by Megan Crane
He knew her name now. He knew her story. He knew who she was.
She wasn’t hiding anything anymore, and that made everything new.
Every touch. Every breath.
Every glorious shattering.
When he finally rolled over to his back and brought her above him, he handled the condom with his usual efficiency and then lowered her onto him at last.
And that was different, too.
Not the fit of him, big and hard and stretching her almost to the point of a wince, but not quite. Caradine loved that, every time. She loved having to adjust to him. She loved having to take a breath before moving.
For a long time, that little moment had felt like a simple truth in the middle of too many lies.
Tonight that deep, glorious slide that lodged him deep inside her, still with that same initial hitch, felt like a sacrament.
And she knew why he’d put her on top, because it was another kind of challenge. And this was Isaac, who never backed down.
He knew she wanted to go fast, set a blistering pace, and hurtle them into a wild finish.
But she knew he thought she would do exactly that, so she didn’t.
Or maybe he knew what she’d do all along, but Caradine couldn’t care about that. Not the way she normally would.
Not when his hands were wrapped around her hips, letting her know that if he wanted to, he could control this, too.
And maybe he was controlling it, with that steady gray gaze locked on to hers. As if he expected the best from her, and only the best. As if he expected her to do as he asked, simply because he’d asked.
The Caradine of years past would have defied him. She’d taken a great pleasure in that, always, because no one else dared.
But tonight she was someone else, someone new. Not Julia, who might as well have died in that house fire and had, really. And not the Caradine she’d been all these years, crafted from years of terror, running, and hiding.
Tonight she was a new version of herself. She wasn’t hiding. She wasn’t running. And she was with the only man alive—the only person alive—who knew her. All of her.
Intimately.
This, then, was intimacy. This taking that felt like giving. This celebration as she moved against him, rocking them both toward something far better than forgetting.
Caradine broke first, and she didn’t try to hold herself back the way she usually did. She let herself cry out, her head falling back while wave after wave of the most intense sensation she’d ever felt gripped her.
She was still going when he flipped her over, brought her beneath him, and then, at last, let go of his own control.
Heat and driving need. Sheer male power.
He pounded into her. Caradine had barely finished shaking before she started again, falling over a cliff she hadn’t known was there into something brighter, hotter, wilder.
Only then did Isaac join her.
They fell together like heat and light, wrapped around each other as if they’d been made that way. Their hearts pounding so hard she couldn’t tell whether she felt his or hers. Tangled up together as if they could never possibly be torn apart.
A long time passed before either one of them moved. Isaac shifted the dense, heavy weight of his body off hers, but he still held her close. And surrounded by his warmth and strength, Caradine felt herself drifting off to sleep.
That, too, was a surrender, though she didn’t fight it. She didn’t force herself to leap up and do something, hoping that could break this spell between them. She just drifted off.
It was only when she woke up some indefinable time later to find herself with Isaac’s arms around her, that gray gaze of his regarding her steadily, that the reality of what had happened hit her.
“Don’t worry,” Isaac said lazily, and she could feel his voice rumble in his chest. Something that struck her as so astonishingly intimate that she felt herself flush all over. It almost washed away the panic. “I told you. My bed, my rules. You can sleep here. I want you to sleep here. Notice I didn’t throw you out while you were still gasping for breath, the way some people in this bed like to do.”
Deep inside, Caradine could feel her usual prickliness surge at that, ready to do battle—
But she didn’t have it in her. She was cuddled up next to this man she’d worked so terribly hard to keep at arm’s length. And for once in her life, she felt . . . soft.
Not weak. Just not . . . weaponized.
She refused to analyze it. “I guess you’re a much better person than me.”
But even that came out wrong. Because she’d tried to sound arch and amused and, yes, a little bit prickly, but instead her voice sounded . . . sincere.
Isaac ran a hand down her back, and then held her even closer, his big, heavy arm making her feel cocooned against him. She loved the heat of him. It was why she’d never allowed herself to experience this before. She’d known that if she dipped her toe in this pool, she would dive straight in, then drown.
Because all she wanted to do was bury her face in his chest, let down her guard, and let him handle whatever happened next.
“Stop thinking at me,” he rumbled at her. “You’re fine. You’re safe. I promise.”
Caradine wanted that to be true more than she wanted her next breath. But she knew that wasn’t the deal. That wasn’t her life, no matter how tempting it was to imagine otherwise here in Fool’s Cove, wrapped up in Isaac’s arms. Because there wasn’t only her life to consider.
And even though she knew better, she thought there couldn’t be any harm in pretending. Just this once.
All these years of dire, endless pragmatism and punching herself in the face with reality, no matter how much it hurt. All the times she’d walked away from this man when she’d wanted to run to him instead. All the times she’d made herself sharp when she wanted to melt. Every time she’d pushed him out her door, then ached. Every time she’d slammed her door in his face, then stood on the other side, hating herself.
