by Maggie Price
After Julia moved off, Grant retrieved the printout she’d left, intending to start scanning the names. Ten minutes later, his forehead creased when he found himself still staring at the first page. His mind ought to be centered on the computer-generated names, not on Sky Milano’s take-you-to-heaven blue eyes.
“Get a grip, Pierce.” It annoyed him that he hadn’t been able to completely forget her over the past six months—more, that he’d been unable to lock her out of his head since she’d walked into the FOP club five nights ago. One of his cases had turned to hell, and that was what he should be focused on. Only that. Instead, he felt himself being pulled by a woman who had made it clear she didn’t trust him, and had forced him out of her life.
He was achingly aware that he wanted to see her, not talk to her on the phone.
Cursing himself for a fool, he rose, jerked his suit coat off the back of his chair and stalked toward the door.
The white-haired, bespectacled secretary glanced up from behind a desk piled high with files. “Where’re you headed, Pierce?”
“Recruit school,” he muttered.
Thirty minutes later, an OCPD academy instructor pointed Grant toward the gym. He went through the high double doors and froze. He blinked as if to clear his vision, but there was nothing wrong with his eyes. It was his heart that had stopped at the sight of Sky lying flat on her back, her dark hair tumbling over her shoulders as her hand rose silkily upward and slid around the neck of the man straddling her.
“What the hell?” A mix of anger and fang-infested jealousy consumed Grant. Then he saw red.
Fists clenched, he’d made it halfway across the gym’s waxed floor when the man’s head jerked up. A second later, the triumph in the bastard’s eyes shot to wariness, then his body jerked and flew sideways. Air escaped his lungs with a muffled “Oof” when he landed hard on the padded mat that covered a section of the wood floor.
Grant skidded to a halt just as Sky bounded to her feet, clearly unaware of his presence. “Okay, recruit, you wanted to know how to get up when somebody has you down. That’s how.”
Face flushed, lungs heaving, the man looked up and shook his head. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Stop saying Yes, ma’am, and get up!” Sky commanded. “If you stay down, Johansen, you’re a target.”
He got up…slowly.
“Fast. Get up fast. You’re vulnerable when you’re down.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Through hooded eyes, Grant watched the recruit. He was young, tall and good-looking. His gray police academy T-shirt and gym shorts molded to the strong, toned body of an athlete.
“Rush me,” Sky said. It didn’t seem to matter that the top of her head came just to the hulk’s shoulders.
Where her opponent had bulk and power, she had grace and speed. She sidestepped his rush, kicked his legs out from under him and had the sole of her tennis shoe against his throat the instant he hit the mat. “You’re dead. I just crushed your windpipe.”
“Yes, ma’am,” the hulk croaked.
Grant felt a stiff tic of pride at how effortlessly she’d toppled the mountain.
She stepped back from her prey. “Don’t stiffen when you fall. You have to be boneless, Johansen. Boneless. When you hit, roll and get back up on your feet in one fluid move. You might wind up dead if you don’t.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Practice with the other recruits.” Slicking the back of her hand across her forehead, Sky leaned and retrieved a hair clip off the edge of the mat. “If you need more help, you can reach me at the lab,” she added, then turned and nearly collided with Grant.
“Having fun with the cavewoman routine, Milano?”
Her eyes widened and went dark. “Maybe.”
Her glossy black hair was a gorgeous mess, her cheeks were flushed, her flesh slicked with sweat. Her breathing came fast and hard; her breasts moved rapidly up and down against the baggy T-shirt marked Academy Instructor that she’d tucked into a pair of loose-fitting gym shorts. The smell of woman and heat pulsed off her in little waves. Grant wanted to pummel the hulk into the mat just because he’d touched her.
“Get lost, recruit,” Grant said, keeping his eyes locked with hers.
“Yes, sir.” Johansen jogged across the gym, the rubber soles of his shoes squeaking against the shiny waxed floor.
“No need to be rude,” Sky said as her student shoved through the swinging door that led to the locker rooms.
“You have to be rude to recruits. It’s the law.”
She arched an eyebrow. “That one must have gotten by me.”
