Hooking his finger in the stray coils of her hair, he brushed them away from her face. “Why did you stay in the water so long, baby? How could you stand the cold?”
“I locked it out.”
SEAL training had centered on the very same concept. So many men—huge, physically tough men—couldn’t handle the brutally intense training because their brains weren’t as strong as their bodies. Fear wormed through their mind, driving them to quit. Blocking it out was one way. The other was to press into it, drawing power from pain. Nik had done both many times in training and in combat. It’d gotten him through unimaginable torture, keeping him alive on multiple occasions.
Holding Thea’s cold body now, he wondered if blocking out fear and leaning into the hurt could actually do more harm than good. The pain was there for a reason, to keep you from being injured worse.
“You had me terrified,” he admitted as he pressed his lips to her forehead before dropping his own to rest against it. “You don’t have to be so strong, baby.”
Back and forth, the tip of his nose brushed against hers.
Eskimo-freaking-kisses, Steele?
His grip was officially gone. He’d saved her life twice now, but she wasn’t his to keep. Pressing his lips together, he clamped his teeth and willed himself not to do the one thing he desperately wanted to. If he gave in, he was screwed in ways that were virgin territory for a cold-blooded guy like him.
Her amber eyes claimed him. Bold fingertips ghosted across the hard line of his locked jaw. “You don’t have to be so strong, either,” she whispered.
He might as well have forgotten to pre-breathe before leaping out of a C-130 and falling thirty thousand feet to earth. That was how fucked he was as her lips lifted and brushed fire across his.
Naked in his arms, her mouth testing his. Shit. He had no choice but to surrender, and yet still he fought for control by nipping her plush bottom lip. Whether he meant it as a warning or a defense, it didn’t matter. The soft tip of her tongue mocked the bite, flicking across his teeth and the underside of his lip. His own thrust out and sideswiped hers, tangling in her sweet taste and taking control.
He explored her mouth in the same methodically slow way he’d stealthily approach an enemy or maneuver across extreme terrain. Instinctively he knew the ground he treaded on now was equally filled with danger.
Chapter Fifteen
It was just one kiss, I told myself. It was as much a lie as it’d been in the hotel bathroom not even twenty-four hours before. I knew full well Nik had held himself back from kissing me. I shouldn’t have pushed him over the edge. It wasn’t fair. It was selfish to want anything from him. To take anything from him.
I eyed Nik’s strong profile across the kitchen counter as he stared out the window above the sink. Undoubtedly, he regretted bringing me here, and I couldn’t blame him. This wasn’t a fairy tale. Kissing the handsome knight wasn’t going to solve anything, but damn if kissing Nikolas Steele didn’t make me feel alive. Blazing heat coursed through every single cell and for the first time this body belonged to me. All me.
But the feeling was a fleeting one.
She waited inside of me, holding everything hostage. I wanted her gone. I’d sat in the frigid-cold bathwater praying it would kill her. I didn’t care if she took me with her, either. I’d blocked out the cold, but I’d lied to Nik about blocking out the pain. I’d felt the scorch and sting of it and drawn it in deeper, because it attached me to this flesh. And it had terrified me to the core, because pain was the only thing making this body mine.
Until Nik’s kiss.
The slow invasion had infiltrated me to the point I’d palmed his rough cheek and crushed my mouth into his, deepening our kiss with desperation. Lapping into him like he was my only drink in days. Thirsting for the wild, hot burn of his taste and the searing edge of his flames cutting through my veins.
Ostensibly, Nik was still focused on heating me up. He’d left me a pair of his thermal long johns, a plaid flannel shirt, and thick wool socks to change into. He’d stoked logs in the massive stone fireplace of the great room until a fire roared to life. He’d heated up the tomato soup I was sipping on while sitting at the kitchen counter. Titan was even curled up at my socked feet, panting hot breaths my way. But there wasn’t a hint of warmth radiating from Nik himself.
