Bolting up off the pillows, Grier grabbed her chest and felt her heart pound against her palm as she woke on a gasp. With her free hand, she pushed her hair out of her face and looked around. Her room was all in shadow, nothing but the floating DVD logo on the TV screen shedding any light.
"Isaac?" she asked, her voice cracking.
No answer. And no footsteps coming up the stairs.
As disappointment slowed her heartbeat, she corrected herself: It was relief. Relief .
"Daniel?" she said softly. When her brother didn't make himself known, she figured she'd come awake because her nerves were shot--
Grier froze. There was a man in her room. A huge man who was standing in front of the French doors, just outside the light of the TV. He was utterly still, like a photograph, and the only reason she knew he was there was the silhouette he cut through the ambient glow of the city.
Opening her mouth to scream, she . . . stopped herself.
He had wings.
Great wings that lifted above his shoulders and shimmered like moonlight over water, hypnotizing her eyes.
He was an angel, she thought. And as an odd, disassociated peacefulness eased over her, she decided this had to be a dream. Right? Had to be . . .
"Why are you here?" she asked, her voice sounding far, far away.
As he took a step forward, his face emerged from shadow and she was struck by how hard he looked. No cherubim sweetness. No airy-fairy, beneficent-messenger expression. No robes, either--he was dressed in a tight black shirt and . . . blue jeans?
This was a warrior.
And he reminded her of Isaac.
"Why are you here?" she asked again, unsure whether she'd just thought the words the first time.
Looking straight into her eyes, he pointed to the door that led out into the hall.
Isaac, she thought--or perhaps heard in her mind.
Grier shot out of bed and ran for the stairwell, urgency driving her feet deep into the carpet, her hand barely catching the banister as she skidded around and tore down the stairs.
At the door to the guest room, there were the sounds of some kind of struggle. Oh, God . . .
Bursting in, she couldn't see much in the darkness and called out, "Isaac? Are you okay--"
It happened so fast she couldn't track the movement. One second she was just inside the doorjambs; the next she was wrenched around, shoved onto the ground, and totally incapacitated, her arms pulled behind her back and held there hard.
A cold piece of metal pushed into her temple as a heavy weight sat on her hips.
Fear choked the air right out of her lungs, even as she was sure it was Isaac, because he smelled like her soap. "P-p-please . . ." She dragged in a breath. "It's me . . . Grier."
He didn't move. Just started to pant like he was struggling.
Tears slicked over her eyes. "Is . . . aac . . ."
"Oh, fuck." In a flash, he was off her and the gun disappeared.
As she tried to catch her breath, he bent down to her and croaked, "I'm so sorry--"
She jerked away and leaped to her feet, moving back until she slammed into the wall. Putting shaking hands to her face, she tried to inhale nice and slow, but her lungs were jamming up against her ribs, and her throat was so tight she felt like she was being choked.
Isaac gave her plenty of space and didn't say another word. He just stood where he was, in the slice of light that cut in from the hall fixture. As the roar between her ears dimmed, she realized he was naked, that sweatshirt of his held over his privates, his pecs and his stomach muscles standing out in stark relief.
No doubt he'd traded the gun for modesty.
"I didn't know it was you," he said. "I swear."
In her head, she heard him telling her not to come in until he answered.
"Grier . . ." His voice cracked, his expression one of physical pain--like it killed him that he'd done that to her.
When she felt like she could speak, she met him straight in the eye. "Just answer one thing . . . are you on the run for a good reason or a bad one?"
The response was long in coming and quiet as breath. "Good. I promise you." And then he surprised her. "I needed the money and I can't work legally --that's why I was fighting. I also happen to be well trained."
Well, yeah.
He cursed and ran a hand through his short hair, his biceps bunching up thick and stretching a bright, angry bite mark on his muscle. "I have to leave the country because I've got a better shot that way. If I'm found, they're going to kill me." He put his palm over his heart, as if taking a vow. "I'll never hurt you intentionally. I swear. When you came in, I didn't know it was you. I was having a dream. Nightmare. Shit--" He winced "Crap, I mean. Sorry 'bout the cuss word."
She had to smile a little. "Sometimes they're the only thing that fits."
"What made you come down? Was I . . . making some noise?"
As if he'd been known to do that.
Grier frowned and decided to keep her winged visitor to herself. "I guess I just knew you needed me."
For a long beat, they stared at each other in the soft darkness.
"Can I do anything to help at all?" she whispered.
"Just take the money I owe you and resign. Please. And if anyone comes asking about me, tell them everything you know."
"Which would be next to nothing," she thought out loud.
"Exactly."
Shaking her head, she went over to him and put her hand on his forearm. "I can't stop you if you're going to run, but I can't afford to be contaminated by how you got the money. If you leave it with me, I'll just turn it in--"
"It's to pay you back."
