by Ruth Owen
She slipped into the enveloping darkness of the cab. The back of her legs rubbed against the slick leather seats worn smooth by a thousand unknown occupants. She glanced over at the shimmering wonderland of Ian’s house, realizing that she, too, was slipping back into the anonymity of her safe, ordinary life. A life without passion, without love, without Ian …
“Miss? Señorita! I asked where you want to go.”
Jill raised her head and met the worried stare of her mustachioed, sharp-eyed Cuban driver. She’d been so lost in her thoughts that she hadn’t heard the man’s repeated questions—so lost that she hadn’t even closed the cab door behind her. Great, at this rate I’ll be sitting here all night. “I’m sorry. I guess I wasn’t listening.”
“Pretty lady like you shouldn’t frown so much,” he commented sagely.
Jill opened her mouth to reply, but was interrupted by a familiar baritone. “I agree.”
No, it can’t be. But as Ian sandwiched his tall form into the limited space of the cab’s backseat, she realized that it was. “Ian! You can’t—Look, I told Partridge—”
“You told Partridge to tell me you were leaving. You just didn’t know she’d use the intercom to do it. Now, stop all this foolishness and come back in the house.”
And back to your reason-numbing kisses? I don’t think so. “I’m going home.”
“Fine,” he replied curtly with a tight, not altogether pleasant smile. He yanked the car door shut behind him. “I’ll come with you.”
“Like hell you will—” Jill began, but Ian interrupted her.
“Would you rather talk about this tomorrow? In front of Felix, Sadie, and the rest of the department?”
She wouldn’t, and he knew it. She remembered how the staff had whispered and giggled when they’d seen the video of her and Ian’s cyberkiss—imagine what they’d say if they had a real relationship to gossip about. “It’s all right,” she told the understandably perplexed driver. “But the gentleman will be taking this cab back.”
The gentleman merely smiled.
Jill gave the driver her address, and the taxi started down the driveway. She shoved herself into the farthest corner of the seat, wanting to put as much distance between herself and Ian as possible. It wasn’t easy. The taxi’s backseat wasn’t large to begin with, and Ian took up most of it. No matter how she turned, she couldn’t avoid touching Ian’s knee with her own. The contact was electric. Damn him. Why did he have to follow me in the first place?
And why did I let him?
The cab had turned off the well-lit driveway and onto the empty country road. Darkness filled the car like ink in a well, yet Jill could feel Ian’s intense eyes watching her, piercing her. She shifted nervously in the seat, a move that unfortunately brought more of her leg into contact with Ian’s. Beneath the form-fitting jeans she felt the hard muscles of his calves, the coiled energy of a panther waiting to strike. God. “I’m sorry I left without telling you,” she said truthfully. “I … I remembered I had work to finish.”
Ian gave a snort of disbelief. “That’s what Partridge told me. I didn’t buy it then, and I don’t buy it now. You weren’t just leaving—you were running away.”
“I wasn’t running away,” she stated. But, of course, she had been. Retreat was preferable to telling him the truth about herself. Then and now. “Listen, I don’t owe you an explanation. I don’t owe you a damn th—”
Her sentence stopped abruptly as she swiped her arm for emphasis, and inadvertently knocked over her purse. The contents spilled onto the seat between them. Perfect, she thought as she hurried to stuff the items back into her handbag. At least things can’t get any worse.
But they did. Ian reached over to help her, closing his fist around several of the scattered objects. The darkness obscured their identity, but there was no mistaking the telltale crunch of foil.
“What the—?”
“Marsha,” she explained weakly, grabbing the condom out of his hand and stuffing it into her purse. “I wasn’t … I mean, I didn’t … let’s just pretend this whole evening never happened.”
“I can’t do that, Ms. Polanski. Nor,” he added with lethal softness, “would I want to.”
Neither do I, she thought helplessly, but I have to. A relationship with Ian could only break her heart. He was right—she had been running away. But instead of escaping from him, she was closer to him than ever. The small backseat was filled with him—his body, his smell, his heat—she was suffocating from it. She’d never been so aware of a man’s sexuality before. Or of her own. She swallowed, trying desperately to rein back her careening emotions. “I think it would be better for everyone if we didn’t see each other anymore.”