Surely she’d earned one night.
Caradine burrowed closer instead of rolling away, and thought she felt him release a breath. And she couldn’t resist. She found her hands moving on his perfect chest, letting the last of the summer light lead her on a lazy exploration of every muscle, every indentation, every beautiful sinew. Every hour he spent maintaining his impressive physical condition translated to another fascinating inch on his body, and she tasted them all.
This time, she catapulted over the edge, sobbing the joy of it out into the crook of his neck. Isaac took his time following her, holding her there against him, locked in that embrace as if he felt all the same things she did.
The wonder of taking their time. The beauty of not having the inevitable limit of Caradine’s need to cut it off before it meant more.
It already meant too much.
Something else she didn’t want to look at straight on.
Caradine slept again. When she woke up, his heavy arm was draped over her. Her back was flush against the broad wall of his chest. He let off heat like a furnace, which made her wonder how she’d never taken advantage of that over the course of so many long Alaskan winters.
As she blinked the heavy sleep away, she realized she’d slept deeper than she could remember doing in at least ten years.
Outside, the sky was doing that deep blue thing it did to indicate it was a summer night. Farther north, there would still be daylight.
“Didn’t you say something about food?” Isaac asked in her ear.
She could feel him smile at the goose bumps that shivered their way down from that point of contact to her wrists.
“Don’t you ever sleep?”
“Everyone sleeps, Caradine.” Another smile. Another shiver. “But I don’t sleep much. And when I do I wake up instantly and fully alert. Semper Fi.”
She would ordin
arily make a snide remark about the marines, or the armed forces, or whatever she thought would irritate him the most. But tonight felt like it belonged to someone else, someone safer and softer, so she didn’t. Caradine shifted around beneath the weight of his arm so she could face him.
Isaac Gentry, who had wedged his way into her life when she wasn’t looking.
She reached over, then traced her way over the line of his mouth and the beard she’d felt all over her skin. His lips curved as she went, showing her that rare smile of his.
Not the one he shared like candy. The one he saved. For few and far between moments, when no one else could see it. Or him.
Mine, she thought, though it was dangerous.
And she didn’t need light to see the way his gaze changed. Went from gray to silver in an instant and heated her up inside.
He pulled her closer and rested his forehead against hers, so they could breathe together. Until she thought she might cry.
If she were the sort of woman who cried, that was.
“Caradine . . .” he said, and she didn’t know if he was going to say something else. Or if he was just saying her name, the name she associated so strongly with him that it hurt a little. The name that felt like her, even though it shouldn’t.
But she couldn’t risk it.
She pressed her fingers against his mouth and held them there this time. “Come on,” she said quietly. “I’ll make you something to eat.”
This time, she didn’t wait for him to respond. She pulled out of his embrace and climbed out of the bed, grabbing her clothes as she went.
She dressed as she moved, ignoring the way her pulse pounded at her. And the choir of voices inside her she didn’t want to hear, all of them calling her a coward.
Horatio met her at the end of the short hall, and she calmed herself by leaning over and kissing him on his furry forehead.
Then she went into the kitchen and did what she did best. She heated up the food she’d prepared earlier, because she hadn’t known what else to do with herself after Oz was done extracting every detail of her life from her. An easy savory pie she’d thrown together from the ingredients in his refrigerator and freezer. Beef, vegetables, and a thick, creamy sauce that hinted at curry.
Cooking was better than breathing. Or feeling. Cooking filled all the ugly places inside her. It allowed her to pretend she was whole. Normal.
It let her imagine she could have things she knew she couldn’t.
Isaac appeared in the kitchen. One moment she was alone and the next he was there, leaning against the counter, wearing nothing but a pair of cargo pants low on his hips.
He was enough to give her a heart attack.
And that was if she looked too long at the honed perfection of his abdomen alone. The rest of him was equally problematic.
“That’s creepy.” She threw him a glare, then served up two plates with the briskness she would have used in her café. If it still existed. Another thing she didn’t want to think about, because it also hurt more than it should. “A man as big as you are shouldn’t move so quietly. I’m going to put a bell around your neck.”
She saw a hint of that dark smile. “You can try.”
Caradine slid the plates on the table over by the windows. She wondered if the table, clearly handmade, was his work or if he’d inherited it from a family member. It had that sort of look about it. An heirloom or a piece of personal history.
“Where did you get this table?” she asked when he came and took a seat across from her. “Or did you make it?”
“My grandfather made it.” The expression on his face altered as he looked down, running his hand over the surface, and there was a kind of familiar reverence in the way his palm moved over the wood. It wasn’t unlike the way he’d moved that same hand over her skin. Caradine bit back a small sigh. “Grandpa Gentry was a fisherman, but when he had to wait out one of the sea’s moods, he liked to work with wood. As he got older, he spent more time with it and made bigger projects. Like this table.”
