Wild Card

  Her head jerked around at the sound of his voice, the seething anger burning inside her as Noah blinked up at her, dazed.

  “I’m okay.” He shook his head and glared past her at Nik. “Did you get the license?”

  “No plates,” the other man rumbled. “If she’ll let me haul you up I’ll take you to my place. Get you patched up if you don’t want to go to the hospital.”

  “Like hell, he’s going to a hospital.” Sabella glared at both men, pain and fear raging through her, mixing with the anger.

  “No hospital, Sabella.” Noah pushed himself up. “Where’s Toby?”

  Toby was fine. He was still sitting on the incline, staring around him in shock.

  “Dude. Some bitch tried to run me over,” he exclaimed.

  “Some bastard more likely,” Noah muttered, easing himself up, his gaze pinning Sabella.

  His eyes were fevered, glowing. Something not wholly natural was blazing in them, holding her speechless as the mechanics rushed around him.

  “Come here.” He held his arm out to her, his eyes demanding. “Come here, Sabella.”

  She moved to him slowly, watching his eyes, just his eyes. His arm moved around her, jerked her to him. If Nik hadn’t been bracing them they would have both landed in the dirt.

  He lowered his lips to her ear. “Stay steady. No ambulance. No hospital. You can’t, under any circumstances, allow anyone to believe I’m not in fighting shape. Don’t fight me, baby. Not yet. I’ll explain everything later.”

  She shuddered at the sound of his grating voice but nodded. He wouldn’t go to a hospital, didn’t want a doctor. And she wanted to know why.

  “Let’s go.” Rory on one side, Nik on the other. Sabella felt crushed as they moved Noah across the road, his arm so tight around her back she wondered if he even realized his own strength.

  “We need to get you to my place at least,” Nik stated again. “I have a friend that can patch you up if you’re this determined.”

  Noah shook his head. “The apartment.”

  “I’ll get him upstairs,” Nik growled at Sabella, a hiss of sound no one else would have heard but her and Rory. “We’ll have help en route. Rory, keep your ass down here and hold down the fort. Take care of the sheriff, you know he’ll be here.”

  What was going on? What the hell did Nik and Noah have in common besides cars? Cars and dangerous eyes.

  They dragged Noah to the back stairs, the weakness she could feel in him terrifying her. Her hand was wet with his blood, she could smell the scent of it, sharp and metallic, as Nik all but carried Noah up the stairs.

  “Keys,” Nik ordered.

  Sabella dug into Noah’s pocket for his keys, barely holding back a gasp as she encountered the steel-hard thickness of his cock on the other side of the pocket lining.

  Pulling the keys free, she stared up at him again. His eyes were so hot, so bright, lust building in his gaze despite the weakness of his body. They weren’t dark eyes, not the navy blue she was used to. They were bright, almost sapphire. Almost. Oh God. They were almost, just almost Irish eyes.

  She forced herself to turn away, to shove the key into the lock, and would have entered the apartment if Noah hadn’t jerked her back.

  Leaning against the porch railing, he jerked his head to the inside of the apartment in some indication to Nik. Nik slid into the apartment, and the movement reminded Sabella of a predator, or of all those damned government documentaries where she watched federal or military agents slipping into unknown territory.

  They were agents of some sort. She wasn’t stupid; she had been married to a SEAL, for God’s sake. What made them think she hadn’t paid attention to her husband?

  Even at home her husband had been careful, checking the house out, checking windows and doors, his eyes always hard, wary, until he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt everything was safe.

  Sabella would sit in the hall, file her fingernails, or pretend to. She had always paid more attention to the man she loved than she had to her nails. It had been a part of being married to him. One she had accepted even as she lusted after his tight, hard body while he looked all dangerous and predatory.

  “Let’s get him inside.” Nik stepped out no more than a minute later and helped her steady Noah.

  They pulled him into the apartment and back to the bedroom. When she stripped the sheets back she stared down at them in horror.

  There was so much blood. So much blood. Blood he had to have shed through the night.

