On Dangerous Ground

by Maggie Price

“No. The owner said the blanket he always kept in the back had disappeared. He had no idea how long it had been gone.”

  Mouth tight, Grant said nothing, just waited for her to continue.

  “Adams drove back to the fraternity house after he got rid of me,” Sky said quietly. “A girl there admitted to spending the night with him. She’d been partying hard, so she had no idea what time they hooked up. It was her impression that Adams was as drunk as she was.”

  “An act to strengthen his alibi,” Grant said, his voice deathly quiet. “An inept doctor screwed up whatever evidence was on you. Adams got rid of the blanket from the van and, along with it, more evidence. Since the cops had nothing to compare body samples to, they couldn’t get a search warrant to force Adams to give samples. It was your word against his.”

  “Yes. It was rough, knowing he was laughing while my entire world crumbled.”

  “I wish I had been there to take care of you.” Grant raised a hand, tucked a wayward strand of hair behind her ear. “What happened after you found out he was going to walk?”

  “The nightmare started.” She stared down at the hand Grant had linked with hers. Now that she’d told him about the rape, now that she’d gotten it out, she could feel hot tears boiling up inside her. She hadn’t cried. In all the time since that terrible night she hadn’t allowed herself to cry. She had told herself if she did, she might never stop.

  Taking a deep breath, she waited until she steadied. “My family doesn’t have a lot of money. I was going to school on a scholarship and working part-time to earn money for expenses. I couldn’t afford private counseling. The college had a male therapist on staff whom I could see for free, so I made an appointment. The man had no clue what rape was all about. The first question he asked me was how I provoked the attack. I walked out and never went back.”

  Grant nodded slowly. “And never dealt with the rape. Then when I touched you, it all came back.”

  “After the rape, after I knew Adams wasn’t going to pay, I handled things the best way I could. I was so afraid, constantly looking over my shoulder, and I hated that. So I took lessons and learned to defend myself. I couldn’t do anything about the fact that evidence in my case had been contaminated, but I could do something about other cases. I changed my major from forensic anthropology to forensic chemistry. That meant staying in school two more semesters and taking out some hefty loans, but that was something I had to do.”

  A tear spilled down her cheek and she swiped it away with an unsteady hand. “But you’re right, Grant, I never dealt with the rape itself. I shut myself in a nice, safe lab and told myself my job was the only thing I needed in my life. Then I met you, and you made me want more. I thought I could deal with a relationship. I was wrong. I hurt you. I’m so sorry, Grant. I’m so…”

  “Sky—”

  “I wouldn’t…” Her voice hitched; tears streamed down her cheeks. “Wouldn’t…let myself cry. I haven’t, not since that night. Not since…” She broke, simply broke. Covering her face with her hands, she began to sob.

  “You need to cry,” Grant murmured, and scooped her into his arms. He carried her to the bed, slid onto the mattress and settled back against the headboard with her cradled in his lap.

  “Let it out.” His voice was as soft as the hand he used to stroke her hair, her cheek. “Let it all out.”

  He had given her his shirt, so her hot, desperate tears pooled across his bare shoulder. The arms that cradled her were strong, warm and comforting.

  “I didn’t mean to hurt you,” she managed after the tide began to stem.

  “I got hurt because you didn’t trust me enough to tell me what was wrong.”

  She raised her head, met his gaze through wet, spiky lashes. “It was me I didn’t trust, never you. I had convinced myself I’d dealt with the rape. Then I stepped into your arms and had a panic attack. That’s when I knew I hadn’t really dealt with anything. I couldn’t trust myself not to go to pieces on you again.”

  “So you walked away.”

  “I had to.” She dropped her gaze. “I called a rape crisis center and they referred me to Dr. Mirren.”

  “Dr. Mirren?”

  “A psychiatrist. She’s helped.”

  “You’re still having the nightmare.”

  “I…” Sky let her voice drift off. “It stopped for years. It came back the other night.”

  Grant’s eyes narrowed. “What night?”

