by Lora Leigh
He realized now, as he slammed the cargo door shut and climbed back into the driver’s seat of the Cherokee, that Paige might not even remember his vow. She’d been lying so still in that hospital bed, weeping her little heart out. Zach had wanted to tear his own flesh out, it hurt so much.
And it hurt to see her now. Wounded. Afraid. Alone.
No surprise that he still wanted, with the same fervor as he had yesterday and every day for the past seven years, to make it better for her. Would make it better for her, fuck it.
He’d worked the streets for two years, training like he didn’t have anything to live for— which, maybe, at the time he’d believed to be true. He’d gotten punched in the gut and in the face, blasted with pepper spray until he was sure he’d be blinded for the rest of his life. Then he’d moved up . . . and up . . .
And now he wouldn’t drive off, goddammit. He shut off the engine only a second after he’d powered it up, got out of the car, and slammed the door shut as his cell began vibrating at his hip.
He slapped it to his ear. “Rivers.”
The silence, the breathing behind it, had his body tightening in instant response.
“Um. Detective Rivers?”
The pink hue of sunset was creeping across the skies as he glanced up at her window, noting the sheer drapes were drawn. “Zach,” he said quietly.
“Ah, Zach . . .”
She seemed to be searching for words. Zach gradually followed the walkway up to her house. “Open your door, Paige. I’m here.”
“Oh.”
She hung up.
When the door opened, Paige stood wide-eyed and breathless, staring at him with the look of a woman who’d sold her soul to the devil and somehow feared he’d come to collect.
Zach braced a hand on the door frame, his heart ramming against his rib cage. He hadn’t felt like this in seven. Years.
He ached to grab fistfuls of her hair and draw her up against his body, to take her lips with his, to slide his tongue into her sweet, warm mouth and remind her what she had felt for him, to do with her everything they’d done before and everything they hadn’t.
Instead he said softly, so softly, “Did you want to talk to me?”
“No.” One nervous hand briskly tucked a strand of wayward strawberry hair behind her ear. “I mean . . . no, I don’t have anyone to stay with tonight.”
It took Zach one full heartbeat to absorb this.
She could’ve called Cody. Who was older, friendlier even. But she’d called him.
Reeling with this, Zach jerked his chin toward the house. “Go get your things.”
CHAPTER 2
THEY’D BEEN DRIVING for a couple of minutes. Minutes Paige had spent stealing covert glances at the detective. Minutes she’d been inhaling the intensely masculine aroma of his intoxicating person and his leathery car. Minutes that felt like hours she spent suffering in baffled silence.
He’d been on the phone— first with someone at the lab, then with his lieutenant, who got a very thorough brief on the “situation.” The silence, when he hung up and simultaneously powered off the police radio, had her scrambling to speak.
“I’m sorry,” she began uncomfortably, facing the window as they passed a gas station. “I didn’t know who else to call and suddenly I felt . . .”
“That’s all right.”
Biting her lower lip, she chanced a look at him and fairly dissolved to putty in her seat. His shoulders were broad, his biceps bulging as he maneuvered the wheel, stretching his T-shirt to capacity. Awareness of him as an excruciatingly handsome man brought forth an awareness of herself— being a woman. Not dead. Not in a coma. Very much in her five senses.
All of which he stirred.
“I realize I grew up here,” she admitted. “I should have a friend to call.”
He shot her a sidelong glance, giving her a full view of that fantastically somber face for a heart-stopping second. “Again. It’s all right, Paige.”
His husky timbre had her suppressing a shiver. Who was he?
She shifted uncomfortably in her seat and tried distracting herself with the buildings outside. None seemed familiar— not the modern glass structures, not the weathered brick office buildings— and her failure to recognize them increased her discomfort. Having a big black hole in your brain was incredibly frustrating.
“Want to talk about it?” he asked.
He sounded so ready to listen, Paige actually blinked. “Talk about . . . ?”
He shrugged his big shoulders. “You.” He gazed out the windshield. “Your life.”