Was he upset about the kiss? From the way his tongue had taken over mine, his lips hot and hungry, he’d seemed to enjoy it. More than enjoy it…need it. Lord knows I had. I’d fallen blissfully asleep cradled in his strong arms. But when I’d awakened alone hours later, it had been if he were the one with memory loss. No more calling me ‘baby’, no more kisses on my forehead. He could barely look at me.
He spooned soup into his mouth as he scanned the dusky terrain out the window over his sink. His brow furrowed and his features locked as he focused in on something.
“Is someone outside?” Running away with me had been a horrible idea. Why was it so hard for him to admit I was a liability? Bringing me here to his house had been a mistake. I should’ve insisted he take me to the police. “Someone followed us, didn’t they?”
“Relax. Just a black bear,” he replied.
“Outside? Seriously. There are bears here?”
“Lots. The other houses in the area are all rentals. They have bear-proof trashcans, but the tourists don’t use them properly, so I get a lot of traffic.”
Bear traffic? I set my spoon down with a clink. “I want to see.”
He held up a hand to stop me from getting up, keep me from getting too close. “It’s pretty dark out and she’s already headed out of sight. For the best. It’s not good for the bears to get comfortable around people.”
“Because they’re dangerous?”
“People? Yeah, very.”
I slumped back into my chair.
In an effort to keep him talking to me, I blurted, “I like your picture.” I couldn’t help but notice it was the only photograph out. It’d been next to a glass-topped box holding several service medals. Both items were on a bookshelf, not on display so much as stored there, laid down flat and gathering dust.
I’d been glad to see his house was free of knickknacks and photos. Having no memories of my own, I wasn’t really interested in seeing someone else’s home full of them. But then I came across the lone image of a much younger Nik, determined and proud, hugging a pouting preteen girl into his chest. He was standing next to a tightly smiling man and a woman with sadness in her eyes. My heart had shifted at the sight. “Is it of your family?”
I’d almost given up on getting an answer when his silence broke. “They aren’t here anymore.”
I cocked my chin to the side. I hadn’t seen any signs of family other than the photo. “They used to live here?”
“No. Two months after my first deployment, after that picture was taken, they were in a fatal car wreck.” His words and tone were matter-of-fact, smooth. It made him sound cold. No…cold was what he was being with me. This was something entirely different. Practiced, maybe? Guarded, definitely.
He braced his palms on either side of the sink, locking his strong arms straight. The muscles and tendons in his forearms stood out taut and corded. The expanse of his back spread out beneath his dark gray T-shirt as he drew a slow, deep breath. Between his intensity and his strength, I wouldn’t have blinked an eye had he pulled the sink right out of the counter.
I started to speak, but he cut me off. “Yes, it’s awful. Yes, I miss them. Yes, it hurts. It’s been eight years though and I’m over it.”
Clearly.
I probably should’ve been more sensitive and tiptoed around the subject, but I was eager to get down to it. He didn’t have to be stuck with me if he really didn’t want to be. And he was making it pretty clear he didn’t want to be. If Nik kept putting up walls, fine. I wasn’t going to beg him to take them down. But I sure as heck intended to get the truth out of him.
“I was going to say…I wonder what they’d think o
f you helping me.”
“Oh.”
Yeah. Oh. Their perfect war hero son and the armed and dangerous harlot thief he’d brought home. Kind of made the underaged hooker with a dog sound like marriage material. At least she could be reformed…woof woof.
Slowly, Nik’s muscles went neutral. “I think they’d be…I don’t know. Surprised?”
“Surprised by what I did, you mean?” Shocked, I was guessing. Horrified, even. Come on, tell me how I’m awful and you’re regretting helping me. I can take it. I hate me, too.
“Just…surprised.” The rumbling noise he made sounded like a laugh, but from the faraway smile in his eyes I couldn’t be sure.
I imagined he was with them in his mind—seeing their faces and remembering their voices. I envied him that, because in my mind there was only his face and his voice. Soon he’d be gone and I’d be alone, in jail most likely, remembering only him—his touch, his kiss, and his cold walls shutting me out for good.