  She turned and stared at him, watching as Nik helped him lie back then bent and unlaced his boots before taking them off.

  “Go into the living room.” Noah was staring at her, hungry, fierce. “Go now, Sabella.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” she whispered, her voice hoarse. “Why didn’t you tell me you were bleeding like this?”

  Nik looked up at her, then to the bed. “How much blood was smeared on you when you woke up?” he asked.

  “I washed it off her while she slept,” Noah snapped, still glaring back at her. “Go into the living room and no farther. Go now.”

  She shook her head, moving instead to grip the hem of his shirt and pull it off.

  His hand jerked out, catching her wrist. “Do you remember what happened last night?”

  She stared back at him silently, her breathing harsh, heart racing in fear.

  “It will happen again. And I won’t give a shit who’s watching. We have company coming. Let Nik know when you hear them coming to the door. Don’t open it, you understand me?”

  “Ease off, Noah,” Nik muttered, obviously wary, concerned.

  “Answer me, Sabella,” he growled. “Do you understand me?”

  She tugged at her wrist, jerked it, but his hold was like iron.

  “Sabella.” He growled her name, an order, a hint of determination in it that seemed like a slap from the past. “Do you understand me?”

  “I’ll wait in the living room,” she whispered hoarsely. “When I hear someone on the deck, I’ll let Nik know.”

  He held her gaze; those eyes, they were molten, like blue fire staring back at her.

  Finally, he nodded slowly and let her go, finger by finger, releasing his hold on her until she was drawing back, retreating slowly from the bedroom, walking through the hall, and standing silently in the kitchen.

  She was the widow of a Navy SEAL. She knew agents from various law enforcement agencies, her father had been a detective with the Atlanta police department. She knew men like this. She knew how they moved, she knew how they looked, and she knew when she was being lied to.

  She swallowed tightly and stared around the living room. It was dim. Curtains were closed, she knew the windows would be firmly locked.

  What sort of government agents could they be? She searched her mind frantically then sat down on the couch, trembling. Border patrol maybe? No, they seemed too hard eyed for border patrol. The only thing she could think of were the deaths that had been reported in the park in the past year or so. Illegals that had been hunted down in the dark. And there had been that girl that went missing from the college a few months before. A pretty girl, Lisa? She had been a friend of Toby’s.

  FBI? Maybe CIA. She could see a CIA agent with that hard, stony gaze, with the power in every command he issued. Or a SEAL.

  A shudder swept through her. A SEAL acted like that. But SEALs wouldn’t be investigating anything in Texas. They were a strike force, not an investigative agency. Noah was something similar at least. An agent of some sort. Perhaps a former SEAL. A former SEAL as tall as her husband, the same age as her husband would have been, one that held her as Nathan had and one whose eyes had bled with sapphire fire just moments before. The same color as Nathan’s.

  She shook her head. God, was she so messed up that she had to believe Noah was Nathan to excuse her attraction, her hunger for him? There was no other excuse. There were vague similarities, she knew. Even Duncan had seen them. But he wasn’t Nathan. Nathan was dead. The
man she loved was gone. Wasn’t he?

  She felt the tension tearing through her, fighting to find the differences between Nathan and Noah. Noah was hard-core, Nathan had always been gentle in the bed. But she had sensed that darkness in him, had known there was more coming. Noah didn’t hide it.

  She nibbled at her thumbnail. Her Nathan hadn’t been scarred. His voice had been lyrical, a pure dark sound that caressed her senses.

  Nathan had twirled his wrench just as Noah now twirled it. And chewed gum when he worked in the garage.

  She shuddered and pressed her hands to her stomach. That man in there was not her husband, because her husband would have never stayed away from her for six years. He would not have left her alone and grieving for him. He couldn’t have.

  Noah was an agent, he was just similar to Nathan sometimes, she told herself. Perhaps had the same training. So what was he doing in Alpine?

  The militia. The Black Collar Militia was rumored to have been behind the deaths in the park lately. Illegals who were hunted down. There had been murmurs about it for years. It had to be that or drugs. And there were no drugs in her garage, she made sure of it.