“I came in upstairs by the classrooms.” The mugginess in the air had Grant slipping out of his suit coat and hooking it on a finger over one shoulder. “One of the instructors pointed me in this direction. I thought you were teaching recruit school this afternoon about the exciting world of the forensic lab.”
“I teach that block of classes next month.” She took a few steps and retrieved a white hand towel off a metal stand that held a row of basketballs. “When this academy started, I signed on to help teach self-defense to the female recruits. That’s what I did this afternoon.”
“Female recruits?” Grant gave her a cynical smile. “Your most recent student was a few quarts over the legal testosterone level.”
“Johansen asked for some extra help, so I stayed.”
“The guy could bench-press the entire SWAT team. You really think he needs tips on self-defense?”
Her eyes narrowed. “Not if he stays on his feet.” She blotted the towel across her forehead, then slowly down the seductive arch of her throat.
Grant felt heat streak straight to his loins.
“Johansen’s big and strong, like an ox,” Sky continued, apparently oblivious to what her ministrations were doing to him. “That’s to his detriment if some scumbag manages to knock him off his feet. When he’s down, Johansen lumbers around trying to get back up. Meanwhile he could get shot. Or stabbed.” Her eyes closed briefly. “He recognizes his limits, and he asked for my help.”
Grant knew there was sense in that, but at the moment he didn’t want logic. He wanted to touch that tanned, moist flesh so bad he could taste it. Taste her.
Drawing in a slow breath, he took a casual step forward. “Want to go a few rounds with me, Milano?”
The hand gripping the towel froze against her throat. Her gaze skittered to his mouth, then to his eyes, then settled back to his mouth. She swallowed hard. “No.”
“It’s one thing to take on a goo-goo-eyed recruit who’s afraid to toss the instructor—”
“I didn’t give him the chance to toss me.”
“Really?” The defensive thread in her voice had Grant fighting a smile. When they’d first met, he’d savored the verbal sparring they’d engaged in. Then their relationship got personal and everything changed. And ended. Somehow, after months of silence, they’d all of a sudden slid back into sparring mode. Standing there, in the expansive gym that smelled vaguely of hard workouts, Grant knew there was no way they’d wind up rolling around together on the mat. He knew Sky knew that, too. But, dammit, he was enjoying just being with her after so long and he wanted to prolong the pleasure of the moment.
“When I walked in here, Milano, your student had you flat on your back.”
Her chin rose. “I let Johansen put me there. He wanted to know how to recover when someone knocked him down. I showed him.”
“Hmm.” Grant took another step forward and leaned in. The sweet, compelling scent of her hair drew him, and without thinking, he turned his head, inhaled. And savored. “He had you flat on your back,” he whispered against her cheek.
She took a jerky step sideways. “I had control of the situation.” Her fingers clenched and unclenched on the towel. “Total control.”
“He had you pinned—”
“Not even close. I had full use of my legs. He hadn’t even managed to restrain my arms. I could have disabled him with one palm strike to t
he nose.”
“You could have killed him with a palm strike to the nose.”
“My point, exactly.”
From behind Grant, the echo of voices filled the air; he turned in time to see two brawny patrol officers clad in gym shorts and muscle shirts push through the door. They acknowledged his presence with a nod. The taller of the two men snared a basketball off the metal stand and lobbed it to his partner, then grabbed another ball and dribbled off toward the hoop.
Grant turned back, his eyes locking with Sky’s. He had never seen her with her hair tumbled down around her shoulders. Never gazed into the stark blueness of her eyes without looking through the lenses of her glasses. Never glimpsed her in shorts with her bare legs long and tanned and soft. It hit him then, that if he could get his hands on that barrier she’d put between them months ago, he’d rip it apart.
He let out a slow breath against the realization. Barrier or no barrier, he wasn’t ready to let her go—not yet.
“Come on, Milano. Some scumbag might knock me on my butt someday. Maybe if you gave me some pointers—”
“You’re not a recruit. You’re trained, and you’ve worked the street. You know how to move.”
“True. But I might be rusty.”
