She was a doctor and knew all about the logistics, the mechanics of how a man and woman came together, but what she had no knowledge of was that elusive, missing X-factor. No prior knowledge of that wildness that ran through the blood and ultimately led to this fascinating place where pa.s.sion reigned supreme and nothing else mattered except achieving the ultimate connection, the ultimate bonding with the man her soul was calling out to.

Until the fateful day she'd gotten stuck in that elevator, she'd envied her sister and her cousins and her friends because that head-over-heels sensation had come into their lives but never once into hers.

And now it had, taking her prisoner.

Nikka thought that their coming together would be quick. That Cole would enter her and that the union would be sealed.

She hadn't expected him to go out of his way to pleasure her. To heat a body that was already burning for him.

When she felt his mouth gliding along her skin, felt him lightly skim his lips along quivering sections of her body, she all but exploded as she desperately tried to hold off experiencing what she a.s.sumed was saved for the last moment.

But thirty years without any release made for a great deal of pressure building up and his mouth and hands were too clever at eliciting responses from her. Suddenly, just like that, she found herself on the receiving end of a climax. And then, to her astonishment, one climax flowered into another as he brought his lips to the side of her throat, to her belly, to her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, effectively reducing her to a cauldron of throbbing needs and wants.

Making her climax, only to have her renew the climb again.

She hadn't realized that there was actual magic involved until she'd experienced it.

Hardly able to draw in a breath, Nika tightened her fingertips on his shoulders as she felt him enter her.

Her eyes were shut tight when she felt him hesitate. Instinctively knowing what he had to be thinking, Nika immediately raised her hips and her mouth at the same time, sealing her lips to his as she urged him on with her body.

Unable to resist, to do what he knew he should, Cole didn't stop. He pushed in. He felt her quick intake of breath less than half a second before she began the dance that was theirs alone. The dance he unconsciously knew he would remember for the rest of his life.

He stopped processing sensations and just lost himself in her.

Chapter 12.

The moment the euphoria that lovemaking had generated began to recede, guilt descended on Cole with the force of an anvil that had been dropped from the roof of a five-story building. He didn't know what to say, or how to begin to apologize.

Didn't know how to take back that which couldn't be taken back.

Every apology began with a first word. He forced one out, not really knowing what was going to follow in its wake.

"Why?"

Nika knew what was coming. Saw it in his eyes and didn't want the question, the a.s.sumption he was making, to be anywhere near the fireworks still settling down within her. She wanted to be able to savor what had happened between them for just a little longer.

But that wasn't possible anymore.

She put her fingers to his lips to still them and shut away the words that Cole was so obviously struggling with.

"Because," she answered, saying the universal word that had been known to quiet arguments across the board and was the tacitly understood explanation for everything, large or small, that required a myriad of words to put it to rest. Parents used it all the time when they were at a loss for exact explanations.

Because.

Cole gently took her hand away from his mouth, his eyes giving voice to the confusion and the guilt that were still square-dancing within him. He was having a great deal of trouble understanding what he'd just learned to be true.

"You never...?"

Nika merely smiled in response, preferring to move ahead. "I have now."

"But not before?" he asked incredulously, still unable to finish his sentence out loud. How could a woman, especially a beautiful woman, come to this point in her life and still be a virgin? It just didn't seem possible.

And yet, it was obviously true in this case.

"No," she replied simply, wishing he would drop the subject and allow her to just bow away from it gracefully, to glory in this new threshold she'd crossed. She didn't want to go into explanations.

But avoiding them would have been too easy, and she'd known from the moment she'd laid eyes on him that Detective Cole Baker was not an easy man. Not by any stretch of the imagination. Why should making love with him be any different?

"How is that possible?" he asked. What, had she been raised in some tower, like Rapunzel?

"No one's given you the birds-and-bees talk?" she asked, the corners of her mouth curving, seeking refuge in humor for a moment. "I have this wonderful book I could recommend-"

He cut her short. This wasn't a joke. Not to him. Her situation and what he'd done brought a vast responsibility in its wake.

"You know what I mean." He struggled not to snap out the words. It wasn't Veronika he was angry with, it was himself. "How do you get to be your age and not...?"

His voice trailed off again as he looked at her, completely stunned, completely floored as well as speechless.

