Forbidden Stranger

  “Yes. I do,” Ewan replied in a low voice, his gaze never leaving hers.

  Please remember me. Remember us.

  But her gaze showed him he was still almost a stranger to her. All of this was still forbidden and might always be. When Nina moved into his arms, Ewan turned his face away.

  “I want to kiss you again, Ewan.”

  The press of her body against his was sending rolling waves of desire through him. There was no way she couldn’t feel it. His cock had gone almost painfully erect in seconds.

  “Nina. You shouldn’t.”

  “Because you’re my boss?”

  His hands had fallen naturally to just above her hips in the black leggings. She was thinner than she’d been, but her curves were still familiar. He shook his head, aching to tell her. Not daring even to hint.

  “Because you don’t want me?”

  “No,” he gritted out through clenched jaws. “Absolutely not because of that.”

  This time when she kissed him, it was with a clashing of teeth and the stab of her fingernails into the back of his neck where she gripped him. Ah, the pain. The spark of it sent another surge of arousal straight to his already throbbing cock. She took his tongue between her teeth and bit until he cried out into her mouth, but he didn’t pull away, no, never, because that was how it was between them. She knew how to hurt him in the best way, and he craved more, more, more. She had been the only woman, ever, to elicit that response from him, in quite that way. She would be the only woman, ever.

  Breathing hard, Nina made as though to move away from him, but Ewan held her tight. She’d made him wild with longing. He needed to taste her again. He couldn’t stop himself any more than he could stop the waves behind them from crashing onto the rocks; the water broke and spilled and so would they because of this kiss, but all he could do was plunder her mouth with his lips, his teeth, his tongue. All he could do was surrender to this desire. To give everything up to her in this moment.

  The sound of his name slipped out of her on a moan so low he almost missed it beneath the sound of the sea. She pushed out of his arms but didn’t take more than a single step back. He could pull her close again, if he chose, but then she put a hand on his chest, over his heart. Some sense returned to him. Not all of it, but enough to give him the smallest semblance of control.

  “You are not just my boss,” Nina whispered. “Who are you to me, Ewan?”

  “I wasn’t the one who hurt you. But I was the reason you got hurt,” he said, finally, praying to whatever gods existed that he wasn’t going to activate the destruction programming. If anything he told her now was going to drive her to die, he would die with her.

  Nina closed her eyes for a moment, turning her face from his. “What would you say to me if I told you I wanted to leave the island?”

  Ewan’s throat closed. She was so beautiful, even in her anguish. It slaughtered him that he was the cause of it. “I would encourage you to stay longer, to take some more time to heal. But I wouldn’t try to keep you here against your wishes. If you really wanted to go, I’d put you on the airtranspo myself, as soon as you asked me.”

  “I don’t want to leave.” Nina looked at him. “Something is keeping me here, something I don’t understand. I’m shiny fine with it, even if I don’t know what it is. More than anything else, I want to get well, Ewan. Will you help me?”

  He swallowed hard. “I’m trying. I swear to you, I am.”

  “Try harder,” Nina said. “Please.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  She couldn’t say she hadn’t meant to kiss him. That would be like saying she hadn’t meant to eat the last piece of cake, or hadn’t meant to sleep past her alarm for that extra twenty minutes. Maybe she knew she shouldn’t, but that hadn’t stopped her from doing it. Nina couldn’t remember if she’d always been an impulsive person, but kissing Ewan had definitely been an impulse. At least the first time.

  The second had been pure, wanton need. Inescapable. Relentless. A compulsion she didn’t understand but had been unable to fight. It had left her both weakened and yet feeling strong—a contradiction in her emotions that she couldn’t get straight.

  Why did kissing Ewan Donahue make Nina feel as though she might fall to the ground, only so he could help her back up?

  “We should get back to the house,” she told him when he didn’t say anything more. “I’m hungry.”

  Something in the way his lips tipped up a little annoyed but also intrigued her.

  “Why does that make you smile?” she demanded.

