She shivered, hugging herself. “That must have been so—what am I saying? I know how it hit you. I understand exactly because I felt something inside me come alive again, too, the day that I found out you’d come back from the dead.”
“Even though you’d left me and found someone else?”
It grew so quiet inside the barn that he made out the sound of hammering from somewhere outside and what he recognized as the happy, growly chuffs of the two young shepherds playing in the paddock area. There was another sound, as well, the lumbering thump of his own heartbeat, a sound that grew swifter every moment he looked into her eyes.
But he couldn’t tear his gaze away, couldn’t do any more than stare in fascination as she studied him, too, thoughts darting swift as swallows in the expanding darkness of her pupils. It was one of the things that he loved best about her, that sense of so much going on behind each look and every word. Maybe, as an old friend from the agency had told him after he and Andrea had parted, men with secrets like theirs were better off sticking with uncomplicated women. But he’d never wanted anyone too naive to see through his lies...
Had never wanted anyone who didn’t think before she answered the important questions.
“Julian helped me through my grief for you,” she finally answered. “He was good to me and kind, and we shared a passion for helping traumatized veterans—something I became intensely involved with after hearing of your...after I received that knock at the door.”
“I’m sorry for what you were put through on my account.”
“Don’t be, because that’s not my point. The thing is, Ian, Julian might’ve been the man I turned to. But he wasn’t, he’s never been, the man I needed.”
His pulse booming in his ears, Ian closed the remaining space between them, his lean, work-hardened arms enfolding the sweet softness of her body. This time, when they kissed, he forced himself to hold back, to begin a wordless conversation based not on his hopeless desire to go back in time but on a wish to start anew. Only this time, he swore to himself, he’d do whatever it took to build a real relationship instead of another shimmering mirage.
He trailed kisses to the tender spot beneath her ear, making her shiver when he gently nipped the delicate flesh.
Her breathing deepening, she tipped back her head and whispered, “You, yes. Always you, except...except, Ian, there is something. Something I’ve been meaning to...tell...”
A word dissolved into a groan as he cupped her breast with his hand, as he pressed her up against one of the beams that separated the stalls. Right now, he didn’t need or want words. He only wanted her, needed her with a fever-bright intensity that made every other consideration fall away.
Andrea’s glazed eyes and parted lips told him she was swept up in the same warm current, a current that put him in mind of turquoise waters, green palms and a certain blue bikini forever imprinted on his mind.
“Later. Tell me later.” His voice grew hoarse as he leaned in and their bodies came together, their movements an ebb and flow as natural and as ancient as the tropical tides.
“Ian,” she murmured, her hand dropping low to squeeze the hardness making his jeans so damned uncomfortable. Moments later, she seemed to regain control of herself. “We really can’t— We shouldn’t. Not here, at least. And not before I talk to you about what I—what I’ve done.”
He covered her mouth with his own, swallowing her protest. He couldn’t process words now, not while he was burning body and soul with the need to lose himself in the sensation, to lose himself in her.
“Come with me,” he said, gripping her by the wrist and taking a step toward his brother’s office. When she hesitated, he said, “Please, Andie. Before a bunch of damned talk gets in the way of what you know we’re both feeling, what we both want and need.”
Her beautiful hazel eyes locked on to his, a denial written in them. But when he lifted her hand to his mouth, when he turned her wrist just far enough to taste the flesh that covered the delicate tracery of blue veins, he felt her frantic pulse slow, felt the moment when whatever resistance remained in her gave way.
Inside the barn office, he turned the lock on the door and prayed to everything that was holy that wherever his brother was, he would stay away a good long while.
For a long time, he and Andrea kissed right there, beside the door, his hands rediscovering the hills and plains, the secret valleys of the remembered country of her body, his mouth feasting hungrily on hers. Her fingers were busy, too, unbuttoning his shirt and running through his sparse, dark chest hair, sliding her palms over work-sculpted muscle and driving him into a frenzy.
He helped her pull off her shirt, too, tossing it onto the floor in front of the oversize desk. As he reached to unhook her bra, he thought of sweeping that desk clear in a single, reckless moment, of laying her back atop its broad expanse and taking her right there. But he was distracted by the irresistible glory of her freed breasts, by an impulse so strong that he pushed her against the door to suckle first one and then the other.
“We—can’t—someone will hear...” Her words dissolved into a moan. “Oh, Ian, how I’ve missed...”
The protests ended, and she reached for the buckle of his belt, undoing it and the top button of his jeans. Starting the zipper’s downward journey, until his rock-hard erection was free of the constricting pressure.
Somehow, they made it to the sofa, a trail of clothing marking their haphazard progress. As they stood beside it, she began kissing her way down his body, his awareness of the heat of her mouth and the sharpness of her nails as they lightly scored his flesh so all-consuming that he barely registered her soft words. “Have to make it up to you. All of it, you have to forgive...”
The first brush of her lips against his heated shaft was nearly enough to set him off. But as what she’d said sank in, he put a hand on her shoulder and drew her to her feet to look into her eyes, the lashes dark and spiky with her tears.
