He made a sharp, thick sound in the back of his throat. “Damn it, you’ve always been different!”
She stared, shaking, clearly not believing him.
Muttering a foul stream of words under his breath, he locked his hands behind his head and began pacing, from one side of the room to the other. Slanting her a dark look from the corner of his eye, he said, “I want things with you that I’ve never wanted with another woman.”
“And that’s bad?” she asked, her words soft with confusion.
His laugh was low, pained. “Yeah, honey. It’s bad.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t want to hurt you,” he muttered. “Emotionally…or physically.”
“You won’t,” she argued, lifting her chin as though he’d just insulted her.
Riley shook his head, lowering his arms as he came to a stop on the far side of the room, staring at her across the distance. “You’re right, I won’t. Because I’m not doing this. I won’t be the thing that destroys you.”
“You didn’t let that bother you before.” She wet her lips, cleared her throat. “God, it almost killed me when you told me we were over, and then, within the blink of an eye, took Amee Smith to the prom. She couldn’t wait to get to school on Monday, so that she could tell everyone how you’d nailed her in the backseat of your car.”
Guilt burned beneath his skin, making him sweat. He tried to swallow the knot in his throat, his chest tight…body clutched in a grip of self-loathing. “I had my reasons,” he finally managed to rasp. “They had nothing to do with you.” Which was a lie, because they’d had everything to do with her. He’d been so sure of himself, thinking he was going to be the white knight who took her away from Laurente and gave her the life she deserved, only to discover that all he’d end up offering her was a life of hell. He’d known he needed to sever the connection between them, and he’d done a damn good job of it. So good that they were both still reeling from the pain.
She took a deep breath, then slowly let it out. “If you don’t want me, fine. But don’t tell me lies, Riley. Don’t keep making excuses. Just be a man and say it.”
Before he could stop himself, he’d closed the space between them, grabbed her hand and pressed it over his bulging fly, where his cock was throbbing hard and long and thick beneath the confining denim. “Does that feel like I don’t want you?” he growled, pulsing against her hand. “All I ever have to do is set eyes on you and I get like this. Even after all these years, just the thought of you makes me burn. Makes me harder than any woman I’ve ever had under me. No matter how beautiful they are or how eager, I’m always left wanting when it’s over, unable to get away from the ugly knowledge that the one woman I want, I’m never going to have!”
She breathed his name on her lips, staring back at him in startled, stunned amazement.
Riley knew he should cut his losses while he still could and shut the hell up, but the gritty words just kept pouring out of him. “Christ, Hope. You have no idea how hard I have to fight it when you walk into a room. I sat through eleventh-grade history hard as a bloody spike every goddamn day, just from staring at the way your hair fell across your shoulders, imagining it draping over my chest, my stomach. And now…now it’s even worse, because you’re not that innocent, big-eyed little girl anymore. You’re a beautiful, breathtaking woman, and I’d give a limb just for the chance to spend one night with you. Hell,” he confessed with a bitter, jagged laugh, releasing his hold on her hand as he stepped back, moving away from her, “you don’t want to know what I’d be willing to do for just an hour with you. A handful of minutes.”
“But you’re still rejecting me, aren’t you? I don’t understand,” she whispered, wrapping her arms around her shivering body. “It doesn’t make any sense, Riley.”
His voice was hard…grim. “I know.”
“Then explain it. Please.”
He shook his head again, forcing out a hoarse “I can’t.”
She took a step toward him, vibrating with emotion. “You’d better damn well try.”
“I’m not what you think I am. I…I’m…” His voice cracked, and he gave another bitter laugh, shoving his hands back in his pockets.
“What?” Her tone was soft…pleading. “What are you trying to tell me, Riley?”
The sudden ringing of his cell phone made them both jump, and he swore softly under his breath. Pulling the phone from its case, he looked at the number and swore again. “I have to take this,” he muttered, turning away and answering the call.
“What’s going on?” he asked, knowing that Seth McConnell, their unlikely Collective ally, wouldn’t be calling unless there was a problem.
