First, losing his folks within months of each other. Kenny had bawled like a baby at Mom’s funeral. Dad had gone three months earlier, but he’d known all along that smoking those damned unfiltered cigarettes caused cancer. Smoking had always been his choice and his biggest weakness. But when Mom died of lung cancer caused by Dad’s second-hand smoke? It had damned near killed Kenny. In one fell swoop, the Judge boys lost everything. Violet and Booker Judge had been, hands-down, the best parents any kid could’ve asked for.
Yet even at his mother’s funeral, Walker had held everything in. He’d been the strong one who’d handled both funerals, then handled Kenny through the depression and survivor’s guilt that followed. Funny how kids blamed themselves when they couldn’t rescue the people they loved most.
Walker stroked his fingers through Persia’s soft hair, then lifted a handful of silky strands to his nose. Remembering always hurt. After Kenny’s funeral, Walker had returned to Team 18. It felt good to be a winner-takes-all SEAL again, instead of a grieving son and brother.
It wasn’t until Quinn Dooley reached out for an assist to get his daughter back that Walker had finally gotten his head back together. When he closed his eyes at night, he could still see sweet Emily’s teary, red face mashed into her daddy’s neck, while she sobbed and whined and clung to him. He could still see Quinn falling to his knees on the tarmac, cradling that girl against his heart like he’d never, ever let her go again.
He didn’t blame Quinn for needing that assist. Couldn’t. Everyone needed help some time, even hardguys like aircraft carrier captains. Even hard guys like me.
Sighing, Walker pressed his lips into Persia’s hair, at last understanding what he’d seen written all over Quinn’s face the day Emily came home. It was time to be humble. Time to admit… Walker Judge needed the woman in his arms.
Chapter Thirty
Stretching, Persia ground her nose into the warm pillow beneath her. Took a few seconds before awareness seeped into her weary brain and told her this pillow smelled like a certain man…
Oh, no! But yes, Hotrod was in her bed. Cracking an eye open, she peered up at the scruffy underside of his chin. He was on his back with one arm curled possessively around her and snoring quietly. This wasn’t good. If he was here… had she screamed or done something equally embarrassing? Her entire body cringed. Had she had another nightmare?
Please, no. Not now when I’m finally on a real mission.
Oh, my God, had Izza heard? Did she know?
Persia closed her eyes as a wave of fiery heat infused her body. How utterly embarrassing! This paranoia had to stop. As stealthily as she could, she lifted up on her knees just enough to ease away from under his arm and—
“Stay,” he murmured, his voice deep and thick with sleep, and that arm around her now clamped tighter. “My turn.”
Her heart jackhammered up high in her throat as Hotrod pressed her closer. Man, he looked good early morning with his hair mussed and all that scruff. “Your turn?” For what?
“Mmphmmph,” he breathed huskily, his eyes still sealed tight, but his fingers rubbing small, warm circles on her arm. “Yeah. My turn.”
“But I… I have to fix breakfast.” Or something. “Now. Let me up.” Before Izza bangs on my door and wants to know where you are and what we’ve been doing.
Hotrod rolled over, caging her beneath his entire, wonderfully heavy body. Man, he felt good. He hadn’t showered while he’d been sick, but who cared? The pleasant weight of him pressing her flat to the mattress made her eyes roll back in her head.
If only he was in better shape…
If only they had more privacy, more time, and…
One of his big hands smoothed over her shoulder and down her arm, then shoved her tank top up to her neck, baring her breasts, at the same time, lighting a spark at her core.
Automatically, she slipped her fingers into his hair, the other hand under his t-shirt and over the smooth warm planes of his back. Then down his spine and beneath his boxers to his firm, muscular backside. There wasn’t one part of this guy not padded with muscle over large, sturdy bones and heavy sinews. Everything about him was bigger and stronger and harder. And pleasantly warm.
His heady scent incited every last feminine hormone. Persia’s body filled with streams of dancing flames that licked up her legs and pooled at her core. She gripped that fine ass, ready if he was.
She was on fire. Just the sight and scent and feel of Hotrod did this to her. With one touch, one glance, he’d turned her body into liquid heat, like the icy blue flames from lighted cans of Sterno. Persia forgot breakfast. She already had the sustenance she craved.
