A muffled whump told her that he’d switched on the heating. By the time she’d used the bathroom, scrubbed her face clean, brushed her teeth and changed into her pink flannel nightgown, the air was already starting to heat up. Good. She needed the warmth.
He was sitting at the table, two steaming mugs of dark liquid before him. He looked her quickly up and down, seemingly satisfied with what he saw, and pushed a mug over to her. “Drink. Then we’ll talk.”
Suzanne picked it up, nose wrinkling at the smell. She took a sip and coughed, eyes watering. “Is there any tea at all in this whiskey?”
His mouth lifted in a half smile. “Very little,” he confessed. “Tea is for wusses.”
Must be, because there wasn’t much in her cup. Suzanne sipped again and found on the second try that the hot tea-flavored whiskey went down like a dream, warming her all the way down, curling into her stomach and chasing the coldness away.
The warmth kick-started her brain. She looked around the bleak, sad, little room, then back at John. He’d abandoned the teacup and was drinking his whiskey straight, from a glass. That was a good sign. John struck her as the kind of man who would never drink alcohol if he felt danger was imminent, but she wanted to be certain.
“Where are we?”
“Near Mount Hood. The closest town is Fork in the Road, about three miles away.”
Fork in the Road. The name was familiar. She had a vague memory of someone mentioning it at a cocktail party, laughing as he described it, some dinky one-horse town.
She looked down into her mug for a moment, the tea muddy and unclear. Like her life. “Are we safe?” she asked quietly.
He drained the glass, never taking his eyes off her. “Safe? Yeah.” He poured another finger of whiskey into her mug and gestured for her to drink it, waiting until she’d choked it down. “Absolutely. To find us, they’d have to look for me, but I don’t think anybody besides Bud knows we’re connected. Unless you checked me out with anyone else on that list I gave you?” He raised an eyebrow.
“No,” she sighed, “I didn’t. Bud’s word was enough.”
“Remind me when all this is over to chew you out for that. You should have checked me out with everyone, but given the circumstances, I’m glad you didn’t.”
“Unlike you, I’m not constantly on the lookout for danger,” Suzanne said dryly.
“Yeah, well, if you’d been more like me then maybe we wouldn’t be in this mess in the first place.”
Suzanne opened her mouth then closed it, appalled. What was there to say? He was right.
“Sorry,” he muttered, a muscle jumping in his jaw. “That was way out of line.” He poured himself another shot of whiskey and drank it in one swallow, like water. “So let’s get back to risk assessment. Nobody knows you’re with me. We hadn’t signed the lease yet and anyway I’m going to make sure Bud won’t let anyone in the house to go through our stuff, get my name. I’m almost certain there were only two killers. That’s standard procedure when you want to wipe your tracks. The second shooter’s there to kill the first and erase the connection.
“I parked well out of sight of your street, but just in case the second shooter managed to notice my vehicle and called it in to whoever his boss is, I changed the license plate numbers. And I made damned sure nobody was following us.”
She blinked. “You changed…what?”
John shrugged. “I keep several spare sets of plates in the back. They come in handy from time to time. ”
“But isn’t that illegal? Driving with false license plates?”
He shrugged again, not even bothering to answer.
“I own all the land for several miles around,” he continued. “The land is registered in the name of a shell company. It would take a very determined and very skillful person several weeks to get to my name, assuming he knew what he was looking for. And even then, I hacked into the land register and changed the data, so they’d be looking fifty miles west, in a state park. The perimeter’s got trip wires and I know whenever anything bigger than a rabbit gets through. So yes,” he concluded. “We’re as safe as we’ll ever be. We could probably stay holed up here forever, though I’m counting on finding out what’s going on before that.”
Suzanne just stared and stared, feeling more than ever as if she’d stepped into an alternate universe. And yet, deep inside herself she knew.
She hadn’t, like Alice, fallen down a rabbit hole. This wasn’t an alternate world. It was this world, as it really is, as it has always been. Dirty and dangerous and violent. She’d spent her entire lifetime avoiding this reality, steeping herself in pretty things, fretting over colors and shapes and textures, maybe in an effort not to think about what the world was really like.
Look what it had got her, hiding her head in the sand. Pretty, perfumed sand, taupe and ecru, but sand all the same, and her head sunk way down in it.
She hadn’t seen danger coming at all.
It was entirely possible that if she’d taken just half the care in installing a proper security system in the building that she’d taken with the color scheme, none of this would have happened. There wouldn’t have been an intruder. She wouldn’t be here—wherever here was—holed up, hiding from God knows what and God knows who, having endangered the life of a good man and dragged him away from his growing business.
He’d come running to her rescue without hesitation and if he hadn’t been so skilled, it would have been his blood staining her hardwood floor, his head a bloody pulp. Now he was here with her, and plainly he was planning on staying with her for as long as it took. How long until Bud was able to figure out what was going on?
Days? Weeks? Months? Years maybe?
