Wild Card

  “Nathan, please don’t be mad at me . . .”

  “How did you hit my truck? How? It was sitting in plain view. Plain view, Sabella.” He was getting angry. He only said her full name when he was really getting angry or really, really horny. And he was not horny. Okay, this wasn’t good. She could do without for days. But she didn’t like it.

  She stomped her foot, glaring back at him in irritation. “If it weren’t for you, I would have never hit it.”

  “Me?” He stepped back, shaking his head fiercely. “How the hell was this my fault?”

  “Because you were cutting the grass, with no shirt, in sexy jeans and boots, and seeing your tight ass striding across the lawn made me horny. You distracted me. It’s all your fault. If you would dress properly things like this just would not happen, Nathan . . .”

  He kissed her. It wasn’t a gentle, easy kiss. It was rough and ready and smack full of lust as he jerked her against him, pressing his cock into her belly as she gasped in pleasure.

  “You are so spanked.” He picked her up, striding across the lawn, leaving her car door open, his truck abused. “Spanked, Sabella. I’m going to watch every inch of that pretty ass turn red.”

  He slammed the door behind him, locking it quickly before heading for the stairs.

  “Oh, spank me, Nathan,” she breathed teasingly into his ear. “Make me beg.”

  He shuddered against her, threw her on the bed and proceeded to make her beg.

  One week later

  “I’ll be home in a week.” He was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt. He didn’t look like a badass Navy SEAL, he looked like her husband, going off on a business trip. Not a big deal.

  She was good at fooling herself.

  “The truck will be out of the shop tomorrow.” She nodded as she watched him pull the duffel bag from the closet and turn to her. “I’ll have it in the garage, all nice and pretty for you.”

  She grinned back at him cheekily as she brushed the long strands of her hair back from her face. “You owe me though. I had to flash some leg to get it done so fast. Your mechanics are so easy, Nathan.”

  He owned the garage and auto service station just at the edge of town. A thriving little business she knew he loved.

  He grunted, his gaze going to her bare legs as she leaned back on the bed, her shorts riding up her thighs.

  “Witch,” he growled. “My ride is waiting downstairs and you know it.”

  She drew her shirt off and released her shorts, letting them fall down her legs. Watching him, she slid her fingers over the bare, wet folds between her thighs then lifted them to his lips.

  Nathan groaned. She loved that sound. His lips parted and his eyes went wild as he tasted her.

  “So make it a quickie,” she whispered, desperate to have him, just one last time, before he left. She straightened on the bed as he neared, her fingers going to his belt, working it loose quickly. “I dare you. Fuck me like you mean it . . .”

  He turned her, pushed her over the edge of the bed, and within seconds he was filling her. Hard and throbbing, stroking, penetrating, burying inside her in rapid hard strokes until she felt pure white-hot sensation wash over her.

  “Nathan. Nathan, I love you,” she cried out as he came over her, holding her in place as his hips jerked against her, his hands gripping her, fingers burning into her flesh.

  And then he whispered the words. The lyrical flow of sound, Gaelic. He whispered his love for her in a language his grandfather had taught him, and she felt it in her soul.

  “Always,” she whispered, turning her head to him, taking his kiss. “Forever, Nathan.”

  One week later

  Bella opened the door, and she froze. Nathan’s uncle Jordan was standing beside the chaplain. She knew he was the chaplain by his dark uniform. Jordan was in his dress whites, his Navy hat in his hand, medals shining on his chest, and she felt the collapse of her spirit.

  “Nathan’s due home any day,” she whispered, her lips numbing as she stared back at Jordan and saw his grief, his sorrow. “You’re early, Jordan. He’s not here yet.”

  She was crying. She could feel the tears, hot, blistering her skin as she pressed her fists tight to her stomach and felt her knees weakening.

  “Bella.” His voice was thick, unshed tears glittering in his eyes. “I’m sorry.”

  He was sorry? Sorry? He was tearing her soul right out of her chest and he was sorry?

  She shook her head. “Please don’t say it, Jordan. Please don’t say it.”

