by Elise Faber
She grinned, shrugged. “What do you think?”
I groaned. “Good God, you’re going to be the death of me.”
Olive spun so fast that I hardly processed the movement, and it wasn’t until my back was against the wall, the air squeezed out of my lungs in an oof that I fully realized she’d moved. “Don’t say that,” she said, that tray clattering to the floor, the supplies fanning out in all directions. Her hands came to my shoulders. “Don’t you dare say that. I cannot envision a world without you in it.” A shuddering breath, her lips coming to mine. “You’re mine, Linc. You became mine the moment you saved my life. You stayed mine when you took care of me. You’re my family now, baby, and I don’t want to ever imagine a world where you are not part of mine.”
“Baby,” I whispered.
“I was scared,” she said. “But I knew you were going to come. I knew the teams would come. I also knew that I just needed one opportunity, and you guys would figure out how to get me out.”
I rested my hand on the side of her neck. “You were right.” My forehead came to hers. “We also owe Tom for the assist.”
She smiled. “Sometimes routine is good.”
“Say that to him.”
Her head lifted, brows drawing together. “Why?”
“That’ll be like porn to him,” I said with a straight face. For the moment, anyway. Then she glared and I lost it, holding her to me and laughing into her shoulder.
She swatted at my chest, pushed me back. “You’re terrible.”
“Maybe.” A beat. “But you’re stuck with that terrible.”
“Heaven help me.” But her tone was light and as she bent to pick up the dropped supplies, I crouched to help her. Then we started walking back to my room again.
“Linc?” she asked as we approached the door. Her teeth were nibbling into her bottom lip, concern creeping back into those pretty blue eyes.
I smiled. I knew she was going to circle back to that list of concerns from earlier. “Yes, he is still out there, but you know as well as I do that none of us will stop looking for him. Base security has been tearing out systems and going back to square one, with increased foot patrols instead of relying on the camera, pins, and cards Jack put in place.” I tucked her hair behind her ear. “And we can’t worry if other agents turned. This is our family. It needs to be our safe place, and we can’t start accusing people, especially when it seems like the majority of them are innocent.”
“Linc—”
I cupped her jaw. “We’ll keep our eyes peeled, of course. We’ll track down anyone with a connection to Jack, ferret out any rot at KTS, but—”
“Linc.”
I stopped, glanced down. “What, baby?”
She gave me a smile that took my breath away. “I was just going to say, I love you.”
Chapter Twenty-One
KTS Satellite Base
Western Georgia
03:17hrs
Olive
The words had barely tumbled from my lips before Linc had me through the door to his room, the tray of supplies landing somewhere with a clatter, the heavy panel slamming shut.
Then his lips were on mine.
“You love me?” he asked after a long moment, his fingers having drifted to my waist and gripping me tight.
I was panting, my lips tingling, my thighs trembling. “You knew that already.”
Dark gray eyes on mine, a mouth a hairsbreadth away. “Say it again.”
“Why?”
He scooped me up, nipped my bottom lip. “Sass. Always fucking sass.”
I laughed, clung to his shoulders as he carried me across the room and dumped me on the bed. “You love the sass.”
“I love you.”
My fingers found his jaw, the bristles on his skin the sweetest abrasion. “I love you, Lincoln MacFayden.”
He inhaled sharply, his eyes going the slightest bit damp, and then he held my face in his hands and stared down at me. I could feel his love, actually feel it, as though it were stroking my skin, sinking into my body, being absorbed into my cells, my heart. And for a long moment, we stared at each other, just stared in a way that should have been creepy, but instead was . . . as though we were sharing every single thought in our minds, every feeling in our hearts.
I placed my hand over his chest, felt his heart thundering beneath it. “I love you,” I said again, “but you’re still not getting out of me cleaning those wounds.”
A quirk of his lips.
Then he tolerated me cleaning him up.
Mostly because it involved undressing him.
First a shower, the two of us squeezed into the tiny stall, the steam gathering around our bodies, his erection hard and pressed to my spine as he ran soap over my body and gently shampooed my hair, his touch a bare feather of a stroke when he found the lump on the back of my head from Jack striking me, the plethora of bruises and abrasions from the crash and my flee through the woods.
“Your wrists,” he murmured, and I glanced down to see the bright red marks. I’d cleaned them earlier, same as Linc had scrubbed out the cuts on his hands and arms before we’d assisted Lily with the surgery on Hannah’s leg.
We hadn’t needed to be there. Lily certainly was capable enough to complete the procedure with assistance from one of the other team’s doctors and the nursing staff.
But it hadn’t even crossed my mind to not be there.
Get clean, keep her safe, make sure the surgery went well.
Make certain she was out of the woods, and then we could rest.
It was our way.
“It’s nothing,” I said, slipping my hands from his grip and turning to face him. “They don’t hurt.”
He snagged them again, lifted them to his mouth, gently pressing kisses to the abraded skin. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there.”
I froze. “What the hell are you talking about?”
