Ultimate Sins (14 page)

That was the power she had over him, and it was damned dangerous. Not just for his peace of mind, but also for her safety as well as his family's.

She stared down at him, those pretty turquoise eyes somber and far, far too knowing.

“Just say it,” she whispered, resigned pain echoing in her voice.

The soft demand had his eyes narrowing on her, a chill racing up his spine.

“Say what?”

“What you came here to say.” Holding the sheet to her breasts, her gaze pierced him clear to his soul. The thought left him feeling a bit off balance.

God, where was that ice that had shielded him for the past seven years? In the space of the time he'd been buried balls-deep inside her, he swore the heat of her hunger had melted it.

“You didn't deserve this life,” he sighed.

Her laugh was soft, and filled with such bitterness he wanted to strike out at the world for the pain that had created it.

“No, Crowe,” she retorted. “It's you, Logan, and Rafer who didn't deserve it. It was the women you could have loved, the lives you could have had, the happiness and joy that was stolen from all your parents. That was undeserved, yet inflicted anyway. It was so undeserved that I'm wondering how you could bring yourself to be here in his daughter's bed.”

The question was there, unvoiced, and for a moment, for one incredibly insane moment, he nearly told her the truth. He wanted to tell her the truth with such strength that the words nearly fell from his lips.

“Why are you here, Crowe?” The question fell from her lips instead, firm, the demand that filled it bringing a heavy breath from his chest.

“DNA tests are in.”

*   *   *

Amelia felt the breath still in her chest. She wanted to scream. The need to voice a wail of denial lay unrequited from a lack of air rather than a lack of will.

Instead she fisted her fingers in the sheet to still their trembling while she locked her teeth together, firmed her lips, and promised herself she wouldn't allow them to tremble.

“He's alive,” Crowe continued when she said nothing, but only stared into the savage features of his face. “We won't fool him a second time, Amelia. Drawing him out won't be easy. This time it will take more than a suspicion that you belong to me. This time you're going to have to convince him you belong to me—”

Slowly, as though every cell in her body ached, she drew away from him until she sat on the edge of the bed, her fingers gripping the mattress as her head lowered for long minutes. Finally, forcing herself to stand, she turned and faced him.

Gloriously naked, achingly wounded, he thought, as the fury he'd kept buried for so long began to burn in his gut.

“Convince him I belong to you?” she whispered.

“We'll have to convince everyone, Amelia—”

She shook her head, then lowered it again, slowly. “I belonged to you seven years ago,” she said, her voice hollow, shredded with such pain he flinched. “Now I don't think there's enough left of me to belong…”

He wanted to jump from the bed, pull her into his arms, and show her different. Instead he watched as she pulled her gown and robe on before leaving the bedroom, the door closing softly behind her.

He let her go, not because he wanted to. Not because he needed to.

He let her go until he could find a way to once again control the bitter, overriding rage about everything he'd been forced to walk away from seven years ago. Because staring in her face moments before, he'd realized just what he may have lost.

*   *   *

The cup of coffee sitting on the table in front of Amelia whispered steamy promises in the dim early-dawn light. Soft, foggy wisps of heat rose from the dark liquid, drawing her gaze and holding it for long moments before a long, slow breath parted her lips and once again her gaze turned to the winter wonderland the world had become overnight.

The snow that had fallen the night before covered the backyard in a thick, heavy veil of white. It covered trees, brush, plants that lay dormant for the winter, and the cement and polymer figurines that filled the back garden.

The weeping cherry tree, barely six feet in height, looked like a heavy mound of white fluff. The half-grown fir trees held the snow with an air of strain, while the very air swirled with the remnants of the flakes that had blown in overnight.

The ugliness of the cold autumn months was covered with a jewel-bright white cape of frigid beauty. As cold and perfect as the heart of the man lying in her bed upstairs.

His heart might be cold, but his touch and his hunger had been anything but. He had been burning hot, incredibly sexual and wicked. And he had been everything, every part of him she had missed in the past seven years.

