Page 34 of The Broken Places

“There must be a happy medium, though, right?”

He smiled again. “Unfortunately, not every circumstance features a happy medium. Sometimes there are only extremes. Your job—our job—just doesn’t make that easy to deal with.”

She conceded his point with a nod. He was right. Perhaps it shouldn’t be her goal to nonchalantly stroll through a room where people had died violent deaths. Perhaps she should stop beating herself up for her natural reactions. But she also had to do her job. In any case, talking like this with him was soothing her and helping her put her emotions into context. It was helping her let go of some of the pent-up stress. This was what she’d missed about having a partner, though she didn’t at all feel toward him how she’d felt toward Tommy and still did—sisterly. But Ambrose was kind and understanding and he was making her feel safe, and she couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt this way.

But it wasn’t just that. She’d felt simmering attraction to this man since she first laid eyes on him, but she’d desperately tried to hold that back. His supportive words, his touch—the way he was looking ather—was crumbling her resistance. And once it started crumbling, it crumbled fast.

When she gripped his hand back, his eyes moved to their fingers, laced together. She saw his nostrils flare very slightly, and a muscle jumped in the corner of his eye. She became very aware of him, too,the air between them charging. Electricity sparked in her stomach, but it wasn’t at all unpleasant—not like the buzz of anxiety she was so used to feeling. Ambrose Mars made her feel alive, energized, but in a way she loved and hadn’t felt in so, so long. She leaned over, and she brought her mouth to his. He froze, obviously surprised, and she moved closer, bringing his hand inside her robe and covering her breast with it. She pressed her palm over the top of his, and he moaned, seeming to break out of the momentary shock he’d been in, using his other hand on the back of her neck to tilt her head so he could kiss her in earnest.

Without breaking their kiss, she climbed on top, straddling him, her blood heating when she felt the hard evidence of his arousal between her thighs. God, he tasted good, and he felt good too. Sleek and solid. Their kiss deepened, and he made that sexy sound of desperation in the back of his throat again. It sounded raw and primal, and it drove her higher, her pulse pumping blood to her core, nipples tingling.Life.This was life. Not death. The opposite of the thing she was trying to shrug off from today, to deny, to turn away from.

He flipped her off him, onto her back on the couch, and she bounced slightly and laughed. And then he was over her, claiming her mouth again, pressing his groin into her and grinding slightly. “Is this okay?” he asked, holding his weight off her. And that’s when she realized that he’d thought about the fact that he was putting her in the same position she’d been in today when she was victimized, and he didn’t want her to be reminded of it in any way. But she hadn’t thought about that, and the realization brought a surge of relief.

“It’s better than okay,” she said. She’d needed this. She hadn’t realized how much. She pulled him back toward her so he was once again pressing right where she needed him. Tingles of pleasure radiated from the place where he pressed, and she gasped and broke from his mouth, tipping her head back so he could kiss her throat.

He brought his mouth to her skin, dragging his warm lips down her bruised neck, feathering them over her wounded skin and then kissing the hollow at the base of her throat as he ground into her again.Everything drifted away, and she realized what a weight she’d felt hanging over her—not just today, but for such a long time. She suddenly felt unencumbered.Free.

Kissing him like this on her couch reminded her of those teenage make-out sessions, but ten times better. All lips and tongues and still-clothed pressing bodies, hormones rushing crazily. She felt dizzy with lust. She’d forgotten thejoythere was to be found in sex, the way it made everything brighter and hotter. She’d needed this. God, she’d needed this.

But she also needed more. And she wasn’t a teenager anymore. There were no limits, no boundaries. She was a fully grown woman, and she could have sex with this man on her couch if she wanted to. It’d been years since she’d been with a man. Years! It made her want to laugh.

She wrapped her legs around his circling hips, tilting upward as her robe fell open, and she felt the cool air of the room on her naked breasts. Ambrose exhaled against her skin, lifting his head as he met her eyes.Oh.She blinked, momentarily stunned by his beauty: not only his face and his features, but the way those bedroom eyes looked when they were filled with lust. There was something else there, too, however. A vulnerability. A tentative joy that she’d never once seen on any man’s face, ever. She felt inexplicably awed by it, even as she couldn’t explain why or how or even who. Was it she who’d put that look in his eyes?

He exhaled, leaning back, his gaze moving from her face down to her breasts. She was glad to let him look, wanting a few moments to study him, too, to soak in that expression in his eyes that made her feel both honored and confused and slightly overwhelmed.

“Lennon ...,” he began, his voice gravelly. She shivered as though the word—her name on his lips—had come to life somehow and scraped across her skin. Her nipples pebbled, and his eyes flared. “Maybe we ... are you sure?” he asked. “Do you want this?”

