I Dream of Danger (24 page)

But this Elle—she didn’t do beaten down. She stood absolutely straight, high color riding her high cheekbones, light blue eyes narrowed so that only a pale blue gleam showed, her face, her entire body, stiff with dignity and resistance. This was the woman she’d become. Strong and in control.

He stepped back, hands up because she looked like she was about to attack him. Nick wasn’t afraid of anyone on earth in hand-to-hand combat. Except Elle. Because to save his life, he couldn’t lift a hand against her. If she were armed and shot him, he’d be unable to resist.

He was really lucky she wasn’t violent by nature.

“I didn’t leave without a word,” he said softly.

Her face sharpened. “What? What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I left you a note. I suspect you didn’t see it.”

Her nostrils flared. “Stop jerking me around, Nick! Damn you!”

“I said I was coming back. And I did. I came back. I thought we would be gone for a day or two, but it turned out we were gone for three months. But I left you a note.”

“Yeah,” she sneered.

His jaws clenched hard. “Yes. I did. And you know what?” He tapped her on the chest with a finger. “I risked everything to leave you that note. It was a court-martial offense. Only married operators can tell wives that they are going on an op and you weren’t my wife. If my commanding officer found out I’d left a note to someone who wasn’t a relative, I would have been fucked. So leaving you that note was a
big fucking deal
.”

She punched him. It didn’t hurt but did take him completely by surprise. “I didn’t find any note!”

“No, it fell to the floor because you threw back the covers when you woke up.”

Her eyes opened wide. “How the hell would you know that?”

“Because I came back for you. You’re not listening, Elle. I left the note on my pillow, but when I came back it was on the floor. You didn’t see it. You didn’t see it and you didn’t trust me to come back, and you left. And I have spent the past ten years worried sick about you.”
And she’d changed her fucking name!
He was still mad about that.

“Oh no, Nick Ross.” Elle moved away from him

Oh no, you don’t,
he thought.
You don’t get to hold back.

His hand on her cheek brought her face back to him. “Look at me, honey. I’m not lying. I’ll never lie to you. I got a text from my superior officer that night. We were going on a secret mission. And though the U.S. military has divorced me and would probably kill me on sight, I still can’t tell you where we went or what we did. But I was under direct orders to leave immediately and not tell anyone where I was going or even that I was going on an op. I thought it would only be for a few days, but we ended up staying three months.”

Elle brought her hands up. They were shaking. “Don’t,” she whispered. “I can’t deal with this now.”

The flush of anger had gone from her cheeks, leaving her icy pale. He didn’t ever want to see that color on her face again, and here he was the one who caused it. Shame made him step back.

“Okay. You don’t have to face anything right now except shower and bed.”

“I want to sleep alone, Nick.”

“You will. I’ll bunk on the couch.”

“Alone.”

“Not going to happen. Sorry. I’m not going to leave you alone. I won’t touch you unless you want me to, but I’m not leaving.” Their eyes met and held. She was strong-willed but so was he.

She made a sound in her throat and looked away.

Damn straight.
She wasn’t going to win this one.

Nick pointed. “The bathroom’s through there. You’ll find everything you need. You’ll find clean tees in the dresser drawer. They’ll do for a nightgown until we can get you some clothes. Now I’m going to lie down because I don’t know about you, but I saved someone’s life tonight and I’m goddamned tired.”

He could hear her teeth grinding. No matter. He went to the closet, pulled out a blanket, placed his boots next to the couch, lay down and pulled the blanket over him and, closing his eyes, turned over.

He didn’t watch but his hearing was just fine. He heard her take a shower, pad across to the bed, and slip under the covers.

The bed was comfortable, he knew that. It was the same make as his own, and it was great. She didn’t resist more than a few minutes. He heard her breathing slow down and almost felt her tumble into a deep sleep.

He waited half an hour then threw the covers off and padded barefoot to the bed. He’d dimmed the lights to the faintest of glows, just enough so if she woke she wouldn’t be in complete darkness.