  “Bella.” He swallowed tightly. “You know I have to.”

  He had to. He had to destroy her.

  “Mrs. Malone.” The chaplain spoke for him. “Ma’am, it is my greatest regret to inform you—”

  “No. No!” She screamed the words as Jordan caught her, dragging her into his arms and helping her into the house as the screams poured from her. They ripped from her chest, like a knife, brutal, merciless. The pain dragged her into a pit of such deep, stark despair that she didn’t think she could survive.

  “Nathan!” She cried out his name, screamed his name, she begged him. He swore he would always know when she needed him, even in death. Because he had that gift. It was the eyes, he had said, and she had laughed at him, and now she wished it were true. Because she needed Nathan, her Wild Irish eyes. “Oh God, Nathan!”

  Six months later

  Bella came awake to her own sobs, her chest heaving as she searched the bed, her hands reaching across the distance, clawing at the sheets, the pillow, desperate to find him.

  He was bleeding. She could see the blood on his hands as though she were staring through his eyes. She could feel his agony, gut wrenching, desperate, a ragged gaping soul of unvarnished agony howling around her.

  It had to be a dream. Sobs tore from her throat as she ripped at the blankets, a guttural cry of raw agony tearing from her heart.

  “Nathan!” She screamed his name, her voice hoarse, raw from her tears, from the past horrific months.

  The funeral . . . They hadn’t even let her see him.

  She fell forward, her tears dropping to the bed as she remembered, remembered and knew it wasn’t a dream. Nathan was really gone. Forever.

  They had closed his coffin to her. She hadn’t been allowed to touch him, to kiss his beloved face, to whisper goodbye. There was nothing to hold on to, nothing to ease the agony breaking over her.

  There was only the emptiness. The emptiness of her bed. Her life. There was only the horrible, aching hollow in her soul. It ate at her, burned into her mind and reminded her every second, every day, that Nathan was gone.

  Nathan was gone.

  Forever.

  Except in her nightmares. Where he cried out her name. Where he touched her then backed away from her. Where he stared back at her with hollow grief. Or when she felt the pain that tore through him. Unending, agonizing, so much pain.

  Then as quickly as they began, as fast as she realized it was Nathan’s pain, the dreams would shift, change.

  “I’ll love you forever, witch.” He leaned over her, naked, his chest gleaming, golden flesh blocking out the sun as his brilliant, neon eyes watched her intently. “Feel my soul touch yours, Sabella. Feel me love you, baby . . .”

  An agonized cry rasped her throat as she clutched at air, the insubstantial memory drifting away, gone. Just as Nathan was gone.

  “Oh God. Oh God. Nathan . . .”

  She clutched his pillow to her breast, rocking herself as her head fell back and a scream ripped from her soul.

  “Damn you, Nathan . . .”

  CHAPTER ONE

  Nine months later

  Nathan Malone stood in the clinical white office he had been brought to. He was six months past the most horrific nightmare he could have imagined enduring. Six months. He knew how many days, how many hours, how many minutes and seconds had passed since he had “died.”

  Since the day he walked out his front door and headed into hell. The mission was supposed to
be simple. Rescue three young girls from a cartel drug lord in Colombia and allow himself to be captured just long enough to draw out the government spy working with the cartel lord, Diego Fuentes.

  There had been an electronic tracker in his heel that he could activate the moment he saw the spy. Unfortunately, the spy had known that. His heel had been sliced open before the spy ever appeared. Before Nathan could realize the danger he was in, he had been strapped to a hardwood table and the first of a series of synthetic drugs pumped into him.

  Whore’s dust. A powerful, blinding aphrodisiac. Hell. Because there had been no relief. Because Nathan, enraged, crazed, animalistic, had been unable to break the vows he had made to his wife. No matter the amount of drugs. No matter the provocation.

  He stared back now at the small group of men who had rescued him from Diego Fuentes’s hell. Three doctors, an admiral, some scowling bastard in a suit, supposedly a JAG representative, and his uncle Jordan Malone.

