Loose Ends (33 page)

“Hell,” he muttered, dragging his hand back through his hair.

“What?” she asked, still with that death grip on his jeans. It was crazy, the way she was holding on to him. “What?”

Damn
, he thought. This was never going to work.

“He’s gone,” he said. “Whoever was out on the porch is gone.”

“That’s good?”

He shook his head. “Not really. I wanted to talk to him.” To put it nicely. Not so nicely, things probably would have gone down a completely different way.

“So you think it was the ghost guy?” Her face paled a little more at the thought.

“No,” he lied. “Could have just been a neighbor, wondering why the cops were here.”

She nodded, like she was working that idea around and maybe not quite buying his story.

“I … don’t think he’s much of a talker, the ghost guy,” she said.

“Probably not,” he agreed, refraining from a weary sigh. She was so damn beautiful. “How’s your head? Still hurting?”

“A little.”

“And your knee?” He’d never seen it coming, that he would end up in a house tucked into the middle of nowhere, hell and gone in the Denver suburbs with a woman who broke his heart just by standing there. It made him feel uncomfortably exposed, vulnerable.

Edgy.

“It smarts … a little.” She shrugged her oh-so-elegant shoulders, a gesture of such profound, unfolding grace he felt an echoing ache in his chest.

He was so screwed.

“But I’m okay,” she said.

Yeah, sure, him, too.

“Good.” It took a lot to get the word out, and in the ensuing silence of his failure to voice another one, she cast her gaze downward—which pretty much fascinated the hell out of him. Like she needed any more help in that department.

They were probably both in over their heads.

“Look at me,” he said, and, after a slight hesitation, she complied, tilting her chin up.

This was the time to tell her he needed to go after that guy, whoever he was. To tell her the ghostly tracker wouldn’t get by him—and the bastard wouldn’t, no matter what kind of laboratory had made him. To tell her she was safe in this house, and that he’d be back.

But, God, she was exquisite.

Abso-fucking-lutely irresistible.

He knew better, but “better” didn’t seem to matter, not in the heated shadows of this hallway with her hands practically in his pants, still holding on to him so tightly.

Geezus, baby, do you know?
He lifted his hand and slid the tips of his fingers across her cheek, feeling the softness of her skin, watching her eyes darken to an even more verdant shade of green.
Do you know what you’re doing to me?

He’d be crazy to get involved with her. With half a chance, he could still make a break for it.

But she didn’t give him half a chance. Without another move, without so much as the blink of an eye or a twitch of a smile, between one breath and the next, she captured him completely.

There was no help for it and no escape.

None.

She was the Wild Thing, everything he remembered and something he hadn’t known for a long time. The
lush, alluring scent of her awareness filled his senses, all of it female. Every fiber of her being was alert to their closeness. She fairly vibrated with it, and it was turning him inside out with longing.

“I’m not the man you knew.” No matter what happened here tonight, he couldn’t afford to be anything less than honest with her.

“No,” she said. “No, you’re not.” Her voice was soft, barely audible, but her gaze was direct, and the temperature of her skin subtly rose with a blush, a more telling confession than the words themselves.

“I don’t know how much time I have, maybe only weeks, maybe months.” More brutal honesty. He really didn’t think he would live out the year, not the way things had been going for him lately.

Distress flattened her expression, but her gaze stayed locked onto him.

“Okay,” she said slowly. “I understand.”

He doubted it. Hell, he didn’t understand it himself, how he could be so strong one minute and crash the next. Souk had been such a sick bastard. In the hands of a humanitarian, of a doctor who cared, Souk’s research could have changed the world. He could have helped people and saved lives.

Instead, along had come another crazy sick bastard working somewhere out of Thailand, jacking warriors up for profit and unleashing a monster on the earth.

Lancaster had a lot to answer for.

“Six years in the wasteland,” he said, gently rubbing his thumb across the soft fullness of her lower lip. “And then there you are, walking down Wazee Street, turning my world inside out, and things start coming back to me.”

