A Cry in the Dark

by Jenna Mills

  “You didn’t think.” Acid dripped from his voice. Then another step, this bringing a hundred Liams one step closer. “That’s the problem, isn’t it? You didn’t think. You didn’t think the night on the beach. You didn’t think this afternoon, and you didn’t think tonight.”

  She lifted her chin. “Just because I’m not playing by your rules doesn’t mean I’m not thinking.”

  “Your words,” he said in a silky soft voice. “Not mine.”

  All those loose ends she’d held together started to unravel.

  “Don’t you get it?” he practically growled. He lifted his hands toward her, then let them fall to his sides. “I’m trying to help you, damn it. Titan—”

  And then, finally, at last, she did get it. She understood his anger, the volatility flashing in his eyes. The glint of something dangerously close to fear—a fear she’d never expected from an FBI special agent like Liam Brooks, who walked unblinkingly through the fire.

  Titan.

  “You’re right,” she admitted, and even though she heard her voice falter, she didn’t care. “I was so lost in memories that I didn’t let myself consider that he could be here.”

  Laughing, two young boys raced around a corner, barely sparing Liam and Danielle a glance before scampering down the path to the exit she hadn’t found—and was no longer sure she wanted.

  “It’s okay,” Liam said, and when she looked back at him, at the Liams surrounding her, she saw that the lines of his face had softened. “I’m here now.”

  Her breath faltered. Because he was. Everywhere she turned.

  “What memories?” he asked, stepping closer.

  She blinked. “What?”

  “You said you were lost in memories.”

  The urge to touch him drove her, stripping away the anger and the defenses she’d wrapped so tightly around her only a few minutes before. She lifted her hand, but found only air.

  “We used to come to the carnival when we were younger,” she said. “My sister and brother and I.” She paused but she couldn’t look away from his eyes, which were no longer cold and flat, but warm and glowing and surrounding her like a sea of candles. “You remind me of him, you know.”

  He lifted an eyebrow. “Your brother?”

  The smile happened all by itself. “So big and bad and tough, ready to take on the whole world, scared to admit you’re“I’m not afraid.”

  Her smile widened. “That’s what Anthony always said.” And he’d do the same thing Liam just did, kind of puff out like a male peacock. “I always thought he was invincible,” she said, letting her mind drift back through the years, “until the night Liz and I tried to get him to go into the House of Mirrors.”

  Her badass brother had acted as though they’d asked him to play dolls or dress-up. Horror had drenched his eyes. He’d stepped back from them, thrown up a wall between them.

  “He was afraid of mirrors?” Liam asked.

  “Not mirrors,” Danielle said, and her heart swelled at the memory. “Of closed-in spaces.” She and Liz had not realized it until that night. They’d known he carried scars from the night their mother was murdered. They all did. But they’d never noticed how he went out of his way to never be fenced in. “We hid in her closet,” she murmured, “while my mother was killed.”

  Liam swore softly.

  “Anthony was almost out of his mind. He was torn between protecting us and protecting her.” The memory crested through her like a dark wave. “He couldn’t stand being cooped up in there like that, choking on the cloying scent of gardenia that she always wore. He made us promise we would stay hidden, then threw open the door and ran to help.”

  Liam took a tentative step toward her. “But he was too late.”

  She closed her eyes, nodded.

  “Did he see who did it?”

  “I think so,” she said, opening her eyes. As long as she lived, she’d never forget finally venturing out of the closet, finding her brother standing over their mother’s body. She’d been beaten and strangled. Anthony dropped to his knees and begged her to wake up, but their mother didn’t move. Not even when he cried. “The memory is locked so deep inside of him, I don’t think it will ever come out.”

  Liam took a step closer. “And you, Danielle? Are you afraid of small spaces?”

  “No. I…I’ve always felt safest with walls around me.” It was only when those walls were gone, when she stood open and exposed as she had that night on the beach, with no one to watch her back, that vulnerability cut through her.

