Sinful Haven

by Brook Wilder

  Armed with just my gun and my cell, I walked into the restaurant, choosing the seat I had seen in the scope. It wasn’t long before Raul made his way in, greeting some of the locals on his way to his own table across from me. I sipped my coffee and watched as his order was brought to him immediately, waiting until he was nearly done with his eggs before I made my move.

  Raul didn’t even have a chance to pull his gun. I blew his brains all over the waitress behind him, ignoring her screams as I got the picture and started out the restaurant quickly.

  The first bullet shattered the window of the restaurant, striking an older man who had been sitting on the other side. I ducked, firing two quick shots to provide cover as another hail of bullets hit the restaurant, shattering the rest of the windows. I took off toward the alley where I had left my bag, barely grabbing it in time before the bullets pinged into the dirt and streaked across my shoulder in a fiery blaze.

  That was the signal to go. Slinging the bag over my chest, I ran toward the pickup point. The village was just starting to wake up for another day in Mexico so I had to dodge more than one street vendor along the way.

  In no time I was at the pickup point, glad to see the chopper just landing in the field. Sprinting across the patchy grass, I kept my head low as I approached it, seeing Elisa’s anxious face break out into a relieved smile when she saw me.

  “Come on!” she shouted, holding out her hand.

  I faltered, feeling like I had just slammed into a wall. That was too close to another scenario.

  With another McDermott.

  “Come on, Damian!” she urged again, waving with her hand. “We got to go!”

  I took her hand and propelled myself into the chopper, barely pulling my feet in before it was taking off.

  I had done the job, but at what cost?

  Chapter 9

  Elisa

  Damian made it.

  I pulled myself up onto the bench in the chopper, trying to slow my heart rate while Damian did the same, looking no worse than when he had cut out the light last night. I had panicked a little this morning when I woke up and he was gone, but Voodoo had informed me that he had just gone to scout and that I should eat the breakfast he had brought.

  I did and he showed me the hospital, even giving me a chance to work for an hour or two assessing the locals until it was time for us to go to the chopper.

  And now, this was over with. Damian was safe and we were heading back home.

  “Good job,” Voodoo was telling Damian, a broad smile on his face as Damian showed him his cell. “This will start to help the people of Mexico take back their country.”

  Damian grunted and I noticed that his left shoulder had a streak of red across it. Oh no. “You’ve been hit,” I said, fear lodged in my throat.

  He looked down. “It’s just a graze.”

  “You don’t know that,” I protested, reaching for his shoulder. The moment I touched him, Damian pulled away. Instantly I felt like a fool for even being in this predicament. “I’m sorry,” I said quietly, tucking my hands in my lap.

  Damian reached over and wrapped his hand around mine, squeezing it gently. “Sorry. It’s been a long week.”

  That was an understatement. I felt the warmth of his hand on mine, trying not to do anything to show him how much his small touch was affecting me. “Hey at least I got my motorcycle ride after ten years.”

  Damian choked out a laugh. “Yeah I guess you did.”

  No ‘what do you mean,’ or ‘I don’t understand.’ He knew exactly what I meant. So, what did that mean to me? Had he thought about me at all in ten years? Not because of Will’s death. No, I meant in a way that would have his heart racing or his lower half, well, doing what it did.

  I could only hope so.

  **

  By the time we got back to the clubhouse, word had spread and Damian was an instant hero. I hung back as people congratulated him on the kill, watching as he took it all in stride. This was the Damian Gibson I didn’t know, the one who had earned the respect of this club and lived in this life.

  This was the Damian I wanted to know. Ten years was a long time and who we had been then was not who we were now.

  But I did need some answers first. I needed to know what happened to him, why he had avoided us, me, like the plague, and what truly happened to Will over there.

  I wanted to know if he had ever healed from it, if he could remember how my brother said his name or carried on with him during one of their nights out.

  I wanted to know if he still missed him on occasion.

  After what seemed like an hour or two, Damian finally broke off from the crowd, joining me on the fringes of the party. “Come on,” he said, grabbing my hand.

  Wordlessly I followed him to my room, and once we were both inside, he shut the door behind us, throwing the lock for good measure.

  “Don’t you have to debrief Rex?” I asked lightly, nervous we were in this room together again.

  He turned, his eyes on me. “Yeah I do but it can wait.”

  I swallowed. “Um okay. Do you want to take a shower then? You can use my bathroom and hide out here if you want.”

  He started toward me. “Yeah I do.”

  So that was what this was about. Trying not to look disappointed, I reached over and got him a towel from the pile of laundry, holding it out. “Here, you can use this.”

  He stopped in front of me, his jaw clenched. “I have to show you something, Elisa. I don’t want to, but I feel, well hell, I’m just gonna do it.”

  Before I knew it, Damian was pulling his shirt over his head, throwing it to the floor.

