by Sylvia Ryan
“Across the street.”
He nodded. “They’re filling the street house by house. You’re the third person to get designated Emerald since I got here last summer.” He clinked his glass with hers. “Welcome to the neighborhood,” he practically growled, then threw back his drink. “What happened this afternoon when you left the meeting?”
She couldn’t tell him the truth, and refused to lie. She raced to find the right words, and the longer his stare bore into her, the angrier his expression became. Finally, she shrugged and gave the same lame excuse she’d used earlier. “I felt a little overwhelmed.”
“By Garret’s presentation?”
She broke their eye contact and feigned interest in the video playing. “No.” She felt him staring at her. Waiting.
“Morgan was touching you. Has he done that before?”
“No. I think his advances were for your benefit.”
“Probably were. Sorry about that.”
“I’m not the only person who thought so.”
“Sydney?”
Laila nodded.
“Let me know if she bothers you again. I told her to communicate through me from now on.”
“Why?”
“It didn’t take a mind reader to tell she was being nasty. It was written all over your face.”
“Oh.” He smiled down at her. He was gorgeous when he smiled. “Thank you again.”
“You’re welcome.”
“I got the distinct impression there was some hostility there between you and Morgan.”
“That is an understatement.”
“I’m not a fan either.”
His gaze was hard. His jaw clenched. “Don’t worry. Now that I know you don’t want him touching you, he won’t get the opportunity again.”
“Nice sentiment.” She shifted and laid her head against his arm. “But Morgan can pretty much do whatever he pleases.”
“No, he can’t. Not this time,” he mumbled.
Laila let the comment go. Even with all her barriers up, she felt his anger flare, but it was nowhere near the level he’d escalated to that afternoon.
Tucking her hand between his bicep and torso, she snuggled close. It had been so long since she’d felt the trademark unconditional acceptance from another Amber. She’d never gotten an opportunity to experience the protection and care an Amber man instinctively exhibited. Maybe now. She sighed, contented. After all the years living alone in the Sapphire Zone, she finally had the touch, the sense of belonging she needed again.
God, she’d agonized at the loss all those years ago. Eventually, she found the only way to cope with total isolation was by locking her emotions down and ignoring her need. Her refusal to let the solitude affect her helped her survive the complete disconnect from everyone and everything she’d ever known. Now, sitting there, the locks broke and relief flooded her.
“It feels so good.” She didn’t need to elaborate. She’d felt his loneliness.
Rock wrapped an arm around her shoulder and pulled her in so her cheek rested on his chest.
“I missed it so much,” she whispered. She wasn’t alone anymore. Laila tried to swallow around her tight throat. But with her next breath, her composure fractured. Hot tears streaked down her face. When he squeezed her tightly and shushed her, his massive arms weighing heavily and giving comfort, she cried harder. He rested his cheek on the top of her head and rocked her tenderly.
Mortified, she started to pull away. “I’m sorry.”
He pulled her into his side. “Nothing to be sorry for.”
She gave up trying to hold it all in.
Chapter 4
By the flickering light of the video screen, Laila cried in Rock’s arms. He held her, stroking her hair and shushing her. His chest was tight and his stomach swam with a queasy feeling of foreboding. His earlier conversation with his father replayed in his head and his commitment to this woman who had so little and needed so much solidified.
He absorbed her weight as she burrowed into him, desperately clutching the material of his tear-dampened shirt. She was starved for the unconditional acceptance and physical touch they’d grown up with.
“Lie down. Put your head in my lap.” His voice was gruff with emotion, even to his own ears. She tilted her head back and gauged his expression with hope-filled eyes. His heart broke for her, and not able to face her pain, he had to look away. She stretched across the soft leather of the couch, her head pillowed by his thigh. He sought to ease her misery through the continual movement of his hands, trailing his fingers along the exposed skin of her arm and smoothing her hair away from her face. Her sobs subsided into an occasional hiccup.
Soon, his hand at her waist moved with the rhythmic rise and fall of her breathing. She seemed smaller than she had when she sat across the table from him at the briefing. Her coconut-scented hair drew him closer and made his mouth water. Tonight, instead of her professional attire, she wore a tank top and lightweight shorts. This was a side of her he hadn’t seen.
He’d barely survived a year outside the Amber Zone. The pervasive hush here seemed amplified, especially when he’d first arrived. It was the complete opposite of the life they’d been used to. Amber was full of noise, of people, of sex. And, it was safe. Even with all those people crammed into tiny little spaces, he’d never felt safer.
Until a person lived in an environment where pitfalls and perils were everywhere, truly understanding the monumental effect safety, or lack of it, had on a person’s life wasn’t possible. Laila had been living without that particular state of being for five years. A year of it had fundamentally changed him. The citizens of Sapphire and Emerald didn’t hide their true feelings regarding Ambers. How many times had their prejudice left her alone and ostracized? No wonder she’d lost it. He was one friendly face in a sea of nefarious humanity.
A fleeting whisper caressed his consciousness. What had she been like before?
This changed everything. He would keep her safe, try to calm her fears and soothe her suffering. And she was suffering, even though she tried exceptionally hard not to show it.
