by J. S. Scott
“I love him,” I said aloud, hearing the words I’d been keeping inside my mind for days.
It was a relief to admit to myself exactly how I felt about Marcus. Honestly, I’d probably always just been a little bit in love with the frustrating alpha male. But it had really grown during the time we’d spent together in Florida and in Colorado. I’d gotten to know who Marcus was inside, and fallen completely, head-over-heels in love for the very first time in my life.
It felt good.
But it also hurt because I knew our relationship would be temporary.
Marcus would eventually have to go back to traveling, and I’d move on to my next story. Problem was, I hadn’t wanted to miss a moment of what was in between those events, so I’d let myself experience the pleasure. I’d pay a high price for indulging, but it didn’t matter.
He’d probably been the only man I could have trusted enough to sleep with after what had happened to me.
It was ironic that the very healing I’d experienced with Marcus would probably break my heart in the future.
“Just let him be okay. I’ll deal with everything else when the time comes,” I whispered, my throat too sore now to speak louder. The smoke and dust was getting to me.
I tormented myself about Marcus’s safety, trapped until somebody came along to help me out of the toppled building. I felt so damn guilty. I’d been the one to get Marcus into this position. If he hadn’t come to Florida to find me, he probably wouldn’t be in this particular border town right now. If not for me, he’d be safe.
I told myself over and over that I couldn’t think about the past, but I still did. If something happened to Marcus, I’d hate myself for insisting that I go with him. Even if he’d still ended up here looking for the missing women, he definitely wouldn’t have been in this area. It was me who had brought him here because I had my own contacts to see.
“Please be okay. Please be okay.”
I chanted the words under my breath, the small phrase becoming my mantra.
I’d come here to help save lives, and I’d quickly regained my confidence and lost my fear of this town and the surrounding area. It hadn’t taken me long after I’d arrived here to get back into the swing of hunting down information. The friends I’d made in this village had greeted me warmly, all of them happy that I was doing okay.
Finally, I’d felt like I was making a recovery from my fears.
I just desperately hoped that I hadn’t gotten Marcus hurt in the process.
If it wasn’t for me, he most likely wouldn’t have been in Turkey right now, much less a border town that evidently had just taken some kind of bomb strike.
He never would have gotten involved in Miami if I hadn’t been chasing after Becker, and it would have been a much lengthier time until we’d run into each other again.
I closed my eyes, the smoke and dirty air around me starting to make them burn like crazy.
Even though I loved Marcus more than anything, I’d give everything up right now just to see him be safe.
I have to find him!
I really wanted to get the hell out of this store and go find Marcus, but if I started to move, I’d more than likely cause the roof to come down on top of me. I needed somebody to move stuff from the outside in so I had an escape route without moving some of the supports around me that were keeping me from getting crushed.
My heart started to hammer as I heard movement coming from outside the building. I could hear people working on digging me out. Although I had no patience for waiting, I had to keep myself alive so I could do everything I could to help Marcus. I had to find him, and to accomplish that, I’d have to get out of this spot alive.
“Danica!”
My heart lurched as I heard a male voice calling my name. A tone that sounded very much like Marcus.
My eyes popped open, and I could see someone progressively making their way to my location, the masculine figure tossing large pieces of debris aside much faster than he ought to be able to move.
“Marcus!” I shrieked.
“Dani?” he called, his voice hoarse and stressed out.
“I’m here. Be careful. The roof is going to collapse. There isn’t much holding it above the ground.”
I could see him now, and I watched as he pushed away the loose wood, being careful that he didn’t yank out a necessary piece.
“Are you okay?” he hollered.
“Yes. I just need an opening to get out. If I move some of these pieces near me to get out of here, I’m afraid the roof will go.”
“Don’t fucking move,” Marcus demanded. “I’ll clear a path from here.”
“Are you okay?” I asked anxiously.
“Hell, no, I’m not okay. I’m goddamn terrified that you’re going to get crushed.”
It was a typical Marcus kind of reply, but so incredibly sweet that it made my tears flow steadily. “I meant are you physically all right? Were you hurt in the explosion?”
“I’ll live,” he said in a voice loud enough to travel.
To me, that meant that he was injured, but didn’t want to admit it.
I finally saw his face as he crouched at the end of an opening he’d cleared with his bare hands.
“Marcus, you are hurt,” I cried out, anxious because I could see the blood on his face.
“I’m fine,” he said sharply. “Right now all I want is to get you out of here. Can you give me your hands without upsetting anything? I’ll pull you out through the area I just cleared.”
He was downplaying his injuries, but I wasn’t going to get any answers until I got away from the building.
“Yes. I can move them.” I lifted my arms carefully, stretching out so I could clasp his hands.
“Are you hurt? I don’t want to make anything worse,” he questioned hesitantly.
“No,” I replied. “I was confused for a few minutes, but I’m not hurt.”
He reached into my space, grasping my hands and then pulled me out, slow and steady. I carefully tried to keep myself positioned away from the beams that I was fairly certain was keeping the roof from hitting the ground.
In just a few moments, I was out, away from the building, and being held tightly in Marcus’s arms.