It was several long, silent minutes before he spoke. “My dad would be totally mesmerized by your surviving the tornado.”
I sat back in the chair, pulling my knees up and hugging them to my chest. I hadn’t expected that, or Nik’s stony expression to soften as he continued speaking to the window.
“My dad was what you’d call a ‘prepper’. He was prepared for anything, specifically the end of the world as we know it. I’m still working down his supply of canned goods.” He cast a regrettable look at his bowl. “This crap is like ten years old, I think. Sorry. I cleaned out everything perishable before my last deployment and haven’t been here long enough to bother with stocking back up. Anyway, yeah, he’d think the tornado thing was really cool.”
Only a badass like Nik could get away with trivializing a tornado as simply a ‘thing’.
“I imagine my nearly dying in the bathtub wouldn’t be quite so enchanting.”
“He’d think your toughing it out in the ice bath showed incredible promise for the apocalypse. I probably get it from him.”
“You think an apocalypse is coming?”
“No, I find your ability to withstand pain and survive impressive,” he said to the trees outside, not to me. If it were to me, it might’ve given me hope. “My dad drilled into me early on how to turn pain into drive.” He gave his chin a shake, like he was disagreeing, but didn’t elaborate. Instead, he walked, soup bowl in hand, toward the larger windows in the great room.
I dropped my feet, swiveling the bar chair as I watched him move throughout the living area.
“My dad was out of his gourd. In addition to his whole prepper schtick, he was also a Squatcher. He’d take me on these survivalist adventures—living off the land, trapping, field dressing. But the whole time we were also hunting Bigfoot.” He flashed me an exaggerated eye-roll. “It wasn’t easy, but it prepared me well for being a SEAL, I guess. Hunting actual bad guys was more productive than hunting Bigfoot. I made the mistake of sharing that fun fact during training and now I fucking can’t shake it. I’ve gotten enough gag gift hats and shirts over the years to clothe an entire convention of Squatchers. One of my COs used to name the missions I was on things like Operation White Yeti and Ape Man Cometh.”
He paused to pick up the framed photograph of his family from the bookshelf and rubbed the dust off on his hip. With a grimace he set it back down, this time upright.
“Dad really embarrassed me sometimes. At times I hated him for it, but he was my dad and he was tougher than most anyone, even some of the baddest of the brass I worked under. And, well, who couldn’t use a Squatch Knocker?”
He lifted his spoon toward the baseball bat engraved with the same words resting on the fireplace mantle. I couldn’t help but snicker.
“Or, if you’d rather…” Nik crossed over to the bar and pulled out an etched drinking glass. As he put a hip up on the bar chair across from me, he set the glass down on the counter, twisting it so the imprinted Bigfoot image faced me. “I can fix you a Squatch on the Rocks?”
I let out a laugh. “Is it wrong for me to want one?”
“Yes. Very wrong. But you’ve had a head injury, so you’re forgiven.” He put his elbow on the counter, then propped his head on his fist. Warmth had returned to his gaze as it connected with mine. “My mom would go nuts over your eyes. Her birthstone was topaz, so anything amber-colored she considered to be good luck.”
“I doubt she’d think I was good luck.”
“She’d insist on it. She’d also make you the most amazing cinnamon rolls.”
Hearing the words made my stomach growl. “Better than the diner’s?”
“Oh man, those were like sugary dirt balls compared to hers. Mom’s rolls were as big as dessert plates. My little sister ate four once and we had to take her to urgent care. She said it was totally worth it.”
“What was your sister’s name?”
“Cora. She would think it was pretty cool you let all those dogs loose at Animal Control. Especially since almost all of them got adopted out because of it.”
“Really?” I suppose it did sound a little bit cool. Still, I didn’t condone the brutal way I’d—she’d—treated the employee.
“She’d be all over Titan. She really wanted her own dog. When she was about four or five, she thought our Pappy’s dog was named Who, because he used to always say, ‘Who’s a good girl?’ We explained the dog’s actual name was Bisky, short for Biscuit. Cora was disappointed and said when she got a dog, she’d name it Who.”
