Her adrenaline spiked for a moment, and she forcibly had to remind herself of everything she’d just tried to prove to him. She wasn’t scared of him. If anything, she wanted more, and that scared her more than anything. Her desperation for him to want her, to choose her when no one else had.
“Who hurt you?” The gravel hadn’t left his voice, and with the descent of the sun coming through the front window, she couldn’t be sure of his expression.
This wasn’t about her, and that ingrained urge to downplay everything she’d been through—because there were people out there, like him, who’d been through so much worse—reared its ugly little head. But she’d left Ohio for a reason. She’d seen the signs and sworn never to justify them again. Never to overlook the hurt and disregard, the neglect—any of it again. Drennan pressed her fingertips into the backs of his knuckles, steadying herself. But that didn’t mean she had to expose that leaking wound. She’d moved on. She’d started a new life with a new job, a new apartment and a new outlook on life. And she wouldn’t ever put herself in a position to be that victim again. Not even for him. She shook her head with a tight smile pulling at her mouth.
Harvey used both hands on her hips to back her against the arch separating the living room from the kitchen and diningroom beyond. The corners dug between her shoulder blades with the weight of his body pressed against hers. Not to control or intimidate but something just as dangerous if she wasn’t careful. Angling his head to one side, he skimmed his nose along her jaw, near the sensitive spot beneath her ear and down the side of her throat. Hovering over her pulse. “Do you know what I did in the military? What made me such a good soldier?”
She couldn’t even shake her head, too lost in the full dose of heat sinking through their clothing. It was the same illogical reaction that had convinced her to go home with a practical stranger, bypassing every warning she’d been taught in school. Her fingers fisted in his shirt, to add much-needed space between them or draw him closer, she wasn’t sure.
“I was an interrogator.” His mouth slid to all the places his nose had visited, eliciting an eruption of desire in her low belly. “I could read people better than most. Tell when they’re lying.”
The muscles down her spine tightened one by one. A defense he’d definitely noticed given the hitch of his mouth into a smile against her skin. “And did you have to get this close to them to be able to tell they were lying?”
“No.” Harvey slid his thumbs from her hips, to the hem of her sweatshirt then up. Calluses scraped against the bare skin of her stomach in small circles, working to ease the panic closing in around her throat. “Being this close to you when all I’ve thought about for the past two months is tracking you down and re-creating that night is just an added benefit. Who hurt you, Drennan?”
He’d wanted to find her? Drennan couldn’t get her head around that. She shook her head, trying to convince herself more than anyone else. “It doesn’t matter.” It didn’t. She wasn’t a victim anymore. She didn’t have to—
“You should know I have other ways of getting to the truth.” A growl reverberated through his chest and straight into hers. Hepulled back slightly, and the cold rushed in. His gaze dipped to her mouth then back. “And I’m very good at my job.”
Harvey crushed his mouth to hers.
Chapter Ten
He hadn’t meant to kiss her.
But Harvey pulled her toward him, dropped his head and lost himself in that near-constant craving he’d had for her since the night they’d met. Deeper, harder, more ferociously. His mouth smoothed over Drennan’s as she met him stroke for stroke, like a dance they’d rehearsed a thousand times. In a matter of seconds, his entire body felt as though he’d been stunned with a Taser. His heart thudded hard enough from behind his rib cage, he was sure Drennan could feel it trying to escape.
His senses rocketed into overwhelming territory. Every sweep of his tongue against hers. He couldn’t fight the urge to savor everything he’d convinced himself hadn’t been real all over again. The slight gasp as he let up, the way her fingernails dug into his shoulders. How she pressed against him as though unconsciously seeking him out. His hands and legs prickled with sensation. Heavy as he folded her against him.
This. This was what he’d been missing the past eight weeks. Her touch, her scent, the way her hair slid between his fingers. Sex had always been nothing more than a biological necessity he was happy to get through, but with Drennan… How had his brain minimized this connection between them?
