Page 68 of Dead Man's Alibi

“I guess I needed to hear that,” he muttered.

He kept his arms around her, and she hadn’t quite worked on telling herself to let him go, so that even as they looked at each other now, space between their faces, they clung to each other a bit like an anchor.

She wanted to be his anchor.Which was a surprising realization, or at least the force of that feeling was.How much she wanted to give him.This man who could be so damn difficult.

But had such a good heart buried underneath all his issues.

And had her pulse thumping when his gaze moved from her eyes to her mouth.Like that moment before that she wanted to convince herself was her overactive imagination.He had more important things to think about thanher.

But his face was closer now.His mouth just a whisper from hers.All it would take would be to lift her face a little, and him to lower his a hair.Just fractions of space needing to be crossed.

A moment that stretched out, taut as any rubber band.Except it never snapped.It just…eased.Into lips touching lips.

She couldn’t be sure if she’d been the one to cross that last line, or he had.She couldn’t be sure of anything, because with his mouth on hers, she felt like someone else.Suspended in a different time altogether.

She might not have been sure who initiated it, but he was the one who pulled away.At least a little.There was air between their mouths again, though her hands remained fisted in his shirt, and he didn’t release her completely.

But he was studying her.Not breathless and shocked like she felt.He looked studious.A man solving a complex equation.

Jill wasn’t sure she liked that.

“That was…”

“Bad timing?”she offered, because she didn’t know how to see any other way around this than…that.

He laughed.She couldfeelhis laugh against her cheek.What thehelldid she think she was doing?

“Yeah.”But he was staring at her so intently, she didn’t think she could find any other words.“I’m not sure there will ever be good timing,” he said quietly.Seriously.

Jill nodded.She wasn’t sure what that meant—as in this was never going to happen, or maybe it just should because the timing wouldn’t ever be right.She knew she didn’t understand whatanyof this meant or what she should do.Part of it was being so rusty that the kiss had felt like… something different and more special than any kiss she’d ever had.

Surely that was just the time between kissing someone messing with her brain.Her heart.

Then he pressed his mouth to hers again.Surprisingly gentle.Like they had all the time and space in the world to figure out what a kiss could mean.

She couldn’t help but melt into that.Who could?It was persuasive and drugging andwonderful.He cupped her face with his hands.He took his time.Hesavored, and she felt as though she had no choice but to meet that slow, seductive pace.

When he pulled away this time, she had to fight to open her eyes.To return to earth and the here and now.His hands were still on her cheeks.Her breath was coming in strange little puffs.His dark eyes, hazy and conflicted, stared right into her.

He swallowed.“I apologize.Because… I really don’t have the time or brain space to make sense of that right now.So I shouldn’t have initiated it.Even if it was…” He trailed off, clearly searching for a word that would fit.

And coming up as empty as she had.

“I don’t want to keep giving you mixed signals.I don’t want you to think that wasn’t enjoyable,” he continued.

He was starting to sound like a lawyer now.Carefully outlining an argument, which frustrated her enough to poke through the warm, bleary haze of kissing him.

“I can’t deal with this in any kind of reasonable, rational,adultway right now.So we should probably… not.”

She wasn’t surprised he would come to that conclusion.She actually thought she knew him pretty well by now.She still didn’t quite understand what put her in this little box for him, where he felt like he had toprotecther from him… and maybe that was the answer to her many questions about him.

He wasn’t protectingher.He was protecting himself.

“You don’t have the time or brain space to deal with this right now, and youwantto deal with it because you want to reason it away.”

He studied her.His dark eyes seemed very deep and fathomless.He was very smart.His brain moved faster than a lot of people she knew.He was also very… well, traumatized.He had a lot of walls and masks to hide that soft center.

But hedidhave a soft center.She’d seen glimpses of it.With Aly.With Grandma.Even with her.There was a gentleness in him hidden behind all those dark, jagged edges, and it didn’t take a psychiatrist to understand he used thatsharpto shield thegentlebecause of everything he’d been through.