McConnell’s deep voice crackled over the crappy connection. “It looks like there’s some serious trouble headed your way. We’ve got a good lead, but I can’t go into it right now. Just wanted to let you know that there’s a lot of movement headed in your direction.”
“Casus?” he grunted, aware that Hope was listening to his every word.
“Along with some of Westmore’s personal unit and a group of Collective soldiers,” McConnell rumbled. “I think word’s gone out about you, but it’s more than that. Sounds like they might be coming after Gregory from all sides. I’m going to finish up here, then head your way. I’ll call if I get anything else.”
McConnell didn’t say where “here” was at the moment, but Riley knew the guy couldn’t tell him over the phone. “Thanks for the heads-up. And I’m pretty sure Gregory’s already in town.”
“How many victims?”
“One so far.”
“Shit,” McConnell cursed. “And the Marker?”
“God only knows,” Riley said with a tired sigh. “But we’re looking.”
Voices started shouting in the background, and McConnell said, “I gotta run, but stay sharp.”
“You, too.”
The instant Riley disconnected the call, Hope said, “Is there a problem?”
“Yeah.” He slid the phone back into its case, then pulled one hand down his face as he turned back around to face her. “Just one more to add on top of everything else. This whole situation is going to shit.”
Needing to get the hell out of there before he did something stupid—like touch her—he turned and started to head toward the door, when her words stopped him in his tracks, the soft, shivery sound reaching into his chest and taking hold of his heart. “Neal…He…killed our baby.”
Riley waited, his shoulders hunched, hands fisted at his sides while he stared at the floor, giving her the privacy he could sense she needed for the telling.
“He’d gone to law school, graduated top of his class, set to be the next brilliant Capshaw in one of those old-money Southern families. You know the ones I mean. But as his career started to take off, he…wasn’t able to handle the stress. So he began drinking. Heavily. And as the drinking worsened, so did his jealousy. His rages. He’d always been…possessive, but suddenly I couldn’t so much as smile at another man without him accusing me of having an affair. He began to get violent, even though I was seven months pregnant. Hit me a few times. Bloodied my lip, blackened an eye. I…I started making plans to leave him. But I wasn’t fast enough.”
She paused for a moment, and he turned his head to find her standing at the window again, staring out at the darkening sky. Finally, she said, “On the night when it…happened, he’d gone out with some friends, hitting the local bars. Doing God only knows what. The temperatures were freezing, and there was a problem with our heating. I couldn’t get anyone to come out to fix it, but we had a neighbor across the street who owned a local contracting company, and when I asked, he was more than happy to come and see if he could help. When Neal came home and found the man there, he went into a rage about the fact that I’d let him into our house, and he…attacked him. Picked up a wrench from the man’s toolbox and started beating him with it. I was trying to call 911 when Neal knocked the man unconscious and turned on me.” She pressed her
hands to her belly, as if she might still somehow protect the life that had been growing inside her. “I tried to get away from him, but he grabbed me, and we struggled. I was clawing and kicking at him, doing everything I could to get away, terrified that he was going to try to kill me. Though he later claimed in court that he was simply trying to push me away, feeding them some pathetic story about how my so-called lover and I attacked him when he came home and found us together, that wasn’t the way that it happened. Neal…He deliberately shoved me through the living-room window. The glass shattered, cutting me, slicing through…my abdomen. And the baby died.”
It scared him, how calm and level her voice was. How even, as if the emotion had just drained away, leaving a lifeless shell in its wake. That was obviously how she dealt with the pain, pulling in on herself…shutting down, and it made him want to get his hands on Neal Capshaw and beat the ever-loving hell out of him.
“So you see, Ri? I tried to tell you,” she said in a quiet, hollow voice, “but you wouldn’t listen. Any starry-eyed dreams I ever had died a hell of a long time ago. I don’t need you to protect me from reality. To shelter me from the truth.”
