Taking in the room didn’t help – the dinginess, the narrow beams of sunlight penetrating the grime on the windows, the thin mattresses spread out on the floor. It wasn’t as if they couldn’t afford motel rooms. He also knew she wouldn’t have thought of it.
For some reason that thought only made him angrier. Relief and the memory of fear he’d felt when the building had exploded raced through him. He wanted to be angry. Angry was better than the fear, the devastating agony of loss.
“What the hell did you think you were doing out there?” he demanded.
The crash of the door flying open and the sound of Ty’s familiar deep voice caught Nike completely off guard.
Startled, she spun to stare at him.
Ty.
Here.
He was in Washington. He was supposed to be in Washington.
Against the darkness, his hair glowed and his eyes were brilliantly blue. Her breath caught.
In the dim light, he might almost have been a ghost as he stalked toward her. Dust motes danced in the air around him, but he wasn’t a ghost. He was as handsome as always, but wearing a charcoal crewneck and dark gray slacks he nearly blended into the shadows. It was a look that suited him incredibly well, making the most of his fairness and his lean muscular build. In the thin light, his hair was brilliantly white, windblown. Her body tightened reflexively, warmth, desire, heat, burning through her along with the memories.
It seemed unreal. He shouldn’t be here. He couldn’t be here.
But he was.
Just seeing him made her breath come short, caught at her heart, and made it wrench. It was shattering, a confusing mixture of feelings she didn’t know how to handle and wasn’t sure she wanted to. Not anymore. It simply hurt too much. She didn’t know what to think, what to feel…
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
“Answer the question,” he demanded as he advanced on her. “What the hell did you think you were doing out there?”
His eyes were blazingly blue, brilliant in the light piercing the grimy windows.
She was confused, baffled by his anger and his sudden appearance.
Feeling attacked, her own temper spiked and fury flared. She didn’t want to feel this, she didn’t want to feel anything.
“What do you care? I was doing what I always do,” she shot back, furiously, bewildered by his anger, as pain clenched around her heart. “It’s not as if you haven’t seen it before.” Throwing her arms wide, she cried, “Look at me. This is what I am. It’s what I do. You know that. What’s wrong with you? What are you angry about? It’s not as if you didn’t know.”
Look at her? Ty thought. He couldn’t help it, she glowed like a beacon in the center of the room her skin was so pale in the shafts of sunlight. She was beautiful, glorious, the scars that decorated her silky skin invisible in the pale light of the room. Not that they mattered to him. Except that they were there. And now he knew who had made every one of them.
For some reason that only stoked his fury higher.
Her rich wavy hair tumbled around her shoulders, every curve perfect. Her eyes flashed with fury, and pain. That was the only false note; he could see in those eyes the hurt she unwillingly showed.
Once she wouldn’t have let anyone see even that much.
Guilt only made him angrier.
“You could have been killed,” he snapped.
“It’s what I’m good at. It’s what I’m good for,” she shouted back. “It’s what everyone wants from me. It’s what you wanted from me.”
“It’s not. Are you trying to get yourself killed?” he demanded.
Disgusted at herself, furious, ashamed… Nike spun away. She wouldn’t let him see her cry. Emotions made you weak. They would destroy you…
She threw up her hands.
“Yes,” she shouted in return. “You read my file. What, did you miss the part where they said I had a death wish?”
She snapped the last over her shoulder, stalking away from him, the thought of him reading that file terrible, the memory of the afternoon on the Mall sharp. “What part of it didn’t you understand? What did you miss?”
In two steps, Ty reached out to grab her arm, to spin her around to face him. The thought that she was trying to find a way to die snapped something inside him.
The damned glasses.
He ripped them off her face, tossed them aside to see her eyes. To look into those eyes, as green as new grass, startled, wide, and vulnerable. Beautiful. Bright, too bright. It broke his heart, shattered and infuriated him, to see what he’d done to her…
“I love you,” he snapped, shaking her. “What part of that don’t you understand?”
Caught completely off guard, Nike just stared at him.
She was stunned speechless, breathless, trying to comprehend the words he’d just said… All her anger drained away at those words.
What had he said? she thought.
One look at her expression, fragile, open, tears sparkling in her eyes, destroyed him. Ty snagged his hand in her thick hair and crushed his mouth to hers.
Just the thought that he might have lost her… His mind replayed the moment when he’d seen her turn to run… He heard the explosion once again in memory…and thought then that he’d lost her.
He banded his other arm tightly around her waist, binding her against him. To him.
His mouth was hard, bruising. Niki didn’t care.
Tears streamed down her cheeks as she devoured his mouth in return, as she ran her fingers into his silken hair. It felt wonderful, so soft, and his body was so hard, so real against hers. She clung to him, needing to convince herself he was really there, that this wasn’t a dream. She needed to feel him beneath her hands, warm, alive, and here.
Desperately she tugged at the thin sweater until it was free of his slacks.
Her hands dove beneath it to his skin, feeling him…
Passion fired need, desire.
Ty tasted her tears as he kissed her. Then her hands were on him, hot, burning.
