“Yes. I don’t think you should go. Come with me now. I’ll make you dinner at my condominium. We’ll talk . . . or . . . or not, if you don’t want to.”
He leaned down and kissed her opened lips, lingering when he caught her taste on his searching tongue. He felt guilty. She sounded so worried . . .
After a moment, he lifted his head reluctantly. He’d be a liar if he said he wasn’t fantasizing about having her yet again . . . taking her in another fevered frenzy. He’d heard death could heighten the sexual instinct. People needed to feel alive in the midst of their anguish . . . to celebrate the fullness of existence when death hovered and beckoned into the void.
Thomas now knew firsthand how true it was.
“Tell me your address,” he muttered as he nudged her middle with his once again stiff cock before he backed away, depriving himself. At least for a while. His body was far from being done celebrating Sophie Gable’s vibrant existence. Next time, he’d take it slow. Now that he’d consumed her, next time he’d savor her.
If he could get a handle on himself, anyway.
He nodded when she said her Gold Coast address. He’d remember, even if his concentration hadn’t been that great for the past several days . . . even if the past few days had been a strange collage of too-bright, vivid images and darkness. Thomas didn’t forget numbers.
“I’ll meet you at your place in a few hours. I promise. No one and nothing is going to keep me away from a second time, Sophie.”
A shadow flickered across her beautiful face, but Thomas determinedly levered his body away from hers.
He hadn’t remembered.
The thought kept replaying like a skipped record over and over again in her brain as she locked up her office after Thomas left. He hadn’t remembered last night . . . hadn’t remembered making love to her.
He thought he’d just made love to her for the first time.
Her brain couldn’t quite seem to wrap around the reality of it. She’d known he’d been traumatized . . . unwell, but she hadn’t guessed he wouldn’t remember, that he’d become amnesic to those hours in her bed, to their raw, volatile lovemaking. Another thought made her freeze while her key was in the door.
What else didn’t he remember?
The thought sent her brain into another riot of uncertainty. She’d been stunned when he’d mentioned that he’d just made love to her for the first time in her office just now. At first, she’d thought it must be a joke, but then she’d taken in Thomas’s rigid muscles and tortured glance and known in a rush of dread that it wasn’t.
She’d stopped herself from spilling the truth. He was like a walking time bomb. Who knew what would happen if she suddenly forced him to recall what he’d forgotten?
She shouldn’t have let him leave, she thought as she pulled her key out of the door and swiftly turned. She slung her purse over her shoulder and headed toward the elevator, but came up short when a man called her name.
She recognized the young, sharp-eyed FBI agent who had been on the elevator earlier with Thomas. He leaned casually against the hallway wall.
“Dr. Sophie Gable?” the man repeated. She nodded. He reached into his pocket. Sophie’s gaze lowered over the official-looking badge he held up. “My name is Fisk. I’m with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I was wondering if I might have a word?”
“About what?” Sophie asked.
“Thomas Nicasio.”
Sophie just stared at the agent while her pulse began to throb in her neck. It struck her that Agent Fisk wasn’t that much older than she was, but his clean-cut, dark good looks, serious expression, and sharp eyes gave the impression of talking to an older man. Despite her wariness of him, Sophie had to admit that Fisk had the type of face you trusted. And maybe she would have trusted him . . . under different circumstances anyway.
“Where’s your partner?” Sophie queried briskly after she’d glanced around his shoulder and ascertained that she was indeed alone in the deserted hallway with Fisk.
“Working on something else.”
“So you work alone at times?”
“Yeah. I do, Dr. Gable,” the agent replied after a pause. “I saw Nicasio leave your office.” His perceptive eyes flickered over her body. Sophie glanced down, following the trail of his brief assessment of her appearance. She held the agent’s stare, her chin tilted upward as she rapidly shoved the side of her shirt into her skirt. It’d remained partially untucked, a telltale sign of her heated lovemaking with Thomas.
“Have you known Nicasio long?”
“No,” Sophie admitted brusquely. “What is it that I can help you with, Mr. Fisk?”
He smiled at her small show of defiance. “I’m not your enemy, Dr. Gable. I’m not Thomas Nicasio’s enemy either.”
“Thomas seems to feel differently.”