  “After I told you that Adams grabbed me from behind. That night.” She gave an uncontrollable shudder. “And every night since.”

  “Which explains why you were climbing the walls when I drove in from Texas and stopped by your apartment,” Grant reasoned. “And because the nightmare returned after so long, you decided we shouldn’t be together.”

  “I didn’t want to chance breaking down on you again. I don’t want to hurt you—”

  He cupped a finger under her chin, nudged it up until her gaze met his. “The only way you can hurt me is to lock me out of your life. You matter to me, Sky. Maybe I haven’t figured out exactly how much, but you do.”

  She lifted her hand, placed her palm against the firm line of his jaw. “I don’t know if I can give you what you need.”

  “What I need is you.” He brushed a light kiss across her lips. “Giving ourselves a second chance is what matters right now. As long as that’s what we both want, everything else is workable.”

  She nested her head against his shoulder, drew in his scent and let herself absorb the sensations. It had been so long since she’d felt the comfort of an embrace. So long since she’d been held. Only you, she thought as she listened to the steady rhythm of Grant’s heart. She knew with unerring certainty he was the only man with whom she would ever feel this sense of trust. The only man.

  Tonight she’d done what she had thought impossible. She had told him about the worst experience of her life. A quiet sureness settled over her, and she knew she was close to burying her past. For the first time in years, no shadow hung over her future.

  “Our being together,” she said quietly. “It’s what I want, too, Grant.”

  “Then we’ll be together.”

  For the second time that night, Grant stood beside the bed and watched Sky sleep. She lay in the middle of the mattress, her dark hair tumbling down her back, one well- toned arm stretched across the pillow where he’d lain when she drifted to sleep. He watched her, and felt a kaleidoscope of emotions. Anger. Relief. Horror. They were all there, swirling inside him, as hot as the flames he’d carried her through hours earlier. He could still hear her terrorized scream when she’d jolted out of the nightmare. Still feel the scalding outrage that had built inside him as she related the sick things Kirk Adams had subjected her to.

  She’d been drugged. Kidnapped. Raped. She’d endured a degradation so horrific, she’d denied herself the right to cry.

  As he gazed down at her face, Grant could find no trace of the vulnerability that had seemed to emanate from her the past few days. Now, a healthy color tinted her cheeks, her breathing was slow, even, relaxed. It was as if by finally telling him what she’d suffered, she’d purged herself of the last vestiges of being a victim.

  He wanted to rip Kirk Adams apart.

  Grant’s hands curled into fists against his thighs. He wanted to get his hands on the sleaze, tear him limb from limb for what he’d done to her. For the things he had stolen from her. From them.

  Grant set his jaw. He had been careful to hide the rage that had burned inside him while Sky was awake. The rape wasn’t about him, it was about her. He understood that. But after she fell asleep, his real emotions had spewed to the surface, hot and molten. Now that rage had transformed into iced fury.

  It was not just the cop in him, but the man who wanted to hunt down the sadistic bastard and dole out the justice Sky had been denied. It would be easy, Grant thought. With the connections available to him, it would take little effort to find Adams. No trouble at all to pay him a visit.r />
  When his clenched hands began to tremble, Grant turned away from the bed and walked to the room’s lone window. There, he parted the curtain and stared out at the sky that the weak light of a new dawn had transformed to pewter.

  By telling him her darkest secrets, Sky had given him more than just her absolute trust. She had offered a part of herself that she’d given to no other man. A part that was sacred.

  His fingers tightened on the curtain as emotion flooded into his chest. He had thought there was no deeper intimacy than sex that a man and a woman could share. Tonight, Sky had shown him there was. In all but the physical sense, she had become his.

  Possessiveness coiled deep within him, a fierce, primitive thing that shocked him with its strength. He had spent the past six months wanting her, aching for her. That they had agreed to give their relationship a second chance should be enough for now. It should be, he knew that.

  After what she had told him tonight, he wasn’t sure it could be enough.