  “Your appetite. It’s consistent, that’s all.”

  She put her hands on her stomach. She’d been bony thin when she first woke up from the accident, but had been working to get more fit. “Is that a polite way of saying I’m getting fat?”

  “There is no polite way to say something like that,” Ewan told her, “and I would never say that, anyway.”

  For a moment the tension between them eased into something more resembling the casual friendship they’d built over the past few months. She wanted to fight it, Nina thought as she studied his face. It had become so familiar to her, she could have numbered every line and every lash. She wanted to battle against the semblance that maybe they would both forget that he’d invaded her privacy. Kept important information from her. Been involved, somehow, in the reasons she’d been injured.

  It was too hard, that was all. Too difficult to keep fighting to hold onto her fury when that was so obviously the opposite of how she felt about him. She could keep stoking the fire of her anger, but she needed kindling and was running low.

  “I’ll meet you at the house,” she told him, pointing in the direction of the stairs, which she couldn’t use. It would take her a longer ten minutes or so to get back by going around to the path.

  Ewan shook his head. “You’re coming with me.”

  Nina tensed. “I can’t handle the stairs. You know that.”

  “I’ll be with you.”

  “No,” she said sharply. “I can’t do them. They make me feel . . . bad.”

  It was not the best way to describe it, but seemed the only word she could find. Her brain buzzed with alarm as Ewan took her firmly by the elbow and moved her a step or two toward the stairs. Nina balked. Ewan tugged.

  The next thing she knew, he was on the ground in front of her, and she was straddling him, her knees pressing into his sides and her hand around his throat while the other was raised above her head, poised to give him some kind of final blow. She stopped herself with a gasp, but didn’t move. Ewan had not struggled at all to stop her and was not moving, now.

  She ought to get off him. She knew that. Her fingers, curled around the warmth of his skin, twitched. His pulse beat beneath her palm. She lowered her other hand and released his throat. She still wanted to kiss him.

  Something grows in the space between them, real and palpable, an echo of the previous tensions but something more. Something bigger. It tightens the muscles in her belly and at the base of her throat; she swallows against it, but it doesn’t go away.

  Nina got to her feet. Physical reactions to sexual arousal and to threats were so similar—increased heart rate, blood pressure, sweating. The sensations rushed through her, and Nina took a step back. She could control this, she thought wildly. She could make this stop. She had to make it stop, right now.

  Breathe. Calm. Slow.

  Something that had been clenched and tight unfurled inside her. She tasted salt on her upper lip. Trickles of sweat crept down her spine. Her fingers twitched, but she kept them from curling into fists.

  “The stairs,” Ewan told her. “Unless you want to knock me unconscious to avoid them.”

  Nina shook her head. “I don’t want that. No.”

  “I’ll be there with you. All the way.” Ewan held out his hand.

  “When you’re . . . mine . . .” Nina muttered. It was not the voice in her head saying it, it was her own lips and tongue forming the words.

  “Y
es,” Ewan said. “That.”

  The memory, if that’s what it had been, did not linger, but it gave Nina a renewed strength. She took his hand, first hesitantly. Then firmly. Their fingers linked, and he held her hand tightly. Her feet didn’t want to move, but with the pressure of Ewan’s touch, they did.

  “I won’t let you fall,” he promised.

  She believed him. Even after everything else, or hell, probably because of it. He’d been keeping track of her location in case she did fall, because he cared about her. She could want to know why, but she didn’t have to know. All she needed to know and feel and believe and trust was that he did.

  They made it halfway up the steep stone stairs before she started to panic. Everything rocked under her feet, and dark spots pulsed in her vision. Her heart pounded so hard she expected to see it throbbing through her shirt. Her hand in Ewan’s twisted, slick with sweat.

  “I won’t let you get hurt,” he said again. “Keep going. One step at a time.”

  “I can’t. I’m going to fall.” She moaned the words, her pounding heart in her throat, making her sick. Her knees weakened. She would have fallen, at least to her knees, if he hadn’t kept her upright. “I hate this, I hate this, I hate feeling so scratching weak!”

