“And the yellow pills?” She cups my hand, her tone all business, and I relax a little.
“Vertigo. I haven’t needed one in a month, and I don’t think I’ll ever need them again. But I carry them just in case.”
“One white pill if you slur your words or can’t walk a straight line,” she says, and I nod. “What about calling 911? Getting you to the hospital?”
“That shouldn’t be necessary—”
She cuts me off with a searing kiss, then pulls back, pinning me with her stare. “We’re soldiers, Royce. We prepare for the worst. And…I think we could have something here. This isn’t the last night I plan to spend with you.”
I could lose myself in her eyes. Her scent. The feel of her hands on my skin. “Emergency inst-sstructions are in my wallet, taped to the back of my driver’s license. But only call if I pass out or if I’m not better in half an hour. Even when I can’t speak, I can understand you, and I can give you non-verbal responses.”
“Okay.” She relaxes against me once more, and we stare out the window overlooking Lake Washington. “So, you didn’t date because you were worried how a woman would react to you having a seizure?”
I love this view. And it’s so much better having someone to share it with. “That was only part of it. I tried—once or twice—after I started on meds, but I was nauseous all the time and pretty fucking angry. Once I reached the acceptance stage, I was too sick. Kind of hard to date when you can’t stay up later than 9:00 p.m.”
“And now?” She presses closer, and if she didn’t feel so damn good against me, I’d carry her to my bed right now.
“Eighty-five, ninety percent.” The lump in my throat tightens my voice. “My balance sucks. As the night goes on, my speech will probably get slower. I’ll stutter a little. If I get overtired, I can have clusters of seizures for a couple of days. This is…my life now. My doctors think I’m about as good as I’m going to get. Doesn’t mean I won’t keep trying for better, but this is who I am.”
After a long moment, Inara flashes me a wicked grin, then tosses my jeans at me. “Come on, soldier. Get dressed. The woman I am now is hungry. And then after that, we’re going to see about round two. And maybe,” she leans in, crushes her mouth to mine, and pulls away with a quick bite to my lower lip, “I’ll get to see what you look like tied to your bed.”
I grab her, one arm around her waist and my other hand in her hair, fisting the short strands. “We’ll see who ends up restrained.”
“One of my college roommates was Italian,” I say as I serve Inara a second helping of puttanesca. “From Boston. He taught me his favorite recipes. Without Damian, I probably would have starved.”
“I technically know how to cook,” Inara replies. “But takeout is a lot easier. And this is delicious.”
“Not too spicy?” I arch a brow, unable to tear my gaze away from how her breasts swell against the Henley. As sexy as her golden tank was, seeing her comfortable, relaxed, in my home—and my shirt—was well worth digging out an old gray army t-shirt to finish out the vertical portion of the evening.
“I won a challenge in basic training by eating a whole ghost pepper. Without breaking a sweat,” she teases with a smile. “Damn thing tasted like shit, but everyone else ended up throwing up or running for the milk to quell the burn. Can’t say I had a pleasant time the next day, but the bragging rights were worth it.”
Dinner passes with the conversation flowing easily. Her work as a translator, her last trip to England to see her father’s family, and finally, my history with Emerald City Security.
“After I retired from the army, I bounced around for a while. Spent a couple of years in Silicon Valley, but the whole start-up culture? I’m too old for that shit.”
“How’d you end up in Seattle?” Inara sits back and takes a sip of her wine.
“I like the weather.”
“Bullshit.” She laughs and runs a hand through her hair.
The other reason I haven’t dated? Discussions like this. How do you tell a woman you’ve just fucked—no, scratch that—a woman you’ve just come damn close to making love to that you moved up here for someone else? Someone she knows? But as Inara leans forward, her sweet scent surrounding me, I don’t want to hide anything from her.
“I don’t have a lot of close friends,” I say as I rise and pick up our plates. “Cam became sort of a sister when we were deployed together. Her family cut her off before she enlisted, and when you’re diffusing bombs for a living…you get really fucking close really fucking fast.”
