Grayson (8 page)

“What now?” she asked.

Grayson took a deep breath before he answered. “We wait.”

She blinked. “For how long?”

He heard the unasked questions, and he knew she wouldn’t like the answers to any of them. “The text will eventually get through to Dade, and he’ll come after us.”

“Good.” Her face relaxed a little. “Then we should walk back to the road to meet him.”

Grayson glanced back at the body. “The coyotes won’t leave a fresh kill alone for long. I need to preserve the crime scene as much as possible because I need an ID on this guy.”

Eve started shaking her head. “But I need to get to Austin.”

He nodded and settled for saying, “I know.”

“No. You don’t know.” She huffed and blinked back more tears.

Hell.

Well, at least she wasn’t shaking so hard, but this was about to get ugly.

“You don’t know,” she repeated, and she just kept on repeating it until the words and the tears got the best of her. She sagged against a tree.

“Eve,” he said reaching out to her, but she just moved away.

Her breath broke on a sob. “I’ve made some terrible mistakes in my life. First, giving you that ultimatum. And then I promised my heart and life to a man I didn’t love. I’m the Typhoid Mary of relationships, Grayson, but I know I’m meant to be a mother.”

She was. Grayson didn’t doubt that. Heck, she’d practically been a mother to his youngest brother. Grayson, however, didn’t have a good track record. And he tried one last time to convince Eve of that.

“I’m not the man you want to father your baby,” he insisted.

She opened her mouth to say something, but Grayson didn’t want her to tell him something along the lines of his being the only man she wanted for that job. He couldn’t hear that. Not now. Not with Eve falling apart like this.

“I sucked as a father,” he continued, trying to snag her gaze. Eye contact might help her see the determination. “My brother, Gage, is dead.”

“Gage died doing a job he loved,” she clarified. “You couldn’t and wouldn’t have stopped him from joining the Justice Department any more than he could have stopped you from being sheriff of Silver Creek.”

Maybe. But that didn’t change things. Besides, Gage was just one of his failures.

“Dade has got so much rage inside him. Nate’s just one bad day away from needing professional help. And Mason? Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if he hunted our father down just so he could kill him in cold blood.” Grayson paused because he had to. “That’s the kind of family I raised.”

Now she made eye contact, and the jolt was like a head-on collision. Grayson had hoped she would see his emotion, and maybe she did, but he saw hers in complete vivid detail. The pain. The need.

The hopelessness of her situation.

“If I helped you,” he managed to say, “I’d just screw things up again.”

She swiped away the tears and stared at him. “If you don’t help me, I’ll never know what it’s like to be a mother. I’ll never have a part of my life that I want more than my next breath.” She walked closer. “Grayson, you would have no responsibility in this, other than having sex with me. I swear,
no responsibility.
”

He had to say no. Had to. And Grayson just kept repeating that.

But he knew the reality here.

Even if Dade got the text and responded right away, it would be an hour or more before they could get this body out of the woods. Grayson would need another vehicle since his truck was in the creek. It would be nightfall or later before he could get Eve to a clinic in Austin. Since it was just three days before Christmas, it was likely the clinics had already closed for the day. Maybe for the rest of the holiday week.

Still, Grayson had to say no.

Didn’t he?

“Don’t think too much,” she whispered, walking closer.

The cold air mixed with her breath and created a misty fog around her face. It seemed unreal. Like a dream. And Grayson had had so many dreams about her that he nearly got lost in the moment.

Oh, man.

She could still make him burn.

Eve stopped, directly in front of him. So close he could take in her scent. She leaned in and put her mouth to his ear. She didn’t touch him. Didn’t have to touch him. Her scent was enough. He fought to hang on to the denial he intended to give her, but it was a battle that Grayson knew he was losing.

Worse, he
wanted
to lose.

“Just consider this a big favor for an old friend,” she whispered.

A friend? Eve was plenty of things, but she wasn’t a friend. Whatever she was, she was pulling him closer. And closer.