In sleep, the ugliness of her pain vanished. She looked peaceful now. Her thick chestnut hair, gathered at the back of her head with a band, curled over her shoulder. For hours, he ran his fingertips through the heavy strands. Closing his eyes, he absorbed as much as he could of the year’s worth of touch he’d missed. He memorized the feel of her smooth skin under his work-roughened hand. Appreciated it. Having Laila Lewis sleeping in his arms was a comfort to him, too. With the exception of the time he’d examined Jordan’s amputated limb, this was the first time in an entire year he’d deliberately touched a woman. He absorbed as much as he could of the touch he’d missed.
Was he enough of a bastard to inflict his twisted brand of care on this innocent? Laila reminded him of Journey, and she’d done well in the tightly controlled world he lived in. He didn’t really have a choice. He knew no other way and didn’t really have the inclination to change.
He spent the night watching her sleep and mentally lambasting himself for the direction he would take her life because it wouldn’t be an easy path. As the sun rose, chasing away the shadows from the room, Laila finally stirred. Without opening her eyes, she murmured, “I’m sorry about last night. It’s been years since I cried because I missed Amber. I guess I had a lot more bottled up inside than I thought.”
Rock brushed the pad of his thumb over her cheekbone then down, across her bottom lip.
She peeked up at him. “Forgive me?”
He mustered a smiled. “Forgiven.”
“Oh.” She pushed up from his lap, suddenly looking wide-awake. “Today’s a training day.” She stood and stretched. “I need to take a shower and change.”
“Take your time. I planned on starting with the basics today. Tomorrow our strict nine to five training schedule begins. You’ll have to wear clothes you can move in and shoes you can run in.” He perused h
er body for what had to be the thousandth time in the last few hours. “No skirts.”
“What time are we leaving?”
He unfolded his stiff body and glanced at the oversized clock hanging over the wide, arched entry to the kitchen. “About an hour?”
“Okay.” She stopped near the front door. “But today you can only have me until two. I have an errand to run after that.” Instead of leaving through the front door as he’d expected, she turned and trudged up the stairs to the second floor.
The second floor he’d never been to.
He walked to the bottom of the steps, intent on saying something, but heard a door shut and water running. He stood frozen, mouth hanging open.
When he’d gotten to Emerald, he hadn’t even wanted to look at a bedroom. He hadn’t wanted the acres of mattress spread out on either side of him as he slept. At least when he crashed on the couch, he could fool himself into thinking the cushions at his back were a soft, warm body.
He grabbed the handrail, hesitated then walked to his downstairs bathroom and snagged two clean towels.
As he climbed those stairs for the first time, he left a piece of his past behind. It was time to take his first steps in a new direction.
He knocked then opened the only closed door on the landing. The big, fern-colored bathroom had a slanted ceiling with a skylight that bathed the room with morning sunlight. “I brought you some clean towels.”
“Thank you. Do you have any shampoo? There isn’t any in the bottle.” Her vague form moved in the steam behind the pebbled shower glass.
“Yeah. I’ll get some.” Downstairs, he rummaged around in the cabinet underneath his bathroom sink and found the items he thought she’d need.
Back upstairs, he put the toilet paper on the tank and set the soap, shampoo and conditioner just inside the shower door.
“Thank you,” she called.
He straightened and looked over his shoulder. “Get used to it. I’ll be taking care of you from here on out.” He didn’t wait for her to answer or offer an opinion to that statement, just closed the door behind him.
Rock stood on the landing at the top of the stairs. There were two doors on the right and one to the left. He went left and found the master bedroom with an attached bath. Leaning his shoulder against the doorjamb, he scanned the suite, taking in the details of a room left alone for a quarter century.
Like the bathroom, it had skylights and high windows along the top of the vaulted ceilings. Rectangles of cheerful sunlight painted the cream-colored carpeting. A riot of white, twisted sheets lay on the foot of a chunky four-poster bed. He picked up a frame sitting on the nightstand. His stomach twisted as he studied the faded family picture of a smiling couple and two small boys in front of a Christmas tree in the downstairs great room. He tossed the photo onto the bed, stripped the sheets and brought the bundle down to the laundry room. He chucked the picture into the garbage can and threw the linens in the washer.
Breakfast was prepared when she joined him, fresh-faced and smiling, in the same shorts and tank from the night before.
“Eggs and potatoes okay?”
“Yeah.” She held up a toothbrush he’d never seen before. “I used your toothbrush. I figured you could put it in the dishwasher.” He must have blanched because she tilted her head and said, “What?”
He tried to squash his smile as he dropped the toothbrush in the dishwasher’s silverware basket.
“What?” she asked again.
“Not my toothbrush.”
Her eyes widened. “Oh…girlfriend’s?”
“No. You can have it after it’s run through the washer. It’s yours now.”
She shrugged. “Okay.”
Sitting next to each other at the island, Rock barely tasted his breakfast, too fascinated in the slow withdrawal of Laila’s fork from between her lips and the momentary flutter of her eyelids when she groaned her pleasure. When Laila pushed her half-eaten food away, he slid it back. “Get used to having a big breakfast. You’re going to need your energy on training days.”
