I fought back a moan, barely resisting the urge to turn my mouth to his. I closed my eyes, trying to ignore the heat that flared across my skin at his touch.
Another barely-there kiss landed on the opposite corner of my mouth.
Then a kiss to my lower jaw. And another kiss to the opposite side of my jaw.
He was teasing me. Tormenting me. Making me want.
Anticipation built. Longing stirred deep inside me.
A soft peck right in the center of my throat. Then a trail of tender kisses up to my right ear that had me gasping softly and tilting my head back.
Hot breath tickled my skin as he paused.
I couldn’t take it anymore. I whimpered, turning my mouth toward him in invitation.
Kiss me, already. Please, God, just kiss me.
Then he rewarded me, his lips brushing mine. Gently. Coaxingly.
My breath hitched. My fingers clutched at his shirt. Oh, my…
He nibbled at my mouth, his tongue darting out to gently tease and lick, his lips urging me to open and let him in. A flame ignited inside me, sparking and swelling, spreading throughout my entire body. He was patient, yet persistent, licking and nibbling, teasing and tormenting until I finally parted my lips, letting him in. He expertly swept in, coaxing and tasting me with deep open-mouthed kisses, his tongue sweeping in again and again to explore, to dance, to tangle erotically with mine. A moan worked its way out of my lungs. No one had ever kissed me like this before. Ryan’s mouth was like an aphrodisiac, like magic, casting his spell over me.
My body no longer my own, I melted into him, completely lost in him, completely under his control. I was a puppet and he was the master, pulling my strings and making me do whatever he wanted. My hands stroked around to his muscular back, up, then down, the soft, smoothness of his skin a major turn on. God, this man was so sexy, he consumed every part of me.
He let out a soft growl, deepening the kiss. His hand moved to the back of my head where he tangled his fingers in my hair and tilted my head back, the angle allowing him better access to my mouth. Then he swept in again, taking my mouth in a deep, passionate kiss. He knew exactly what he was doing. He was an expert at seduction. He’d probably been with hundreds of woman. And now he was seducing me.
The thought momentarily jarred me out of my sexual haze. I pulled my hands from his shirt and pressed them against his chest. No. Stop. Don’t be a fool, Liz.
But he kept kissing me, again and again, hotter, wetter, deeper, luring me back in, making me weak and pliant, and oh so needy.
No. No!
If I gave in to him, I would just become another conquest. I instinctively knew he would expect my total surrender. He would demand that I give him everything and hold nothing back. He would want me completely bare. Vulnerable. He would strip me of my emotions, wreck me, and probably break me. That’s how weak he made me. That’s how much control he had over my heart.
And once I gave in, once he took what he wanted from me, he would kick me to the curb. Because that’s what players did. They took and took until there was nothing left to take. Then they left, leaving nothing but carnage in their wake.
I pulled back, pushing against his chest. No! I wasn’t doing this again. I wasn’t going to be played by another player. I couldn’t. My heart couldn’t handle it a second time. I wouldn’t survive it again.
Somehow, I found my voice. “Ryan. Stop.” Oh God, what was I doing? What was I thinking, letting him kiss me? Idiot!
He slowly lifted his head, gazing down at me with a slightly dazed expression.
“Let me go,” I begged. “Please.”
He released me and I leapt back, stumbling off the bed.
My face flamed. Oh God. I needed to get away from him. Before I made a bigger fool out of myself. I grabbed my purse from where I’d tossed it on the nightstand and raced for the door.
“Liz, wait.” His voice halted me. “It’s winter and you’re barefoot. You can’t run outside like that. Besides, where will you go?”
Right. Of course. Where were my shoes? I glanced around desperately, trying to find my comfortable black flats that I’d worn to work that day.
“Liz,” he said gently. “What’s wrong? Talk to me. Please.”
I shook my head, unable to speak. Shoes. Where are my shoes?
He sighed. Then he rose from the bed and came toward me. I tensed, quickly turning to face him, prepared to fight him off if necessary.
