I paced for a while. Just back and forth from the bathroom to the bedroom door. Then around the bed. Back and forth, around and around. When the confines of the room got to be too small of a space, I went out into the hall and paced up and down that, counting my steps and humming under my breath, doing everything I could to keep my mind off of what was happening outside these walls. When that didn’t work, I went into the control room.

They’d removed the video from the large screen. That was a relief. Everything appeared to be turned off, but when I touched a couple of knobs and buttons, screens lit up. I found myself watching the employees doing what employees do late in the day. A woman in the cafeteria was putting away the last of the day’s leftovers before wiping the counters and lifting the chairs onto the tables. A couple of people were sitting in cubicles, typing away at keyboards, finishing up reports or whatever else they had to do. There was a janitor on the top floor, mopping her way along the edge of the hallway.

Normal people going about a normal day. Never mind that their bosses were out there, potentially getting themselves killed. But that was normal for this place, wasn’t it?

I found the communication system Brent had told me about, but I was afraid to touch the button that would activate it. I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear what was happening out there just then. I began to pace again, moving close to the door that would take me back to the elevator, away from it toward the door to the command room.

Knowledge or escape.

Wasn’t that a classic dilemma? Which would I choose?

Neither, apparently.

I hadn’t eaten all day, but I couldn’t stand the idea of food. I browsed the shelf with all the books, but couldn’t imagine concentrating long enough to follow a novel-length story.

I did some stretches, my body aching so badly from all the tension that had been tearing at it all day. It helped a little, but what I really needed was a hot bath. But who could rest in a bath with all of this going on? I found myself thinking about the shower Brent and I took last night before things all went to hell. I could still feel that bubble that wrapped itself around us, still feel the heights his touch took me to. In the moment, it felt magical. A rare perfection.

Yet, in the darkness after everything began to unfold, after another girl was injured and reality had rudely come rushing back in, I began to wonder if I’d imagined it all. We were new, he and I. A month ago, I’d never heard of Brent Stone or Stone Security. I didn’t know this place even existed, didn’t know it was possible to hire a couple of ex-cops to do things even the cops couldn’t do. How could we have had such an intense connection in such a short time?

But I knew…I felt it.

Then I began to wonder if it was just me. I mean, come on, here was this guy who suffered a couple of horrific losses in a very short time. He wasn’t looking for a relationship. Hell, he probably wouldn’t want a relationship ever again. I was just a space filler, a woman who happened to share some resemblance with his wife. I remembered the way he looked at me the first time we met, how when he came to sit beside me, he couldn’t look me in the eye.  It bothered him that much. And I saw the double take Jack made when he first set eyes on me and the odd way he looked at me today in the control room.

How could Brent want me? Why would he? I might have grown up in the same sort of privilege he clearly enjoyed, but my life was nothing like it once had been. I walked away from all of that when I left Curtis. I was a weak, poorly educated woman who worked in a club designed to make wealthy people’s fantasies come true. I was just barely a step above a high-class prostitute and we both knew it. He’d had perfection once already. He’d be a fool to choose anything less than that again.

I didn’t even know why I was there.

I dug my fingers into my hair, pulling the hair tie loose that had been holding it into a ponytail. I hated being so deep inside my head. Rachel always told me that I was my own worst enemy because I analyzed things to death and talked myself out of everything sooner or later. And she was right.

But I also knew I was right this time, too.

I was falling in love and I knew it would be bad news.

I’d done more on the computer yesterday than check into classes at the University of Memphis. I’d also emailed my parole officer, asked what I would have to do to travel to Connecticut. She said it would be simple, just a request for a travel pass. Then she told me that I could have my parole moved to Connecticut with a simple petition of the court. I only had two years left and I’d been a model parolee. She said it should be easy.

Maybe that was for the best. Maybe when all this was done it would be best if I went home to my parents, if I went back to the life I was supposed to live instead of this train wreck I thought I’d wanted.

Maybe it was time to grow up.

I was still pacing when I heard the heavy locks on the door shift in their mechanism. I ran in my bare feet and launched myself into Brent’s arms as he came through the door alone.

“You’re okay!”

He chuckled a little. “Don’t sound so surprised. I am rather good at my job.”

“I’m aware of that. But these men are insane.”

He lifted me high, allowing me to wrap my legs around his waist, his hands sliding easily over my ass.