And she was just as weak as she had been all those years ago as well.

Weak and incredibly stupid, because she wanted to believe his heart wasn't frozen. And she knew better.

She'd known better as he held her after that final, explosive climax, her head cushioned on his chest, the sound of his heartbeat against her ear. With his hands buried in her hair, his fingertips rubbing against her scalp, he'd sent her racing from complete peace and relaxation into a hell she'd prayed she'd never know again.

He's alive. This time it will take more than a suspicion that you belong to me. This time you're going to have to convince him you belong to me—

Amelia looked down at her hands. They were still trembling so fiercely she was actually hesitant to lift her coffee cup again. She'd already singed her fingers carrying the damned thing to the table.

Wayne was alive.

Drawing in a shaking breath, she fought back her tears and a lifetime of memories. Memories she'd hoped she could put behind her, yet it seemed they would forever haunt her.

“You shouldn't sit in front of open windows,” Crowe informed her quietly as he stepped into the room.

Moving to the side of the window he pulled the shades closed, effectively blocking the view of the outside as he blocked the view inside as well.

“There seems to be a lot of things I can't do,” she said softly. “But fucking you now isn't one of them, right?”

Sitting across from her, Crowe watched her silently. Still, she could feel his look like a physical caress. As though the air itself were determined to remind her of what it felt like to be touched by him.

“Don't kill the messenger, fairy-girl,” he murmured, the look in his eyes too calculating to suit her. “I just delivered the news, I didn't make it.”

“Neither do you seem too concerned by it,” she stated, crossing her arms on the table as she stared back at him painfully. “And perhaps, Crowe, that's the part that really worries me. You act as though it's nothing more to be worried about than walking across the street, and I think you know better than that.”

*   *   *

Watching her, Crowe was reminded of a time, years before, when he'd acknowledged just how slick his Amelia was.

That girl's smart as a whip. Watch out for her, boy. Once she sets herself on a goal, or a man, she won't let go.

That was Clyde Ramsey's warning the summer Crowe had made her his lover. And Clyde had been right. She was smart as hell, intuitive, and with a heart far too tender for the world she lived in and the people who ended up using her.

And that included himself.

He wondered when she had woken up and realized she'd been all used up.

“Why should it worry you, Amelia?” he asked, shaking his head as he stared around the room, remembering the stories he'd heard over the years, the suspicious bruises she'd carried, the quiet air of sadness that had always surrounded her.

“Why shouldn't it worry me, Crowe?” The blue-green of her eyes darkened, an emotion akin to betrayal gleaming in the rich color. “He's a serial killer with how many decades of murder attached to his name? Do you think he's just going to step out and wave his hands with a cheery little
Here I am
?”

“Not if he's smart,” Crowe decided, reaching out to catch her hand as it formed a fist on the table. “And I think he's smart, Amelia. Smart enough to know I'm waiting on him. But he's not smart enough to completely lose sight of everything I'm doing. Or that you're doing. Trust me, he's close. Close enough that this time he'll make sure we're sleeping together, and when he's certain, when he's convinced we've gone on without him,
then
he'll give us that cheery little
Here I am
.”

Enclosing her small fist with his much larger one, Crowe tasted the bitterness of the deception he was practicing. He hadn't expected that. He'd been protecting Amelia in one form or another for years, and until now, he hadn't realized how often he'd deceived her to do it.

“You're waiting for him,” she repeated softly, pulling her fist from beneath his hand. “Perhaps that's the part that frightens me, Crowe—knowing that you're waiting for him, and knowing the lengths you'll go to catch him. It makes me wonder what, or who, you're willing to sacrifice for your own revenge.”

“I'll sacrifice whatever it takes, Amelia.” Reaching across the table, his hand was around the back of her neck, pulling her forward before she could evade him and glaring back at her, his lips nearly touching hers. “I'll sacrifice whatever the fuck it takes. Even us.”

Slowly, she shook her head. “You can't sacrifice what never was. And there never was an us.”