"I can't accept it--you know I can't. My license to practice is at risk--frankly, I'm walking the accomplice line here already. I should have called the police back in Malden. And tomorrow morning, I'm going to have to tell them that I harbored you for a time while trying to get you to turn yourself in. All that is bad enough."
But God help her, she believed him. She believed that he was running for his life. And damn it, she was going to do as much to help him as she could.
As Isaac stood naked in front of his defense attorney, he was still trying to replug into reality. The nightmare had a way of unwrapping his snow cone so that he came out on the other side a drooling mess. Or at least that's what it felt like. For a while after he woke up, everything always seemed to move too fast and take too much energy to figure out.
God, the damn thing was always the same when it came to him, and even after two years, it was still as freshly horrifying as it had been the first time: in a pit of darkness, a living corpse with lidless eyes worked him over until he was bloodied from head to foot and screaming around whatever had been shoved into his mouth. There was never any escaping. He was pinned to some kind of table and no one could hear him--and though he could handle the physical pain, what undid him was the knowledge that the torture would go on forever. There was no end to it . . .
Grier squeezed his arm and brought him back to the here-and-now. "That newspaper article," she said. "The one from five years ago. Who was responsible for the body in the ditch?"
"I didn't kill him."
But he'd heard about the death--and provided Matthias with his wallet and a set of clothes without asking a whole lot of questions. And as soon as he'd turned over those markers of his life, he'd walked into the XOps fold and disappeared. Leaving his family had been an easy thing to do. His father had been raising five hellacious boys on the farm by himself and one less was a blessing to that bunch of Neanderthals. Plus he and his old man had never gotten along.
Which was why, when he'd gone AWOL, he'd used his own name on the fake ID he'd bought. No one was looking for him from back home--and he sure as shit hadn't planned on getting arrested. But the thing was, if he was starting over, he wanted to return to the person he'd been before Matthias had come along. So stupid, though. No label was going to get him back to that place and time, and nothing was going to erase the past five years.
What he needed was forgiveness.
Abruptly, Grier's face came into sharp focus. God, her eyes were clear. And smart.
And so beautiful.
"Grier . . ." The sound of her name on his lips was hungry even to his own ears. Hungry and desperate.
"Yes . . ."
That was so not a question, he thought. It was an answer . . . but, man, it was the wrong one.
Pulling himself out from under her palm, he tried to derail what was happening between them. "I think you'd better go."
She cleared her throat. "Yes. I should."
Neither of them moved.
"Go," he told her. "Now."
When she turned away, he crossed his free arm over his chest to keep himself from grabbing her and pulling her into him.
And she didn't go nearly far enough, as it turned out. She stopped in the doorway, the light from the hall hitting her profile and drawing over her perfect features ever so gently.
She deserved that kind of carefulness in a lover, he thought.
But he was too raw, too needy . . . too starved to be tender with her.
As she stood on the threshold, with the hand that had been on him gripping the doorknob, her hold tightened until her knuckles went white.
"What's wrong," he said in a voice so deep it nearly disappeared.
Stupid goddamn question.
Especially as he traced the curve of her breast with his eyes and wanted to do the same with his mouth.
"Have you ever wanted something you shouldn't?" she asked.
Fucking hell. He had half a chance at resisting her if it was all one-sided--namely, his: There was nothing like telling yourself you were a nasty bastard to get a choke hold on your libido. But if he'd woken up in some parallel universe where she somehow wanted him that badly, too?
They were both screwed--even without the sex part.
"Have you?" she demanded.
"Yes, ma'am." Like right now.
Now her voice was as husky as his. "What did you do?"
I took two steps forward and turned her around by the hips. I yanked her in tight and then I kissed her for about a minute and a half before I stripped her naked from the waist down. After I got on my knees, I threw one of her legs over my shoulder and worked her with my mouth until she came all over my tongue and--
"I walked away." His throat was so tight the reply was strangled. "I walked away and I didn't look back."
Her shoulders straightened as if she'd resolved herself. "Very smart."
He released his breath, relieved that she wasn't as insane as he was feeling--
When she shut the door, she was on his side of it. And then she came at him through the darkness, drifting over like a shadow . . . and bypassing him to go lie on the bed.
Isaac couldn't breathe and couldn't think. But he could move.
Damn right, he could move.
All that let's-be-smart went right out the window as he approached and loomed over her, seeing her pale skin against the dark navy sheets. She'd stretched out in the place he'd warmed not from some cozy-ass dream, but in his exertions to get away from his nightmare. And didn't that remind him of what they were both going to wake up to.
"You sure about this?" he asked in a guttural voice. "I get down on that mattress right now, I'm not stopping until I'm inside of you."
He meant every word.
And as she opened her mouth, he cut her off. "Make sure you give me an answer you can live with. Because what happens now will not change tomorrow."
"I know. And you have my answer. Right here."
With that, she pulled her T-shirt over her head and lay back down.