There was no question of sleep. He felt like he’d never sleep again. Every hormone in his body that governed sleep, hope, happiness, and sex was pinging around his system and he had nowhere to go with it. He hooked a chair with his foot and sat down by her bedside because the only thing that could calm him was looking at her.

Elle.

After ten years—fifteen if you counted from the day the judge kicked him out—she was here, with him. He’d lost hope. He’d resigned himself to that aching emptiness he sometimes let himself feel, knowing it would be forever. To his dying day, he’d be alone in the most elemental sense of the word.

The closest he had to a place in the world was here, Haven. He respected Mac and Jon, he liked Catherine and the misfits making up Haven. That was going to be the extent of his relations till the end of time. Everyone at arm’s length, no one close.

And now . . . Elle.

She was pissed at him. That was cool. It didn’t make any difference to him because he had her again. That particular warmth that only she could give—it was back again. She’d slipped through his fingers once but she wasn’t slipping twice.

He sat next to her, watching her pale profile, watching the covers rise and fall, knowing he was going to be next to her for the rest of their lives and felt something he hadn’t felt in a long, long time. In fifteen years, actually.

Happiness.

H
er eyes fluttered once, twice, opened. If he hadn’t been staring at her face, he’d have missed it. But he hadn’t been able to look away from her all the while she slept. Outside on Mount Blue, dawn had come and gone and it was late morning. If he hadn’t wanted to guard her sleep, he’d have tapped a button and turned the walls into giant monitors and watched the dawn with her.

It would happen.

Elle frowned, light blue eyes flickering from him to the room like bolts of lightning in the dim light. Nick tapped and the ambient light came up slowly, so she could see more than the dim shadows of the furniture.

She hadn’t had the strength to notice much last night, but now he watched her take in her surroundings.

The room was nice. Everything in Haven was nice. They had supertalented people who’d designed the spaces and he and Jon were master thieves. They’d stolen furniture from the finest designers. The room was spacious, beautifully appointed, a delight for the senses.

Elle’s gaze rested thoughtfully on everything in the room, taking in the luxurious feel of it. Finally, her light blue gaze rested on him.

“You,” she said. Nick couldn’t figure out the tone of her voice. One thing for sure, though. It wasn’t enthusiasm he was hearing.

He leaned forward in his chair, placing a hand on the mattress. “Me.”

There was maybe half a foot between them, but it felt like oceans, like whole valleys and planets were between them. Nick couldn’t stand it for one second longer. Talking things over would come later. The words would only confirm what already was.

She was his. He was hers.

He leaned forward and touched his mouth to hers.

He could taste the surprise. Now he wanted to taste the heat. He’d been a good boy. He’d waited. He’d fed her, let her sleep. But the control was fraying because just watching her sleep, he’d wanted her like his next breath. He leaned against her fully, bringing her arms up and around his neck. She resisted but he kissed her harder—and felt the exact precise moment when her resistance broke. She tightened her arms around his neck, nearly choking him, and lifted herself up into him so her breasts rubbed against him.

Oh yeah.

He ate at her mouth, pressed against her harder and felt his mind blur. There was no strategy now in his movements, no feeling his way forward. His body took over completely. He hadn’t been celibate these past ten years, but it felt like it.

He panted as he pulled her T-shirt up and off, then unzipped himself. He slid under the covers and shifted her leg with his hand—remembering clearly how soft she felt—and his rock-hard cock found its unerring way inside her. He pushed hard, mind blasted by all that softness and heat and— He stopped.

“Oh God,” he wheezed. There was barely enough oxygen to breathe, not much making it to his head, but what he was feeling was unmistakable.

Buried deeply inside her, Nick lifted his head and looked down. So beautiful, like an otherworldly creature, an eye magnet for men and yet . . .

He moved his hips forward, as if testing her.

“No one else has been here.” Nick stared into Elle’s pale blue eyes as he said this, and her eyes flared. “No one, ever, has been here but me.”

Her mouth opened and closed. There was no way for her to lie because her face, her eyes, her whole body was open to him.