Maybe this was it, he thought, maybe he was dying and this thing with her was his whole-life-flashing-before-his-eyes setup, except his “flash” was going in
slow motion, one memory at a time, starting with Corinna and Hawkins, and Kid, and Denver, memories of 738 Steele Street and this house on the west side, and especially of her, Jane Linden, Robin Rulz.

His recollections of her were so clear, but sex had a way of focusing a guy’s mind like a laser beam—and his feelings for her were very sexual.

“So,” he said, “this guy you had the date with tonight …”

“Wouldn’t have gotten me into half the trouble you did.”

Sweet thing, she said it with a straight face, as if there might actually be somebody out there who could have gotten her into even more trouble.

He doubted it.

“An accountant?” he guessed.

“Cop.”

Geezus
. He couldn’t help himself, he grinned.

“Yeah,” she said, a small grin lifting a corner of her mouth, as well. “I know.”

“Steady boyfriend?” He needed to know, not that he thought her answer was going to make too damn much of a difference—not when she was still holding on to him like she was never going to let him go.

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “Blind date.”

Good, he thought, feeling the last of his safeguards slide out from under him like so much shifting sand. The poor cop was never going to know what he’d missed.

Crazy, crazy night
.

J. T. Chronopolous back from the dead, and he was getting ready to kiss her all over again. Jane saw it in his eyes, felt it in her own response and the heated tension filling the hall—and for no known reason on the face of the earth, she found herself tightening her grip on his waistband.

Wrong
. The smart money told her to back off, to be the good girl, to play things safe. She really didn’t know him, which didn’t begin to explain why she had hold of his pants. He wasn’t who he used to be, not even close, this stranger with the scars and the missing finger, the one who didn’t know his own name or his own brother.

And yet he knew her—and that knowledge held her where she stood, her heart racing and breaking at the same time.

Maybe only weeks, maybe months
—he was telling the truth, and the truth hurt. She could see it all now, the worst of it running down the middle of his chest.

Lord, she didn’t want him to die. With every beat of her heart she wanted him to have a chance. Whatever life had done to him, she wanted him to have better. Six years in the wasteland, he’d said, and she understood exactly what he’d meant.

She let her gaze slide down the length of him, past his
bandage. Scars or not, he was a work of art, every muscle delineated, the veins in his arms running like rivers into his palms, each a confluence of strength and testosterone, of conviction and the iron will to survive.

A war-fighter, that’s what he’d been, and what he still was, a soldier to the core, and he wanted her. She felt it with every breath he took, the rising tide of his desire—and she knew there’d be no playing it safe tonight.

Wild night. Wild girl
, Con thought. She’d kicked some major ass for him in the alley, taking on those two
pendejos
at Mama’s, the poor bastards—and she’d called him a liar.

She had it right. He remembered more than he wanted to admit, especially to her, of nights so dark he’d thought they’d never end, of fear and the pain that had broken him again and again, of grief so deep he’d prayed for death. But he’d been too strong to die, literally, every part of him honed and enhanced for indestructibility—except for the expiration date Dr. Souk had carved into his genes.

Yeah, she’d seen right through him.

He liked smart women. He could have walked away, gotten her gun back in her hand, and gone to find that damned ghost tracker. Or he could stay here and play Beauty and the Beast in the hallway with her.

It was no contest in his mind, no contest in his heart, and she wasn’t running away, either.

Done deal.

He slid his hand around the back of her neck, and she slowly tilted her chin up and captured him with her long, green-eyed gaze. Yeah, she wanted this.

Combing his fingers up through her hair, he closed his fist around a handful of silken strands and brought them to his face, and he breathed her in, the rich mélange of all she was: the girl of his forgotten dreams.

She intrigued him like no other, enchanted him, everything about her. She worked in an art gallery, of all things, looked like she’d stepped off a catwalk, was fiercely street smart right down to her bones, and she was soft and smelled so damn good.