  Jordan wasn’t in uniform. That was telling enough. His resignation from the SEALs three months before had surprised Nathan when he’d heard about it. Of course, there wasn’t much left to do but listen to rumor in the highly secured, specialized private clinic he had been recovering in.

  Surgery after surgery to repair his body and his face. They’d fixed what had been damaged. They’d rebuilt what couldn’t be reset. But his mind still felt broken. The man he had once been was no more than a dream.

  He was still a SEAL. He hadn’t resigned. But he had a feeling he wouldn’t be one for long.

  “Lieutenant Malone.” The admiral nodded back at him, his lined, weathered face drawn in worry and concern. “You’re doing well.”

  Like hell he was.

  He stood to attention, but this was fucking shit. He felt like he was being stretched on a rack of fire.

  The three doctors watched silently. The psychologist assigned to him made a few notes. Damned bastard was always making notes.

  “Thank you, sir,” he finally managed to say. Hell, he just wanted to get back to the exercises he’d been doing. The ones that pushed his body to exhaustion, that made the hellacious arousal that still cursed him lessen.

  The admiral frowned back at him.

  “Are you in pain, son?” he asked him.

  Nathan forced patience. Forced patience didn’t sit well right now.

  “Yes, sir, I am.” He wasn’t going to lie about it either.

  The admiral nodded. “That explains your borderline disrespect. Maybe.”

  Nathan gritted his teeth. “Sorry, sir, protocol isn’t my strong suit these days.”

  He expected a snap in the admiral’s reply; he didn’t expect the old man’s face to smooth out or the understanding that lit his gaze.

  Admiral Holloran had once been not just his superior officer, but a man he respected.

  “Sit down, Nathan.” The admiral nodded to the chair behind him before taking his own seat.

  Nathan glanced at Jordan. His uncle was sitting, all protocol pretty much abolished where he was concerned. But it wasn’t disrespect, it was an arrogance, a confidence that had only been thinly veiled until now.

  Nathan sat down gingerly. He was still having trouble with one leg, but it was strengthening. As were the muscles in his back that he had worked to rebuild.

  The admiral finally sighed as silence filled the room.

  “I attended your funeral,” he stated then. “I grieved, Nathan. Seeing you now”—he shook his head—“makes me wonder sometimes at the decisions that are made behind my back. I wouldn’t have approved that mission.”

  “I agreed to it.”

  Simple. It was supposed to have been so simple. He still had the hole in his heel to prove it hadn’t been.

  “We’ll discuss that another day,” the admiral growled. “We’re facing another problem.”

  “Has my wife been informed I’m alive yet?” The words felt torn from his ruined vocal chords.

  His voice was rougher, darker than it had been, but hell, at least he could talk.

  “Not yet,” the admiral answered.

  “I still prefer she not be told.”

  Nathan stared straight ahead now. He was aware of the bandages that still covered his face, the wounds that were still healing on his body. But even more, he was very much aware of the effects of that fucking whore’s dust those bastards Fuentes and Jansen Clay had pumped into his body.

  Eighteen months of it. He had been the guinea pig. The SEAL to break with the black evil they forced into him. But he hadn’t broken. He’d become a monster instead.

  “Sabella’s been grieving, Nathan,” Jordan said then. “She’s still grieving. She still cries for you.”

  “She’ll stop crying. Sabella’s tough.” He shrugged as though it didn’t matter and glimpsed the admiral and Jordan’s exchanged look from his periphery.

  He was lying. His Bella wasn’t tough. She was soft and sweet and he swore he heard her cries in his dreams, in his nightmares. The ragged wound that was his soul would never heal, because he couldn’t get the sounds of her screams out of his head.

  How much worse would her screams be if she saw him now? His gentle little Bella had loved his body. When he had walked out the door that last day he had been strong, powerful, but even more, he’d been a man who knew how to be gentle. That man didn’t exist anymore. There was nothing gentle in the dark, twisted dreams he had now. Dreams of death. And dreams of Bella. And a hunger he knew he would never restrain if she came to him.