She shook her head. “You don’t have a rusty move in your body, Pierce.” She glanced in the direction of the clock bolted high on the wall, then looped the towel around her neck. “I’ve got two minutes to turn in my class-evaluation sheets before the office closes.”
Lips pursed, Grant studied the graceful swing of her hips as she turned and walked away. When he heard an appreciative grunt, he shifted his gaze. Both patrol cops were dribbling their basketballs in place, their gazes plastered on Sky’s trim bottom. The familiar tightness that settled deep inside Grant had him acknowledging that his desire for her was unchanged, as sharp as ever. Maybe sharper.
“Great,” he muttered, shoving his fingers through his hair. Offhand, he could think of about six women who’d be happy to spend time in his company. What the hell kind of idiot was he, trying to steal a few extra minutes with a woman who had made it clear she wanted nothing to do with him? He turned to go, then remembered what had brought him to the Training Center in the first place: Sky’s phone call.
She’d just cleared the opposite side of the mat when he jogged up behind her. Reaching, he snagged her shoulder. “What did you call—”
Before he could even react, she’d jerked his arm almost out of the socket and flipped him. For a breathless second, Grant had the sensation of flying. Then he landed hard, flat on his back.
The catcalls and whistles from the two patrol cops echoed off the gym’s cement block walls and high ceiling.
“Oh, God.” Sky crouched, patting his cheek with her fingertips. “Grant, are you okay?”
He shoved up on his elbows and blinked away stars. “Damn, Milano.”
“I’m sorry.” She leaned closer, her eyes anxious as she peered at his face. Her dark hair swept forward, bringing her maddening soft scent into his lungs. “It was reflex, Grant. I just reacted to your touch, that’s all.”
He gave her a dark look. “Yeah. Thanks for saying that. I feel a whole lot better now.”
Chapter 3
“I’m sorry I flipped you,” Sky said again as she and Grant walked out of the gym into air that sat still and gauzy and full of early-evening humidity.
“Yeah.”
As they walked along the sidewalk toward the Training Center’s parking lot, she watched him out of the corner of her eye. He looked irritated, and he carried his suit coat gripped so tight in one fist that it would take a heavy steaming to get the wrinkles out. She knew his present mood wasn’t a result of her having tossed him on his butt in front of the two patrol cops. What she’d said after she’d flipped him had been the thing that had turned his gray eyes the color of rolling storm clouds.
I just reacted to your touch, that’s all.
Sky stifled a groan. How could she have been so insensitive? Beneath her baggy T-shirt, dampness pooled between her breasts; nerves had her switching her gym bag from one hand to the other. After Grant had regained his feet, he’d informed her in a voice void of emotion that he’d come there because she’d called him. They obviously had business to discuss. Would she please give him a few minutes so they could just get their damn business out of the way?
Business. No way did business have anything to do with the fact that his presence in the gym had unsettled her far more than she’d cared to admit. Or, that when he’d slid off his suit coat, the sight of his formidable shoulders and chest beneath his starched white shirt had stirred something dark and dangerous low in her belly. There had been no way—no way—she would have accepted his challenge of going one-on-one and possibly winding up rolling around with him on the padded mat, their legs and arms locked in an intimate tangle. The image of them doing just that rose up with erotic insistence, and for a moment she couldn’t quite remember how to breathe.
Business, she reminded herself, forcing away the image. She had the DNA results from the OSBI, and she and Grant had business to discuss. That was what they’d do, then they’d both go back to their own lives, just as they had for the past six months.
The knot in her chest tightened at the thought. Fine, they’d go their separate ways, but first she had to make amends for tossing him to the ground. She had hurt much more than Grant’s pride, and she needed to make him understand why.
His long strides took him around a corner of the building, and she had to double-step to keep up. Just ahead, their cars sat side by side; his sleek red Porsche with its convertible top down made her gray Blazer look like a hulking mammoth. It reminded her of the recruit Johansen.
“Grant, I want to tell you why I reacted—”
“Dammit, I know why.”
