Dream Man

Sometimes his size overwhelmed her and sometimes she was comforted by it, but this was the first time she had had the opportunity to simply sit and study him. He was definitely a big man, even bigger than she had thought, at least six two and over two hundred pounds. The feet parked on her coffee table had to be size twelves, or larger. His shoulders were so wide, he took up almost half the couch; his arms were thick and hard, sinewy with ropy layers of muscle. His chest, she knew, was rock-hard, and so was his abdomen. His long legs, stretched out before him, looked like tree trunks.

His hair was darker than hers, almost black. She eyed the blade of a nose and the brutally carved cheekbones, and wondered if there was any American Indian in his heritage. He had a heavy beard; evidently he had shaved that morning, since there was a fresh-looking nick, but already the black stubble had darkened his jaw.

He leaned forward to get another slice of pizza, and her gaze fell on his hands. Like everything else about him, they were big, easily twice the size of her own. But they weren’t thick hams; though powerful, they were lean and well shaped, with short, clean nails. She felt safe with those hands on her; not safe from him, but from everything else. She didn’t want to be safe from him. She had lost her heart about fifteen minutes ago, and she was still reeling from the shock of it.

He was a cop, a man who made his living in violence. He didn’t commit the violence, as a rule, but he had to clean up after it, he was constantly surrounded by it. Close by his right hand was a big automatic pistol. At some point during the day she had become aware of it, and now she realized that it was never far from his side. A shoulder holster was slung across the back of the couch, beside him.

There was a scar across the back of his right hand. She caught a glimpse of it when he reached for a third slice of pizza, and recognition congealed in her. “That scar on your hand,” she said. “How did you get it? It looks like a knife wound.”

He turned his hand to look at it, then shrugged and gave his attention back to the television. “It is. A close encounter of the punk kind, when I was still working patrol.”

“It looks bad.”

“It wasn’t any fun, but it wasn’t serious. It was a shallow cut, didn’t slice through any tendons. A few stitches and I was as good as new.”

“Gleen cut me,” she said. She didn’t know why she said it; she hadn’t meant to.

His head snapped around, all affability gone as if it had never been, and the expression in those hazel eyes was scary. “What?” he asked softly, putting down the slice of pizza. His thumb moved on the remote control, and the television screen went blank. “The professor didn’t say anything about that.”

She set the plate aside and drew her knees tighter to her chest. “They weren’t serious cuts, just little slices. He was playing with me, trying to break me down with pain and fear. He got off on that; it was what he needed. And he wasn’t trying to kill me, at least not then. He wanted to keep me alive so he could play with me. He would have killed me later, of course, if the sheriff hadn’t gotten there.”

“Let me see.” The words were a soft growl and he was already reaching for her, uncurling her, his hands opening the robe. Marlie struggled briefly for control of the robe, but then he had it open, spreading it wide as he looked down at her, naked except for thin, brief panties.

The scars, six years old, weren’t disfiguring. They would, given time, probably fade completely. She had never fretted about them, because they were so unimportant compared to everything else, and she had never been vain anyway. They were just small, silvery lines, five of them: one on the inner curve of her right breast, the rest on her abdomen. There would have been more, but Gleen had swiftly lost control when the gambit hadn’t worked, degenerating to the crude force of his fists to elicit the response he had wanted.

She quivered, a hot blush staining her cheeks as Dane slowly examined her. She was acutely aware of her bareness, in a way she never had been before. His mouth was a grim line as he traced the line on her breast with his fingertip, the touch as light as a breath. Her nipple tightened, though he wasn’t even touching it. She heard her own ragged breathing as he slowly touched every scar. He was shaking, too, and suddenly she realized that it was with pure fury, at a man forever beyond his reach.

She put her hand on his hair, threading her fingers into the warm thickness of it. “They aren’t important,” she said, forgetting her embarrassment. “Of everything that he did, those little cuts amounted to the least.”

“It isn’t the cuts.” His voice was thick with rage as he pulled her into his arms, cradling her head against his shoulder. “It’s knowing what you went through, how terrified you were. You didn’t know that he wasn’t going to kill you.”

“No, I expected to die. In some ways, that would have been easier.”

12

SOMEHOW SHE WAS BEING HELD ON HIS LAP, HER ROBE STILL open and his hand inside it, but instead of threatened, Marlie felt utterly safe, his warmth and strength surrounding her like a citadel. It was a delicious sensation, one she had never been able to enjoy before. She wanted to sink into him, revel in this new freedom, for that’s what it was, an entirely new vista opened up to her. But Dane wanted information, chapter and verse, and Detective Hollister was very good at getting his way. She could have resisted bullying, but not the waiting silence in which he held himself, a silence in which she could feel his tension. The tension wouldn’t ease until he knew, and so she told him, the ugly details, the guilt that she had held inside for years.