  “I’m dead,” he told them, his voice cold as he thought of the consequences of trying to return to her. “I’ll stay dead.”

  The psychologist was scribbling furiously on his pad. Nathan’s gaze jerked to him. As though he could feel the spikes of fury aimed his way, the balding little man lifted his head.

  His shoulders shifted beneath his ill-fitting suit jacket, and behind his plain glasses, his brown eyes flickered nervously.

  Nathan’s eyes jerked back to the admiral. “Would you get him the hell out of my sight, sir.”

  Admiral Holloran stared back at him for long seconds before nodding to the doctors and jerking his head to the door. They all filed out quickly. None of them were comfortable in his presence. They never had been. Of course, they’d had to deal with an animal for the first three months that he had been under their care.

  Admiral Holloran sighed wearily and stared back at him.

  “Last chance, son,” he said softly. “Let us call your wife. Send someone for her.”

  He bared his teeth in fury. “No, sir.” The “sir” was habitual, the growling rage in his voice wasn’t. It was pumping through him, numbing his mind, filling his senses with the echoed images of his nightmares.

  “Enough.” Jordan spoke into the silence. “I warned you he wouldn’t change his mind.”

  “Your respect has gone to hell, Jordan,” Holloran snapped.

  “So has my patience,” Jordan bit out. “I was given complete control of this unit, Admiral, and that supersedes even your rank.”

  “If he changes his mind then he can’t go back,” the admiral argued. “Is that what you want for your nephew, Jordan?”

  “If he changes his mind then that decision is mine to make, not yours or anyone else’s.” There was a hardness to Jordan, a bleak anger Nathan had never seen in him before. “He’ll be transferred to the command center tomorrow and the doctors there will work him with the others.”

  “You haven’t even asked him if he’s willing!” The admiral was in Jordan’s face now. The two men nose to nose, two incredible wills clashing. It would have been amusing if Nathan had been in the mood for it.

  He wasn’t.

  He rose to his feet and headed to the door.

  “Nathan.”

  Nathan paused before turning back to face his uncle. Jordan had once been not just family, but a superior officer, when they had both been SEALs, when Nathan had been a man rather than the animal he had turned into.

 
He stared back at Jordan. “Make it quick. I have exercises to finish this evening.”

  Jordan got to his feet. “There are other options than the SEALs.”

  “Oh yeah?” Nathan arched his brows. “What’s better than the SEALs, Uncle? Hell? Been there, still take trips.”

  Jordan nodded slowly. His brilliant blue eyes, wild Irish eyes, his grandpop had called them, stared back at him. “There are other options, Nathan.”

  “Really?” Nathan stared between Jordan and the admiral.

  “Yeah.” Jordan nodded. “You walk out of here as a SEAL and you walk out as Nathan Malone. You walk out with me, and Nathan Malone ceases to exist.”

  The admiral moved from his chair with a jerky movement and paced to the other side of the room.

  “You leave with him and the SEALs won’t exist for you anymore, Nathan. The only men you’ll have contact with are those in your old team under Commander Chavez, to retrain. You’ll be dead forever. Nathan Malone will no longer exist. Not for you. And not for your wife.”

  Nathan stared back at him, but it was Bella he saw. She hated a broken nail, she worried about wrinkles. How would she handle a husband who was little more than a monster?

  He turned to Jordan. “So where do I sign up?”

  Three years later

  Jordan Malone stood in his office and stared through the privacy glass at the exercise room. His hands were shoved in the pockets of his jeans, a scowl on his face as he watched his nephew.

  Nathan, now known as Noah Blake to the world, was only five years younger than he was. Jordan had been a surprise to his parents, a shock to his older siblings. And he had been more like a brother to the man pouring with sweat beneath the weights in the other room. The change in Nathan over the past years was nothing short of miraculous. Hell, the first six months, the very fact that he had survived had been miraculous. It had been the first three years that had been the hardest though. The nightmares and effects of the whore’s dust in his system had nearly driven Noah insane.