And then he inclined his head.
“All right.”
Chapter 12
The second Kansas stepped across her threshold into her apartment, she felt her adrenaline instantly kicking in. It raced madly to all parts of her at once, sounding a multitude of alarms like so many tiny Paul Reveres riding in the night. Her whole body went on alert—not in waves, but simultaneously.
The feeling intensified when she heard the lock click into place as Ethan closed the door behind him.
This is it, she thought. Time to fish or cut bait, Beckett.
She wanted to fish. Desperately.
Damn it, Ethan thought as a warmth undulated through his body, why was he doing this to himself? Why was he testing himself this way? He should have just ushered Kansas in, politely said good-night and then gotten out of there.
For every moment he hesitated, every moment that he didn’t do the right thing, it became that much harder for him to walk away.
But as much as he wanted her—and until this very moment he had no idea that he could possibly ever want a woman this much—he couldn’t allow himself to act on that desire. He had a sister. If someone had taken advantage of her in this kind of a situation, he would have cut the guy’s heart out and served it to him for lunch. Just because he was on the other side of this scenario didn’t make it any more excusable for him to take advantage of the woman.
“So, if you’re okay, I’ll be going,” he said, fully expecting his feet to engage and begin moving back to the door.
But they didn’t move. They seemed to remain glued in place.
Kansas looked up at him. How could she be getting more beautiful, more desirable by the second? It wasn’t possible.
And yet...
“But I’m not okay,” she said.
The drinks she’d had at Malone’s were probably getting to her stomach, Ethan guessed. “What’s wrong? You feel sick?” He should have never brought her there, he upbraided himself.
“That wouldn’t be the word I’d use,” she answered, moving closer to him, dissolving the tiny distance between them until there wasn’t space enough for a heartbeat.
As she began to put her arms around his neck, Ethan stopped her, catching her wrists and bringing her arms down again. He saw confused frustration crease Kansas’s brow.
“In case you haven’t noticed, Detective,” she told him, “I’m throwing myself at you.”
“Oh, I’ve noticed, all right.” He’d been acutely aware of everything about her from the first moment. “And at any other time, I’d be more than happy to do the catching.”
Her eyes narrowed as she struggled to understand. She took his words at face value. “What’s wrong with Thursdays?”
He laughed softly, shaking his head. “There’s nothing wrong with Thursdays. There’s something wrong with taking advantage of a woman.” He appealed to her because he really needed help if he was going to do the right thing. He couldn’t do it on his own. He was only human. “Kansas, you’re not thinking clearly. You’re probably not thinking at all,” he amended.
Otherwise, he reasoned, she wouldn’t be acting this way. The Kansas he’d come to know wouldn’t have thrown herself at a man. She would have skewered him if he even attempted anything.
Kansas took a breath, absorbing this. Men like O’Brien weren’t supposed to exist. Everything she’d ever learned pointed to the fact that they didn’t. And yet, here he was, sounding as noble as if he’d just ridden in on a charger with Lancelot.
No, with Galahad, she silently corrected herself, because Lancelot lusted after the queen, but Galahad was purity personified.
Looking Ethan squarely in the eye, she said, “Give me a calculus problem.”
Just how hard had those three drinks hit her? “What?”
“A calculus problem,” she repeated. “If I solve it, will that prove to you that my brain is functioning? That it isn’t in a fog and neither am I? I admit the drinks hit me hard at first,” she said before he could bring it up, “but the effect didn’t last, and believe me, that ‘I can touch the sky’ feeling is long gone.” Although, she thought, it had served its purpose. “While it lasted, it let me say what I couldn’t say stone-cold sober. That I want to make love with you.”
Pausing for a moment, she looked up at him. Every breath she took registered against his body, against his skin.
“Don’t you want to make love with me?” she asked as the silence stretched out between them.
Oh, God, did he ever. “You have no idea,” he told her, feeling as if the effort to restrain himself was all but strangling him.
The smile that slipped over her lips in almost slow motion drew him in an inch at a time. Trapping him so that he couldn’t turn back, couldn’t cut loose. Couldn’t tear his eyes away.
She rose up on her toes. “Then educate me,” she whispered, her lips all but brushing against his as she spoke.
He was just barely holding on to his self-control. The next second, as the promise of her mouth whispered along his, his self-control snapped in two, leaving him without any resources to use in the fight against his reactions.
Instead of doing the noble thing and protesting, or saying anything about the way she was going to regret this, Ethan pressed his lips against hers and kissed her. Really kissed her.
Kissed her so deeply and with such feeling that he was instantly lost.
All he could think of was having her. Having her in the most complete, satisfying sense of the word and steeping himself in her until he wouldn’t be able to tell where he ended and she began.
The kiss went deeper.
Yes!
The single, triumphant word echoed over and over again in Kansas’s brain even as she felt her body melting in the flames that his mouth had created within her. This, this was the connection she’d missed, the part of herself she had struggled to pretend didn’t exist, the part of her that hadn’t been allowed to see the light of day. It broke free and filled every single space within her.
