Private Affair(27)

In the darkness he swallowed hard. “I didn’t do it to get thanked. I did it because I didn’t like seeing what was happening. But I thought you didn’t remember.”

“How could I forget something like that?” she asked.

“Because it was me.”

Her head shot toward him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I was a guy your crowd avoided.”

“Maybe they thought you were dangerous. But that night in the pizza parlor you proved you weren’t what I’d assumed.” It was her turn to swallow hard. “But I wasn’t going to go looking for you after that. I had enough problems.”

He could have asked what that meant. Instead he said, “Maybe we’d better talk about that dream, before you forget the details.”

It was an interesting transition back to the nightmare, but she knew that he was right. If they were going to talk about it, they’d better do it now before the details evaporated into the mist of her unconscious. Still, it was hard to force her tongue to form the right words.

“Okay. You weren’t really there. But a lot of the rest of it was what I remember. At least what I remember now.”

“You’re saying the dream was about something that really happened to you?”

She had to gulp in air and let it out slowly before saying, “Yes. It was about a party I went to. Until tonight, I’d forgotten all about that night. I guess you could say I repressed it.”

“Why?”

She wanted to scream at him to stop pressing her. If she was going to talk about that night, it had to be at her own pace.

“It wasn’t one of my better moments.”

“But now you think this party was important?”

When she’d come to Rockfort Security, it had been to solve the murder of a friend. Maybe on some level she’d known that she was going to have to talk about her and Angela’s high school years. Maybe the dream was her way of forcing the issue.

On a sigh, she said, “If it wasn’t, I wouldn’t have dreamed about it, would I?” Still, as she said the last part, she began to shiver, fighting the feeling of being dragged under freezing water again.

“Are you all right?” Max murmured.

“I don’t know. I mean, all that stuff rushing back at me is a shock.”

He gathered her closer, stroking his hands over her back and shoulders and into her hair. It felt good to be held by him—protected. And more. They were in her bed, in the middle of the night. What would happen if she raised her face to his?

It was tempting to do that. Tempting to find out if playing house was affecting him the way it was affecting her. Or maybe in her case, it was because she hadn’t been with anyone in a long time, and she was focusing on Max in a way that was better left alone.

Her rational mind knew it was a mistake to get involved with him. Especially now. But her emotions were so tangled up by the evening’s events and the dream that she wasn’t capable of staying logical. She raised her face, and for a moment their mouths were inches apart. She heard his breath catch just before she closed the gap between them.

When her lips touched his, it was as though an electrical circuit had snapped closed. She felt a jolt of sensation, a frisson of heat that sizzled through her body, and she silently acknowledged what she hadn’t told him. In the dream, seeing him had sent a wave of heat coursing through her. Then it had been unwanted. Not now.

She had initiated the kiss, but he didn’t remain passive. His lips moved over hers, and his arms gathered her to him, increasing the heated sensation. She closed her eyes, enjoying the kiss and the man, and elated by the knowledge that the sexual pull hadn’t been all on her part. There was no doubt he was responding to her, just as she was responding to him. That insight gave her a feeling of power that she hadn’t sensed in the relationship before. As she rode the wave of that power, she opened her mouth, darting her tongue out to play with the seam of his lips. He opened for her, and she drank in the taste of him, the sensuality of his tongue gliding against hers. She let the tendrils of fire wrap around the two of them, sealing them together, enjoying the man and her own arousal, and not thinking about where a kiss between two people lying on a bed might lead. But he was apparently more cautious than she.

When he pulled back, she made a small sound of protest.

“Max?”

“I shouldn’t have done that.”

“I think I started it.”

“And I have to put a stop to it, because this is not a good place for us to be kissing.”

“Is there a good place?”

“Probably not.”

The blunt words cut, and she didn’t want to think that he was rejecting her. “Because you’re on a job?” she asked.