  “Then what?” he asked. “What has you so scared right now?”

  She angled her chin, tried to deny. “What makes you think I’m afraid?”

  His gaze heated, slipped down her body, slowly, lingeringly, then cruised back up. “I’m an FBI agent,” he said in that deceptively benign manner of his. “I’m trained to see what others miss.”

  Her mouth went dry. “And what do you see?”

  “A woman who wants to run.” He stepped closer. “A woman who keeps glancing around, checking her surroundings, searching for a way out.” The lines of his face hardened, condemned. “A woman whose eyes, normally a clear green, are dark and stormy.”

  Too much thought. The man saw too much. She didn’t know how he did it—made her feel safe and threatened at the same time. Instinctively she lifted a hand to fend him off, but realized he wasn’t close enough to touch. He just looked that way, so tall and dark, surrounding her in an ever-tightening circle.

  “Everywhere I look,” she whispered, painfully aware of the catch to her voice, “there you are.”

  “And that bothers you.”

  She glanced to her right, where the two young boys had vanished around a corner. A corner she could not see, not with all those Liams staring back at her. Watching. Waiting.

  Crowding.

  “It confuses me,” she said. It made her heart beat too hard, her blood flow too fast. “It’s not real.”

  He didn’t move, just watched her with those steady, penetrating eyes that reminded her of a wise owl, all seeing, all knowing. “You don’t think so?”

  She swallowed hard, for the first time wishing that she’d trotted behind him the way he’d wanted, that she’d never defied him, never ventured down her own path. Then she wouldn’t be standing here in the semidarkness of the House of Mirrors, one woman standing against an army of Liams. “It can’t be.”

  “Why not?”

  Because it was too intense, too consuming. Because she kept reaching but, despite the fact she saw him everywhere, she kept coming up empty handed.

  Because with Liam she could no longer discern what was real from what was only a shadow of her imagination.

  “You walked away,” she reminded him, thinking back to the first day he’d barged into her life, when he’d boldly promised to not walk away, not leave her, until her son was safely home. “You told me you wouldn’t, but after the Ferris wheel, you practically ran.”

  He’d left her sitting there, hugging the stuffed fish and staring after him, wondering how in such a short time this man had managed to shred the defenses she’d spent years erecting.

  She watched his hands, the way they curled into tight fists. “I had to.”

  His words were hard, almost guttural, and they should have warned her. They should have prompted her to turn from him, seek the path the boys had taken.

  But she couldn’t look away, couldn’t deny the need to know. “Why?”

  For a moment he just stood there, all of him, all those reflected images that surrounded her for as far as the eye could see, standing as still as marble soldiers. Then he swore softly and killed the distance between them.

  “So I didn’t do this,” he said roughly, and before she realized his intent, before her heart could beat, he took her face in his hands and lowered his mouth to hers.

  The contact stunned her. The sensation of mouth to mouth. Of hunger. Urgency. Earlier, on the Ferris wheel, it had only been a slight brush. A promis
e of a kiss, a temptation, a whisper of what could be.

  But this was so much more. This was more than just a promise, more than a temptation. It was a full onslaught, his mouth crushing hers, not with the finesse or restraint she associated with him, but with a blinding urgency that curled her toes and melted her bones. Made her want to cry.

  To beg.

  She wanted to push away from him. She wanted to twist out of his arms, sever the contact between their bodies, of his hands holding her face, his mouth taking hers, but she could no more have turned from him than she could have resisted the draw of the House of Mirrors.

  One of his hands tangled in her hair, and she found herself arching into him, opening for him. A soft little cry rasped from deep in her throat when his tongue swept into her mouth and brushed with hers.

  There’d been no one since Ty, no physical intimacy, no hard, male mouth claiming hers, no whiskers rubbing against her cheek, not even a chaste kiss good-night. No one. And now the reality of this man, this kiss, seared clear to the bone, and like a blackboard wiped clean, her mind went blank.