Everything within Kansas hummed with a happiness she hadn’t known was achievable.
But as that feeling of happiness, of absolute joy, progressed, all but consuming her, Kansas swiftly came to realize that this really wasn’t the feeling she’d hoped for.
This was more.
So very much more.
Before this, any kind of happiness she’d experienced with Grant amounted to little more than a thimbleful in comparison. This “thing” she was feeling was like an ocean. An all-encompassing, huge ocean. And she was swimming madly through it as the current kept sweeping her away, taking absolutely all control out of her hands.
She was at its mercy.
And she loved it!
She felt Ethan’s breath on her neck, making her skin sizzle.
Making her want more.
And all the while the very core of her kept quickening in anticipation of what was to be. What she hoped was to be.
She struggled to hold herself at bay, struggled to savor this for as long as she could. For as long as it went on. Because something told her that these conditions would never be met again. This was a one-of-a-kind, one-time-only thing. Like the sighting of a comet.
And then, just like that, Ethan was no longer kissing her. His lips were no longer grazing the side of her neck, rendering her all but mindless. Ethan had drawn back, cupping her face in his hands as he silently declared a time-out.
Confused, with shafts of disappointment weaving through her, she looked at Ethan quizzically. “What?” she asked breathlessly. Had she done something wrong? Turned him off somehow?
“Last chance,” he offered.
She shook her head, not understanding. “Last chance for what?”
“For you to back out.” He held his breath, waiting for her answer. Praying she’d say what he wanted her to say.
It came in the form of a soft laugh. The sound all but ricocheted around her small living room. “Not on your life.”
He coul
dn’t begin to describe the urge he felt just then.
“Okay, just remember, I gave you a chance. You asked for this,” he told her, his voice gruff.
“I know,” she managed to say before her lips became otherwise engaged.
The next moment, his mouth was back on hers, kissing her senseless as his fingers got busy removing the layers of her clothing that were between them.
He began with her jacket, sliding it down her arms. The garment was followed by her cherry-red tank top and her white skirt. With each piece of clothing he removed from her, the heat encircling her intensified. And his breathing grew shorter, she noted, as a haze began to descend over her brain.
Refusing to be passive, even if she was being reduced to a mass of fiery yearning, Kansas started to remove his clothes, as well. As she worked buttons free, took down zippers, she felt as if her fingers were clumsier at this process than his were. But then, it wasn’t as if she was altogether clear-headed right now. Or experienced at doing this kind of thing.
They achieved their goal at the same time.
Clothes commingling in a pile on the floor, their bodies primed and aching, he swept her into his arms as if she weighed no more than one of the reports that she’d left abandoned on the desk at the precinct.
“Where’s your bedroom?” he asked in between pleasuring her mouth with bone-melting kisses.
“At the end of the hall,” she answered with effort.
Because her lips had been separated from his during this short verbal exchange, Kansas framed his face with her hands, held his head in place as she raised up her mouth to cover his.
He almost dropped her. But that was because she was so effectively weakening his limbs.
Bringing her into her bedroom, he placed her on the bed, joining her without breaking rhythm. Ethan began kissing her with even more passion.
He made her forget absolutely everything, especially the glaring looks and thinly veiled derogatory remarks she’d received from this afternoon’s collection of firefighters.
Nothing else mattered. Not her past, not the lonely isolation of her childhood, nor the emptiness of her short-lived marriage to a narcissist. All that mattered was sustaining this incredible feeling that was crescendoing through her.
Because of him.
In response to him, her own kisses became more passionate, more intense. Each place that Ethan touched, she mirrored the gesture, sweeping soft, questing fingertips over his tantalizingly hard body. Glorying in the way he responded to her, the way he moved. The sound of his moan drove her crazy.
She saw that she could arouse him even more with just a touch—just the way he could her. The thought of exercising that kind of control over him was mind-blowing. She felt like an equal, not just like a receptive vessel. That was the moment that this completely transcended anything she’d ever experienced before.
Thinking that she was at the highest level she could reach short of the final one, she discovered in the next moment that she was wrong.
She all but lost the ability to snatch a thought out of the air when Ethan began to trace a hot, moist path to her very core, first with his hands and then, very swiftly, with his lips.
Suppressing a surprised gasp, Kansas was barely able to breathe as she rode the crest of the all-consuming climax Ethan had just produced within her.
She arched and bucked, desperate to absorb the sensation and keep it alive for even so much as a heartbeat longer. But when it left, leaving her convinced that she’d experienced the best that there was, Ethan’s clever mouth brought another wave to fruition.
And then another. Until she cried out something unintelligible. Whether she was asking for mercy or for more, neither one of them knew.
But suddenly, there he was, over her, pressing her deep into her bed as he slid his hard body along hers, activating yet another host of sensations until she was completely convinced that she had somehow just vibrated into an alternative universe where pleasure was king and nothing else mattered. Ever.
