“Genevieve?” He sat up in bed, stared at her with confused eyes. “What’s going on?”

“The shutters. I need to close—” Her voice broke as she rushed from window to window as fast as she could, slamming each shutter closed until the room was once again blanketed by darkness.

Only then did she stop, her back to him as she tried to get control of the panic racing through her system. How could she be so stupid—again? Wasn’t once enough of a humiliation?

Horrified, panicked, she tried desperately to remember what had happened after she’d gotten to Cole’s a few hours before. They hadn’t made love—she’d been too zonked for that—but he had undressed her, showered her, carried her, naked, to his bed.

For a brief moment she thought back to Torres, who had followed her out of the station and through the Quarter to her house. Had he stuck around to see her climb into her car, or had he left once she was safely indoors? Had he been following her to keep her safe, or for some other, nefarious reason?

Luc, Shawn, Chastian, Jefferson, Jose—their faces swam through her head until Genevieve worried she might actually go insane. What was she thinking? They were cops, all of them. Her friends and partners, even her boss. There was no way any of them would do this to her. No way one of them could be this sadistic and manage to hide it so well. She was simply letting paranoia get the better of her.

“Hey, earth to Genevieve.” Cole’s hands landed heavily on her shoulders, and then he was turning her to face him. “You want to tell me what the hell that was all about?”

“No.” Her voice was rusty to her own ears. “I really don’t.”

“Let me rephrase that.” He strode over to the bed, pulling her behind him with a hand around her wrist. “I want to know what that was about. Now.”

He switched on his bedside lamp and a soft puddle of light chased away the last vestiges of night. If only he could do the same for the darkness invading her soul. But he couldn’t. She smiled sadly. He was just a man—one who spent most of his own life in the shadows. It was unfair of her to ask him to take on her ghosts as well.

“I freaked out.” She shrugged, tried to play it off. “I’m sorry—I’ve got an overdeveloped sense of paranoia. Sometimes it gets the best of me.”

The look he gave her was patently disbelieving. “You are the least paranoid person I know.”

She snorted. “Don’t bet on that.”

“Why are you lying to me?” His voice was curiously devoid of the anger she’d expected, and when she finally met his eyes, they were completely blank. As if he’d gone inside himself and nothing she said was going to be able to reach him.

Fear, ice-cold and vicious, whipped through her. Not Cole too, a little voice whispered in the back of her head. She was on the brink of losing another victim, her job, and the respect of her colleagues. She couldn’t lose Cole too, not when she’d just begun to figure out what he meant to her.

Too humiliated to tell him what was really going on, too frightened not to try to smooth things over, she finally said, “It’s work stuff, Cole. Can we leave it at that?”

“You think that sick bastard is following you? That he’s out there right now?”

He pulled her into his chest, held her tightly for one long inhalation, then shoved her behind him. He crossed the room in three strides and threw open the patio doors before she could stop him.

His eyes—dark and hyperalert—scanned the backyard, and she knew he didn’t miss anything in the early morning light. But when he strode outside, stark naked, she grabbed a blanket and clambered after him. “Cole, get in here! You can’t go out like that.”

He didn’t even acknowledge that she had spoken, and she knew he wouldn’t until he was well and truly satisfied. Time dragged as he walked his backyard, looking behind every tree and bench.

When he finally came back in, he was grim-faced and intense. Slamming the door behind him, he made sure the shutters were completely closed. Then he turned to face her, fury in every controlled line of his body.

Chapter Eighteen

“Tell me.” Cole’s voice was cold, his eyes colder as he watched her intently.

“It’s nothing.”

“He’s messing with you. That sick son of a bitch is hassling you, and you tell me it’s nothing?” His hands clenched into fists. “Worse, you don’t even tell me at all.”

“It’s not like that.”

“No?” He stalked toward her, every inch the sleek, sinuous jungle cat she’d thought him at their first meeting. And every inch as deadly. “Then what is it like?”

There was a desert in her mouth, and no matter how hard Genevieve tried to form words, nothing came out but a dry, dusty croak. Shaking her head, she backed hastily away. She’d never seen Cole like this before—he was all predator, all strong male animal on the hunt. And though it was nerve-racking in the extreme to be the focus of all that hostile male energy, it was also arousing as hell.

He stopped mere inches from her, his huge body crowding her from every side. “I’m waiting, Genevieve.”

The impatience in his tone set her free, got her back up and her mouth working before she could consider the wisdom of blowing him off. “Back off, Cole! I’m not some plaything to be backed into a corner by the big, hungry cat.”

His eyes swept down her nude, trembling body. “I never said you were. But you will tell me what’s going on.”

“And if I don’t?” She raised her chin, glared at him with narrow eyes.

“That’s not an option.”

Before she could so much as tell him to go to hell, he’d reached out and grabbed her. Yanked her against him. Lowered his mouth to hers in a kiss that was both brand and punishment.

Heat exploded instantly. Hot. Basic. Elemental. It flashed between them, through them, burned them from the inside out and then set fire to the room around them until nothing mattered but the way they made each other feel.

