“This time,” she half expected him to add.
When he didn’t, she curled her lower body into him. The frank evidence that he was as aroused as she was nestled against her stomach. She didn’t really know him. Not enough to be responding to him this way. But Cole was suddenly the one memory Shaw had to have.
“I guess I’m going to have to take my chances, then.” She stretched to her toes until they were face-to-face. “Will I remember even more if you kiss me again?”
A wicked gleam transformed his pale gaze. “There’s only one way to find out.”
His challenge was enthralling. Tempting. She was a woman who thrived on solving impossible puzzles instead of letting them defeat her the way she’d been allowing her nightmare to for so long. A breeze ruffled the ivy beyond the door, scattering goose bumps up her spine. Cole’s hand in her hair pulled ever so slightly, once more rewriting a horrible moment in her dream with an exciting, tender alternative. Her scalp, her entire body, tingled. Her head tilted back, her mouth lifting, an invitation, a dare.
Because she wanted this. She had to know. If they took the passion seething between them further, would she recapture even more of their past? Would she recapture him?
As Cole had said, there was only one way to find out.
She brushed his lips with hers. His breath rushed in. Her fingers dug into his biceps, determined to keep him with her if he decided to move away. His body tensed beneath her touch. His mouth inched away, and she prepared to beg. But then his lips crashed back to hers, this man who’d become a bridge between her dreams and her reality. And she was lost, swept along by the need pouring into her from his kiss.
The roaming possession of his hands molded down her back, one aching vertebrae at a time, past her hips. His hands clenched around her bottom, tilting her, settling her more snugly against him. She gasped, and he devoured her surrender. He angled his mouth over hers in a twist that opened her lips wider for the invasion of his tongue. He thrust into her mouth, sweeping her deeper into him and away from everything else.
Her arms slid around his neck. She sipped at him, sucked him in, and nearly cried out at the memories suddenly flashing through her, fueling her desire for him. Memories not of any one moment. There were no images or voices this time, nothing specific. They were only feelings, but they were everything she hadn’t known she’d been missing.
Powerful sensations swamped her, along with the confidence that this was her truth. His truth. Theirs. This was who she’d been, the Shaw she’d lost. And she knew that this, being in Cole’s arms and shaking with the strength and honesty of their need for each other, this was the most real she had ever felt. This was a life worth risking anything to get back.
His teeth nipped at her bottom lip, then the corner of her mouth. She rubbed her forehead against his and tried to breathe. She heard laughter and realized it was hers.
“You feel so real.” She kissed his cheek, his closed eyes, the sinful cleft in his chin. “Have you always felt this good, Cole? I swear I can remember it. Us. I can remember the fire we had.”
He gazed down at her. The backs of his fingers rubbed across her cheek.
“I should be taking better care of you,” he said, his voice hoarse with emotion.
“You should be kissing me again.” Her hand smoothed across the well-defined muscles of his chest. Her mouth watered at his masculine shudder. She was drunk with the magic they held over each other.
“Shaw, you—” His lips were as warm and welcoming the second time she took his kiss. “Damn.” He groaned. His thumb tipped up her chin. His eyes, a stormy blue now, gleamed with the very passion consuming her. “I’ve missed you. I never should have left, no matter what he said. How could I have left you?”
No matter what he said…
The memory attacked this time, powerful, without warning. There was no easy glide into a soft, safe yesterday. This time, the past had claws. It ripped at her as she plummeted backward…
“He’s responsible,” an angry voice said in this very room, long ago.
“He’s not, Father. You can’t believe that Cole—”
“Started the fire that killed your brother and almost took you away from me, too? What else am I to believe?”
“He was in as much danger as I was.” Shaw’s skin felt as if it were still on fire, where the flames had scorched her arms and legs. But she was alive—because Cole had gotten her out. “He carried me away from the barn when I was too terrified to run myself.”
“He’s a murderer. The police found his prints on the gasoline can used to start the blaze. Not ten feet from the loft where they found your brother’s body. The loft where you’ve been whoring yourself out to my overseer’s bastard all summer. Now he’s killed my boy!”