She’d been so soft, and it wasn’t often he felt that particular tactile pleasure. His world was hard and black and scorched, the most forsaken, desolate wasteland anyone could envision. It was home, but a few more brushes of that cool, silken skin and he might grow attached to the topside world. It was a risk he was willing to take.
He approached the side of her boxy yellow car and peered inside. She’d crossed her arms over the steering wheel and was draped over them, her shoulders shuddering. Sobbing. Her hair cascaded over her back and arms, a heavy curtain of silk.
She might tell him to leave her at this point. He might only frighten her. Nonetheless, he lifted one hand and tapped on the window.
Her head jerked up and her eyes met his, widening slightly as their gazes connected through the glass. She made a quick effort to duck and swipe at her cheeks before popping open the car door. “Um, hi.” Her voice was raw and husky with tears. Despite her efforts, dampness clung to her cheeks, and a stray hair caught in the moisture. He longed to brush it away.
“Are you having some trouble?”
Her laugh was without humor…it was actually one of the most despairing sounds he’d ever heard, and that was saying a lot. “If you only knew what a loaded question that was.”
Oh, he did know. “I can help. Maddie.”
She softened at his adding her name to the offer. He saw it. Her eyes closed briefly, then she shook her head. “No. You can’t. No one can. It’s not just that my car won’t start, it’s…it’s everything.” Her lips twisted in bitterness. “Every f**king thing.”
“He doesn’t deserve you.” But aren’t you one to talk?
She made a breathless sound as her gaze darted up to his again, those luscious pink lips parting with surprise. “You don’t know anything about me. How can you say that?”
Deciding to risk shattering the fragility of the moment, he lifted his fingers to gently grasp her chin. “I don’t have to know you. I have eyes.” And he let those eyes wander down to where the bodice of her dress cradled her full br**sts, to where the skirt dipped between her thighs. Beautiful. Her figure was lush, curvaceous, just beckoning his hands to chart the dips and swells. His thumb stroked her cheek, where the skin looked like porcelain but felt like satin. It couldn’t be his imagination that she was leaning into his touch.
He would have her throughout eternity. But she wouldn’t be as she was now, alive and still vibrant despite all he’d taken from her. He wanted a taste of her now, the sweetness of her flesh, the salt of her tears. He wanted to breathe deep the musky fragrance blooming even now from her sex.
Her lips were trembling. “I…do I know you somehow? Have we met before?”
Interesting. She never would have seen him, but she most likely would have sensed him near her. She might recognize his presence, know by instinct that he was familiar to her. He allowed a reassuring smile. “Maybe we knew each other in another life.”
She wet her lips, staring at his own now. “This is so not me.”
“What’s that?”
“I don’t know you.”
“I thought we just established that you did, somehow.”
That gained him a tiny smile. “You know what I mean.”
“I think I do. You don’t know me, and yet…” His finger slid down the curve of her neck, over the persistent throb of her pulse. Delicate muscles tensed beneath his touch. He could now read every turbulent emotion as clearly as if it were his own. What would that feel like if he were buried to the hilt inside her? To feel those emotions crest as she came apart around him? “You want to. You can’t explain why. You wonder if it’s such a bad thing that you want to let go just once in your life.”
His finger reached the neckline of her dress. Her eyes closed, her breath held, as she fell under a spell he wasn’t even bothering to weave…at least not by any magical means. She sat very still, captive by his intuitive words alone. “And it’s all right. I’m here to tell you that it doesn’t matter, not for you. Nothing matters. There’s no one to impress anymore, no one to judge you.”
“What if I judge myself?”
“Guilt is so useless.”
“I think you might be a very bad influence.”
Ash traced his finger just inside the edge of her dress. “I think you should let me be. Take me home with you.”
Maddie’s eyes opened and she drew a deep breath. She gave a meaningful nod toward the front end of her vehicle. “I hope your ride is nearby.”
For a moment he held her gaze, drinking in the molten blue of her eyes. A pretty blush spread up her cheeks, and she made no move to push his hand away. He made no move to test her further. He knew he’d won.
Giving her a crooked grin, he leaned into her car, reached across the steering column and turned the key. The engine purred to life. Maddie gasped.
“What the…? A few minutes ago it was totally dead. How did you do that?”
He stood straight and shrugged with feigned aw-shucks innocence. “I guess I have the magic touch.”
She gripped the wheel so tight her knuckles ached, but in the face of the throb in other parts of Maddie’s body, her knuckles were the least of her worries.
More than once, she’d asked herself what she was doing. The answer had never really come. Her mind was a humming blank, her body one big raw nerve. From the moment he’d touched her and she went up in flames, there’d simply been no turning back. Crazy? Yes, clearly she’d gone crazy. That was established. She might as well revel in it.
I guess I have the magic touch.
