Ready

by Lucy Monroe

  Lise turned six shades of pink and tried to move away from his arm. “He didn’t fall, he’s just…”

  “Not going to talk about it.” He reined her back in, keeping her small body close to his own.

  Josie smiled, her whole stance relaxing. She even laughed. “That’s great. It really is, but I’m mum on the details from here on out. Sorry,” she said to Lise, “I wouldn’t have said anything if it hadn’t come as such a shock.”

  The sound of disbelief that came from Nitro really had Joshua wondering what was going on between the two of them, but nobody pried into Nitro’s life, not even his friends.

  It was a way of being Joshua identified with well, despite having two sisters and a mother who didn’t know the meaning of the word privacy. Which was probably one of the main reasons he’d never invited them to visit his sanctuary. There were big chunks of his life they knew nothing about. Stuff they could not handle if they did.

  Chapter 17

  Lise’s body convulsed with pleasure, her heart exploding with emotion, and she cried out, “I love you, Joshua!”

  She couldn’t keep the words inside. She didn’t even try anymore. Not when they made love.

  His mouth slammed down on hers, marking her as his while at the same time sealing her words of love inside her. He came, his whole body shuddering over hers while he threw his head back and shouted her name over and over again.

  Interspersed with her name were words of need, of approval, of volcanic pleasure.

  But no words of love.

  And Lise’s heart contracted with pain, even as her body knew a satiation that left her totally drained.

  Afterward, he got up to take care of the condom and she tried to regain emotional perspective in the brief solitude, but hot wetness burned the back of her eyes.

  He was the perfect lover, burning her up with his passion and yet patient when she needed him to be. Her love for him grew more powerful every time they came together in physical intimacy, but that was only part of it. Unquenchable emotion also consumed her on each occasion he exhibited the bone-deep character that made him who he was.

  Not to have her feelings returned shredded her insides. But how could any man be so tender and caring for her every need, when he felt no real emotion for the woman in his arms?

  When Joshua came back, he pulled her against him like he always did after making love.

  She searched his eyes for some indication of deep emotion as their breathing returned to normal, but his chocolate gaze remained impenetrable.

  She stifled a sigh and said good night, unwilling to break their rapport with questions she wasn’t sure she wanted the answers to.

  Warmth flared briefly in his expression as he leaned forward to kiss her lips and whisper, “Good night,” before tucking her head under his chin.

  Emotion beat around her in the ensuing silence, and she would swear on her publishing contract that it wasn’t all coming from her.

  Hope flooded her and she took his hand in hers, bringing it to her mouth to kiss his palm, her love for him pulsating on her lips and through her fingertips.

  She pressed his hand against her heart and nuzzled his chest. “I do love you, Joshua.”

  He didn’t say anything, though he hugged her more closely to him. It definitely wasn’t a rejection, but could it simply be physical consolation for his lack of emotional attachment to her?

  “Joshua?”

  “Shh, Lise. Go to sleep, honey.”

  She tried to do as he said, but inexplicably, despair grew second by second until she could stand their intimacy no longer.

  It was too much of a reminder of what she needed that he couldn’t give and she turned from him, scooting away so their bodies no longer touched. The immediate sensation of being cut off from something infinitely precious and necessary swept over her in a drowning wave, and she had to bite her fist not to cry out at the pain of it.

  His big hand settled on her naked shoulder. “Lise, is something wrong?”

  Nothing she wanted to talk about, so she shook her head.

  He didn’t ask why she’d pulled away, but he tugged her back into his arms and she let him. Even this false sense of emotional intimacy was better than nothing.

  Only a small voice in the back of her head said she was doing it again, hiding from a reality she didn’t want to face, but one that wasn’t going to disappear.

  Joshua took his turn at monitoring the surveillance equipment late that night while Nitro performed physical reconnaissance outside. His attention on the monitors, Joshua’s mind worried a problem he wasn’t sure how to tackle.

  Lise had told him she loved him again.

  Like the other times she’d said it over the past few days, not knowing what to say, he had not replied.

  If he returned the vow, and he admitted it wouldn’t be that hard, would that be fair to her? Was the witch’s brew of emotion filling his insides love, or a very complicated form of physical desire? And if it wasn’t love, did it matter?

  He was sure that whatever it was, it was a permanent condition, so would it really hurt to tell her he loved her?

  It definitely hurt her that he didn’t. He could see the pain in her soft hazel eyes, feel it in the stiffness of her body against him when the words would not come.

  They had gone to sleep that night with an emotional distance between them that had not been there before, and he didn’t like it.

  His eyes flicked from monitor to monitor and across the grid. Nothing. No activity to get his mind off the emotional upheaval he hated acknowledging, much less concentrating on.

  The hair on the back of his neck stood up and he knew immediately what that meant. Lise was awake.

  No sound came from behind him, but he could sense her watching him. It was like a wire connected them, sending a buzz through his body when he became the focus of her concentration.

  What was going on inside her head?

  Was she trying to come up with a way of telling him that she didn’t want to sleep with a man who was too damn hardheaded to acknowledge a passion that eclipsed the physical?

