Fallen Angels 02 - Crave (16 page)

Before he could open his mouth, she held up her palm to stop him before he started. “It doesn‟t matter that I don‟t know you and I don‟t owe you. So you can stop that argument right 82

Crave

there. You and I are going to check out my security system and then you‟re going to sleep in my guest room and leave in the morning—”

“I could kill you. Right here. Right now.”

That shut her up.

As her fingertips lifted to that heavy gold necklace of hers, like maybe she was imagining his hands around her throat, he walked over to her.

And this time she did back away…until the counter where her empty plate sat stopped her.

Isaac kept coming until he put his arms on either side of her, locking his hands on the granite, effectively imprisoning her. Looking right into those wide blue eyes of hers, he was desperate to scare some sense into her.

“I‟m not the kind of man you‟re used to.”

“You‟re not going to hurt me.”

“You‟re trembling and you‟ve got a death grip on your neck right now. So you tell me what you think I‟m capable of.” As she swallowed hard, he figured the wake-up call was way overdue—except he felt like a thug putting on the show of aggression. “I know you‟re into the savior thing. But I‟m not the kind of charity case that‟ll feed your soul. Trust me.”

A humming energy started to vibrate between them, the air molecules in the space between their bodies and their faces agitating.

He leaned in even closer. “I‟m more the type to eat you alive.”

Her breath exhaled in a rush and he felt it fan over the skin of his neck in a tickle.

And then she floored his ass.

“So do it,” she bit out.

Isaac frowned and pulled back a little.

Her eyes were burning, a sudden anger suffusing her beautiful face with a passion he was shocked and titillated by.

“Do it,” she growled, grabbing at one of his arms.

She yanked his hand up and put it to her throat. “Go ahead—do it. Or are you just trying to scare me, huh?”

He snapped his wrist out of her grip. “You‟re out of your mind.”

“That‟s it, isn‟t it.” Her anger really shouldn‟t have been a total turn-on again. Really. Truly.

“You want to try to bully me into getting scared and letting you off the hook. Well, good luck with that. Because unless you‟re prepared to follow through on the threat, I‟m not backing down and I‟m not scared of you.”

His lungs started to burn…and whereas it would have been a hell of a lot smarter for him to step off and use one of her doors, he ended up putting his hand right back where it had been on the granite…so she was once again stuck between his heavy arms.

He liked her right where she was, all but blanketed by his body. And he respected her show of strength; he really did—even as it made him worried about how reckless she was.

“Guess what,” he said in a low, gravelly voice.

She swallowed hard once again. “What.”

Isaac moved in close, putting his mouth right to her ear. “Killing you isn‟t the only thing I 83

J.R. Ward

could do to you…
ma’am
.”

It had been a long time since Grier had felt every square inch of her body—at the same time.

Good God, though, she did now, and it wasn‟t just the skin she was in. She felt every bit of Isaac Rothe, too, even though nothing of his was touching her.

There was just so much of him. And maybe she should have been turned off by the raw, masculine thing he had going on…but instead, the brutal reality of his power just drew her in tighter and tighter. Separated by mere inches, with both of them breathing hard, she was utterly unhinged, her emotions unleashed sure as if he had in fact popped her head off her body and let it roll on the floor.

God, she was desperate for him: She wanted to hurl herself right into him and get knocked out by the impact. She wanted him to be the brick wall that she slammed into. She wanted to be senseless and reeling and out of touch with her reality…because of him and the sex he threw off like a scent and the wild ride he would be.

Yeah, sure, it wouldn‟t last. And when she came to, she was going to feel like hell. But in this electric moment, she didn‟t care about any of that.

“Isaac—”

He backed off. The moment she said his name hoarsely, he not only moved away, he pulled out of the vortex.

Pacing around, he rubbed his short hair like he was trying to scrub his brain raw, and the physical distance gave her a clue about how she would feel in the aftermath if she ever were with him: very empty, vaguely nauseated, and definitely ashamed.

