Tales of Chills and Thrills: The Mystery Thriller Horror Box Set (7 Mystery Thriller Horror Novels) (26 page)

Nicki stared at him in disbelief. That something so hideous could have happened to Rafe when he was a child was stunning. That she didn’t know about it until now was heartbreaking. She had to fight every instinct she had not to put her arms around him and hold him. She forced herself to stay still. From the dead expression on his face, she realized he had only begun.

“I should have been able to prevent what happened in Rwanda. I was older then, and my skills could compete with the best of them. But, hell, we were still young. Christ, I’d just turned twenty. Rwanda was where I met Gray and Max. Gray was two years older than me, and Max was a whopping twenty-four. He was an army medic then. I was already a Ranger. Your father made that happen. It’s important to understand. We were in the middle of a fucking uprising. We weren’t supposed to be there. Only the U.N. was sanctioned. The U.S. wasn’t.

“Our Colonel was my hero. I believed in him. He was the kind of man I wanted to be. He was suave, cultured, came from a prestigious family. Handsome as hell. He spoke as many languages as I did. I always knew when something was wrong. My instincts are as good as yours Nicki, but this time I ignored them. For once I had a military leader to look up to, the way I looked up to Yuri.

“Like I said our mission was clandestine. We were supposed to intervene quietly, blow up weapons, get intel, that sort of thing. I’d always been attracted to working with kids, so I started helping out at a girl’s school, teaching the kids English in my spare time. The little girls loved me. They got a kick out of how I tried to speak their language. I did it badly and they loved my clumsy attempts.”

Nicki clung to him. She dug her fingers in his arm to weight him down. She was afraid if she didn’t, she might lose her grip on him. That he’d fly away high in the sky like a balloon when you let go of the string. Her chest was so tight she had to force herself to take shallow breaths or she might forget to breathe. She wanted to shut out his monotonous voice, longed to make it stop. She didn’t know if she was strong enough to hear the rest. But as terrified as she was to hear what she knew was coming, she was more afraid he might stop and she’d never know the agony torturing his soul.

“The Colonel put me in charge of the mission. We were supposed to blow up a cache of weapons the rebels hid in a compound. We did this kind of thing all the time. Didn’t matter whose weapons they were, we were just supposed to get rid of as many as we could. We didn’t pick sides. Tutsi, Hutu, Interahamwe, who the hell cared. We just wanted to cut down on their firepower. The government was as rotten as the rebels. As violent, as vicious—if not more so. Once the militia got involved, it turned out they were the worst of the bunch.

“That day we wired the compound and were waiting until dark for the command from the Colonel. He was a quarter of a mile away calling the shots. When he radioed me the go signal, I signaled my men to blow it. And at that moment two of the children I’d been working with came running out of the building. I can see them now. They were laughing, calling my name. ‘Missur, Missur, Missur Rafie. Candy? Candy?’ I screamed. I screamed and screamed. Grayson and three other men had to hold me down. Don’t know what I thought I could do. And then it was blown. Bodies were everywhere. I watched pieces of them fly through the air. I can still see them. I don’t know who screamed louder. All those dying children or me.”

Nicki did her best to control her sobs. She wept as soundlessly as she could. The lump in her throat threatened to choke her, but she kept forcing herself to swallow. Anything to keep him from stopping until the terrible tale was told.

“Gray and Max dragged me to some government hospital. I was burned pretty bad. My throat bled for weeks. I couldn’t talk. They dosed me up. I woke up in middle of night. Gray was there. He looked like shit. Even before he told me, I knew what he was going to say. Gray could barely speak, he was so angry. He said, ‘Goddamn, Rafe. I don’t want to tell you this but the Colonel sold us out. He set us up. He did it for money, Rafe. For goddamn fucking money.”

“The militia wanted the world to know that the U.S. did it, killed the little girls. The official word was the U.S. wasn’t there, remember? It was supposed to be a fucking public relations disaster for the U.S. The bastards enticed the kids into the compound after we got it wired and made sure we didn’t know.