“That’s not an answer.” He grasped her wrist, pulling her closer with a cruel and gentle strength. “Why, Jillie? What did I do to drive you away?”
The bewilderment in his voice split her heart. “Oh, Ian, it’s not like that. It’s—” She stopped as the cab passed a streetlight, and she caught sight of their driver’s curious stare in the rearview mirror. Honestly, just once couldn’t they have a discussion without an audience? She dropped her voice to whisper. “I left because—”
“Why are you whispering?”
Jill inched closer. “I’m whispering because—”
“Are you feeling all right?” asked the infinitely practical doctor. “Have you got laryngitis?”
“I don’t—argh!” Exasperated, Jill leaned against him and whispered directly into his ear. “I haven’t got laryngitis. I just don’t want to share our personal business with a nosy cabdriver. Can you hear me now?”
After a meaningful pause he answered, “Yes.”
It wasn’t what he said, but the way he said it—as if he were fighting for breath to speak even that short word. Jill realized how close they were, and how her torso was pressed full against the solid wall of his chest. Layers of clothing separated them, but they might have been naked by the way her breasts molded to his hard planes of muscle, aching with a delicious sensitivity. They might have been naked …
“Maybe this wasn’t a good idea,” she whispered shakily, finding that she was also short of breath.
“Nonsense,” he answered gruffly. “We’re scientists—our minds control our bodies, not the other way around. Do go on.”
Well, if he can stand it, so can I. Determined, she willed herself not to feel the threads of fire weaving through her arms and legs, and wherever else her body touched his. She pulled herself up to his ear, trying to ignore the way the wonderful scent of his hair tickled her nose. “I left because there are things in my past that you don’t know about. Our backgrounds are so different.…”
He turned toward her ear, brushing his jaw against the sensitive skin of her neck as he did so.
“I’m trying to point out the differences between us. I’m—” she began to say.
The taxi hit a pothole, throwing Jill off balance. She would have hit the seat in front of her if Ian hadn’t caught her and pulled her back. “Bloody hell,” he cursed at the driver, “can’t you watch where you’re going?”
“Pardon, señor,” the apologetic cabbie muttered.
Jill barely heard the exchange. Cradled against Ian’s broad chest, she felt safe and protected—and ridiculously content. She was vaguely aware of the shift in her position—that somehow she’d ended up sitting in Ian’s lap, with his right hand resting on her stockinged thigh just below her hemline. The darkness and the motion of the cab created a strangely separate atmosphere, as if she and Ian were in a space apart from the rest of the world—a world where she was warm, and safe, and cherished. It was a fantasy, an illusion as false as the topological overlays in the simulator. But she couldn’t seem to help herself from nuzzling closer to him, and breathing in his clean, incredibly masculine scent.
“Jillie,” Ian murmured against her hair.
His rough-textured fingers stroked up her thigh, trailing tremors of delight across her ultrasensitive skin. Pas
sion ignited within her. She’d had a taste of his caresses earlier that evening, but it was nothing like this. This was slow and steamy, as if he intended to make love to every part of her. Every part. She groaned, knowing she couldn’t want this, knowing it was poison to want this. “Ian, we can’t …”
His deep chuckle sent delicious shivers down her spine. “When I was a child, I lived in a castle that has been in my family for centuries. It’s cold and damp, and it’s so crowded with the trophies of my ancestors that there’s no room left for the living. I’ve lived among the dead for so long, I’d forgotten what it was like to be alive.” He leaned closer, giving her earlobe a seductive nip. “Or I had, until a certain spitfire barreled into my office and gave me hell for not recycling.”
Jill’s eyes widened in surprise. “But that was my first day!”
Against her hair she felt his mouth curve into a smile. “And it’s been torture being near you ever since. Do you know how long I’ve wanted to kiss you? Do you know how long I’ve wanted to touch you like this?”
