Jenna Mills - Crossfire

But she had.

Once.

The memory cruised through him, hot and damning, and though he knew the polite thing to do—the gentlemanly thing to do—would be to ignore the eight-hundred-pound pink elephant she’d just summoned from the past, he couldn’t quit looking at her standing fewer than ten feet away, with her hair starting to dry and falling loose around her face, her gaze startled, her lips parted. Even wearing nothing but his ratty, threadbare flannel shirt, she still managed to steal his breath.

He met her gaze. “You sure about that?”

Elizabeth glanced at the bedside clock and squeezed her eyes shut, and Hawk had his answer.

“Life doesn’t always unfold neat and tidy the way we want it to,” he pointed out, leaning forward to balance his elbows on his knees. He didn’t understand his fierce need to force her to look in the mirror. “I’d have thought you’d realized that by now.”

Her gaze met his, quiet, seeking. “I’ve realized a lot, Wesley. Have you?”

The question splintered through him. A hot comeback begged for release, but he refused to let her lure him on to a path he had no desire to travel. It was late, and tomorrow would be a long day. She’d probably been awake close to twenty-four hours. She’d been tracked, almost abducted, could have been killed. Any adrenaline had long since drained away.

He wasn’t sure how much longer she could stay standing.

“Come to bed, Elizabeth. You’re exhausted.”

She didn’t move. “Have you?”

The control he’d been exerting crumbled. She wanted an answer? Fine, he’d give her one. “You want to know what I’ve realized?” The question broke from his throat rougher than he’d intended. “I’ve realized you’ve got your whole life mapped out, and nothing else matters. You know what you’re going to do, what’s acceptable and what’s not, who you’ll be with. Everything is black, or it’s white. Gray confuses you.”

Elizabeth crossed to the little bed a few feet from him, then meticulously folded back the bedspread. Only when she finished did she turn to him, and when she did, she quickly stepped back, as though she’d just realized how close the two beds really were.

If she moved two steps, she’d be standing between his thighs.

For a moment she just looked at him, at his bare chest where the ugly scar was a brutal reminder of how little she gave a damn about him. Then slowly she lifted her eyes to his.

“I suppose you think you’re the gray?”

“I don’t fit into preconceived notions.” If he had, if he was a gentleman like Nicholas, he’d be wearing a pair of pale blue pajamas, with the top buttoned all the way up to his throat, not lounging there more naked than not. “I don’t play by the rules.”

“No,” she agreed with brutal speed, then turned and practically yanked back the crisp white sheet. “You fly by the seat of your pants.”

And finally they’d reached the heart of the matter.

“It’s not a crime.”

Elizabeth stiffened, kept staring at the bed. He could tell she was on the verge of collapse, that she wanted nothing more than to crawl between the sheets and shut her eyes, wake up in a time and place where Hawk Monroe had never rocked her world.

Finally she looked at him through a curtain of damp scraggly hair. “I never said it was.”

“Tell me how you’d rather me act. Tell me what would make you more comfortable.”

Across the room the baseball announcer signaled a grand slam, but neither of them looked. Elizabeth just stared at him, no doubt considering a comeback. She’d be more comfortable if Zhukov was still behind bars and this nightmare had never started. She’d be more comfortable if Aaron or Jagger had been sent to bring her home.

She’d be more comfortable if the bullet that had ripped into his shoulder four months before had landed a few inches lower.

“Look, Hawk,” she said. “We’re adults. Can’t we just—”

“Pretend that night didn’t happen?” That’s what would make her more comfortable, he realized. If he’d never touched her. Never made her sigh.

Never made her come unglued.

“No,” he answered before she could. “I can’t do that. I don’t pretend.” That was the coward’s way out.

She frowned. “I made a mistake, Wesley. Nothing less, nothing more.”

Nothing.

Less.

Nothing.

More.

The seven most incredible hours of his life.

Nothing less, nothing more.

The burn started deep, spread fast. “If that was a mistake,” he said slowly, pointedly, “it wasn’t just one.”

Her eyes flared wide, and the memory flickered, burned hot. Color rose to her cheeks, much like the flush that had consumed her chest after they’d first made love.

“You don’t have to throw it in my face,” she said quietly, and if Hawk didn’t know better, he would have sworn her voice sounded more than a little breathless.

“Throw it in your face?” He aimed the remote at the television and killed the power. “We’re not talking about some heinous crime, Elizabeth.” But to her, he knew that they were. “We’re talking about you, and me, and why you’re scared to be in the same room with me.”

And why that room suddenly felt incredibly hot.

“Wesley, please.” She pushed the damp hair back from her face. “Let it go. I have.”

He looked into her eyes, searched deep. “Have you, Ellie? Have you really?”

The room was excruciatingly quiet now, the television no longer blaring. If he listened carefully, he would have sworn he heard her heart pounding.

Or maybe that was his own.

“Yes,” she said, not with the clip he’d come to expect, but with a complete lack of emotion that burned even deeper.

“I suppose that’s why you kissed me tonight like you never wanted to let me go?”

Something odd flickered in her gaze, a light that vanished more quickly than the shooting star they’d seen one hot summer night two years before. “Don’t confuse adrenaline with desire,” she said softly. “There’s a difference.”

A hard sound broke from his throat. “You think so?” For a minute, he thought about telling how in explicit detail just how wrong she was, but he knew she wouldn’t listen. So instead he slammed his fist against the pathetic excuse for a pillow, then stretched out on the mattress. He didn’t pull the covers over him, though. The room was too damn hot.

“Get some sleep, Ellie,” he said, reaching over to flick off the bedside lamp. “I’m here if you need me.”

The heater rattled relentlessly, interrupted only by the occasional airplane taking to the skies. The curtains blocked most of the light from the parking lot, but a sliver cut through, casting the man with the gun in shadow. She watched him standing there, alert and ready, still wearing nothing but a pair of sweatpants. His shoulders rose and fell with each deep, rhythmic breath he drew. The sound thrummed through her, and before she realized it, she’d matched his cadence.

Frowning, she was tempted to turn away, to face the sallow wall instead of the man who stood rigidly by the window, but knew better than to turn her back on Hawk Monroe.

If that was a mistake, it wasn’t just one.

Even now, hours later, the words made her shift uncomfortably, acutely aware that she was naked beneath his shirt. The blunt statement had caught her completely off guard, even though she knew Hawk Monroe wasn’t a man to mince words. She’d never known anyone with such a complete disregard for propriety.

I’m here if you need me.

That’s what worried her.

Two years before, she’d realized a truth, made herself a promise. A promise she intended to keep. Never would she allow herself to dance naked in a thunderstorm ever, ever again.