We clung to each other, and I never wanted to let him go. In the moments I’d questioned whether or not he was still alive, I’d nearly died myself.
“Baris?” I asked anxiously about my friend as I hugged Marcus just as firmly as he was holding me.
“He’s okay,” Marcus answered. “Just a few minor injuries. He’s being treated at the clinic.”
I pulled back so I could look at him.
I reached up to touch the gash on his head. I couldn’t help but notice his hands were also bleeding from digging through the wood and glass to get me out of my prison barehanded. “You’re hurt, Marcus. You need to get to the medical clinic.”
The wound on his head was open and blood was still flowing from his injury. The shirt that had been white this morning was now covered in his blood. No doubt the head wound had just kept on bleeding as he’d pulled me out of the wreckage of the store.
“I’m good,” he said in a tone heavy with emotion. “I just want to get you the hell out of here.”
“I’m okay,” I argued.
“I’m not,” he confessed. “I don’t ever want to live through another incident of not knowing whether you’re dead or alive, Danica. I can’t.”
“I was scared, too,” I said in a tremulous voice as I put my arms around him again and hugged him to me. “I knew you were outside. I didn’t know where you were when the bomb exploded.”
“I was worrying about you. It seems I’m rather good at doing that now,” he answered, his torn-up hands stroking over my hair in a comforting motion.
“We’re safe,” I said tearfully, the enormity of what had just happened starting to sink in.
“Let’s go home,” he suggested, but he didn’t move.
“We have to find those women�
�”
“They’re safe,” Marcus told me. “Somebody helped them get home. Jett confirmed it.”
Oh, God. The irony didn’t escape me that we were in Turkey looking for the two women, and they were home safe. We’d nearly gotten ourselves killed for two females who hadn’t needed our help.
Even though it hurt to separate myself from Marcus, I pulled back so we could leave. “You need to have your injuries checked before we go,” I insisted, concerned about the size of the laceration on his head.
“I’ll have them checked when we get home,” he said stubbornly.
“Now,” I demanded.
I expected a smart-ass answer, and I was actually concerned when I didn’t get it. I looked at Marcus anxiously, noting that he was pale, and he was holding his hand to his head.
“I’ll be...” His voice trailed off as he sat down on a nearby crate that hadn’t been blown away.
I squatted beside him. “Marcus, talk to me,” I said in a panic.
He never said another word.
He lost consciousness as I struggled to hold him up, screaming for somebody—anybody—to help me.
Dani
Two days later, we were finally on board Marcus’s jet, headed for home.
He’d scared the hell out of me, and I’d never let him forget it. After he’d been treated as much as he could be at the medical clinic, he’d been transported to the capital city for further testing. He’d stayed a few days there for observation after the tests had come out negative for fractures. Marcus had one hell of a concussion, but he was recovering.
Luckily, the suicide bomber had been inexperienced. Just a girl, really, somewhere around the age of eighteen. Alone, she’d wandered into the wrong part of the town, and there had been plenty of damage, but no fatalities except for the rebel bomber.
I mourned the life of somebody that young, and I’d felt a profound sadness that she’d been so full of violence.
“Hey, are you okay?” Marcus asked from his supine position on the bed. We’d lifted off and then I’d insisted on bringing him back to rest.
I was sitting cross-legged next to him, lost in my thoughts as I looked at the bandage on his forehead. I’d lost count of the number of sutures it had taken to close his laceration, but it was healing well. “Just tired, I guess,” I answered as I smiled down at him.
“You are in a bed now,” he reminded me.
I rubbed a hand over my eyes. “I know. But I’ve had a hard time sleeping.”
“Worried about me?” he asked curiously.
I gave him an exasperated look. “Yes, I was worried.”
“I have a pretty hard head,” he said in an amused tone, his hand stroking over my back with a soothing touch.
His palms and fingers were already healing. Luckily, the damage to his hands had been superficial.
I snorted. “For once, I’m glad you’re hard-headed.”
I maneuvered my body down so I could lie next to him on my side, my head propped up on my hand.
“I’m doing all right. So why the pensive look on your face?” he asked in a tender voice.
Gently, I reached up to stroke the hair from his forehead. “I just keep thinking how things could have worked out. If you’d been closer, it could have been really bad.”
“Don’t, Dani,” he said sternly. “Don’t drive yourself crazy with how ugly it could have been. I tortured myself with the same thoughts for the first day after it happened. Then I realized how damn lucky we are. I’m focusing on the fact that we’re both still here, and relatively unscathed.”
Marcus could make light of his injuries, but I couldn’t. Otherwise, he was right. I really needed to be glad we were both still alive. He would heal, and be back to normal in a week or so. Except for maybe a small scar, he wouldn’t have any lasting effects from the explosion.
“I know you’re right, but I was really scared,” I confided.
Marcus wrapped an arm around my waist and pulled me against his body. I relaxed, letting my head drop onto his chest.
“You asked me once what I was afraid of,” Marcus said thoughtfully.
“I remember,” I muttered.