She follows me into the kitchen with the pasta bowl. “I get it. Pretty sure my guys knew my entire life story two weeks after we deployed.”
Leaning against the counter, I wrap my arm around Inara’s waist and tug her closer. “After Cam got blown up, I bolted.” With a sigh, I tip my head back to stare at the ceiling. “Not my finest hour. I moved to Seattle to try to make things right.”
“Well, it must have worked.” Inara cups my cheek, a smile curving her full lips. “Or we never would have met.”
“Eventually.” I tap the side of my head. “One of the few good things to come from the tumor. Reconnecting with one of my closest friends, my app…and you.”
After a kiss that leaves me hard as a rock, Inara reaches up to slide her fingers into my short, cropped hair. “Show me this fabulous app you’re building. And then I want you naked.”
8
Inara
Royce leads me into a small bedroom he’s turned into an office. Electronic parts litter a long table, and lines of code scroll by on a large monitor.
“What's all this?” I pick up a small, black piece of plastic the size of my thumb. A thin cable connects it to the computer, and a single light flickers on the side. Red, then green, then red again.
Royce taps the keyboard, and another screen appears with a flashing blue dot on a map of Seattle—right about where we are. “That little transmitter gave me a purpose when I was barely able to function.” Pride swells his chest slightly. “When I started tinkering with app programming, I just needed a distraction. I couldn’t walk, could barely use my left hand. But my mind worked. Cam would drive me to therapy, and I’d be so beaten up by the time I got home again that I’d end up trapped on my couch or in bed for hours. After I blew through two hundred hours of Band of Brothers and all of the Ken Burns documentaries, I started tinkering.”
He runs a hand through his hair, and the move highlights his corded muscles.
Royce goes over the basics of the app with me. All of the tracking functions, the emergency beacon, the admin controls, and his future plans. “I can get biometrics from some of the more advanced smartwatches on the market today. So why not let caregivers check on their charges? ‘Uncle Bob hasn’t moved for the past three hours. Send him a message and make sure he hasn’t fallen and can’t get up. Or send the EMTs right to his location.’ I’ll give Cam a full license to sell the software as part of Oversight, but I think this could be huge. And I have a couple of other app ideas to play with once I’ve finished Loc8tion.”
“How come you’re not doing all of this for Emerald City?”
His blue eyes darken, the metallic streaks disappearing into cobalt. “Because I still have days I probably shouldn’t get out of bed. I can’t let the rest of the team down when my body decides I’m going to have a seizure cluster. Or when I’m meeting with a client and lose my words.” He tucks his chin on top of my head as we stare at the screen showing some of Loc8tion’s admin functions—directing the police right to a user’s location, sending a loud alarm to the device to alert people around them, and displaying all the places a user has been in the past twenty-four hours. “Cam’s worked too hard to have me ruin things for her. She deserves Emerald City all to herself.”
“You wouldn’t ‘ruin things,’ Royce.” I turn in his arms, peering up at him. “I don’t know Cam that well. But West and I tend to stick together on missions—there’s an odd closeness you develop when you
have to stop someone from bleeding out while bouncing over jungle roads in the middle of fucking nowhere. But from what little he and I have talked about Cam and Emerald City, you ‘ruining things’ isn’t a concern.”
“Oh, I can ruin things with the best of them,” he says, almost too quietly for me to hear.
“What?”
With a sigh, he shakes his head. “Cam and I are working our way back to solid. But with what I did to her…it’s a long road. And I don’t want to fuck it up.”
“What does that mean?” I cringe at my bluntness, but I suck at the “getting to know you” portion of the dating game—always have.
“I was her CO when she was blown up. Hell, I was only a couple hundred feet away.” He leads me back to the couch, his shoulders slumping, his gait a little more uneven than usual. “I should have seen the other bombs. Should have listened to Yanko when he warned me something wasn’t right. I hesitated. And in that second…she ss-stepped on a trigger plate. Didn’t have a fucking chance.” He clenches his fists as he stares into the flames of the small gas fireplace along the wall.
