by Fiona Quinn
They climbed onto the elevator, and it filled behind them with people in costly designer clothes.
Remi didn’t do well in confined spaces. He’d watched her psych herself up on the planes and in elevators the whole trip and was at a loss for how to help her navigate that. It wasn’t his place, still…
But right now, she seemed fine. Nervous, but so was T-Rex.
Shit. He hadn’t been with a woman in almost five years. He deployed, and then his wife died. Five years, he hoped he didn’t embarrass himself with too much enthusiasm or too little self-control.
The door slid open, two people got off.
Remi moved a little closer to him. Her breast brushed against his arm.
His dick stood at attention, saluting her amazing body. His heart pounded.
The doors open and the family got off. Now they were alone.
As the door slid closed, Remi bubbled with laughter. “Nerves,” she said.
Man, he wanted to scoop her into his arms, crush her into him. He wanted his mouth on her. His hands.
He licked his lips.
The light flickered.
The elevator was thrust into sudden pitch black. Then came a sudden, stomach-dropping thunk as they came to an abrupt stop.
Remi cussed under her breath. There was a pop and then sudden illumination as Remi held up a pink chemical light.
“Blankenship was right. You’re like Mary Poppins.”
“What’s that?” She looked up at him, confused. Those long eyelashes. Those sweet lips.
“Did you grow up in the U.S.?”
“Yes.” She tipped her head.
“There’s a movie called Mary Poppins.”
“I’m... Yes, I just don’t understand what you’re talking about.”
“You keep reaching into various pockets and pulling out random things.” He waved a hand toward the glowing pink stick. “Chem-lights.”
“Live and learn,” she said.
“This happens frequently here?”
“Very unfortunately, yes. They have trouble with the electricity. It won’t take but a second. They just need to power up their generator. It’s a good thing all those people got off first. Normally, getting stopped is its own kind of torture. I’m not great when I feel trapped.”
Brushing his fingers down her sleeve, T-Rex reached for her hand, but she rolled into his embrace instead, wrapping her arms tightly around him and cuddling her head into his chest.
T-Rex held her tight, painting a hand over her head, tugging her hairband from her ponytail, running the strands through his fingers like silken water.
They held.
Honestly, T-Rex was fine being just here, doing just this.
But the moment lasted longer than he’d expected. Seconds turned into minutes. Remi’s body banded against him. Her stress levels rising. “Are you okay?” he whispered.
“This…we should be out of here by now.”
Without letting her go, T-Rex pressed his sternal communicator. “Echo Actual.”
“Havoc. The senator’s asleep. I checked on her. She won’t even know we had the power outage.”
“Did you call the desk and get a timeframe?”
“Negative.”
“Remi and I are in the elevator between the fifth and sixth floors.”
“That’s crap. Is Remi okay? She’s claustrophobic.”
T-Rex dropped a kiss into her hair. “I’ve got her. Can you find out what the holdup is?”
“Wilco. Out.”
“Havoc is going to get us some more information,” T-Rex told Remi.
“I think I’m going to sit down. I’m…it’s not awful, but because this didn’t resolve. Yeah, I should warn you, I’m starting to freak out a bit.”
“Does it help to talk?”
“Ha! Yes. So I’m in an elevator with a guy who prefers five syllables or less.”
“Oh, that’s what you’ve been doing?” He sat first so Remi wouldn’t lower herself and have his bulk hovering above her. “Counting my syllables?” For whatever reason, he was charmed by that. By her.
She sat down between his legs and leaned against him.
“What should we talk about? You pick a topic,” he suggested.
“Okay. T-Rex,” Remi said. “When did they start calling you that? Why not Godzilla?”
“I got the name my first day of kindergarten when I was learning what recess meant.” He kissed her hair again, and she twisted to offer her lips. It was one brief kiss. But it tasted so sweet. “I went out with the rest of my class after lunch, and we were playing dinosaurs.”
She chuckled. “As one does as a five-year-old.” She absentmindedly played with his fingers. “My favorite dinosaur is the stegosaurus. It seems after you reach a certain age, say seven, people stop caring what your favorite dinosaur is. But for some reason, they continue to care about your favorite color. Or horoscope sign—but that’s based on birth dates, not preference.”
“Favorite color?” he asked.
“Indigo. You?”
“Navy blue.”
“Of course it is.” She held the pink light straight up, her eyes searching around the elevator car.
He didn’t want her thinking ‘trapped’ thoughts. “Sign?”
“Scorpio. October 25th.”
“Passionate. Yep.”
“You?”
“Gemini, June first.”
Remi pulled her phone from her thigh pocket. Opened it and scrolled. “Let’s see,” she murmured. The anxiety in her voice ticked up. When she settled back against him again, that strain in her muscles released. He felt like a giant of a man. He felt like a protective force.
She didn’t need that from him. But he liked the sensation all the same.
“Gemini. It says that you are great at staying calm in stressful situations.” She laughed. “Focused on what needs to be done. Gemini’s don’t find fear and panic to be helpful. Hmm, who does find that helpful? Uhm, Gemini’s don’t like escalating a crisis… Geminis can talk someone out of their fears. Lot in here about fear… Gemini’s are solution-based. Well.” She turned her phone off and slid it back in her pocket. “There you have it. I’d say that was just about perfect.” She peeked up at him. “You’re keeping me sane. Thank you.”