  After several seconds of silence, the sound of rustling bedclothes told him she was moving.

  Then she padded across the floor in her bare feet and he had to swallow down an admonishment to put on some socks. It got cold at night and neither of them liked a very warm room for sleeping. Where this nursemaid side of him came from, he sure as hell didn’t know, but Nitro and Hotwire would laugh their asses off if they knew about it.

  He flicked a quick glance at her when she stopped beside him before resuming his vigilant observation of the equipment.

  She’d pulled on his white t-shirt. It hung down to her thighs, but her dusky nipples showed through the thin cotton and he had no problem picturing the silky, perfectly shaped body beneath it. He tried not to.

  He needed to keep his full attention on the monitors and indicator grids in front of him, not let his mind wander down salacious paths that would send his thinking to his other head.

  “I think Nitro’s in love with Josie.”

  Whatever he’d been expecting Lise to say, that wasn’t it.

  “They’re at each other’s throats.”

  “Anger can often mask other strong emotions.” She wasn’t touching him, but she might as well have been, her presence was so indelibly printed on his psyche.

  His whole body contracted in reaction to her nearness.

  “Nitro’s a loner, honey. Whatever he feels for Josie, it’s not love.”

  He had to admit that the past couple of days with the two of them around had been interesting ones. The tension was so thick between them, it was a surprise they didn’t spontaneously combust.

  Several seconds of silence greeted his comment.

  What was Lise thinking?

  He wished he could turn and look into her eyes, see what their clear depths would reveal. Something had started her on this train of thought and he wanted to know what it was, afraid his
lack of love words earlier might have been the trigger.

  “I think you’re wrong,” Lise finally said. “He never takes his eyes off of her when they’re together and it makes Nitro really mad when Hotwire touches her, even when it’s just to grab her attention.”

  Joshua had noticed that, too, but he didn’t think it meant love. “He wants her.”

  “You think lust and only lust explains the way they lock onto each other like heat-seeking missiles when they’re in the same room?”

  “Yeah.”

  The quality of her silence changed and he couldn’t resist a quick glance at her. She was looking at him like he’d crawled out from under a rock.

  Damn it, why had he said that? He wasn’t even sure it was true. He was too used to thinking in terms of the physical and denying the emotional. He hadn’t given her theory even minimal consideration and now he’d put his foot in his mouth and was choking. Boot leather tasted like crap.

  She sighed, the sound sad and discouraged, but her hand hooked into his waistband and she stepped closer. “Just because you don’t think romantic love exists doesn’t mean the rest of the world is handicapped by your cynicism.”

  So, this was about what had happened earlier. She’d been using this whole thing about Josie and Nitro as a blind to talk about what she wanted to know…what he felt.

  It was damn good battle tactics, but her timing stank.

  He wasn’t good at subtlety when it came to the emotional side of life. Feelings were problematic enough without getting all cagey about them.

  “This is not a good time for this conversation.” He needed to be able to give her his undivided attention because he didn’t want to screw this up, but he had to focus on the surveillance equipment right now.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize talking about your friend’s love life was a taboo subject.” Sarcasm dripped like water from a melting icicle in her voice.

  He reached back and found his t-shirt. He used a fist of it to pull her around in front of where he sat on the tall swivel stool. Tucking her between his legs and her head under his chin, he kept them both facing the surveillance equipment. She struggled, but he wouldn’t let go and finally she settled against him.

  He rubbed the top of her head with his chin. “But we’re not talking about Nitro, not really. This is about us and I don’t want to discuss our relationship when I can’t look in your eyes, much less give you my full attention.”

  Even now, he had to keep his gaze locked on the monitors and merely holding her didn’t feel like enough. Not by a long shot.

  “We don’t have a relationship.”

  His body tensed with the same battle-readiness he experienced before going through with a mission. “Like hell.”

  She snorted. “We’ve got sex and a living arrangement you’ll want to end as soon as we catch Nemesis.”

  She talked as if she didn’t want to move out of his house any more than he wanted her to leave.

  Now was not the time to make decisions about their living arrangements, though. Not when the threat of Nemesis might be influencing her feelings for him as well as what she’d once called the sex thing.

  He put his hand over her stomach and pressed her more firmly against him and decided to address the sex thing. “Calling what happens between us mere sex is like calling the crisis in the Middle East a family squabble.”

  “Okay, so it’s a great screw, but it doesn’t mean anything to you. You’ve made that clear.”

  She was really intent on pissing him off, wasn’t she?

  “I never once said it didn’t mean anything to me.”

  “You never said it did, either.”

  His arms tightened around her convulsively. “I said it was more than sex.”

  “What does that mean, Joshua?”

  For the first time that he could remember, thoughts and emotions fought for supremacy in his mind. He didn’t like the out-of-control feeling it gave him, or all the conflicting judgments that vied for supremacy in his head.

  Women said they wanted honesty, so he gave it to her. “I don’t know, and I really don’t think this is the time to dissect our relationship.”

  She went completely still, not even breathing, and then let out a long sigh.