My hand flew to my heart. “I love it.”
“It’s a terrible name. Whenever anyone asks her what the dog’s name is, she’d have answered ‘Who’ and then it would have become a whole ‘who’s on first’ skit.”
“What?”
“What’s on second.”
“I don’t know.”
“He’s on third.”
I started to growl, realizing he was playing me. As much as I wanted to see the smile he was stifling, I could tell talking about his family was something he hadn’t done in a very long time. “Tell me more about Cora.”
Flashes of silver danced in his eyes. “I used to call her my corazon. One day when she’d just started school, she came home with her fists balled up and stomping her feet. She marched up and poked me in the chest and said ‘don’t you ever call me that again! I know what it means, jerk!’ I was like, what the heck? Corazon means—”
“Heart, in Spanish.” The knowledge popped in my head the way a few things had begun to.
“Yeah. I usually said it kind of fast and in this really bad Mexican accent. I guess when she repeated it, some kid thought she said calzone and told her I was calling her a folded-up piece of pizza. Which, while delicious, she still took as an insult. I wanted to beat the tar out of the little brat. Shit, how old would he be? Like twenty? He could take a punch now.”
I laughed, but Nik looked like he might seriously find the boy and get payback. His love and desire to protect his sister, his corazon…his heart, were as easy to see now as they’d been looking at the younger version of him in the photo. If anything, they’d grown. But just as he hadn’t been able to protect his sister from a kindergarten brat’s taunts, he hadn’t been able to protect her from dying in a car wreck.
“Your heart tattoo is for Cora,” I surmised aloud as my mind flashed back to the gorgeous ink on the left-hand side of his chest. It had looked more like a dagger at first since the heart itself was welded steel with flames at the top and sharpened to a point at the bottom.
He nodded, but didn’t elaborate. The other tattoo I’d caught in the hotel room appeared equally disguised, blending into larger, ornately engraved plates of armor covering the bulk of his upper body on his right side. Hidden in the intricate pattern on the back of his shoulder were etched bones, like a fossil. “And what about the skeleton? Looked like a frog?”
“It’s for my mother. She had bowlegs and a green complexion.”
I winged a nearby dish towel at him, which he snapp
ed out of the air with lightning-fast reflexes. The playful upturn of his lips burned a swath of warmth through my core before his smile faded.
“SEALs are also known as frogmen. We’re amphibious, fighting from both land and sea. Many of us have some variation of the bone frog tattoo. The skeleton honors the fallen who continue to watch our six…our backs. You’re observant. You probably only saw it briefly, and as I recall I was up against a wall and you were trying to keep Titan from killing me at the time.”
“You’re welcome, by the way. And what? Did you assume I was in a blind haze after seeing your abs?”
“This is the second time you’ve mentioned them. Women like six-packs.”
“So why do you have eight? More to love?” I caught the flash of coy astonishment across his handsome face. “What? I can do math, admire artwork, and save your life from a ferocious hell-beast. Women are very good at multi-tasking.”
He tilted his head, curiously studying me. “You’re very good at a lot of things, aren’t you?”
Chapter Sixteen
Every time Nik seemed to get control over his urges, Thea found a way to crank the gas, fueling his fire for her up even hotter than before. He’d tried his level best not to get all worked up by her again, but taking notice of anything Thea related had the power to knot him up something fierce. And between needing to contact her fiancé and kissing her on the couch, he’d been more twisted up than ever.
His fingers clenched as he ached to tangle them in the haphazard loose spirals of her blonde hair. It was nothing compared to what he yearned to do with his tongue again. His taste buds roared to life as flashes of their kiss rushed back through his mind like the aggressive assault of spring melt-off crashing through the valley—forever changing the landscape, yet simultaneously feeding it with life.
Tasting her once wasn’t going to be enough. Hell, tasting only her mouth wasn’t going to be enough when he wanted every inch of her on his tongue. He needed to quench his desires on something else and quick or he’d throw her down on the kitchen counter and consume her whole.
Twist My Heart Page 10
