Page 82 of I Dream of Danger
It was the cut that had hurt the most, slicing her face and her life in two.
Lucius’s touch was so gentle, his eyes so understanding. They just sat there in the quiet room, his finger tracing her worst nightmare from temple to chin. His thumb wiped away the fat tears that welled from her eyes.
His eyes—they knew her somehow. No one had known her. Her fame had been like a stone wall between her and the rest of humanity. Even her lovers pleasured her body without ever touching her heart. They didn’t want to touch her heart anyway. That had always been very clear.
This man, with the ruined face and broken body, this man touched her heart.
A sob escaped her, quickly stifled. She never cried, ever. The tears were…a mistake.
“Hush, darling,” he said, that deep voice so tender. “I haven’t finished talking yet.”
She nodded, throat too tight for words.
“I love you, Stella. I know I have nothing to offer you, not even myself. I can barely stand upright. I have no career, no place to call my own but here. I am a hunted man, together with the others. Should we be caught, we’d be court-martialed, but I don’t think we’d make it to a tribunal. They’d shoot us first. I don’t have anything resembling a future. I’m not even fully a man again. But I swear no one else could ever love you like I do. Someday I’ll be whole. I believe that completely. It won’t be today and it won’t be tomorrow. But, do you think—do you think you could wait for me?”
That strong, scarred, beloved face was open for her to read, to see his anxiety. Those dark eyes were locked onto hers.
The tears were falling freely now, catching on her upturned lips. She cupped his face with her free hand.
“I’m not going to wait for you, Lucius.” He flinched and she clutched his hand harder. “I don’t have to wait. I’m already yours.”
“Do you think Jon will find a clue in Elle’s house?” Catherine came out of the bathroom with perfumed steam billowing behind her, like some goddess coming out of the mists of time.
Billowing steam, goddesses, mists of time. Christ. Mac didn’t recognize the thoughts in his head these days. They were totally unlike the thoughts of Mac BC—Before Catherine. He seemed to be having a lot of those thoughts nowadays, though.
Everything in his life had changed since Catherine, not least the small bump showing in her belly. When he saw it, when he touched it, his heart gave a huge kick in his chest. His child. Their child. Though Catherine was his heart and life, this child would be his only blood relative in the world. Just thinking about it gave him the shivers.
Catherine walked to their bed, smiling sadly. If anyone knew what it was like to be hunted down by the goons of Arka Pharmaceuticals, it was Catherine.
Mac held his arms out and grunted with satisfaction when she went into them. The world was fucked up almost beyond repair, but when his arms closed around his wife, he could almost hear an audible click, as if a piece of sophisticated machinery were working well.
He ran a hand down her dark, soft hair. “If Jon doesn’t find what we need tonight, we’ll just attack it full bore tomorrow. Everyone will pitch in. We’ll figure it out.”
Looking down, he could see her smile, felt her head nod against his shoulder.
She wasn’t quite convinced. True, there were only a few of them against a huge multinational corporation, but they were the best. And they had two secret weapons—Catherine and Elle.
Between them, the two women had about a billion advanced degrees and they were highly motivated.
“I appreciate what you and Nick and Jon are doing.” She looked up at him, cupped the burn scar on his face. As always, when she touched him there was a sensation of deep warmth and well-being. And something else. Her eyes opened wide because she also got a blast of the surge of lust that took him. It wasn’t anything new, he felt a low-level desire whenever she was around and they were alone.
Like now.
She was pregnant and worked hard at the infirmary, so Mac tried really, really hard to keep a lid on it, or at least keep his dick down. If it were up to him or his dick, she’d be flat on her back all night and most of the day. But he loved her too much to act on his lust every time he felt it. She never said no, but he could read her like a book now. If she was tired, faint bruises appeared under her gorgeous silver eyes, and that ivory skin became even paler. That was when he really stepped back. And he knew to keep it tucked in his pants when she was absorbed in a task.
She was worried now, that was clear. He smoothed out the furrow between her eyebrows with his thumb. “We have to do this, honey,” he said gently. “For Nick, if nothing else. Because he’d go it alone if he had to and we simply can’t let him do that.”
He could understand her worry. They would risk their lives for strangers. If the three of them got caught, they’d be executed. They were all real clear on that. But more important than that, if they got caught or if they died, Haven would die, and not well. The small community they’d gathered round them was precious to him and to all of them, and they were moving toward complete self-sufficiency, but it was still dependent on what Ghost Ops could steal or liberate from the outside world. It was dependent on Ghost Ops for protection and direction. If the three of them were gone, Haven would slowly die.
And his child would grow up fatherless.
Mac squelched that thought immediately. Catherine was way too perceptive for him to allow something like that in his head.
“I know we need to rescue them,” Catherine said quietly. “No question. And not just for Nick, for us.” She searched his face. “We need to do this. I feel it very strongly.”
Man, when Catherine felt something strongly, it was as true as true could be. But what she felt wasn’t making her happy. The lines between her brows were back and her mouth was turned down.
Well, Mac had a cure for that. “You feel it strongly, huh?”