“I can’t eat all this every day. My clothes wouldn’t fit me in a week.”
“You’re not going to have to worry about that.”
“I still can’t eat another bite, Rock.” She jumped off the stool. “I gotta get dressed. I’ll be back.”
“No skirts.” He got up from his stool and slotted the dishes into the dishwasher. The ambient temperature of the suddenly silent great room lowered five degrees when she walked out the door, and the pervasive feeling of solitude returned. The woman was a storm, churning up long repressed feelings he’d buried deep. She brought some life back into what had only been an existence two days before.
In his downstairs bathroom, he stripped himself of his jeans and turned on the shower. While he waited for the water to warm, he looked at himself in the mirror as if through Laila’s eyes, assessing things he hadn’t paid much attention to for a year. He was haggard with a week’s worth of whiskers shading the lower half of his face. His once super-short cut, worn when he was in the Amber police department, was now shaggy to the collar of his T-shirt. The combination made him look wild. He shaved in the accumulating steam and then stepped into the shower.
The original plan of glossing over the training so he could focus on more terrorism while in the city was out. He’d assumed Laila was just another snooty academic raised in privilege and viewing him as the help. One who, he’d thought, would have a stick prominently stuck up her ass and be a pain in his. What one night did to his perspective was mind-boggling. This was not that.
He cared. She roused his protective feelings and it left him feeling like an itch in just the right part of his brain had finally been scratched. Her voice strummed the horrible silence away. His soul purred with anticipation of what was to come. He hadn’t been looking for a companion, yet here she was. She had his name written all over her in blinking neon lights.
Now, he was more suspicious than ever that Morgan was fucking with him and setting them both up to die. He ran down training exercises he might be able to use to help her master some of the skills he’d neglected during his initial planning. He needed to train her to follow a command without question and defend herself whether he was with her or not. To some degree, he’d done it twice before. Not overly well, since Emily was dead. He’d been easy on his girls back then, indulging their playful acts of defiance. He wouldn’t make the same mistakes this time.
Over the din of the shower spray, Rock heard Laila enter the house and call his name.
“In here. I’ll be out in a second.” He finished quickly, stepped out of the shower and dried off. He’d forgotten to bring clothes into the bathroom with him, so he wrapped the damp towel around his waist and strode to his clothes piled haphazardly next to his duffel bag.
Laila sat, waiting on the couch, following him with her gaze. He grabbed his pants from the floor and released the towel from his waist.
Chapter 5
Ho-ly Crap. Laila had thought no man could look sexier than Rock, when she’d finally gotten a good look at him yesterday before the meeting. But the twenty-four-hours-ago Rock was just crushed by the right-this-second Rock, hands down.
He was broad and tanned, with water dripping from the ends of his tousled hair and landing on his shoulders. Droplets rolled seductively down his chest past so sexy nipple rings and badass tattoos. She wanted to catch the drops with her tongue. No need for that pesky towel. He was perfect. Muscled, but not too much, obviously powerful, and with an air of danger that wrapped the irresistible package up in a bow. The day she’d noticed those little gold rings in his nipples, winking in the sun as he jogged around the compound, she couldn’t drag her eyes away. She’d stolen quick glimpses of his tattoos, and wondered what words meant so much to him he had them permanently written into his skin. Good God, no man had a right to be that gorgeous. He probably had women drooling all over him. Beautiful women, like Sydney with the
striking green eyes. Laila wondered how much he availed himself to them.
She was nothing special, painfully average compared to the women outside the Amber Zone. Her self-esteem had always come from her intellect. She was intelligent, but rarely does one hear a man brag about how smart his woman is. She used to be spontaneous and fun, happy. Those great qualities had disappeared since she’d left Amber.
He said, “I’ll be ready in a minute. Then, we can go.”
“Okay.” The word came out guttural. She cleared her throat quietly and continued her appreciation.
He turned just enough to give her an eyeful. Oh my God. He was circumcised. She’d never seen one like that before. Growing up in Amber, she’d seen many naked men up close and personal. None of them looked like that.
It answered one question about Rock. He was definitely older than she, old enough to be born in a world where medical care was available for everybody.
She was not. Laila had been one of the first babies born in New Atlanta, her mom having traveled pregnant to the relative safety of the city.
She glanced from his cock to his face and found him looking at her, the side of his mouth curling up.
“Everything okay?” He pulled pants over his muscular ass. No underwear.
“Yes.”
He buttoned, zipped, and then walked to where she sat. “Your mouth says yeah, but your face says no.”
“Nope. I’m good.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll go easy on you today.”
She nodded, happy to be distracted from the direction her thoughts had been going. Visions of military type boot camp had made her wary of mission prep for months.
His boots were set in a wide stance, anchoring girders wrapped in blue jeans. He appeared invincible. He turned and a lock of his shiny black hair fell on his forehead like a comma. Like Superman. He reached toward her and his biceps bulged under his black T-shirt. “Come on. Time to start your training.”
