Page 53 of The Devoted Game

“Go away, McBride.” There was a crazed fan out there kidnapping people to make him look like a hero, and he was asking her about hersex life? Talk about a trip into the Twilight Zone ... They were there and checking out T-shirts.

“Did you feel it?”

“Okay.” She shot to her feet. “That’s enough.” She paced, mostly in circles, but it seemed the thing to do. Anger sparked, making her want to kick something.

“I’m not talking necessarily about an orgasm, Grace.” He pushed to his feet, propped against the doorframe. “I’m talking about feeling it. Here.” He patted the center of his chest. “Or do you disappear during sex the way you must have when Nameless made you ... do those things.”

She stopped, pointed a furious look at him. “There’s nothing wrong with me, McBride. I’m fine. I can do my job. I can lead a normal life. I’m not the disappearing girl.”

Her circle expanded, became more of an oval shape. She had to keep moving or risk hitting him.

She had heard all those questions before.You need more therapy, Vivian. How can you expect to experience true intimacy if you remain in denial?Each new voice echoing in her brain made her more furious. She hadn’t done anything wrong. She had survived. That was all. Yes, she’d had to do ...things... she never wanted to think about again. But she was alive!

There were twelve other women lying dead in the ground because of that twisted piece of shit! She had lived to tell about it, and that was what counted.

She refused to think about him or that time. That part of her life was over. She had a career. Building that career was her focus now. A deeper relationship would come later. She wouldn’t be twenty-seven until her next birthday. There was time, dammit.

McBride waited for his answer. Damn him.

“Go back into the room,” she snapped.

He shook his head. “Not until you tell me the truth.” That husky, rich voice slid over her skin, making her shiver despite the fury lashing through her. “Do you remember the truth? How to really feel? To letgo and enjoy the moment? How to savor the pleasure ... to allow your partner all the way inside?”

“I suppose you know all about the pleasure and getting all the way inside,” she mocked. He was such a hypocrite! Here he was telling her how she should lead her life, and he was hiding behind booze andsex!

“I might be running away from who I used to be,” he admitted, “but I know who I am now, Grace. I feel it more than I want to. I don’t always like it, but I’m damned sure not afraid of it.”

She strode up to him, stared at that face with all its too-intriguing angles and lines. Peered into those assessing blue eyes. “I’m not afraid, McBride. Remember, I kissed you.”

He licked his lips as if he had just remembered that too. “That’s when I knew you did that little vanishing act. I felt you disappear.”

“You don’t know anything about what I feel!” How dare he be so damned arrogant! “If, as you claim, I disappeared during that kiss, it was because my mind wandered. Maybe that was about you, not me.”

He straightened away from the doorframe, put his body close enough to hers that she could feel his heat ... close enough that he could have kissed her with the tiniest shift of his head.

“When I kiss you, Grace, you’ll feel me.”

Her body humming with the need to let him prove his point, she retreated a step. “Go back into the room.” She took her seat and aimed her attention straight ahead. Just one more hour. All she had to do was get through one more hour, and then Pratt would be up.

Birmingham-Shuttlesworth International Airport, 7:00 a.m.

“We’re inside.” Vivian scanned the line at the ticket counter. “He’s at the counter now,” she told Pratt. “We’ll wait for you at the food court.”

She put her phone away and met McBride as he left the counter. “Pratt’s coming from short-term parking. We’ll meet him in the food court.”

Operating on less than an hour of sleep was going to make for a long day. She had relieved Pratt at two thirty. At four thirty they had prepared for the trip to the airport.

Most of that time in between she had either been arguing with McBride or walking off the fury he had ignited with his psychoanalyzing. The part that infuriated her most was that a whole lot of what he had kindled hadn’t been fury.

Her first high-profile case, and she couldn’t keep her head screwed on straight.

Maybe she did need more therapy.

As they followed the signs to the food court, she tried to recall the last time she’d had sex. Last month? July?

Sad. Really sad.

When you had to work that hard to remember, it couldn’t have been memorable.