He raised his arms. “Liz, I’m not going to hurt you. Calm down and tell me what’s going on.”
I swallowed hard. His voice was soft, his words tender. I was being irrational. I knew that.
“Come sit down,” he urged gently. “Tell me what’s going on. I promise I won’t touch you.”
Oh God. I wanted him to touch me. That was the problem.
He waited, watching me closely. “Liz?”
All right. I could do this. I needed to chill out. Breathe. Calm down. Relax. I was overreacting big time. All he’d done was kiss me. What the hell was my problem? He must think I was a lunatic.
I walked back to the bed, my head lowered. I sat on the edge, tensing when Ryan moved to sit beside me. Close. But not touching.
“You asked me about myself earlier,” he said quietly. “Would you like me to tell you about myself now?”
What? That was the most unthreatening thing he could have said. And the most intriguing. Of course, I wanted to know about him.
The breath eased out of me. My irrational fear fled in light of my eagerness to learn more about him. If he was going to open up to me, then hell yeah I wanted to hear everything he had to say.
I turned my head and looked into his eyes, hoping this wasn’t a new ploy to get me to let down my guard so he could seduce me.
“Yes,” I whispered, “tell me.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Ryan
Kissing Liz was…oh fuck, indescribable. It was like…watching a time lapse video of a flower opening in spring. The petals slowly peeling back, exposing the sweet nectar inside...
Liz was that flower, slowly relaxing, gradually opening up to me and letting me in.
Her skin was so soft, so feminine. Her lips like fresh honey. Warm. Sweet. Delicious.
Just that small amount of unraveling, of seeing her give in to me, made me so hot and so hard with need that I physically hurt. I’d never been so hot for a girl before. But Liz…fuck, she completely undid me, and I didn’t understand why. I barely knew the girl. Hell, I’d only met her a couple of hours ago. But I felt as if I’d known her my entire life. She relaxed me. She made me laugh. She made me feel good. Liz was what I’d been waiting for. I knew that with a certainty that shocked me. How could I be so certain about a girl I’d just met? I’d never wanted to be a one-woman man until Liz.
But now, she was all I wanted. Liz was special. Unique. Liz was real.
The way she’d responded to my kiss, the way she’d melted into me, told me I affected her as much as she affected me. And I hadn’t released the pheromone at all. This thing between us was real. Natural. Not forced. When we touched, it was incredible, mind-blowing, and I planned to chase this girl to the ends of the earth if I had to. I had to find out exactly what this thing between us was.
But she’d panicked and pulled away from me. Something had scared her. Something big. Someone had obviously hurt her in the past, and that made her wary about getting close to me. I wanted to kill the bastard. I desperately wanted her to tell me what she was so afraid of. But the only way to get her to open up to me was if I opened up to her first.
Luke had sensed something between Liz and me back at the inn, so he’d shoved me toward her with that bet, knowing I wouldn’t be able to resist because I didn’t want him anywhere near her. He wasn’t a matchmaker at all, so I was a little stunned that he’d done that. At the time, I’d thought he was just playing a game, trying to see who could bed her first. But now I realized that wasn’t what he’d been doing. Luke might seem
cold and insensitive, but he’d never use a sweet girl like Liz that way. If I’d sensed she was different, then so had he. Somehow, Luke had known Liz would be perfect for me, even though I was far from perfect for her. She didn’t like me. She was afraid of me. She thought I was only out to seduce her. While that may have been my original intention, it wasn’t anymore. There was so much depth to this girl. So much goodness. So much genuineness. I wanted to peel back all the petals of Liz and expose the sweet nectar inside.
But I needed her to relax. To be comfortable around me. To believe that I was harmless and that I would never hurt her.
So I was going to tell her everything there was to know about me. I was going to back off a bit, and just try to win her trust. I would be her friend first. And later—hopefully—her lover.