  Turning, she pressed her face against his chest and kissed him right over his heartbeat. “I’m sorry, Joshua.” Her soft voice tugged at something deep inside him. “I know you never made me any promises and my feelings aren’t your responsibility. I don’t have any right to get all bitchy with you because you don’t share them.”

  Who said he didn’t share them? He wasn’t sure what he felt, but did she have to dismiss it all without even a hearing?

  He opened his mouth to demand just that when the first checkpoint light began to glow.

  He rubbed Lise’s neck and shoulders, trying to soothe the tension in her as he waited to see if checkpoint two lit as well, but his instincts said it was going to.

  “You can get as bitchy as you want, not that I think that’s what you’re acting like,” he hastened to assure her, “but, honey, your timing sucks.”

  “We don’t have to talk about this at all.” She was trying to sound huffy, but her words were muffled against his chest and it spoiled the effect. “I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

  He tightened his hold on her, allowing a small smile to curve his lips. “We’ll talk about it, all right, but later.”

  “Why later? Why not now?”

  “Because checkpoint two just lit up.”

  He reached for the Comm button and pressed it. “Recon One, come in.”

  He released the Comm button and a second later heard Nitro’s voice. “This is Recon One. Go Comm Center.”

  “We’ve got an eagle on the mountain.”

  “Stats.”

  “Passed C-Two eleven seconds ago.”

  “I’ll move in for visual.”

  “What is your location?”

  “L-P path thirty meters out.”

  Shit. Even moving as fast as Joshua knew Nitro could do, he wouldn’t be able to make visual of the approach to the house from his location near the launch pad in less than five minutes.

  Nemesis could make the gate at Joshua’s entry in that time if he was traveling fast enough. They had disabled the electric field on the gate and fence because the idea had been to catch Nemesis, not keep him out.

  Lise broke from his arms as he signed off with Nitro, her expression not easily read. “He’s here?”

  “We can’t be positive until we have visual, but yeah, I think he is.”

  She moved behind him while he called Hotwire and Josie. When he put the comm unit down, he realized she was wearing jeans and tying her tennis shoes.

  “You’re staying in the house.”

  “I’m not an idiot, Joshua. I won’t get in your way, but I’m not helpless, either. I was raised on a Texas ranch.”

  “And you refused to learn to shoot a rifle or a handgun. Jake told me.”

  “So?”

  So, she wasn’t getting any closer than a gunshot to that sick bastard and since she couldn’t shoot a gun, she wasn’t going in at all. “You’re staying inside. Got it?”

  She rolled her eyes. “I didn’t say I was going outside.”

  “Promise me, Lise.”

  “I won’t get in your way,” she vowed.

  He’d tell Josie to keep her inside, no matter what.

  Joshua left Lise and Josie manning the surveillance and comm center downstairs while he and Hotwire left the house via an exit in the weapons room. They went in opposite directions around the house so they could take parallel paths to the drive and stay out of open visual range.

  Joshua came around to the front under cover of the trees. He was in position on his side of the drive, his eyes scanning both the woods and the open area, when the comm unit in his ear beeped.

  “The intruder is on foot,” Josie said, her voice flat and professional, “three meters northwest of the dri
ve, point five kilometers from the drive entrance, headed toward the house.”

  That put Nemesis on the opposite side of the drive from Joshua. He took off toward the location Josie had given, knowing Nitro and Hotwire had received the same information and would be approaching Nemesis from their positions as well.

  Joshua had visual within seconds.

  Wearing snow camouflage and a backpack, the intruder carried a folded M-16 over his shoulder. His parka covered his hair, but Joshua had no doubt that it was Ed Jones.

  Several meters from the perp, the crisp white snow hindered a completely silent approach, and because of it, the speed of Joshua’s movements. He pulled his own standard M-16 into firing position, the selective fire mechanism set to semiautomatic.

  He was still too far away for a flying tackle when Nemesis stopped, pulled his gun off his shoulder, and then his pack off his back. He dug in the pack for a couple of seconds before pulling out two grenades and setting them on the ground. He flipped his M-16 open and set one of the grenades into the grenade launcher on the barrel.

  Ed Jones lifted the gun toward the house and Joshua fired.

  A second report followed closely on the first, and Nemesis spun, lifted, and then fell to the snow, motionless.

  Joshua was already approaching at a dead run. He and Hotwire converged on the perp at the same time.

  Joshua carefully turned the man over while Hotwire examined the pack.

  No crimson wetness stained the pristine white of the snow.

  Joshua checked for a pulse at the neck. “His heart’s beating.” He unzipped the parka on the intruder and noted the steady rise and fall of the man’s chest. “Kevlar.”

  “Uh-huh,” Hotwire said noncommittally. “He awake?”

  “No. Out cold, and he’ll probably stay that way for a while after taking two hits.”

  “Too damn bad.”

  The tone of Hotwire’s voice made Joshua look up from the man who had caused Lise so much grief. “Why?”

  “He’s got an armed bomb in his pack.”

  The unmistakable odor of napalm confirmed the type of bomb before Hotwire carefully pulled it out and Joshua whistled low when he saw it. The timing mechanism was connected to a detonator with two sticks of dynamite strapped to the bomb casing.