to be able to indulge in quite yet. She could smell the fresh pot she’d put on as it began to percolate. The rich scent alone was enough to both perk up her brain synapses and make her feel a bit queasy, all at the same time. She’d really rather just close her eyes for a few hours. “Dream on,” she murmured, still standing in the doorway, watching him.
She found her gaze once again roaming over his body. He’d always been well-muscled, but not big or bulky. He moved quickly, economically, always in control, and light on his feet. More panther than lion. He generally slipped into whatever space he chose to occupy, rather than stride his way into it. He was stealthy with his dominance, rather than overt or kingly, despite his leadership position.
So it surprised her how overly large he seemed to her now, in the way he dominated the space in her bed. It was a big bed. A sea of bed, actually. She didn’t like small spaces, didn’t like to feel limited in her range of motion, even if she didn’t use it or need it. She needed to know it was there, the room, the space.
She knew quite well that need was tied directly to her time spent in captivity and didn’t really give a flat damn what that said about how well and thoroughly she’d healed. She’d healed more than she’d ever expected possible. So if she wanted to sleep spread-eagled on a mattress the size of Kansas, she wasn’t going to apologize to anyone about it.
She covered her mouth with her fist as a yawn overtook her, which made her feel every tense fiber in her neck and shoulders. She was exhausted from the lack of sleep, but hauling his half-dead weight into her bedroom—and away from that giant picture window in her living room—before the sun came up hadn’t exactly helped matters. He’d been back in her world less than twenty-four hours, and she needed him to wake the hell up so he could help her come to terms with exactly what his intrusion was going to do to her.
Her innate training had kicked in whether she wanted it to or not, and she realized she’d been subconsciously making damage-control lists almost from the time he’d collapsed on her floor. First order of business was to make sure he was stabilized and secure. He was still fighting off the effects of his injuries and whatever drugs had been pumped into him, but he was no longer bound, he’d been given sips of water, and he was as comfortable as he could be. She still needed to strip him and clean up whatever wounds he might have, do a more thorough investigation of his injuries, but getting him into bed had been an epic struggle, done in fits and spurts whenever he was lucid enough to help her maneuver his weight. At the moment, that was going to have to be enough.
Moving him off the floor had been a risk, as she couldn’t be a hundred percent certain there weren’t life-threatening internal injuries, but given his continued improvement, and the fact that she couldn’t haul him into the nearest emergency room no matter what shape he was truly in, she’d done what she thought was most important.
Which was to make him comfortable and get him out of any possible public view. There were windows along the back wall of her bedroom, but as the rear of her cabin jutted out over a steep hill, someone would have to either be sitting on the deck which circled the back of her home, or have shimmied very high up into some skinny pine trees, to get into binocular—or scope—range. Not that there weren’t agents who could pull that off, but it was unlikely. She’d done a thorough visual scan of the rear area anyway. Because unlikely didn’t mean impossible.
As soon as she could be relatively certain he wouldn’t do anything to further harm himself—or her—she needed to get outside and repair the obvious signs he had to have left in his drugged and disoriented trek to her front door. They might not be obvious to a neighbor or casual passerby, not that she had any of those way out here, but anyone who was actually looking for him would find a trail as easily as if he’d left bread crumbs.
If they hadn’t already.
“What in the hell did you think you were doing?” she murmured, tucking suddenly cold hands deeper under her arms. It was little comfort. It was frustrating, the lack of progress she’d made so far in information gathering. She knew he’d been watching her, that he might have even been in the cabin at some point. What she didn’t know was why. She did know that someone had found out, or found him, and beaten and drugged him. And that it might have something to do with CJ being alive. It made her heart clutch and her mind flinch every time she allowed her thoughts to go there. So she did her damndest not to. She’d get to all that eventually, process it, deal with it, but to do that she had to get to him first.
And he was still mostly out of it.
Her coffee-maker beeped from the kitchen. She still didn’t lever her weight off the door frame right away, despite needing caffeine like a bleeding person needed a transfusion. If she had any hope of figuring things out enough to get them both through the next couple of days without unwanted visitors and the very unwanted consequences that would follow, she needed to be as alert as possible at all times.
And yet she continued to watch him for a few more moments, turning things over, sorting, analyzing. Hating. She still had some work to do on the detached and unemotional thing. Had he been telling the truth about CJ? Or was that just a hallucinatory effect of the drug? Except where in the hell would that have come from? And if this wasn’t about CJ, what else on earth could bring him, literally, to her doorstep, or anywhere even remotely close?
He’d seemed somewhat certain when he’d told her that much, but then he’d also commented on things like how incredible she would taste, and how long he’d wanted to do just that. “Come on,” she demanded angrily, tightening her arms even further as she finally shoved away from the door, hating how her body continued to respond so readily to even the mere thought of his garbled ramblings. “Wake up, dammit. Tell me the things I need to know so I can keep us both breathing. Because when it’s all over, I really want the satisfaction of kicking your ass myself.”
She turned toward the kitchen and the freshly brewed transfusion that awaited.
“I wouldn’t blame you.”
She turned back around to find him blinking his eyes open, but making no effort to move. Which was a good thing, since a lot of his movable parts really shouldn’t be for the time being. “For?”
It took him a moment, during which he blinked a few more times, apparently trying to clear the mental haze, then turned his head fractionally, almost experimentally, in her direction. “Kicking my ass,” he said, sounding more groggy than alert. “Least I deserve.”
She stepped into the room, but didn’t go near the side of the bed. This was the most alert he’d sounded since he’d conked out after dropping the CJ bomb on her. She had no idea how long he might have been awake, or what was going through his mind. Or, for that matter, what state his mind was in. Which was why she maintained a safe distance.
In the past, they’d always been on the same side, with the trust that naturally comes from playing on the same team. Now it was different. Completely different. Something had gone terribly wrong somewhere. For him to be out here, attacked, drugged, and presently in the bed of a former agent who’d buried her previous life in favor of a brand-spanking completely anonymous new one—one which only he’d known about…yes, something must have gone horribly wrong. Better damn well have.
“I’ll agree with that,” she replied at length. She drew close enough to see his eyes, which looked clear, or clearer, anyway. Still, she stayed on his weaker side, where he’d sustained most of his injuries. If he’d made it to her door, from God knew where, in the condition he was in, there was no telling what he was still capable of. Or what, in his delirium, he might think he needed to do.
You would taste so damn incredible, do you know that? Do you know how badly I’ve wanted to know that?
She
