“No. It doesn’t make a difference, you leaving, not to me. And if you ever come back—”
“I won’t. You’ve got to believe that.”
Oh, she believed it. It was why she was desperate, why this was possible. “Then I want tonight, Dante. Don’t you want it, too?”
His simmering sidelong glance said he did. But, then, he would want any female who stood there begging for anything with him.
Fine. She didn’t expect an exclusive relationship. Wouldn’t know what to do with one if she had one. Didn’t want one.
She just wanted tonight.
He turned from her, bent down to lower his head to the sink. He held his breath and let cool water pour over his head.
The sight of water sluicing over his polished bronze skull thudded in her heart, behind her eyes, in her loins. An endless minute later, he straightened to his full height, water rivulets running down his head and neck, merging with the sweat darkening the green of his surgical scrubs.
Suddenly the space between them had disappeared.
“Gulnar…” His arms moved to push her away and convulsed around her instead, squashing her into his body. She melted immediately. The next second, he exploded away in disgust. “Dammit, Gulnar. Don’t do that to me—not now.”
“Later, then? My place? Your hotel?” Say yes. Promise me tonight.
“Gulnar!”
He dipped his hands under his scrubs, snatched his headscarf out of his pants pocket and in two violent movements wiped and wrapped his head, cornered, angry. “You’re a hazard, Gulnar. For God’s sake—you have no idea what you’re asking for!”
He snatched the scrubs over his head, volleyed them into the laundry bin, exposing his massive chest and ridged abdomen. But even his beauty didn’t distract her from the searing sight of his healing wound.
He turned away, heaving in steadying breaths. Her arms wound around his chest back to front, her fingers digging into his solid muscles, her lips quivering where the bullet had almost taken him from her. Her eyes brimmed with unspent tears, her body quaked into his precious flesh with all the horrific could-have-beens.
“Say yes, Dante.”
“No.” He tore at her hands, stumbled away and snatched open the locker they’d been given to keep their clothes in.
He put more distance between them, eyeing her as he prowled in slow, tense figure eights, buttoning his shirt. A caged lion taking stock of his tormentor.
Had she misunderstood it all? She’d thought their shared ordeal gave her some special status in his eyes, that he shared her attraction—however partially. It didn’t seem so any more. She couldn’t pretend any longer not to understand his withdrawal, his rejection. He didn’t want her, not in any way, no matter how fleetingly. She was the one dishonoring and erasing anything that they’d shared.
Oh, hell—what had she done!
Then something even more crippling hit her.
“I just realized—I know nothing about you. I don’t know whether you’re married, or involved…” She stopped, shame shriveling her up.
His sharp inhalation suspended her agitation. The next second stretched out, the eternity before the verdict. Then he exhaled. “No. I’m not. Not any more. And I never will be again.”
Air disappeared. She groped for it and it came, tearing, burning inside her chest.
He’d been married? Or deeply in love?
Of course he had been. He hadn’t just emerged into existence the moment she’d lain eyes on him. He had to be in his late thirties, and…
It hurt to imagine someone, another woman, loving him, his body eager for hers, his eyes telling her what she meant to him, his heart racing, welcoming her.
It hurt even more that it had ended—and in pain? The thought of his pain, his loss was unbearable. What had happened? Had she died? Had he sworn off caring again, not wanting to be hurt, unable to lose again? Like her?
Was this why he went to areas of conflict, risking his life, daring death? Was it that his grief, still fresh and overwhelming, was prodding him for release, for an end to it all? And she’d intruded on the sanctity of his mourning.
Just leave him alone. Remember your own rule.
She never cared. Never got close. And Dante was probably the one man she shouldn’t come near. The one man courting danger and death.
But it was too late. It had gone beyond caring, beyond closeness. It was beyond even what she had with Evraim.
And if it were only about her, she would have broken all her rules, invited devastation for that one night with him. But it wasn’t about her—only he mattered now.
A nauseous claustrophobic sensation crushed down on her. Just get out. “I’ll just go…” She got the words out somehow. “Goodbye, Dante…”
“Gulnar!” His imperative bark jolted her. She closed her eyes. No more humiliation, please! She ventured a look at him—and almost fell to her knees.