Though it nearly killed him to resist, he groaned, “You have nothing—nothing at all to make up to me, darling.”
“But, Ian, I was sent here. Julian made me come. He wanted me to spy on—”
“Guess I should pay him a visit then, to thank the son of a bitch for sending you to me.”
“He wanted your—”
“Shh, Andie. I don’t give a damn what he wanted, not when I’m right here wanting you more than I’ve ever wanted anything or anybody in my life.” Taking her by the hand, he guided her onto the sofa, sat down beside her hip.
She looked up into his face and her breath hitched. She froze like a fawn when the wolf passes nearby.
His hand glided over one of her soft breasts, his fingers lingering to toy with her hard nipple. Sliding to his knees, he followed with his mouth, tempting and teasing until he heard her sigh slip free.
And then he was kissing his way up the column of her neck, drawing soft murmurs of pleasure from her. Beside her ear, he whispered, “And I want you, Andie, want to look at you, to watch your face the very moment that I slide inside you...like this.”
His hand found and stroked her damp heat, his fingers dipping inside her, pumping her until she arched and gasped.
“I’m going to watch you lose control,” he said, placing a knee between her creamy thighs, his excitement an exquisite torment. “Watch you come to pieces while I—”
“Now, please. I need you now, Ian.” Her eyes captured his, the worry in them shifting into pure feminine desire.
He drank in the sight of her, so beautiful, so helpless with want, so completely his as he would always be hers. And then in a single long thrust, he buried himself inside her, lost himself in a rising spiral of sensation that built and built and built until she finally, fully brought him home.
Spent and satisfied some time later, he held her on the sofa, kissing the soft hair at her te
mple and feeling as content and relaxed as he had in the days before they’d parted. So content that he drifted off, forgetting for the moment where he was...
Until, some minutes later, the ventilation system kicked out a whiff of straw, a trace—perhaps imagined—that somehow found its way past the homey scents of horse and leather, of wholesome hay and grain. The acrid smell of fear came next, jerking him awake. He was reminded of deep shadow, deeper shame, and the deep voice he’d heard crying out beside him—a voice pleading for mercy, not for Ian, but himself.
Ian was back there again, right there, he realized as his tormentor raised a meaty fist, the end of the chain wrapped around it.
Startling to alertness, the woman beside him rolled over, staring as he scrambled off the sofa and started grabbing for his clothing. “What is it? What’s wrong? Ian, can you hear me?”
His heart pounding silver nails of adrenaline through his system, he jammed a leg into his jeans. Unable to answer, to think past anything but the need to escape the tangled images ripping their way through nerve and muscle, biting into bone. They were jumbled together, shards from childhood and keen-edged blades from that place, that reeking hole beneath the floorboards, where slivers of light reached down to touch the filthy straw.
Andrea rose like a hallucination, speaking in a voice that floated across the continents and oceans. “Ian, listen to me. You’re having a flashback, remembering something from the past. But you’re safe now. You’re with me here, in Texas. You’re home, and we’re okay.”
He snatched up his shirt, looking around for an exit. Would there be a guard just outside, waiting for him to make a break, another excuse to lay into him? Would he have to kill again, wrapping the chain around the thick neck, pulling and pulling until he heard the crunch of cartilage?
“Can I touch you, Ian? Would that be all right with you?”
He elbowed his way roughly past the image of his Andie. The hallucination stumbled, looking both hurt and bewildered before she pulled herself together. “What is it, Ian? What’s going through your mind now? What are you remembering?”
One splinter pierced his reality, shattering everything he thought he had known. His heart pounded and his gaze snapped to the memory of the only woman he had ever allowed himself to love. “I wasn’t—wasn’t there alone. A-another man—another American. He watched it. Watched me.”
Two patches of color stained her cheeks, some emotion burning hot inside her. She sounded almost real as she asked, “Watched what, Ian? Watched your torture back there? Back before you came home?”
Ian tried to force himself back into that memory, but it was like trying to shove his entire body through a tiny pinhole. He could peek through sometimes, if the light was just right and he had the correct angle, but there was no way, no way in the damned world, he was ever going to squeeze himself into that space.
Squeezed...space. So damned dark back there, with the smell of musty straw burning in his nostrils. A deep voice, big and booming—the old man’s voice, his old man’s face, with the chain in his hand now.
Any minute he’ll be coming back.
“Ian? Are you with me?” Andrea asked, and he noticed she was pulling up her own jeans, her top half clothed already and her now-loose hair wildly tousled.
“What?” he asked, blinking at her before his head jerked toward the low rumble of approaching voices. Male voices, sounding more casual than alarming, but Ian wanted to curse them anyway for intruding before he’d quite remembered where he was.
“Is that your brother I hear?” Andrea asked. “That’s Zach out there, isn’t it?”
Ian stared at her, trying to make sense of what she was saying. As the voices grew nearer, she hurried to unlock the door just before it opened.
His brother stopped in the open doorway, with a graying, goateed man visible behind him. Zach didn’t come inside, his sharp gaze flicking from Andrea to Ian, his look of surprise melting into one of comprehension. There was no judgment in Zach’s eyes, only the hint of a smile as he said, “Sorry to interrupt. I’ll just take Doc Spencer to see to that lame heifer first and brew us up some coffee later.”
