by Megan Crane
“It would be worth bleeding,” Templeton retorted, unrepentant. “And besides, if it was untrue, she’d only smirk at me, so you’re proving my point.”
“I appreciate this conversation,” Isaac said. “Really. I had no idea that you were a twelve-year-old girl, Templeton. I figured a sixteen- or seventeen-year-old girl, at the youngest. Good to know you can sink even lower.”
He saw the one-fingered salute his friend made in his peripheral field of vision just fine.
“You’re the kind of man who likes to hold on,” Jonas said then, and both Isaac and Templeton fell silent at that. He flicked his dark gaze toward Isaac, no trace of laughter there now. “Or I wouldn’t be standing here.”
Neither Isaac nor Templeton jumped to dispute that, because it was true. All three of them had survived that last, horrific mission in a place they still weren’t allowed to identify. In one form or another, they’d survived. But none of them spoke of it, and not only because what had happened there was classified at the highest levels.
But then, they didn’t have to speak about it. They’d all left the service afterward, when the debriefings and the threats of court-martials gave way to the usual commendations, medals, and requests for further engagement from all three operatives.
They’d declined. The way they continued to decline every time the U.S. military reached out again. As much to make sure they weren’t running around telling their story to any interested parties, Isaac often thought cynically, as to see whether or not they could get any of them back on board. They’d started Alaska Force instead.
But Jonas didn’t mean any of that, or not directly. What Jonas meant was that trip Isaac and Templeton had taken, at Isaac’s direction, deep into one of the most desolate stretches of Alaska’s interior. Where Jonas had gone, not intending to come back.
Because it wasn’t enough to not die. That didn’t teach a man how to live. Not when he was used to fighting.
Like the man said himself, Isaac held on to the things he cared about.
He nodded now. Because he didn’t trust what might come out of his mouth.
“You’re trying to hold on to someone who doesn’t want to stay,” Jonas said. “Doesn’t think she can. How long can you do that?”
“As long as I have to,” Isaac said, his voice much darker than the night around them. “Which you know, because that’s what I told you, too. Do I still have to prove it?”
“Sometimes,” Jonas said quietly, into the soft stillness of the evening, as bright as day though it was coming up on ten o’clock, “it’s better to miss them.”
Isaac couldn’t get that out of his head as he made his way down the wooden path to his cabin. He’d prefer Templeton poking at him all day, every day, to one of Jonas’s seemingly offhanded remarks that always landed on him like some kind of prophecy.
He couldn’t regret the things he’d done today that had made him and Caradine an open topic of conversation, instead of the usual whispers, innuendos, and significant looks. But that didn’t mean he had to like it. Maybe he’d had this wrong the whole time. Maybe it would have been better to wait. To enjoy the stolen moments. To keep it theirs.
A secret everyone suspected was still a secret. It was different from everyone knowing.
Caradine was the only secret he’d chosen to keep after leaving his shadowy life in the service. The only secret that was his, not the government’s.
But as he walked toward his cabin door, he couldn’t help but imagine what it would be like if this were normal. If Caradine actually lived here. With him. If he solved her problem, slayed her dragons, and got to be with her. Just like this.
It was shockingly easy to imagine, when he would have said neither he nor Caradine were remotely domestic. He would come back to her from putting out fires all over the world, and he would always wonder exactly what he’d be walking into. Because one thing she never was, no matter what she called herself or where she stayed, was predictable.
Good thing he liked a storm.
Better still, she’d be here. Right here.
He couldn’t decide if he was unsettled or filled with anticipation when he opened the door.
Inside, he could smell the remnants of whatever food she’d cooked. He glanced toward the kitchen, his stomach reminding him he hadn’t eaten in a while, but he was more interested in finding her. He half expected her to be in his study, attempting to break into his computer system. But she wasn’t there.
He walked farther into the house, down the small hallway, and stopped at his bedroom door.
And it wasn’t until he saw her there, lying sprawled out across his bed, that he understood two things.
One, that he’d fully expected her to dramatically make herself a bed on his couch, clutching her pearls and denying him so much as a touch, just to be a pain. Just to prove that she could.
And two, that he had absolutely no defenses in place for what it did to him to see her lying there like that.
She stirred as if she sensed him and looked over toward the door, but didn’t sit up. She looked scrubbed clean, her hair gleaming damply. He could smell his soap on her body, which struck him as almost unbearably intimate. And then, completing the picture, curled up next to her with his head on her belly while she scratched behind his ears, was Horatio.
His dog looked at him and whined. But didn’t move.
“You’re supposed to be guarding her,” Isaac told him.
But all he got in response was the clearly unrepentant thump of Horatio’s tail.
“I made food,” Caradine said in a voice he hardly recognized. It took him a minute to realize she sounded relaxed. “You didn’t have all the ingredients I wanted, but I did my best.”