  The last word tore out of her on a shout. She’d closed her eyes for a minute but opened them now. One foot was on the higher step. Her hand was tight in his. The steps were steep but wide enough that both of them had plenty of room to stand next to each other. The land on the sides of the steps was hard and rocky, with nothing but patches of scrubby grass to grab if she did, in fact, start tumbling to the bottom to break her bones and splatter her brains.

  “You aren’t weak. You’re the strongest woman I have ever met,” Ewan said. “You can do this, Nina. Just ten more steps, and we’re at the top. Ten more. Do them one at a time.”

  Nina gulped a few breaths that burned her throat. She took one step to end up with both feet on the same stair. She lifted her right foot and placed it on the next stair. Then the left.

  She did it once more and froze in place.

  “Eight more,” Ewan said. “Keep going.”

  Somehow, she made it. She didn’t throw herself to the ground and kiss the rocky earth, but she thought about it. The amazing part of it was that as soon as both feet were off that top step, every single bit of anxiety passed.

  Nina let go of Ewan’s hand and watched him rub his fingers. She’d been holding him so hard she’d left red marks. Considering she’d also thrown him to the ground and tried to spike him in the jugular, she guessed that wasn’t so bad.

  “You know everything about me, don’t you?” she asked him quietly.

  The wind up here still smelled of the sea, though neither the scent nor the force of it were quite as strong. It tugged at the hem of Ewan’s jacket and mussed his dark hair as it blew her unruly curls across her cheeks. She pushed the strands away, irritated at the tickling touch.

  “I don’t know everything. Far from it. I’m not sure it’s possible to know every single thing about another person.”

  “But you know enough,” she said.

  Ewan nodded. “Yes.”

  No voices cropped up to tell Nina not to push for more. Nothing squirmed inside her, and the blankness didn’t crawl up and over her to make her blind and deaf. Still, she didn’t want to risk that happening. She backed off from the questions.

  She took what she’d been given and was grateful for it. There would be time later to ask more, learn more. To remember, she promised herself. She would work toward it.

  For now, she merely lifted her chin toward the house. She and Ewan remained silent as they headed in that direction. There was still a tension, though, crackling between them. Electric. Sensual, a heat and a spark. She wasn’t imagining it, Nina was sure of that, but neither of them was acknowledging it.

  Inside the house, Aggie had made an enormous breakfast. The table was laden with biscuits, jam, and some kind of savory quiche that had Nina’s mouth watering and stomach rumbling. Ewan snagged a biscuit slathered with honey butter but begged off the rest of it, claiming he wanted a shower and had some work to take care of. He left the kitchen without so much as a lingering look in Nina’s direction, and she supposed she ought to be thankful for it, if for no other reason than Aggie would have noticed. It was embarrassing enough for Nina to think about, without having the older woman privy to what had gone on between them—what was still going on.

  Nina settled herself at the table and filled her plate. Her hands were shaking as she lifted a delicate teacup, the china chattering against the saucer. She put it down before Aggie could notice.

  She’d kissed him.

  She had kissed Ewan Donahue, her boss, on the mouth. With tongue. More than once.

  Nina had to hide her nervous, gasping giggle behind her hand. She wanted to bury her face in her palms. She forced herself to take a slice of quiche, instead. She was aware of Aggie watching her from the doorway to the kitchen, but she kept her eyes on the food.

  Once she’d finished eating, Nina had no choice but to take her own shower and then head upstairs to the whitewashed attic office. He was already behind his desk when she climbed the narrow stairs into the long space with its slanting eaves and the soft, natural light coming in from the windows on either end.

  The first thing she saw at the far end was the easel. She was glad he hadn’t taken it down. She wasn’t sure she was going to use it, ever, but it no longer made her angry to see it.

  “Hey,” she said when he didn’t look up.

  “Hi.” Ewan didn’t glance up at her, his eyes on his monitor.

