Promise Not To Tell(33)

He got to his feet, moving in the smooth, fluid manner that somehow managed to cross the invisible line from the merely well coordinated to the intensely sensual, and stood in her path. He closed his hands around her shoulders.

“What I’m trying to say is, please don’t do that again unless you mean it,” he said. “I don’t need to be comforted. I don’t need your gratitude.”

His voice was husky, as if he was exerting a fierce control over some dangerous emotion. His eyes were stark with desire. She could feel the need radiating from his hands on her shoulders. But there was also a lot of raw willpower, a lot of control.

She raised a hand and touched the side of his face with her fingertips.

“I don’t generally kiss people unless I do mean it,” she said.

“Did you kiss me because you felt sorry for me? For what happened in the past?”

She hesitated, telling herself he deserved honesty. “Well, maybe it started out that way. I was remembering you as a fatherless boy who had just lost his mother and how no one from your family came to claim you.”

“Yeah, that’s pretty much what I thought was going on. For the record, I do not want you to kiss me for that reason. I don’t want any pity kisses.”

“Okay.” Feeling more certain of herself now, she flattened her palms against his chest. “But just to be clear, you don’t object to me kissing you for other reasons?”

“Depends.”

“I want to kiss you because I would like to find out what it’s like. Is that a good enough reason?”

He gave that half a second’s thought and then used his grip on her shoulders to pull her hard against his chest.

“That’s the only reason you can come up with?” he asked.

“No.” She gripped fistfuls of his T-shirt. “Here’s the bottom line: I know some of your secrets, Cabot Sutter. And you know some of mine. A long time ago you and I spent some time in hell together. We were both wounded while we were there but we both survived. I’d say that’s reason enough for a kiss.”

“That works,” he said. “For now.”

He tightened his grip, pulled her even closer and covered her mouth with his own, all in one swift, relentless, irresistible motion.

The kiss went hot and deep, overwhelming her, swamping her senses. She was not sure what she had been expecting, but this shattering, disorienting sensation was not it. She clung to him, holding on for dear life.

She had learned long ago not to get her expectations raised too high at the start of a relationship. She made it a rule to go in clear-eyed, anticipating very little in the way of actual fireworks and, sure enough, she had never been surprised. A little mild heat and a fleeting sense of intimacy were as good as it got for her.

“Home by midnight” was her rule.

Lately she had been forced to shelve even those limited expectations because the anxiety attacks had started to become more frequent, striking with unnerving unpredictability. The turning point had occurred one memorable night a few months ago.

Brad Garfield was a very nice man but she knew he had probably been traumatized for life when an anxiety attack exploded through her just as things reached the intimate stage.

In the wake of the disaster, she had sworn off dating, at least until what she thought of as the Storm Season had passed.

Tonight was not the time to rethink her decision, she thought. The last thing she wanted to do was wreck the fragile bond she was developing with Cabot.

Kissing him had probably been a mistake.

But it was Cabot who ended things. He eased them both out of the kiss before it could drag them under.

“We should probably stop here,” he said, his voice more than a little rough around the edges.

He was right, although his reasons for calling a halt were probably quite different from her own. “Never sleep with a client” was one of his rules.

“Yes,” she said, going for a bracing tone. “We’re involved in a very serious situation. We don’t want to make things more complicated than they already are.”

He appeared to give that some thought.

“You think going to bed together would complicate the situation?” he asked.

“Well, yes. Don’t you?”

“No.”

She glared at him. “Then why did you stop?”

“Because I could tell you were having second thoughts.”

“I see.” She drew a breath. “That was very… intuitive of you.”

“That’s me, Mr. Intuitive. Mind telling me why you were having those second thoughts?”

She spread her hands. “For all the obvious reasons, starting with we hardly know each other.”

“Seems to me we know a whole lot about each other. Let’s cut to the chase. You’re scared to go to bed with me, aren’t you?”

Now she was getting angry. She made to step around him, heading for her bedroom.

“I’m not afraid,” she said over her shoulder. “I’m a serial dater, remember? But I do learn from experience. And for the past year, all of my experience has been bad. The last time I got to the hot-and-sweaty stage with a man, I had a full-blown panic attack. Poor Brad thought I was having a nervous breakdown. I had to talk him out of calling nine-one-one at the same time I was trying to find my meds in my purse.”