“You already know my father took me away from my mother when I was thirteen,” I began. Liz turned toward me, looking into my eyes. The girl had gorgeous, expressive, soulful eyes. I wanted to wipe the sadness away, make her eyes sparkle with happiness. Right now, there was wariness there, but also curiosity. That was good. If she was curious about me, then that meant I had a chance.
“I don’t remember much of my life before then,” I went on quietly, turning away from her and staring at the blue, green, and orange carpet pattern on the floor. “The General pumped us full of memory-suppressing drugs to help us forget. I do have vague recollections of my mother, and now I remember the night they stole me away. She was crying and begging them not to take me. The General told her she would never see me again, and that if she tried to find me or contact me, he would kill her.” I sighed, closing my eyes as the memory returned. Bits and pieces of it had come back to me when I’d talked to my mom earlier, but most of that night was still just tiny fragments of memory.
“My training began immediately once I was taken to the facility. They pumped me full of experimental drugs and various different types of animal DNA, trying to alter my genetic makeup, trying to turn me into the ultimate super soldier. I underwent intense military training, fighting, killing techniques. I was taught not to feel, not to care about anyone or anything except my partner, Luke, and the other guys in my unit. Soldiers without feelings make perfect killers. The General wanted us as soulless as possible. They wanted us to never hesitate. To kill the enemy on sight. They literally turned us into beasts. Monsters. Killing machines. Years of conditioning and brainwashing and memory-suppressing drugs turned us into obedient zombies. We had no free will. We were forced to endure horrendous torture in an attempt to make us stronger, to make us unbendable. Any type of torture you can imagine has been done to me, and then some. They broke me down, again and again, then built me back up, gave me a single purpose. To complete the missions without fail, by doing whatever was necessary.”
Liz remained silent and still next to me, listening. Waiting.
I let out a nervous laugh and turned to look at her. “Are you disgusted yet?”
She turned those soft, soulful eyes to me. Tears welled and she blinked rapidly. “At the people who hurt you? Yes. At you, no. Definitely not. You only did what you had to do to survive.” She paused, then reached over and squeezed my hand. “Was that why you haven’t seen Glenda all these years?”
I stared down at her small, pretty hand over mine, liking what I saw. Her nails were short, neatly clipped, and free of polish. Everything about this girl was feminine, but in a natural way, without all the added embellishments of heavy makeup, Botox, overdone hair, a fake tan, or enlarged, silicon breasts. Liz didn’t have to try to be sexy. She was naturally sexy. Normally, I went for those high-maintenance chicks, because in my experience, they were usually easy. And why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?
But I didn’t want easy anymore. I wanted a challenge.
Nothing about Liz was free. And I liked that about her. I liked that she was making me work for every little thing.
I rolled my hand over so that our palms met, then threaded my fingers through hers. She tensed, her gaze darting to mine, but she didn’t pull back, and I took that as a good sign. As I gazed into her eyes, I found myself getting sucked into the compassion I witnessed there. The tenderness. The understanding. This girl may have judged me earlier by my appearance and what she perceived me to be—a player—because she’d thought I was a threat to her, that I was going to use her. But I had honestly never used a woman in my life. I only engaged in no-strings sex with willing females. But Liz didn’t know that. Yet, despite her earlier assumptions about me, Liz didn’t judge me now for what I’d gone through or what I’d done as a soldier. That told me she was a truly caring person. And that she really had been hurt by someone, and because of that, she was wary and distrustful of my intentions toward her. Could I ever get her to let me in? I’d never wanted anything as badly as I wanted Liz to trust me.
I had to remind myself that she’d asked me a question. Was that why you haven’t seen Glenda all these years?
“Yes,” I answered. “For the longest time, I forgot about my mother. The memory-suppressing drugs, combined with all the brainwashing and the conditioning made me forget my life before the facility. That’s what they wanted. They wanted us to know only the life of a soldier and nothing else.”
I’d never opened up to a woman like this before, getting personal, making myself vulnerable, telling her things I’d never told anyone else before. But I wanted Liz to know me. I wanted her to see that I was a good guy even though I had a past I wasn’t proud of and had done things I was ashamed of. Opening up to her wasn’t as scary as I’d imagined it would be. For some reason, talking to Liz felt good. It just felt right.