“I’m sure I’ll love it,” Isaac said, but he didn’t make a move for the kitchen. He couldn’t think of a reason he’d ever move again. “You know what I like.”
She must have shifted then, because Horatio lifted his head. Caradine rolled up to a sitting position, letting her legs dangle over the side of his bed. And what could he do but look at her? She was here. It wasn’t a few rushed hours after the Fairweather closed. She couldn’t kick him out of his own home. He had a mind to look at her for a good long while.
Once again, she was dressed the way she often was in his head but rarely in reality. She wore a black T-shirt, another formfitting one. And what he was almost certain would be classified as yoga pants. Not that he could imagine Caradine doing yoga.
“What name do I call you?” he asked. “Have you picked a new one already? From a phone book in Maine, maybe?”
She studied him with those haunted eyes that made him think of long-lost summers, and that little half smile that made his chest ache.
“I don’t want to talk,” she said, still sounding relaxed, and her gaze changed. It got hotter, and he did, too. “I’ve done more talking today than I have in ten years.”
Sometimes it’s better to miss them, Jonas had said.
Isaac had felt the truth of that out on the porch by the lodge. But here it hit harder, looking at Caradine in his bed at last, but not the way he’d imagined her. Not naked and grinning wildly, with that wicked light in her eyes that drove him crazy. Because it was like this. With ghosts all around them, too many names to hide behind, and no clear way forward.
What he would give for a clear way forward.
Then again, he’d always been good at making paths in the wilderness, no matter what tried to stop him.
“Isaac,” she said, a different edge to the way she said his name. “I’m in your bed. Surely you can think of something better to do with me than talk.”
Without waiting for him to respond to that, she heaved a long-suffering sigh. She swung off the side of the bed, then started toward him as if she’d never been so put upon in all her life.
This Caradine he knew all too well.
<
br /> When she reached him in the doorway, she tilted her head to one side so he could see nothing but the heat in her gaze, vanquishing any ghosts that might have been lingering there between them.
And in the next breath, she jumped him. Literally.
She jumped up and he caught her, and then he had her legs wrapped around his waist, her arms around his neck, and everything seemed to slide down hot and wild to the place where they were joined.
But not joined enough.
“Julia,” he began.
But she bit him.
Nipped him on his jaw, to be more precise, just enough to make him hiss in a breath.
But not enough to make him let go.
“Caradine,” she said against his mouth. “With you, no matter what, I’ll always be Caradine.”
And then she tightened her hold, angled her head, and slammed her mouth to his.
Fourteen
The best thing about kissing Isaac was that he always let her act like she was in charge.
For a moment or two.
Then, like now, he would make that hot sound in the back of his throat and take control.
And, God help her, but she loved it when he took control. She didn’t want to think, she wanted to feel. She wanted to forget everything.
Everything but him.
Isaac, whom she never should have touched.
Isaac, whom she couldn’t seem to stop touching.
Everything was heat and fire and that intense, electric connection that hummed so loud inside her she was sure he could hear it, too. And only when they were like this did they stop fighting each other, and start fighting together. Toward the same goal that felt more and more like magic every time.
Maybe he was the magic.
Isaac walked her backward and tipped them both onto the bed, catching himself on one arm but still lowering her the rest of the way. And something about being pressed into a soft comforter that carried his scent while he kissed her like a lost, precious thing made her want to sob. Or scream.
Maybe she did. Caradine was vaguely aware of it when Horatio jumped off, then padded out of the room. But all she really cared about was the way Isaac kissed her, his mouth a slick, hot demand on hers.
She had left Grizzly Harbor never expecting to see him again. Intending never to see him again. Then he’d appeared in Maine. She’d thought she might get one last taste, but he’d tricked her.
In retrospect, she was angrier about that than being tied up and hauled off into the night.
But now she was here. At last. In his bed, which felt momentous in ways she refused to analyze. Not here. Not now.
Maybe not ever, if she could get away with it.
There were too many what-ifs. The day had been filled with broken promises and family, but not the family she was used to. And Caradine couldn’t handle any of it in her usual ways.
She couldn’t pick a fight. She couldn’t order folks out of her restaurant. She couldn’t issue bans, then close up early so she could head to the Fairweather, throw back too many shots, and cheat at pool.
She couldn’t sneak up to the hot springs and indulge herself with a long soak sometime after midnight when no one would see her.
And she couldn’t goad her favorite commando into slamming her up against a wall, because he was here already. Worse, he knew too much about her—like the fact she wasn’t going anywhere, at least not tonight.
Not to mention a great many other truths.
But she could fight with him to get that T-shirt off. She could tip herself forward into the unending glory of his chest. She could taste him, reveling in those hard, lean muscles and that particular taste that was only and ever Isaac.
Salt. Man. Him.