He released her then, sat back and let his lips tilt with a mocking curl. “There's always been an us, Amelia. There always has been, and whether you like it or not, in one form or another there always will be.”

*   *   *

When had he grown so hard? Amelia wondered.

Seven years ago his amber-brown gaze had been softer, warmer. For a few precious weeks she had been certain he was a man on the verge of falling in love.

With her.

Rising from the table, unable to sit still beneath his steady regard any longer, Amelia paced to the end of the counter that separated the breakfast nook from the kitchen.

The news that the body that had burned in that car wasn't Wayne only reaffirmed her suspicions and destroyed that small kernel of hope she had held in her heart.

She was still Wayne's prisoner, and Crowe's sacrifice. It wouldn't matter if she stayed in Corbin County or if she ran. As long as he was alive he was a threat not just to her, but to the one thing she'd sworn to protect above all else.

“You need to leave, Crowe.” Pushing her hands into the pockets of her robe she faced him squarely, knowing her soul couldn't survive this man or the threat he represented to her.

He laughed.

The strong-boned, savagely hewn features of his face filled with genuine amusement while the sensually full curves of his lips curled with a hint of mockery.

“Ah, Amelia, there's not a chance in hell that you're kicking me out of your bed, or your life, now.” Making that announcement he rose from his seat, turned to her, and stared back at her knowingly. “I warned you six weeks ago I was coming back for you. Now, until Wayne's in custody, or until he's dead, baby, we're fucking joined at the hip.”

“Joined at the hip? No, Crowe, we're not joined anywhere. I'm just the tool you think you need to draw him out again by proving to him that you've one-upped him by fucking his daughter.” She couldn't help but stare back at him in amazement. “That's not going to happen again. I let you use me to draw him out six weeks ago and all he did was find another way to fool all of us. I can't do it again. And you're very, very wrong about whether or not we're finished,” she said, hardening her soul to the pull this man had on it. “You and I were finished when I walked into my bedroom seven years ago and found the note you left me. Sorry, but in this case there are no second chances. I'm not strong enough for it.”

She couldn't afford a second chance with him. Because if by chance Wayne was ever arrested or killed, then just as quickly as Crowe had joined her at the hip he would rip himself from her, as he had done so long ago. And when it happened, it would destroy her to the point that she would never be able to stay in Corbin County. She'd have no choice but to leave. Sooner or later, no matter what happened or how it happened, this would never be her home again.

And now he was asking her not just to allow it, but to cooperate with it.

Watching as his eyes narrowed on her, his expression losing all amusement, Amelia steeled herself for the coming battle.

Crowe leaned against the kitchen counter, his eyes gleaming in the dim light of the room, and crossed his arms over his powerful chest. The unconscious posturing of male intimidation. She knew all the moves by now.

“And you think it's going to be just that easy?” he asked her as though genuinely curious.

She knew Crowe. The calculation in his eyes, the assessing nature of the beast lurking beneath the calm exterior. Yeah, she knew him far too well.

“I won't be your pawn or a handy lover until Wayne's captured or dead,” she informed him, fighting to hide the hurt and anger growing inside her. “I have no doubt you want to believe I'm the only tool to catch Wayne, but I think we both know he was finished with that the day he faked his death. But knowing he's alive changes the rules for you, doesn't it? It changes the rules for any lover you would have as well. Do you think I'm the only safe fuck around, Crowe? If he comes after me, then it's something you expected. If he doesn't, then at least you've had a ready fuck for a while?” Bitterness fed the disillusionment rising inside her.

She could feel her nails biting into her palms as her fists tightened in the pockets of her robe. Anger surged through her.

“The last thing I ever considered you was a safe fuck.” Dropping his arms from his chest he straightened from the counter, his gaze licking over her with the heated promise of a lust that would destroy her. “That doesn't mean I'll let you go now that I can have you, either. The identity of the Slasher was all that was holding me back from you, fairy-girl. I know who he is now. I know who to search for, and I'll be damned if I'll let him stand between us any longer.”