by Fiona Brand
Gray could see the gleam of the Sig where it butted up against what looked like a tractor case. He lifted his gaze to Harper, his fingers closing over the hilt of his fighting knife.
"Where's Sam?" he demanded, sweat trickling down his temples, stinging his eyes as they circled and parried, playing what was evidently Harper's favourite game.
"Lost your girlfriend, Lombard? You should be more careful."
"What have you done with her, you son of a bitch?"
Harper's eyes were cold. "Nothing … yet."
Tension vibrated through Gray, cording his muscles, tying his shoulder up so tight it burned with each tiny flex of his fingers, each flick of his wrist. Harper's knife dived, swivelled, flashed where it caught the light. Gray whirled, and cold fire seared across his stomach. He was cut. He could feel the hot spill of blood, the cool that followed. Fury channelled through him. He feinted, lunged. His knife sank into muscle, and Harper stumbled back, his left arm hanging useless at his side.
With a roar, Harper charged. Gray feinted, avoiding the manoeuvre; then something smashed into his back, throwing him forward. Harper's knife scored his neck, then Harper himself was abruptly jerked back. The snapping report of the two shots, then a third, echoed in the cavernous hollow of the warehouse as the floor rose up to meet him.
When Gray came to, he knew he'd been shot. In the back.
He was aware of movement. Harper staggering to his feet, clutching his thigh with his good hand, then he was gone from Gray's vision. There were more gun shots, the sound of a vehicle, then … silence.
He was having trouble breathing. Something was wrong with his neck. He could feel the heat of his blood on his skin, the coldness seeping into his very core, the deep aches he instinctively knew were bad – like pain just waking up.
He was going to die.
A part of his mind mulled over the concept of the justice in dying while trying to fix his mistake, as if it was an intellectual question and he was part of some impartial jury presiding over his bleeding body. The visual was so real he could almost swear he was hovering over himself, staring down at the entry wound in his back. Then the illusion telescoped into a point of black, the darkness swirling at the edges of his vision as he opened his eyes and was sucked back into the grim, only-too-real present.
The floor was hard and cold, his sense of smell almost painfully acute. He could easily separate the smells of dust and sweat, and his own blood. God, his blood, so rich and sweet, and it was draining away.
The thought shoved his heart into overdrive. Abruptly the life force rose in him like a ball of pure, white-hot energy vibrating at his very core, pulsing, driving upward as if it would burst from his mouth. He clenched his jaw; he didn't want to die.
The hell he would die.
Gray sucked in a breath as the pain flowered, breaking through the odd, numbing stasis. The enormity, the all-encompassing nature, of the pain forced him into a foetal position, even though the slightest movement made his head spin. His stomach tightened, rolled, and for a moment he thought he was going to be physically sick. An odd rattling groan was torn from his damaged throat. If he threw up now he probably would die. Breaking into a sweat at the exquisite agony the movement caused him. Gray felt down his body, located the exit wound the bullet had made, then rolled, trapping his hand over the wound, applying his own pressure to help staunch the bleeding.
He must have blacked out again. When he opened his eyes, he was on his back and Blade was leaning over him, breaking open an ampoule of morphine. There was a faint sting as he injected it directly into the wound. Hazy warmth washed through Gray, swept him like a lazy ocean swell, rocked him gently, each undulation easing him further from the jagged bite of the pain. With every pulse the terrible tension that gripped him eased, and his mind drifted.
Gray tightened his jaw, hanging on fiercely. He didn't like losing control, even to the morphine. He was afraid that if he let go, he would die. He had to stay awake. He had to live.
Blade was talking as he ripped open packets, telling Gray what he was doing, cursing him for getting shot, threatening Gray with a long, drawn-out death if he did die on him.
Gray felt pressure on his belly and a fresh wave of nausea rolled through him as the pain broke through the morphine haze.
"Give me another wound dressing. Now!" Blade snapped.