  I let my eyes travel down from his broad shoulders to his torso, seeing the hard ripples of his abdomen before they disappeared into the waistband of his jeans. But as I looked over his arms, I realized what he was talking about.

  Oh God.

  Silently, I closed the distance between us, reaching out with a shaky hand to touch the scarred skin on his bicep. “What happened?”

  He drew in a breath. “Will and I were on a mission to rescue these kids who had been seen in an abandoned village on the outskirts of our post. We had a chopper fly us in since there were kids involved and your damn brother wanted to be the hero, rappelling down and leaving me in the chopper.”

  “That sounds like him,” I said softly, my heart breaking at the sight of his scarred arms.

  Damian chuckled, not flinching as I explored his scars. “He rounded them all up, even giving out those suckers you sent to them as we loaded them into the chopper. They were cute kids, all scared and hungry, except this last one, one Will had to pick up and put in there. He was nervous and we just chalked it up to riding in a chopper.” He then drew in a breath. “None of us saw it coming.”

  I was afraid to ask. “What?”

  “There was another kid,” Damian started out, his voice low as my fingers reached his wrists, where the scar tissue ended. “I saw him, so I jumped out and ran to get him. Just as I was handing him up to Will, he detonated his vest.”

  “Oh God,” I whispered, realizing he was telling me how my brother died and how he got these scars.

  Damian hung his head. “I was blown back by the explosion, my arms catching the worst. The chopper was a total loss.”

  I couldn’t even begin to imagine what he must have seen, how it must have felt to have this happen to him. Sliding my hands up his scarred arms, I wrapped my own around his neck. “I hope you don’t blame yourself.”

  He still didn’t meet my eyes. “Of course I fucking blame myself. I should have noticed the vest under his clothes. I shouldn’t have gone after him. Something was up and we, I, didn’t catch on until it was too fucking late.”

  “Damian,” I whispered, touching my forehead to his. “It’s not your fault. You thought you were doing something heroic and so did Will. You can’t help what happened at all.”

  He shuddered and I pulled him against me, relieved when he wrapped his arms around me a
nd buried his face in my shoulder. All my life I had imagined a moment that would change my very existence in life.

  This was that moment.

  We stayed like that for a while, standing in the middle of that bedroom and just holding each other, both wrapped up in what we had learned. For me, I was glad I’d finally learned how Will died. It was the way he would have wanted to go out, helping those he thought were innocents in this war. In his final moments, I imagined the elation of finally getting all the kids to safety and how they were going to celebrate once they were back at their post.

  And for Damian. Now I understood why he hadn’t come around. I would have questioned his injuries, pressuring him until he told me what had happened to Will. The whole time he was living in his own tortured world, blaming himself for that loss and carrying this secret to torture himself for ten years.

  Ten years.

  “I shouldn’t be doing this.”

  His soft words broke me out of my thoughts, and I pulled back, forcing him to meet my gaze. “Doing what?”

  “This,” he repeated, though he made no move to release me. “Will would fucking kill me right now.”

  “For holding his sister?” I inquired. “Or for standing here shirtless?”

  “No,” he said. “For this.”

  I was barely able to take a breath before his mouth crashed on mine. I froze as his lips explored mine, not sure what to do.

  Damian was kissing me like his life depended on it.

  Something unfurled in me, something that had been dormant for ten years, and I kissed him back, letting it all go. I’d wanted this for years. This was what we had been fighting for, for Will’s sake and our own grief.

  He growled low in his throat and I stumbled back, causing us both to fall onto the bed, Damian on top of me. It broke our kiss and I felt the disconnect immediately.

  I didn’t want this to end. When Damian tried to rise, I clung to him. “Please, don’t leave.”

  He stared down at me, his expression conflicted. “I’m not the man I was ten years ago, Elisa. I’m a shitty person who’s done a lot of shitty things in his life.”

  “And I am not the girl you left,” I fought back, tears threatening to leak from my eyes. “Neither of us are the people we used to be, but we are exactly what we need to be right now, and right now, we need to be together.”

  His hand came up and pushed my hair out of my face. “You’re so fucking beautiful.”

  I flushed. “Can I ask you a question?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Where’d you get that cap from?”

  He chuckled, a light appearing his eyes that hadn’t been there before. “I knew you would pick up on that.”

  I smiled. “Where did you get it, Damian?”

  “It’s mine,” he blurted out. “I bought it after I got back. I thought it would… shit. I sound like a damn sissy saying this, that it would keep that connection between us.”

  It was the singular sweetest thing I had ever heard. “You liked me. Back then I mean.”

  “I shouldn’t have,” he answered, shifting until we lay side by side, facing each other. “I really tried not to, but I think I was hooked the day you graduated high school.”

  Surprised, I eyed him. “Why, because I was legal?”