At some point, T-Rex wanted to know what caused her phobia, but this was absolutely the wrong time to ask about that.
T-Rex sat there perfectly contented.
“Playground,” Remi whispered as she angled her chin up. “Go back to that. There’s a story there.”
“Mom and Dad were both college athletes.”
“Where was this?”
“Maryland. Mom was a six-foot-three basketball player. My dad played college football.”
“Big genes.”
“From the get-go. I was out on the playground at my very first recess. We were stomping around being dinosaurs. I wanted to be a triceratops. That’s my favorite dinosaur.
“To this day?” Remi asked.
“Yup. I still love triceratops,” he laughed, “but the other boys insisted I be T-Rex.”
“It’s your bizarrely short arms, isn’t it?” His skin warmed as she rubbed her hand up and down his arm. She pulled his hands tighter around her. Inching back a little more. “I bet that made all those pushups in boot camp easier, less distance to travel.” She turned and planted a kiss on his bicep. It felt playful like she wanted to make extra sure he knew he was being teased. Like she was protecting his feelings.
And that sensation of Remi protecting him, caring, turned on a switch. Suddenly there was light and warmth where he’d been in the dark for so long.
I’m ready. That thought was a revelation. He’d crossed “relationship” off his life plan. Or pushed it out into the future. And here he was, for the first time since Jess, wanting to understand what made a woman tick. All of her. Intellectual. Emotional. And yeah, definitely sexual.
“They kept calling you that after your first day of school?”
She laughed, and T-Rex’s spirit soared.
“What would you do?” Remi asked. “You can’t beat people up at school.”
“They’d call, and I’d do my best dinosaur roars as I stomped my way over to stand between the bully and my friends. No one in Mrs. Pennyworth’s kindergarten class was bullied or harassed.”
Remi’s body shook against him as she laughed. His whole body was waking up.
“That was where I met Jess.”
“Your wife? That’s amazing.”
What was amazing was he’d blurted that out. It was inexplicable, but T-Rex felt compelled to tell Remi about this. “Yup. She was a scrappy little thing. I remember the first time she put me in my place. She was in a boxing stance, fists up, yelling, ‘Try it. Come on, just try.’ The boy was circling. Taunting. That kid was like a third-grader and almost as big as I was.”
“Wow. Did it turn into a fistfight?”
“He ran away. Instead of gratitude, Jess turned to me. ‘Why’d you get in my way?’”
“Ha!”
T-Rex pitched his voice like a little girl. ‘I was going to whoop his butt.’ I protested. I said she was so little, and the guy was too big for her to fight. And, man, I remember this like it was yesterday. She said, ‘My daddy says it’s technique. The bigger they are, the harder they fall, mommy says.’ I stopped her. ‘Your mommy wants you to fight?’ His voice rose again to imitate five-year-old Jess. ‘My mommy says if anyone gives you trouble, you know how to protect yourself. We’ll stand behind you. My mommy’s a soldier, and I’m going to be a soldier, too’.”
Remi squeezed his thigh. “And you fell in love with her smart tongue?”
“Oh, I knew right then and there I wanted to marry her. She rejected me outright. And kept rejecting me all through middle school. Then came the miracle of high school. When her body started to change, she added a little makeup to her routine. I joined the rugby team. She started showing up to the games. Finally, sophomore year, she said yes, she’d be my girlfriend. It took me almost a decade of patience. But we got there.”
“When were you married?”
“Right out of high school. Spring, senior year, we found out Jess was pregnant. I joined the Navy to support us. We kept our marriage and the baby secret until after graduation. We were afraid our parents wouldn’t be on board with our decisions. I headed off to boot camp. Jess had a miscarriage.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Bad timing for all of that. In hindsight, it was best. We would have loved that baby and done our best, but we had already decided that we didn’t want kids.”
“Did that ever change for you? Do you have children?”
“No kids. And no. I’m just not that guy. I think it’s best if I’m godfather to my friend’s kids.” He realized he was testing the waters. It would be unfair for him to want a relationship with someone who wanted something he wasn’t willing to give.
Her saying, “Same.” blew through him like a sigh of relief.
“I’m curious,” T-Rex began. “How do you handle the mental part of your job? You’ve been to some of the most dangerous places on earth. You’ve interviewed some of the most lethal people.”
“Oh, I’m terrified most of the time. No, that’s not right. I am terrified, just never at the time when I should be—always after. Except for claustrophobia—that’s an immediate sensation—I think it’s kind of funny that I feel fear—the adrenaline dumping, sweaty, hot, gross fear all the time. And it’s almost as if I have to find a life-or-death event because, in that, I have clarity. I have peace—no, that’s a poor choice of words. I have respite from the fear during an event to stay alive in that place and time. Some of my friends suggest that I’m addicted to adrenaline when it’s really the opposite. I despise the feeling of adrenaline and seek ways to dissipate it. It just so happens that I feel relief from terror in the very places where I should feel it most acutely when I have my head in the lion’s mouth. That’s true, except for confined spaces that I can’t leave. Fear of being trapped is a whole other beast.”