An uninvited sadness crept into her voice. “I can’t remember most my life. I have frighteningly little to tell.”
She had never spoken about this openly. Not even with Mom. Paige had tried to stay cheerful and positive with the grieving woman, and kept to herself how unsettling her lack of memory was.
The detective hardly reacted to her powerful words. Still as a granite sculpture, he seemed to be waiting for her to offer more.
“Well,” she ventured sheepishly. “What would you like to hear?”
“I don’t know. That you’re happy.”
A rueful smile appeared. “Happy. What does that even mean?” Since he did not enlighten her, she lifted a challenging brow. “Are you?”
“We’re not talking about me, we’re talking about you.”
“Aha! So you’re not happy, either.”
His teeth shone blinding white, his smile so charming it brought the light out in his eyes. A shaft of yearning pierced through her, and Paige dropped her head and drew circles on her thighs, biting her lower lip. Who was he? “I left the city several years ago with my mother,” she told her lap. “My father was, well, he was . . . um . . .”
“Murdered.”
A breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding left her in a whoosh. “Yes.” Of course. Everyone in town must be acquainted with the happening. “And I lost my memory.”
He braked at a stoplight, and their gazes held. A sensation that he was trying to see beyond the surface, that those intense green eyes were searching for Paige Avery, spread through her entire being. With his scrutiny came an unexpected feeling of discovery . . . as though for the first time in her life, another human being could see her.
“What do the doctors say?”
His question was feathery, undemanding, but it made her twine her fingers into a knot on her lap. Because she’d asked herself a similar question every morning and night, but hers started with “why.”
Why can’t I remember?
“I’m sick of doctors,” she confessed, rubbing her thumbs together. “And cops. Not . . . not you, of course. I’m just sick of their questions. And feeling so frustrated. Sometimes it was as though the entire case depended on me. The harder I tried to remember the more physically ill I became. Mother had to take me away. A second chance, she said. Start over.” But how could she?
She was an emotional cripple, damaged and deeply affected by events she couldn’t even remember. On more than one noisy, rainy Seattle night, she had awakened in hysterics to shake her mother awake. I have to go back, I have to go back . . . Mom, we have to go back!
Paige, calm down! Calm down, you’re dreaming.
But she’d been wide awake and struggling to grasp the barest hint of a memory teasing at the fringes of her mind. Her mother couldn’t understand her ramblings. Paige could never give her a reason to return. She only knew that there was this big hole inside her. That she felt lost. That at night she felt anxious to visit the same place she didn’t want to face, either: her past. She craved to know everything her mind had forgotten.
A faint streak of sunlight lingered on the horizon, casting an orange hue across the evening skies. Poignant somehow. She had never expected Phoenix to suddenly feel . . . welcoming.
Zach parked at an abandoned parking lot spread out before an old, one-story building. A weathered sign that read dixie’s leaned against the dusty windows. The land surroundi
ng the building seemed to have once been a miniature golf course. Despite the puddles of sooty soil scattered here and there, it still boasted a few hills covered with synthetic grass, and a wall of jutting rocks decorated its perimeter.
“Ohmigod, I know this place,” she gasped.
Out of the car more quickly than he in her excitement, she rushed toward the side entrance, one that seemed somehow separated from the rest of the building. She ran her fingers up the weathered dark wood of the small door, then one long suntanned arm reached out to unlock and push it open for her.
An apartment. It was small, but cozy and inviting. The essentials— sofa, TV, coffee table littered with magazines— sparsely furnished the area, and the air smelled clean and potently masculine.
Unable to resist the tug of the room at the far end of the narrow hall, Paige peered inside. A large bed, one nightstand, one lamp, one pillow. So odd, the magnetic draw of it, the way it called to her most basic, instinctive self.
Walking inside, she whirled around with a smile that stretched from ear to ear. “I’ve been here.”
His broad shoulders filled up the doorway, and he nodded, and his face just . . . broke. His aloof, detached expression transformed, his brow became marked with lines, and he closed his eyes tight enough to make her think it was paining him to do so.