“The next morning Gray found me. The way he tells it, he looked for me all night long. So did the doctors at the hospital. Gray found me covered with bloody bandages. Like a good soldier, I was sitting in the camp cleaning my weapons. I had them all lined up, pretty as you please. Gray told me the Colonel had been found dismembered. He was in so many pieces he could have fit in a small sized steamer trunk. Gray kept saying no one would blame the man who did it. No one, from the President of the United States to the lowest Private. Gray made me promise I wouldn’t blame that man either. I laughed. It took me three months to be able to talk again, but I laughed then. I told Gray later that I wouldn’t blame that guy for what happened to the Colonel but I’ll never forgive him as long as I live for killing twenty-seven innocent little girls.”

For several long moments the only sounds in the room were Nicki’s sobs and the sound of his match striking another cigarette. Rafe didn’t let go of her, but he didn’t look at her either. He just looked straight ahead and continued in that low monotonous tone.

“Do you want to know the irony of it? The fucking irony of it? There was no public relations disaster. Because no one knew it happened. We were in the middle of the biggest genocide in modern history and we didn’t even know it. In little over a month nearly a million people were murdered. The ‘civilized’ world turned its back. It didn’t give a shit what was happening in some godforsaken African hell hole. Think about that, Nicki. Between 800,000 and a million people were slaughtered by their fellow countrymen in less than six weeks and the world couldn’t have cared less. Sure as hell no one knew or cared about those little girls. Except us. Max said it was a blessing. At least they weren’t all raped before I blew them up.”

Nicki buried her face deeper against his chest stricken by the hideousness of his casually caustic statement.

“Ironic huh? But one lesson I learned as though I didn’t already know it. When it comes to the people I love—specifically the women I love, I’m horseshit at taking care of them. Something always happens. I can’t protect them. That’s why I’m scared shitless, Nicki, about you going tomorrow. Yeah, you have to do this. You are the single best person to make this work. But, baby, I sure hope you are as good as I think you are, because you better not count on me. My track record… it ain’t good, sweetheart. It doesn’t bode well.”

Nicki murmured over and over how sorry she was. Tears streamed down her face onto his chest. The sheets and pillow case were damp with her tears rolling off his chest. She didn’t bother to wipe them away. They were endless. She didn’t try to minimize the horror of what happened. Or tell him it wasn’t his fault. She intuitively knew that would keep him from ever talking about it again.

After several minutes of listening to her sobbing quietly beside him, he snuffed out his cigarette and stood up.

“Where are you going, Rafe?”

“I’m gonna shower, Princess. It’s been a long day. Gray and I really went at it in the ring. For once he needed to blow off as much steam as I did.”

While his tone was casual, Nicki sensed the barricades going up. She was already losing him. She lay in bed listening to the shower, then made a decision. Now that he had bared his soul to her, if she didn’t go to him, he’d close her off, shut her out. He’d build an even higher wall, complete with ramparts. A wall so high and thick she’d never be able to breech it. She was certain that after he’d told her father the hideous story, the two men never discussed it again. She wasn’t going to let that happen to her.

Nicki walked into the bathroom stripping off her tank top and hip hugging briefs. Through the glass stall she saw him leaning against the shower wall. His forearms were stretched out in front of him bracing him. His head hung between them as if it was too heavy for him to hold up. Even blurred by the cloudy wall, he was impressive. Tall, lean. His broad shoulders and strong arms and thighs were visible though the steamy glass. For the first time, she also saw the vulnerable man. The man with way too much resting on his broad shoulders. She wasn’t sure how, but she was about to take some of that burden off the shoulders of the man she loved.

Chapter 29

“Nicki, please. Not now. Please go.”

Nicki didn’t need to hear his words to know that he didn’t want her. His scowl and tightening muscles in his neck and shoulders when she opened the door and stepped in conveyed the message. If she’d let them, his harsh words would have wounded her.

“Please, Nicki, I don’t want to hurt you, but I need to be alone.”

Nicki gave a derisive snort.

“You need a lot of things, Rafe. To be alone is not one of them.”