“That won‟t happen again,” he said roughly.

As his pronouncement hung in the still air between them, she told herself that she was relieved she wouldn‟t have to deal with the sex stuff.

Annnnnnnnnnnnnd…the throbbing between her thighs told her that was a bald-faced lie.

“I still want you to stay,” she said.

“You never give up, do you.”

“No. Never.” She thought of the number of times she‟d tried to pull Daniel out of his tailspin. “Not ever.”

Isaac‟s face was ancient as he looked across the kitchen at her, his frosty eyes nothing but pits of darkness. “Word to the wise. Letting go can be an important survival mechanism.”

“And sometimes it‟s a moral failing.”

“Not if you‟re being dragged behind a car. Or being pulled down a rat hole. Sometimes to save yourself, you have to get out.”

She knew they were getting close to his truth and she kept her voice as steady as she could.

“What are you getting out of, Isaac. What are you saving yourself from?”

He just stared at her. And then…“Where‟s your security system.”

The deflection was a disappointment, but the concession that he was staying was a win of sorts. And as she took him to the front of the house, she pulled herself together as best she could, even though her knees were loose and her skin overheated and her mind spinning.

There was a terrible familiarity to the way she felt, one that she refused to dwell on…but 84

Crave

might well bring up to her dead brother when she saw him again. Daniel never spoke of the night he had died, or all the self-abuse that had gone on before that. Maybe, though…they needed to talk about everything.

“As I mentioned, this is just for show,” she said, sweeping a hand past the ADT pad that was mounted on the wall. “The real unit is in the back of my bedroom closet. Each window and every door has the ADT receivers, but the real system is secured by radio waves and infrared beams and copper plates. Just like yours.”

“Show me the connectors. And I want to see the motherboard. Please.”

Which would mean taking him upstairs.

As she glanced over at the carpeted steps, she found it hard to believe that she was wondering whether she could be trusted with him…

That close to a bed.

What the hell was happening to her?

85

A
s Isaac was led into a cozy library-type room, he knew this was where Grier spent her downtime. There were sections of the
New York Times
and the
Wall Street Journal
in a wicker basket next to a stuffed chair, and the wide-screen TV on the far wall no doubt had CNBC or CNN or FOX News on it most nights.

Who sat here and watched with her? That brother of hers?

“See?” she said, pulling one of the Black Watch tartan drapes aside.

Isaac went over and leaned in—and the whiff of her perfume was precisely the kind of thing he didn‟t need right now.

Forcing himself to focus on the tiny flashes of copper, he approved of what he was eyeing.

Very current stuff.

Who the
hell
was her father?

Before he did something stupid, like touch her, he moved away, and as he wandered by the TV, he was entirely unsurprised by the collection of DVDs tucked into the shelves. Lot of foreign titles and serious movies he‟d never heard of, much less seen. Then again, he hadn‟t been to the cinema since the late eighties.

Last thing he knew, Bruce Willis was a cop desperately looking for a pair of shoes that fit, Arnold was a cyborg with sunglasses, and Steven Seagal had a real hairline.

“Will you take me to the motherboard,” he said, turning around to her.

The
and into your bed
part he left off. What a gentleman.

“Of course.”

Following her up the stairs, he gave her a wide berth—which was good in that he kept his hands to himself, and not so hot because his eyes had plenty to look at. Jesus, her hips had a way of making him grind his molars.

When they passed the second floor, he took a quick pause and snagged an impression of three bedrooms with open doors. The decorations were done in the same old-money routine as downstairs, but there was a cozy vibe to it all. Much more “family” than “hotel.”

He certainly hadn‟t lived like this. He‟d shared a room the size of her front hall with two of his brothers growing up. In XOps, he‟d grabbed sleep where he could—usually sitting upright in a chair facing a door with a gun in his hand.

“I‟m on the third floor,” she said from a number of steps up on the landing.