It was too much. His hips started hammering against her, lifting her with each stroke and he could feel her emotions pounding inside her, finding release in the sex. It was fast and hard and intense and couldn’t last and it didn’t. One last stroke that drove her almost to the headboard and he started coming like a train, moving hard inside her all the while, coming in hot pulses that felt like his spinal cord had liquidated and found its way to his dick.

And at the very last minute, when he was crushing her against the mattress, head down on her shoulder, sweat coating his body, he felt it. That sweet little cunt, clenching around him in white hot pulses, milking him.
Oh God, yes.

At the end they lay there, plastered together, Nick still panting.

Elle punched him in the shoulder and burst into tears.

“Shh, shh.” Nick kissed her neck, that soft spot behind her ear. Her mouth, briefly, because she punched even harder when he kissed her lips. “No, honey, no.”

He settled more deeply against her. He’d lost part of his erection. The days in which he could come two, three times in a row were gone. But his dick didn’t want to leave her in any way so there was enough blood in it to stay in her.

He was careful not to slip out. No, no. If he could, he’d stay in her forever.

She was crying silently, head buried in his shoulder, trying to stifle her sobs but failing.

It broke his heart.

He held her close for long minutes, knowing it would be best for her to get it out of her system. When she calmed, he eased away so he could look at her. She turned her head away and he gently tilted her face back to his.

Even after crying, she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. How could that be? She’d been rescued at the last minute, been hooded and taken to a place she’d never seen before. She’d had the shock of seeing him after ten years. He’d fucked her near to death. She’d had a storm of tears.

And still she looked beautiful. Her eyes didn’t swell, her nose didn’t turn red. The tears simply dried on that pale ivory skin like shards of crystal and,
oh . . .
It almost hurt to look at her.

He was lying with his entire weight on her, cock still in her. What he had to say required saying not only with words but with his body. He knew that at some primal level she would hear and feel the truth.

“I never left you.”

She was watching him carefully out of those pale blue eyes. Listening to him. Feeling him. A big lie is told with words but told with the body too. Tiny signals of falsehood, many imperceptible. But they were touching each other all over. He was inside her. His body had the stillness of truth.

Her eyes searched his. “I thought you’d left me. Again.”

Nick closed his eyes in pain. “I know, honey. I realize that. There was nothing I could do. I made it up to Lawrence the instant I got back but—you’d left.”

“That night,” she whispered. “I left that night. I felt like I’d die if I stayed one more minute.”

His heart clenched as he thought of her—poor and abandoned, striking out on her own.

“Because it was the second time you’d left me.” There they were. The words he’d been dreading.

Because there was no way he could tell her the truth—that the judge had sent him away. Nick knew the judge had been absolutely right to do what he did. But Elle wouldn’t see it that way. She’d watched her father decline badly and he didn’t want to add anger to her memories of her father. The judge had been a good and noble man who’d had to bear a lot at the end of his life.

Wherever the judge was, his daughter wasn’t going to resent him because he’d sent Nick away.

Nick lifted himself up on his forearms and looked down at her. At this woman he loved with all his heart. He’d loved her these past ten years and he’d love her until the day he died.

Which might be tomorrow.

He cupped her head in his hands and opened himself.

He was good at lying. Good undercover agent. He never saw a need to tell anyone what was going on inside himself. That stopped right now, because Elle had a right to see inside him because she was inside him.

He looked her in the eyes and opened his soul.

“I can’t tell you why I went away that first time. I could lie to you and you’d believe me. I’m really good at lying. An ace at it, in fact. But I won’t lie to you. I will never lie to you for the rest of our lives. But this one thing—I can’t tell you and you will have to accept that.”

She thought about it long and hard. She didn’t even pretend that she wasn’t. He watched her work her way through it, knowing what he was asking her.

“You won’t lie to me?”

Nick dipped his head, kissed her shoulder, lifted his head again. “No, not ever.”

“You’ll tell me what’s going on here? In this place?”