“Hotrod,” she whispered, licking the curl of his ear. Breathing a soft sigh over it. Into him.
“Yes, ma’am,” he replied as if her command was his ardent wish, as if she’d ordered him for breakfast, and he meant to comply. When goose bumps popped over his shoulders, his hips jutted forward. He easily pulled her shorts down, baring her ass, which only made her need him more.
Pressing a hand between their bodies, Persia smoothed her fingertips up that rigid wall of muscle. Touching him. Breathing him. Loving the crisp hairs over his pecs. His flat manly nipples. Needing him inside her.
Like a pair of dancing fireflies, their bodies vibrated together. Moving in sync, as if they’d done this a lifetime before. Their breathing joined into one single breath. Their hearts, a single beat. They became sunlight and stardust.
Out of breath, she parted her legs and let him slide between. He cupped her sex. Nothing more. Nothing else. The power he held in that hand, and all those callused fingers stood for—his country, his honor, his team—stole Persia’s breath. He’d kissed America, for heaven’s sake. He’d fought and been prepared to die for her ungrateful masses. That made him a one-of-a-kind hero.
Hotrod wasn’t a lightweight by any definition of the word. Neither was he white-collar office material or GQ airbrushed. He was blue-collar all the way, from his hair roughened legs to the magnificent steel licking at her core, to the rasp of his fingertips. This man was a worker and a doer, and he was doing things to her body she’d never known were possible. He hadn’t even kissed her yet, yet she was close to detonating in his hands.
How did he do that?
Automatically, instinctively, her back arched at the mere thought of coming without more foreplay, and… “Damn, damn, damn,” she cried.
It was happening. Just like in Florida. So fast. So good. She bucked against his hand and… “Yes!” Persia shattered into a thousand brilliant bits of suns and moons and stars.
Hotrod covered her mouth with his, swallowing her scream and her tears. She clung to him, her body wrung out with a release without end, a chain reaction rippling through her. The fiery pleasure ended with her gradually settling back to earth, even as aftershocks sparked tiny fireworks.
“I need you inside,” she whined, ready for more. Wanting all of him. “Hurry, Hotrod. Now.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he purred like a sexy, obedient beast.
Only then did she realize he was still dressed and her bare heels were dug into the small of his back. She’d officially lost her mind. Who had trapped who?
As if he’d read her mind, he peeled out of his boxers, then knelt over her while she relieved him of his t-shirt. Persia couldn’t get him naked fast enough. Finally skin to skin, and oh, so damned warm under her palms, he hovered over her. Breathing heavy. His gaze powerful and hazy and harsh and kind, all at the same time. His hair was just long enough that short lazy bangs tipped over his forehead. Not into his eyes, just enough she could thread her fingers through those locks and pull.
Leaning over her on one arm, he breathed on her, his eyes sinfully, wickedly dark. Like a warrior of old, total male domination glittered in those deep blues. His gaze fixed on her mouth. He meant to conquer her and she meant to let him. Theirs was a once-in-a-lifetime kind of romance. And if this was all she would ever h
ave of this man, this one sweet, breathtaking moment, she meant to savor every last second and heartbeat of it.
The Agency had taught her that, and her time spent with Domingo Zapata had literally pounded the lesson into her. Grab what you could, when you could, because life wasn’t promised to anyone. Just time, and even that was finite. What you did with those few minutes, hours, days, and years you were given, was on you.
“Persia,” he whispered, his voice a silky baritone balm that melted into the tiny cracks and wide-open fissures of her never-to-be-healed-again heart.
“Hotrod,” she breathed up at him, lost in the ocean of his eyes, yet begging for rescue. To be saved, once. Just once. Could he be the one? Did he see what she saw? The futility of living just to kill and die?
Time stood still, like it did at pivotal moments in a person’s life. Like death. Like that first step into Hell. Like surrender and anguish and too many memories to ever forget. Persia noticed that the pivot points in her career had all been beginnings or endings associated with her hardest fought battle in Brazil. Even dead, Domingo Zapata still had a stranglehold on her, and she needed that to end.
