Spectacular joined wow. Along with mind-blowing.
Imagination hadn’t come close to what had just happened. Nothing had. And each time, it would only get better.
Whoa!
She blinked, double-time. What was she thinking? That this was permanent? Real?
Last time she boarded that hope-train, she’d barely avoided disaster. Not that Seth was anything like Liam. Then again, she wasn’t anything like the girl she’d been back then.
Now she knew the value of restraint. Which made her thoughts all the more wayward. A female detective in a man’s world. Scandal, even a hint, would only undermine how far she’d come.
She wouldn’t undo years of control for one moment’s pleasure.
Perspective. Now. Deep breath. The scent of pine and sex filled her nostrils. His lips brushed hers. Perspective dwindled.
He rolled off.
She shivered, missing his blanketed warmth, the removal of his weight and contact leaving her with an odd feeling of loss. Inexplicably contrary to her thoughts.
‘You’re cold.’ He reached across and pulled the duvet up to cocoon her from behind.
Care. Concern. The realisation he’d ensured her pleasure—multiple times—before taking his own. They stole the words from her tongue.
Impossible to stall the rush of those thoughts through her heart’s door. He caressed her cheek for seconds longer than a simple action required, before sliding out of bed.
‘Back in a sec.’ He shot her a grin that warmed her like no blanket before disappearing into the en suite.
Thoughts which had abandoned her only moments ago now surged back with a vengeance.
If she allowed her mind’s ramblings free rein, she’d wonder at Seth’s caring when he didn’t love her, and Liam’s lack after professing he did.
If she allowed it.
Before she’d wandered too far down that muddied track, Seth was back, edging onto the bed beside her, giving her reason to toss any thought that threatened her bliss. She tugged the duvet over his shoulder, feeling the warmth of the cover, the radiant warmth from his skin.
Hair flopped over her forehead and he softly tucked it behind her ear. The action tingled her skin, there, lower, before burrowing inside and tugging her heart.
If she closed her eyes and lost herself in the moment, she could almost believe it meant more . . .
No.
Maybe if they’d met under different circumstances, in a different life, where she still believed in love and marriage and fidelity and happy ever after.
Her hand jerked and she clenched it firmly beneath her chin. She had no idea where those thoughts came from, but they could go straight back where they belonged. There was no place for them here, in her bedroom, beneath her duvet which had never experienced a man until now.
She exhaled, let go of everything but the languorous aftermath of Seth’s lovemaking.
His hand reached over to tug hers into its warmth. ‘Okay?’
She nodded, fighting buffeting emotions triggered by his concern, her thoughts, the mess that was her life.
‘Thank you. For . . . making just now special.’ Benign sentiments after he’d turned the world on its axis for her. But what else could she say, with her senses still humming and her thoughts in a state of flux?
She watched the race of Seth’s mind through his eyes, a wealth of unspoken questions just waiting to be voiced. His mouth opened, stalled, then slammed shut, delaying curiosity she knew would need satisfying.
Just not now.
His thumb rubbed across her knuckles, luxuriant, lulling, drawing her deeper towards drowsiness. Weight dragged at her eyelids and she gave in to the pull, allowing them to close, locking out the world and all that had gone wrong today so she could focus on what had gone right.
And maybe—just maybe—the fact that something had meant her sleep would be sound.
40
Jayda whimpered.
No!
She shucked her bedcovers. Moaned. Tossed her head. One side. The other.
Arms flung outwards. Images. Scorching her brain. Flickering frame by frame across the insides of her eyelids.
A woman weeping.
Breath caught. She flipped onto her side. The other. Lips moving, soundless. Pleading.
Nothing changed. The motion picture sliced through her subconscious, rolling, never-ending, as if the reels that fed it had a life of their own.
A scream.
A name that slipped her mind before it had time to stick.
A banana moon. Legs running. The smell of wet dirt. The sense of loss. Death.
Her eyes shot open.