The burning intensity in his gaze! Did that mean…?
He prowled over to her, eased her back until he plastered her to the wall. He held her eyes until she whimpered. Then he said it. “Yes. Yes, Gulnar. Satisfied?”
She flung her arms around him, her tears flooding her cheeks. “Oh, Dante—not yet, not yet.”
He crushed her mouth in a near-violent kiss. The pressure of longing was a heavy, viscous quicksand sucking her consciousness. He snatched his lips away, and his eyes. “Just remember—I did try to step back.”
“I’ll remember. And I’ll try not to hate you for it.”
His frown made it clear he’d misunderstood her. She could see him withdrawing in his mind first. “Hate you for tormenting me, you idiot, for making me beg and wait.”
“So we’re back to calling me names, huh?” There was no humor in his voice or expression, just searing emotion and sensuality.
“If you’re fool enough to think I meant anything else.” She gasped, her knees almost giving out. He stepped away from her, the driven look in his eyes slamming into her. He tugged her out of the hall past smiling personnel. She ran in his wake, dazed, unquestioning, quaking in anticipation.
He stopped only when they were at the end of a corridor housing the doctors’ rooms.
One was open and there was no one inside. He tugged her behind him as rushing personnel passed by and cast them curious looks.
He locked the door behind them, looked down at her. For answer, she wound herself around him, arms and legs. He staggered with her until he opened the bathroom and spilled with her inside the shower cubicle, his hand behind her head and his arm at her back taking the impact against the tiled wall at the last second. They remained like that for endless minutes, panting, their bodies and gazes fused, exchanging memories, longings, hunger—everything. She silently sobbed to him what she couldn’t say out loud, what she had no right to say. Dante, Dante, you’re everything, my heart. His unending universes of inner beauty and strength and tenderness said she was everything to him, too. And she believed she was. For now. Until he left.
She brought his lips down to hers, sank into him with all her love and despair. And he gave her back everything, then more, and more. More fervor, more intimacy, more abandon.
Suddenly Dante’s groans doused her in dread. What if they were ones of pain? His injury—two weeks weren’t enough for him to be back to normal…
Distressed, she unclamped him and attempted to regain her footing. He wouldn’t let her, crushed her tighter to him, then shifted, taking their weight on his extended arms against the wall. His eyes detailed his pain and how his hunger overwhelmed it, negated it. Then he closed them, gritted his teeth. “I am going away tomorrow, Gulnar. Nothing will make me stay.”
She bit him. His lower lip, his chin, his neck, silencing his mutilating verdict, frustration, grief, arousal sending her berserk.
Growls of pain, of voracity rumbled from his gut. He dropped her to her feet, tore her scrubs off her then swooped to his knees, yanked down her trousers. She wanted to help him, to be naked before him, against him, now, now, but she had no volition.
He put himself between her thighs, worshipped from calf to thigh to stomach. His hot breath, his voice, his passion scorched her flesh, She didn’t obey him as much as she sagged in his grip completely. He nudged her thighs further apart, bent lower to bring them over his shoulders then heaved her up, her flaming hair streaming back, sliding upwards against the tiles, until she was straddling his shoulders. Then he buried his face in her.
A scream welled from her depths, too loud, too frenzied to form. The next one would have, but he reached out a hand to her mouth, caught it in his palm. She bit down, harder each time his tongue lashed her swollen, hypersensitive flesh. He was giving her no chance but to thrash every time he drove deeper inside her. But she just had to make him understand, tell him what would deliver her. Her voice wouldn’t come. Her tongue filled her mouth and everything else in her, heart and body and soul, was swelling, overflowing. She managed a word, the only word that mattered. “You—you…”
He gave her one more hot, wet lash that almost had her blacking out then raised his eyes to her. Obsidian gems housing all his intellect and passion and virility, promising her what he had in store for her. “Yes, amore, me. You’ll have all of me. You promised me anything and I promise you too, anything—everything.”