Time became elastic. No matter how hard Gray tried, he kept losing his hold on the present, slipping off the edge into the blackest midnight he'd ever known; it pulled at him, beckoned, warm and dark, but there was a reason he had to stay awake, a reason he had to keep going.
The reason crystallised. "Sam," he said in a tortured rasp.
Blade leaned over him, so close that Gray could see the moisture in his eyes. It hit him like a hammer blow: Blade was crying. Blade never cried. He was the hardest of the hard men, and he almost never revealed what he was really thinking. Gray knew him, they were close, so alike in many ways – intensely private, single-minded, wary of commitment. Blade ran deep, too deep for most, who chose to see only what he allowed them to see – the cold, utterly professional soldier when he was working, the love-'em-and-leave-'em outlaw when he wasn't.
"Sam's not here," Blade said grimly. "We've searched this whole viper's nest and questioned the scumbag who shot you in the back. She was never here."
He had lost consciousness at that point. Three days later, he'd surfaced from heavy sedation. It had been weeks before he was fit to travel.
Gray turned from the view out of the kitchen window that he had barely registered because the images of his own private hell were so much brighter, so much more intense.
Sam's face was paper-white, her eyes almost black with an inner pain that caught and held his attention. She was still standing by the coffeemaker, her hands gripping her bare upper arms as if she was chilled, the mugs of coffee steamed unnoticed beside her on the counter. "You thought I was there? You nearly died because—"
"It was a reasonable assumption to make. You went missing the same day Jake and Rafaella did. Sometimes coincidence is a real bitch."
"You were looking for me."
Gray's gaze narrowed on her face. "I shouldn't have told you."
"I already knew most of it." Fury replaced the blank shock that he had almost died for her and she hadn't known. "Take off your shirt."
"Sam… If I'd been paying any kind of attention to what was and wasn't happening between us, I might have worked out that your disappearance wasn't connected with Harper."
Sam wasn't in the mood to be placated. "Take off your shirt," she repeated. "I want to see."
Gray didn't move. Sam stepped closer, pulled his shirt from his pants, then started on the buttons.
His hands covered hers. "Sam…"
She threw off his hands and continued. When all the buttons were unfastened, she pushed the shirt from his shoulders, letting it peel down his arms and fall to the floor.
For a long moment she couldn't see beyond the sheer, muscular beauty of his torso. His skin glowed copper in the brassy light of the approaching storm; dark hair shadowed his chest and ran in a line to the waistband of his pants. He was startlingly male and primitive in the civilised confines of the ultra-modern kitchen. Without the concealing mantle of clothing, danger and heat poured from him, animal-strong, intense and vital. He smelled delicious. The clean male scent of his skin, edged with an aroma that was musky, male, filled her nostrils and almost made Sam moan out loud.
She wanted to be closer. She wanted to wrap her arms around his lean waist, burrow her head against that broad chest and breathe her fill of the erotic, intimate scent of him. He would be hot to the touch, the pelt of dark hair on his chest enticingly rough against her cheek, his skin satin-smooth, pulled taut across heavy muscle. That edgy vitality would shiver and throb through her, as if in touching him she'd transferred some of that pulsing, vibrant energy to herself.
And then she saw the scars.
An ugly, sunken welt j
ust up from his hip that she instantly knew was the bullet wound. An arcing slice across his flat, muscled stomach. She could actually envisage the knife slicing through the hard muscles of his belly, the fleshy explosion of the bullet ripping into his back.
Before she could stop herself, before she could think beyond the shock of what had been done to Gray, Sam touched the scars, her fingers running lightly over the devastating injuries as if she could comprehend the violence, as if she could absorb some of the pain he must have felt.
He jerked at her touch, his breath coming roughly, but he didn't move, away.
Gray was such a beautiful male animal, and someone had hurt him. Anger rose in her. Not just hurt him – someone had done their very best to kill him. "Damn you. How dare you nearly die for me?" she demanded raspily.
His gaze glittered down into hers, and she knew he would do whatever it took, risk himself again if necessary.