She bolted upright, shaking, cold, slathered in sweat. Her hands flew to her face, her cheeks a dry crust of makeup and tears.
‘Jayda?’
She turned to the voice, only then registering she wasn’t alone.
Seth pushed himself up, his bare torso reminding her of the night before. The fact that she was naked, too. She grabbed at the sheets and pulled them up to her chin.
Her bedside clock said it was 4 am.
The hour varied, the dream never did—a runaway rollercoaster of colour and sound that made no sense. It charged full-throttle through her brain, leaving her alone and grasping for some missing link always just there, barely beyond her fingertips.
‘Are you okay?’
She nodded, sure if she tried to speak he’d guess just how un-okay she was.
He looped an arm around her shoulders. ‘What happened?’
‘A dream.’ Her hands clenched tighter into the sheets.
‘Nightmare, more like.’ He pulled her into his arms and she buried her face, breathing in everything about him that gave her comfort. The race of her heart slowed.
‘Want to tell me about it?’
She dragged in another mouthful of Seth-rich air and let it shudder out from her lungs. ‘There’s not much to tell.’
The words mumbled against his skin, and as they left her lips the rub of his hand over her back ceased.
Please don’t stop.
She steeled herself and pulled back, just a little. Not ready to leave the cocoon of his warmth. ‘Sometimes I have bad dreams.’
Cold still managed to shiver up her spine until he pulled her closer into his side.
‘Dad told me they started after the fire, the day my birth mum and dad died. Then when I was five, some guy showed up to the precinct with a gun. I hid under the desk while he shot two officers.’
Chair legs scraping. Blood dripping. Screams buffeting her eardrums.
She clenched her eyes against the memory. Inhaled. ‘He was finally subdued, but the nightmares started up again, this time much worse.’
Disparities between that day and the dream’s images she wouldn’t delve into.
‘How recurring are they?’
‘You mean, how often?’ She swallowed. ‘Lately, most nights.’
The arm around her tensed. ‘That’s a mighty big reaction for something that happened so long ago.’
‘It’s not as if we can choose what affects us and what doesn’t. One image mixed with a child’s imagination is all it takes to throw things out of proportion.’
‘Have you ever talked to anyone about it?’
‘You mean a shrink?’
He nodded.
‘After my parents died, of course. But I was two, and didn’t remember much of what happened. Then a few months after the shooting I saw a police psychologist, and the nightmare disappeared for a while. Most times I don’t dream at all. But since the Trentham Case they’ve resurfaced. They tend to do that when I’m stressed or working a particularly bad case.’
‘Do you remember what you dream?’
Like countless times before, she searched her memory and got nothing but a dry mouth and rabid pound against her skull. And a chaotic jumble of picture fragments that made no sense.
She floundered, lost, grasping. As if something were missing. What?
S
he shook her head.
Seth considered her through hooded lids. ‘Ever wondered if the nightmare could be about more than something you saw twenty or so years ago?’
She pulled back. ‘Why would I?’
‘I don’t know. Perhaps seeing someone as an adult would expose the real source behind it.’
‘Perhaps.’ She edged out of his arms, still grasping the sheet to her breasts, and shuffled downwards to rest her head on her pillow.
‘Promise me you’ll think about it.’
‘Sure.’
Seth’s expression left her in no doubt that he wasn’t fooled by her answer. It wasn’t as if she’d made a habit of taking his advice before.
Her yawn was genuine, but timely. And hopefully enough to waylay conversation she’d rather have never. Although she knew enough about Seth to know that was wishful thinking.
He dropped down beside her, head on his pillow so they rested nose almost to nose, chin almost to chin. She edged back to gain breathing space but his gaze still bored through the distance, its heat scorching her head to toe.
‘Why, Jayda?’
Her breath caught and stuck. ‘Why what, Seth?’
Not that she needed to ask. Never had come all too soon. And much as she dreaded the conversation, neither did she want it hanging above them, mushrooming into something bigger than it was.