"Choice," Nika told him. Then, because she saw that the single word wasn't enough, she added, "Because I didn't feel that making love with someone was something you just did at the end of a date. I wanted someone I respected and admired to be the first man I slept with. And, just as importantly, I wanted the first man to be someone who could make the earth move for me just by his proximity. I kept hoping someone would come along who met those requirements. I wasn't about to settle for anything less."

The implied compliment stunned him. "And I meet those requirements for you?" he asked in disbelief.

She lifted one shoulder in a quick shrug, a silent tribute to the whimsy of a fate that saw fit to bring together unlikely duos, and throw into the mix electricity, like the kind she'd felt with him the first time her body had slid against his.

"Like it or not," she acknowledged, "you do."

"That first part, 'like it or not,'" he repeated, "are you referring to your reaction to the situation, or what you a.s.sume is my reaction to it?"

Okay, the man had just lost her. "Excuse me?"

Cole tried to rephrase his question. "Are you saying that you aren't too happy about the turn of events, or that you're thinking that perhaps I'm not happy about what just happened between us?"

Before answering, Nika took in a long breath and pulled down a multicolored throw she had slung over the back of the sofa. She wrapped it around herself like a woolly toga. She was suddenly feeling extremely exposed.

"I'm saying that you're really overthinking things," she told him glibly. "I'm also saying I have no regrets."

"You might want to rethink that," he warned her. "I'm not exactly a happy-go-lucky person."

It was hard not to laugh and impossible not to grin. "I hadn't noticed."

She needed to know, he thought. To know how dark his soul was. The only way to tell her was straight out, no embellishments. She deserved that. So he began.

"My father was a soldier," he said without preamble. "He was killed his second day overseas by a bomb that was strapped to a nine-year-old kid. Six months later, my younger brother, Steve, was knocked off his bicycle by a hit-and-run driver. The guy never even stopped. Steve died on the way to the hospital. Losing Steve was the final straw for my mother. It broke her and she never really came around. One day, not too long after that, I came home from school and she called me into the kitchen. When I walked in, she shot me, then turned the gun on herself. She died instantly." Looking away, he struggled to keep the memory at arm's length. "I guess she didn't want to leave me behind.

"They tell me it was touch-and-go for me for a while. When I finally woke up, I was in the hospital and G was sitting there beside my bed. She looked drawn, like she hadn't slept in days. The first thing she said to me was, 'About time you pulled through.'" A fond smile touched his lips. "I owe her a lot."

Nika felt her heart twisting in her chest. "Oh G.o.d, Cole, I don't know what to say."

"Don't say anything." He hadn't told her because he wanted sympathy. "I just wanted you to know who you're getting mixed up with."

"I already know that." Her eyes held his. "You're a survivor."

"Yeah, well, surviving seems to be the thing to do." He looked at her now. She wasn't getting up. She was still here. He didn't know if that was good or bad-for either of them. "About those regrets-"

Was he going to tell her that he regretted what happened between them after all? "Still don't have them," she told him. "If you do, I'm sorry, but I'm afraid there will be no refunds issued."

His eyebrows drew together in a confused V. "What?"

She shrugged uncomfortably, dismissing her last words. "Feeble joke," she admitted. "Sorry."

Getting up off the sofa, she bent down to quickly retrieve her clothes. Holding them against her, she began heading toward the next room, toward the first private area where she could get dressed.

She nearly made it all the way out of the room before his words stopped her.

"I don't regret making love with you," Cole said, his voice low as he addressed his words to her back. "I just regret not knowing you were a virgin."

Nika slowly turned around. "And if you'd known, then what? You wouldn't have bothered?" What else could he mean by saying he'd wished he'd known? The man was obviously accustomed to experienced women, not one who behaved as if she'd just been transported to an incredible alternate universe.

"The word 'bothered' doesn't belong in this sentence," he informed her. "If I'd known that this was your first time, I would have tried to make it special," he explained tersely.

"Make it special," she echoed. It was her turn to be confused. "As opposed to what? Fantastic? Because that was what it was. Fantastic. Any more 'special' than that and I might not have survived the experience."

"Fantastic?" he repeated.

She couldn't read his expression in order to gauge his feelings. The man was probably a world-cla.s.s poker player. Nika nodded. "That was the word."