She ran her fingers over the bullet wound again. "You're going to catch this man – this Harper."
It wasn't a question, but he answered anyway. "Yes."
She absorbed the flat intent in his voice, and something else, a new tension. She was touching Gray, standing so close that he could encircle her with his arms if he wanted. Her hand jerked back, but she wasn't fast enough. His fingers captured hers, wrapping them tight. She was surprised all over again by the rough tingling heat of his grip and the effect it had on her.
Her breath came in sharply. She was going crazy. No, strike that, she was already there. Gray Lombard was the last man on earth she should be attracted to, the last man she should want to touch. He was too arrogant and too rich for his own good, and he didn't need or want her worry, or her protection. He had nearly died for her.
And she loved him.
More, she was in love with him. She knew it, starkly, without any sense of wonder or elation. She loved him, and she couldn't bear a world without him in it.
"Don't let him hurt you again," she whispered. "Do you hear me?"
Gray touched her face; his thumb rubbed gently across her cheekbone. "I hear you."
"But you won't listen. You're going after him. There's no guarantee you won't be shot again. There's no guarantee you won't—"
"He won't kill me."
Sam drew in a breath, unable to hide her fear or the fury that grew out of that fear. The emotions were too well-known, too closely married to the dark, empty places inside her, because she knew with a stark certainty that if Gray died, she wouldn't want to live.
Not that she was suicidal in any way, simply that she would take no joy in life. She would live, she would continue to breathe and do all the things that normal people do, but she would simply be going through the motions, as she had done for the last seven years. If Gray died, it would be like a part of herself dying, and she knew she had to tell him that. After today, there was every possibility that she might not get another chance. "I love you."
He went still, his expression utterly blank; then his expression hardened, settled more fiercely against the bones of his face. "I have to go."
"I know."
He swore, sharply and succinctly. Keeping her hand in his, he retrieved his cell phone from his pants pocket. He stabbed in numbers and spoke, holding her gaze as he did so. Sam heard the low rumble of Gray's voice but had no idea what he actually said. His intent smouldered in his eyes, as blunt, as straightforward, as the way he was physically keeping her close.
He wanted her, and he was going to have her.
Just admitting what was going to happen next turned her knees to proverbial jelly. She didn't have the strength or the will to stop him, not when this was what she wanted more than common sense, more than logic or safety.
Gray snapped the cell phone closed and slipped it back into his pocket. "Carter's got a job to do before he gets here." One big hand curled around her nape, trapping her in a grip that was both predatory and possessive. "We've got two hours."
Chapter 12
Elation burst through Sam as Gray's mouth settled hungrily over hers. She could feel the blood pounding through her veins, the sweet, heavy throb of desire pulling her muscles taut, making her skin tight and hot, almost unbearably sensitive to his lightest touch.
Her palms came to rest against the intriguing roughness of his chest. He shuddered and groaned and pressed closer, herding her against the counter. His mouth left hers and trailed along her jaw, down her throat; then, as abruptly as he had kissed her, he let her go.
"If you don't want this, you'd better say so now. I need you so much you make me shake."
He grasped her hand and pressed it to the centre of his chest. She could feel the rapid slam of his heart, the almost imperceptible tremors that shook him, but it was the words he'd chosen that moved her the most. He needed her. Somehow, that was more than she had expected.
She knew he would more than likely hurt her again, but suddenly she didn't care; either one of them could be dead tomorrow. "If all we have is two hours, I'll take it."
He let out a breath; his lashes lowered over his eyes. "The first time we do it, I don't want to be standing up. I want to see you. We need a bed."
He swung her into his arms and carried her through the darkened hallway to the bedroom she'd chosen, set her on her feet and began systematically stripping the clothes from her body.