“Please,” she said. Just that one word. Her warm breath brushed against his mouth like a kiss.

He looked into her eyes and didn’t look beyond that. Yeah. He could say no. He could turn and walk away.

But that wasn’t what Grayson was going to do.

What he did was exactly as Eve had said. He didn’t think too much. He didn’t look beyond this moment and the bad mistake he was about to make.

Grayson cursed and pulled her to him.

Chapter Eight

Eve was too afraid to ask Grayson if he was sure about this. She was too afraid to delay even a second because she couldn’t risk that he would change his mind.

This had to happen, and it had to happen now.

Grayson was obviously with her on the
now
part. He slid down, his back against the tree, and he pulled her down with him.

Eve’s breath was racing already. Her heart pounded against her ribs so hard that it felt her bones would break. She was trembling, scared and cold, but she pushed all those uncomfortable things aside and pressed her mouth to his.

Big mistake.

She felt him stiffen, and the air between them changed. He’d agreed to the sex, to the making a baby part, but that stiff mouth told her that he wasn’t ready or willing to go back to where they’d been.

“All right,” she mumbled, hoping the sound of her own voice would steady her nerves.

It didn’t, but Eve didn’t let raw nerves or Grayson’s steely look get to her. She worked fast, sliding up her dress and moving onto his lap in the same motion. She didn’t meet his gaze. Didn’t want to. This was already difficult enough without seeing the proof of what he was thinking.

And he was no doubt thinking this was a big mistake.

Eve didn’t let him voice that. She knew what she had to do. She’d had years of experience making out with Grayson. After all, they’d had their first kiss when she was fifteen, and they had spent years driving each other crazy.

She knew how to make him crazy.

Eve didn’t kiss him again, but she put her mouth right next to his ear. He liked the breath and heat. He liked the pressure and the touch of her tongue there. Well, at least that’s what used to fire him up. She had another moment of panic when she realized that her mouth might not have the same effect on him as it had back then. He might push her—

Grayson made a slight, familiar sound.

If she’d been any other woman, she might not have even heard the catch in his chest, the small burst of breath that he tried to choke back. But Eve heard those things, and she knew exactly what they meant. This was still a fire spot for him. So were her hands on his chest. Since his shirt was already partially unbuttoned, she ran her fingers through his chest hair. And lower.

Grayson liked lower.

Still did, apparently.

Because by the time she trailed her fingers from his stomach and to the front of his jeans, she found him already huge and hard. She pressed her sex against his.

Eve suddenly didn’t feel so cold.

A thought flashed through her head—this was like riding a bicycle. Well, better actually. Her body knew exactly what Grayson could do to her, how he could make her soar. And fall. That wouldn’t happen now. It couldn’t. She had to keep this as clinical as possible. He was merely a sperm donor here and not her lover.

Eve fumbled with his zipper and finally managed to lower it. No thanks to her hands. She was trembling. So was her mouth, but that didn’t seem to affect the kisses she lowered to his neck.

She reached to take off her panties, but Grayson latched onto her hand. His grip was as hard as the part of him she was pressed against.

Her gaze snapped to his, and again Eve was terrified that he was stopping this. But Grayson didn’t look her in the eyes. He made another of those sounds, a growl from deep within his throat, and he grabbed her with his other hand. He turned her, shoving her back against the tree. The impact and her surprise nearly knocked the breath out of her.

Grayson seemed to have no trouble breathing. He yanked off her panties and pushed his hips between her legs. He was on his knees now, and the weight of him pinned her to the tree.

For just a moment, she registered the rough bark against her back and bottom. His raw grip. The harsh profanity he was mumbling. Then, he thrust into her. One long stroke that was nearly as rough as the hold he had on her wrists.

Her body gave way to his sex. Welcoming him. Yes, he was rough, and the thrusts inside her didn’t become gentle, either. Of course, he knew her body as well as she knew his. And Grayson knew her. Gentle didn’t work for
her.
She had always been in such a hurry to have him that she had begged for hard and fast.