What had she done? Her throat closed tight with guilt and sorrow.
She put her mug down with a clatter. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered, unshed tears burning in her eyes.
He was sipping from his glass. He swallowed heavily, coughed. “What? You’re sorry? What the hell for?” He looked genuinely astonished, which made her feel even worse.
Suzanne bit her lip. I will not cry, I will not cry. “I’m sorry for involving you in this mess, John. And I don’t even know what the mess is. I’m sorry for endangering your life, I’m sorry you had to kill someone—two someones—for me. I’m sorry if you’re going to have trouble with the law because of what you did for me. I’m sorry…“
“Whoa. Wait a second.” He held up a large-palmed hand and frowned. “You’re not making sense here.”
“I’m sorry I wasn’t any help to you. I’ve always meant to take self-defense courses but I never got around to it, and if you want to know the truth, I am a total wimp. I can’t even face up to Murphy the garage owner jerk and by the way, I never thanked you for picking up my car. I’m sorry you had to deal with Murphy for me, that’s never pleasant. I’m sorry I didn’t know how to do anything but cower in a closet,” she continued, past the huge lump in her throat. “I’m sorry I wasn’t able to defend myself and had to call in the Marines. Literally.” She gave a choked laugh, cutting it off before it could become a sob. “I’m so sorry I forced you into hiding, sorry you have to stay holed up here with me, sorry…just…sorry.” She covered her face with trembling hands. She was flying apart, shaking, taking deep breaths to hold herself together.
“Fuck this,” John snarled, pushing back his chair so hard it fell to the dusty wooden floor with a clatter, and scooped her up. He held her high in his arms, moving quickly into the bedroom. He didn’t switch on the light. Just sat down on the chair, holding her, and began to rock.
Suzanne turned her face to his neck, no longer bothering to fight the tears, which welled out of her. He held her in silence, tightly, probably realizing that she didn’t need words at all. She needed this, human contact, human warmth. A connection however tenuous with his strength and courage.
One large hand covered the back of her head, another held her tightly around the waist and it was as if she had permission to let it all go.
Throughout it all John simply held her so tightly she could feel his chest lifting and falling with his deep, even breathing. She could hear, even feel, the slow steady heartbeats, steady and strong just like he was and it gradually calmed her.
When the bout ended, she felt dazed and exhausted. Fatigue and whiskey had demolished her defenses. She couldn’t have moved if her life depended on it.
Her arms were tightly wound around his neck. If she was choking him, he wasn’t complaining. Maybe he was uncomfortable sitting there with her on his lap but he didn’t say anything, just held her close. How much time had gone by? She had no idea. She stirred, trying to muster the energy to get up, but his arm tightened and she slumped back against him.
Her hip came up against his erection, huge and hard and she quivered. She remembered every second of his penis inside her, how he’d thrust with the whole strength of his body, how she’d flown apart.
He wasn’t thrusting up against her in sexual demand, but he wasn’t hiding it either. It was there—he was aroused but he wasn’t pushing for sex.
Oh God, she couldn’t deal with any of this. Sex and death. Death and sex. It was too much. Her body simply gave up the fight. Sleep was falling as swiftly as night in the tropics. But before she fell asleep in his arms, there was something he had to know.
“I’m glad you were there,” she whispered against his neck, her lips moving across the skin in what was almost a kiss.
“So am I,” he whispered back.
Chapter Nine
She’d fallen asleep like a child, from one breath to the next, John thought. He himself didn’t have any experience with children, but that’s what his married buddies always told him. Kids could drop off to sleep in an instant, just like that, they said.
Except Suzanne was no child. His raging hard-on was very clear on that.
She thought that she could hide herself from him inside a high-necked flannel nightgown, but hell, she couldn’t hide inside a burlap bag. She’d still be totally desirable. High-necked the gown might have been, but the shape of her breasts—her braless breasts—was clearly visible, the tight little nipples outlined against the pretty pink fabric. It was the cold making her nipples hard, not thoughts of having sex with him. So he managed—barely—to keep from tossing her onto the bed, ripping the nightgown in two and crawling on top of her. Opening her with his fingers and sliding his cock right in.
He knew exactly what being inside her felt like and he wanted more. Right now.
Part of it was his obsession with her, that ice princess air she had which contrasted so sharply with the curvy femininity, the luscious, slightly overlarge mouth, perfect creamy skin, large, slightly uptilted eyes…
But part of it was adrenaline. He was coming down from a firefight and extraction and that always made him hard as a rock.
It was an aspect of soldiering that didn’t figure in Hollywood movies or Tom Clancy novels. Movies showed men smoking, laughing, high-fiving each other after battle, but the truth was that men after battle were strung out, grim, tense and shaking, sporting woodies as hard as rocks. Willing to fuck a knothole in the wall to get it out of their system.