He surveyed her for a tense moment, holding her gaze as he kicked off his shoes and peeled off his pants. His hands settled on her hips, moving up in a rough stroke to cup her breasts, plumping them up into full mounds as he lowered his mouth to first one nipple, then the other. Sam trembled and arched under the onslaught, the exquisite pull of his mouth, the hot, wet heat of his tongue. The backs of her knees connected with the bed; then she was tumbling. Gray's weight pinned her to the mattress, flattening her breasts against the solid wall of his chest, his thighs spreading hers as he settled himself between them. Sam shivered in his grasp, assaulted by an overload of textures that were at once alien and familiar. His body was hot, his textures rich and varied: satin skin and crisp hair on his chest and thighs; bard unyielding muscle and callused hands; the heavy, gliding heat of his sex as he moved over her.
Gray's gaze locked with hers as he probed and found her entrance. Sam shivered at the tantalising pressure, the searing liquid heat that flooded her lower belly. Her hips lifted of their own accord to capture and contain him. The breath hissed from between his teeth. He reared back, surveyed her for a taut moment, then retrieved his pants from the floor and extracted a foil packet. Swiftly he sheathed himself. "I had planned to court you when this situation was over. I still will, but it will be after the fact."
One hand cupped the back of her head, fingers locked in her hair, anchoring her in place as he reached down and positioned himself. "I've dreamed of this," he whispered. "Look at me while I take you." The demand was low, rasping, as relentless as the pressure between her legs.
Sam gasped at the dark, hot intensity of his gaze, the burning pleasure of his touch. She dimly understood that even now, despite Gray's fierce arousal, the need that simmered in the banked heat in his eyes, he was controlling their lovemaking. He'd had the presence of mind to take care of contraception – something she hadn't thought about, and which should have been flashing like a neon sign in her mind. He was still holding back, while he demanded everything from her.
She gasped as he pressed deeper. Her fingers dug into his shoulders. It had been so long, and she'd forgotten how it felt, how smoothly muscular he was, the difficulty she had always had accepting him. He was only part way in, and already she felt unbearably stretched.
"Relax," he crooned, stroking one hand down between her breasts, over her belly, to the exquisitely tender flesh between her legs. His voice was rough and tender, telling her how pretty she was, how much he wanted her, just how hot his dreams had been.
His words washed over her, as velvet-soft as the stroke of his fingers as he soothed the point of penetration where she gloved him so tightly,
then slipped up over the exquisitely sensitive bud just above. Sensation broke through her, white-hot, so complete she arched, mindless with the terrifying power of her climax. The intensity of feeling was shattering. There was no turning back. She had made her decision, and there was nothing she could or would do to stop him. She was open and completely vulnerable on every level. If loving Gray was going to hurt her, it was too late to worry about it now; she was committed, for better or worse.
Not that Gray was giving her a chance to change her mind. He was sinking deeper, taking advantage of the shimmering convulsions, her internal moistening, to ease his way.
His hands tightened on her hips as he lifted her to him, adjusting the angle so he could plunge deeper still, and the feel of him buried inside her, the unadorned intimacy of penetration, tore away the last tattered remnants of her defences.
She wanted this.
She had never felt so tinglingly alive, never taken so much joy in living. The discomfort was fading, giving way to a hot excitement. She lifted, accepting him fully, crying out at the sweet, rasping ache. She wanted life, she chose life, and in that moment she accepted Gray – his implacable will, his code of honour, his smothering protectiveness – all three things that still threatened to lock her out of his life, just as they had done for the past seven years.
"Touch me." The demand was hoarse and raw, more a groan than actual words.
Her hands slipped along the damp curve of his back, glorying in his strength and slickness, the bunch and slide of his muscles as he began to move. Sam flexed her limbs beneath his solid weight, feeling him impossibly hot and heavy inside her, wanting more than his gentleness and restraint, half wild for more.
Her mouth opened over his skin. The salt taste exploded across her tongue, and she arched, shimmying against him. A rough sound was torn from his throat; he bucked, then shuddered and drove deep. He was like a storm, on her and over her, pounding inside her. She wanted all of him, everything he had to give, everything he could make her feel. She had been lost for seven years, lost and so alone without him.
