He caught her jaw with his fingertips to tilt her head to the exact right position. “I’ve wanted to do this from that first night.”
She lifted her hands around his neck and leaned in closer. “What were you waiting for?”
“The perfect moment.”
Her eyes widened in surprise. “And you think this is it?”
“Guess we’ll find out.”
He brushed his lips across hers. Soft. Welcoming. Enticing. Perfect.
On the second pass, she protested. “Quit teasing.”
Eli smiled and kicked the intensity up a notch. He tasted the corner of her mouth with the tip of his tongue, loving it when her lips parted long enough for her own tongue to dart out in invitation. He tightened his hold on her, pulling her flush against his chest as he deepened the kiss. She tasted like coffee with a hint of rich, dark chocolate. She was a perfect fit in his arms, her body lean and womanly. He pressed her against the door and rocked against her, letting her feel the hard evidence of how much he wanted her.
The small sounds she made drove him crazy. It was so damn tempting to carry her inside and follow this to its logical conclusion. To strip them both down to the skin and discover all of each other’s secrets. To learn what she liked from a lover and then give it to her over and over again. His breath caught in his chest.
Secrets. His. Hers.
That thought dragged him back from the edge, and he banked the fire that threatened to rage out of control. He couldn’t—wouldn’t—take Safara to bed when he couldn’t even tell her his real name. How could he ask her to trust him with her truth until he was willing to share his own? And what if those men from the crash site found him? By their choice or his own, he might have to disappear with no explanation. It wouldn’t be fair to Safara to let her think they could have a future together until he could lay his past to rest.
While he waited for his pulse to slow, he tucked her head under his chin and simply held her close. “I was right. That was perfect.”
He felt her smile against his chest. “No arguments there.”
Time to leave. It took a surprising amount of strength to step back from the precipice. “Keep me posted on how your grandfather is doing, and thank you for dinner, not to mention the dessert.”
“We both know how much you love Ronnie’s pie.”
“True enough,” he said as he traced her smile with his fingertip. “But for the record, I wasn’t talking about the pie.”
Then he gave her another quick kiss, one meant to be friendly, before walking away. He liked that she stood watching him until he was halfway down the block. She waved one last time before disappearing inside her house. He kept walking because it was the right thing to do, even if he hated every step that took him farther away from her.
THE NEXT MORNING,her father wasn’t at the hospital when Safara stopped by to check on her grandfather, but her aunt arrived shortly afterward. Bitti offered to sit with Halder during the day, leaving Safara free to work. Since Jakes had spent most of the night at the hospital, he was still home in bed asleep.
Not needed at the hospital, Safara headed over to the police station. She wasn’t scheduled to be out on patrol, but she could answer phones while catching up on paperwork. An hour later, she was still staring at the same report. Her mind kept wandering back to last night—or at least certain parts of it.
Eli Jervain sure knew how to kiss. If he hadn’t slowed down their headlong rush, she wasn’t sure she would’ve found the strength to step back on her own. The press of that big body against hers, rock hard in all the right places, had felt amazing. Historically, she’d always been a bit skittish when it came to sex. Letting someone get that close was not something she took lightly. It was hard enough to protect everyone caught between two worlds when she kept outsiders at arm’s length. It became nearly impossible if she dropped that barrier. Most of the time it wasn’t worth the effort just for a little hot sex.
Maybe it was how they’d met and everything that had happened since that made it next to impossible to maintain any distance with Eli. Admittedly, she had a thing for tall men with broad shoulders, but it was more than that. It meant something.
Or maybe she was fooling herself.
The sound of the office door opening jarred her out of the endless circle of doubts she’d been trapped in. She recognized the footsteps. Without bothering to look over her shoulder, she held up her empty mug and said, “Hi, Dad. The coffee is fresh.”
She saved the still unfinished report and sat back in her chair while her father poured them each a cup and carried them over to sit down beside her desk.
“I stopped to see your grandfather on my way here. He’s awake and asking when he can go home.” He offered her a wry grin. “Those nurses have no idea what they’re in for if they think they’re going to keep him down for long.”
The news that her grandfather was already stirring up trouble eased the knot of tension she’d been carrying in her heart since she’d first listened to Eli’s terse phone message. “Was he able to tell you what happened?”
“A little. I didn’t want to discuss it with Bitti there, and we only had a few minutes alone while she went downstairs to grab a quick bite.” His expression turned grim, his gaze angry. “He was visiting a friend who lives not far from the crossing. As he was heading back to where he’s been staying, he ran into Tiel’s gang. Everything seemed normal until they suddenly grabbed him by the arms and dragged him into the cave.”
A muscle in his jaw twitched as he spoke. “Tiel told him they wanted him to take a message back to us. Dad agreed to tell us whatever they wanted him to, but they laughed and said hewasthe message. Then they had fun cutting him up and then threw him across the barrier. I don’t know if they meant to hurt Dad or kill him, but that doesn’t matter. Once Will is finished with his investigation and gets his people out of our way, we’ll end this threat for good.”
His pronouncement wasn’t a surprise, but she hated that it had come to that. The problem was tracking the culprits down. “They’ve obviously been slipping back and forth across at that spot for a while now.”
Her father pinched the bridge of his nose as if fighting a headache. “Yeah, that’s what I think, too. At least one of the bunch must be able to control the barrier. To make matters worse, I’m going to be tied up for a while taking care of your grandfather. Bitti will help out as much as she can, but she has a job and her own family to look after.”
