help.” H
e shifted his position slightly, perhaps to hide the growing evidence of his arousal nudging against her thigh. His blue eyes demanded her attention and she willingly tilted her face to read the promise shining there. “Were you thinking about what happened tonight with Rush and Lynch? They’re both in jail tonight. Rivers is in the hospital, with a guard watching him. They can’t hurt you.”
“I know.” Her breathing quickened when his gaze dropped to her lips and his eyes dilated and darkened. “It was just some of the horrors of my past getting mixed up with everything that’s going on now. Tonight. The letters. Mrs. Anthony. What you said about things getting worse.”
“I shouldn’t have scared you like that.” He blinked, moved his hands to a more neutral position, which turned out not to be very neutral at all because his chest brushed against the pearls of her tight nipples, sending a burst of electric energy from that point of contact straight down to her womb, making every point of contact suddenly several degrees hotter. “I can be…” he swallowed hard and she watched the movement all the way down the column of his throat to see that his chest was rising and falling in an unsteady rhythm, too “…pretty harsh about making a point.”
“No. I want to be smart about this—how I handle things.” Jillian squeezed her eyes shut, fighting to control the warring impulses inside her. Fear and comfort. Nightmares and light. Past and present. Patience and desire. Following the lonely existence her choices had sentenced her to and following her heart.
“Jillian.” He sensed it, too. The hand at her waist squeezed almost to the point of pain as he struggled to maintain control. “I haven’t wanted anything like this for a long time. But I’m smart enough to know it can’t just be something physical. I don’t want to get this any more complicated. I don’t want to make it worse for you.”
“You can’t.” She stretched up to kiss his lips, feeling both hope and fear as he caught hers and tried to cling to them as she pulled away. “At the hospital, you said you needed something from me. I need something, too. I need to feel. I need to know that I’m okay, that some part of me is still normal. For a little while, anyway. Michael.” She rubbed her palm across his prickly jaw and begged him to understand. “Please.”