that he thought her answer was going to make too damn much of a difference—not when she was still holding on to him like she was never going to let him go.
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “Blind date.”
Good, he thought, feeling the last of his safeguards slide out from under him like so much shifting sand. The poor cop was never going to know what he’d missed.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Crazy, crazy night.
J. T. Chronopolous back from the dead, and he was getting ready to kiss her all over again. Jane saw it in his eyes, felt it in her own response and the heated tension filling the hall—and for no known reason on the face of the earth, she found herself tightening her grip on his waistband.
Wrong. The smart money told her to back off, to be the good girl, to play things safe. She really didn’t know him, which didn’t begin to explain why she had hold of his pants. He wasn’t who he used to be, not even close, this stranger with the scars and the missing finger, the one who didn’t know his own name or his own brother.
And yet he knew her—and that knowledge held her where she stood, her heart racing and breaking at the same time.
Maybe only weeks, maybe months—he was telling the truth, and the truth hurt. She could see it all now, the worst of it running down the middle of his chest.
Lord, she didn’t want him to die. With every beat of her heart she wanted him to have a chance. Whatever life had done to him, she wanted him to have better. Six years in the wasteland, he’d said, and she understood exactly what he’d meant.
She let her gaze slide down the length of him, past his bandage. Scars or not, he was a work of art, every muscle delineated, the veins in his arms running like rivers into his palms, each a confluence of strength and testosterone, of conviction and the iron will to survive.
A war-fighter, that’s what he’d been, and what he still was, a soldier to the core, and he wanted her. She felt it with every breath he took, the rising tide of his desire—and she knew there’d be no playing it safe tonight.
Wild night. Wild girl, Con thought. She’d kicked some major ass for him in the alley, taking on those two pendejos at Mama’s, the poor bastards—and she’d called him a liar.
She had it right. He remembered more than he wanted to admit, especially to her, of nights so dark he’d thought they’d never end, of fear and the pain that had broken him again and again, of grief so deep he’d prayed for death. But he’d been too strong to die, literally, every part of him honed and enhanced for indestructibility—except for the expiration date Dr. Souk had carved into his genes.
Yeah, she’d seen right through him.
He liked smart women. He could have walked away, gotten her gun back in her hand, and gone to find that damned ghost tracker. Or he could stay here and play Beauty and the Beast in the hallway with her.
It was no contest in his mind, no contest in his heart, and she wasn’t running away, either.
Done deal.
He slid his hand around the back of her neck, and she slowly tilted her chin up and captured him with her long, green-eyed gaze. Yeah, she wanted this.
Combing his fingers up through her hair, he closed his fist around a handful of silken strands and brought them to his face, and he breathed her in, the rich mélange of all she was: the girl of his forgotten dreams.
She intrigued him like no other, enchanted him, everything about her. She worked in an art gallery, of all things, looked like she’d stepped off a catwalk, was fiercely street smart right down to her bones, and she was soft and smelled so damn good.
God, he’d been without this for too long, always on the move, always on the hunt for the spymaster, and somewhere, deep down inside him, always on the hunt for her, the rarest thing on earth, a woman who knew him and cared.
He’d had sex and, a few times, maybe even traces of love, since he’d broken free from Souk’s lab—but he hadn’t been known, and he’d felt the lack with every lover.
Hell, he hadn’t known himself. There’d been no way for a woman to know him—but this one did. Even more amazing, he knew her. His longing for