Regret filled his gray eyes, darkening them until they resembled storm clouds. “I shouldn’t have left you alone.” He shook his head. “If I’d been there—”
I placed a finger over his lips. “What are you doing right now? This wasn’t your fault in any way, baby.” But that regret didn’t fade, and I knew it wouldn’t fade with just one conversation. I’d seen it often enough with those I’d cared for over the years. Guilt for not being in the right place at the right time. Guilt for surviving. Guilt for not being able to stop something they couldn’t predict.
And I saw it now in Linc’s gaze.
I saw it in the way he gently kissed my finger then the marks on my wrists again. In the way he held me close, cradled against his chest, hands moving slowly up and down my back.
I knew it would take time for that wound to heal, that it would persist much longer than those on his body.
“You didn’t know Jack was involved, honey,” I whispered. “None of us did.”
“I should—” He broke off, shook his head. “It doesn’t matter what the shoulds are.” A sigh. “No one saw it, and now he’s dead.”
Resting my head against his chest, I whispered, “Yes, he is.” I hugged him. “I’m sorry. I know you two were friends.”
He sighed. “I trusted him with my back.”
The anguish in that statement made my heart squeeze, my stomach coil itself into knots. “I know you did.”
I wanted to find other words to say something else, to find a way to make that pain go away. But there was nothing I could say to make that happen. We’d all been betrayed, Linc and his team doubly so since they’d all worked so closely together. There would be hurt and anger, just like we had felt when Daniel had first betrayed us. I wasn’t on Laila’s team then, but the shadow of what he’d done—what he was still doing—hung heavy like a lodestone.
“I wanted to kill him,” he whispered, his arms coming around me, holding me tight. “When I found out it was him, when we knew he was the one who’d taken you. I was prepared to fucking end him.”
I waited, and when no more words c
ame, I said, “But he was still your friend.”
He nodded, his chin rubbing along the uninjured side of my head, the bristles catching in my hair. “Yeah, Pop. He was.”
My arms squeezed tighter, and I just held him, knowing there wasn’t anything else I could say, nothing I could do to take the pain away.
Except to be there.
Because he hadn’t had that before.
Because his ex hadn’t given him that.
Because I could.
We stayed like that under the stream until I felt goose bumps prickle on his skin and realized that I was the one beneath the water and Linc was hardly getting a trickle.
Taking care of me.
Again.
And it’s funny, but I’d been on my own for so long that I hadn’t ever expected to love the feeling of someone looking out for me—not just in the field like my team did, not like a friend or family member like Laila and company obviously did. But like a man, as someone who loved me in a non-platonic way.
Thinking of what I might need before I needed it.
Caring that I was comfortable and warm and happy.
I wasn’t trying to say my friends didn’t look out for me.
It was just . . . the way that Linc did it was completely different. He made me feel good, and I knew I’d do anything in my power to make him feel the same way. Which was why I spun us around, why I washed his hair and soaped his body. Why, when I was finished with that, I turned off the water and wrapped him in a towel before grabbing one for myself.
“Baby,” he began, trying to hand it to me, to dry my hair.
“Let me,” I whispered. “Let me.”
He froze. Then he nodded and held still as I ran a towel through his hair, as I caught the water droplets on his back, his chest, his legs, and when he returned the favor, I held equally still as he wiped the remnants of our shower from my skin.
Once we were dry, I led him to the bed, and as I bandaged the worst of the cuts and burns, we talked about the day, about how Linc had discovered I was missing, had seen my room torn apart—something I hadn’t been conscious for, but knowing that Jack had probably been looking for the un-doctored report, the list I’d been making (and crossing off) of suspects until I’d narrowed it down to one.
To Jack.
Linc told me how the team had come together, how Jack had joined the search late—probably hiding my body, though I did wonder how he managed to get me out without being seen.
“He must have had help getting me off property,” I murmured.
“It’s possible, but I don’t think so,” Linc said. “At least not that explicitly. We gave him the opportunity to take you out. We called the alert, and everyone gathered in the mess for search assignments. We practically gave him a clear path to get you out.” A sigh. “I remember seeing him come in with wet hair, saying he’d come late because he’d been in the shower and missed the alert. But now . . .”
“It was probably cover,” I agreed.
He nodded, then explained how Jack had been given my laptop—and I supposed he had taken the opportunity to delete what I’d been looking at—then how Tom had come to them, how they’d finally made the connection, and how they’d gone to confront Jack at his lab.
This was where I got really freaked out.
Because Linc told me about the bomb in the lab. “Was anyone hurt?”
He shook his head, dutifully lifted one arm when I tugged at it so I could better see the bruise blooming on his ribs, and I realized the abrasions and cuts and weren’t from the confrontation and explosion in the road.
“No,” he said. “I took the brunt of the blast—or I should say,” he quickly added when concern had my stomach twisting and probably bled over to my face, “the door took most of it. Jack’s lab is trashed, though. Water damage and extinguisher powder everywhere. And what isn’t under one of those two substances, is burned beyond recognition.”
I checked his pupils. “Did anyone evaluate you for a concussion?” I asked, tilted his head from side to side, palpating and searching for any injuries I might have missed. “Did you hit your head?”