His hand claimed her inner thigh. Desire exploded through her like a bursting star. “You can’t,” she gasped as she glanced at the silhouette of the cabbie’s head. “We can’t—”
His leather-soft voice was as seductive as his touch. “Let me, Jillie. Just once let me touch you the way I’ve wanted to, the way I’ve dreamed about.…”
His hand followed his words, moving higher up, until he reached the bare skin above her garter-secured stockings. She moaned, pressing her mouth against his shoulder to kill the sound. He wanted me from the start, she thought, feeling a bright bittersweet longing well up inside her. He wants the person he thinks I am.
She was crazy to let him do this, and not only because of the cabbie. Their passion didn’t change her past, or his. This was illusion—a dark, hot, sinfully wonderful illusion as unreal as cyberspace. She needed to end this—now. But as his fingers began to stroke the naked flesh of her inner thigh, she knew she couldn’t summon the will to stop him even if she’d wanted to. Being touched by Ian was her fantasy too.
She gave herself to him. Instinctively she moved against his hand, picking up the rhythm of his lovemaking. His strong fingers stroked magic through her, arousing her to a fever pitch. When he cupped her she buried her face in the hollow of his neck, groaning as a tidal wave of pleasure ripped through her.
“I want you,” he growled. “I want you hot and naked and under me. Say you want it too.”
Want it? She was dying for it. She was mad for him, burning for a fulfillment only he could provide. From the waist up she was a perfect lady. From the waist down she was moving to the rhythm of his incredible caress, wild as a bitch in heat. She couldn’t take much more. She couldn’t imagine stopping.
“Say it,” he commanded, his voice thick with the strain of his own passion. He bent closer, his lips hovering torturing inches above hers. “I don’t care if it’s true or not. Tell me you want me.”
Not true? How can he doubt it? Her body was proving how much she wanted him, how much she loved him. Her love for him was the one true thing about her. It was also the one thing she couldn’t bear to admit. To be this close, then to see the passion die in his eyes when she told him the truth about herself … that really would kill her. “Ian, I can’t—”
The taxi jerked to a halt. Turning her head, Jill saw the lights of her town house condominium. The ride was over. And the fantasy.
Afterward she was never entirely sure how Ian untangled their bodies so quickly, or how he managed to set her on the other side of the seat with her coat demurely pulled down over her legs before the cabbie had a chance to switch off the meter and turn around. “We’re here, Señorita. And the señor—will he be going back?”
“Yes,” Ian stated before she had a chance to reply. “The señor will.”
He opened the door and helped her out, but there was no warmth in either his touch or his expression. His mask was back in place, the steel façade that made people view him as cold and distant. But Jill knew that behind his impassive exterior beat a passionate, vulnerable heart. A heart just as capable of being broken as her own.
There couldn’t be anything permanent between them, she knew that. But she also knew that she owed him the truth as to why not. He’d rescued her from an orc and a Nazi, and most recently from the knowing leer of a curious cabdriver. She couldn’t let him leave believing that he was the reason she’d left, that somehow he’d driven her away. She curled her fingers around the hand that rested on the door handle. “Ian, what you wanted me to say in the cab … it’s true.”
For the space of several heartbeats, nothing happened. Then he turned his hand palm-up and laced his fingers through her own. Their gazes locked, and for a precious moment there wasn’t a sound in the world but their hushed breathing, and the pounding rhythm of their hearts.
“You can drive on, cabbie,” Ian said without taking his eyes from Jill’s. “The señor will be staying.”
TWELVE
She walked into the shadowed darkness of her living room, seeing the familiar shapes of her furniture, the glint of the pale moon through her sliding glass door. This home was a haven for her, an island of peace in a crazy, chaotic world. But peace evaporated as she heard a footstep behind her.
“Would you like me to turn on a light?” he asked quietly.
“No,” she said. It was easier in the darkness, easier to confess the truth about her upbringing. She hugged her arms to her body, a neat trick in the enveloping coat she still wore. Still turned away from him, she spoke, hoping that the perfect words would just tumble out of her mouth. But all that came out was “Would you like some tea?”