Exactly what he was giving her now.

The man knew what he was doing, that was for sure. He’d learned to make love with her. He knew how to bring her to climax within seconds. Normally, Eve would have gladly surrendered to that climax. She would have surrendered to Grayson, but she instinctively knew that would make the aftermath even worse than it already would be.

And it would be
bad.

This would cut her off from Grayson forever. Once he’d had time to apply his logical no-shades-of-gray mind to this, he would feel that she’d manipulated him. And she had. Later, Eve would deal with it, too. But for now, she pressed her mouth to the spot just below his ear. She whispered his name.

“Grayson.”

The trigger,
he had once called it. To finish him off, all she had to do was say his name. It had just the effect she knew it would.

He thrust into her one last time and said her name, too.
Almost.

“Damn you, Eve,” Grayson cursed.

And he finished what he’d started.

Chapter Nine

Grayson got up as soon as he could move. He fixed his clothes and then put some distance between Eve and him. He couldn’t go far, but even a few yards would help.

He hoped.

Behind him, he could hear Eve milling around. She was also mumbling. Grayson didn’t want to figure out what she was saying. He didn’t want to figure out anything except why he’d snapped and done the very thing he’d sworn he wouldn’t do.

“If you’re waiting for me to say I’m sorry, then you’ll be waiting a long time,” Eve let him know. “Because I’m not sorry, and I hope you’re not, either.”

Oh, he was. Sorry and stupid. But that wouldn’t change what had happened. There was no way he could justify having sex with Eve. Yes, she might get pregnant. She might finally get that baby she wanted, but that put him right in a position he didn’t want to be.

He didn’t want to be a father.

Of course, the odds were against Eve having conceived. Grayson had no idea of the stats, but even with her at the prime time of the month, this had to be a long shot.

Hell.

That bothered him, too.

He wanted Eve to have this chance at motherhood, but Grayson wanted what he wanted, as well. Too bad he couldn’t quite put a finger on what he did want. Nor did he have time to figure it out. His phone beeped, and he glanced down at the message as it came onto the screen.

“Is it Dade?” Eve asked, hurrying to his side. She was still fixing her clothes, and she smelled like sex. Looked like it, too, Grayson noticed when he risked glancing at her. He looked away as fast as he could.

“Yeah.” Grayson worked his way through the abbreviations Dade had used in the message and gave her a summary. “He used my cell phone to pinpoint our location and will be here soon.”

She made a sound of relief. So different from the sound she’d made just minutes ago when he’d taken her against the tree. The memory of it flashed through his head, and Grayson knew that memory would give him no peace.

His phone beeped again, and there was a new message from Dade. “He wants me to take a picture of the body,” Grayson relayed to Eve. “As soon as we have a better signal, I can send it to the Rangers and they can feed it through the facial recognition program.”

Something that Grayson should have already thought of, but then he’d had sex with Eve on his mind.

He cursed himself again.

“Wait here,” he ordered, and Grayson walked across the woods to the body. Even the mini break from Eve might help because right now his stomach was knotted even harder than it had been in the middle of the attack.

The dead man was still there, of course, sprawled out among the clumps of dried leaves and fallen tree limbs. Grayson snapped a couple of pictures and checked the signal. Still too weak to send the photos, but he made a mental note to keep checking. He made another mental note not to do any more looking at Eve. No thinking about Eve. No more need for her that was generated below the belt.

Hard to do with her standing there in that body-hugging dress.

“Thank you,” she whispered when he went back to her.

He didn’t want to hear this. “Don’t,” Grayson warned. “Don’t say anything.” He wasn’t a man who dwelled on regrets, but by God he could make an exception.

She stepped in front of him and forced eye contact. “Thank you,” Eve repeated, and she leaned in pressed a chaste kiss on his cheek. His cheek!

Here his body was still burning for her, and she had risked giving him a brotherly kiss like that. The woman really was playing with fire.

Grayson stepped back and fastened his attention on the area where the dead man was. “Did I hurt you?” he growled.