Breathing hard now, trying vainly to draw in enough air to sustain herself, Kansas parted her legs and opened for him.
And cried out his name as she felt him enter.
The music suddenly materialized in her head, coming from nowhere.
The dance began slowly, building quickly.
A waltz developed into a samba, then the tempo went faster and faster until the final moment with its satisfying dispersion of mind-numbing sensations echoed within them both.
It was like New Year’s Eve when the clock struck midnight and confetti came raining down, accompanied by cries of good wishes and happiness.
Gradually, she became aware of clinging to Ethan, became aware that her arms were still wrapped tightly around his back and that her body was still arching into his even though he was on top.
She became aware as well that his breathing was just as short as hers.
And aware, most of all, that she didn’t want this very special moment to end. Didn’t want to exchange what she was feeling for reality, where guilt and vulnerability and, most of all, disappointment resided, ready to rain on her parade.
But the moment linked itself to another and then another until finally, the descent came, slowly rather than rapidly, but it came. And it brought her down with it.
She felt Ethan shift his weight off her and realized that he’d been propping himself on his elbows the entire time they’d made love to spare her being oppressed by his weight.
That was when she recalled having trouble breathing when Grant made love with her. Grant always allowed his full weight to press against her, against her lungs, after he’d satisfied himself. Once he’d actually fallen asleep and had gotten angry at her for waking him up. He claimed not to remember the incident when he was awake the next day. And because she loved him, because she wanted him to love her, she’d believed him.
Or said she had.
They weren’t the same kind of men at all, he and Ethan, she realized. Maybe there really were two different kinds of men. The good ones and the bad ones.
No, don’t do that. Don’t go there, she warned herself sternly. You’re just going to start hoping and setting yourself up for a fall. You fell once, crashing and burning, remember? That should be enough for anyone, including you.
She felt Ethan’s smile before she saw it.
Turning her head to look at him, Kansas saw that she was right. He was smiling. Grinning, really. Was he laughing at her, enjoying some private joke at her expense?
She could feel herself withdrawing. “What?” she demanded.
His smile seem to soften, or maybe that was wishful thinking on her part, a way for her to save face in her own eyes.
“You, Kansas,” he told her, “are just full of surprises.”
She could feel her defenses going up, and just like that, she was ready for a fight. “Meaning?”
“Meaning I don’t think I’ve ever actually been blown away before.” He stopped as if he was thinking, trying to remember. But there was no need to think, really. Because he already knew. “No, never blown away. Until now.” He combed his fingers through her hair, looking into her eyes. Despite everything, all those defenses she thought she’d just hastily thrown up, she felt herself melting. “You really can make the earth move, can’t you?”
What she wanted to do was lean into his touch. But she knew the danger in that. Instead, she rebuffed his words. “You don’t have to flatter me, O’Brien. We already made love,” she pointed out.
“I don’t have to do anything at all,” he told her. “I tend not to, as a matter of fact. Kyle’s the family rebel, but that doesn’t mean that Greer and I just fall docilely into step, doing whatever we’re told, following all the rules just because they’re rules.” His smile deepened as he looked at her, thoughts cropping up in his head that he was not willing to share yet—if ever. “You, Beckett, are a force to be reckoned with. But I already kind of figured you would be.”
He was doing it aga
in, she thought, he was breaching her soul. But somehow the sense of alarm that should have accompanied that realization was missing. “Oh, you did, did you?”
He traced a light, circular pattern along the back of her neck and managed to send shivers down her spine. “Yup.”
“Is that because you think you’re such a red-hot lover?” she asked, doing her best to sound sarcastic. But her heart just wasn’t in it. Her heart was elsewhere. Hoping...
“No,” he answered seriously, his eyes holding hers. “It’s because I’m a pretty good judge of people.”
“And does this ability to correctly judge people help you guess what’s going to come next?”
“Sometimes,” he allowed.
“Okay,” she challenged, “what’s going to come next now?”
She could feel his smile getting under her skin as it spread over his lips. “Surprise me,” he whispered.
Funny how a whisper could send such shock waves through her system, she thought. “That,” she informed him as a sexy smile curved her lips, “is a downright dangerous challenge.”
“Oh, God, I certainly hope so.”
Then, before she could comment on his response, Ethan pulled her to him, his mouth covering hers. Silencing her the best way he knew how.
It was the best way she knew how...as well.
Chapter 13
There had to be something. Something, Kansas insisted silently as she sat at the desk that, after more than a month of being here, she’d begun to regard as her own. She felt as if she’d been reexamining files forever.
It was late and everyone on the task force had gone home long ago. She’d even sent away Ethan, who had remained after the others—including the two extra detectives the chief had given them—had left, trying to do what he could to make the tedious process go faster. But another case he’d been working on had required his attention as well, and consequently he’d gotten next to no sleep in over two days.
He was beginning to resemble death walking, she’d told him, insisting that he go home. Ethan had finally given in about ninety minutes ago, leaving the precinct after making her promise that she’d only remain another few minutes.
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