Heart of Danger (17 page)

Where did that thought come from?

Mac walked into his quarters and moved into his bedroom. Bending, he pulled back the covers and laid her down.

He missed that warm, slight weight in his arms immediately. For minutes, he hovered over her, still touching her, unwilling to let her go completely.

New terrain.

Mac’s body did what he told it to do, no more, no less. The idea that he’d hover over a woman because his arms simply didn’t want to obey him shocked him as much as the boner in his pants.

Christ.

Get a grip.

It took every ounce of self-discipline he had to straighten up and let her go and that scared him.

Her eyes were half-open when he unzipped her boots and removed them.

“What are you doing?” she whispered. Her eyes were such a brilliant gray he was almost glad they were half-closed. They were mesmerizing. It was hard to look away from her.

“Making you comfortable. You’re dead tired. You delivered a baby.” She looked so lost in his huge bed, he picked up her hand. “Rest now,” he said, keeping his voice low. “You’re safe now. Don’t worry about anything. I’m here.”

Man, how could he expect her to feel safe when last night he was interrogating her, fully armed, suspecting her of being a government spy? What a fucking stupid thing to say to her.

But to his surprise, her lips turned up a little as her eyes closed. “Safe,” she murmured. Her hand curled trustingly around his, then she turned her head and went out like a light.

Mac pulled up the covers, smoothing them over her shoulder with his free hand. He wanted to sit down at her bedside. He stretched with his foot for the chair because, well, he didn’t want to let go of her hand.

Sitting, he wrapped her hand in both of his and watched her face, trying to figure out the enigma that was Catherine Young.

She looked so very fragile, lying there. She was pale, nostrils pinched with stress, frowning even in sleep. The rest of her was fragile, too—slender, fine-boned.

Catherine Young seemed so heartbreakingly delicate, almost frail. Like she’d break if you touched her too roughly, though he’d treated her roughly and she hadn’t broken, not at all.

Whatever her motives, it took balls the size of refrigerators to set off on a quest to find him with just a few clues from a madman.

The idea that the madman might be the Captain was shunted aside. It hurt to think about it. He’d deal with that later, with Nick and Jon.

Whoever sent her on that chase had given her crumbs to go on, and by God, she’d done it. She’d tracked him down when no one else had. She hadn’t crumbled under interrogation, either. She’d stuck to her story and had been meek but not intimidated.

And watching her help Bridget give birth. Man. She’d been gentle, reassuring, utterly competent. He shuddered to think that he might have had to do that. Mac knew all about stopping bleeding, broken bones, bullet holes. But helping a child be born took a whole set of skills he didn’t have, never would have, either. Though she said she wasn’t a practicing physician, Catherine had stepped right up to the plate and delivered a healthy baby into the world.

Into
their
world. Their first new citizen, delivered by the latest addition to their community.

Because Catherine was now one of them, there was no hiding it, no running away from it. It was a simple fact.

His people had come to him one by one, sometimes in twos and threes. They recognized him and they recognized each other and they now had recognized Catherine.

So what the fuck was he supposed to do with her?

He watched her, holding her hand in his. She’d turned in bed and now her face was in profile, only her head and hand outside the covers. She was so fucking beautiful. He’d tried so hard not to notice, but his body laughed at him and reacted the way a healthy male body reacted to a spectacularly beautiful woman.

Usually, that wasn’t a problem, he had himself under control. He could control his heart rate, his reflexes, his thoughts, his cock. They’d been taught that in BUD/S but he’d already known how. You didn’t survive his childhood without massive self-control.

And he’d learned early on that it was useless getting a hard-on for beautiful women. He’d been born ugly, grew up ugly, and the fucker with the knife and the massive firestorm at Arka that had melted part of his face had just made things worse. He rarely looked beautiful women in the eyes because it could come across as aggression. He’d learned long ago to tuck his dick between his legs when he desired one because it just wasn’t going to happen.

He’d been aroused in the interrogation room, but had been able to dial his dick right back down because she’d been so scared. Mac was scary-looking and if you were his enemy duck and hide, but the thought of intimidating a woman for sex made him physically ill. And besides, Nick and Jon had been watching, so the hard-on just had to go.