  She rubbed her hands together before wiping them over her face, realizing tears still tracked her flesh. She went to the kitchen drawer to get a dishtowel to wash her face. She pulled the top one free and noticed the odd arrangement, the slight hump in the middle. Drawing them aside, she found the gun.

  Glock. She knew the type, the model. It was the same kind her husband had preferred. It was kept in the same place. What? Was there a damned class for where warriors hid their weapons?

  Nathan had never realized that she knew exactly where his guns were hidden through the two years they were married. She hadn’t bothered them, had never mentioned them, but she had always known how to find them.

  She was aware of every place in the house where Nathan had a weapon hidden while they were married. And every place in the apartment. And this had been one of those places.

  She pushed the drawer back slowly, still gripping the dishtowel as she moved to the sink and dampened it beneath the cold water.

  She wasn’t going to go searching the apartment. Not yet. She could feel the panic rising inside her now, slowly, insidiously. She had to catch her breath first.

  Who was the man bleeding to death in the bedroom? Had he known Nathan? Had he researched her? Was that why he had come to her garage, why he had invaded her life?

  Was she a part of it, somehow? Her garage?

  She put the towel over her face and fought back the need to run, to hide. She had only hidden once in her life, those first three years of hell when nightmares and pain had seared every inch of her soul. When they had eased enough for her to function, she had come out of her bed, and had fought to rejoin the living.

  For what? So another man, another adrenaline junkie, could walk into her life and destroy it?

  The sound of vehicles pulling in behind the garage had her head jerking up. She was on her way to the bedroom when Nik came out of the room, caught her arm and dragged her back into the living room.

  “Stay!” he mouthed, his rugged face tight, his body tense as he went to the door and cracked it open.

  Sabella stood back and watched the men that came in. They stopped daily for gas. She didn’t know their names, but they looked a hell of a lot different with their flat, hard gazes.

  There were two strangers, and bringing up the rear were Ian Richards and his wife Kira. She almost laughed. Hysteria almost bloomed inside her as she met Kira’s compassionate and knowing gaze. Ian Richards was involved in this, and so was his wife. And Sabella wanted to know why.

  It wasn’t as bad this time. Noah gripped the straps Nik had tied to the posts at the headboard, gritted his teeth, and endured the stitches as Micah sewed his flesh together. He could feel his blood burning in his veins, churning through him and raging into his cock.

  Fucking whore’s dust. Fucking Diego Fuentes. The bastard was still alive and grinning, protected by Homeland Security, as Noah lay in his own sweat and blood and fought to hold on to his sanity.

  The doctors had warned him that the effects of the drug his body had been filled with for so long might never be totally gone. There were still traces of it. Especially after a hard surge of adrenaline as there had been last night. Fever only made it worse. The cuts in his body had been deeper than he had wanted to admit to, and stopping the flow of blood had been an on again, off again thing.

  He had to still the surging lust beating in his brain somehow. He didn’t want Sabella to see him like this. Like an animal, intent on nothing but sex. Hard. Fast. Driving sex. He’d used the last of the witches’ brew of antibiotics, painkillers, and lust supressors that the Navy doctors had put together for him the night before. It hadn’t helped.

  “You shouldn’t have come,” he bit out to the Israeli Mossad agent, or former agent. Dead men. They were all fucking dead men now.

  “Jordan called in the order.” Micah kept his voice low. “We came in Travis’s car. The garage isn’t being watched. Travis had been watching for any eyes. You didn’t pick up notice until that fight in the bar last night. Did you inject yourself when this happened?”

  Noah nodded. “Last of it last night. It didn’t do much.”

  “You’ll need a larger dose. Ian should have more here soon. The new batch was flown in last night.”

  “You’ll be noticed leaving,” Noah bit out. “I can’t trust all my mechanics. Sabella’s going to have questions now.”