  She felt her knees buckle, heard the guttural sound from deep within him. He backed her against a mirror and held her there, pinned between his big body and the cool surface. But she didn’t feel trapped. She didn’t feel threatened. She felt…everything. She felt every hard line of him, every angle, every ridge. He pressed himself against her and she responded by twining her arms around him, sliding one hand up along his neck, to where her fingers could thread through his hair.

  To the world at large, Liam strapped on a shield of control, of indifference, of command. But there was nothing controlled or indifferent about the way his open mouth ground against hers, the tangling of their tongues in an erotic imitation of deeper intimacies. She felt him inside of her, against her. She felt him everywhere, just as she’d seen him.

  “And so I didn’t do this,” he murmured, sliding one big hand down the side of her face and along her neck, to her chest, where her breasts had grown heavy with a sweet, forgotten need. They ached for a touch they’d not felt in years.

  Not true, she amended, drinking in the sensation. His was a touch she’d never felt before.

  But she’d longed for it forever, she realized as his fingertips grazed her nipple.

  The soft, mewling sound surprised her. The hot curling ribbon of sensation streaked from her breast down between her legs. He kneed them apart and she let him in, embraced him with her thighs and her arms, holding him as tightly as she could, moving her hands restlessly along his body, mapping the feel of him, the size and shape and promise. His body was big and strong and powerful, capable of crushing and hurting, but he did neither. In his arms she felt safe. In his kiss she found a harbor she hadn’t realized she’d been seeking.

  Liam, the FBI agent who had materialized in her life when she’d needed him most, this man of shadows and secrets, tasted of strength and desperation, of pain and shattered restraint, of a dark denial she recognized too well. He tasted of need. He tasted of want.

  It was the want that got her. The want that penetrated the haze of desire. The want that she felt, too. That drenched every pore of her body.

  That she had no business feeling.

  On a cruel heartbeat the haze crumbled, and reality sliced in with all its sharp, jagged edges.

  “No,” she whispered, shoving at him as though he’d been molesting her rather than kissing her with a passion that left her breath in shambles. A kiss that she’d been returning.

  A kiss, heaven help her, that she’d wanted.

  “No,” she said again, louder this time, and when she pushed at him, he staggered back, as though he was nothing more than a cardboard cutout, rather than more than six feet and two hundred pounds of hard, driven man.

  Trying to breathe, to think, to understand, she dragged the back of her hand over her mouth, a mouth still moist and swollen and pulsing from the intensity of his kiss. A mouth that felt naked now. Exposed.

  A mouth that still wanted.

  He stared back at her. All of him, not just the man, but the countless Liams that surrounded her, towered over her, threatening now, where before they’d been protective, seductive.

  “No,” she murmured again, because there was really nothing else to say. But deep inside she bled. Where there’d been heat and completion a moment ago, now a sickness spread, blotting out every crying need, every throbbing want.

  His eyes went dark. “That’s why I walked away.”

  The words devastated her. Because despite everything, she wanted to step toward him, to lift a hand to his face and wipe away the regret.

  Instead she turned and ran.

  Previously the path had eluded her. Now she navigated the twists and turns, the sharp curves and the deceptive images with a horrifying ease. New needs drove her, not dark and erotic like the ones that had pulsed through her in Liam’s arms, but cold and punishing. The need to be outside, away from him. To suck in fresh night air untainted by the scent of man and desire.

  She burst out of the house and ran into the swelling crowd. She opened her mouth and pulled in deep breaths, but no relief came, not when all the scents of the carnival jammed into her throat.

  “Danielle!”

  She kept running. From Liam. From the truth.

  From herself.

  Alex.

  Dear God, Alex. Her little boy was missing. He needed her. And yet there she’d been, in the House of Mirrors, with her body wrapped around that of the FBI agent who’d promised to help her.