She knew from the pure male cockiness in that comment he hadn’t been talking about touching cars. Oh God. She might just be crazy and in for the night of her life. The trail of fire he’d left on her skin with just his fingertip still burned. Her entire body thrummed. By the time they reached her apartment, she’d be wound so tight she’d fly apart the moment he put a hand on her.
Well, those magical hands were now resting casually on his jean-clad thighs in her passenger seat. He was quiet, and occasionally she glanced over to watch the passing streetlights intermittently bathe his features with their dingy glow. Every time she looked away from him, she almost convinced herself he wasn’t that good-looking. Only to glance over and feel that sweet shock to her senses yet again. His was a face she could spend hours looking at, exploring with her fingertips, memorizing.
Ordinarily silence felt awkward to her, especially when she was one-on-one with someone she’d just met. She always felt compelled to fill it with something. Anything. Not so now. This silence didn’t feel awkward—it felt like the calm before a storm, the tense moments spent knowing that something was out there, something huge. Dangerous and intense and raging. But she wasn’t afraid, not in the sense that she feared for her safety. She was ready to get tossed on those waves.
“Here we are,” she said, hitting the blinker as her heart lodged at the base of her throat. She’d meant for the statement to come out bright, cheerful. It came out like she’d just reached the location of her impending execution.
Maybe it was that, in a sense. She’d left her apartment knowing herself, but it was like she was coming home not only with a stranger, but a stranger herself. The old Maddie, dead and gone. As she turned off the rain-slick street into the parking lot, the dark bulk of her building looked somehow sinister, foreign. Her heart kicked its way out of her throat and began rattling like mad in her chest.
What is wrong with me?
She was no stranger to sinister thoughts, strange forebodings or outright panic attacks. But all three didn’t usually assault her at once. And some a**hole had taken her usual parking space. She gnashed her teeth as she found another and nudged her Jeep in, then she sat, concentrating on filling her lungs one breath at a time. A fine tremor shook her hands that she hoped he didn’t notice. She didn’t think she could tolerate one more person tonight who thought she was about to spaz out.
“What’s wrong?” he asked. “Second thoughts?”
Was that it? Did she know deep down this was the absolute wrong choice, even though there hadn’t seemed to be any choice at all?
Then, something incredible happened. He reached over and put his hand on her back. And all the swirling negativity in her thoughts came apart and dissipated, like the storm in her earlier analogy running out of steam. It didn’t leave clear skies in its wake, but it did cease its destructive, pummeling onslaught.
His fingers slipped down her spine, carefully tracing each tiny outward curve and subsequent indentation. Scores of chill bumps skittered down her arms, but there was nothing unpleasant about it. “It’s all right,” he said soothingly.
“My boyfriend broke up with me tonight,” she blurted.
“I surmised.”
“Tonight. Right before I met you, literally not ten minutes earlier. Now here I am with you, and I’m not saying I don’t want to be, but…”
“This isn’t you,” he finished, throwing her earlier words in the parking garage back at her.
“It’s so not. And I swear to God I’m not just saying that.”
“Why do you think I need convincing?”
“Well…” She closed her eyes as his fingers began the sensuous journey back up the ladder of her spine. Her mouth went dry and her n**ples pebbled. She could feel his heat through her clothes, burning hot. He could’ve been running a fever. But then, it had become almost uncomfortably hot in the confines of her vehicle, and she didn’t think it was from his effect on her. He’s going to burn me alive.
“Well?” he prompted. “Do you think you have to go through life playing the good girl, the saintly one, the one who has it all together?”
“God, no,” she said, dismayed. “I sure don’t want to give that impression. That’s not me, either.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
All right, maybe it was time to lay it all out there. Even she might not know what was at the root of all her anguish, but at least she could go into this with a clear conscience, knowing she’d disclosed everything. She met his gaze squarely. “Do you want to know why my boyfriend broke up with me tonight?”
Ash shrugged, and his answer surprised her. “Why do I need to? Why does it even matter?” His voice dropped to an intimate timbre that exacerbated the shivers racing under her skin, and he leaned so close she could feel his breath on her ear. “See, you are quite saintly, aren’t you? So worried the guy you’ve brought home to f**k will see some deep…dark…terrible secret about you.” His fingers crept underneath her hair, to her nape, gently massaging there. She wanted to open her mouth and snap a retort to his crass comment, but all that came out was a groan. How did he weave such a spell? It wasn’t only his words, but the mesmeric pitch of his lightly accented voice, the ironic undertones. “Is that it, Madeleine? Do you have a deep, dark, terrible secret? Tell me.”
The massaging fingers became firm, biting into the tender flesh under the base of her skull. But it felt good. She couldn’t fight his grip when he turned her head to face him. She didn’t want to, didn’t even try. His mouth was so close to hers his breath stole between her lips. Her own breath was coming in ragged little pants. She could gauge its speed by the erratic fluttering of the curlicue of hair hanging in front of her face, until his other hand pushed it away.