Page 63 of Heart of Danger
He straightened, scowling, wishing like hell he could put all these roiling emotions inside him down to some drug or fancy form of hypnosis or some crazy mind control technique, but he knew it wasn’t that. It was all real and it came from him, from the deepest part of him that responded to her like a key in a lock.
Dealing with a firefight was easier than this. This was mind-bending, life-altering stuff and knocked him straight out of his boots.
“So?” she asked softly. “Can I open my eyes?” She drew in a deep appreciative breath. “It smells glorious.”
“Sure.”
He angled the cart close to the edge of the bed, wondering how this was going to work without plates then realized there was stuff on a shelf below. God, he was going to get something special for Stella the next time he went out into the World because bless her, she’d thought of everything. On the lower shelf was a fold-out tray, plates, glasses, napkins and silverware.
Mac started to fold the tray out over her lap when he stopped, frowning. She was naked, the sheet barely held over her breasts, tucked under her arms.
Though a naked Catherine was a very good thing and though he couldn’t imagine anything finer than seeing and touching her breasts while he ate, a lot of the food was hot and the thought that she might be burned by hot food made him queasy. Mac knew first-hand the blinding pain of burns, soul-searing torment that went on forever. He couldn’t bear to think of Catherine going through anything like that.
Not an option.
“Hold up your arms.” He pulled out a clean folded tee from a drawer, shook it out, floated it over her head. “Here. You’ll be more comfortable this way. And you can open your eyes now.”
They opened immediately and met his and it was a punch to the stomach. No soft tendrils around his heart, no glowing heat flowing gently through his veins like honey. This was desire, hot and strong and hard as rock. Nothing gentle about it, just something vast and necessary. Strong as painless fire.
She knew it, she could feel it, he could almost see the lines going from him to her. Connection, deep and clear. Desire, like a blast furnace, fiercely strong, from him to her, strong and hot.
Her eyes widened and she instinctively flinched back against the headboard. God. She looked almost eerily delicate, his tee on her so huge the neck almost slipped off her shoulders. Her eyes were wide, fixed on his, confused swirls of emotion buzzing around her, darkening, and he realized with a sigh that she wasn’t ready for Round Two. He frowned. Round Three.
At some deep level she wanted it but at an even deeper level she was frightened by it and it scared him that this made sense to him. That he could read her like that.
He brought her hand to his mouth and kissed her knuckles, one by one. He turned her hand over and kissed the palm. Her hand cupped his chin, one finger stroking his burn scars.
Normally, he hated that. He didn’t like being touched, not even in the heat of sex. He often held a sex partner’s hands above her head because he had heavy scars along his back, too. The deep, thick scars—shrapnel from an IED—were souvenirs of Fuckedupistan, well before he was fucked up at Arka, but the two together were like a roadmap of pain and violence. What he’d done with his life written on his skin.
He didn’t need the light for a woman to be curious. Even in the dark, you could feel his scars and he hated the question—what happened?
What the fuck do you think happened?He’d had to bite that one back a lot.
This was completely different. Catherine ran her soft fingers over the entire scar, rippled, melted flesh on the left side of his face that went from the top of his forehead down to under his chin. He had a working left eye by a miracle.
The tone of her feelings changed, softened. No fear, something else.
“I can feel your pain,” she whispered.
And she could. He could tell. Everything about her darkened and tightened and Christ, he couldn’t stand it, not for one second. He didn’t want her to feel his pain. He didn’t want her to feel any pain, ever.
“Don’t,” he whispered back, clasping his hand over hers. Her hand under his was warm, and seemed to emit light. All of her was light. “Don’t think of it.”
She shook her head, eyes never leaving his. “How can I not think of it, when it’s so close, right there under your skin? I can feel it. It never goes away. Not physical pain but the other kind.” Her hand traced down, over his neck, chest, to rest over his heart, where it seemed to pulse. Skin against skin, skin melding into skin. “The kind that’s worse. I wish I could take it away for you.”
He smiled, something he did rarely. The burn scar puckered and stretched when he smiled. It wasn’t painful, just uncomfortable, and so he hardly ever smiled. There wasn’t much to smile about anyway. There’d never been much to smile about.
“You are taking it away,” he said in a low voice. It was true. Heat spread from her hand, filling his chest, curling inside him like smoke. The Colonel’s betrayal, he and his men, who had pledged their lives to their country, on the run like outlaws, accused of treason…it faded to background noise. The sharp pain of it was gone, dissipated like morning mist.
The spiky, ragged, almost painful desire he’d felt only a few minutes ago had subsided, replaced with a liquid glowing need for her, strong and steady and true. Sex, surely. Desire, yes. But something else, something deeper and more necessary than that. What he felt was passing through her hand into her.
He took in a deep breath, her hand rising and falling with his chest.
“I want you. Again.” The words came out a gentle whisper, where moments before they would have come out painful and raw.
He leaned into her hand, knowing she could read everything about him through the skin of her hand, something flowing between them, hot and rapid and bright with the glow of passion laced with tenderness.
He didn’t press against her, didn’t try to convince her, just waited, feeling the ebb and flow and swirl of emotions in her. He watched her carefully, though he could read her better through the hand touching him than he could from the expression on her face.
