The Last Time I Saw Her (12 page)

“I'm not crying because I'm afraid,” she growled into his neck, with the slight interruption of a maddening little hiccupping sob that she would have stifled if she could have. “I'm crying because you vanishing like you did scared
me
to death, you jackass, which you should
know,
and now here you are and—and—”

She couldn't go on. Her voice deserted her as her throat closed up again despite her absolute determination to stop with the waterworks already.
You're stronger than this,
she told herself, but she wasn't, not where he was concerned, which was what the period without him had taught her. Where he was concerned, she was weak and vulnerable and in so much trouble, because there wasn't any possibility of a happy ending for them, and—

“Charlie. Babe.” There was the briefest of pauses as he pressed his mouth to the sensitive place below her ear, to which her only response was a shuddering indrawn breath as she fought to get herself back on an even keel. Her skin tingled where his lips touched it and her heart beat faster. He kissed her neck and she shivered and tightened her grip on him. Then he lifted his head and said, “Now you're making me cry.”

What?
That got her attention. Blinking away the hot tears that just would not stop welling up, rearing back so that she could see his face, she frowned suspiciously.

She knew the hard, handsome face technically belonged to Hughes, but the man who was looking back at her was
Michael.
She'd thought Hughes looked identical to him, but now she saw that Hughes was only a pale copy. Michael was the vivid original, the oil painting to Hughes's print. Temperament, character, life force—whatever it was that made one individual different from any other—sculpted a face as much as bone and muscle, she discovered. The crooked half-smile with which he was regarding her was
his.
The tightening of the skin over his cheekbones, the slight lift of one eyebrow—it was as if the soul inside the body had modified the exterior just enough so that, for her at least, there was no longer any possibility of mistake.

“You are not,” she said accusingly. He was
smiling.
And those glinting black eyes held not the slightest hint of tears.

“I was just trying to get you to look up,” he said, and kissed her.

Fierce and possessive, his mouth slanted over hers in a way that made her heart lurch. Tilting her face up to his, she parted her lips in instant, instinctive response as everything else in the world receded. Hot and wet and intensely real, his tongue slid into her mouth. She shivered and closed her eyes, and kissed him back with an urgency fueled by those days in which she'd thought he was gone forever. The electric thrill that was always there between them had her arching up against him, sliding her fingers through his hair, responding to the controlled savagery of his mouth with a feverish hunger of her own. Heat blew through her, making her blood sizzle, causing her pulse to go haywire. Passion blazed up hotter than any wildfire, and she went all light-headed and marshmallowy as her body quickened and her mind lost focus and everything that wasn't
them
got burned away.

Michael.
She must have said his name out loud, whispered it against his lips, breathed it into his mouth, something, because he lifted his head just long enough to make her blink questioningly up at him, just long enough for her to meet those scarily black eyes and have him whisper back, “I'm right here.”

Then he kissed her again with a carnality that had her melting inside, that turned her blood to steam and liquefied her bones. His mouth was hard with wanting her and his body was hard with wanting her, and she was left with no doubt whatsoever about the strength of his desire. But there was tenderness for her there in his kisses, too, as well as a kind of angry desperation that echoed her own sense that the situation was getting away from them, that there was more at stake here than either of them had ever thought there would be, or had ever intended. Being in love with him absolutely blew, for a variety of reasons, but she
was
in love with him, no doing anything about that. He knew it, too, or at least she thought he did, although she had never officially told him so—yelling it after him when he'd disappeared didn't really count, and she didn't think he'd even heard—and she wasn't sure if she would or should say it
again.
But now he was there with her and corporeal, which was kind of a miracle in and of itself for however long it lasted, and she was just going to go with what they both knew they had, which was this blazing sexual attraction. She kissed him as if he was everything she had ever wanted in this existence, which, come to find out and who'd a thunk it, he was.

And he kissed her the same way.

His mouth left hers to trail down her throat. The hot, wet glide of his lips on her bare skin made her dizzy, made her cling to him as if he was the only solid thing left in the world. Tilting her so that her head rested on the hard muscle of his upper arm, he kissed her collarbone, the soft upper swell of her breast, and then his mouth slid over the silky stuff of her blouse to open over her nipple.

