He’d convinced himself tracking down the man who’d butchered her father—a serial offender who’d taken more than ten innocent lives, as far as the police were able to put together—would offer her some kind of closure, but the terror persisted, drove her to the next case and to push herself harder. Sometimes past her limits. Once upon a time, he’d been there to pull her back, but now? Who did she have to remind her she had to eat, that she had to sleep and to make sure she wasn’t getting too invested in the victims she sought justice for? And why the hell did he care?
A sigh escaped from between her lips, as if she’d found some kind of release. The worst had passed, but Callen still drew those small circles over her skin. Waited as her breathing evened out and the muscles down her spine relaxed.
He wasn’t sure how long he lay there just…absorbing her body heat. Touching her, pulling the last hints of her perfume into his lungs. When was the last time he’d just held still like this? When he’d felt warm? His gaze shifted to the rise and fall of Maeve’s shoulder. The answer was right there in front of him, throwing him back to the night before he’d ended their engagement. Before he’d learned she’d compromised Lauren’s case. If he’d known that night would’ve been his last chance to feel this…connection to another person, would he have gone through with the breakup? Would he have kicked her out of their apartment and cut off contact?
Maeve shifted, and he held himself frozen, suddenly aware that he’d crawled into her bed and put his hands on her after everything he’d thrown in her face today. He really was a bastard. “Callen?”
“You had a nightmare.” His voice sounded as though it’d been dragged over gravel. He didn’t want to think too much on the sensations pooling in his gut at hearing his name on her lips. “You were screaming.”
She moved to sit up, but Callen only held on to her tighter. Unwilling for her to break the peace he’d found the past few minutes. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to wake—”
“You have nothing to apologize for.” Removing his hand from her stomach took more effort than he expected as she rolled over to face him.
“You don’t… You don’t have to stay. I’ve managed this long without you.” Maeve tucked both hands beneath her face. The sight was absolutely ridiculous and completely her, and he couldn’t stop the smile tugging at his mouth.
“Have you?” He hadn’t meant to ask. And he certainly had no business running the side of his index finger along her jaw. But an unquestionable craving exploded as his hand brushed hercollarbone and her pupils expanded to the rims of those dark eyes he thought of so often.
And Callen crushed his mouth to hers.
Chapter Eight
Holy hell. Callen was kissing her.
And she was kissing him back.
A low moan scraped up his throat as Maeve fisted both hands into his T-shirt collar and pulled him flush against her. He claimed her lips as though he’d set out to claim her soul, and the too-small size of the twin bed, the slight locker room odor she couldn’t find the source of and the cutting remarks Callen had thrown at her all day faded into the background. There was only him as his lips demanded more and more from her. He tugged on her lower lip, urging her mouth to part, and she gave in. Gave him everything she’d been holding back for the past year. The loneliness, the grief, the sadness of losing not only her best friend but also the man she loved. Losing an entire family. She gave him the nights she’d ordered takeout and ate it alone on the couch in front of the TV. She gave him the empty cold of the other side of the bed and the anger at herself for making such a big mistake that’d cost her everything she cared about.
And he took it. All of it.
A breathless moan escaped her control as his taste immersed her in another life. One where she’d been loved and accepted and wanted. He invaded her stroke after stroke, scalding her from the inside out. And she still wanted more. She wanted all of him again. She wanted him to fill the inky hollowness that’d started spreading the moment she’d moved into an apartment she hated with no one but herself for company.
She wanted Callen.
That hadn’t changed. No matter how many times she’d tried to convince herself otherwise, there were some people you couldn’t erase on a cellular level. He was that person. The one who’d answered the call after a trigger had paralyzed her in the women’s locker room at the gym and she hadn’t trusted herself to drive. The one who’d made her a protein shake every morning before she rushed out the door because he knew she wouldn’t stop to eat. The one who’d seen past the anger and depression and obsession and nightmares of her father’s murder to the woman underneath.
