father sent me—” The words stopped abruptly, almost violently. His eyes went wild. “Those bastards hurt you.”
“No,” she said. “They just scared me.”
He crowded her against the cold brick wall. “Tell me where.” Before she could push away, before her heart could even beat, he shoved his Glock into its holster and had his hands on her body, running them down her bare arms and up the sides of her little black dress. “Damn it, this is my fault,” he said roughly.
“I’m fine,” she insisted, trying desperately to ignore the feel of his big, brutal hands cruising over her body. She might as well have pretended this was all a bad dream. Her skimpy cocktail dress hadn’t been designed for warmth, and the rain stung like shards of ice. Everywhere Hawk’s hands cruised, heat lingered.
Just like before.
Back away, she told herself. Now. His touch was too demanding, the contact between their bodies too intimate. She thought of putting her palms to his chest and pushing, demanding he let her go, but the truth burned. Even if he hadn’t wedged her between his body and the brick wall, her injured ankle made outrunning him impossible. Hawk Monroe was a man of instinct and impulse. He’d be on her before she took two steps.
She didn’t want him on her ever, ever again.
He pulled back and lifted his hand. “How do you explain this?”
In a faraway corner of her mind, the mix of blood and rainwater on his fingers registered, but it was the look in his eyes that stole her breath. They were hot and burning as always, but not with betrayal like the last time she’d seen him. If she didn’t know better, she would have sworn they blazed with concern. Mortality. A fear that reached down deep and twisted hard.
“Not mine,” she whispered. “Not my blood.”
The breath sawed in and out of him. “Not yours?”
“No,” she said. “Not mine. I’m fine.”
He looked from her eyes to his upturned hand, washed clean by the steady downpour. “Not yours,” he muttered, as though he didn’t quite understand.
Elizabeth wanted to feel relief that he’d finally quit running his hands over her body, but he was standing so still. Too still. Unnaturally still for a man like Hawk Monroe, who wasn’t still even when he slept. He tossed and turned, thrashed, transforming a bed into a war zone. Now he didn’t move, just kept staring at his hand, as though blood might suddenly reappear.
She knew better than to touch him, but raised a hand to his anyway. “Wesley?”
That was her mistake. Touching him. Just like that night two years before. She tried to withdraw, to undo the damage, but he lifted his eyes to hers and she flat-out forgot to breathe.
“Elizabeth,” he muttered, and before she could pull away, before her heart could so much as beat, his mouth was on hers, and nothing else mattered.
Chapter 2
Hawk Monroe prided himself on staying cool under fire. He didn’t cling to plans if they didn’t work. He didn’t hesitate to improvise. Those were his rules, rules that kept him alive.
Kissing Elizabeth Carrington violated every rule in his book.
But God help him, with the world exploding around him and Elizabeth Carrington staring up at him through those tilted green eyes, he flat didn’t care. There was nothing rational or cautious inside him, just hot, jagged edges and a burning need. He pulled her to him, roughly almost, knowing he could never get her close enough.
Elizabeth. Cool, untouchable Elizabeth.
Nothing had prepared him for the sight of her, the feel, even across a crowded auditorium. Not memory. Not dreams. She’d been just as heart-jarringly beautiful as ever, just as elegant and regal and refined. He’d looked at her standing behind the podium, wearing a sexy-as-sin little black dress with the kind of square neckline that drove a man wild, and he’d had no choice but to remember what it had been like between them, the heat and the intensity, the passion she denied.
He’d been making his way toward the stage when the auditorium went dark. He’d started to run immediately, instinctively. Toward her. Elizabeth.
The woman he’d sworn to give his life for.
Who’d tossed him out like month-old leftovers.
Still, his body tightened at the realization of how close he’d come to losing her. He’d seen that man’s hands on her. He’d heard her cry out. He’d wanted to kill.
Not now. Now he wanted only to absorb, to feel every inch of her. He lifted a hand to her face, found her skin soft and cool, damp from the rain, flawless like he remembered. He wanted to spear his fingers into her hair, but she had it twisted off her face in one of those fancy styles that emphasized her killer cheekbones and those provocative eyes that incinerated common sense.
Need twisted through him, hot and dark, punishing, to assure himself she was safe and unharmed, that she was in his arms and not just his dreams. The ones that had him jerking awake in the middle of the night, tangled in the sheets and vowing to never let her look down her perfect nose at him again.
Cradling her like that, with his palm cupping her jaw and his fingers spread wide, he kissed her hard, he kissed her deep. He kissed her the way he kissed her in his dreams, his memory.
And she was kissing him back.
Sweet Mary, she tasted of red wine and fear, temptation and destruction all rolled into one impossible package. The way she had her hands curled around the lapels of his jacket, it was as though she sought to keep him from backing away. Christ. There was no way he could have torn away, not when she kissed him as she had that night so long ago, when boundaries had shattered and the world had narrowed to only the two of them.
A hard sound broke from his throat as he pulled her closer, went deeper. He held her against him, ran his hands along her back. She was alive. She hadn’t been hurt. He’d gotten to her in time.
Dragging his mouth from hers, he skimmed along her jawbone. One of his hands drifted to her shoulders, down to her lower back, where he pressed her against him. His body was hot and hard and on fire, and—
The hands clutching his sport coat began to push instead.
“Don’t,” she said, turning her face from his. “Stop.”
Hawk went very still. Her brittle words doused the fire as effectively as the cold rain in which they stood. He pulled back to look at her, see her, found her eyes huge and dark and as icy as the night around them. No emotion glimmered there, not one trace of the seven hours when the rest of the world hadn’t mattered, none of the heat or longing that pulsed through him. He found only the cool indifference he’d seen countless nights when he lay twisted in the sheets of his empty bed.
And something inside him snapped.
“Which is it, Ellie?” He worked hard to bring himself under control, but the question ripped out anyway. “Don’t?” he asked, biting out the word like a command. “Stop?” Briefly he hesitated. “Or don’t stop?”
Her