Charlie felt the moist heat of his mouth burning through the thin layers of her shirt and bra. Her nipple hardened instantly against what she realized was his tongue caressing it. She caught her breath at the exquisite sensation, at the scalding dampness that penetrated her clothes clear through to her skin. Her heart pounded and her blood raced and her body made a good case for the reality of spontaneous combustion. His mouth tightened, sucking at the aroused peak, pressing hard against her, until she was so totally turned on that if they'd been any place else she would have been ripping off his clothes and her own. She made an involuntary little sound of pleasure, surging up against his mouth while deep inside her body clenched and quaked.

His arms tightened in response. His mouth pulled hungrily at her breast. She was on fire for him, blazing hot, wanting him—

Then right in the midst of that blistering embrace a terrible thought hit her. Charlie pushed away from him like he'd suddenly erupted in a layer of thorns and looked at him in horror.

“What?” Michael growled. His voice was thick and low. His eyes smoldered at her. If ever a man had looked dangerous, he looked dangerous then. His face was set in brutal lines. His eyes were black and burning. She could feel the tension in his wide shoulders and muscular arms, feel aggression coming off him in waves, feel the intense sexual energy surging through the big body she was plastered against. He was rock-hard and radiating heat. Electrically charged sparks practically crackled in the air around him. The remnants of Spookville were still with him, making him all savage and primitive, as she knew from experience it did. Lust seemed to be intensifying the effect, but the immediacy of this simply could not wait.

“Oh, my God, are you going to get snatched away again? The last time you took over someone else's body—” Charlie broke off, because she didn't need to elaborate. He'd been there the same as she had and knew exactly what she was talking about. The last time he'd taken over someone else's—actually, Tony's—body, he'd been snatched right out of it by a hunter, and that's what had led to the worst two and a half weeks of her life. As in the last two and a half weeks.

Remembering, she cast a harried glance around the dark, mist-shrouded mountainside.

“Relax. That's not going to happen.” He sounded so certain that, having gone rigid in his arms, she allowed herself to slump against him the tiniest little bit. They were kneeling chest to chest still, and she had her hands braced against his shoulders and he had his arms wrapped around her waist. His grip was slightly awkward, she noticed now, because of the handcuffs. She could feel the chain linking them bunched against her back. She loved the physicality of it, the steely strength of his arms around her, the hard muscularity of his thighs, the unmistakable evidence of his arousal pressing urgently against her. She loved the heat of him, and the slightly ragged way he was breathing and the rise and fall of his chest against her breasts. She loved having him there with her in real, live, human form. She loved having him there with her, period.

None of that stopped her from being scared to death about what might be getting ready to happen to him at any second.

The cold breeze that she'd felt earlier blowing up the side of the mountain swirled around her, making her shiver despite the fact that she was wrapped in his arms. Easy to imagine a hunter swooping down and—

She looked at him anxiously. “How do you know?”

“I know, okay?” Meeting her gaze, he dropped another fierce, deep kiss on her mouth. She slid her arms around his neck and kissed him back because she simply couldn't do anything else, but then resolutely broke it off.

Their faces were inches apart. He was looking down at her, breathing unevenly. His face was dark with passion. His mouth was hard with it.

“But we should—” Do what? She didn't quite know. Something. Her anxiety for him was there in her voice.

He didn't let her finish.

“I'm good. We're good,” he said. “Unbutton your blouse for me.” That last was accompanied by a sweep of his eyes down her body, and the burning intensity in that look coupled with the roughness of his voice made her breathing quicken.

“What?” She stared up at him while her heart hammered and her pulse raced.

His eyes blazed down into hers. “Unbutton your blouse and take it off. Then take off your bra.”

Suddenly her bra felt two sizes too small and she realized that she could still feel the dampness of the cloth covering her nipple, both of which were pebble-hard. She was burning hot inside despite the rising chill that was enveloping her, and that would be because she was fiercely aroused. She
wanted
to do what he told her to do, to unbutton her blouse and—

“No,” she said. “Michael, this is important. I need you to
listen.
”

“I don't want to listen. I want you to take off your clothes.” He lowered his head, nuzzling his face into the open vee of her collar, pressing his mouth against the place where her cleavage began, licking the sensitive skin in the hollow between her breasts.

She barely managed to swallow a moan as she was hit by a blast of sheer, unadulterated sexual desire.

Oh, my God, take me now.