And it went.

It was harder to rein himself in now. By some magical alchemy, Catherine Young was inside his perimeter in every way there was. She’d been accepted by his ragtag town and he accepted that her safety was now his responsibility. He didn’t like it, but there it was. She was in.

She wasn’t awake to see him look at her with heat in his eyes, so he could, well, fantasize.

Mac shifted in his chair, his hard-on like some heavy, uncomfortable
thing
hanging onto the front of his body. He hadn’t had a woman in a long long time. While he was a SEAL, it hadn’t been much of a problem. Ugly as he was, there were plenty of women who got off on nailing SEALs. It gave them bragging rights if nothing else.

He still remembered the SEAL groupie in Coronado who’d asked if she could make a plaster cast of his cock. But first she wanted him to depilate.

She already had twelve trophies, lined up on a bookshelf. With names, dates and number of times they’d fucked.

Jesus.

In Ghost Ops, everyone’s dicks were lashed down, including Jon’s, who used to go through women like good ole boys went through free beer.

Ghost Ops was all about being invisible, untraceable, hidden. They became non- people with no credit history, no leases or mortgages or utility bills or cell phones linked to ordinary providers, no car registrations, no driver’s licenses—nothing. That went with no sex life because you had to tell a woman
something
. Women were curious and if they liked the sex they were likely to want to stick around, and inevitably they’d find out that Joe Smith didn’t really exist.

So Ghost Ops was mainly a no-sex zone, not to mention the fact that since the day they were established, the six-man team had been almost constantly on ops. And their downtime wasn’t at home—because they didn’t have homes anymore—but quarters on some scrubland a hundred miles from the nearest town or road, a place they’d dubbed Fort Dump, a place no woman would put up with on pain of death, let alone for sex.

And after the Arka disaster—well, being on the run for your life and hiding out didn’t really bring out the warm and sexy.

So Mac sat, watching Catherine’s face, holding her hand, vainly trying to will away the blue steeler in his pants and trying to remember the last time he had sex.

He couldn’t.

It wasn’t just that it was probably lost in the mists of time, or not just that. It was that he had problems remembering anything about other women while looking at Catherine. It seemed impossible to him that he could ever have wanted another woman because the most desirable woman in the world was right in front of him, sleeping in his bed, her hand in his.

Every other woman in the world just slid right out of his head, never to return.

Catherine’s eyes moved under her lids, back and forth, as if she were reading something. Her hand gripped his and she opened her eyes.

He moved his hand so that his thumb rested on the inside of her wrist.

“Hi,” he said softly. “You’ve been asleep. You were exhausted. I brought you here so you could rest.”

Her eyebrows pulled together as she slowly looked around the room then brought her gaze back to his face. “I’m in your room?”

Quarters was more like it, but he nodded. “Yeah.” He held up the hand that wasn’t gripping hers. “But don’t worry. You’re in no danger from me. I’m not going to hurt you.” His mouth quirked. “Even if I wanted to, which I don’t, every single person in this community would rush in and beat me up if I touched a hair on your head.”

She listened to him carefully, hand gripping his. It was strange, how she wouldn’t let go of him, just hung on tight. Where her hand met his, his skin was warm, and it was almost as if there were some kind of glow.

Shit, he really needed to get laid if holding a woman’s hand was making him hot.

She took her time answering, searching for something in his face.

It made him almost—but not quite—uncomfortable. Women’s eyes didn’t linger on his face. Certainly not beautiful women’s eyes. People looked at him briefly, then usually focused on a point past his shoulder. Only his men and the people of Haven looked him straight in the face.

And Catherine Young.

After looking at him for a long time, she finally spoke in a soft voice. “No, I’m not afraid you’re going to hurt me. Not at all.” She stopped, bit her lip.

“You have something else to say? Spit it out.”

Her hand moved in his, warm and soft and spreading . . . something where skin touched skin.

“You’re not going to like it,” she warned.