Maybe she should have pushed him away, should have fought against the possession of the gesture. But she didn’t. She couldn’t. As caught up as he was in the conflagration roaring between them, she chose instead to surrender. To let him take her however he wanted to—however he needed to.

Her body went pliant, the fight leaking out of her as she pressed herself as tightly against him as she could get. Her hands grabbed on to his shoulders and hung on, the need to touch him, to feel his strength under her fingers, a compulsion she couldn’t begin to fight.

His arms tightened around her, lifting her onto her tiptoes as his mouth devoured hers. Wild, hungry, desperately searching, he took everything she had to give and demanded more. Demanded everything. And she gave it to him, because she couldn’t not give it to him. To herself. Her need was that basic. That deep.

That primal.

Cole tore his mouth from hers and she whimpered, her hands grabbing his head and trying to force his lips back to hers. “Don’t stop!” she all but sobbed. “Don’t leave me like this.”

His only answer was a growl as he picked her up and threw her onto the bed. “I couldn’t stop if I wanted to,” he said as he climbed on top of her.

His lips closed over her nipple, and she felt the sharp bite of his teeth. She screamed, her back arching as her hands grasped his head and pulled him even closer. He nipped again and again, but unlike the other times, refused to soothe the little hurts with his tongue. Instead, he left them to burn, to throb, to make her hotter still.

“Cole!” It was a plea, a demand, a cry for mercy, but she had pushed him too far—her refusal to let him protect her sending him over an edge he hadn’t known he was balanced on. All he could think of was branding her, possessing her, making her his in a way she could never dispute.

His c**k was throbbing, burning, the need for release so urgent he was afraid he’d lose it before he buried himself inside her. But he had to take care of her, had to hang on until he was inside of her.

“I need you, Genevieve. I need you in a way I don’t understand.” He panted the words in between sharp little nibbles on her belly and inner thighs. “I need to hold you, to feel your body under mine.”

“I’m right here!” It was a high-pitched, keening cry, one filled with need and desperation and something he didn’t know how to label. Something he was afraid to label.

“I need you to let me protect you.” He sank his teeth into her thigh, savoring the strangled scream that came from her. “Trust me that much.”

“I’m the cop,” she gasped out, her body trembling wildly beneath his. “I protect myself.”

He thrust two fingers into her, hard, and she screamed. He gritted his teeth, willed back the orgasm that rose in him with each clench of her pu**y around his fingers. But she was so hot—so goddamned hot—that he would die if he wasn’t inside her. Soon.

But first, she needed to understand. He knew she was strong and smart and more than capable of taking care of herself—those were the things that had first attracted him to her. But she was also his woman, and if some bastard dared to lay a hand on her, he would annihilate him.

“If some psychopath is after you, I need to know.” He curved his fingers, stroked them over her G-spot at the exact moment he closed his lips around her hot, hard little clit.

Her only response was a broken moan as her breath hitched in her throat.

Smiling grimly at the sound, he swirled his tongue around the little bud, using his fingers to spread her labia so that she was wide open for him. Pink and wet and so goddamned beautiful, she drew him in like nothing ever had, captured his soul when it had been lost for far too long. Made him ache in ways he’d never thought possible.

Because he wanted more of her—he wanted all of her—he moved on from her sweet little cl*t too soon. But it wasn’t enough for him, the slow lick and swirl. With a groan, he thrust his tongue inside of her, desperate to taste everything she had to offer. Insane with the need to take her in every way imaginable.

She went wild at the first touch of his tongue inside her, bucking and jerking and arching against him as her hands clenched in his hair. They pulled hard, and he saw stars even as he continued his sensual assault on her hot pussy.

Her juices ran over his tongue like honey and he delved deeper, loving the taste of her. It exploded against his tongue—spicy and sweet and so much like Genevieve herself that it made him crazy. Made him desperate to give her the same overwhelming pleasure she gave him just by existing. The same pleasure that burned through all resistance, all excuses. That flamed brighter and brighter with each encounter, until neither of them knew where one left off and the other began.

He pulled her cl*t into his mouth and rolled it gently between his teeth. She whimpered, tried to reach for him, but he shifted his h*ps away from her. One touch of those warm hands and he would go up in flames hotter than the ones currently burning through him.

But he wasn’t done yet, nowhere near it. Thrusting his hands under her hips, he lifted her so that she was sitting on him, her beautiful sex positioned directly above his mouth.

He’d wanted to do this since the first time he’d touched her, had wanted her above him so that he could kiss and taste and lick her to orgasm while she moved restlessly against him.

His hands moved around to cup her ass, to stroke and mold and squeeze the sweet flesh before slowly, inexorably, he pushed his thumb in between her soft cheeks. She tightened around him, her whole body going rigid at the unexpected invasion.

“It’s okay,” he whispered against her sex, loving how she trembled at the vibrations from his breath and the soft little licks of his tongue. “Trust me. I’ll take care of you.”

He sensed her hesitation, her fear of giving him everything. But he was beyond boundaries, beyond separation. He needed Genevieve, had to know she felt the same way about him.