She heard the smile in his voice. “Not right now.”
Stupid, of course he doesn’t want tea. She grimaced, painfully aware of how inept she’d sounded. But she really couldn’t be anything but inept about this. She’d never invited a man into her house to … well, she never had. Movies and books always made it sound so easy, as natural as falling off a log. But she’d never felt more unnatural. She felt shy and awkward, and she hadn’t a clue on how to proceed. “Well, how about some coffee?”
“What I’d like is for you to relax,” he said as he came to stand behind her. “We’re alone here. No simulator cameras, no cybertechs, no orcs, Nazis, or cabdrivers. It’s just you and me. And truthfully,” he admitted as he pressed a heated kiss on the back of her neck, “I’m almost as clueless about this procedure as you are.”
Yeah, sure. “You were married for six years.”
“I know about sex.” His voice grew hard, with a bitter edge that cut to her own heart. “Samantha had an insatiable appetite for physical pleasure. Trouble was, she didn’t much care who she was doing it with. Men were interchangeable to her. Including her husband.”
He sounded so remote, so alone. She turned in his arms, and saw that isolation mirrored in his eyes. For the first time she understood his remoteness, the reason he’d built a wall of facts and figures around his heart. She smiled softly, unafraid of his forbidding expression because she knew and loved the man behind it. “She’s wrong, Doctor. You’re definitely one of a kind.”
The harshness left his expression. In the silvered moonlight she watched his features soften, taking on the treasured gentleness she’d so rarely seen. Her breath caught in her throat as she saw the man she loved looking down at her without a trace of the barriers that had kept them apart for so long.
“You’re rather special yourself,” he said with a tenderness that made her shiver. “But do you think we could dispense with this bloody coat?”
“It’s not that bad,” she said, fighting a grin. “My grandmother gave it to me.”
“Well, she didn’t do you any favors,” Ian commented as he helped her out of the sleeves. He took the garment and dumped it on the couch, glad to finally be rid of the ugly thing. Trust Jillie to take in stray coats as well as stray cats, he thought as he turned back—and momentarily forgot how
to breathe.
She stood near the window, moonlight pouring over her like a silver river. She seemed made of light, a gossamer dream spun of night and magic, a fantasy come to life. And yet she was real, so very real. In the cab he’d had a taste of what loving her would be like—a sweet slice of heaven melting through his frozen soul. One taste would never be enough. “Jillie,” he said softly, half afraid she’d vanish like so many of his other dreams, “you can dispense with the dress as well.”
She went utterly still. For a moment he thought he’d pushed her too far too fast—this was so new for both of them. Then she reached behind her and slid down the zipper. For a moment she held the bodice of the soft material like a shield against her chest. Then with a barely audible sigh she loosened her death grip on the velvet darkness and let it fall to her ankles.
She was a vision. Her high, smallish breasts were fuller than he’d imagined, with dark, straining nipples that seemed to beg for his touch. Her torso narrowed to an impossibly small waist, then flared again to generous hips that called up a hundred carnal images to mind. His gaze traveled down and up her slim legs, to the black lace panties that revealed almost as much as they concealed. She had the figure of a courtesan, not a cybertech, and her unconsciously erotic sensuality brought him to instant, aching arousal. “Ms. Polanski,” he said roughly as he fought to control his fierce, primal need, “my simulator did not do you justice.”
He started to pull off his sweater, but her soft words stopped him.
“No. Let me.”
She walked over to him, trying not to look as eager as she felt. She wanted to touch him so badly, it made her weak, but what if she did it wrong? She knew her love could meet his emotional needs, but his physical ones … she was less certain. She reached him and bunched the bottom of his sweater in her hands, shocked at how the feel of the soft, Ian-warm material ignited her own desire. Instinctively she raised the cloth to her face and rubbed it against her cheek.
He uttered a sharp, raw curse. “Take it off,” he commanded hoarsely. “Now.”