Paige splayed a hand across her midriff. “I have this sensation. I can’t explain it.”
Their eyes met. His pupils dilated, merging with the liquid green irises. He stood there— large, taciturn, stunning. She could think of nothing but how attractive he was. His jaw spoke of character, and his mouth was lush and succulent. His top lip flared into a bow, and the bottom was plump and she desperately wanted to taste it. To . . . to . . . suck it.
She grew wet between her legs. “I’m . . . shaky.” Breathless, full of puzzled wonder, she whispered, “And I feel like I . . .” Belong.
She could feel his weight on top of hers, could feel . . . God, his lips dragging over her shoulder, her neck, her cheeks, her temple, could hear the echo of her name murmured in her ear. Paige.
A tremor of excitement melted her knees. “This is your place . . . ?” Her throat cramped around his name, preventing her from saying it.
“Zach.” Violently tender green eyes scanned her features. “My name is Zach. Paige.”
“Zach.” Her hushed whisper feathered into the silence, leaving her with the sensation of having done something illicit. Her entire body twittered like a wanton’s with the inexplicable eroticism of having spoken his name.
Friends. He said they’d been friends. Only friends? she wondered. And how could a woman, ever, in her life, forget him?
He gestured toward the bed, saying thickly, “You can sleep in my bed.”
Her stomach gripped as he pulled the drapes shut. “Oh, no . . . I couldn’t. Impose.”
“No. No imposing.”
He covered the threshold once more and stared into her eyes, stroking a large, restless hand up and down the wood frame. The air felt so thick with awareness that his strong, splayed hand could have been sliding intimately up her thigh.
“Do you need anything?” he rasped. “Food or . . . anything?”
Stomach squeezing as a thousand— indecent—suggestions sprang to mind, she shook her head and forced herself to stay put the moment he left even when her legs wanted to follow him.
Too restless to settle down, Paige absently glanced through the books stacked atop the TV. Cold Case Files. Hidden Evidence. Then she walked over to the window and plucked the drapes apart to reveal the quiet moonlit street outside. But no. Her heart continued beating abnormally fast.
After a moment’s hesitation, she gave in to the impulse and went to peer into the living room through the slit in the door. She eyed the small stainless steel kitchen from afar and spotted him— a sleek, mysterious feline, a weary feline, checking the windows, the door. Then he removed the gun at his hip, clearly at ease with the weapon, and set it on top of a nearby desk.
He sank into the chair, stretched his legs out far, and examined some clippings for a while.
He was going to find her father’s killer. Paige had no doubt, could sense it in the way he concentrated, surveyed, studied. He was beautiful. Sinewy, seething with restrained power. He was a quiet one, wasn’t he? Kind of shy.
A deep, fierce throb built inside of her as she watched him rise, large and gorgeous and lonely. Or maybe it was she who felt lonely.
He moved to a sofa. The soft glow of a nearby lamp gleamed richly on his hair, dusting across his face and his taut, corded forearms like gold.
In a single fluid move, he wrenched his shirt off, and Paige’s tummy tumbled. Her lips tingled, suddenly aching to . . . to . . . trace all that bronzed flesh? Press heated kisses against his sinful mouth?
He lowered himself to the couch and her breasts pricked. His abdomen was carved with slabs of muscle, his ribs perfectly delineated— scattered with scars.
He extracted another gun, a smaller one, from his ankle, and let it drop on a side table. Then his silky dark head fell back on the couch, and he groaned. The long, drawn-out sound reverberated in her bones, and Paige sealed her eyes shut, wanting to moan, too. Stop this!
Gathering her wits, she sat on the foot of his bed, stiffly at first. She removed her shoes and began to scoot up and up until her head was nicely cushioned. His room was . . . simple. His pillow . . . She rolled her head and took a whiff. Clean and masculine. Yummy, actually. She began to snuggle, arranging the pillow just so, hitting it equally on either side, lifting it to manually plump it up. Her eyes widened at the sight of a picture lying on the sheets.
