Why (Stalker Series Book 2)

by Megan Mitcham

  “So help me God, it’s not a threat. I’ll see you in jail before I see you get yourself killed.”

  “I’m not—”

  His fists connected with the steering wheel, jerking her attention from the road. “Look around you. Goddammit. Look in the mirror!” He didn’t look at her. His gaze, his reflexes were intent on the cars around them and the streets he zipped past.

  “If I hadn’t found you …” His head shook. “If Douglas hadn’t called me … If Marlis hadn’t known you were planning to come down here, you’d be dead or dying on a fucking sidewalk.” The tops of his thick knuckles turned white from his grip on the wheel.

  “You live in a bubble of fancy restaurants and cushy condos where people don’t go hungry, where people don’t sell themselves for a few dollars, where law and order rule. Well, princess, Rubia Sanchez is entrenched with TMG.” The muscles in his jaw flexed, sharpening his profile. “Any one of the two hundred plus gang members that live on these blocks could have turned that courtyard into a war zone neither of us would have escaped. Do you understand that? Badges. Law. They mean nothing good to those kinds of people.”

  The cramps started in Gen’s back. They cinched so tightly that they straightened her and pinned her to the seat. Her arms had been firmly wrapped around her middle. Now they seized. Everything inside her went rigid, including her breaths. They wheezed slowly through her swollen esophagus.

  “Shit,” Owen gruffed.

  Over half a dozen blocks from the Sanchez’s building, he whipped the car into a loading zone next to a corner market.

  “It’s the crash. Adrenaline flooded your body. It helped you stay alive, but now it’s gone. This is the aftermath. Part of it.” He reached into the back.

  Gen sat helplessly pinned to the spot with zero control over her muscles. Some quivered while others turned to stone.

  “Here.” Owen pulled a thick leather jacket from the back seat. “It’ll help a little, but mostly you just have to ride it out. Like a hangover.”

  He wrapped the jacket around her torso and tucked the corners between her shoulders and the seat. Next, he grabbed the seat belt, secured it in the buckle, and pulled it taut across her chest as though she were a helpless child. She was helpless, and hopeless, and too tired to care about or compute anything.

  Eighteen

  Thin white ribbons split and swirled, danced and faded in the black marble of the fireplace. It hypnotized her and had for the past ten minutes or so. She’d seen the carved rock a thousand times or more, daily for the past six years, but it had never entranced her like it did now. The designs were complex and almost rhythmic. As though nature knew what the hell it was doing.

  A year ago, so had she.

  At least, that was what she’d thought.

  Gen’s gaze lifted to the stark white wall above the fireplace. It was the most prominent wall in her apartment. The mantle and the space above the fireplace were the galleries, the front windows into peoples’ lives, but hers was void. There were no pictures of family or friends. Not even an overpriced piece of artwork that she identified with filled the space. It was empty.

  She was empty.

  “You don’t have much.” Owen read her mind while foraging in her kitchen. He headed toward her with a dishrag and a bag of frozen broccoli from a failed attempt at that keto bullshit. The vegetables had to have freezer burn or be petrified by now. “But this should work.”

  Would it?

  It had before, but now it was exposed and raw. Everything was electrified, and every movement, every thought amplified the deficits in her life. She was rich in career. Rich in material. Rich in friends. After all, they’d saved her today as much as Owen had. But her ability to trust was third-world poor. And had been for a long time. Any bit of it she’d gained through the years shattered the moment she’d begun suspecting Perry killed his family.

  Owen crouched in front of her and peered into her eyes as though looking for her retinas or retinal detachment.

  “I salvaged enough coffee from a holiday tin in the back of the freezer that we might get you a full mug.” One corner of his mouth kicked up. “No promises on the taste.”

  He wrapped the wet rag around the vegetables and slowly placed it on her right cheek. Contact amplified the throb, but it didn’t rouse her to any movement or emotion. Since the crash, as he’d called it, she’d been near catatonic, relying on this man for everything from the use of her feet to entry into her own apartment.