  “Rory has eyes like a hawk. Jordan called him first thing. He’s watching everyone, keeping the boy inside. And you were advised to inform Ms. Malone of the status of this operation to begin with. She was given clearance for partial information, it’s because of your stubbornness that she’ll be pissed off now. You can deal with it. Now stop worrying. You sound like my mother.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Wrong sex, big boy,” he grunted. “I’ve a mind for a little satin flesh, not your tough hide.”

  “Bastard.” Noah coughed out a laugh.

  “Yeah, ain’t we all.” Micah grinned as he mangled his hopeless Texas accent all to hell.

  Noah dug his head into the pillow as a punch of lust slammed into his balls. He swore he could smell Sabella’s scent. It was making him mad with the need to fuck. The fever and adrenaline, twice, this close together, was too much. He thought he’d have time to get the refill on the injections whenever he was wounded. Evidently, he’d been wrong.

  “Ian has your meds, Noah,” Micah told him softly. “We can’t give you anything for the pain until you get that, you know what that shit does to you. But the doctors sent some new shit, they seem to think they have a nice little concoction put together for that woody of yours and the pain as well.”

  Noah shook his head. “No more drugs.” It would go away, it would ease, until he was as close to normal as possible. He’d fought this for too many years now. He was learning to get by. Or he had thought he was, until last night.

  “We have to do something for the fever, Noah,” Micah warned him, his black eyes concerned, worried. “There’s antibiotics in it, a mix of painkillers. Same crap they used on you when you took that bullet three months ago. It eased it then. Let’s give it a chance this time, okay?”

  Nothing really eased it. Sometimes, the crap the Navy doctors came up with allowed him to keep his sanity, but it didn’t ease the need. The fiery, bloodcurdling lust for his woman.

  Not any woman. His woman. His wife.

  As he blinked back the sweat from his eyes he loosened his grip on the straps and fought back the driving insanity. It had held him in a grip like iron for months after his rescue. Incessant, burning, the furious lust was like a vicious plague burning through his system.

  All he needed was Sabella. If they would just get the hell away from him he could survive it. Let his sweet little wife wash over him like rain.

  A ragged groan tore from his throat at the thou
ght of her. So tight and hot, just flowing over him, sucking him into her and taking everything he had to give.

  “There’s Ian.” Nik moved from the doorway and headed back into the apartment, where Sabella was.

  Murderous jealousy rose inside him. He’d always had to fight his jealousy. He’d never let Sabella know it, had never shown it around her, but it had been like a growling animal inside him anytime, every time another man had been close enough to touch her.

  And now Nik was in the other room with her. Big, blond, gentler no doubt. Noah doubted the Russian would take her without foreplay. Or that he would sit her on a table while he bled to death and care about nothing but burying his face between her legs.

  “Whoa. Hold on there, Noah.” Micah pushed him back to the bed as he surged upward. “Break my stitches and I’ll knock your ass out like I did with the bullet.”

  That pierced the haze, a little.

  Noah grunted a laugh. When the doctors refused to give him a painkiller and Noah refused to pass out from the pain, Micah had taken care of it. He’d gone behind the hospital gurney, behind Noah, and the hell if Noah knew how he’d done it, but after that, there was only the dark. And no pain.

  He couldn’t afford to lose consciousness this time. Sabella could be in danger. If Toby was in danger, then he knew Sabella would be. It was just a matter of time. God, he should have stayed the hell away from her.

  “How’s he doing?” Ian stepped into the room.

  His voice was rough, almost as ragged as Noah’s was now.

  Noah stared up at his friend. When they were ten, Noah had heard Ian’s screams piercing the desert surrounding his father’s ranch. He’d forced his father from his bed, harassed and screamed until Grant Malone had followed him.

  And they had found Ian, cradling his mother as her life nearly slipped away. Screaming. Enraged. His voice broken by the time they reached him.

  They’d been best friends from that night. And that friendship had endured, even after Noah learned that Diego Fuentes was Ian’s father. Even after Fuentes had nearly destroyed Noah.

  “You look like shit,” Noah growled as Ian moved to the bed, his eyes dark with pain, with regret.