“What happened is exactly what I’m fucking terrified about,” he said in a graveled voice. “I’m scared as hell that something will happen to you. You don’t exactly live a noneventful life, and that worries me. I don’t get uptight about very many things, but losing you or seeing you hurt again is my greatest fear. I can’t see you brutalized and broken again, Dani. It almost killed me after we pulled you out of that rebel camp.”
My eyes teared up, and no matter how hard I tried to blink them back, they still fell. “But I survived, Marcus. Maybe I’ll never be quite the same as I was before it happened, but I realized even before the bombing that going back had somehow set me free.”
He was silent for a moment before he asked, “Do you mean that?”
“Yes. I’m not saying that I don’t need to keep meeting with my counselor, but I think everything fell into place, all I need to do now is sort it all out. I’m not anxious anymore. I doubt I’ll ever be as fearless as I used to be. But some of that lack of fear was based on the fact that I’d never really understood how quickly life could end. I’d never really experienced intense pain or fear. After I did, I was warier.”
“I never want to see you afraid, in pain, or anxious,” he grumbled.
“I don’t welcome it, either,” I admitted. “But I have to admit that no matter how much I’d like to go back and be the same person I was before the kidnapping, I can’t. I have to be okay with who I am now.”
“Are you?”
“Yeah. I think I am,” I mused.
“Did going back make you want to get your old life back?” he asked hesitantly.
I sighed. “No. I can never go back. I have to move forward. I’d like to stay a freelance investigative reporter wherever there are stories to be told. But I’m not sad I gave up my beat anymore. I’ve discovered that I don’t always have to be in every hot spot in the world. I can find my stories that need to be told in all parts of the world.”
“Thank fuck,” Marcus cursed. “I want you to be with me.”
I tried to ignore the way my heart was galloping inside my chest. I loved Marcus with every fiber of my being, but I wasn’t going to get my hopes up that our time wasn’t going to be limited. “You’ll go back to traveling eventually,” I said lightly, trying to pretend that separating wouldn’t tear my heart out.
“Not as much,” he informed me. “It seems my executives are doing my job quite well overseas, and if the government doesn’t have a problem with me training somebody to do some of my intel work, I think I have the perfect man to take over.”
“You’re going to stop being James Bond?” I asked incredulously.
“I’m not playing James Bond, and yes, I don’t think I’d mind turning some of that over to somebody younger. I’m tired of not eating chocolate,” he teased. “It’s not that I won’t travel, and I’ll still meet up with some of my contacts for intel, but I’m about ready to spend more time with my family and at my home in Rocky Springs. I regret that I’ve missed so much because I’m constantly away.”
I understood how alone a person could feel when they were traveling all the time. I’d felt separated from my siblings for a long time, and I missed them. “I missed my family, too,” I confessed. “I think I just kept myself too busy to notice.”
“You never commented on what I said,” he reminded me.
“What?”
“I want you to be with me, Dani. I want you to stay with me. Will you?” His voice was hopeful.
“I don’t know if I can,” I replied honestly, tears still pouring from my eyes and landing on the bare skin of his chest.
“Why?” he grunted.
I was quiet, afraid to tell him about everything I was thinking. I didn’t want him to feel pressured for more, but I had to be true to myself. “I love you, Marcus.”
He rolled o
nto his side and propped his head up, forcing me to do the same, so we were facing each other. “What did you say?”
“You heard me. I love you so much it hurts. I’m not sure I can be in a relationship with you and not want more than just sex.”
“You and I have never been all about sex,” he protested. “Jesus, Dani! Can’t you feel it? I think I’ve known that we were more than just sexually attracted for a long time, but I didn’t want to acknowledge it. Yeah. Okay. My primary instinct was to fuck you, and that’s never gone away. But I think we both know this has never completely been about sex.”
“I didn’t think so, but I wasn’t sure what you wanted. I didn’t know if you wanted love, but I can’t not say it anymore.”
“I fucking want it all,” he said in a warning voice. “I want everything you’re willing to give, and then I’ll want more after that.”
“You want something that involves a commitment?”
“Oh, hell, yeah. I want you and I to be as committed as two people can get,” he answered in a husky voice. “I want to hammer out some kind of compromise so we can travel together, and be home at the same damn time. I want you to marry me, and wear my ring on your finger so every bastard out there knows that you’re mine.”
“You want me to marry you?” I asked apprehensively.
Marcus Colter wasn’t a marrying type of guy…or I’d never seen him as one until now.
“I can’t believe you would ever doubt that I wanted us to be together. I love you, too, Danica. Say you’ll marry me so I don’t have to have a heart attack over whether or not you’re going to agree.”
My eyes met his in a clash of intensity that was flowing between the two of us.
Maybe I’d always had doubts about where we could go as a couple, but now that I knew he loved me, too, I felt like I could fly. “Yes,” I answered simply.
“Yes, you will?” Marcus probed. “Will you marry me? I don’t have a ring yet, but—”
I put a gentle hand in his hair and cut off his words as I leaned forward to kiss him. I didn’t give a damn about a ring, or the formalities. All I needed to know was that he loved me.
Everything else was nothing more than inconsequential details.