Eyes blazing, he wheeled on her so fast, she collided into his chest. For a split second she had the sensation of crashing against steel. Her gym bag slid from her hand, landed with a soft plop on the toe of her tennis shoe. “Some recruit off the street can touch you, but I can’t.” He made no move to steady her as she shook the gym bag off her foot and took an uneven backward step. “For you, my touch is poison.”
“It had nothing to do with you.” She knew he was talking about more than what had just happened in the gym. He was also addressing the night she’d literally fallen apart in his arms, but she didn’t trust herself right now to discuss how she’d reacted then.
“Nothing to do with me?” He lobbed his suit coat into the Porsche’s passenger seat. When he turned back, his expression had settled into cop mode, slightly remote, definitely cynical. “I didn’t notice anybody else around, Milano.”
“Not you specifically,” she amended. “I’d have reacted the same with anyone who came up from behind me like that.”
He jerked at his tie, flicked open the top button on his shirt. “You knew I was behind you.”
“Not that close. I’d walked away. I didn’t know you’d followed. The patrol cops were dribbling basketballs. I didn’t hear you. Didn’t know you’d gotten close enough to…” She closed her eyes. The heat seeping beneath her skin had nothing to do with the evening’s thick humidity. “The night I was raped, that’s how he got me. From behind.”
“Damn,” Grant said quietly as regret slid into his eyes. “Sky—”
“I didn’t know any self-defense then,” she hurried on, afraid if she stopped she’d be unable to get out what she needed to say. “He was tall and powerful and he had a knife. I couldn’t…get away.” Her voice wavered, and she dragged in steamy air that cloyed in her lungs. Her hands trembled and she jammed them into the pockets of her shorts. Six months ago—before she’d found the Monday night group and Dr. Mirren—telling Grant even that much had been impossible for her. Now it was just simple agony. “He came from behind and grabbed me. He…knew how to rape….”
“Sky.” Eyes eloquent, Grant reached a hand toward her cheek, then stopped. His mouth
tightened; she saw a muscle tic in his jaw. “I’m sorry,” he said, and let his hand drop. “So sorry.”
The thought of what she had just lost in that unfinished gesture tightened the fist around her heart. “No, Grant, I’m the one who’s sorry. You had no way of knowing what happened to me. I overreacted. Big-time. You and I were in the police gym, for heaven’s sake. A relatively safe place.”
“Unless there’s some jerk cop in your face, wanting to roll around on the floor with you.”
Again, the image of their sweat-slicked bodies locked in an intimate clench flashed in her brain. She moistened her dry-as-dust lips and forced a smile. “There is that.”
A breeze stirred, picking up the ends of her long hair that in all the turmoil she hadn’t bothered to clip back. As if in reflex, Grant reached, caught a few strands and toyed with them. “I confess to being selfish,” he said, his voice as soft as the breeze itself. “I wanted to spend some time with you. Just spend time.”
He was standing close. Close enough that, even in the waning sunlight, she saw the individual crimson threads in his silk tie. The faint lines on either side of his mouth. The tiny specks of granite in the smoky gray eyes that gazed down into hers.
The breeze picked up. She smelled the salty tang of his skin mixed with the overtly male scent of expensive co logne. The heady mix made her knees weak. In another lifetime, she would have closed the distance between them and dissolved into a puddle right there in his arms. She held back a sigh. This wasn’t another lifetime. It was the same one in which she’d proven she could melt into his arms, but that melting had nothing to do with desire, and everything to do with sheer panic followed by desperate humiliation. She would not—could not—do that again to Grant or herself.
When she stepped back, the strands of her hair slid through his fingers. His closed his eyes for the space of a heartbeat.
“I need to tell you about the report I got from the OSBI,” she said, snagging her gym bag off the ground.
Grant looked toward the street where traffic hummed. The hand he’d had in her hair seconds ago curved slowly against his thigh. “And I need to bring you up-to-date on the search for Ellis Whitebear’s twin brother,” he said after a moment. Looking back, he unbuttoned his shirt cuffs and began rolling his sleeves up to reveal tanned, muscled forearms. “Look, I’m not feeling too fresh in all this heat.” His gaze slid over her baggy T-shirt and loose-fitting shorts. “You probably aren’t, either.”