Rapid Fire (19 page)

“Then
what makes you think I would get something when the others couldn’t?”

“Because…”
Maya faltered, thinking, because I feel like you know me better than those
others. “You said it yourself—the flashes are starting to break through the
barriers you’ve built. Damn it, you had one just now—don’t tell me you didn’t.
What if they’re trying to tell you something important? What if they’re trying
to show you something that would help us solve the case?” Ignoring his suddenly
closed expression, she stood and took a step toward him. “I know you don’t want
the visions. I’m not even sure I believe that they’re real. But if they can
help…don’t you owe it to the innocent victims to try?”

Thorne
cursed under his breath. “Christ, not you, too.”

“What
does that mean?”

“It means
that I’m not a damn side show, or some jackass psychic detective. You can’t
give me a scarf and get a name in return—the stories were exaggerated.”

Hearing
the raw emotion in his voice, Maya took a step toward him, until they were
close enough to touch. “Back at the academy, they said you could see the
future.”

It wasn’t
quite a statement, wasn’t quite a question.

She
expected him to shrug it off. Instead, he stayed still and locked eyes with
her. “Some days I thought I could. Other days I convinced myself that the
doctors were right, that it was just flashbacks from the drugs, or delusions
from post-traumatic stress. But all that changed the night we spent together.”

THORNE
SAW THE SHOCK IN her eyes and wondered why the hell he was telling her this
when it would serve nothing for the current case.

“How so?”
she asked, her voice sounding suddenly small.

He wanted
to pace, he wanted to move, hell, he wanted to be somewhere else entirely. But
instead of running away, as he had done too many times before, he jammed his
hands in his pockets and said, “That night you told me about your husband,
about the drinking. You didn’t tell me about the accident, but you talked about
rehab and how hard you fought to get clean after you left him. And I—” He
cursed. “I don’t know. Maybe I was getting ready to see it on my own and you
tipped the balance. It shook me to realize that all ninety-eight-pounds-wet of
you was tougher than me. We’d both had bad times, and we both knew what it was
like to wake up thinking about nothing more than that first drink. But you’d
found your way out. I hadn’t.” He glanced at his hands, saw that they were
balled into fists, and consciously uncurled them and pressed them flat against
his upper thighs. “When you passed out, I stayed up and watched you sleep. And
I decided to make some changes.”

Her eyes
darkened. “Because of me?”

“No.
Because of me. You were the catalyst, though, and I owe you for that.” Which
was why he was going to do his damnedest to see that she kept her position in
Bear Claw, he realized suddenly. He couldn’t take her job. He wouldn’t. Feeling
a weight lift off his chest, he spread his hands away from his body. “I stopped
drinking and took up meditation and martial arts. I figured out the connection
between my mind and body, and how to block the flow. I tuned the visions out.”
He shrugged. “Or maybe I’m kidding myself about that. Maybe my brain finally
healed enough that I stopped having the visions.”

“You
don’t believe that.”

He shook
his head. “No. Because if that was the case, why are they coming back now?” He
feared he already knew the answer.

They were
coming back because of her.

Getting
to know her had given him the strength and the resolution to fight off the
flashes. Now, being around her was letting them break free. But why?

“What are
they showing you now?” she asked again, persisting when he didn’t want to see,
just like Tabitha had.

Resentment
welled up. She didn’t understand what the flashes did to him. What they showed
him. “I’m not seeing a damn thing right now and I’d like to keep it that way. I
told you, I’m not some sort of a sideshow fr—”

In one
smooth move, she leaned down and framed his face in her hands. “What do you see
now?”

And she
kissed him.

Colors
exploded in his brain, hues that matched the rocketing sensations as he took
Maya in his arms and crushed her to his chest, trying to burn away the images
of blood with the heat of contact. Of connection.

Though he
suspected she’d kissed him to provoke a flash, and thought he might damn her
for it later, at that moment he could only ride the wave of heat that surround
him. Pounded him. The sounds of an imagined gunshot and a woman’s ghostly
scream were blotted out by the roar of blood through his veins, the thunder of
his heartbeat echoing inside his head.

Then, in
an instant, the violence of the images became something else entirely.

Sex.

“What do
you see?” she whispered, returning him to the moment, to the feel of the woman
in his arms, the power of a connection he hadn’t wanted, but now didn’t want to
escape.

“I see
you,” he said before his brain jammed on the images of Maya’s creamy skin bared
beneath her sundress, her legs wrapped around his waist as he leaned back
against the spreading shade tree that was just a few steps away. “I see us.”

It was
too much too soon, he knew. They weren’t ready for that level of intimacy.
Hell, he wasn’t ready, wasn’t sure he’d ever be, especially with the
half-formed visions of what was to come.

What he’d
vowed not to let happen.

Knowing
it, he pressed a soft, undemanding kiss to her lips, one intended to please
without promising, to excite without unleashing the desires he held in check.

