CHAPTER 26
At the top of the stairwell, Brenna dug in the camera bag that Jasha had retrieved for her and pulled out a small flashlight. Twisting the doorknob, she carefully descended the rubble-strewn stairs.
She found Grace sitting on the floor of the landing, asleep against the wall with her head tipped back, her jacket in her lap and eyeglasses folded in her hand.
Crouching in front of her, Brenna set the bag and camera on the floor and lifted the light.
A small dry sound cracked in her throat.
Grace’s face was flecked with blood and bits of tissue.
Tear tracks had smeared a path through them.
Who wouldn’t weep? She could see Grace’s age tonight, the lines that appeared at the corners of the eyes and mouth when a forty-something woman had been pushed to the limits of endurance.
Her heart tumbled, touched by Grace’s courage in the operating room and her vulnerability now.
It had been difficult for Brenna to film the surgery, but Grace had been the one holding the patient down, viscerally feeling the anguish through her hands.
Beneath her genteel manner, she was tough, disciplined, morally courageous—all traits that Brenna respected.
But it was Grace’s kindness that took her breath away.
Grace groaned, grimacing in her sleep, her expression as pained as it had been in the surgical suite.
Brenna reached out, impulsively placing two feather-light fingertips on the deep furrows between her brows.
Her fingers scarcely skimmed Grace’s skin, but the contact felt charged.
Gradually, she extended the path, tracing her brows, her forehead, her temples.
She fine-combed Grace’s hair. All the attraction she felt for her concentrated itself in her fingertips.
The worry lines eased. Brenna smiled. Unable to stop herself, Brenna brought her fingertips down Grace’s cheeks and brushed her thumb across her lips.
Grace stirred, opening her eyes.
Brenna snatched her hand back.
“That felt nice,” Grace whispered.
“You were having a nightmare.”
Grace’s blue eyes rose and searched Brenna’s. “How do you do this?” she asked. “How do you not lose your mind?”
“Who’s to say I haven’t?” She meant it sardonically, but her words contained more truth than she cared to admit.
Grace’s brows furrowed.
Brenna turned away, busying herself by extracting the first aid kit from her bag.
Pulling out alcohol swabs, she tore open several packets, forming a little wad with them.
She wanted to clean Grace before she caught her reflection and freaked out about what was on her face.
“Here,” she said, gently lifting Grace’s chin. “Let me fix you.”
Grace watched her closely as she dabbed.
Inches away from her, she could feel Grace’s essence.
She took her time, tossing aside the swabs when they became too soiled.
When only the eye area remained, too close for alcohol, she did what her mother used to when Brenna was a child.
She licked her thumb and rubbed it across the eyelids and beneath her eyes.
Impulsively, Grace reached forward, caught Brenna’s elbows and tugged gently. Her eyes shifted to Grace’s mouth.
Brenna’s heart kicked into high gear. She’s going to kiss me! She shot to her feet. “Morgue is next,” she said, nervously brushing off her pants.
Grace rose with effort, stiff from injury. Head tipped to one side, pensively looking her up and down, she stepped forward.
Brenna retreated. “Two hundred fifty bodies in a facility built for ten,” she prattled. “No refrigeration, and the drains are—”
“Shh, shh,” Grace murmured, crowding her as gently as if she were injured wildlife in need of help.
Heart hammering, Brenna backed up, one step after another, with Grace following.
Brenna’s heel touched the wall.
Grace stepped forward, leaving scant inches between them. Tenderly, she assessed Brenna. “Well,” she finally said. “That was an interesting reaction.”
Brenna’s breath hitched. Ever since she’d met Grace, she’d been sideslipping along the shoulder of a crumbling mountain, inexorably sliding down the incline into her embrace.
Grace had eased past her barriers with simple acts of kindness.
She’d comforted her, kept her heart open, and promised shelter.
She wakened Brenna’s heart and made her want to hand it into her care.
Grace reached out, combing a strand of hair off Brenna’s temple. “Is that because you don’t want me to touch you—or, because you do?”
Brenna’s chest caved in. Grace was everything she wanted, everyplace she wanted to be. But Kav?ak was circling them, waiting with sharp talons and razor beak. No, no, no. She couldn’t risk attachment again.
Grace leaned forward, gradually moving in for the kiss that Brenna desired but feared.
Desperately tempted, Brenna swayed without withdrawing.
And again, Grace followed, bringing her mouth within a breath’s distance. “Hm?” she gently prompted.