“I need this,” she told Hotrod truthfully. She should’ve said you, not this. Because just sex she could have and she’d had, with others. But this brand-new thing between her and Hotrod was something rare and bright and—promising. It was also something she didn’t deserve, hadn’t earned, and wasn’t sure she knew what to do with, if or when she claimed it for her own.
That was why Hotrod had walked away from her before. Karma’s one and only rule: A woman couldn’t reap what she hadn’t sown. All Persia had sown in her life so far had been death and destruction, with a hefty dose of vengeance splashed over all of it. Like water poured onto the desert sand, her need for revenge against Zapata had sucked the life out of her.
Hotrod pressed his warm, moist lips to her forehead. “And I need you, sugar,” he whispered, her breasts mashed like pillows against his magnificent chest. “I think I’ve always needed this bright, intelligent woman and the light she’s brought into my life.”
Tears sprang to her eyes. Her throat tightened. He obviously didn’t know her very well, because Persia was more of darkness than of light. Which was why she was still an aunt, not a mom. She’d seen too much evil to ever nurture innocent new lives. A woman who slaughtered lambs didn’t deserve to bear children.
Just as her pity party swelled around her like a cold, wet blanket, Hotrod sank into her, and Persia forgot about death and blood and all the bright, dying reds splashed against evil blacks.
“Come for me, princess,” he whispered in her ear. “Come with me.”
Her body responded to his friction with heat and tears. Yet like a freaking baby, she buried her face under his chin, her arm still crooked around his neck. Holding on. Forever fighting the good fight, forever lost to the dark.
Hotrod began pumping in earnest, his body a machine with one goal, to hear her scream and to make her smile. But she couldn’t recover the high she’d had. She wanted to. She tried to. Yet every beat of their bodies was now out of sync. The friction between them hurt. She couldn’t pretend. “Stop,” she whispered huskily. “Hotrod, stop. I… I can’t.”
Instantly, he ceased moving. Still hard and thick, and wonderfully hot inside her, he peered down through hazy, oceanic-blue eyes. “What’s wrong? Did I hurt you?”
She shook her head, afraid he might see more than she wanted to share. “No, I… I just can’t.”
The tenderest light glimmered over his face. In one fell swoop, he rolled onto his back, taking her with him. Persia found herself sitting upright and straddling his hips. In plain sight. Where he could see everything. All of her. Where she had nowhere to hide and nothing to hide behind. Yet his palms gently cuffed her wrists, and his full attention was on her eyes instead of her breasts.
“Talk to me,” he said, his voice so damned soft and low she wanted to cry.
Persia shrugged, not making this any more personal than it already was. “Nothing. It happens.”
“Something,” he insisted quietly, tugging her down and flattening her to his chest. Hotrod tucked her head under his chin and crisscrossed his arms over her back, keeping one manly hand on each cheek of her ass. “Better?”
She nodded, struggling to hold herself together as she slipped her hands around his neck.
“I’m an ass. Should’ve let you sleep,” he murmured, his skillful fingers kneading her backside, his heavily muscled arms around her, making her feel safe and protected. Her, one of the FBI’s best covert operators. The woman who’d brought Domingo Zapata, one of the world’s most evil villains, down. Needing protection...
“No. It’s all right. It’s just… I just… I had a dream,” she whispered, blinking fast so no teardrops fell. The same dream. Forever and always, the same dream.
Reaching around her, he pulled the bedsheet up and over them, instantly easing her nakedness. “Want to talk about it?”
“Not really.” Persia ran her tongue over her dry lips, afraid to admit her weakness, but wanting someone to know why she needed that silly nightlight and how dark the nights really were without it. Hoping that someone could please, be Hotrod. But afraid speaking the dream out loud would make it real.
Yet she couldn’t go on like this. Forever hiding and running and falling apart.
The nightmare poured out of her slowly. “It’s a crazy, weird dream, that’s all. Stupid, really. I shouldn’t let it upset me, but…” She hesitated, about to ruin her bitch-of-the-beach persona once and for all.
“I’m listening,” he breathed, the warmth and feel of his male body so damned comforting.