  The days when Ewan wasn’t on the island, Nina worked on the battered red chaise longue tucked beneath the eaves. Transferring the written documents into her table was tedious, but not difficult. Today, though, she took her place at the small desk on the opposite side of the room, as far away from Ewan as she could get.

  There was tension between them again, but this time it was awkward, not sexy. She’d screwed up, and the worst part of it was that Nina had a feeling it was not the first time she’d done so.

  “Are you going to fire me?” she asked bluntly, when time had ticked by without him saying a word.

  Ewan looked up, his brow furrowed. “Huh? Um, no. Of course not.”

  “I mean. You’d be within your rights.” Nina kept her voice light. Casual.

  Ewan leaned back in his chair. “Nina, I’m not going to fire you for that.”

  “For kissing you.” She said the words deliberately, wanting to make sure it was out there. No pretending.

  “Yes. For that.”

  “Should I apologize for it?” She pushed the box of ancient paperwork aside.

  “That depends,” Ewan said. “Are you sorry you did it?”

  “No.” That single word lifted her like a balloon. She wanted to float all the way to the ceiling with it.

  “Then don’t apologize for it.” He smiled, briefly, then wider.

  Nina studied him. “Thank you, Ewan. For the stairs. I don’t feel afraid of them anymore. I’m not sure how I know it for sure, but I’m not ever going to be afraid of them again.”

  “You asked me to try harder to help you. That’s what I want to do. That’s what I want more than anything, Nina. To help you.”

  She nodded and went to the easel. She picked up a brush and the palette, a couple squeeze tubes of color. She closed her eyes and thought of a picture she could paint, but so far there was nothing. There would be, though.

  All she had to do was keep trying.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “You took a risk with that girl, and you know it.” Aggie put her hands on her hips and glared at Ewan. “You hired me and Jerome to be here in case she tried to hurt herself again, and then you go and do this? If you’re not going to let me know what you’re doing, Mr. Donahue, you might as well as hire Greta back.”

  The first nurse he’d hired had been capable of dealing with
Nina’s medical issues, but without special training in the security field, she’d been useless for all the rest of it. “Nothing that had happened here was Greta’s fault, but you have to know I appreciate how much better you’ve been for Nina, Aggie.”

  “And yet you take it upon yourself to force her to face her fears without me or Jerome there. What would you have done if she’d broken, let me ask you that? She might’ve . . . Mr. Donahue,” Aggie said in a frustrated hiss, keeping her voice low, “she might have done something to kill you both!”

  It would have sounded melodramatic to tell her that if Nina died, Ewan would happily go with her. Instead, he tapped the comm on the table between them. Nina had gone outside to work out, but might return at any minute. This talk had to be fast.

  “Aggie, I just got an update from my team that they’re getting closer to figuring out how to disable the self-termination programming. It won’t be much longer.”

  “But you don’t have it yet,” she pointed out, not mollified.

  “No. But I will. Soon. For now, though, she’s remembering things. I’m not sure what, exactly, is coming back to her, but I know she is. More importantly, she knows that she is.” Ewan leaned back in the chair hard enough to make it creak. “We have no guidelines here. We don’t know what will help her or hurt her, but scratch it, I have to do something. I can’t watch her suffer, Aggie.”

  “None of us want that.” Aggie waved a hand toward the comm. “And what about the Dev woman?”

  Ewan’s brow furrowed. “What about her?”

  “She’s got people working on a cure, too. And her own set of upgrades. What, do you think I don’t have my own ways of keeping track of this? She’s hardly being secretive about it, and surely it can’t be a surprise that all of us in the business have an interest in keeping up with what’s going on.”

  The business. Aggie meant the personal security careers that she and Jerome had in common with Nina and the other enhanced soldiers. Ewan scowled.

  “She doesn’t have permission to be working on anything. Even if she does manage to get there before we do, she won’t be allowed to release any upgrades to the tech, not without wading through months’ or even years’ worth of legal back and forth. There’s been far too much controversy over the tech for her to step in at the last minute.”