“What were you like before you came here, Tristan?”
“If you knew me then …”
“You’re not the same person you were.”
“I’m the same. My loyalty just lies with someone different these days.”
Her hand went to his biceps, her palm cool on his hot skin. “Tristan—”
He shrugged off her hand. “I’m not looking for a pity screw, okay?”
“You think I’m sleeping with you out of pity?”
“No, I think you’re slumming and it’s hot and exciting but you’ll get tired of it and end up with someone who belongs in your world.”
“I don’t have a world anymore!”
“You can’t make me it, then. You can’t.”
“Who hurt you, Tristan? Who the hell shredded your heart?”
Was it that simple? Probably. He’d always found the more uncomplicated truths the most important. “Just a high school love gone wrong. I thought she was it for me … she was using me because I was good in bed and a nice screw you to her family.”
“Why?”
“I was poor. The bad boy. In a gang.” He shrugged. “Such a fucking cliché, and I fell for all her pretty words.”
“And you’ll never do that again.”
One look at Rowan and he knew he already had. “I’ve got enough troubles without falling for someone.”
“Like what?”
“I’ve got a dishonorable discharge that follows me around. I took the fall for someone else—and so for the second time in my life, my name’s shit.” Just like Janie’s family treated him … just like they’d told him he’d turn out.
Her parents had tried to ensure that. “Look, you really want to know all this? Here goes—Janie, the girl, accused me of theft. And rape. Really, she just needed to get out of what her family considered a scandal, with her all-important reputation intact. So you’ve got the classic good little rich girl takes up with poor boy who lives too close to gangland for comfort. Who do you think the police believed? Hell, even my mother believed it.”
Jesus, he still sounded so bitter, even today. He needed to let that shit go, because all it got him was pissed, but maybe laying it all out there for Rowan would help somehow. “It was the night before the prom. I’d borrowed money, gotten a tux and a limo. Bought her flowers. I still couldn’t believe it. I was going to show up at her old man’s mansion and prove that I could be good enough.” Even now, shame flushed his face. He’d been so young and stupid. “And then, just as I was getting ready, the police showed up. Said Janie had accused me of raping her, and robbing her family, the night before. They had my fingerprints.”
He’d been at the house the night before, yes. His fingerprints were everywhere … and his DNA was inside her. They’d had consensual sex while her parents were out, but Janie didn’t—wouldn’t—admit that.
“Her father came to me, told me he’d drop all the charges if I stayed the hell away from his precious baby. Said he couldn’t afford to have any half-breed mongrels messing up his lineage. Said my kind would try to get her pregnant and take all her money.”
Rowan’s eyes widened. “He knew you didn’t rape her.”
“He knew. But this was an effective way to get me out of the picture and scare the shit out of her.” He scrubbed his face with his palms as if he could scrub away the memories. “I loved her—that was all I knew. And she sold me out, which I get. Well, now I do. It got me on a better path than I was going down. I enlisted right after that, and I haven’t been home since.”
And then, years later, when all that was behind him, another sharp and swift betrayal by someone he trusted. “On a mission in South America, my commander got a direct order for us to pull out of a firefight and return to the LZ. Our team knew it was the wrong decision, that we couldn’t pull out of the town or most of the people left alive wouldn’t be for much longer. Lots of women and children who we were defending against a local drug lord’s men. But apparently, Army Intelligence had gotten a new lead for us, said to leave the town and move on. The commander was my friend and so I stayed behind, disobeyed the order. He was supposed to help me out of a court-martial—I stayed behind so he wouldn’t get in trouble and lose his rank. The aftermath shouldn’t have been as bad as it was, but hell, it was bad.”
Apparently, his team had missed the drug lord and everything got twisted around on Tristan—he’d been the one who’d insisted on staying behind and refusing the order. The one who held up the team as they’d tried to reason with him.
At least that’s how it was laid out to him by his Army-appointed defense lawyer when he found himself in the brig.
He’d taken the rap, accepted the punishment and found himself alone again. To this day, he was still angry with himself that he hadn’t fought back, but a big part of him had known that fighting that system, with only his word against his commander’s, would be a losing battle and could’ve cost him much more. Beyond that, he’d lost someone he’d thought of as a friend.
He wondered if all of it was part of a larger pattern, if it was something he’d consciously chosen or if it was as simple as the universe enjoying crapping on him.
But he knew there were many people who had it worse than he did. “So there you have it—how I get screwed over when I trust someone.”
“You would’ve been okay if it had just been the girl. But when you were accused of ignoring a direct order and no one believed you didn’t, it brought it all back,” she said with a quiet understanding.
“You’d think that realizing that would make it all better, but surprisingly, it doesn’t.”
“You feel how you feel. Who’s to say it’s wrong?”
Rowan hadn’t said anything he’d expected, didn’t act like he’d expected—why was it so easy with her? He’d been with women who’d lived through their own forms of tragedies and they’d never connected to him like this.
With Rowan, it felt real. But it had also felt damned real on all those summer nights down by the lake when he’d held Janie tight and they’d talked about a future together, about how she wanted out from under her family’s thumb.