I don’t know, Brenna thought, as Grace hovered, mesmerizing her, waiting for consent. Could there not be one good thing in my world? She parted her lips.
“Is it because I’m a woman?” Grace murmured.
“No. Not—” The ache spreading through her pulled her forward, as if Grace were an inescapable gravitational force.
It had been so long since Brenna had been enfolded, so long since she’d experienced intimacy.
Maybe this could just be sex. She could separate the physical from the emotional, right? Before Ari, she’d done it all the time.
Grace slid her fingertips down the side of Brenna’s cheek and put her palm on Brenna’s neck, gently guiding her forward.
Haltingly, Brenna acceded. She was touch-starved, standing way too close to the source of singular temptation, and tired of resisting.
Grace rested her cheek against Brenna’s temple with a soft sigh, and pressed light kisses into her hair, her temple, her ear.
Slowly, she brought her mouth down. Lips pressed to lips, she appropriated Brenna’s mouth a degree at a time, savoring her without hurry.
This wasn’t the kiss Brenna’d expected: eager, possessive.
It was a tendril slipping through her, winding through her core, gathering her with surreptitious strength, and curling its way down her lower back to a breathtakingly-vulnerable erotic zone.
Brenna slipped her hands around Grace’s waist, steadying herself as long-dormant sexual pathways awakened, begging for more of that good thing. God help her, Grace had moves. Unhurriedly, she was igniting every sexual nerve in Brenna’s body. Oh, sweet woman. It’s been so long since I felt this.
Grace’s hands slid down her neck and over her shoulders, landing softly on her breasts. She was wearing a sports bra, her bosom confined. Tch. She tugged the shirt from the waistband, slipping her warm hands up the bare skin of her back, seeking the tiny hooks.
“The clasp is in front,” Brenna whispered, abetting her own plunge down the mountainside.
The backs of Grace’s fingers nestled in Brenna’s bosom as she released the bra.
“Mm.” The sound left her like a sigh. “Much better.”
She captured the freed breasts in her palms, relishing the heft and roundness of the warm orbs.
Bending forward, Grace kissed the hollows of Brenna’s neck, while she stroked her nipples, skillfully provoking them.
“You’re so beautiful,” she murmured, lowering her mouth to them now, kissing and suckling her, inciting the areolae into taut peaks.
Brenna nearly buckled.
Grace soughed with delight. “Oh, Brenna.”
Brenna hesitated fractionally. This is so reckless. But her hands overruled her caution, setting a course of their own, traveling over the ridges of Grace’s shoulders, sliding down the slope of her back.
Grace’s eyes darkened. She closed the distance between them, skimming Brenna’s pelvis with her own.
Delight tumbled through Brenna. Just feel the pleasure of body meeting body. Don’t think. This isn’t—
Grace brought her mouth onto Brenna’s again, her lips and tongue sensuously stoking her. Tucking her pelvis forward, she roused Brenna’s long-dormant craving. Desperate for more intimate contact, Brenna tipped her own hips forward, instinctively seeking more.
Catching a shuddering breath, Grace slid her hands down Brenna’s front, and tugged at her belt buckle, the button of her pants, the zipper.
Brenna heard the catch of Grace’s breath, felt the heat rising off her, mingling with her own.
Fumbling with Grace’s belt, she opened the steel button of her jeans, and eagerly tugged out her shirt.
She wanted this connection—needed it more desperately than she had realized.
She’d been adrift for so long—survived the unthinkable alone—and she needed tethering.
Grace hooked her thumbs over Brenna’s waistband and panties, and slipped them over the curve of her hips. Released, the clothing fell to her ankles.
Bracing herself on Grace’s upper arm, Brenna yanked at her boots, freeing her legs from the pants. Straightening, naked from the waist down, she turned to Grace, eased open her zipper, and pulled her clothing down, sliding everything to the floor.
Grace stepped out of her things. Returning her attention to Brenna, she said: “Open?” gently indicated with her hand that Brenna should spread a knee.
Leaning against the wall, Brenna did as Grace bade.
Grace moved into her again, and began gliding the backs of her fingers down her intimate crease, over the delicate tissues, caressing them, arousing her, provoking her to slickness.
With each caress, their breaths quickened, deepening as their passion deepened.
Press in, Brenna wanted to say, Stop teasing, and enter me.
I’m ready. But her excited flesh was so exquisitely provoked, her entire body so inflamed, she could scarcely breathe, never mind speak.