“Maybe I’m more insane.”

I shook my head, ready to argue. But we were walking down the corridor and passed a light high on the wall that revealed a new bruise on his jaw. I touched it—I don’t know why that’s always my instinct, but it is—and he winced.

“Maybe you are,” I agreed.

He took me straight to the bedroom where he’d deposited me the moment we arrived, pulling the door closed behind him as he buried his face in my chest, his lips brushing the skin revealed in the V-neck of my tee. I ran my hands over the back of his head and tugged him closer, perfectly okay with just about anything he wanted to do. I was just happy to have him back safe and sound. Mostly.

I pushed his head back and brushed my lips against his, taking possession of him the way he often did to me. This day had been one of the worst I think I’d ever lived through. I wanted to feel alive for a little while, wanted to feel connected, wanted to feel safe. I wanted the bubble to come back and envelope us once again.

He started to carry me across the room, but somehow we ended up against the wall, his body trapping me against the cool cinderblocks. His hands were under my tee in an instant, tugging the soft material this way and that, searching for and finding the back of my bra, tugging it loose as one hand came around to hold my full breast in the palm of his hand. I sighed against his mouth, loving the feel of him, the touch of him.

“You’re killing me,” he whispered, pushing my head back so that he could stare into my eyes. “All I could think about was how desperate I was to get back here to you.”

“Good.”

He grunted, a little smile finding its way to his lips. “Is that right? You don’t mind sending me out there distracted?”

“Not if it means you come back to me.”

He moved close, his lips creating a fiery path along my jaw. “I’d stay here with you, just like this, for the rest of my life if I could.”

“Sounds good to me.”

He took my lips again, possessed my entire mouth, doing that thing with his tongue that threatened to drive me right out of my head. His hands were on my ass again, tugging at the back of my yoga pants, pulling them down over my hips. And then his fingers were inside of me and a scream built deep in my chest, stalling in my throat as I struggled to catch my breath. How did he do that? How did he steal the air straight out of my lungs so easily?

I tugged at his shirt, smelling the sweat of the night stuck to the cotton fibers, to his skin. He lifted his arms and I pulled it over his head, his tattoo winking at me in the dim light. I touched it, trying not to let my thoughts go there, but finding it nearly impossible.

What was Madeline really like? Would we have been friends in another life? If there was an afterlife, if she could see us now, what would she think of this? Would she be happy for Brent? Would she want him to be happy? Or would she be raising Cain trying to get him away from me?

And then he was taking the shirt from my body, tugging my bra down my long arms so that he could take a nipple or two between his teeth. I lost my train of thought, lost once again in his touch, my fingers searching his body again, reaching down to unsnap the complicated fly of his cargo pants. He reached between our bodies, his fingers touching sensitive spots through the thin material of my yoga pants, to help. And then he was in my hand and there was no going back for either of us.

He tugged at my pants, managing to get them loose from one leg. He was inside of me quickly, roughly. I cried out, wrapping my arms around his head and pulling him tight against my chest. He bit at my flesh, tugging at my breasts with his sharp, wonderful teeth. Pain and pleasure coursed through me and it was heavenly.

It wasn’t a bubble, but it was just as good. I was lost in him, lost in everything about him. His scent, his taste, his touch. I couldn’t get enough of him.

He moved up my body, his lips grazing my throat, my jaw. Then he was staring into my eyes, veins sticking out along his temple as his movements quickened. But he wouldn’t look away, wouldn’t stop staring into my eyes. It was unnerving at first, and then it was the hottest thing…an intimacy that went beyond everything else we’d done.

He didn’t close his eyes until the first waves of ecstasy washed over him. He braced himself with a hand on the wall, pressing his hips so hard against me that I was pretty sure there was no more space between us, no place he wasn’t touching. The sounds that came from deep in his chest were intense, masculine. It sent a shiver through me, pushing my body over that cliff. By the time I’d finished riding my own waves, he’d carried me to the bed and fell with me onto the soft mattress.

We clung to each other for a long time after that, our hands continuing to explore, our lips and tongues continuing to find new places to delight. There was no way of knowing when we finally fell into a deep sleep tangled in each other’s arms, but I imagine it was probably very close to dawn.

It was a good night, a good ending to a horrible day. It was the kind of night I could cling to when everything was said and done and we’d each made our separate decisions about the future.

I was more grateful than I ever could have expressed.