Every soldier in the world knew it, knew that surviving a fight required sex afterwards—hard and fast and furious—to bleed off the tension. A barracks after a takedown was so filled with testosterone you could smell it, it fogged the air so much. Soldiers had hard-ons after fights and that was a fact of life. Some would get it on with a female goat if a woman wasn’t around, but he’d always drawn the line at anything kinky. If a semi-attractive and willing woman wasn’t available, his fist worked just fine.
He had a more than semi-attractive woman in his arms right now and his hips surged upwards reflexively as his cock, all on its own, sought to enter her. She was right there, legs across his lap, ass right over his cock. Through the nightgown he could feel the little scrap of material over her hip. Probably a copy of those incredibly sexy little lace panties he’d ripped off her the other night, in his frantic haste to get inside her. Right now, right now, goddamn it, he could pull the soft flannel up, rip her panties off again—he’d have to start buying her underwear by the ton—spread her legs until she straddled him and thrust right up into her, and she’d be sweet and tight and smooth and all his…
Jesus.
He remembered every second his cock had been in her, everything about it. The tightness, the heat, the wetness…she’d been thinking about sex just as much as he had over dinner.
Suzanne sighed in her sleep, shifting slightly, slithering over his cock. He froze. Sweat broke out on his face, though there was still a slight chill in the air the heating system hadn’t managed to dispel.
A good soldier visualized, running what he wanted to do through his head until he could see and feel the moves, until the moves were second nature, running a successful future battle through his mind so many times that by the time the real thing rolled around, the op went down smooth as ice.
John was damned good at visualizing, at projecting himself forward in time to an op, going over the details again and again. It wasn’t something he could turn off, just like he couldn't turn off his ability to prepare for future danger or countering danger when he met it.
Right now he was visualizing like crazy. Visualizing doing all the things to her he hadn’t had time to do the other night because he’d been nearly half-crazy with lust. Not that he wasn’t in the same state right now. There had to be some point in the future in which he was going to be able to make love to Suzanne Barron instead of fucking her blind. When he'd had her enough times to assuage this burning hunger, when he’d come inside her often enough that he could savor the feel of her instead of craving it…then maybe he’d settle down some.
Maybe.
But he’d already been too rough the other night and that was without post-fight adrenaline raging through his system. Now he suspected he’d hurt her. Enter her too quickly, thrust too hard, Jesus maybe even bite her.
That thought made him back down a little.
Some women liked rough sex. John knew that for a fact and he’d had his share of them. Women who bit and scratched, who didn’t mind being sore afterwards. Who got off on barely controlled violence.
That wasn’t Suzanne. She’d been shocked the other night at the roughness, though maybe she’d been shocked at her reaction, too. And what a reaction. He remembered every ripple of her sheath contracting sharply around his cock. Her excited pants, the dilated pupils.
No, he might have made her come, explosively even, but rough sex wasn’t her thing.
And right now he wasn’t capable of anything but rough sex.
He wasn’t the only one coming down off an adrenaline high. She’d shown clear signs of it with the desperate, frantic apologies and the crying. She didn’t have the right equipment for a hard-on, but tears bled out stress, too.
He looked down at her in his arms, a tear still drying on that high perfect cheekbone, crystal over purest white marble.
Jesus but the woman was gorgeous. She’d been enticing when they’d met, and he’d been blown away by the sleekly beautiful confident woman—successful, completely together—across the desk. But the woman in his arms, now—bedraggled, without makeup, eyes swollen with tears—that woman was a heartbreaker. He wanted her, every way there was.
He rose with her in his arms and curved down to put her in the bed. She barely stirred when he tucked her in and he stood for a long moment, watching her sleep. Feeling things shifting inside him, things he had no words for. The only thing he remotely recognized amongst the thousand emotions rolling inside himself was lust. He had a steel hard-on and he headed, relieved, for the bathroom because at least he knew what to do about that.
He had no frigging clue what to do about his heart but he knew exactly what to do about his cock.
Luckily he kept spare clothes up here in his mountain hideaway. He’d bought the place his second week in Portland. Just a shack with a big, insulated cellar, whi
ch was the main reason he’d got it.
He’d decorated it in exactly one extremely painful and clueless hour at the closest Wal-Mart, choosing the first pieces of furniture he’d come across, not knowing what the hell he was doing, and having three beers afterwards to calm his nerves.
He stripped, leaving his clothes with their funk of the sweat of battle on the floor and got under the shower. The water was only luke-warm but that was okay. He should have a cold shower, actually, but he was suffering enough as it was.
Here he was, naked and raring to go, Suzanne Barron was in his bed not ten feet from here and there wasn’t a damned thing he could do about it. If that wasn’t torture, he didn’t know what was.
He dropped his hand to his groin, and remembered.
She had a little chocolate beauty spot right next to her ear. He’d licked it as he was taking her. Then he’d licked her ear and she moaned and it had been as if he’d had another gear and she’d kicked it. He’d almost doubled the speed of his strokes before the moan had finished its echo.