“I get what you’re saying. I do. When I’m on a mission, my senses expand. I’m right there in the moment, dealing with the events. No time to ponder. No time to focus on emotions. There’s a Zen quality to it. Pure presence.”
“Yes, that’s it.”
They fell into silence.
T-Rex let his memories float him back to his teen years. He’d signed on the dotted line to join the Navy. Jess started college in criminal justice to become a police officer…
They’d decided it was the safe place for her to be, a sleepy town cop.
His job with the SEALs moved them to California.
Back to the East Coast to Virginia for a short stint with DEVGRU—SEAL Team Six.
Then on to North Carolina when he joined The Unit.
And in North Carolina, things weren’t quite as sleepy.
Jess was killed saving a family from a husband who was out of his mind on drugs.
Dead. Four years. T-Rex would never recover from it. It was a constant bubble of pain in his chest. It was like losing one of your senses and spending your days realizing it was gone, not coming back, and now he’d have to learn to navigate the world anew. Diminished.
On missions, T-Rex packed those emotions into his case and carried them around with him. They waited on his empty cot for him to get back to base from his assignment.
Missions required him to be laser-focused. And T-Rex knew exactly what Remi was saying earlier about being in the middle of chaos. If you wanted to survive, it took up every available cell and electrical impulse. The senses expanded, the mind sharpened. If he wallowed in emotion, he’d be dead a hundred times over. He didn’t feel grief amid the chaos. And she was right; he experienced respite when he stuck his head into the lion’s mouth.
A revelation.
It was in the downtime when the grief was a fog that blurred his view of the world.
And he didn’t even hope for sunshine to disperse the mist.
T-Rex was startled when he realized he was sharing this aloud. “Listen to me talking to you about this shit.”
Remi had spun around to face him, kneeling between his legs, her hands resting on his thighs. “I’m glad to hear what you’re thinking.”
“Part of the job.”
“I’m not on the job. I have personal time.”
“Not what I meant,” T-Rex clarified. “Part of your success at your job must be an innate ability to be a good listener.”
She blinked up at him…so beautiful in the glow of the pink light. “Yeah. I guess you’re right. That’s been my lifelong gift. I sit down, and people just spill out their stories.”
“Echo Six.” T-Rex heard in his earpiece. He put a finger in the air to pause their conversation.
T-Rex pressed his comms button. “Echo Actual.”
“I’m down in the lobby. Someone stole the fuel for the generator. The staff is scrambling to find some, even if it’s just enough to get the elevators to a floor and the doors open. You two aren’t the only ones trapped. They’re hoping ten-fifteen minutes to get the elevators cleared out. It will probably be a lot longer until they can get lights on. Blankenship is still asleep. Ty’s outside of her room.”
“Copy. Over.” He looked down at Remi with her trusting eyes. “Ten, maybe fifteen minutes.”
“We were talking about fear. How do you deal with it?”
“I’ve been asked that a lot. And the truth is, I feel like I’m where I’m supposed to be. I feel like there’s a divine shield over me,” T-Rex said.
“Does it extend to those around you? Because if that’s the case, I think your shield might have a crack in it.”
“Bad things happen. No reason in this world that the bad things should happen to other people and not me.”
“Yeah. I get that sentiment. I really do. Why shou
ld my life be magically comfortable and easy when children are getting blown up, standing in line at the spigot to get some water for their family?”
“Man, this is dark.”
“Yep. How about you ask me something you wonder about me?” Remi suggested.
“Were you ever married?” Not what he’d meant to say. But fine, he kicked that door open, might as well walk in.
“No.”
“Close to it?”
“No.”
“How about love?” He held his breath. His heart pounded.
“What about it?”
“Have you ever fallen in love before?”
“Oh, so many times. I’ve fallen in love with sunsets over preserves where giraffes and elephants roam free. I’ve fallen in love with the gentle lapping of water against the side of our little boat as we made our way through Vietnamese rivers past rice patties. I have fallen in love with the wide eyes of newborns who look so wise with their toothless milk smiles. Like they still remember all of the secrets of the universe, and what a shame it is that by the time they can speak, they’ve forgotten. I have fallen in love with peace amongst the chaos.”
The silence fell gently, blanketing them.
“I want to go to your room for that dinner when we get out of here,” she said. “The dining room won’t be working until the lights come on.”
“I have MRE’s in my pack—and that actually might be a good thing.”
“Oh?”
“My room is right next to the senator’s. Havoc will be back on guard duty.”
“And he’ll see me going in. Is that a problem?”
“Not when I’m feeding you an MRE.”
And with that, there was a whir and a chunk. And the elevator moved.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Remi
Friday, Beirut, Lebanon
The lights blinked on.
The elevator shook.
T-Rex reached up and pressed the button, and they came to an immediate stop on the sixth floor.
“I think it’s prudent to take the stairs,” Remi whispered as she emerged from the elevator into the lighted hallway, chem-light still clutched in her hand.