“Stop,” she practically yelped, and shoved at his shoulders.

He lifted his head to look at her. A dark flush had risen to stain his cheekbones. His nostrils flared at her.

“You don't want me to stop,” he said, and kissed her, a hungry, insistent kiss that had her kissing him back and molding her body against his and letting him bend her back over his arms and…

No. Wait. Something important to…

Tearing her mouth from his, she shoved at his shoulders again. “Damn it, Michael.”

He looked down at her, his eyes blacker than the blackest pit in hell and so hot she could practically feel the flames. “
You're
saying ‘damn it' to
me
?”

Fighting to steady her breathing, she looked at him more closely. There was a latent savagery in his face that she'd never seen there before, a barely controlled violence in the way he was holding her that she would have found alarming in anyone else. Every muscle in his body was rigid, and that would be, she decided, because he was fighting to hold himself in check. His arms around her were corded bands of steel. His chest was a rock wall. He was huge with wanting her. She could feel his erection pressing insistently against her stomach. A deep pulse of pleasure between her legs flared in yearning answer.

Part of her—no, get real, most of her—wanted her to shut up and lie back and let him do what he wanted.

It was that other part of her that might just keep both of them from getting a really nasty surprise. The levelheaded part, which, right now, was very, very small.

Her brows knit as she frowned at him. “What happened to you in Spookville, anyway? You seem—”

He interrupted with a terse “Forget Spookville. Same old same old. Take off your blouse.”

“Hunters,” she reminded him with some desperation, because nothing she said really seemed to be getting through. “Big scary monsters who swoop down and carry you away.
Hello-o.
”

He made an impatient sound. “Like I said, not gonna happen.”

Ignoring the taut intensity in his face and body as well as how tightly he was holding her, to say nothing of her own thrumming pulse and rising urge to just give in and go ahead and have sex with him already, she said with some astringency, “That's nice, Hellboy, but I'm going to need a little more.”

“Hellboy?” His voice grated, but then something flickered in the depths of those burning eyes and some of the ferocity in his expression eased. Slowly his mouth relaxed into the slightest of wry smiles. It did unfair things to her heart.
“Hellboy?”

“You're sprouting horns and a tail here, baby.” She tapped her nails meaningfully against the nape of his neck. Message:
pay attention.
“Hunter?”

“Would you quit worrying? A hunter is not going to show up.” His eyes slid over her face. “Anyway, if one does, I'm counting on you to go all Van Helsing on it and save me.”

“You're hilarious.” To go along with the tartness of her response, the look she gave him was severe. “I'm serious. How do you know a hunter's not going to show up?”

He sighed. “It's technical, okay? A ghost thing. I'd explain it, but you still wouldn't get it, and we'd be talking about it all night, and I'm not much in the mood to talk, in case you can't tell. How about you just trust me on this? I'm not going to get snatched away. So why don't you do me a solid and start getting naked?”

“I'm not getting naked,” she told him firmly. “Would you get over this whole return-of-the-damned thing you've got going on already? It's important that you
focus.
”

“I am focused,” he said, and kissed her again, a torrid taking of her mouth that left her in no doubt about exactly what he was focused on. Because he was Michael, and because he'd already gotten her so turned on that she just couldn't help herself, she responded to the searing intensity of that kiss with a deep-seated hunger of her own. Still, there was a part of her mind that even the heat they generated couldn't quite shut down: the situation was too fraught. The single-mindedness with which he kissed her left her in no doubt as to what would be next up on the agenda if he was calling the shots. It also said that he really wasn't worried about being interrupted by a hunter, and she
was
willing to trust him on that because she had to assume that he was even less of a fan of the prospect of getting snatched away by a hunter than she was. Well, maybe not: if he was terminated, once he was terminated, he'd presumably know nothing about anything, while she would suffer for—she didn't want to think about how long. In fact, she didn't want to think about hunters at all, because if one was out there looking to carry him off there was nothing she could do about it, really. With that in mind, there was enough going on that was terrifying right there on the earth plane to worry about, so she switched over to being terrified by a problem that possibly she could actually do something about.