Shit. Two explosions in one day. That wasn’t good for anyone’s brain, especially since he’d been so close to both of them—
“Baby.” He snagged my arms.
“What?” I asked, breaking his hold and continuing my search. That explained the bruising on his side, but what about his back? The skin there was newly healed and could be easily damaged, especially with being subjected to two explosions—
“Pop.”
I froze, glanced down at his face, the sharp tone breaking through my fussing. “What?”
“If you keep fretting over today, keep running your hands over my body—”
“What?” I asked with narrowed eyes. “You’ll do what?”
One dark brow rose. “If you keep worrying and touching me”—his hand skated up my side . . . my naked side, and I realized my towel had fallen open—“I’m not going to be responsible for my actions.” His fingers drifted forward, running back and forth on the sensitive skin beneath my breasts. “And yes, love, before you ask again, Lily checked me right after the explosion in the lab.” His gray eyes found mine. “I’m fine.” Those fingers still moving. “In fact, I find that I’m great.”
My lips twitched. “What’s it with you and towels?”
“Me and taking off towels?” He waggled his brows. “The last time we were in this situation, I believe it was your fault.”
An outraged gasp on my lips. “My fault? You seem to be the one with your hand on my breast.”
He glanced down, smirked. “Huh. How’d that happen?”
I sighed but bent to rest my forehead against his. “We’re going to be okay, aren’t we?”
His hand cupped my cheek. “Yeah, Pop, we are.”
I thought so, too.
Which was why I shelved the rest of the conversation, knowing that while we needed to have it at some point, that we also didn’t need to rehash it all tonight. We had time, and we had each other.
“You know,” I whispered, “you never did take me on that date.”
“You know,” he whispered back, “I had a whole plan for how to tell you I love you while on it.”
“Mmm,” I murmured, my lips moving closer to his, brushing his with my next words. “Did it involve flowers and candles and chocolates?”
His eyes sparked with humor. “It involved you and those see-through sweats.” He lifted his head to murmur in my ear. “And the new set of underwear I bought you.”
I laughed.
He didn’t.
“Oh my God.” My brows rose as I sat back on my heels. “You’re not serious.”
He grinned, shrugged.
“Oh my God. You are serious.” I swatted at his arm. “Linc, tell me you didn’t buy me underwear.”
“Isn’t that what boyfriends do? Buy their girlfriends nice things?”
I couldn’t deny that was sweet. Except for the humor dancing across his expression. That made me suspicious. “Maybe.”
His grin widened.
“So, why am I suddenly scared?”
Another shrug.
“Linc,” I warned.
He curled up, capturing my mouth in a kiss that sent my pulse skittering, heat skating down my spine, my thighs clenching around his waist, the strip of cotton of his towel the only barrier between us. Then he set me to the side, pushed up from the bed, and crossed to the closet. His towel dropped to the floor, and I wholly enjoyed the view when he didn’t bother picking it up.
God, the man’s ass was just bitable.
“Stop staring,” he tossed over his shoulder.
“Not a chance,” I tossed back.
And then he was back, holding a small, wrapped box, pink floral paper topped by a silver bow.
I lifted a brow.
“Don’t try to tell me it’s too girly,” he said, setting it on my lap and kissing my throat. “A girl who wears lace beneath co
mbat fatigues isn’t worried about someone thinking she’s too girly.”
“For the record,” I said, carefully removing the bow. “I don’t wear lace under my combat fatigues.” I glanced up, met his eyes. “Cotton all the way, baby, because I’m not a fan of chafing.”
He chuckled. “Okay, lace under sweatpants then.”
I nodded. “That I’ll take.”
Then I tore the paper from the box, setting it next to the bow, and finally, I tugged off the lid to reveal what was inside.
And then I somehow fell in love with him even more.
“Seriously?” I snapped.
But I wasn’t mad, or at least not mad at anything other than the fact that this man was going to make me cry. Because inside the box were four pairs of underwear. Which, I got, probably sounded a bit icky or presumptuous, as though he were trying to tempt me into sleeping with him—though, frankly, it wouldn’t take much tempting. When it came to this man, I was a sure thing.
But he was going to make me cry because he’d given me a rainbow of hedgehog underwear.
Cotton underwear.
“I love you, Pop,” he said when I just sat there and traced the adorable little spiny shapes. “Lace or cotton, combat boots or sweatpants, ordering me about or washing my hair in the shower.” Fingers on my jaw, my throat. “I’m just so fucking lucky that you’ve let me keep you here.” He touched his chest over his heart.
“And, for the record, I don’t care if you go halfway across the world on a mission. I don’t care if you have to go deep undercover and won’t be back for weeks or months. I don’t care if you’re away. Because I’ll be there for you when you get back.” He cleared his throat, fingers convulsing lightly. “I didn’t have that before, didn’t trust that when I did all the things I just said—that when I went on a mission, I would have someone waiting there for me, someone who got how important our job is, someone who’d be waiting without rancor or irritation.” His fingers tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. “But when I saw you in the hall after my mission, not pissed because I hadn’t checked in, not angry that I was late . . . fuck, but the clarity hit me hard, baby.”
I swallowed. Hard.