The whole story spills out as he rests his elbows on his knees. “The insurgents liked to set traps for our ordinance teams. Bombs on top of bombs. Daisy-chained sets of explosives hidden under piles of rubble. Cam had just finished diffusing the primary bomb—the only one we saw. One of my guys warned me. Or tried to. I cut him off because hell, she was almossst done. She stood up, turned, and froze. Those three seconds are burned into my brain. The horror. The fear. Fuck.” Royce shakes his head, and I run my hand down his back. “She knew she was dead. Or close to it. The explosions threw her thirty feet. By the time I got to her, the arm of her sssuit had started to melt, and she was close to bleeding out from a piece of pipe that had torn clean through her side.”
“Shit.”
Royce meets my gaze, and the pain etched on his face threatens to make my eyes burn. “Once we reached the field hospital…I left. Didn’t see her again for almost three years. I kept tabs…through the other guys in the unit, but she asked about me every damn day. I failed her once. I won’t do it again. I’ll maintain a small stake in Emerald City, but it’s Cam’s company now. Or will be by next week. Shhe and I are meeting with my l-lawyer on T-Tuesday.”
“Royce?”
The marked change in Royce’s stutter makes my heart beat faster, and he blows out a breath. “Sorry. This happens at n-night. I’m fine. N-nothing to worry about.”
I cup his cheeks and search his gaze. He’s not concerned. Hurt. Tired. But not the least bit afraid. In this position, pressed against him, I can sense his heartbeat. Calm, steady. “This is all new to me.”
“Being with someone…d-damaged?” The right side of his mouth lifts a little higher than the left.
“Being with someone. Period.” I lean in for a kiss, and the taste of him makes me want more—much more. All of him. Straddling his thighs, I slide my hands into his hair. “I don’t get close to people, Royce. I’ve dated. Had a few semi-serious flings. But every time I go out on a job with Ryker, there’s a chance I won’t come back.”
“You forget what I used to do for a living, baby. I underst-sstand. Live in the moment. You never know when you might die—or have a st-stroke and wind up unable to walk or talk.” Royce stands, pulls me to my feet, and cups my ass. “I’m done wasting t-time.“
“Me too.” Kissing my way from his lips to his ear, I drop my voice. “I want you naked.”
His arousal juts against my bruised hip, but I stifle my wince as he cups my ass and lifts me against him. “Oh, do you?” Now, a gruff edge replaces the wistful tone, and his dark blue eyes shine with silver flecks as he carries me down the hall to his bedroom.
“Yes.” I close my teeth over the shell of his ear, and I’m rewarded with a shudder and his fingers digging into my butt cheeks as he carries me down the hall.
Once we reach his bedroom, Royce claims my mouth in a kiss that can only be described as panty-melting, and I grind my hips against him. “Take me, soldier.”
Despite the desperation in his kiss, he’s gentle as he sets me down on the bed. “Do you trust me?”
“Yes.”
He slides a drawer open and withdraws a set of padded leather cuffs. “Enough to let me tie you up?”
“Enough for anything.”
“Fuck, Royce. I’m going to come…again!” On my back, with my legs wrapped around his waist, I can’t stop the release barreling towards me. Have we been at this minutes? Or hours? Time means nothing, and even my voice deserts me as I implode, my back arching as the seemingly endless waves of pleasure roll through me.
He groans his climax, and despite the condom, I feel everything…every pulse of his cock inside me, every brush of his fingers, the way the light dusting of hair on his chest tickles my breasts, his trembling abs as he holds himself over me.
“You…are…going t-to kill me,” he says with something between a smile and a grimace as he releases my wrists from the leather cuffs, then pulls out of me and stumbles to the bathroom to dispose of the condom.
In a few moments, he’s back, but strain tightens lines around his eyes and mouth.
“Are you okay?” Despite feeling like my bones are made of wet noodles and my brain has taken a permanent vacation, I push up on an elbow and reach out to cup his cheek.
He nods as he slides under the sheets and urges me to snuggle close. With a wry half-smile, he gestures to the clock.
“Oh God. How is it 2:00 a.m.?”