She’d never gotten far. He’d learned she’d married the son of her father’s associate, in a big society wedding. And he’d never let himself even think about getting serious with another woman.
“I would never do that to you,” she breathed, and shit, had he really said all of that out loud? The heat must be getting to him—or maybe he had malaria or something. “And Doc J doesn’t think your name means shit.”
“Out here, it doesn’t matter. If I wanted to go home, it would.”
“Do you? Want to go home, I mean.”
“I haven’t known what I’ve wanted for a really long time.” But that was the biggest fucking lie he’d ever told, and he’d told a lot in his day.
He wanted to feel the way he had at seventeen—in love, the world in front of him.
He also never wanted to feel the pain of rejection again—not the way he’d gotten it from his mother and the Army, and not the way he’d gotten it from the person who’d told him she loved him most in the world. “I was raised by my mom. I put her through hell, disappointed the shit out of her—I know that. And when I went into the military, I wrote to her … she never wrote back. She died a few years ago. I couldn’t even bring myself to go home for the funeral. I don’t think she’d have wanted me there anyway.”
“So this is home for you, then?” Rowan asked. She was looking for all the answers, and he’d never had many to begin with.
“I don’t know. I’m just looking for peace, Rowan.” It was the best answer he could give her. He’d let a hell of a lot go—some anger still threatened to boil over at times, but he blamed a lot of that on the fact that he was ripped away from his job, hadn’t walked away the way Rowan had. It was easier to do here, in a lot of ways, but he still hadn’t been able to escape the noise inside his own head. And yet, he’d forgiven himself for a lot of things—had to, or he’d
have gone crazy. “You ask too many damned questions.”
“I know,” she said softly. “I do that when I’m tired. Scared. Angry. Don’t you ever get that way?”
His mouth quirked to one side, the closest to a smile she’d seen since he’d gotten angry with her. “All the damned time. The trick is not letting it show.”
“I don’t know if I want to learn that trick.”
He swallowed hard as he nodded in silent agreement. Without further pretense, he was pushing her seat back, taking off her clothes as the wind rocked the car gently, and yes, this was what she wanted.
Last night hadn’t been the first time since her husband had died, but it was by far the best—and the only time it had meant anything. She didn’t tell Tristan that though. Didn’t have to. The cocky man seemed to know that—and more—and she’d spent so many years playing it close to the vest that being this open, this fluid in his arms shocked her. Worried her.
But when his hands moved over her body, all of that disappeared into a fierce, rushing need. It was almost brutal in its intensity. And beautiful.
The man on top of her was also beautiful. Bronzed. Amber-colored eyes. Hard-jawed, stubborn, protective as all get out, as evidenced by his stance with the soldiers earlier.
Living in fear was something she’d promised herself she would never do and she had nearly caved in to it yesterday. If she stayed here, there would always be danger—and maybe that was okay, since she was ready for it now. On that horrible September day, she hadn’t been.
“You think too damned much, woman,” he breathed against her ear, and she opened her mouth to reply, but her retort became a loud moan instead as his mouth tugged her nipple between his teeth and his fingers moved between her legs, stroked her with a mastery that made her writhe against the leather seat.
Her lips curved in pleasure, a small, contented moan escaped and she realized that, as of yet, she hadn’t seen Tristan smile. Then again, she hadn’t smiled all that much in past years, and any laughter had been born out of relief rather than true happiness or humor. But she wanted to see him smile.
No, she wanted to make him smile. Wanted to make him murmur her name again, over and over, until she knew he was lost in the pleasure haze.
“You’re so beautiful … so beautiful,” she told him, unable to stop herself from calling this broad, strong man such a thing, but it was the only word that fit him right now.
She had no idea that’s all it would take, but after a second, he smiled, brilliantly, the shine reaching his eyes, and she simply melted.
There was no going back. She hadn’t felt this much like a woman in years. And she liked it.
His hand trailed along her bare skin, his palm somehow cool despite the sweltering temperature. She stretched out, nearly purring with contentment as his hand traveled lower still, dipping between her legs, making her shiver for an entirely different reason than a cool palm.
“Tristan.” His name on her lips, she turned into him as her hips began to sway against his. “You. Now.”
His arousal was rock hard against her belly, telling her that now worked for him as well.
He balanced deftly over her on the entirely too small space of the seat, her legs swiftly enveloping his, her sex cinching his cock like a delicious vise. She was going to lose it fast, and she needed him to do so as well, to spiral off that cliff with her, to come so hard he saw stars.
When she heard him cry out her name with a hoarse groan, she closed her eyes and let herself go.
Vivi’s heartbeat was a steady drum in her ears as she writhed against him, the aftershocks of the orgasm leaving her unable to remain completely still.
It had never been like this—never. She’d had no idea what she’d been missing curled up with her stupid laptop.
“Did you just compare me to your computer?” Cael asked and she managed a weak laugh as she lay boneless against him because she hadn’t realized she’d spoken out loud.
“Kind of. But it’s a compliment really.”