He was having trouble processing this. "You thought what we did was fantastic?"

The smile began in her eyes, filtering through to all parts of her. "Absolutely."

Cole got up. Since she had taken the throw for herself, there was nothing for him to wrap around himself. Consequently, he crossed to her as naked as he'd been while they'd made love. Nika felt her blood heating instantly, even as she struggled to keep her eyes on his face.

She wasn't entirely successful in her efforts.

"Any way I can talk you out of getting dressed?" he asked, taking her into his arms.

Nika let the throw slip away from her body and fall to the floor like a deep sigh. The bunched-up clothes joined it.

"You just did," she told him, just before she sealed her lips to his.

This wasn't going well.

Twelve victims.

Twelve alleged victims, he silently corrected himself, had died in the Geriatrics Unit in the last eighteen months. Of those twelve, seven had had families, five hadn't. The families, other than the one couple who'd recently requested an autopsy and seemed far more interested in the financial rewards of an out-of-court settlement in exchange for keeping the allegation out of the public eye, were opposed to exhuming their loved ones.

No exhumation, no evidence that murder, rather than natural causes, was responsible for the victims' deaths.

He still had the late police sergeant, thanks to Nika's uncle. And, of course, there was that last man who'd died just before he was to be released and sent back to the nursing home. That made three, he reminded himself. Three dead people who'd met their end the same way. An air bubble had been injected into a major artery, causing them to convulse and die. Approximating a heart attack.

Cole thought that taking these deaths and extrapolating the evidence to hypothesize that the others had met the same ending was just a natural progression. The defense attorney, however, might just see it as a huge coincidence and pet.i.tion to have the matter thrown out of court. Especially if Cole didn't come up with more evidence.

With two patients dying just in the last week, the pace was definitely picking up. He knew he was fighting the clock. He needed to find the killer before he-or she-struck again.

But right now he had no idea who to point a finger at. He had no viable suspects. And nothing to go on. Not without some kind of theory as to why these particular people had been picked and not any of the others.

Was this all the work of some maniac slipping into the hospital in order to take revenge for an imagined wrong that had been done to him or her? What kind of wrong? To whom? To the killer or someone he cared about?

Or was it someone on the staff doing away with these people?

That, he had to admit, was the more likely scenario, but if so, then who was it? And equally as important, why was he or she doing it? And what determined who the next victim was going to be?

Other than advanced age and being patients here on the fourth floor, the dead people had nothing uniformly in common. They weren't all women or all men, weren't from the same walk of life. Some were well off, others were poor. Some lived in nursing homes, some still lived in their own homes. Some were terminal, others weren't. So what was it that connected them, other than Patience Memorial?

Cole stared at the overloaded bulletin board on the wall some ten feet away.

He rubbed his hand across his forehead, willing a headache away.

He couldn't come up with it, couldn't come up with the key, the cipher, that would suddenly open up this case for him and get him moving in the right direction.

He was frustrated as h.e.l.l.

Cole rocked back in his antiquated chair. It emitted a pathetic squeak every time he leaned all the way back in it. Now was no exception. It set his teeth on edge. Almost as much as the case was doing.

"Didn't anyone ever tell you not to rock back in your chair like that unless you want to wind up landing on your head?"

Cole swung around toward the speaker, belatedly banking down the instant rays of warmth that burst through the unguarded moment at the sound of the soft voice.

Nika's voice.

He half rose in his chair. When Nika dropped into the chair next to his desk, he sat back down again. "What are you doing here?"

"I have the day off," she reminded him. She'd mentioned that to him this morning before he'd left her bed to go to work. Amazingly enough, since that first night, there'd been a reason for them to get together every evening after that, including last night.

It went without saying that she'd gone to the hospital anyway, even though she was free to do whatever she wanted. What she'd wanted was to catch up on a few things at the hospital and to look in on her patients. To a.s.sure herself that they were still alive, still breathing.

Her uncle and a couple of his handpicked men were patrolling the floor as well as planted in prominent spots to demonstrate a show of solidarity to the mysterious killer so that, hopefully, there wouldn't be another casualty.

But she still worried. She couldn't help it. It was a congenital thing, handed down from her mother, who had made worry an art form.