And still Grace trailed her clever fingers along the wet path between clitoris and vaginal slit, and up again in figure eights.
Pressing her knuckles enticingly deeper into Brenna’s opening on each pass, Grace crossed Brenna’s tender clitoris this way, then that, catching the edge of the deep orgasm she was building.
Ripples of pleasure popped on the periphery of Brenna’s senses, building a growing sense of abandonment.
Each time Grace neared her center, she tipped forward, desperately willing those skillful fingers wholly inside herself.
And still, Grace teased her with partial incursions and withdrawals.
Feeling she was going to shatter, Brenna whispered: “Now. Oh, please, now.” I’m wet. I’m ready.
At last, Grace slid three fingers inward.
Brenna gasped, crying out, clinging to her while her body molded itself around her fingers.
Grace stilled. “You okay?” she murmured. “Shall I—?”
Brenna, face buried in Grace’s neck, managed to shake her head. “I’m fine, don’t stop.”
Moving inside her, Grace intensified the cadence.
Matching her, Brenna moaned. Oh, the delicious friction, the exquisite expansion of her innermost self!
And, oh, Grace’s care!
Her heart squeezed. Grace wasn’t like the sophomoric males that Brenna’d had sex with in her youth, men who used her for their own gratification—but from whom she could sequester her heart.
Grace was making love to her, carefully, attentively, her heart and body fully invested.
There’d only ever been one person who’d made her feel this way—Ari.
And the last time she’d been with him… She shook her head, fighting to keep her emotions from whipping loose, trying to stay in the present.
She closed her eyes. Don’t think about what’s lost. Let this just be sex.
“This isn’t too much, Bren?”
“No,” she whispered, grinding her hips. “More.”
And on that word, restraint deserted them.
Grace’s sweat mingled with hers, primal moans flew from their throats.
Their bodies undulated in rhythm, answering each other’s quickening desire with their own cresting urgency.
Sexual tension coiled tighter and tighter, knotting up on itself.
Again and again, Grace drove in, plundering her as if she couldn’t get deep enough, or close enough.
In the frenzy of such intimate trespass, the physical hammering began crumbling the barriers around Brenna’s tattered heart.
With her touch, Grace was laying her open, dismantling her defenses, reaching into her innermost core.
She felt herself cracking, perilously close to breaking open.
I can’t do this with my heart unprotected.
I have to safeguard myself. Desperately clinging to the illusion of separation, fighting to isolate her heart from her body, Brenna couldn’t stop now.
She matched Grace thrust for thrust, touch for touch, desperately trying to concentrate on the physical and not surrender her emotions.
Her voice broke loose, mixing with the sound of Grace’s own deep need.
The final ecstasy engulfed them. A racking orgasm swept through her.
Bodies had touched soul, and sex had transformed itself into raw, unguarded, feelings—attachment, caring, connection.
Overwhelmed, she rocked, sobbing, ambushed by the feelings she’d thought herself immune from.
Oh, Ari, Ari, she wept, terrified by this emotional exposure.
Why had he taught her how to do this with her heart open?
Grace grunted as if she’d been punched. Her body grew rigid. She withdrew her fingers from Brenna’s core.
“Oh,” Brenna protested. “Not yet.”
But Grace pulled out and stepped back. “Who am I?” she demanded. “Look at me and tell me who you see.”
“What?” Brenna asked, bewildered. She looked in Grace’s face and was shocked. She was angry and hurt. But why?
“Were you fantasizing I’m a man?”
“What? No! I’m—” What just happened?
“Name me,” Grace ordered.
She gave her head a shake, trying to clear it. “Grace,” she said. “Alcott.”
“Grace. Not ‘Ari’.”
The statement stunned Brenna. She must have said Ari’s name aloud! “Oh, God, Grace, I—”
Grace cut off her protest. “Morgue is next.” She yanked up her pants, stuffed her shirt into the waistband and jerked the zipper closed. “We have work to do.”
Brenna watched her miserably, heart spiraling as Grace swept up her jacket and punched her arms into the sleeves. What could she say? I lost my mind? I jumped the track? It was body memory?
Grace put her foot on the first staircase step, then halted and turned. “I have feelings, Brenna. I’m not some sort of plaything.”
She took the rest of the steps. The upstairs door scraped open, then shut again. Brenna remained below, naked from the waist down, boots scattered, pants and underwear pooled on the cold concrete floor. She dropped her face into her hands, fighting tears, and slid down the wall.