Light from beyond the doorway illuminated his face, and she was glad hers was masked by shadows. She didn’t need him reading her, a talent in which he seemed to excel. His gaze burrowed into hers and she matched it until she wondered whether he could see more after all.
She quickly closed her eyes. ‘What are you asking? Why the inexperience or why now?’
He seemed to consider. ‘Both.’
She opened her eyes to find his still on her. It was unnerving, the intensity of that gaze. She dropped hers to the three o’clock shadow dusting his chin and wondered how a smattering of unshaven hair could be so sexy.
‘I guess it’s almost unheard of these days. A twenty-seven-year-old homicide detective with less sexual experience than most teenagers.’
She paused and his lips kicked upwards. ‘Unusual, yes. But not necessarily in a bad way.’
She didn’t know how to take that, so she didn’t try.
Sorting through the jumble that was her thoughts, she let out a sigh. She’d never been a hasher and rehasher of life’s crap. But something in Seth’s gaze, some little flutter in her heart, made her want him to get why she was who she was.
She blocked her mind as to why him, why now, and forged on before she lost her nerve. ‘My parents’ marriage was always my idea of happiness. I grew up watching them love and support each other, always loving both Bec and me equally.’
A little corner of her heart twisted as she considered her mother’s lack of contact lately, and whether that, too, was something she’d gotten wrong.
‘You weren’t wrong about that.’
Her gaze flew to his. Why was she surprised at Seth’s insights into her mind? You’d think she’d be used to it by now. That uncanny knack he had of reading her.
‘And you know this, how?’
‘Gut instinct.’
Difficult to argue, considering her intuitions ran on the same oily rag. But it didn’t mean she had to believe it.
‘Since forever I’d wanted what my parents shared. I thought if I did what Mum did, I’d find what she found in Dad. It sounds ridiculous when I say it aloud, but back then it just seemed to make sense.’
She didn’t wait for him to comment. Didn’t need his thoughts on how naïve and stupid she’d been.
‘I was twenty, the same age that Mum met Dad, when I met Liam. I was top of our class in the academy, he was second. We wanted so many of the same things. To excel, to reach detective before our thirtieth birthday. To meet and marry our soulmate.’
She couldn’t help it. Her lips twisted. ‘The one thing we didn’t have in common was the one thing that counted most. He didn’t feel the same way about me that I felt about him.’
Bitterness laced her tongue, the old pain an echo of its former self, but still there, still wreaking its havoc.
‘It took a while, but when the rumours came full circle, I realised our relationship was about nothing more than undermining my reputation. He’d been spreading all kinds of lies behind my back. That I got into the academy because of my father. That I was succeeding because of my father. That everything I achieved was because of my father.’ She swallowed. ‘And then there were the other digs—I was a spoilt bitch using any means possible to get to the top.’
The cringe was instinctual. Even this many years past, the cut of Liam’s words still stung. And even though those who knew her should have known better, the stain back then had still stuck. ‘He used me to get what he wanted.’
Seth’s expression hardened. ‘I hope you got the bastard kicked out.’
‘I’d have liked nothing more than to cut off his balls and play ping-pong with the damn things.’ She inhaled, slow, tempering the burn in her chest as she dragged calm back into her body. ‘I could have lodged a complaint, made him suffer for every nasty, bitter-stained word he uttered. But what would that accomplish? The stigma of ending a man’s career before it started would have followed me. I’d be the bitch who got Liam expelled because I couldn’t handle a bit of flack.’
‘Sexual harassment’s more than a bit of flack.’
‘I know how these things play out, Seth. My complaint would have read like nepotism and Liam’s lies would have taken on more than just a whiff of legitimacy.’ She sighed. ‘I didn’t want my career tainted any further than it already was. I distanced myself, picked myself up, worked my butt off and graduated top of my class regardless of his aspersions. Even then, it didn’t stop some from questioning whether I’d earned it or not.’
