Jackson nodded. Yes, he wanted to solve the case. This one had been eating away at him more than usual. But he was using the case to keep from confronting the very thing that Brianna had told him to.
His eyes washed over her. She looked no different than she usually did. Oh, maybe she was dressed a little more appealingly, but that didn’t account for what he was feeling at the moment. A pull he didn’t want to acknowledge. Certainly one he didn’t want to feel.
Which was why he was surprised when he heard himself asking, “Since you’re already out of the car, you want to come in for a nightcap?”
“You don’t have any food in the house, but you have alcohol?” It was a rhetorical, amused question. She really wasn’t surprised that he had the one but not the other.
“Hey, this is California,” he quipped. “We’re supposed to be prepared for emergencies.”
“Since when does needing a drink qualify as an emergency?” Brianna asked.
The answer came without any thought. “Since I spent the day with you.”
They were at his doorstep now, and he had his key in the lock when his quip stopped her short.
“Okay, I can take a hint,” Brianna told him, turning away.
He caught her wrist and pulled her back around. He felt as if he was trying to hold on to lightning. “No, you can’t.”
And then, without any warning to himself, he did something that defied everything he had always viewed as logical.
He kissed her.
Kissed her with a forcefulness that he didn’t even know he was capable of. Kissed her with such feeling that it actually unnerved him. Because he had always thought—believed—that he was empty inside. That he didn’t feel anything.
But he was feeling something now with an intensity that was off the charts. He stunned even himself, and his first thought was to pull away.
Except that he couldn’t.
And that split second’s hesitation sealed his fate. The very next second, her arms were going around his neck, her body and her mouth cleaving to his.
His heart was pounding like someone who had just found himself going over a waterfall, sealed in a kayak with no way to guide it, no way to even remain upright.
Forcing himself to regain control, Jackson severed the connection between them, his hands braced against her shoulders.
They stood there, trying to recapture the people they’d been just a few seconds ago, unable to know how to begin.
Or if they wanted to.
Finally, Jackson ground out, “I’m sorry.”
Brianna searched his face, looking for the truth. “Are you? Sorry?”
Jackson knew he should lie. It was the only way to save himself. To save her. But lies didn’t save people. The truth did.
“No,” he bit off, pulling her back into his arms, kissing her with the sort of passion that was capable of melting glaciers the size of continents.
Jackson didn’t remember grasping the doorknob and opening the door, then getting inside the apartment with her. Didn’t remember locking the door behind them or letting go of his last shred of self-control.
The only thing he remembered, the only thing he was aware of, was this pulsating, overpowering need to make love with this woman, because making love with her, possessing her, was the only thing that made any sense in his raw, barren life.
* * *
When Brianna had invited Jackson to the family gathering, it was because when she looked at him, when she dealt with him, she saw a wounded man who desperately needed to make a connection with someone. Who needed to believe that there were good people out there as well as the bad ones they were sworn to bring to justice. She was just looking to ease his pain, to erase it, if possible, but at least to ease it.
But when she’d first extended the invitation, not for one moment had she thought that things would escalate to this point—that rather than just spending a day with good, decent people who enjoyed one another’s company, he and she would wind up here, in his apartment, systematically pulling off clothes and seeking the warmth and shelter of each other’s arms.
No, this hadn’t been the plan, but now that it was transpiring, Brianna went with it happily, losing herself in the passions that were unexpectedly being raised and growing to fruition.
She had never lost control like this before. Never once, not with anything she had ever had to deal with. She just always handled things, doing what she could to make it right.
And she’d never once lost control with a man.
So it seemed rather strange that she should lose control now, giving herself up to the wild, sweeping waves of escalating ecstasy that were taking possession of every fiber of her being.
Nothing mattered except surrendering to his touch, allowing him to explore her, inch by exciting, heaving inch.
With each pass of his hand along her body, he seemed to be memorizing every soft, pliant inch of her, wanting to please her.
Wanting to please himself.
He’d never felt such a rush, never wanted this overwhelming sensation to go on forever. Sex was to experience, perhaps savor, and then move on.
But making love, that was a completely different matter altogether.
The difference between a snowflake and a blanket of pure, newly fallen snow.
Desperate to prolong what was happening because to culminate it meant for it to begin to fade away, Jackson kissed her over and over again. Caressed her over and over again.
Wanted her over and over again.
Brianna struggled to catch her breath, to get her bearings while her head spun like an out-of-control carousel.
While all of this was wondrous beyond belief, she couldn’t let herself just be the recipient, even though she was far from passive in her reaction. She wanted Jackson to feel what she was feeling, wanted him to experience