Hell, there were a lot of things he didn’t like. That didn’t mean he couldn’t face them. In the field, you faced what came at you, dodging whatever was incoming if you could, dealing with it head-on if you couldn’t.

“I’m a big boy,” Mac answered.

She smiled, her first smile since waking up. Gentle and sad. There was no happiness there, only pain.

“I know you are, Mac. I know
you
. I know you inside out, whether you want to believe me or not. I know you are a dangerous warrior on the battlefield and that you couldn’t hurt an innocent. Simply couldn’t.”

His hand had jerked but she just tightened her grip. It was ridiculous. His hand was almost twice the size of hers. His grip, like that of all SpecOps soldiers, had been tested on a dynamometer and had clocked in at two hundred pounds. Over, in fact, the scale. And yet he couldn’t pull his hand from hers.

Her eyes searched his. “We have a connection, Mac. Whether you like it or not. And I think you can feel it, too.”

He shook his head even as he knew he was lying to himself. He felt it. Some kind of electric thing, a prickling warmth spreading from his hand up his arm . . .

“Did you somehow drug me?” he blurted out.

Catherine gave a startled laugh. “No, of course not.”

It was the only thing that made sense. What else could explain this feeling, something warm coursing through his system? And Catherine—she was glowing from within; whereas before she’d been pale and pinched now she was slightly flushed and radiant, as if there were a lightbulb inside her.

What was this shit?

His cell gave a soft two-note beep. Incoming text. A white beam shot out, moving until it found a dark surface to project on.

Outside the door. Stella

Grateful for the distraction, Mac pulled his hand away and stood up. Goddammit, his fucking knees felt weak. What had she done to him?

“What is it?” Catherine sat up, the bedsheets falling to her waist.

Mac was acutely aware of absolutely everything. The sound of the sheets sliding down, the brush of her hair against the pillows she stacked behind her, the soft sigh of regret when he pulled his hand away.

And, crazily, he felt . . . bereft. As if he’d been snatched from somewhere warm and welcoming and plunged into an icy cold reality. His hand felt cold. Everything felt cold and alien, including himself.

“Stella,” he said, holding himself utterly still, because the temptation was to crawl in with her, looking so mussed and delectable in his bed. Her smile had faded at his reaction, though. She hugged herself and shivered though it wasn’t cold in the room.

It was never cold and never hot in Haven. It was always a steady 73 degrees.

“What does she want?”

“To feed us, is my guess.” Mac turned and walked to the door. And damned if it wasn’t hard. What was this shit? It was like walking through mud, each step away from her harder than the step before until he was straining to get at the door. It took his hand two seconds to reach the command on the wall, and when he went to touch it, he saw his fingers were trembling.

Fucking trembling.

His hands never shook. He’d killed at a mile out. He’d defused bombs. He’d stuck his hand in a scorpion’s nest. It never shook.
Never
.

But it was shaking now.

The door slid open and a cart was standing right outside. He pushed it into the room and back to the bed, fast, as if a rubber band had been overstretched and was now flinging him back where he belonged.

Catherine watched him, silver gray eyes huge, full lips slightly pinched, biting back words.

She scooted over to the cart filled with food, leaned over and took a sniff. She unpursed her lips and offered, “Wow. This looks better than Fortnum and Mason, in London.”

London had been a fleeting impression of old and new buildings, on his way to Heresford for cross-training with SAS.

“Are you hungry?”

“Starving.”

Yeah. She would be. She’d missed lunch because she was helping one of his little tribe into the world.

Haven wasn’t a place where people went hungry. There was plenty of that in the world outside. Mac had been so rattled by this woman that he hadn’t looked after her at all.

So, yeah, he needed to feed her.

He hadn’t thought of it, Stella had, bless her. She had tons of help in their communal kitchens but she would have prepared this stuff herself. She liked Catherine.

“Okay, let’s see. We have hot sandwiches . . .” He pulled the crusty top off one. “Looks like pulled pork. You aren’t a vegetarian, are you?”

“God, no.” She shook her head sharply, smiling.