  He’d helped, all right. He’d helped her see a side of herself that horrified her. A side that needed and wanted, a side that could lean and could fall.

  And God help her, if she fell, who would be there for her son?

  “Danielle, wait!” Liam was on her then, snagging her wrist to stop her cold. She struggled against him, but he turned her toward him and glowered down at her.

  “Don’t run from me.”

  Breathing hurt, so did looking at him. “Don’t touch me,” she spat. “Not ever, ever again.”

  She excted his face to darken or his mouth to twist. She expected heated words, maybe even a reminder that he’d not been the only one touching.

  She did not expect him to release her. She did not expect an apology.

  But that was what he did. “I’m sorry,” he said, and the words sounded as broken as she felt. “That was…”

  “…wrong,” she finished for him.

  “Wrong,” he agreed.

  She put her hand to her mouth again, meaning to wipe away the remnants of his kiss. Instead, she fingered her swollen bottom lip, where a slight throb remained.

  “No,” he said, and his expression went all soft. “Don’t blame yourself. It was my fault. I’m the one who lost—” He stopped abruptly, but Danielle heard what he didn’t say, what he could not admit. Not even to himself.

  He’d lost control.

  So had she.

  Moisture stung her eyes. “What kind of mother am I?”

  “A good mother,” he said without hesitation. “A strong, courageous mother ready to move heaven and earth to protect her son.”

  A mother who’d, for one blinding moment, savored the taste of a promise she’d taught herself not to want.

  “Now, come on.” He started to reach for her again, but before he made contact, he let his hand drop. “Let’s get you home.”

  She’d been fighting him since the moment they’d met, but there was nothing to fight now, not when he offered exactly what she wanted. “We never should have come here,” she said, glancing around the bright lights and whirling activity of the carnival, the merry-go-round with its cheery horses frozen in motion, the laughing children going round and round. “I just thought…”

  “I know,” he said quietly, and something in his eyes told her that he did, that he knew entirely too much about looking for something in all the wrong places. “I saw the way you looked at every child, the way you swung arou
nd every time you heard laughter.” He hesitated, frowned. “The hope in your eyes.”

  Too much, she thought again. The man, the FBI agent, whoever he really was, saw too much. “Take me home,” she said, and even though she knew better than to let him touch her again, she lifted a hand toward him. “Please.”

  He brushed by her, not touching her, just heading for the entrance. And this time, unlike after the Ferris wheel, she followed, only vaguely aware of the booths they passed and the hawkers calling out to them.

  “No, no, child. You can’t leave yet!”

  The claim, sharper, more urgent than the other attempts to snag their attention, stopped her cold. She swung around and saw the old woman sitting inside a tent labeled House of Fortune.

  Long dark hair, streaked by time and silver, flowed around her face. A face of contrasts, angles and smooth lines, optimism and despair. “You mustn’t run out of here without finding what you came for.”

  Danielle just stared. Leave here was exactly what she and Liam needed to do.

  They’d both already found too much.

  But deep inside, something stirred, the same niggling instinct that had led her to target Jeremy’s pocket to pick. The same whisper that had warned her not to take the drink the man in the Stirling lobby had offered her. Dread crawled down her spine, but she couldn’t turn away from the woman. All evening she’d felt as if she needed to be here. All evening she’d forced herself to stay, when she wanted nothing more than to leave. Now, though, awareness vibrated through her. The awareness her siblings had always referred to as her luck.

  The luck that had failed her the night Ty died.

  Beside her Liam tensed, but she took a step toward the woman, a woman she instinctively recognized as having Gypsy blood flowing through her veins. Maybe it was her features, the mane of dark hair, the bright red and purple clothing. Didn’t matter, though, because Danielle knew.

  “How do you know what I came for?”

  The old woman’s gaze, as sharp and distinctive as her voice, gentled. “I see it in your eyes, child. You came for answers.”