He had to feel her skin against his, finally, again, had to feel her against him once more, needed to feel her touch, her heat and her agile, flexible body against his.
His hands raced over her warm, silky skin, slid up the length of her spine, felt the ripples of the scars beneath the tattoos, but also the petal softness, as if the feathers that were painted there were real.
More, he needed to feel more.
In one swift move he stripped off his sweater and then yanked her back into his arms.
Skin like warm silk was pressed against him, her full breasts against his chest. The feel of her hands sliding up his back, clutching at him, tightening on him, only stoked the fire raging inside him higher.
He needed to feel her around him, needed to feel her heat, the tightness of her and the dampness. He had to have her, now.
Real, real. Niki’s hands skated over him, skimmed over his ribs, up the long muscles of his back, his lean body hard against hers. She couldn’t seem to get close enough to him.
Locked together, they slammed against the wall as his mouth savaged hers, her throat. His hands ravaged her body, his fingers plunged inside her ruthlessly, the lace of her panties hardly an impediment. Her body arched beneath the assault, opened.
Ty pivoted them both, backed her toward the pile of thin mattresses, his fingers working inside her, enflaming her. She quivered, cried out as heat raced through her.
Niki’s knees buckled as her heels hit the edge of the mattress. She fell sprawling. It didn’t matter, Ty’s slacks were gone in a breath, it seemed, and kicked away impatiently. In an instant, he stripped away her panties and plunged into her as she opened to take him. She cried out, her back arching like a bow to feel him so full and deep inside her again, so hard inside her.
Desperately, Ty slammed into her again, drove into her, hard, as her hands scrambled against the wall, found purchase as she braced to take the assault of his body on hers.
&nb
sp; She felt sweet, hot, so hot, so very tight. God, he needed her.
He buried his fear and pain inside her, released the need, the desire, as she lifted her hips to take him. Her body arched with each hard thrust as he drove himself into her, into her sweet, glorious, tight heat. Braced on one arm, he wrapped an arm around her hips as he felt himself about to come. She tightened around him.
A hand skimmed up his chest, down his arm, as she writhed beneath him, trying to take him deep, deeper.
With a cry, Nike felt ecstasy explode through her as she felt him swell inside her. His body locked as he filled her even more deeply, his pleasure jetting into her. Pleasure burst through her as he came, his hot warmth filling her. She cried out as her own ecstasy rushed through her, blinding her, rendering her senseless, her body quivering.
Ty emptied into her, his body taut as his pleasure rocketed through him. It felt as if he’d turned inside out, as if he poured his soul into her as well. It seemed to go on forever, a pleasure so intense it was nearly pain. He gave her everything and she trembled to take it even as she gave it back.
Then it released him, released both of them.
He sagged over her, still buried inside her, his head dropping to her shoulder.
Niki stroked his silky hair as he bowed his head. The sweet sensation of the soft strands in her fingers as she stroked his hair was marvelous. She brushed her cheek lightly against it, feeling him inside her. He was here. It was real, not a dream.
“If you move,” she said, softly, “even one inch before you have to, I will have to hurt you.”
She wanted the feeling of him inside her to last as long as it could.
Ty had no doubt she could or would. The feel of her hands caressing him though, soothed and banked the last of the fire that had burned inside him.
He chuckled a little weakly. “I don’t think I can.”
But the thought that she wanted his weight on her, to feel him inside her, eased him more than a little. He’d just about attacked her…
Carefully, he lowered his weight over her as she curled one leg around his.
Pressing his mouth against her shoulder, he said, “I don’t know what to call you…Callie, or Niki?”
Niki’s breath caught as something inside her wrenched.
“The part of me that was Callie is gone,” she said with a very real sense of grief, remembering the innocence of the girl she’d once been. She sighed. “She died in the jungles of South America.”
Propping himself up on one elbow, looking down into her lovely face, Ty frowned a little as he brushed the soft waves of her hair back. He shook his head as he looked into her eyes.
“I don’t think so,” he said and tapped her chest above her heart. “I think she’s still in here, somewhere. At the core of you.”
Ty remembered finding her things that day in South America, trying to accept that sweet, innocent Callie was dead. That she’d died alone and in agony. That he hadn’t been able to save her. The pain had been incredible.
“You came,” she said, seeing the memory reflected in his eyes. She slid her hand down his thigh, seeking another scar among the many, this one relatively neat and round. “Did you think I didn’t see you take this? You tried. And you came back for me.”
She looked at him, her lovely green eyes shadowed. “Santiago made us wait and watch, in case…until you came…”
It had been meant as punishment and a form of torture, forcing her to accept that she was now alone, that no one would be coming for her. There would be no knight in shining armor, no cavalry riding to the rescue. She was and would be utterly alone.
Santiago had never realized how relieved she’d been, knowing the gunshot that had wounded Ty hadn’t been fatal.
The thought of that, of Niki watching as they flew away again caught at Ty. He remembered the incredible, nearly unbearable grief he’d felt that day.
Yet here she was, alive, looking up at him.
Her hand brushed lightly over his chest as it had the night he’d taken her innocence. It stroked down his arm as her green eyes looked up at him in something like wonder.