It was her senior picture.
Heart stopping, she studied her own smiling face and fingered the worn edges, guessing that once, the photo had been tucked in someone’s pocket.
She didn’t know why she flipped it over, but she did— to find the shockingly familiar sight of her own neat handwriting.
So you’ll think of me.
Every second of the day, I think of you.
Paige.
Her hand flew to her mouth, and she said, “Oh.”
ZACHARY, TELL me again you love me.
I love you, Paige.
Eyes closed as he stood in her embrace, Zach groaned heatedly, feeding from the sweet, scalding nectar of her mouth, sliding his hands under her snug T-shirt. Her breasts filled his hands, firm and round, the tiny nipples poking into his palms. He slanted his head, searching feverishly into her mouth as she curled her tongue around his.
With trembling hands, he eased the fabric of her bra aside and squeezed both those little pearls at the same time. Her hold firmed around his neck, and she squirmed against him, gasping. Everything . . . everything hurts.
He slowed down. Slid his palms down her torso, her ribs, and held her waist. He kissed her temple. Her cheek. Held her body against his and struggled to breathe as he tenderly nibbled her ear. We hurt because we want each other.
Up on tiptoe, breasts pressing into his chest, she tongued his jawline and chin, letting her hands roam up his chest. Do you think . . . her voice quivered, her tongue sought his . . . we could . . . she shivered; he groaned; their mouths opened . . . kiss like this, but with our clothes off?
Damn.
Zach pushed the memory aside and glared up at the ceiling, refusing to think of how close she was, how warm and good and right she would feel. Only an asshole would make a move on her at a time like this. Only a sick, twisted fuck would try.
“You asleep?”
His head shot up. Paige stepped into the shadowed living room, barefoot and heart-stoppingly beautiful.
Years ago, after his father— a quiet, reserved man, much like Zach— had done something stupid, Zach had been warned to stay away from Paige. Judge Avery had taken matters into his hands, and the entire school faculty, the principal, guards, and teachers, were on a high state of warning. Dozens of pairs of eyes followed her, and him, to make sure Zach didn�
�t come within three feet of Paige.
Zach didn’t crave that kind of trouble, so he had stayed away. But his eyes, damn them, would always find her. His hands would brush hers. His heart would pound like something mad every time he saw her. When she spoke in class, in that calm, clear voice of hers, his thoughts would scramble. He’d shift in his seat, uncomfortably aroused, and the instant their gazes met and held, it was as though his entire world revolved around her big, thick-lashed blue eyes. Eyes of a girl screaming to be kissed.
By Zach.
And he’d picture running his thumb across that heart-shaped, coral-pink mouth, sliding all ten fingers into that silky fiery hair, and drawing her close for him to smell a little, feel a little, pet and taste and lick a little. And want her so damned much.
But tonight, nobody was watching.
Zach could hear only the rustle of her movements as she skirted the sofa. His heart kicked, an animal trapped in his rib cage, as he fought the urge to engulf her with his arms. He could, Christ, he could draw her gently to his lap and say, Paige, baby, as long as I live, no one will hurt you, not again, not ever . . . He could kiss her softly, or hard, God, hard, and he could coax his name out of her lips . . . and Paige would know, she’d have to know, know that she was wanted and needed and loved . . . by Zach Rivers . . .
His stomach gripped as she approached. She searched his features one by one, somehow dissecting his thoughts and tearing him open, until he said, “No, not asleep. Thinking,” and rubbed his face with his hands.
She smiled. Venturing forward, she lifted a magazine from the floor and set it on the coffee table. “Why do they call you ‘Stalker’?”
He couldn’t understand why she felt the impulse to chat now. At eight p.m. after a draining day. When he was shirtless. When he’d been this close—this close— to storming into his bedroom, climbing into his bed, and kissing the hell out of . . . his girl. “Just a bad joke.”
Her soft smile made his stomach tighten. “You stalk all the pretty girls?”
“Just looking for one.”