Hidden Embers (8 page)

O
ne of Jazz’s arms snaked around his waist, and the second she touched him, every one of Quinn’s senses came flooding back with a jolt.

It was the strangest thing that had ever happened to him, and for a moment he was too stunned to do anything but lay there and absorb the sound of her breath against his ear. Then she was sliding her other arm beneath him, trying to pull him into a sitting position, and with the way she was tugging, it didn’t feel like she was going to take no for an answer.

Afraid she would hurt herself trying to move him, he rolled to a sitting position, all the while bracing himself for another white-hot stream of pain. Since this thing had started, every move he’d made had been met with renewed agony.

Yet, this time nothing happened—no pain, no vomiting. Even the shudders that had all but knocked his bones together had just disappeared.

He didn’t know what to make of it.

“Quinn, are you all right?” Jazz’s voice was low and serious, harsher than he had heard it all night. But then again, waking up to find her lover curled on the floor in the fetal position could probably do that to a woman.

“I’m fine,” he croaked, his mouth and throat so dry that he could barely form the words. And yet he took a couple seconds to take inventory of his body and realized, with a shock, that it was true. He was
fine
.

He’d been to hell and back in the past two hours, but now he was feeling better than he had any right to expect. He was still weak, but he always was after a typical one of these episodes—and what he’d just experienced had been anything but typical.

“Well, you don’t look fine,” she said. “To be honest, you look like hell.” As he had been assessing the damage, she joined him on the floor, scooting until her legs rested on either side of his hips while her breasts pressed against his back. That’s when he realized two things simultaneously. The first was that sometime during the night, she had discarded her tank top and there was nothing between them now but skin.

The second realization was that she was still holding him. Her arms were wrapped around his waist, her hands holding on to his wrists. A low-grade warmth started in his belly, and began to chase away the chills. He knew it had nothing to do with his strange and sudden recovery and everything to do with her.

Shifting a little, he tried to hold her hand but she pulled away—a low, warning sound coming from her throat.

That’s when a third realization hit him—she wasn’t holding his hand to give comfort, as he’d thought. She was taking his pulse. Which probably wasn’t a good thing, seeing as on a normal day his heart rate was almost twice what a human’s was. And at the moment he was anything but normal. She probably figured he was a walking candidate for a heart attack.

Not wanting to deal with questions—and not wanting to lie to her—he jerked his wrist out of her grasp and hoped that she hadn’t gotten enough of a count to realize just how different he was from her.

He waited for her to say something, to protest his pulling away or to demand to know what the hell was wrong with him. But Jazz did neither—instead she simply sat there, the front of her body pressed against his back, and held him while he struggled to gain control of his riotous thoughts and emotions.

More than once he considered turning to look at her, but in the end he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Firstly, because after waking up and finding him nearly comatose she could have run for the door but hadn’t. That frightened him even as it made his dragon preen. And secondly, because he couldn’t stand the thought of seeing how her opinion of him had changed—not now, when he was still so raw, his wounds so close to the surface.

Not now when he was still confused and trying to figure out what the hell had happened. He’d never had an attack that bad before, nor one that had ended so abruptly. Even while the man was grateful it was over, the scientist in him wanted to know the whys and wherefores.

Minutes passed and he braced himself for a confrontation, figuring Jasmine would start pushing him for answers. Not that he blamed her—if he’d woken up and found her in a similar situation, he would have demanded to know what the hell was wrong with her.

But she didn’t do that, didn’t say a word. He didn’t know if it was because she’d sensed how vulnerable he felt or because she simply didn’t care. But the way she was holding him—so tightly and tenderly—didn’t feel like lack of caring.

As if sensing the ever-changing thoughts that were mixed up in his brain, Jazz smoothed her palms over his shoulders, down his arms and up his spine, kneading softly everywhere she touched.

It was exactly what he needed, though he hadn’t had a clue, and the dragon reveled in her warmth and attention.
He
reveled in it, realizing with a shock that he was cold for the first time in recent memory. And not just any cold, but a bone-deep frigidity that went so deep he wondered if he’d somehow lost the ability to control his own body temperature. Dragons were the only animal of reptilian descent that could regulate their temperatures, due largely to the fire that burned deep inside any healthy dragon.

But now, it was like his fire had gone out. He reached for it but it wasn’t there, and a low-grade panic started humming through his veins. Jazz must have realized how cold he was, too, because suddenly her arms were around his waist. She held him tightly to her while her hands chafed against the skin of his arms and her mouth skimmed over his bare back as she tried to share her body heat with him.

It was the nicest thing a woman had ever done for him. That she was doing it now, when he’d been so close to giving up hope, meant more than he would ever be able to tell her.

He wanted to explain things to her, but his normal eloquence had deserted him, and he settled instead for simply leaning into her body, concentrating on the soft, warm feel of her.

On the crazy, blackberry scent of her.

On the sweet caramel taste of her that still lingered in his mouth. It felt amazing to have his senses back, especially after spending so many minutes locked in complete and total sensory deprivation.

He focused on them—focused on her—as an excuse not to think any more about what had happened to him. It wasn’t the best coping mechanism in the world, but here—in the dead of night—it was enough.

“Can I get you anything?” she finally asked tentatively.

How about a nice dose of sanity?
he wanted to ask.
Forgiveness. Oblivion
. But since asking for any of those things would only make her think he was even crazier than she already did, he simply said, “I could use a drink.”

“Of course.” She scrambled to her feet, crossed to the bathroom and filled one of the plastic glasses with tap water.

A few seconds later she was back, the cup extended toward him. He reached to take it and suddenly there was a searing pain on his arm—it circled his bicep and shot up to his shoulder and down into his fingers. For a second Quinn was afraid that his reprieve was over, that the agony was coming back, but within seconds he realized this pain felt different. It felt hot and sharp and comforting in a way he didn’t recognize and couldn’t explain.