The table was a work of art, tucked away in the kitchen of this faraway cabin. It was an irregular shape, as if to honor the wood itself, the whorls and the knots. This was Isaac’s legacy, Caradine couldn’t help but think. Art. The work of careful hands, polished over time and set to gleam.
Meanwhile, she was a Sheeran. And the work of her family’s hands was death. Blood and bullets. Bombs and guns.
The opposite of art in every way.
Isaac shifted across from her. When she looked up, she wasn’t surprised to find that gaze of his on her face again. She braced herself, but all he did was pick up his fork and then take a long, deep breath. Of pleasure.
“How do you always know exactly what to cook? When I don’t even know what I want?”
“Magic,” she responded, once again without the edge she’d meant to put in her voice.
Isaac looked at her for a moment, and she expected one of those killer questions of his. Something that would slam straight through her, rip her heart open, and force her to jump back into that prickly, armored space—
This is what you want from him, a voice in her whispered. You like that he never lets you off the hook. That he would never let you run away.
“So,” Isaac said, settling back in his chair. She held her breath. “Looks like you have friends after all. That must have thrown you for a loop.”
For a moment, they only stared at each other.
“I don’t think you understand,” Caradine said, in a baleful sort of outrage. “There was hugging.”
Fifteen
Isaac chose not to point out that they’d never shared a meal before. He figured she might stab him with her fork.
When they were done, they actually sat there and talked. Like regular people.
He saw the exact moment that occurred to her.
And watched, fascinated, as she stiffened. He would have said he knew every expression that could possibly cross her pretty face, but it took him a moment to place the one that flashed there for a long, telling moment. Panic.
It was a relief when she scowled at him.
“You need to go away now,” she said, sounding like herself again. Not the warm, pliable woman who’d been in his bed, but the sharp-edged, hot-eyed pain in his butt. Good thing he had a powerful need for both sides of her. “I need to clean this kitchen, to my satisfaction, not yours.”
Her clear implication was that he, a career marine officer, could not maintain a kitchen to her standards.
“You remind me of my drill sergeant,” he said. When her scowl deepened, he laughed. “That’s a compliment.”
She rolled her eyes as she stood, then swept up their plates. “Good-bye.”
Cranky. Grouchy. That scowl in place. Just the way he liked her.
“You know I don’t need you to cook and clean for me,” he said as he got to his feet, watching her move with that efficient grace that had been getting to him for far too long now. “That’s not a requirement.”
She snorted. “If you needed me to, I wouldn’t do it. And if it was a requirement, I’d burn your cabin down.”
“Still.”
Caradine dropped the plates and utensils with a great clatter into his sink. She did not turn to face him. “Isaac. If you say one word about my true heart, I will walk out of this cabin and drown myself in the cove.”
“I think that’s unlikely.”
“I will take that cast-iron skillet off your wall and relieve you of your kneecap.”
“You already tried to shoot me in the knee. You missed. I feel like the odds are in my favor.”
She turned then, her scowl much deeper and her blue eyes a dark warning that bounced around inside him and felt a whole lot like joy.
“Don’t you have work to do?” she demanded. “Wrongs to right and worlds to save?”
&nb
sp; “Usually.”
Her brows rose. “And here I thought that was who you were. In charge of every last thing every second of the day and night, so there isn’t a single moment of downtime. Don’t let me interrupt your long career of overcompensation and workaholic anxiety.”
That punch landed, and he could tell she knew it, so he left her to her mutterings at his sink.
He went out to his study and checked in. And he didn’t forget that Caradine was in his cabin. He was aware of her moving around in the kitchen, then stalking off to take a shower. He monitored what needed his attention, made sure no new information had come in while he was otherwise occupied, and sent out a raft of responses and new orders.
Normally he would keep that up for hours, but not tonight.
He took a minute, sitting there in his home office with Horatio at his side and Caradine in his shower, to consider the fact that everything was fine. Perfectly fine, as expected. No crises were unfolding. Nothing required his attention or interference at the moment.
That he’d set things up so that the whole operation could run while he was on an active mission himself always seemed to slip his mind when he was home—
But that wasn’t true. It didn’t slip his mind. He just . . . didn’t let go.
His strength and weakness right there.
Overcompensation, Caradine had said. Because of course she had.
Because the question he really didn’t want to ask himself was whether he was holding on because he thought Alaska Force and the whole freaking world would fall apart if he let go—or if he was worried he would.
Maybe, something deep inside him whispered, edgy like the woman who knew him too well and acted like that was an imposition, you’re afraid of what you might see if you stopped long enough to look.
“Screw this,” Isaac muttered.
He had no intention of wasting this night.
First he went and joined her in the shower, making sure to wipe that scowl off her face, just to prove he could. Then he set about enjoying her in every room of his cabin, because he knew her.
She had no intention of staying. He had no intention of letting her go.