Hers—but she shied away from that word, that thought, that possessiveness, because she knew better.
She was greedy enough without laying a claim. She was desperate, maybe, and she knew this was more than one of their spiked, temper-fueled tumbles. This was a reunion. A reminder.
A reckoning, she thought.
He wrapped the length of her hair around one hand and held it tight, and then he rolled them over, baring her neck to him so he could taste her. Tease her.
It was almost too much to bear.
When she sat back and looked down at him, she planted her hands on his ridged abdomen and marveled in the lean, hard muscles of his thighs. And she worried that he could see all the wonder inside of her that only he brought out in her.
But for once, she didn’t try to hide it. They’d almost lost each other. They likely would again.
She could taste that, too, when he kissed her.
Isaac tugged her down again, setting his mouth against her collarbone, then moving, so slowly it made her worry she might explode, along the line of her neck. Caradine couldn’t handle it. She wriggled against him, trying to remind him how much more fun it was when he was inside her.
But he only laughed.
“You’re much sweeter after you come.” His voice was a dirty little growl in the hollow of her throat, but it thudded through her like a series of blows, one right after the next. She couldn’t catch her breath. “And I need you sweet, baby. Because this is going to take a while.”
She meant to snap at him, she knew she did, but his big, tough hand found its way beneath the wide waistband of the stretchy pants she wore, and her mouth didn’t seem to work the way it should.
Isaac unerringly found his way to the place where she ached for him, scalding hot and needy. At the same time, he lifted himself, that terrible, wonderful mouth of his finding one stiff nipple through her shirt.
He sucked on her like she was candy, and his fingers were magic, and he knew her far too well. He knew her body. He knew her.
And almost before she knew what was happening, the twin sensations tangled together and fused into something brighter, wilder, hotter. Caradine could do nothing at all but arch herself against him, her head falling back, nothing but Isaac and the things he could make her feel washing through her.
Helpless, something in her whispered, but as if that were a gift, not a warning.
Because this was the only place on earth where she allowed herself to feel that way. Where Isaac made her feel that way and she exulted in it, to be more specific.
She was still shuddering when he moved, hauling her with him to stretch her out over his body.
Her hair fell around them. He smoothed it back from her face, then cupped her cheeks in his palms.
“Now we’re going to take it slow,” he said, and there was that challenging glint in his eyes. “Really, really slow.”
She felt dizzy and giddy, her body was humming, and she would normally show him the door before she was tempted to indulge herself in him too much. But everything was different today. And for once she could settle herself over him. She could stretch herself out like a cat and rub herself all over him, and not because she was in a hurry.
But because she liked it. All of it, all of him.
Especially the part where she could move against the hard ridge of his desire and make them both shiver. And better still, make his eyes go silver.
“I don’t like it slow,” Caradine murmured, her mouth a scant inch from his.
Isaac’s smile was darkly male, and if she bent her head, she could taste it. “Tough.”
“You don’t like it slow, either,” she reminded him. “You never have.”
His smile only got darker, if that was possible. Edgier.
“Wrong again. You don’t like it slow, Caradine, because you want to get off without any pesky feelings getting in the way.” His smile didn’t take the sting of his words away. Instead, it spread into something a whole lot more, like a low, dull ache. Then again, maybe that was her heart. “My bed, my rules.”
“You’re suddenly a lot more in
terested in rules.”
“It’s not sudden.” He shifted, his hand moving along her back, and she couldn’t help but arch into it. “And it’s not a surprise. You’ve met me.”
“Yes, but—”
“Caradine.” Her name was an order. His gaze was a command. “Shut up.”
Then he kissed her, nice and slow.
And he did it for a good, long while.
She had always enjoyed the way Isaac took control. But she realized, some lifetime or two later, when they still had all their clothes on and she was dying, that she’d had no idea how much control he’d been displaying all this time.
It didn’t matter what she did. When she tried to entice him. When she tried to hurry him. No matter how she tried to get her hands on him, he would laugh and then switch it up.
Every time.
Eventually, he got around to peeling off her clothes, but that wasn’t better. Or it wasn’t quicker, because he decided to taste her.
Everywhere. Every inch.
Until she was writhing and panting and so outside herself she wasn’t sure she’d ever find her way back in.
Ages and ages later, Isaac got around to removing his own clothes.
And then, Caradine thought he would break. Rush for the finish.
But instead, though it shouldn’t have been humanly possible, he slowed down even more.
There was no part of her that he didn’t taste, again. That he didn’t touch, wringing out every last bit of sensation that he could find. Over and over and over again, while the light shone in on them from the Alaskan summer night outside.
And at a certain point, she stopped fighting it. Because it wasn’t a fight she wanted to win. Because there was no pretending that things were the same now as they’d been over the past five years. Not with all that light cascading over them both, making it impossible to hide.
There was no forgetting here.