At least
that was his intention. But in the moment that their lips touched, the heat
reached up and grabbed him, pulled him into the images, into the sensations
that crashed within his body, a combination of what was and what might be. He
deepened the kiss almost unintentionally, slanting his mouth across hers and
parting his lips, finding hers open in return.

Their
tongues touched and paused, then touched again with more pressure, more
confidence as the blood beat within his head, within his heart.

Yes, it
seemed to say, this is right. This is good. This is what you need.

But was
it what she needed?

MAYA FELT
THE CHANGE IN HIM, felt the tension sneak back in, felt him withdraw the part
of himself he’d given up during that first moment, when she’d kissed him in an
effort to force honesty and had found heat instead.

Worse,
she’d found want. Desire. A readiness to chuck caution and go with the
sensations, which was so totally foreign to her makeup that she didn’t know how
to handle the urge. Because of it, she was almost relieved when he pulled away.
One part of her brain howled for her to keep going, to reach for him, twine
herself around him again and deal with the aftermath later, when things were
already done.

But
another part of her, the part that remembered brown-outs and angry words, that
part wasn’t sure.

“You
asked me what I saw.” His eyes were nearly black with desire and maybe
something more, sending a shiver through her midsection, a mixture of fear and
want. His voice roughened when he said, “I saw us making love. Here. Now. The
sun was shining and a bird sang in the tree above us.” He swallowed hard. “I
know that’s what I want, rationality be damned. I want us to be together. Not forever,
but for right now. I need to know it’s right for you, too.”

The
unexpected question startled her, as did the vulnerability in his eyes. He held
out a hand to her, making her realize that he’d stepped back away from her,
giving her room.

Giving her
a choice.

What did
she want? What was right for her?

As she
stood there in the sun-dappled courtyard and a small bird fluttered down to
alight in the branches overhead, she realized the two questions might not have
the same answer. She didn’t know what was right for her, not at this point in
her life. Her job was up in the air, her future on the line. But she damn well
knew what she wanted. She wanted the man in front of her. The man watching her
with dark, searching eyes. The man whose taste lingered on her tongue, whose
masculine scent danced in her nostrils as the bird on the branch above her
began to sing.

There it
was then, Maya thought, being brutally honest with herself. This might not be
what was right for her, but it was what she wanted. She wanted Thorne, wanted
to take him deep inside her and figure out the rest later. Not forever, he’d
said, and she would have to accept that.

She took
a step toward him, then another, closing the distance until the heat from his
body prickled across her skin. “This is right for me. Maybe it won’t be
tomorrow or next week, but it’s right for me now. I’m a big girl. I know what
I’m getting into.”

He drew
breath as if to argue, but she was done with talking, done with circling around
the baldest of facts. They had desire between them. Chemistry. They were
mature, consenting adults. She didn’t need the promise of forever anymore.

She
didn’t want forever. She wanted right now, then goodbye, so they could go on
with their separate lives. He was coming out of a relationship and she wasn’t
looking for one, certainly not with a man like him.

But they
could have the moment they should have had five years earlier.

When a
shiver of something tightened her shoulders, prescience perhaps, she touched
his chest with her fingertips, felt the thump of his heartbeat, and slid her
hands up to link them behind his neck, so the two of them were pressed
chest-to-chest, thigh-to-thigh. “I want this.”

As though
an invisible rubber band had snapped, the tension went out of Thorne. He
dropped his forehead to hers, and touched his hands to her hips, caressing
rather than gripping. “Heaven help me, so do I.”

They
kissed, meeting halfway as equals in desire, in decision. The heat of the
dappled sunlight, the sound of the birdsong and the light fragrance of warm
earth and growing things rose up to surround them, sending an uncharacteristic
ache through Maya’s heart.

She
couldn’t afford to let this be about romance. That sort of thing didn’t work
for her. This was about the physical, nothing more. So she focused on the
sensations, the slide of heat and flesh and the taste of him when she
unbuttoned the top of his shirt and pressed a kiss to his collarbone, to the
hollow of his throat.

She had
wanted this since the first moment she’d seen him in the parking lot above the
Chuckwagon Ranch. She’d wanted this even before, back when they’d been in the
academy and she hadn’t wanted anyone, least of all herself.

“Maya,”
he said, whispering her name once, and then again as though it was the answer
to a question she hadn’t asked.

He
brushed a kiss against the side of her neck and her world tilted, then shifted
on its axis. There was nothing left in her conscious mind except him, the taste
of him, the smell of him, the feel of him beneath her fingers as she fumbled
with the rest of his shirt buttons, then reached beneath to touch the ribbed
planes of his torso, the tight skin and taut muscles across his sides and back,
as she removed the material completely.

This
wasn’t about the case anymore, wasn’t about her history with Dane, or about her
fears that she might not have a job anymore, might not have the future she’d
planned.