Page 94 of Hidden Agendas (Tempting SEALs 4)

“Will he come for you?” A sneer, a voice that filled her with terror. “Tell me. Tell me how to contact him.”

She shook her head furiously as she gazed back at Kell. “How did you know I’d been kidnapped?” The question wheezed from her lips. Had she betrayed him?

Kell frowned. “I’d just come off a previous assignment in the Gulf. I was entering debriefing when my CO for that mission told me about the kidnapping. I requested an immediate flight to the transport off Colombia’s waters where the rescue teams were being flown. Once there, I pretty much demanded to be a part of the rescue. Why?”

She shook her head. It didn’t make sense.

“Why, Emily?” he snapped.

“I remember whispers,” she gasped. “Screams. I don’t know whose they were. Mine or the other girls’. A scream for daddy. Someone whispering questions. Asking if someone will come. How to contact them. And it’s so dark . . .” She shuddered as he pulled her into his arms again.

“The stress works against you.” His hand covered her head, holding her to him. “The Whore’s Dust is destructive. Nothing the victims have remembered in the past has had anything to do with the night they were drugged. Everything’s fractured in your head from the time you’re given the drug until the time it’s completely out of your system. Days for some. Weeks for others. Some never recover, Emily.”

Like Risa Clay. She hadn’t recovered. Not yet.

“You have every right to be frightened,” he told her then. “You know what Fuentes can do. Your subconscious knows how terrified you were when you were taken the first time. That subconscious can be more destructive than the reality. It creates demons and nightmares and whispers of memories that you can’t be certain are true or false.”

She breathed in roughly. “I haven’t had nightmares since those first weeks.”

“And once this is over, they’ll disappear again,” he promised her, pulling back enough to watch her with eyes so deep, so dark, they were like endless pools of emotion.

How could she have ever thought he was cold? That there was no emotion, nothing gentle, to back up the extreme sexiness that was so much a part of him?

“It’s just fear,” she said then, swallowing tightly, trying to convince herself of that.

“Just fear,” he agreed, though she swore she saw suspicion flashing in his eyes. The same suspicion that filled her.

“But you want to know if I remember any more whispers,” she guessed.

His lips tightened. “Just in case.”

Emily inhaled deeply. “No other victim has ever remembered anything?”

He shook his head as his hand cupped her cheek. “But you’re not everyone else,” he told her then. “If you remember any whispers, a voice, a face, anything, I want to know.”

“I’ll let you know.”

“And tomorrow night, you’ll stay close to me,” he ordered. “You’ll follow orders. Promise me.”

“I promise,” she answered with a shaky smile. “And I will, Kell, because I have no desire to ever lose your arms around me. I won’t risk allowing harm to either of us.”

His jaw clenched tight, the muscle working in it furiously before a tight grimace crossed his face and his arms tightened aroun

d her.

“Emily, do you know what you do to me?”

She could feel his erection against her stomach, his arms tight around her, flexing to hold back his strength, to hold back the need to pull her so close that they melted into each other.

“I know what you do to me.” Her hands wrapped around his back, smoothed up it, feeling the powerful ripple of muscles beneath her palms. “I know I’ve dreamed of you for years. Fantasized and ached. And I know I love you more than I thought I could love anyone. I’ve loved you all along, Kell, I just didn’t want to admit it.”

“You didn’t want to give your father what you thought he wanted,” he accused her softly, a sad curve tugging at his lips.

“How did you know that?” She hadn’t even admitted it fully to herself.

“Because it’s the reason I stayed away from you, chère. Had I taken what I wanted, then I would have been giving the Kriegers and the Beaulaines what they dreamed of. A woman they approved of, and eventually the grandchildren they dreamed of to carry on their bloodline. It took Fuentes to show me what I was throwing away and this new threat to make me move my ass and claim you. And I’ll never let you go, Emily. Remember that. Wherever you go in life, I’ll be behind you. As well as in death.”

He had lost so much, so young. And that loss had scarred him, made him harder, made him bitter for so long. Now, she saw the man he was inside in the heated warmth of the emerald eyes staring back at her.

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