They were standing in Ian’s way, blocking his only exit, he realized, as reality once more spun on its axis. His vision dimmed, memory creeping on spiders’ legs out of the darkness, its needle-sharp fangs dripping with a venom that burned like fire as he thought of being trapped here, trapped by the stranger in the doorway who wore his father’s face.
Charging the door, he shoved his way past the first man and barely missed the second as the man jerked out of Ian’s path. Ignoring their startled exclamations and the woman crying out his name, he headed full bore toward the outer barn door, the guards’ furious Pashto curses ringing in his ears...
He fled the men, fled the bullets he expected to take him down at any second and raced out into the daylight, into freedom. Staring around wildly, he spotted an unsaddled horse grazing in the distance and started toward it—
Before abruptly changing course and sprinting toward an old brown truck.
* * *
“Ian!” Zach shouted, but his brother didn’t answer.
Panic pounding through her, Andrea grasped his arm to stop him as he started toward the open barn door. While the vet stared after them in shock, she told Zach, “Wait. Something’s set him off— He’s remembering. Remembering too much.”
“You stay back, too, Andrea. He looks pretty damned riled up, and I don’t want you getting— No, Ian!” Zach raced outside, where Ian was running for the old pickup the two hands had been working on. The rusty hood was down now, the cowboys nowhere in sight.
She ran out after Zach, but Ian was already in the cab, cranking up the engine. For a moment, she didn’t think it would catch, but an instant later, the engine rumbled to life, and he lurched off, tires shooting pea-sized gravel in their wake.
“I’ll go after him, make him stop.” Zach ripped the keys from his pocket and sprinted for his own truck.
Andrea was hot on his heels. “No, Zach. If you chase him while he’s still trapped in the flashback, he won’t get the chance to think things through. He’ll just react and end up racing you to get away. Someone will get hurt.”
Zach stopped short and looked after the receding truck, his handsome face contorted with anguish and frustration. “Are you sure you know what you’re doing? What if we let him go now and he just keeps on driving—or worse yet, splatters his damn fool brains over the roadside when he rolls into a ditch or something.”
“I can’t be sure,” she admitted, unshed tears making her vision shimmer, “no one can, and I’ll admit that a big part of me wants to chase him down with you and drag him straight home, hog-tied and yelling his head off if that’s what it takes. But my training and experience both tell me he’ll wind down soon, get a grip on himself and come back once he’s had a chance to process the memory that’s upset him.”
“What memory? Is it—what they did to him?”
“I’m not sure exactly, but it’s definitely tied in with the torture.” She recalled being with him, every worry driven from her mind by the kissing, touching, the way he’d looked into her eyes as he had moved inside her. She remembered, too, that moment when his body had jolted, every muscle tensing as he’d pushed himself away. He’d said something about another person, some other American who’d watched him there, which must mean the place where he’d been held and tortured. But what had Ian meant exactly? Had an American taken part in what had been done to Ian, or had he been a fellow prisoner, doomed to suffer the same torments?
Whatever the truth was, its impact on Ian had been so immediate, so profound, an insight struck her like a bolt from the blue. This had to be it, what Julian had wanted from her all along, what he and Dr. Kapur wanted. And what they would stop at nothing to keep Ian from telling anyone, especially a reporter like his
sister-in-law, Jessie.
To prevent that from happening, Andrea felt sure they would do whatever damage control they deemed necessary...
Damage control that might very well include the murders of anyone who knew the truth.
“If there’s anything you’d like me to do,” the veterinarian said, sounding genuinely concerned, “or anyone I should call for you—the sheriff, maybe?”
“No, that’s fine,” Zach said. “We’ve got this covered. And even if we didn’t, Sheriff Canter is the last person on the planet I’d ever ask for help.”
“Then, I’ll just go in and see about that heifer you’ve got penned up, shall I? You said it’s the left foreleg she’s favoring, didn’t you?”
“That’s right, and thanks, Doctor. She’s in the last box stall on the left.”
The veterinarian went inside, leaving Andrea and Zach to watch the receding cloud of dust that marked Ian’s progress. As the truck vanished from view, Zach shook his head and swore. “I ought to beat that brother of mine senseless for taking off like that, scaring people half to death—and again, without the license.”
“I understand you’re worried,” she said, “and I know it has to be frustrating. But he is making progress, remembering more each passing day. Learning to handle it, to self-regulate the reactions—that’s slower to come, but I promise, it will come.”
“If he doesn’t destroy himself first, you mean?” Zach’s fear for his brother bled straight through his gruffness. There was love, too, in the mix, a deep though mostly unspoken bond between two men shaped by the same upbringing. A difficult upbringing, marred by their father’s violence.
“I swear to you, he’s not going to do that, not as long as I have breath and strength to stop it.” The professional in her knew that it was reckless, irresponsible to make such a promise. But she wasn’t speaking as a psychologist any longer, just as a woman. A woman whose body ached for Ian...and whose heart had no idea how to let him go.
Lone Star Survivor Page 17