  He’d been a cop a long time. He was rarely surprised, sickened, shocked or saddened by the cases that came across his desk. Still, when the victim was someone he knew and cared about, it made a difference. He cared about Sky. Now that he’d heard the horrific details of what she’d endured, it made a hell of a lot of difference.

  Grant stood in silence, staring out at the horizon flooded with the pinks and yellows of a new sunrise. He didn’t have to look back across his shoulder to picture his holstered Glock and gold badge that lay side by side on top of the chest of drawers. In the past, he had used the power of both to exact justice.

  Kirk Adams was beyond reach of the badge.

  Not the Glock.

  Grant closed his eyes against a thought so alien that it sent a black, boiling nausea lurching into his stomach. Better, he thought, to think about consequences. Using the weapon without the badge went against everything he believed. Everything that was right. He knew that. Logically he knew.

  Still, in a deep, dark place inside him, he wanted—needed—to exact justice for Sky.

  It was a need that all of his instincts warned he rid himself of. Completely. Totally.

  He just wasn’t sure he could.

  Chapter 7

  Sky woke to the muted sound of running water. Fuzzy-headed, it took her a minute to remember why she was in a room in which an air-conditioning unit chugged softly beneath a window where sunlight slanted through a gap in the curtains. Grant’s motel room.

  Her eyes popped open. Rising on one elbow, she shoved her sleep-tumbled hair out of her face. The running water was the shower, she realized. Grant was in the shower.

  Slowly she pushed from beneath the rumpled sheet and bedspread, then propped her back against the plump pillows. Yesterday he had carried her from a burning motel room and saved her life. Last night he had pulled her from the terrorizing grip of the nightmare and saved her in a totally different way.

  She’d told him about the rape. Sky nibbled at her bottom lip while the memories of the night swept over her. Grant had listened while she purged her soul of the horror, then he’d held her, rocked her, soothed her. Then she’d fallen into a deep, fathomless sleep that erased the mind-numbing fatigue that had plagued her since the nightmare returned.

  The demon would not come back. She knew that as sure as she knew the events of the past twenty-four hours had refocused her life from the path it had taken since the rape. She felt cleansed. Purified. Whole. In control. And no longer afraid.

  Healing, Dr. Mirren had said, came in many guises. The psychiatrist was right, Sky thought. It had taken more than just the passage of time for her to heal. She had needed to deal with not only the physical violation, but the emotional one. The healing process had begun six months ago when she started therapy. Last night with Grant she had taken another monumental step.

  Sky closed her eyes against the emotion that flooded her chest. Who else but Grant? What other man could she have trusted enough? No one. Only him.

  The irony of the thought that followed had her mouth curving. His dead partner had nicknamed him Pretty Boy because of Grant’s heart-stopping effect on women. He was a man who would know all the tricks, be adept at every slow, subtle move of seduction. Yet, he had been content to hold her—just hold her—while she fell into an obliterating sleep in his bed. How, she mused, had his ego handled that?

  Her quiet thoughts scattered when the bathroom door swung open. A blast of steamy air emerged, along with Grant. Sky’s eyes widened when she saw he wore only his pleated linen slacks, and a white hand towel looped around his neck. His wet, sandy hair was slicked back, emphasizing strong cheekbones and the firm angle of his jaw.

  She sat motionless on the rumpled bed that was still steeped in shadow while her lips parted and her heart did a slow roll. She didn’t need her glasses to make out the broad, muscled chest scattered by gold-tipped hair that veed down the center of his flat stomach then disappeared beneath the waistband of his slacks.

  He retrieved his designer watch from the top of the chest of drawers and checked the time. As he slid the band onto his wrist, his gaze flicked to the bed. When he turned toward her, a glint of hard steel disappeared so quickly from his eyes that Sky wondered if she’d imagined it.

  “Good morning,” he said quietly.

  Now that he was facing her, she saw the fatigue in his face, the lines of exhaustion that etched his cheeks and mouth. “Morning. Did you get any sleep?”

  He raised a shoulder. “I had some things on my mind to work through.” His mouth curved. “You, on the other hand, slept like a rock.”

