"Damn it." She sucked in a hitching sob. "I can't do this. I'm sorry, it's my fault. I never should have let you--"
The words broke off, and then she was pushing him away from her, scrambling out from under him and all but running for the corridor.
Brock stood there for a second, every part of him tight and aching, raw with need. He should let her go. Chalk this up to a disaster narrowly averted, and put the all-too-tempting Jenna Darrow out of his mind.
Yeah, that's exactly what he should do, and he damned well knew it.
But by the time the thought had formed, he was already halfway up the corridor, following the soft sounds of Jenna's weeping back to his former quarters.
Chapter Thirteen
Jenna felt like the biggest coward--the biggest damned fraud--as she fled up the corridor, sucking back tears. She'd let Brock think she didn't want him. Probably made him believe he'd been forcing himself on her in some way with that kiss, when it had nearly melted her into a puddle on the conference room table. She had let him worry that he'd done something wrong, possibly even hurt her somehow, and that was the most unfair thing of all.
Yet she couldn't stop running, needing to put distance between them with a determination that bordered on desperate. He made her feel too much.
Things she wasn't prepared for. Things she craved so deeply but didn't deserve.
And so she ran, as terrified as she'd ever been and hating the cowardice that pushed her each step of the way. By the time she reached her quarters, she was shaking and breathless, tears streaming in hot trails down her cheeks.
"Jenna."
The sound of his deep voice behind her was like a caress of warmth against her skin. She turned to face him, astonished by the speed and silence that had brought him there not even a second after she'd arrived. Then again, he wasn't human. Not really a man at all--a fact she had to remind herself of when he was standing so near, the sheer size of him, the raw intensity of his dark gaze, speaking to everything that was woman inside her.
Her mouth still smoldered from his kiss. Her pulse was still thrumming heavily, heat still kindling deep into the core of her body.
As if he knew this, Brock moved closer. He reached out to her, took her hand in his, saying nothing. There was no need for words. Despite her slowing tears and the tremble of her limbs, she couldn't hide the desire she felt for him.
She didn't resist as he drew her nearer, into the heat of his body. Into the comfort of his arms. "I'm scared," she whispered, words that didn't come easy to her, and never had.
His eyes locked on hers, he gently stroked the side of her face. "You don't have to be afraid of me. I won't hurt you, Jenna."
She believed him, even before he bent his head and brushed her lips in an achingly tender kiss. Incredibly, impossibly, she trusted this man who was no man. She wanted his hands on her. Wanted to feel this connection to someone again, even if she wasn't at all ready to think beyond the physical, yearning to touch and be touched.
"It's okay," he murmured against her mouth. "You're safe with me, I promise."
Jenna closed her eyes as his words sank into her, the same words he'd soothed her with in the shattered darkness of her Alaskan cabin, then again in the compound's infirmary. Brock had been her steady link to the living world after her ordeal with the Ancient. Her only lifeline during the endless nightmares that had followed in the days after she'd been brought to this strange place, changed in so many terrifying ways.
And now ...?
Now she wasn't sure where he fit in the confusion that remained of her life. She wasn't ready to think about that. Nor was she at all certain she was ready to give in to the feelings he stirred in her.
She pulled back slightly, doubt and shame welling up from the part of her that was still in mourning, the open wound on her soul that she had long ago come to accept might never fully heal.
Pressing her forehead against the warm solidity of his chest, the soft cotton of his gray T-shirt laced with the exotic scent of him, Jenna drew in a fortifying breath. It leaked out of her as a quiet, broken sigh. "Did I love them enough? That's what I keep asking myself, ever since that night in my cabin ..."
Brock's hands skated lightly over her back as he held her, strong and compassionate, the steady calm she needed in order to relive those torturous moments when the Ancient had pressed her to decide her own fate.
"He made me choose, Brock. That last night in my cabin, I thought he was going to kill me, but he didn't. I wouldn't have fought him if he had. He knew that, I think." She was sure of it, in fact. She had been in a bad place the night the Ancient invaded her cabin home. He'd seen the nearly empty bottle of whiskey on the floor beside her and the loaded pistol in her hand.
The box of photographs she brought out every year around the anniversary of the accident that had robbed her of her family and left her to carry on alone. "He knew I was prepared to die, but instead of killing me, he forced me to speak the words out loud, to tell him what I wanted more--life, or death. It felt like torture, some kind of sick game he was making me play against my will."
Brock ground out something coarse under his breath, but his hands remained gentle against her back, a tender, soothing warmth.
"He made me choose," she said, recalling every unbearable minute of her ordeal.
But even worse than the endless hours of imprisonment and being fed upon, the horror of realizing her captor was a creature not of this earth, was the awful moment when she heard her own voice rasp the words that seemed torn from the deepest, most shameful pit of her soul.
I want to live.