This.Him.Them.“Is this against your brotherhood oath too?” she asked, to infuse some lightness into the moment. Because he’d paused,and now she was questioning it, too, despite the fact that her body ached for him.This.It suddenly seemed filled with far more gravity than she understood. And maybe he did; maybe that was the look in his eyes that she didn’t comprehend. But he laughed softly at her question, bringing his eyes to hers. “No. I just don’t want you to regret doing something in a moment of ... well, after today.”

“I want this, Ambrose. I want you.” His gaze held to hers, and he must have seen her certainty—and perhaps her need—because he brought his lips back to hers, and then the next thing she knew, she was in his arms and he was carrying her through the living room and down the very short hallway to her bedroom.

He placed her down gently on the bed, pushing her robe aside, his gaze roaming over her naked skin. The look on his face ... he seemedawestruck, and it made the shyness she’d momentarily felt at being naked in front of him melt away. “You are so beautiful, Lennon,” he said.

She smiled, holding out her hand to him. He kicked his shoes off and then quickly removed his clothes before climbing into bed with her.

They kissed again, and their kisses were both languorous and filled with urgency. She relished his taste, his scent, the way his hard, honed body felt above hers, and the velvety roughness of his skin. She allowed herself to get lost in him, and it felt so good, sonecessary. It was beautiful, he was beautiful, and the way he looked at her made her feel so beautiful too. His expression looked like she’d imagine on a person gazing at the Grand Canyon, or the first snowfall. Mesmerized. Entranced. Appreciative. His hand trembled slightly as it moved over her skin, exploring her, and reexamining the places that made her gasp or moan.

His hand lingered between her thighs, and she thought she might scream with frustration before he parted her with his fingers, and she gasped with pleasure, leaning her head back into the pillow as hestroked and teased, nearly driving her to the edge. “Condom?” he gritted. “Please tell me you have a condom?”

A what?She could barely think through the fog of lust.A condom.No, she didn’t. Wait—yes, she did! “The closet,” she said, as though she’d just remembered the buried treasure amid her clothing. With the raise of his brow, he climbed out of bed, and she was treated to the view of his muscular back as he opened the door and looked inside.

“Shelf to your left,” she said.

He reached in, and when he turned her way, he was holding the ridiculous visor with condoms hanging from it that had been passed around at the bar from woman to woman during a coworker’s bachelorette shindig. She’d forced herself to go to that and left the moment she could, still wearing that stupid hat that was now actually the most beautiful, wonderful creation she’d ever seen.

Ambrose tore one of the condoms off, climbed back into bed, and slid the protection on as his mouth returned to hers, her hormones taking up the same dance again as though the music had only briefly paused but the desire to revel had not. She almost laughed at the silly nature of her thoughts and that dumb hat that had saved the moment, just all of it. Of him. And how much she’d needed this brief vacation from reality and also from herself.

His mouth came to her breast, his tongue lapping at her nipple before he gave one long suck, causing a lightning rod of arousal to shoot between her legs, her hips bucking toward his hand. “Please,” she said, the word ripped from her throat. She needed him inside her or she’d lose her mind. Her skin felt charged, her nerve endings vibrating with the need for release.

Their eyes met as he lined himself up at her entrance and then surged inside, his lids closing as his lips parted, expression contorting in bliss.Oh God. Oh my God.And then his hips began to move.

She watched him as he thrust inside her, his dark lashes lying in a crescent beneath his eyes. They were thick and fringed, and there was something beautifully boyish about them that was so contradictory tothe muscular breadth of his shoulders beneath her palms and the masculine scent of his skin. And of course, the way his body was moving over her, and inside her, a steady pace that was nudging her higher with every quickened press. He’d been a study in contrasts to her since the moment they’d met, but one thing she could not deny was her attraction to him or this thrilling feeling of watching his reaction to her. Watching the way he was trying so mightily to hold on to control, and almost managing but not quite.

She had a flash of the way he’d gazed up at her as he knelt before her after the attack, hands warm on her thighs, and then of the way he’d looked when he described the songbird in South America. Both those expressions were flitting over his features now—concern, peace, focus, but with the addition of naked desire. God, he was so expressive when he wanted to be. Or maybe when he couldn’t help himself. And those eyes, those sleepy, sexy eyes that nearly sent her spinning.

He gave a twist of his hips that sent a shock wave of pleasure to her toes, and she gasped, wrapping her legs around him and tilting her hips so he could go even deeper. “Lennon,” he whispered, a plea of his own. And she didn’t want this to end but could feel the pinpricks of pleasure dancing between her legs and tightening her belly.

It only took three more strokes before she came, shattering apart and then slowly coming back together, blinking up at him as he increased his pace, finally shattering, too, as he groaned and panted and pressed his face into her neck, rocking slowly and then stilling with a pleasure-filled sigh.

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