  She should be indignant with herself for relying on him, but that took too much effort. Holding her head up was almost too much. He wouldn’t let her sleep, not for hours, he’d said.

  “The pain will get worse over the next minute, but it’ll numb soon, and the cold will keep it from swelling.” He grabbed her hand, shifted her elbow onto the armrest, and wedged her hand against the makeshift icepack. “Hold that. I need to examine your skull.”

  “Are you a doctor or something?”

  Why couldn’t the first full sentence she’d uttered since he’d saved her ass have been something like Thank you so much, Detective Graham. I owe you my life, and that scares the shit out of me?

  “Or something.” His chuckle incited a small ember of warmth in her bones. He stood. Thick thighs pulled the fabric of his loose cut jeans taut. He rounded the end of the couch, and his quiet footfalls stopped behind her. Anticipation pulled her from the post-fight haze, and her heartbeat ticked up a notch. His fingers eased slowly, gently over the edge of her hairline.

  “That laughter says there’s a story.”

  “Several hundred, really.” He pulled the bobby pins from her lopsided updo and unwound the spiral holder.

  When he eased the thick mass onto her shoulder, she held her breath to keep from screaming. Not that her voice could effectively execute the sound.

  “She went for the hair?”

  “Yes,” she croaked.

  The breath he exhaled was heavy and vengeful. She’d never before heard it from him.

  “I’ve never wanted to deck a woman until today.”

  “Really? I usually elicit that response. We’ve had more than a handful of conversations.” Slowly, she was beginning to feel one with her body, her battered body. Focusing on Owen dulled the acuteness of the pain.

  “You’re starting to get your feet under you again.” He laughed. “I’m glad.”

  His fingers sifted through her hair and over her scalp. It burned like fire at her roots.

  “Tell me one of those stories,” she hissed.

  “Okay.” His boot tapped on the floor for a beat. “So it’s my first real deployment. Norway doesn’t count. I was a highly trained Navy Corpsman, dealing with sprained ankles and mild frostbite from winter training. But Syria, that was a hot zone with live rounds buzzing past your head on a good day. On a bad day, they found their target. And that’s when I went to work.”

  Gen’s mouth fell open in full disregard of the cut on her inner cheek.

  “We’d been there five months. We were all ready to go home. We were talking about the first meal back Stateside. The first, well, everything Stateside that we’ve been missing for so long it hurt.”

  Her scalp hurt, but Owen’s fingers in her hair and the heat they emitted eased the ache.

  “The night before a multi-pronged operation, probably the biggest and most dangerous one we’d all been a part of, the platoon commander was feeling exceptionally nostalgic. He bribed one of the guys from the mess hall to cook him up a Syrian version of a chili dog.”

  “Disgusting.”

  “Exactly.” Owen’s thumb rubbed over the back of her skull. The soreness faded there, and she was able to enjoy his touch more. A little too much more. Her eyes closed, and the sound of his voice lulled her.

  “A few hours later, go-time rolls around. The guys are chomping on gum as though it were their lifeline. They’re tapping and singing their favorite tunes as if it’ll ward off the hell about to unleash around them. I’m ready with my
pack of supplies, knowing it won’t be enough to save everyone. And the commander is nowhere to be found.” His touch trailed down her neck. It found a sore spot on her left shoulder.

  “We can’t go without him. So I go looking. The moment I enter his barracks, I smell it.”

  “What?”

  “Shit. I mean, we lived in the middle of the desert with concrete walls around us that kept out insurgents but also the wind. I’d smelled it before. I’d smelled death, and it had nothing on this guy. The chili dog did such a number on him; it was on his bed and the floor.”

  “Disgusting.”

  “Beyond.” He flattened his hand on her back. “Sit up for me.” She repositioned, and his fingers studied the topography of her shoulders and spine. He hit on a spot at the center of her back, near the bottom.

  “Oh, gah.” She nearly jumped off the seat. It was reassuring to know her body was back under her control.

  “That’s going to bruise.” His touch eased. “Do you have any Epsom salt?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’ll need it.” He continued his search. “So I have to stabilize his condition, find another officer, and relay the message that we’re without command. By the time we’re ready to move out, we get a cease and desist order from higher-up.”

