Page 97 of Killer Secrets (Tempting SEALs 5)

"I love you, Kira. God help us both, I love you."

He collapsed over her, sweat coating them both, melding them together as their ragged breaths filled the bedroom.

Kira felt her eyes grow heavy, her body languorous. Even as he pulled from her and eased his weight from her body, she couldn't seem to move.

She needed to get up, maybe shower. Instead she let her eyes close and felt herself slip into sleep.

IAN CLEANED HER WITH A damp cloth. With another he wiped away the drying sweat. Starting at her forehead and working his way down, a smile tugging at his lips as she shivered softly.

He dried her, pulled back the blankets, and tucked her beneath them as the first full rays of the sun speared through the slats of the shades over the balcony doors.

He'd been up more than twenty-four hours, but hell, so had she. He needed just a few hours' sleep, to recharge before he forced Sorrell into the confrontation that was coming.

He should go downstairs, meet with Diego and fill him in. He wanted him in on this, didn't he? Both of them in the same place. It would be like leading the lamb to the slaughter.

Later, he told himself, ignoring the warning little cringe that tightened his guts at the thought. Diego was no lamb. He had made his own choices and those choices had led him here, to this final confrontation.

He brushed the hair back from Kira's face as he slid beneath the sheets with her. She turned into his arms naturally, for the first time seeking him in her sleep rather than maintaining distance between them.

He kissed her lips softly, because he couldn't help himself. She had given him something he had never known before, the chance to love someone who knew the fires he walked within.

She wouldn't be pacing the floor and crying while he was on a mission. Hell, he'd probably be the one pacing the floor and cursing whenever she wasn't within sight. Because he knew her.

He frowned at that. Something would have to change after this. Neither of them would be able to go back to their old lives. Their old lives wouldn't exist now. Neither of them were the same people they had been when this operation began.

He smiled though, realizing there was no regret in the thought. There were other ways. There were always other ways, other jobs, and damned if he wouldn't be ready for a change, if they survived this.

If they came out of it alive.

His arms tightened around her as he sent up a prayer. Just protect her, he thought. Nothing more. Nothing for him, because that would be selfish. He never prayed for his own survival, but now he prayed for Kira's.

* * *

Twenty-five

HE SLEPT THREE HOURS; HE thought Kira would sleep longer. Ian slipped from the bed and made his way to the shower, mentally and emotionally preparing himself for the next few hours.

He would spill blood today, and he would spill it again before the night was over. As he stepped beneath the shower's spray he braced his hands on the wall, leaned his head into it, and breathed in roughly.

He hadn't lost enough sleep yet to weaken him, and he'd make certain once this morning was over to find an hour for a nap. He'd learned to sleep where he could, when he could, if it meant only a few minutes propped against a wall. Or a few hours curled around Kira.

His arms ached to return to the position he had awakened in. Clenched to hold her against him.

&

nbsp; Hell, he was dangerous to himself in this shape. This was a mission, not an excuse to screw his head up. Or his soul. But that was exactly what he had managed to do where Kira was concerned.

Suddenly, he was questioning plans that had been fact for two years. Questioning his own motivations and wondering about his reasons for getting involved. Honor, glory, and the American way were wonderful surface excuses, but when a man set out to kill his sire, there was more to it. It was personal, it had become personal in a desert twenty years before, and he realized with a vague sense of disgust that it had shaped his life, even after the danger had passed.

She was changing him. Or perhaps that was the wrong word. It wasn't a change, so much as a revelation. She had made him realize why so much of his soul had seemed empty for so long. He hadn't even realized what he was missing, what he was searching for, until Atlanta. And even then he had tried to deny it, tried to push it away.

He was the worst sort of male chauvinist, yet he had allowed her into the mission, he had kept her at his side. The logical part of his brain, which worked only rarely when it came to her, assured him she was a capable agent. The emotions though, those had blindsided him, ambushed him.

And now he was in emotional hell.

More blood would stain his hands this morning, and even more once the meeting with Sorrell commenced. He was sure she was no stranger to bloodshed, hell, he knew she wasn't, but he didn't want to kill in front of her. He wanted her to keep that vision of a white knight that she seemed to have convinced herself he was.

Ian shook his head before lifting his face to the stinging water and mentally kicking himself for the fool he was.

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