  Nodding, she shoved her hair behind her shoulders, and realized for the first time she was still wearing his shirt. She stared down at the hopelessly wrinkled flaps of linen that lapped over her borrowed halter top and cutoffs. “I think we both need a change of clothes.”

  “While you get cleaned up, I’ll check on the cruiser.” He walked to the window, spread the curtain and looked out. “If it’s ready, I’ll pick you up, then we can find a store. We’ll get something to eat after that.”

  The hard, almost unnatural tone in his voice had Sky’s spine straightening. “Grant, is something wrong?”

  He hesitated for a split second, then turned and met her gaze. His eyes betrayed nothing. “I’m just trying to figure out the fastest way to get back to the city.” As he spoke, he pulled the towel from around his neck then lobbed it back into the bathroom. “I’m as anxious as you to find out the DNA results on Whitebear’s blood sample.”

  “Uh-huh.” Sky was no longer paying attention to what he said. Her concentration had centered on the dark bruise that mottled the right side of his chest.

  “I kicked you.” She scrambled out of bed and walked to where he stood, the movement sending his shirt drooping off one shoulder. “When you ran into the bathroom to save me from the fire, I kicked you against the wall.”

  His eyebrows rose as he stared down at her. “I nearly wound up on my butt, just like when you flipped me at the gym. You pack one hell of a kick, Milano.”

  Without knowing she was going to, Sky raised a hand and gently fingered the plum-colored bruise. “I’m sorry I hurt you.”

  “No harm done.” He placed his hand lightly over hers so that her palm rested against the bruise. Beneath her hand, she felt the steady beat of his heart. “One thing’s for sure. I don’t have to worry about you being able to defend yourself.”

  “No.” Her breathing shallowed as the warmth of his flesh seeped into hers. She became aware of the sinewy strength beneath her fingers, of his heady masculine scent, with undertones of soap from his shower. Her body seemed to soften like hot wax as it responded in ways that were instinctive and fundamentally feminine.

  When he tucked a stray wisp of hair behind one of her ears, her throat tightened. “Grant, I…”

  “You’re not ready, I know.”

  “I want to be ready.” She could feel the cool bare floor beneath her feet, a shivery contrast to the heat flo
oding her veins. “I want to be.”

  “When the time’s right.” He lowered his head, dropped a light kiss against her forehead. “No pressure,” he murmured. “Remember, you’re calling the shots.”

  Even after he dropped his hand from hers, she kept her palm against his bruised chest. When no skitter of panic welled up inside her, she released the breath she realized she’d been holding.

  “I think maybe it would be okay…”

  When her voice drifted off, he angled his chin. “What, Sky? What would be okay?”

  “For you to kiss me.” This wouldn’t be their first, after all. During the short time they’d dated six months before, they had shared a few friendly kisses. It was when their relationship was about to take a long stride past friendly that she’d panicked and fallen apart.

  His eyes stayed on hers as he used a fingertip to trace the line of her earlobe, then idly stroke the small gold hoop she wore. “You think a kiss would be okay?”

  Her heartbeat thickened when his fingers grazed the side of her throat. She remembered his taste, the dark, male tang of his mouth. Silvery-edged anticipation had her pulse thudding hard and thick at the base of her throat. “Yes, I think so.”

  “Well, then.”

  When he lowered his head, she felt herself stiffen, instinctively searching for the smallest sign of the heightened anxiety that had presaged her previous panic attack. Now, all she felt was the rush of sensual expectation.

  His lips brushed against hers lightly, gently, and her eyes fluttered closed. His lips touched hers again, lingered with a slow, seductive ease that curled sensation after sensation down her spine, her legs, all the way to the tips of her toes.

  This time it wasn’t sharp, terrifying anxiety that tightened her insides, but desire.

  “Still okay?” he murmured against her mouth.

  She dragged in a deep breath and found that the air around her had heated and taken on density. “More than okay,” she managed over a suddenly dry throat.

  Her hand slid from his chest up to his shoulder as she inched closer, closing the space between them.