Harvey slid his hands down, over her back end, down to her thighs and lifted her off the floor, securing her legs around his waist. Turning, he pressed her back into the archway. To get closer. To neutralize this need for her he thought might not ever be satiated. Years of numbness and avoidance broke under thesmall moan escaping up her throat. And Harvey wanted to hear it again. He wanted to hear it every morning and every night. Every time he touched her. It belonged to him, that sweet little sound. She’d never make it for any other man. She was his. Right here, right now. Whatever this was between them just made sense. The ache in his chest—where a hole had been for years—matched the one building through the rest of his body as he pressed into her. Only she could soothe it. Just as she had that night.
The night she’d gotten pregnant.
Blood drained from his upper body, too many sensations assaulting him all at once. His baby. She was having his baby. He was going to be a dad. And that…that couldn’t happen. Right?
Pressing his forehead to hers, Harvey broke the kiss, breathing heavy. Her, too. He’d done that to her. Brought out that woman who’d shot down a college kid trying to get lucky, the one who’d taken his hand without a moment’s hesitation and somehow shattered everything he’d ever known about himself in a single night. He wrapped her in both arms, holding on to her with everything he had. He wanted her. More than he’d ever allowed himself to admit to wanting something before.
She squeezed her thighs around him as his thumb traced the waistline of her jeans. Trying to drag him out of his head and back to her. Drennan arched her back to close the distance between them once more. “Harvey.”
That breathy sigh nearly did him in. She skimmed her fingers over his jaw, turning his gaze to her. “Hey. Are you okay?”
It would be easy to haul her back into his bed, to chase that high she was solely responsible for addicting him to, but he’d always want more. Do whatever it took for the next hit, maybe even override her desires. And that… He wasn’t that man. He wouldn’t let himself be that man. Harvey loosened his holdaround her rib cage, all too aware of how little pressure it would take to keep her for himself. “I can’t. I can’t do this.”
She unlocked her ankles, sliding down the front of his body with both hands on his shoulders for balance. Lips swollen with the evidence of their kiss, Drennan ran a hand through her hair, still so close he could feel the gallop of her heart rate. “You realize we’ve done this before, right?”
He fought the laugh charging up his throat. Harvey pressed his hand into the archway at her back and shoved off. “Yeah. I’m aware, but this isn’t happening. Not again.”
“Youkissedme.” Her expression fell along with the volume of her voice. Almost as though she’d severed some innate part of herself from her emotions. From feeling anything at all. But Drennan was too alive for that, too beautiful for that.
And he hated it more than anything. He hated that she felt the need to protect herself from him, like he was a threat. But that was what he’d warned her about. That a switch he couldn’t see inside could be flipped at any moment. That he could lose control and she would be the one to pay the price. He’d witnessed that same reaction from his mother too many times to count, that desperation to emotionally—sometimes physically—protect herself from his father. To detach. Which only added to his belief someone had hurt Drennan. No matter how much he wanted to push for answers—to have a name to put to the pain he caught in her gaze every once in a while—he wouldn’t force her hand. He wouldn’t add to her misery. Harvey backed up a few steps. “I made a mistake.”
“You’re not him, Harvey.” She gripped the ends of her sweatshirt in both palms, seemingly unsure what to do with her hands, but not out of nervousness. “And I’m not a mistake. I’m a choice standing right in front of you. One you can make without the influence of the person who hurt you. I understand that sounds easier said than done, but it can be done. I’m proofof that. We’re going to have a baby together. Isn’t that worth something?”
He couldn’t stop the flinch tensing his entire body. No. She wasn’t a mistake. She was everything he’d ever dreamed about. And he couldn’t have her. Not without breaking her as thoroughly as his mother had been broken. She deserved better than that.
“That’s the thing.” Heat that had nothing to do with the remnants of her taste on his tongue seared through his chest as he backed up another step. Wrong. This entire conversation on his end felt wrong, but he couldn’t stop. For her. For the baby. He had to see this through. “You don’t know me. I’m just some guy you met in a bar. You have no idea what I’m capable of.”