  “No,” he answered, a gleam in his eye. “Because you came home wearing that tight white number and I realized you weren’t Will’s little sister anymore.”

  I reached up, cupping his rough, stubbled cheek with my hand. “I wish you would have said something. I thought I was wasting my time.”

  “I was going away,” he said roughly, leaning into my touch. “I didn’t want to trap you like that.”

  “What about now?” I asked bravely, my heart pounding in my ears.

  “Now all I want to do is trap you between my body and this bed.”

  That was music to my ears. “What are you waiting for?”

  He made a sound and rolled on top of me, kissing me until I was breathless with anticipation. His hand found the hem of my shirt and pulled it up and over my head, groaning as he saw my lacy bra. “God, you’re beautiful.”

  “So are you,” I answered, my hands roaming over his bare chest. I didn’t care about his scars. They were a part of him, a part of the net that pulled us together.

  l leaned up and pressed my lips to where they started on his shoulder.

  “Elisa,” he said in a near whisper. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m kissing you,” I said against his skin.

  “That you are,” he answered, pushing me back down on the bed. “But you are killing me as well.” Taking my hand, Damian pressed it against his hard cock straining against his jeans. “That’s what you are doing to me.”

  Oh my. Damian wanted me as much as I wanted him.

  Maybe even a little more.

  Damian climbed off the bed and removed the rest of his clothing, his cock jutting out from his magnificent body.

  I didn’t want to let that go. Kneeling on the bed, I grabbed it lightly and pressed my lips to the bulging head.

  “Shit, no, Elisa,” Damian began, his hands going into my hair.

  I didn’t let him pull back, grabbing his hip with my other hand as I worked, exploring the length of him as I grew wetter myself. This was crazy, what was happening between us, but I wasn’t about to stop.

  Finally, Damian groaned and gently removed me from him, forcing me to look at him. “You’re killing me, sunshine. I want your fucking clothes off, now.”

  I stood and slid my jeans down over my legs, stripping myself until I was standing naked before him. “Done. Now what?”

  His wolfish grin sent my heart racing. “Now I feast.”

  My legs trembled as Damian knelt before me and his tongue touched me for the first time, nearly making me buckle to the floor as he found my clit. It was torture, sheer beautiful torture.

  Over and over his tongue stroked my hard clit, bringing me to the brink of insanity before I let go, crying out when my orgasm overtook my body.

  Damian stood and picked me up, pushing me against the wall before he poised himself to enter me, his eyes on me. “This changes everything,” he said. “You understand that, right?”

  Everything changed the day I walked into this club. “Take me, Damian.”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  Damian pushed into me and I groaned, letting him fill me to the core. He buried his face in my neck and we moved against the wall, slow at first but faster as I reached my next earth-shattering orgasm.

  The party raged on the other side of the wall, but I didn’t care, pressing my lips to his shoulder as he took me higher even, making me forget about the massacre or… maybe even my own name.

  This was all that mattered. “Let go,” I whispered against his skin. “Just let go, Damian.”

  When he did, it was like a balm to both our bruised souls.

  Chapter 10

  Damian

  I lay next to Elisa, my skin cooling in the darkness. I knew she wasn’t asleep and as much as I didn’t want to do it, I had to get up and update Chains on what happened.

  Even though I wanted to stay like this forever. She had unmanned me, made me feel like I could finally let go of Will’s death and the past.

  Maybe this was what I needed all along.

  Elisa stirred next to me and I pulled her tighter against my side, not wanting to lose this feeling just yet. There was ugliness outside, ugliness I had caused, and one day I was going to have to pay for it.

  “You have to go.”

  It wasn’t a question. “Yeah, I do.”

  Elisa rolled on top of me, straddling my chest. “Can I entice you to stay?”

  I grinned, reaching up to caress her hips with my hands. “As much as I want to say yes, I’ve delayed this long enough. I have to give report and figure out what’s next.”

  Her smile faded. “You aren’t going to shut me out now, are you?”

  “No,” I answered, tho
ugh I wasn’t so sure I could keep that promise to her in the long run. “This is dangerous shit, Elisa. What we did, it’s changed everything.” I was already protective of her, but now that I had what I’d been searching for, I wasn’t about to lose it.

  “I know,” she sighed. “I just don’t want you to go all ultra-possessive on me. I’ve been taking care of myself for ten years and I plan to continue to do so.”

  “Yes ma’am,” I answered, rolling her back over to the bed. She watched as I got up, searching for my clothes on the floor and not caring that she was eyeing my scars. For years I had hidden them, wanting to keep people from making me relive that moment over and over again. I didn’t remember much about it, but Will’s grinning face right before that bomb went off was as clear as day. The experts had said I must have already handed the kid off because if I hadn’t, my arms would have been blown off. But no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t piece that part back together in my mind.