Into the Fire - Anne Stuart [78]
But this was worse. This was tenderness, and unbearable. Dillon didn’t know about tenderness, any more than Nate did. He knew about sex—Nate had never had any doubts about that. But this was something else, something unacceptable.
He should have killed her twelve years ago, when he’d planned to. It had just been bad luck that the police had stopped them, but he could have followed through later. He thought the danger was over—she would never see Dillon again. And Dillon would get over his fucked-up obsession for an innocent teenager.
But it hadn’t happened that way. And he was the one who died, thanks to Dillon.
He should have cut deeper with the knife, let her bleed to death on the cement floor of Dillon’s garage. He’d thought the carbon monoxide would have done it, but Dillon had come back sooner than he’d expected.
But this time he wouldn’t let go of it. This time he’d planned backup—he was older now, and he didn’t make mistakes that couldn’t be corrected. Jamie would be dead in the next few days.
And Dillon would have no one left to love. No one but him.
It was strange, Jamie thought. How could she feel so warm, so safe, so peaceful, when things were so wrong? She didn’t want to wake up—it felt too good to lie where she was, pressed up against Dillon’s warm body, his arms holding her.
But she couldn’t stay there—they both knew it. It was almost dawn—the garage was filled with a murky light, and she turned her head to look at him. His eyes were open, dark, lost eyes, and he was watching her.
He moved his head, and she knew he was going to kiss her, and then she’d kiss him back, and then she’d be lost, and at the last minute she put her hands against his chest, pushing away from him.
There was blood on her hands. Blood on his plain white T-shirt. Blood everywhere, and she let out a wordless cry of horror. She scrambled away from him, landing on the hard floor of the cement, shivering.
“Blood…” she said finally. “You’re covered with blood.”
He sat up, pushing the covers aside, and looked down at his shirt. And then he looked at her.
He got up and walked to one of the workbenches. When he turned around he was holding a knife.
She didn’t make a sound as he approached her. She tried to move backward, away from him, but the sofa blocked her, and she could do nothing but huddle there in terror and wait for him to kill her.
He could read the panic in her face. He grabbed her arm, hard, and pulled her into a sitting position, then pushed her against the sofa. She held up her arms, instinctively to block the knife.
“Jesus Christ,” Dillon muttered, grabbing her wrists in one strong hand and holding them out of his way. And then he took the knife and cut her T-shirt down the center, so that it fell apart.
“Jesus Christ,” he said again in a softer voice, releasing her wrists, dropping the knife. “What the fuck happened to you?”
She reached down to pull her T-shirt back around herself, and then stopped. If his shirt had been streaked with blood, it was nothing compared to what she was wearing. Her once-white T-shirt looked like red tie-dye. It didn’t even seem to matter that she was half naked in front of him. She just looked down at the shallow tracings on her chest with numb horror.
“Lie down,” he said. She didn’t move, so he pushed her back onto the sofa, too shocked to argue. She wanted to cover herself up, at least cover her breasts, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. She simply lay back and closed her eyes, and waited.
A minute later Dillon was sitting on the sofa beside her, laying a warm wet towel over her chest. He pushed her torn T-shirt and bra straps off her shoulders and down her arms, tossing the ruined clothing onto the floor.
“You’re pretty damned trusting for someone who thought I was about to cut your throat.” There was no bitterness in his voice, in his face, when she opened her eyes to look at him. No emotion whatsoever—he’d closed