“Okay. So… I’m running. It’s night and it’s dark, pitch black. Branches I can’t see slap my face and whip my eyes,” she confessed quietly. “They sting, but they’re not why I’m running. I’m covered in blood, Hotrod. Painted red like… like a devil.” Like him…
Persia closed her eyes, reliving the nightmare that had once been her daily life. Seeing Domingo’s evil, tattooed face and his flat black eyes again. “Someone’s chasing me. I look back and all I see are red and black shadows, a long black arm, and a big tattooed hand with short-stubby fingers. It’s like one of those cartoon arms, long like stretched putty with a huge, inflated gloved hand at the end of it. Only it’s not a glove. It’s him, Hotrod. It’s h-h-him.” Man, she wanted to die of embarrassment, but her mouth kept talking. “He’s reaching out to grab me. To drag me back. To make me see and do things—”
“Zapata?” Hotrod’s question was a soft, gentle, baritone vibration under her ear.
Swallowing hard, Persia nodded. Her heart was pounding by then, just like during and after every nightmare. Pounding so hard, she thought it might jump out of her throat in protest of all she’d put it through. All she’d seen. If only she had a drink. That would steady her nerves. It always worked. Just one sip, one swallow, one bottle. What would it hurt?
“I could really use a drink,” she murmured, inadvertently confessing another sin. What would Hotrod think of her if he knew how much she drank? Part of her needed him to know that, too.
His big, warm palms smoothed over her shoulders, warming her. Chasing the gooseflesh away. If only he could banish her demon as easily.
“I’m still here and I’m still listening,” he whispered, his nose in her hair.
He probably thought she’d wanted a bottled water, so Persia left it at that. One sin at a time…
“I… I can’t run fast enough. I never can. Something trips me, and I go down on my knees, and I’m holding a… a baby l-l-lamb.” Her stomach pitched bile up her throat. She was shaking now, coming apart. Just one drink. That’s all she needed! “The b-b-baby’s looking up at me with his big, beautiful eyes, and he’s crying and bleating, only he’s bleeding and bleeding….”
She sucked in a deep breath as the nightmare rolled over her once again with all its Technicolor reds and b
lacks, crimsons and ebonies, mashed and dripping together. Willing the ugliness and her trembling away, Persia buried her face against Hotrod’s heart, needing every last ounce of his will and his strength. His power. That was all she needed, just enough of him to keep her going.
When his arms wrapped tighter, she murmured, “And then… I’m looking down, but I’m not holding a white, fuzzy lamb anymore. His face… he… he changed into a b-b-baby boy with big, brown eyes, and I’m holding the knife that’s cutting his throat, and… he’s just a tiny, sweet, baby boy and… and… he’s the one bleeding all over me, and it’s his blood on my face and in my hair and… No more!”
Sobbing, Persia ground herself against the man she’d just made love with, her heart too raw to confess one more sin, and her nose running like a faucet. She clung to Hotrod, her fingertips dug into his shoulder muscles. She was that drowning woman in a very black, very bottomless ocean, grabbing onto the only man foolish enough to come close enough to reach her.
There was no sense going on. If nothing else, her nightmare confirmed she should stay far away from children, babies, and lambs. She’d murdered a defenseless creature that had just wanted its mother. She could still hear its frightened cries. She could smell its blood. The same blood she’d smeared over her face to prove to the monster she’d been sent to destroy, that she was just as bad a deviant as he was. And she had proven it! So why couldn’t she defeat Zapata’s ghost? Why wouldn’t he let her alone?!
“Shhhhh,” Hotrod whispered, still holding her as if he cared. As if he knew precisely how she felt and what she’d done. “It’s tough, I know, I know. Honest, I do. War is damned tough, and I know exactly what the Zapata brothers did with and to their victims. That had to be one hell of an ugly mess you dealt with. I’m sorry I wasn’t there. I would’ve stood beside you every step of the way. I would’ve held you when the nights got too dark, and I would’ve helped you bring that bastard down.”
I would’ve stood beside you…
Not I would’ve killed him for you…
Walker (In the Company of Snipers Book 21) Page 26