God, he’d been without this for too long, always on the move, always on the hunt for the spymaster, and somewhere, deep down inside him, always on the hunt for her, the rarest thing on earth, a woman who knew him and cared.

He’d had sex and, a few times, maybe even traces of love, since he’d broken free from Souk’s lab—but he hadn’t been known, and he’d felt the lack with every lover.

Hell, he hadn’t known himself. There’d been no way for a woman to know him—but this one did. Even more amazing, he knew her. His longing for her had a past, and his need to be with her had taken on a life of its own.

Lowering his mouth to hers, he kissed her, gently sliding his tongue inside when she opened for him. A small groan escaped her, and he deepened the kiss, feeling her body soften against him in a thousand lush and lovely ways.

This was what he’d needed.

Her.

He’d needed to sink himself into the sweet mystery of a woman’s sensuality—this woman’s, the urban jungle girl with the backbone of steel and the .380 to back it up.

Cupping her face in his other hand, he pressed her back against the wall and kissed her like there was no tomorrow—because who knew if there would be?

Who in the hell ever knew?

Not him, that was for damn sure.

Opening his mouth wider, he kissed her deeper, longer, exploring her mouth and letting the taste of her slip into
his veins like a drug. She sighed in his mouth, all the while with that compelling, fascinating grip on the waistband of his jeans, the backs of her fingers brushing against his skin.
Geezus
.

The wind picked up outside, bringing with it a faint smattering of rain and a drumroll of far-off thunder—and he kissed her, endlessly, the taste of her infusing his senses, on and on and on. Through it all, through every moment of mouths and tongues, of need and heat, she moved with him, her body all curves and desire, the sheer eroticism of her running like wildfire from his heart to his groin.

Geezus
, she smelled like an angel, so female, so profoundly rich, a thousand scents layering and melding together to form a picture of her in his mind. She was golden light with a rose-colored center pulsing brightly at her core.

“
J.T.
” she murmured, and for the first time, the name felt right, the way she felt right.

“
Hey, baby,
” he whispered against her lips.
I’m here for you
. And he was, whatever she wanted, whatever she needed, he was the man who could bring it.

“You … me, this is …” Her voice trailed off as she tunneled her hands up into his hair and held him for the sweet kisses she was pressing to the side of his face, along the length of his jaw, to his lips.

“Real,” he murmured. So real.

Four years ago, on a night when he’d been high in the mountains of Honduras, on a wild and lonely stretch of the Cordillera Isabella, he’d fallen asleep and woken to a sky full of stars, millions upon millions of them strewn across the darkness. In all of them, there had been one brighter than all the rest, one that had held his attention and drawn him in, until he’d felt the scent and essence of it reaching across the eons of endless time, felt it tease him with an incomprehensible nearness from light-years
away—and he’d wondered,
oh, God
, he’d wondered what Souk had really wrought within him, what the possibilities were, how far he could go, if he dared.

She was the same, the star here on earth, incomprehensibly alluring, beyond the erotic lushness of her body, beyond the compelling enticement of her kiss—farther, deeper, to the taste of her sinking into his cells and freeing him from the bondage of loneliness, of always and forever being alone.

This was his need, not hers. Out of the millions of people who’d passed him on thousands of street corners in hundreds of cities across the world, only one had ever stopped him in his tracks, only one had triggered the most primal parts of his brain with remembrance.

Her.

“I missed you,” she murmured. “Even if you weren’t ever my boyfriend, I missed you.”

So sweet, so welcome. He’d missed everybody in the world, including himself. It had been a strange, mind-bending dilemma, wondering why he was so goddamned alone. Knowing there had to be someone somewhere who knew him. Hoping there was someone who missed him.

And all along, there had been her.

She shifted her hips, and with his hand sliding up her leg and under her dress, pulling her in close, they found their rhythm—up against the wall and going down fast.

Yeah
, he needed this. Precious woman, he wanted to get lost in her, and there wasn’t a doubt in his mind that she could do it for him.