He muttered something under his breath and she hoped she could stay in bed with him like this forever. Forget the rest of the world existed and keep the hard-muscled bulk of this man’s chest pressed to her.
She was incredibly, wonderfully sore in all the right places, and she propped herself up to study his face, as if trying to memorize every feature, even trailed a finger along a cheekbone, his jawline, tracing a path down to his shoulder.
He responded by cupping the soft mound of her breast and fingering a still-taut nipple, which made her smile. One of her legs was thrown over his, and even though they’d been making love for what seemed like the better part of the night, neither appeared wholly sated.
With Caleb, she felt as if she could go a lifetime and never be. Nor did she want to be, and based on her current situation, that might be a problem. Because with DMH looking for her, her lifetime could be considerably shortened.
God, she was tired of problems.
As she thought this, his phone began to ring. He didn’t move from next to her while he grabbed it. For a few seconds, he stared at the screen, and then he finally answered with a “Caleb Scott here.”
So official.
She watched his face go expressionless, but not before she caught the tic in his jaw right before he sat up and turned his back to her.
He was getting reamed by the person on the other end of the phone, kept his bearing stiff, his shoulders straight, and she knew she was responsible for this. When he spoke again, he kept his voice calm and controlled. “Vivienne Clare’s safety is my responsibility. I’m making an executive decision in order to do my job effectively. I’m sorry if that doesn’t work with your plans, but you put me in charge of this mission, and as far as I’m concerned, it’s not over yet.”
He closed his cell phone and placed it on the night table again, waited a long moment before he lay back down on the bed next to her.
“I wish you didn’t have to hear that.”
“I wish you weren’t in trouble because of me.”
“Vivi, with my job, I’m always in some kind of trouble. It’s like being a criminal, except most of the time, I’m on the right side of the law. And you’re thinking too hard—so just tell me what you’re worried about.”
“I want to ask you what you’re planning. What’s going to happen to me. But I don’t know if I actually want those answers. I’d rather spend our time pretending that none of these problems exist.”
For DMH, she was someone easy to pick off. Inconsequential. She should’ve been an easy hit. Would’ve been too, if Caleb hadn’t kidnapped her from her house.
She wasn’t a warrior like Caleb, didn’t know how much longer she could power through like this.
“We can pretend none of it exists until we get the all clear from my CO,” he said, and she didn’t push. Instead, she splayed her fingers on his chest and stared down at them.
“Vivi, we’ll figure this out.”
“Sure we will.” She looked up. “Will Dale—Ace—find out that I know who he really is?”
“We’ll try to keep that from happening.”
“How can I be sure he’ll leave me alone?” she asked, but she wasn’t really expecting an answer, because there wasn’t one.
“I’ll make it my life’s work to see that he doesn’t come anywhere near you ever again,” Cael said fiercely.
Her eyes shone. “Thank you, Cael. For everything. No matter what else happens, I’ll always have that.”
“What’s going to happen is that we’ll figure all of this out. I promise.” He tugged her wrist gently. “You’re too far away. Come closer.”
She didn’t bother to protest—instead, she moved into his arms, pressed her lips to his shoulder. “You make me feel warm all over.”
“Just warm? I’m going to have to be more effective.” With that, his fingers slid between her legs, massaging her clit, stroking her sex, making her nearly burst into flames and float away that very instant. �
�I’m supposed to be comforting you.”
“You are, Cael,” she murmured as her palms trailed along his shoulders and then down his back. “You have no idea how much you are.”
His entire body shuddered when her hand wrapped around his erection, thick, heavy and smooth.
Any doubts she had about not being skilled at sex faded as he gazed at her with open desire and the word more on his lips.
The rain had let up significantly. Rowan shifted against him, their skin sticky from the heat and the sweat, and Tristan didn’t give a shit, wished the storm would last forever.
It was all good now, but when he started the car and drove away from this moment in time that had turned out to be a fantasy come true, it could all dissipate like the storm.
It had before, so easily. One minute, his heart was so full he was pretty sure it would burst, and the next his dreams had instead, and he’d lost it all.
“We’ve got to get out of here. There’s business to attend to back at Doc J’s,” he said, and she nodded and moved away from him.
They dressed quickly and he started the car and pulled back onto the road. The flooding wasn’t terrible but it would be slow going and he stared at the road like it held all the secrets of the universe, and for a while there was just silence between them.
Finally, Rowan asked, “The kids are leaving in the morning?”
“If the soldiers stay away that long. Plans around here change at a moment’s notice.” He didn’t want to say much more. But he did. “Doc J wants you to go to the next village and stay there until …”
“Until it’s safe,” she finished for him. “You’ve both told me that never happens.”
“These are extraordinary circumstances.”
“Will you try to sell me a bridge next?”
“Rowan—”
“I’m not leaving,” she said firmly. “When you take them, Doc J will be alone. I won’t let that happen.”
He found himself about to tell her that he didn’t want her around if there was trouble to be had, realized he had no business telling her what the hell to do and wondered why that bothered him.
Promises in the Dark Page 24