She was right, and it killed a part of him to know that he hadn’t been there when she’d needed him. He thought he’d been sparing her pain by leaving her, and yet she’d still suffered. Worse than he could ever have imagined.
She shivered, lifting her hands to push her hair back from her face, then carefully said, “So anyway, that’s what happened. And if you ever cared anything about me, Riley, then you won’t make me talk about it again.” She turned and walked past him like a ghost, to the bottom of the staircase, then looked back over her shoulder as she added, “Do me a favor and lock the door behind you.”
Riley stood rooted to the floor, his face feeling like a rigid mask as he watched her silent ascent, until she finally went out of sight.
CHAPTER NINE
SLIPPING HIS CELL BACK into its black leather case, Kellan set the phone on the dresser, then turned back toward the woman waiting for him on the king-size bed. He’d already had her twice, but his cock hardened a third time as he took in her sultry pose, her long hair falling over one shoulder, dusky-colored nipples peeking through the silken tendrils. For the moment, her long legs were folded demurely to the side, but he knew if he could have stayed, they wouldn’t remain that way for long. Despite being kind of quiet and shy, she was a hellcat in the sack, which fit his mood perfectly these days. He wasn’t looking for a lot of conversation. He just needed a way to work out his tension, and she had been like a blessing from heaven when he’d met her at one of the local hangouts.
They’d met back up at the motel where she was staying, since she’d only just arrived in Purity and was still looking for a place to rent. Kellan had mentioned the cabins that Hope and Millie rented out, but she’d said she was looking for something a little closer to the north side of town, seeing as how she was going to be doing some student teaching at the college up in Wellsford.
That had been the extent of their conversations, other than some idle chitchat, the brunt of their time together spent doing things that made them too damn tired to talk.
“Is something wrong?” she asked, her big green eyes dark with lingering satisfaction, a curious smile playing softly across her full mouth.
“It’s nothing I can’t handle,” he told her with a grin, grabbing his jeans off the floor and slipping into them. “But I need to be getting back.” His grin turned wry as he had to work his cock inside the denim—a difficult task, considering the size of the damn thing—and she gave a throaty laugh, the sexy sound shivering down his back, making him wish he could ignore the outside world and just hide away with her for a few more hours. But he knew that if he didn’t get back, there’d be hell to pay with Riley. Seth’s phone call had put the guy on edge, and to be honest, it freaked Kellan out, as well. Before this all came to an end, it seemed as though Purity was destined to find itself at the center of one major bad-ass showdown, with all of them just fighting to survive.
Pulling on his shirt, boots and leather jacket, he grabbed his phone and headed for the door.
“When will I see you again?” she asked as he placed his hand around the door handle.
Kellan looked over his shoulder, suddenly struck with an odd, uncomfortable sensation that jolted him all the way down to his toes. For a split second, he’d thought about walking to the bed and kissing her goodbye, then immediately reeled back from the impulse. Kisses were for lovers and friends, and while they’d had a helluva time messing around together, there was a glaring lack of intimacy to their encounters that he couldn’t ignore.
Not that it was her fault.
No, the problem was with him, and he was struck with the unsettling realization that all his sexual exploits had been leaving him with this same taste in his mouth lately. Not bad. Just…lacking, as if he knew, instinctively, that there was something a lot better out there, if he would only make the effort to go and look for it.
Whoa. What universe did that just come from?
Mentally stumbling over the staggering thought, Kellan felt as if he’d slipped into some kind of alternate reality, because those were not his kind of thoughts. At least not until recently. He liked sex for sex’s sake. Liked the way it felt. The sweat and the heat and the crazy release of pressure. He didn’t know why his brain was suddenly wandering into unsavory territory he normally wouldn’t have touched with a ten-foot pole. All he knew was that he didn’t like it. It made him too aware of the emptiness in his gut that he’d been doing his best to push away…to ignore, unwilling to look at it too closely. The feeling had been coming on stronger, day by day, and it was starting to piss him off. That little voice in his head whispering that he could screw his way through a stream of beautiful women until the end of time, and it still wasn’t going to make him happy. He might get his rocks off, but it wasn’t going to give him what he needed. Wasn’t going to fill that hollow, aching void that had settled in the center of his chest, growing deeper…and deeper.