  Owen lightly touched her shoulder. “You can sit back.”

  When she did, he returned to his squatted position in front of her.

  “So?” she urged.

  “Contusions and possibly a bone bruise on your cheekbone. You’ll hurt like hell for the next couple of days, but with some over-the-counter meds, you’ll function like normal.”

  She breathed him in and reveled in his masculine scent that had nothing to do with cologne and everything to do with action and pheromones. “I didn’t mean me. I meant, what happened to the mission.”

  “Oh.” He leaned forward, dropping to his knees. His abdomen brushed the outside of her thigh.

  Gen’s breath caught between her open lips. Her pulse revved, beating hard and insistently between her legs. Just like that, she forgot the ass kicking she’d sustained. Her breasts felt heavy, eager. And at the same time, heat filled her cheeks embarrassed at her reaction. A first. She held completely still.

  He reached behind her, pulled the light pink throw from the back of the couch, and draped it over her shoulders.

  “Come to find out, the building we were supposed to be clearing exploded exactly two minutes after we would have all been inside. It was false intel. A setup.” He licked his lips. Nice lips. Lips that mesmerized. “They were able to find the leak and the cell that perpetrated the bombing.”

  “Incredible.” It was, but so was he, and her reaction to him. Incredibly baffling.

  She wielded her body as a weapon. She used men for her own pleasure with little regard for anyone involved, herself included. When she needed it most, her confidence fled the scene. Another hit and run with which she couldn’t deal.

  “Yeah, incredible.” Owen nodded. “The moral of the story. Sometimes life hands you shit. Dealing with it can save your ass.”

  A laugh erupted from her throat, surprising her. She eyed him. “That didn’t really happen.”

  “It did.” He placed his hand over his heart and lifted the other in the air. “I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me.”

  So help her. Owen Graham’s kind eyes, his full heart, and his tender smile loosened something inside her long hidden by invisible scars.

  Gen stared at him in amazement. He was all about helping people, his own safety be damned. “You know about the aftermath.” When he’d spoken about it in his car, she hadn’t really paid attention.

  “I do.”

  “What’s the other part of the aftermath?”

  “It’s different for different people. It all sucks.” His wide shoulders bobbed. “It could be seeing your attacker when they aren’t there. Like on a subway car. Could be feeling the punches steal your breath in the middle of a business meeting as though the attack is happening all over again. There’s the super fun, unexplainable sense of dread that hits you out of nowhere for no apparent reason.”

  “Super.” She stared at the vacant space above the mantle. Through the years, she’d experienced the inexplicable feeling of dread, only she knew exactly from where it sprung. Now she got to add death blows and the maniacal face of Rubia Sanchez. Freaking fabulous.

  “Genevieve?”

  “Huh?” She found the most beautiful, kind electric blue gaze searching her own.

  Warmth radiating from his hand touched her cheek a second before his rough fingers glided across her skin. They slipped into her hair, and his palm cupped her face. His other hand slid along her jawline under the ice pack and held her neck. He tilted her chin up ever so gently.

  “You have to let it go.”

  Defeat would have kicked her into the cushion was he not holding on. She knew he was right, had known it since she was flat on her back staring up at the sky. Fearing for her own life crystallized that message. Still, she didn’t want to hear it, much less admit it.

  Her eyes closed. She shook her head. The frozen vegetables wobbled. The packaging crunched.

  “Yes.”

  A tear slipped from her lashes.

  Owen slanted her head. Hot skin met the moisture at her cheek. His lips kissed it away, then slowly grazed up to her hairline. He placed another kiss on her temple.

  Gen clutched her eyes tighter, soaking in the contact, savoring it. She was scared to open her eyes, afraid it might flit away, a forgotten dream.

  “Look at me, Genevieve.”

  She drew a deep breath, swallowed, and looked into his devastating eyes. Shards of navy and a light gray splintered the blue spheres. Her tear glistened on his lips for a moment before he scraped it into his mouth with his teeth.

  “Please, let it go.”