“You’re d-delicious. That’sss how.” His speech is decidedly slurred now, and I cup his cheek as a frustrated half-growl escapes his lips. “Tired.”
“Is this normal or do I need to worry?”
With a tender, lingering kiss, he settles my nerves, though his eyes are only half open and I’m pretty sure he’s already mostly asleep when his head hits the pillow once more. “N-normal. Jussst need rest, baby.”
“I’m going to clean up a little. Get a glass of water, okay?”
He doesn’t answer me, his soft breaths against my cheek reassuring. Slowly easing myself out of his embrace, I take a moment to stare at him.
Stretched out on his side, the moonlight slanting in from high windows paint his face in a gentle glow. I lost count of the number of times he made me come, but we were approaching double digits.
My ass stings as I scoot off the bed. Turns out we’re both a fan of a good spanking, and I smooth my hand along my overheated skin. “Best night ever, soldier,” I whisper as I lean down to brush a kiss behind his ear, right along the scar leftover from his surgery.
Once I’ve washed my face and made use of the travel toothbrush I threw in my bag at the last minute, I pad out to the kitchen, wearing nothing but Royce’s shirt.
As I grab a glass from the cabinet, a shadow moves outside the kitchen window.
What the hell?
I brace my hands against the sink to try to get a better view. A man dressed in a hoodie and carrying a small backpack ambles down the alley. At least we’d turned off the kitchen light, so he probably couldn’t see my little half-naked shuffle.
An odd sensation prickles along the back of my neck, and I fill the glass as I watch him turn the corner. It’s an alley for fuck’s sake. Not private property. The trash cans are back there, along with a handful of parking spaces.
Get a grip. And get back to bed.
Royce is exactly where I left him, and as I snuggle close to his side, he wraps an arm around me. “Missed…you,” he mumbles before he falls asleep again.
I’m in trouble. Two dates and ten days, and I think I’m already starting to fall in love with this man.
9
Royce
I haven’t felt this damn good since before the tumor, and we stayed up past 2:00 a.m. “After breakfast,” I say as I wrap my arms around Inara’s waist from behind and brush a kiss to the back of her neck, “want to go up to Snoqualmie to see the falls?”
“I have a better idea.
Breakfast at the lodge overlooking the falls. Or…lunch, at least.” Her cheeks flush, though her bronzed skin hides most of the embarrassment. She tips her head so I can claim her lips, and damn, I can’t get enough of her taste. Gently twisting her in my arms so we’re face to face, I slide my hands down to cup her ass.
She purrs, and the corners of my lips tug into a grin as I pull away. “Great idea. But next time, we’re hitting this little diner on the corner of Broadway and Pike.”
“And when would this ‘next time’ be?” Inara wriggles out of my arms, then darts around the kitchen counter to grab her purse. “Next Saturday morning?”
I make a show of checking my phone, but it’s not like I have anything else taking up my nights. “I can probably squeeze you in.”
A dish towel sails towards me, and I snatch the cloth from the air just before it hits me in the face. “Oh, now I’m going to do more than squeeze you in,” I say as I stalk over to her. Her eyes widen as I pin her arms behind her back. Pressing against her, I let her feel my growing erection, and she shudders in my grasp. “And I’m not waiting a week to see you again. How about tomorrow night?”
Inara’s smile dims, a storm gathering in her gray eyes. “I wish. I’m taking West and the new guy out to Wenatchee tomorrow for long-range target practice. Then Ryker wants us all running drills on Monday night.”
“Tuesday, then?” Threading my fingers through her hair, I cup the back of her head and slant a gentle kiss over her lips.
“It’s a date.”
If we don’t get out of here soon, she’s going to end up naked again—not that I’d mind. But her stomach rumbles, and we both laugh. “Your place or mine?”
“I’ll sleep anywhere—as long as you’re next to me. You make me feel…safe.”
Something in her voice speaks of a deep longing, and I cup her cheek, tracing my thumb over the smooth skin. “You don’t normally feel safe? Now I’m worried.”
In Her Sights (Away From Keyboard Book 2) Page 9