Then it was gone and he was cold again. Lonely. Desperate to connect in a way he never had been before.

“My brother died yesterday.”

As soon as he said the words, he wanted to call them back. What kind of idiot blurted something like that out—especially to a woman he’d just met? It was a lot more than she’d signed on for. After all, this whole night was supposed to be about fun and games, not his complete physical and emotional collapse. But it was so much easier to show his pain to a stranger, to her, than it was to acknowledge it to his clan members.

Jazz didn’t say anything at first, and he waited, expecting to hear all the meaningless platitudes that strangers voice at times like these—followed by a run for the door. But she didn’t move, didn’t speak. Instead, she slipped behind him again, tightened her arms around his waist and just held him for long moments, the feel of her heart beating steadily against his more soothing than anything he’d felt in a very long time.

When she finally did speak, she said the one thing he never expected to hear. “Was it your fault?”

Anger surged through him, even as he told himself he was grateful she hadn’t pulled her punches. “It was completely my fault.”

“Somehow I doubt that. Death is rarely anyone’s fault—at least not completely,” she answered. “Things happen.”

“How can you say that?” He shrugged her off, got up and paced across the room on unsteady legs. “For all you know, I could have pointed a gun at him and shot him.”

He whirled to face her, and if he expected her to be scared, he was disappointed. Instead, she regarded him steadily from her spot on the floor, her knees pulled to her chest like they were having the most regular conversation in the world.

“Did you?”

“Shoot him? Of course not.”

“Well there goes that argument.”

“You’re being pretty flippant considering I just told you my brother is dead.”

She didn’t look as embarrassed by his observation as he’d expected her to be, only a little sad. “It seems to me that you’re torturing yourself enough for both of us. Someone needs to keep a level head here.”

He didn’t know what to say, didn’t know if there was anything he could say, as a small part of him wondered if she was right. Turning away, he faced out the window toward the parking lot where the last of the traffic from the bar was slowly working its way onto the main street. It was easier than looking at her, easier than seeing that odd understanding in her eyes.

He struggled for control, continuing to watch the mass exodus until the last car had turned out, leaving a lonely red Mustang as the lot’s only occupant. “Is that your car?” he asked, at a loss for anything more meaningful to say.

She crossed the room to peer over his shoulder. “Yep.”

“You want me to change the tire now?”

She wrapped her arms around his waist, skimmed her lips over the ornate lines of the dragon tattoo that covered most of his back. Her easy affection was balm to his tattered soul, even before she answered, “It’ll still be there in the morning.” He felt her smile against his shoulder blade and allowed himself to sink into her words. He didn’t know why, but she helped keep his demons at bay, and right now he was too worn out to do anything but let her.

“Besides,” she said, “I can think of a better way to spend the rest of the night.”

“Oh, yeah? And what way is that?”

She leaned away from him a little and he almost protested, except her voice was light and teasing and still close when she whispered, “Guess.”

He turned just in time to catch the wicked grin that flashed across her face. It aroused him all over again, and he gave himself over to the feeling. If sex was the only thing he could bring himself to share with her, then he’d settle for that. The oblivion that came with losing himself in her body sounded really good right about now. Moving toward her, he murmured, “I should probably let you know I’m a pretty good guesser.”

“Now, see, that’s exactly what I’m counting on.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

Q
uinn took another step toward her and Jasmine retreated—not out of fear, but out of a need to keep the game going a little longer. As he followed her, matching each of her backward steps with a forward one of his own, he arched an eyebrow suggestively. She much preferred the wild glint in his eye to the look of complete and utter devastation that had been there just a few minutes before.

She wasn’t fool enough to think that she had banished the agony she’d seen in his eyes when she’d woken up—she knew it was still there, lurking, right below the surface. But if she could give him a few minutes reprieve from whatever was hurting him, then she was all for it.

“Where are you going?” he asked, as he backed her slowly across the room. “There’s no place to run.”

“Who says I’m running? Maybe I’m just executing a strategic retreat.”

“I’m not sure if there’s anything strategic about it—seeing as how you’re about to bump into the dresser.”

He took another step forward, and in those moments he was all predator and she was his prey.

It was not a relationship she normally espoused, but right then, with Quinn bearing down on her, she couldn’t remember ever feeling more excited.

As she continued to back up, making him work for it in an effort to keep his mind off his pain, she let her gaze sweep over him, lingering on all the parts of him she’d wanted to touch during their first lovemaking session, but had been denied.

With his shirt off and the top button of his jeans undone, he was even more gorgeous than he’d been at the bar. His too-long black hair was tousled, while his eyes gleamed electric green in the semi-darkness of the motel room.

And his chest—his chest was the stuff fantasies were made of. Her fantasies, anyway. It was smooth and broad and extremely well-muscled, and he had a complicated looking black and green tribal tattoo decorating his right pec. As for the six-pack she’d spied through his shirt earlier—it was more like an eight-pack, and it made her mouth water with the need to taste it. The only thing she wanted more was to trace her tongue down the light happy trail starting below his belly button and leading into his jeans.

Her need to touch him was so real, so powerful, that she shuddered and reached for Quinn before she even knew that she was doing it. Whether it was brought on by the fact that she couldn’t be in the same room with him without wanting him, or whether it was because she needed to comfort him when his pain was so real, she didn’t know. And didn’t care.

But before her fingers could touch him, before they could skim down that hard, flat stomach, he took advantage of her lapse in attention and pounced on her. His hands went around her waist and then he was lifting her, plopping her down on the same dresser he’d taken her on earlier in the night.

“You have something against the bed?” she asked with a grin.