“No—”

Her immediate denial broke off when his head lowered and to her shock, he pressed his mouth tenderly over the wound.

There was nothing sexual about the kiss. It was tender. Meant to comfort. Exquisite.

She stared down at his dark head, pleasure flooding her veins, replacing the pain so evident just moments before. Such a simple gesture and yet it tightened her chest, emotion welling in her throat.

The brush of his lips was like touching the wings of a butterfly. Soft and infinitely gentle. A direct contrast to the seething caldron of rage he’d been just moments before.

She lay there, holding her breath, afraid to move, not wanting to break the spell that hovered. They were cloaked with intimacy and time seemed to stop. Everything else melted away and there was only her and him, and his lips pressed tenderly against her skin.

As abruptly as he’d leaned down to touch his mouth to her wound, he jerked upward, his eyes brimming with regret and self-condemnation. He stood, tossing the washcloth several feet away on the floor.

Not meeting her gaze he turned and walked toward the door.

“The doctor will be here soon,” he said gruffly. “Rest until he arrives.”

THIRTEEN

BEAU’S mood was black and he was filled with self-loathing for taking advantage of Ari when she was at her most vulnerable. What in the hell had he been thinking when he kissed her?

It didn’t matter that it wasn’t a passionate kiss or even a kiss to her mouth. Somehow the brush of his lips over her wound, as if he could somehow make it better, had seemed decidedly more intimate than if he had kissed her lips. How arrogant and what an asshole it made him to think he had the power to make her pain simply go away, even if that is exactly what he wanted to do.

He shook his head as he returned to where Zack waited in the living room.

“You got a plan?” Zack asked, cutting through Beau’s thoughts and focusing them entirely on the situation at hand. At least one of them was thinking clearly, because Beau was still replaying the moment with Ari over and over in his mind until it was making him crazy.

Because what he really wanted to do was to charge back into that bedroom so she wasn’t alone. He’d been a dick to gruffly dismiss her and leave her just because he’d been thoroughly disgusted with his lack of self-control.

He wanted to hold her and simply offer her comfort. Precisely what she needed when her entire world had been upended and she was terrified that her parents were dead or terribly injured. Because of her.

It was a burden no one should have to bear and especially not this vulnerable, fragile woman who at her core had a thread of steel regardless of whether she realized it or not.

Beau sank onto the couch, allowing his stiff muscles a moment’s respite. Then he eyed Zack. “No,” he said honestly. “She walked into my office today with a rather incredible story and if I hadn’t witnessed everything that happened after firsthand, I’d think she was either crazy or making it all up. But she’s the real deal. And after hearing her story, it’s very likely that her parents were taken as a way to manipulate Ari. To make her come to them as an exchange for her parents.”

Zack made a derisive sound. “Like they’re just going to let her parents walk away unscathed after they have their hands on Ari? Not likely.”

“Yeah, that’s what I’ve been trying to convince her of because she was prepared to go off half-cocked in her panic and surrender to them in order to get her parents back. I had to break it to her that they weren’t simply going to let her parents go once they had their objective. And if they did keep her parents alive, it would be only so they could control Ari and use them and the threat of harm to them if she didn’t comply with whatever the hell it is they want with her.”

“Seems that needs to be our starting point,” Zack said. “We need to do a background check, starting with her parents and any potential enemies her father has. A man does not go to the lengths he did with security and keeping his family well off the grid unless there’s a threat. Maybe we’ll get lucky and there’s something in either Ari’s past or her father’s that will give us a lead on who’s after Ari now. And why.”

“I can well imagine the why,” Beau muttered. “After that damn video went viral, there are any number of nutcases out there who would see the value in being able to control Ari—and her powers.”

“But no ordinary nutcase would have the resources these people evidently do,” Zack argued. “And I doubt her father’s security team, men he obviously trusted with his wife and daughter’s lives, didn’t just turn on him on a dime. This was likely planned well in advance and it may have taken them years to get the right men in place, with her father as careful as he was. That tells me the video had nothing to do with this particular threat, which makes it even more important to poke around her father’s business—and personal—affairs. Because this looks to be a carefully orchestrated attack. Not one dreamed it up on the fly. It was too pat, too professional. The video may have simply moved their timeline up on a plan already in motion to get access to Ari.”

“Which means someone knew of her powers before she was forced to defend herself and the video surfaced.”

“Exactly,” Zack said in a grim voice.

Beau scrubbed a hand through his hair. “We need information and we need it yesterday. Ari is only going to cooperate for so long. She’s desperate to find her parents and thinks nothing of turning herself over even though it’s the very last thing she should do, because then she loses the upper hand and any bargaining power she has.”