‘The bastard.’
‘And then some.’
‘And you haven’t been with anyone since? How long?’
‘Seven years. And no.’
Seth looked thrown enough to hit something. No doubt Liam. Hell, she’d felt the same back then. Then she’d vowed to leave it all behind, had focused all that burning energy on her career instead.
Her fingers tightened around the duvet. ‘I didn’t give up on love, I just looked for it outside of the job.’
‘Hence your business and pleasure, oil and water parallel.’
‘Yeah.’ She couldn’t help the tug his words gave to her lips. ‘And until recently, I still believed that love was out there, that I just hadn’t found it yet.’
‘Enter, your parents.’
She swallowed. Nodded. ‘When Mum announced she and Dad were splitting—just before their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, mind you—it threw me. Mum called Dad her first real love, said he was the first, last and only man, ever, for her.’
Tears pressed against her eyelids. She swallowed them back. ‘It’s not that I’m belittling everything they shared until now. Twenty-five years of marriage is a milestone and it shouldn’t be underrated. But to end this way . . . If two of the most perfect people for each other can’t make it, what chance do the rest of us have?’
‘Happy ever after is a long time. If people are happy in the moment, what’s wrong with that?’
Liquid green blinked, measuring him so thoroughly he had to temper his need to squirm. Then she licked her lips. ‘Because when the moment’s gone, they’re all alone again.’
Seth watched the roll of emotions spill across Jayda’s features. Pain, disbelief, yearning.
He got it. They were worlds apart on so many levels, yet their visions of love weren’t so different. But where his came from longing, hers were born from a more tangible source—experience.
He shook the thought and the feeling it tugged along with it. What they both wanted or didn’t, and why, weren’t part of this. Helping Jayda, helping the investigation, was. Better he focus on her momentary slip, rather than his. ‘We’re still talking
about your parents, right?’
Her fists clenched beneath her chin. ‘Don’t try to psychoanalyse me with the whole adopted kid, feeling abandoned, seeking security scenario. My biological parents didn’t abandon me, they died. And my adoptive parents are still there for me, even if they’re no longer there for me together.’
Her lips twisted and he knew she was thinking about her mother. Damn but the woman better have a ripper of an excuse for leaving her daughter when she most needed her.
Jayda’s chin tilted. ‘I’m simply making an educated decision based on precedent. Once upon a time I wanted what my parents had, but now I know what I wanted doesn’t exist.’
‘Just because it didn’t happen for them, doesn’t mean it won’t happen for you.’
‘Or Bec? Twice divorced. Even Grandpa Joe and Grandma Emily couldn’t stick it out back in the days when you pledged to stay together for better or worse and meant it. Us Thomaszes aren’t cut out for marriage.’
‘Love and happiness aren’t genetic, you know. And if they were, you wouldn’t suffer the same end. You don’t share the same genes.’
Her lips pressed tight. ‘I’m as much a Thomasz as any member of my family.’
‘I never said you weren’t.’
She shook her head with that ‘closed for business’ sign he knew so well. ‘It doesn’t matter. You asked, I answered, discussion over.’
‘I know why you closed off for so long. I still don’t know why now, or why me.’
He saw the moment fight came to blows with flight. Her eyes widened. Narrowed. She double-blinked. ‘That’s enough open heart surgery for one day.’ She flopped onto her back, glanced at her bedside clock before sheltering her face in her elbow. ‘Three hours before I have to get up, listen to a stream of robotic condolences and mourn my sister. I need sleep.’
The words may have been harsh, but the tremble in her voice told another story.
He wheedled his arm beneath her shoulders and edged in until her head rested against the crook of his neck. While she didn’t move closer, she didn’t pull away either. Her moment of what she no doubt viewed as weakness was gone. The Jayda who sought nothing and no one was back. A woman he knew was just fooling herself.
Lethal in Love Page 29