Rolling his weight on top of her, Callen pressed her into the mattress as he had so many times before. Realizing his touch brought comfort, closeness, she hadn’t gotten anywhere else. Her legs wrapped around his hips as though they’d always belonged right there. Two pieces of a complicated puzzle. He had his own bedroom, one she was sure was far quieter and definitely less complicated, but he was here. With her. He’d soothed circles into her stomach because he’d known how well it’d worked in the past. He’d offered his warmth because it was one of the few things that settled her ragged nerves after a nightmare she wanted nothing more than to forget. Slanting his mouth over hers, deepening the kiss and his access, he offered her pleasure to take the place of the horror and hopelessness that followed her over the years, and it was working.
For now.
But the truth was, the nightmares would return. Another case would remind her of that brutal night she’d witnessed her only parent die. And Callen would go back to hating her in the morning. Maeve broke the kiss, shaking her head. “I can’t… I can’t do this.”
It wasn’t that she didn’t want to. She wanted that back—wanted him—more than anything, but not like this. Not until they didn’t have this crushing void hanging over their heads.
Confusion deepened the lines between his brows as he stared down at her. He’d braced his forearms on either side of her head, keeping his weight off her, but somehow managed to add a few more inches. Clarity chased back the liquid heat in his gaze, and her entire body went cold as he extracted himself from the bed without a word.
Threading his hands through his hair, Callen collected a handgun she hadn’t noticed until then from the dresser where she’d dropped her personal hygiene products. And left.
She stared at the door long after the sun had started its ascent, that persistent heavy feeling of watching him leave knotting tighter as he moved through the house as minimally as possible. Followed by quiet. He’d left, she was sure. Probably for his next shift on the trails, and she…she didn’t want to get out of this too-small bed that smelled of men’s deodorant and socks. Didn’t want to face another day of struggling to remember how to breathe and function as an adult, but Springdale police had already stopped pursuing Lauren’s case. And Iliana… Her boyfriend needed her to come home.
Dragging herself free of the sheets, Maeve peeled the bedding from the mattress and tossed it in the washer Callen had shown her in the hallway closet last night. The washer did its job as she found her way into the kitchen and toward the scent of hot coffee. She needed a different place to stay—for a lot of reasons—but getting the Taser they’d recovered from the scene to the medical examiner hit the top of her priority list. Well, that and a shower. She downed her first cup of coffee of the day and loaded her mug into the dishwasher, wincing at the bite of heat against her sensitive bottom lip.
Callen had kissed her. Bitten her. She hadn’t registered the pain in the moment, but it refused to relent as she showered, dressed and brushed her teeth. She could still feel his body heat along her spine, feel his weight pressing her into the mattress,his mouth on hers, his tongue memorizing her all over again. It’d all been so familiar and…addicting. The small circles he’d drawn with his fingers had worn a different kind of sensation into her skin around her navel, and a coil of pressure tightened in her belly. Embarrassment flooded up her neck and into her face as she studied the reddened skin along her bottom lip in the mirror above the sink, somehow still swollen.
And now she’d have to walk into the medical examiner’s office looking like she’d spent the night being ravaged.
A groan worked up her throat as Maeve grabbed the Taser she’d stashed in her overnight bag and requested a ride share to take her into Hurricane. After twenty minutes of flat desert, cacti and thin swaths of snow, she stepped through the doors of Metland Funeral Home. It wasn’t uncommon for small towns like Springdale with fewer than a thousand residents to band together with surrounding cities and unincorporated territories to share a medical examiner’s office, but this was the first time she’d visited one located in the basement of a funeral home.Creepydidn’t come close to describing the prickling sensation at the base of her neck as she descended the stairs.
Shoving through the double steel doors with small window cutouts, Maeve studied the layout of the L-shaped reception area, which opened straight into a wall of freezers and a single examination table that a tall, older man worked over. And the skeletal remains recovered from Kolob Arch. “I take it you’re the ME?”