By the time she pulled her mouth from his, steam clouded her thought processes and warm liquid honey ran through her veins and the flare of pleasure between her legs had intensified until it was all she could do not to squirm against him. She was breathing unevenly and her bones had turned to mush and her heart was beating like a piston. Resting her forehead against his wide shoulder—the subsequent hot slide of his mouth down the side of her neck was so
not
conducive to clearing her head—she took a moment to regroup. Her eyes still felt swollen from her crying jag, but otherwise she had herself under control again. She couldn't even blame herself for losing it. The absolute, soul-wrenching agony of the last two and a half weeks coupled with barely any sleep, a lack of proper nutrition, the day's horrific events, and his miraculous return had added up to the perfect storm of stress: emotionally, she'd been a time bomb waiting to explode. Fortunately, she was now over it. Well, over the waterworks. Over him? She was afraid that wasn't going to happen in the next million or so years. But until she figured out what to do about that, there were more urgent issues to deal with.

First order of business: talking Michael the rest of the way down from his Spookville-induced primordialness and getting him to concentrate on the problems at hand. There would be time for the two of them—
God, please let there be time for the two of us!
—later.

Lifting her head, she looked at him consideringly. As he leaned in to kiss her again she could see how heavy-lidded with sexual intent his eyes were, see the passionate curve of his mouth. His hands slid down to her butt, shaping it, cupping her cheeks. Her muscles instantly went all warm and pliant and her body curved into him in totally instinctive response. His eyes never left hers as he pulled her harder against him. Holding her in place, he rocked into her suggestively, and the pleasurable clenching between her legs intensified until she practically dissolved into a little puddle right there and then. He was still in the primitive, barely civilized state that journeying through the wrong side of the afterlife reduced him to, and the thought of having sex with him when he was like this made her toes curl.

Unfortunately, one of them had to keep a cool head, and from the way this was going it was obvious she was the one.

“Please stop,” she said in her best plaintive voice. “You're scaring me.”

That got through to him. He froze in place, his mouth scant inches from hers, his eyes boring into hers. His hands stilled. So did his body.

“I am not scaring you.” His voice was thick with desire and even more gravelly than before.

“How do you know?”

“I know.”

Looking up into the way-too-handsome-for-his-own-good face just inches from her own, she had to take a breath before she could continue. “You know you're not quite yourself, right?”

His lip curled. “So?”

“You're not thinking clearly.”

“I'm thinking clearly enough.”

Another breath. “Michael. Take your hands off my butt.”

“Why?”

“Because I'm asking you to. Because we're not having sex on this ledge.”

His eyes narrowed at her. “Why not?”

She made a gesture encompassing their surroundings. “Because this is a
ledge.
Nothing but rock. On the side of a mountain. In the open. And the cold. With armed murderers probably doing terrible things to innocent people nearby as we speak, and giant winged creatures from hell possibly swooping around up there in the sky.”

His lips compressed. “I told you we don't have to worry about hunters.”

“Fine. Scratch the hunters. Like there aren't enough reasons to keep our clothes on without that?”

His face hardened. So did his hands on her butt. But after a moment in which the issue hung in the balance, his hands moved back up to her waist in a slow, sensuous slide. She wasn't sure that was a whole lot better. It was easier to feel the strength and heat of his hands through her thin blouse.

“Happy now?” It was a growl.

“Happier. We need to talk about something.”

“For fuck's sake, what?” But for all the frustration in his voice, some of the untamed savagery had left his face. She'd been right: the idea that he was scaring her had brought him down another notch or two. Near enough to reason that he wasn't being totally ruled by the most primeval part of himself.

“Is Hughes dead?” Her tone was purposefully brisk. He frowned at her.

His arms were still locked around her—literally, by the handcuffs, which were also, she knew, why he hadn't made any attempt to take off her clothes himself—so she was still pressed tightly up against him. Her hair had fallen to hang in what felt like an unruly mass around her shoulders. She'd tucked the bulk of it behind her ears, but loose strands of it fluttered toward him in the breeze. As one caressed his cheek he turned his head toward it and took a deep breath. She thought that she could actually see the worst of the darkness that held him in thrall recede. To keep a little space between them, to buy a little more time to get him to actually lose the beast, she placed her hands flat against his chest. The fine wool of his suit coat beneath her fingers felt different enough that she glanced down and abstractedly absorbed how slender and pale her hands looked splayed on the broad expanse of dark cloth. The white dress shirt was unbuttoned at the neck. The silk tie was crooked.