  Genevieve grabbed his forearm with her free hand, ready to pull it away and flee. Instead, she held firm and pulled him closer. “Even if he killed them?”

  He exhaled. The heat of his breath bathed her chest. His lids closed for only a second before his gaze was back on her and as intense as ever. “Even if.”

  “You’re the one who wanted him behind bars first.”

  “That hasn’t changed, but …” His gaze centered on hers for several beats and then dropped to her mouth. “What’s done is done. It’s not worth you getting hurt.”

  Owen leaned in excruciatingly slowly, giving her every opportunity to bail. Anticipation batted her heart clean out of her chest.

  Home run.

  She parted her lips and pulled him to within an inch of her face. Her lids lowered.

  He pressed his mouth to hers in a tender embrace. The expression was almost chaste. Not almost. It was … for a moment, and then his teeth glided across her bottom lip before pulling it into his mouth. His tongue skimmed the edge, revving her pulse. He released the bite, but his tongue traced her upper lip, coaxing her mouth to open wider.

  Eagerly, she obliged.

  His grip firmed and pulled her close.

  Gen’s hand slid up his bicep, grappling for more.

  Owen’s tongue delved into her mouth. Hers greeted it in an illicit mating dance she knew all too well. Their tongues coiled and undulated while their mouths battled. An animalistic grumble rattled in his chest. He pulled the ice pack from her cheek, freeing her other hand. It sought heat and found it in a handful of Owen’s lats. He shifted, rising higher and pressing her back into the couch. Primally, her legs spread, preparing to wrap around his ass and pull him near.

  The next instant, Owen retreated. Suddenly, there was a gap between them. He grabbed her hands and pulled them from his body. He held them together in front of him. His massive hands dwarfed her own.

  Gen’s chest rose and fell as though she’d just run a marathon. Only the finish line was unattainable.

  “I’m sorry,” he gasped.

  “Sorry?” S
he rested her head on the back of the couch and stared up at him. “Sorry you started, or sorry you stopped?”

  “Yes. I mean, no.” His gaze narrowed, and his mouth scrunched. “Christ, Genevieve. I tasted blood. I don’t want to hurt you.”

  Her laughter was one of relief and amazement.

  “Contrary to what you think, a kiss isn’t going to break me.” She slipped her hands from his grip and straightened.

  “No, but it might break me.” He winked and stood. “I’m going to draw you a bath. Put the veggies back until it’s ready.”

  “If I had all my faculties about me, I’d tell you to fuck off.” She glared.

  “If you had all your faculties about you, we’d be fucking off, and on, for the next twelve hours.” There wasn’t a smile or brow waggle to tamp the declaration.

  “Well, damn.”

  “Tell me about it.” He pointed at the veggies on the couch. “On your cheek.”

  She stuck her tongue out at him but did as he demanded. And good Lord, she’d like to do more, much more.

  Nineteen

  If the bath was supposed to help, it hadn’t. While she’d reclined in the warm, salted water, she’d frothed, replaying the day’s events. The pains in her back had turned to pure agony. Dressed in an oversized sweater and cotton pants with no patience for even a scrap of product on her body, Gen shoved out of the bathroom ready to fight. Only, Owen wasn’t in the living room. It was empty. As was the bedroom.

  She hadn’t known what to expect after that kiss and retreat, but a goodbye would've been—

  A rattle to her right pulled her gaze toward the kitchen. The edge of a gold breakfast tray, which she used mostly for working in bed, peeked around the corner. Owen carried the tray waiter style. On it sat a full mug of coffee, a bowl of soup, and a freshly pressed panini.

  “Where’d you get all that?” Gen’s mouth watered. Ten minutes ago, she’d thought about puking. Now she wanted to sit and scarf. The food. The man. All of it.

  “Not from your kitchen, that’s for sure.” He grabbed her hand, twirled her toward the bedroom, and dragged her behind him. The covers had been pulled back. Her phone sat beside her bed, next to a bottle of over-the-counter pain meds and a glass of water, all lit by her bedside lamp. “In you go.” His grip gently propelled her in the direction of pure comfort.