Brushing past him, she slid her naked body against his, grabbing for the soap. Opting for the less confrontational rear view, she stood behind him. Rubbing the soap between her hands she used it to lather his strong back, his hard ass, and long muscular legs. She ignored his attempt to pull away, glad that the shower was just roomy enough to hold them both. That he had to feel her body against his whether he wanted to or not. When his backside was slippery with soap, she began to knead the rigid muscles striping his neck and shoulders. Having spent a lifetime pushing her body the way Rafe pushed his, Nicki knew the places that ached and the ones that begged to be touched. She worked her strong fingers into the knots and tight muscles the way her trainers had worked hers. She ignored his objections, instead moving systematically from muscle group to muscle group, kneading, digging into the tightest spots, gently rubbing the place when the knot released. Little by little Rafe stopped resisting, moaning softly when Nicki’s healing hands found a particularly tender place.

When she felt his neck and shoulder muscles soften under her expert touch, she began working her way down his spine. Testing the tightness around each spinal ridge, she worked slowly, carefully, not missing a spot. Dropping to her knees, she nudged his legs apart, to better reach around his muscular thighs. When he resisted, she reached up and pinched his butt.

“Spread ‘em Soldier. Unless you want to miss out on something that feels really good.”

Rafe chortled and grunted something that sounded like ‘smartass’. Nevertheless he inched his legs apart but held back guarding more than his jewels. No matter how good her expert massage was making him feel, it was clear he was waiting for the opportunity to ask her to leave. Deciding it was time to up the ante, Nicki kneeled up and began to massage his tight butt. God, he was beautiful. She’d been ogling his ass since the first day she saw him. In the flesh it was twice as good as her most vivid imagination. She dug her fingers into the tight muscles inching her thumbs closer to the inviting crack that separated his tight cheeks.

He pulled away and growled.

“What the hell are you doing, Nicki?”

She held on and kept working the rigid muscles.

“What I’ve wanted to do since the first day I saw you. And I gotta tell you, Rafe, if ever there was a poster boy for ‘Tight Ass’, this butt wins the prize hands down.”

He snorted, then reached behind himself and grabbed her hands. It was instructive that he didn’t face her. She didn’t have to look hard to see the reason. His arousal was apparent from the fleeting glimpse he allowed her. Knowing he was seconds away from throwing her out, she did the most outrageous thing she could think of. Wedging his legs apart she crawled through them then whirled around and came face to face with the most stunning view of her man that she could have hoped for.

“What the hell!”

His shocked exclamation echoed through the tight stall. He reached down to grab her but she buried her cheek against his thigh and held on tight. The water was hot, pulsing. It ran through her hair and over her breasts.

“Nicki, no.”

His voice was rough, but beneath the denial she heard his need. Oh yeah, she didn’t have to see his burgeoning arousal to know that he wanted her. How could he not? A naked woman on her knees in front of him was bound to get a reaction. Her body was flaming with desire just at the sight of him.

Before he could push her away, she murmured against his hard thigh.

“I want you, Rafe. I want to love you the way you love me. All of you.”

He groaned and gripped her shoulders.

“No baby, no. I can’t let you do this. It isn’t right. You…you don’t know what you are doing. “

Her voice was earnest as she leaned back to stare up at him.

“Then teach me. Tell me what to do. Show me how to make you feel as good as I do when you make love to me.”

His face contorted with a mix of desire and determination to push her away.

“No, Nicki. No. I…I don’t want you to do this.”

Something snapped inside of her. He needed to know that she wanted all of him. The hero
and
the vulnerable man who fought hideous demons from the past. And she wanted all of his body. His gorgeous powerful body that she ached to take in her hands and her mouth.

She tossed her head and shoved his hands away.

Pressing both of her hands against his thighs, she snapped, “Fine. Don’t teach me. I’ll figure it out by myself.”

Staring at the huge appendage inches from her face, she muttered, “Good God, how complicated can it be?”

He snorted a sound between a groan and a guffaw.

Sensing his lowered resistance, she pressed her advantage, tentatively taking him in her hands. She gently caressed him, running her hands up and down the length of him.

He groaned and shuddered at her touch.

She glanced up, still somewhat annoyed at his refusal to coach her.

“It’s not as though I haven’t read books you know. I’m not a complete idiot.”