“Hey, are you okay?” she asked, sitting up in the bed with the sheet clutched against her chest, and he blinked, realizing that he’d been standing there for a full minute, one hand on the doorknob, staring at her while his mind had floated a million miles away.
Thinking of the murdered college girl that Riley had mentioned on the phone, he pushed his free hand back through his sweat-dampened hair and said, “There’s been a murder up in Wellsford, near your school.”
Her eyes went round, and she clutched the sheet tighter against her body as he added, “So, uh, just be careful. Don’t go out anywhere alone if you can help it.” She nodded, and he said, “I’ll call if I’m able to get away.”
Before she had time to pout or argue, Kellan walked out the door, feeling like an ass for just nailing her and hitting the road. But at least he could say that he’d been honest with her from the start. Pulling the door shut behind him, he stepped out into the foggy night and curled his lip at the misty drizzle of rain coming down from above. He could have taken Riley’s truck into town, but he liked walking along the picturesque streets, enjoying the sound and scent of the nearby ocean. He just wished the rain would ease up for longer than an hour, but knew there wasn’t much chance of it happening. At least not anytime soon. The weather forecasters were predicting that a violent storm front would be moving in over the next few days. The lightning showers brewing out over the Pacific were just the precursor to what they were calling one of the worst weather systems to hit this part of the country in a hundred years, and Kellan could only shake his head and laugh. He didn’t know why, but it seemed that lately, if it weren’t for bad luck, he and the others wouldn’t have any friggin’ luck at all.
Thinking about the digging that would start again in the morning, Kellan lifted his hand to rub at the knotted tension in the back of his neck, when a strange sensation of being watched suddenly slithered through his system. Moving down the foggy street
at a steady, even pace, he carefully sniffed the nighttime air, but the rainy mist made it impossible to pick up anything and he scowled, not liking the feeling creeping around the backs of his ears. The one that said he was no longer alone…and that trouble was coming.
Cutting through a small alleyway that connected to Main Street, he’d made it halfway down the shadowed road, when a voice behind him shouted for him to get down. Everything that happened afterward seemed to play out in slow motion, even the sounds distorted as he swiveled round to see a bulky, fair-haired man emerging from one of the shadowed doorways, the lethal-looking Glock in his right hand aimed low at Kellan’s legs. As the man fired, Kellan dropped, rolling, barely avoiding the deafening spray of bullets. With only seconds to react, he took the knife tucked inside his jacket pocket, lifted his arm and hurled it through the air. It sank into the blonde’s throat with a sickening, slick kind of sound, and the guy’s eyes went round with shock as he dropped to his knees, the gun sliding from his fingers to smack against the wet asphalt. Instead of falling, he just swayed there, the rain misting against his face, while a crimson wash of blood poured from the wound in his throat.
Moving toward him, Kellan knocked him back on the ground by placing one booted foot against the guy’s right shoulder. “Who sent you?” he demanded.
Blood bubbled on the man’s lips as he growled out a garbled “Go to hell!”
“Wrong answer,” Kellan offered dryly. Then he lifted his foot, placed the bottom of his boot against the hilt of the blade, and shoved down. The man’s body contorted, a choked, gurgling scream tearing from his throat as the rain washed away the pink froth that bubbled at the corners of his mouth.
Reaching down for his knife, Kellan pulled it free, then grabbed the Glock as well, tucking it into the back of his jeans as he headed toward the end of the alleyway, looking for the man who’d shouted out the warning. Finding nothing, he cursed the thick fog that made visibility—as well as smell—impossible, and turned back toward the alleyway…only to discover that the man he’d just taken down was gone. “Shit,” he breathed out, slicking his wet hair back from his face.
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