Callie Martin was alive, and it was Callie that met his look. He could see it there in her eyes.
Here, with Ty, Niki found she could be Callie again.
She took a breath. “The memory of that night with you was what kept me sane all these years. It was my solace and my secret. The one thing no one knew, one moment of tenderness, of kindness, that was mine alone. It was the one thing they couldn’t take from me.”
Raising himself above her, Ty looked down at the scars on her body, brushed his thumb over the one near her heart. So close.
“Why didn’t you tell them?” he asked.
Her smile was brilliant as she lifted a hand to touch his face.
“It was all I had,” she said.
He had to know. “Were you really trying to die?”
Callie let out a breath. She owed him the truth. All of it.
She sighed.
“There were times I was,” she said, softly, her heart twisting, aching, as she lifted her gaze to his. “It was what they’d trained me to be, to believe…that I was so badly damaged by what had happened that I had no hope of a normal life. That I would always be different… Whatever my hopes and dreams had once been were gone.”
Memories haunted her, of the things she’d done, the people she’d killed… And the moments of despair, sitting in some dingy bolt-hole, waiting…
That had been their critical mistake, giving her time to think.
Until they’d sent her after Ty.
To kill him.
She knew Victor Torrance well enough to know there had been layer on layer of meaning there. Not least of which was to break that last tie to her past, if necessary, but also to put her in the position of killing him to save him.
Ty saw her gaze turn inward, the dim light taking the brilliance from her. That and the memories. He cupped her cheek, his heart heavy at what he saw in her face.
It was the lack of tears that was the most painful, the knowledge that the wounds within her went too deep for tears.
The compassion in Ty’s eyes nearly lifted the lid from the deep well of sorrow within her… nearly…but it went a long way toward healing it.
Clearing her throat, she said, “They gave me a purpose., but when that purpose wasn’t fulfilled, when I realized the truth of some of the things I’d done…to think about it, to examine it…”
She’d been at war with herself, weighing and battling the gratitude she’d felt toward Evan and Victor for helping her…never realizing then that it was that very gratitude that bound her to them.
As Victor had intended.
Then one day she’d understood. The day Victor had sent her after Ty.
Ty watched her, brushed the hair back from her face.
“Once it was true,” she said, with that little shrug of hers. Her mouth quirked a little. “But there were conditions. If I was going to die I had to do it honestly and honorably. I could take risks with my own life, but no one else’s. I had to honestly try to avoid it – if there was a God, He would know if it were suicide – and I couldn’t, wouldn’t take anyone with me if I could possibly avoid it. I could take chances, risks, walk the edge myself, but I wouldn’t risk anyone else.”
Her eyes lifted to meet his.
“So, as long as Mitch, Brad and Andy were with you…?” he said.
She nodded. “It wasn’t an option.”
Relief washed through him.
“But that’s all changed,” she said, blowing out a breath.
Changed. Ty looked at her. Something within him went quiet. “Why?”
“You’ll hate it,” she said.
Somehow, he didn’t think so.
“Why?”
“Because of you. You would have believed exactly what you did. It’s why I was so angry. I wouldn’t have hurt you that way,” she said. “That was always the last condition. That no one know
or think that I had committed suicide… God, but most of all, you.”
He didn’t hate it.
Combing his fingers into her hair, he cupped her cheek, lowered his forehead to hers.
“I love you,” he said.
Niki looked at him. The words shattered her, and healed her.
“I’ve done terrible things,” she said. “I can’t even count the number of people I’ve killed.”
Ty shook his head. “I saw your file, saw your targets. You didn’t.”
Few people on the ugly side of the wars that went on between countries were good people, and a good many more than deserved to die. As much as he believed in the sanctity of the Constitution, and the right to a fair trial, most of them would never have seen the inside of a courtroom.
Looking up into his blue, blue eyes, into the truth there, Niki could say nothing else , but, “I love you, too.”
Ty let out a breath.
It was time. Time they were gone. Time they were out of this place. Time they were on their way home.
“Let’s get out of here,” he said, reaching for her and drawing her to her feet.
One last time, at least until they returned, he drew her against him, looked down into her face, into her eyes, the color muted in the dim light. Just to look.
Reaching up, Niki traced the line of his jaw, shook her head.
“I dreamed of this,” she said, softly, with a wry grin. “A thousand times. Of touching you, holding you. It was a fantasy.”
Slowly, Ty lowered his mouth to hers, a brush of it across her lips.
“It’s not a fantasy any longer.”
Niki reached for her glasses.
Deliberately, Ty wrapped his hand around them, his eyes on her. Keeping his eyes on her, looking at her evenly, he said, “You don’t need them anymore.”
Those distinctive grass green eyes met his as she took a quick breath. Then she let it out slowly.
It was over. For the moment.
Chapter Thirty Four
It was late afternoon before they’d all been treated for the few scrapes and burns, been debriefed and released by local law enforcement. It was a relief to see Buck, Mitch, and the others. After a while, though, Ty was trading glances with Niki, Buck, and the team as the questioning went on and on. As sympathetic as he was Ty couldn’t afford to give them a break. Those impressions, their statements, were vital.
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