He nodded and got his ass in gear. It turned out she was actually the
whole
third floor. The master bedroom was a sprawl with its own sitting area, fireplace, and French doors that opened to what he guessed was a private terrace.

“In here.”

86

Crave

He tracked the sound of her voice, going over to the walk-in closet she‟d disappeared into.

The damn thing was as big as some people‟s living rooms, with wall-to-wall creamy carpeting and legions of clothes lined up and hanging by category.

The air smelled like her perfume.

She was at the back, shifting aside a dozen or so serious-looking suits to reveal…a four-foot-high, three-foot-wide grate that appeared to be nothing more than an old-fashioned radiator cover. But what do you know, the thing slid back and revealed a crawl space.

Little click and the light came on.

She went in first and he was tight on her going into the cramped confines—and there it was.

Holy…shit.

As they knelt down side by side, he thought, Man, good thing he wasn‟t a techie type or he‟d be swooning. The setup was as sophisticated as it got—no little pad with ten numbers and
off
,
stay
, or
away
to choose from. This was a computer-linked system that monitored the various zones in the house on multiple levels. And if he was reading it right, the only way to get at the components was all the way up here, and disarming would be tricky.

Except…“I didn‟t see you turn it off when we came in.”

She handed over something that looked like the key fob to a car. “The pad is calibrated to my thumbprint. I take this with me wherever I go, and the system‟s engaged now.”

As he turned the thing over in his hand, she said, “Good enough?”

He flipped his eyes up to hers. “Good enough.”

Long moment. Too long for where they were.

Way too long for who they were.

“Anything else,” she said.

Yes. “No.”

Grier nodded and worked her way around to step out of the confines. After he emerged, they put the grate back and walked into her room—go fig, he couldn‟t help but look at her bed. Big.

Lot of duvets and pillows. On the far side, there was a small TV on top of a choice antique table, and a bookcase lined with precisely ordered DVDs.

He frowned and went over, even though it was none of his business—because he couldn‟t possibly be seeing the titles right.

Pretty in Pink. Breakfast Club. Sixteen Candles. Die Hard. Under Siege
.

Even he knew these.

“That‟s my nighttime viewing,” Grier said, as she came across and straightened the thin boxes even though they were perfectly straight.

“Different from what you have downstairs.” And he found it hard to believe she was a poser who wanted to be all Jane Austen in public and Jerry Seinfeld here in her room.

She picked up
When Harry Met Sally…
and smoothed her hand over the autumn scene on the front. “I don‟t sleep well and these help. It‟s like…my brain goes back to the time when they came out. I see the cars…the supermarket scenes with cheaper prices…the clothes that used to be in style…hair that no one wears anymore. I go back to when I was the age I first saw them, back to when things were…simpler.” She laughed in an awkward rush. “Cinematic knockout drops, I‟d guess you‟d call it. It‟s the only thing that works for me.”

87

J.R. Ward

Staring at her as she looked at Meg Ryan, he had such an image of her curled on her side, the blue flicker of the screen playing across her features, the trip into the past calming her nerves and slowing her brain down.

Did she have a lover to watch with her? he wondered. A boyfriend?

No ring, so he assumed she wasn‟t married or engaged.

“What,” she said, tugging at her beautiful black dress. He cleared his throat, hating that he‟d been caught staring. “Which shower do you want me to use.”

That made her smile. For the first time.

And yeah, sap that he was…his breath caught and his heart stopped.

Grier put the movie back in its slot. “More food first,” she said as she turned and led the way back downstairs.

Jim and his boys landed in the rear garden of a three-story brick house that both screamed old money and apologized for making any fuss at the same time. Everything about it, and its neighborhood, was refined and super-well cared for…and brick. For God‟s sake, the whole zip code looked like the three little pigs had gone hog wild: brick houses, brick walls, brick walkways, brick lanes.

It was enough to make the Big Bad Wolf go iron lung.

Through plate-glass windows, a kitchen that was pretty damn spank spread out in all kinds of directions, and there was some kind of food thing going on at the counter—but no people.