But there was more I needed to tell her. Much more. I was worried about how to explain my dreg talent to her. I would save that part until later.
“So tell me about how your hand got blown off,” she urged, looking into my eyes. “Or would you rather not talk about that?”
I shrugged. “I don’t mind talking about it. Losing part of my arm didn’t traumatize me as badly as it might some people, not after all the things I’d gone through before then.” I lifted my arm and rolled up the sleeve, turning toward her so she could see it. Liz didn’t cringe back. She reached for my arm, gently turning it in her grasp, eyeing the stump beneath my elbow joint.
“Does it hurt at all? I mean, I know it’s gone, but I’ve heard about phantom limbs and that they sometimes ache even though they are gone and that they sometimes feel like they are still there.”
“It doesn’t hurt, but it sometimes feels like it’s still there.”
She let go of my arm and I pulled the sleeve back down.
“Our mission that day was to take out a group of insurgents that were linked to I.S.I.S. But everything went to shit. The intel we received was bogus, so we were doomed as soon as we arrived to carry out the mission.”
Liz grabbed my hand again, squeezing, her eyes going wide. “What happened?”
“Jacob was shot in the throat right off the bat. Nate had to tend to the wound before he suffocated. We all gathered around while we waited for Jacob to be stable enough to transport.”
I closed my eyes and let the memory return…Gunfire. Adrenaline. Danger. Death all around.
“Gordon and Tracker helped Nate tend to Jacob’s wound, and once he was stable, we rolled him onto a makeshift stretcher and crept forward. We traveled no more than about fifty yards before more gunfire erupted around us. Noah was hit in the eye and both of Luke’s knees were shot out.”
Liz gasped softly. “That’s why Luke kind of hobbles when he walks.”
“Yeah.” I decided to tell her about the dreg bond. “Luke is my dreg partner. I felt his pain that day as intensely as if it was my own. It spiraled into me, nearly knocking me over.”
She stared into my eyes. “You have some kind of deep connection with him, don’t you?”
She was intuitive. “Yeah. A dreg shares a bond with his partner that goes beyond any normal human connection. Our bond is spir
itual, emotional, and physical. I can feel his physical and emotional pain, and he can feel mine.”
Her eyes widened with wonder. “That’s fascinating. Tell me more.”
Her interest in me made warmth swell in my chest. I wanted to tell her everything about myself.
“He obviously couldn’t walk with his kneecaps blown off, so we had to carry him out. Once again, we only got a few yards before more bullets erupted all around us. This time, Tracker got shot in the thigh, his bone shattering. The rest of us dived to the ground and began crawling forward, helping our wounded brothers along. The enemy was literally tearing us apart.”
I paused a moment as the memories slammed into me. “Nate contacted The General and requested immediate extraction. We were losing guys left and right. While we waited for help to arrive, we kept crawling forward, trying to stay out of the range of the gunfire. Then Gordon cautiously rose at a clearing to scope the area out.
“He didn’t see the IED until he was stepping down on it. An explosion rocked the ground, blowing his leg off. Nate and Tony rushed to help him. The enemy was dropping us like flies. We needed to get the hell out of there. I kept helping Luke along, crawling through the underbrush. Then my fingers accidentally brushed an IED. I jerked back just as I realized what it was, but it was too late.
“Boom! There went my hand. I don’t remember much after that. Pain. More gunfire. Shouts. Several others in our unit were injured before help finally arrived. Nate took shrapnel to the chest that nearly killed him. Half of Logan’s face was blown off by another IED…but I missed all that action because I was in a haze of pain from losing my arm. We all made it out alive, but it was our last mission. We were all discharged due to our injuries.”
Liz was silent a moment. “How did your face not get blown off by the bomb?”
I shrugged. “It was just a small bomb, and I jerked away as soon as I realized what it was. I guess I was just really lucky.”
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