Extreme Danger (McClouds & Friends #5)(50)

Maybe she’d been subconsciously hoping that sex with Nick would make everything magically better. It hadn’t. It couldn’t. The sex itself had been beyond her wildest dreams, but if anything, that made it worse. It made the contrast between her stupid fantasies and cold, flat reality that much more hurtful.

She stumbled into the bathroom, groped for a washrag with trembling fingers. She soaked it, and wiped the semen off her body as she stared at her face, barely recognizing herself. She looked different. Those big, bruised-looking shadows around her eyes, the feverish color in her face, the glassy brightness of her eyes, the puffy redness of her lips. The wild snarl of hair. She looked like a woman on the verge of…she was almost afraid to imagine.

She’d seen four dead men, seen one of them actually die. She’d been subject to adrenaline dumps that would have felled a bull elephant. She’d been terrorized, shamed, slimed, she’d risked rape and torture and murder.

And then she’d risked Nick. Whew. What a night.

She felt small, battered and scared. Like prey. Something shivering and helpless and fuzzy, waiting for the talons and the beak. Great sex had no power to change that, no matter how violently she came.

It was just the current state of her soul. Very roughed up. A little tenderness or understanding might have helped, but it was quite clear that Nick was absolutely not capable of that.

And? So? Get over it, she lectured herself. The man had risked his life to get her out of there. Being alive and more or less in one piece was something to be grateful for. Even if she felt like a pile of total shit.

She should suck it up. Keep her priorities straight. Be tolerant of his bad attitude and his supremely crappy postsex etiquette.

After all, hey. He’d had a tough night, too. She almost giggled. Her goofy rationalizations sounded ludicrous sometimes, even to herself.

She pulled her vintage silk dressing gown printed with the red cabbage roses off the hook in the bathroom, and wrapped it around her shivering body as she slogged through the pillows.

She tripped over something in the corridor and almost pitched forward onto her face. She squinted, trying to bring it into focus. Nick’s boot. A soggy man’s sock was draped across it. Her breath snagged in her chest.

Oh. Wow. So he hadn’t left without a word or a glance, after all. He wouldn’t have walked out of her apartment barefoot.

She made her way unsteadily out into the kitchen of her tiny apartment. No Nick. He would be a big, blurry dark silhouette, taking up all the space, breathing up all the oxygen. He made the apartment feel so small.

Nick. She still hadn’t gotten used to having a name for him. Nikolai. She found herself repeating it, over and over. Rolling around the word in her mouth. Liking the tight, hot feeling it gave her in her chest.

Already obsessed. Oh, dear. That was scary stuff. Very bad.

She caught a whiff of cigarette smoke as she approached the door. She cracked it open, and peered out. Nick sat on the steps leading down from her porch, wearing only jeans. Tattoos swirled over his broad, muscular shoulders and back. Smoke wreathed his head. He glanced back. She resisted the urge to shrink back inside like a child caught peeking at the grown-ups. This was her own apartment, damn it.

He turned his back without acknowledging her. Went back to his cigarette and his silent contemplation. Dismissing her.

She closed the door, leaned her forehead against it, and repeated the grown-up/dignity/self-control lecture, from start to finish. Then she got busy. Her time-honored coping mechanism. Coffee. Yes.

She measured it out, with trembling hands. Poured in the water. Stood there, hugging her shaking self as she waited for it to drip out into the pot. Wondering if she was glad he was still there…or not. Why hadn’t he just left? He clearly didn’t want anything to do with her.

And what was she shaking with, anyhow? Fear? Excitement? She didn’t recognize it. It had no name. But it couldn’t possibly be healthy.

She didn’t even have the nerve to ask how he took his coffee. In the normal universe, she would holler, “Cream or sugar?” In this one, her throat was locked in her chest. She poured two cups, doctored her own. Stared at the other mug of strong, bitter black brew, breathing in fragrant steam. She hated it black. So harsh.

Aw, the hell with it. She kicked the door open and carried the two mugs just out as they were. He was as mean as a snake. It was the cup of coffee that he deserved. It suited his rotten character just that way.

She picked her way on her bruised feet out over the warped, peeling porch, and ogled the bulky breadth of his back and shoulders, the way his torso tapered sexily down to lean hips. Finally, she was close enough to check out the tattoos. Hypnotic designs that looked somehow martial and menacing, despite their sensual grace.

His gun was stuck in the back of his jeans, a chilling reminder of what they’d just gone through together.

She averted her eyes from it with a shudder of distaste.

The pearly dawn was cool and damp. Too cool for the silk robe. His dour silence damped down the normal sounds of morning. No traffic, voices, airplanes taking off—even the birds were afraid to twitter and cheep when Nick was moping.

She set the coffee down beside him with a thud that made the liquid slosh over the rim and sat down a couple of stairs behind him.

He reached for the cup and took a swallow without acknowledging her. She waited. Nothing.

“You’re, uh, welcome,” she prompted.