Page 67 of I Dream of Danger
He could barely remember his last hard-on. Some waitress down in Bakersville. She’d been nice enough. Lonely, like him. The signs had been unmistakable. Nick had become the world’s greatest expert on lonely and could sniff lonely people out in a crowd. They’d gone to a nearby motel, and she’d been older and more used up than he thought and his dick had gone a little limp. She noticed, had smiled sadly and started buttoning her blouse back up.
Nick had willed his dick back up and forced himself to give her an extra good time, and afterwards, when she’d left at dawn, he’d stared at the ceiling until the sun rose over the windowsill, thinking of absolutely nothing at all.
That had been six months ago and he hadn’t had wood since. Hadn’t seen a woman who even vaguely interested him, and hadn’t jerked off.
Right now, it felt like his dick would never go down, ever again.
He bent again, his lips almost but not quite touching that long, pale slender neck. “So like it or not, Elle, I’m staying here. I’ll sleep on the couch, I’ll sleep on the fucking floor, I don’t care. But you’re not leaving my sight.” Elle gave a long exhale.
“You bastard.” Elle’s voice was the barest whisper.
“Yeah. No argument there.” There wasn’t. He was literally a bastard. He doubted his mother even knew who his father was. Apparently there’d been plenty of candidates. But over and above that, in Ghost Ops you lied and cheated if that’s what it took to get the job done. He’d been undercover, and lied about himself so much it was hard to remember what was the truth. He and his teammates fought for survival, not for goodness. There had been very little of that in his life. The Judge and Elle herself had been the only good people he’d ever met.
So yeah, he was a bastard.
He turned his head so his ear was close to her mouth. “So in a second I’m going to step back, though it’ll cost me, and let you settle in. But I’m not going anywhere and you’d better get used to that. Because from here on in, I’m sticking to your pretty tail.”.
Her skin flushed. He could almost feel the heat. She pulled in a deep breath and gave him a hard shove. If he didn’t want to move, no shove of Elle’s could ever make him move, not even an inch. But he stepped back.
“You bastard!” Her pale-blue eyes shot fire. “You son of a bitch! You leave me—twice!—without a word, and now I’m supposed to let you just stick close to me? Until the next time you leave?”
Nick fisted his hands in her soft, pale hair, pulled her head back a little, and kissed her. Finally. It was what he’d been craving since she’d woken up in the hovercar. Not before. Before, he’d been too wild with terror to think of kissing her. All he’d wanted then was to find Elle alive. In fact, if he’d thought of it and if he believed in God, he’d have taken a vow of chastity in exchange for a living, breathing Elle. He’d have given anything up, promised anything on earth to find her alive. Kissing her had taken a back seat to that.
But he hadn’t promised anything to anyone. He’d found her, saved her, won her. Fair and square.
Her mouth still tasted wonderful—fresh, clean, enticing. She was holding herself back, her mouth cooperating, but the rest of her stiff and unyielding. She stiffened and shoved him again, sliding away from the wall.
He was angry, frustrated, still humming with adrenalin. He wanted to hold her, protect her, fuck her. But even through the huge waves of emotion roiling through him, emotions he hadn’t the foggiest idea how to handle, a small part of him, the non-dickhead part of him, rejoiced.
This was the real Elle now. She’d somehow regained her footing. He’d found her nearly dead, she’d been hooded, taken to an unknown location, met people she’d never seen before and who held power over her. She’d been beaten down, just a little.
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 were going on a training cycle 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 it 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 fucking ten years worried sick about you.” And she’d changed her fucking name! He was still mad about that.
