Forbidden Stranger

by Megan Hart

  Ewan looked stunned. Nina shook her head, embarrassed at where that had come from. It had not been a voice only in her head, this time. She wasn’t sure what to say or do.

  “I don’t know if I do, anymore,” she said in a lower voice. She gestured at the pocket of his robe, where he’d put the comm. “Why would you need to track me, without my knowledge or my consent?”

  He flinched, and she didn’t feel bad about that. She didn’t feel vindicated, either. She only felt weary and confused and sad.

  “What aren’t you telling me, Ewan?”

  “I want to be sure you don’t have another accident,” he said finally.

  Nina didn’t respond immediately. She crossed her arms over her chest to study him. “Tracking where I go isn’t going to stop me from having an accident. That’s why they’re called accidents, Ewan, because they happen by accident.”

  “If you do have another . . . accident . . .” he whispered fiercely, “I want to be able to get to you in time. That’s all. I’m sorry, I should have told you. But I didn’t think—”

  “You didn’t think I would ever find out.”

  Ewan nodded.

  Nina frowned and looked at her wrist. Knowledge filled her the way water will fill a bucket of rocks, trickling and slow but inexorable. “It’s connected to my ID chip?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you turn it off?”

  “Yes, but I don’t want to.”

  Her chin lifted, and she stared him down. “I’m not asking if you want to. I’m asking you if you can turn off that tracker. In fact, I’m telling you to.”

  A good minute or so passed before Ewan, with a scowl, pulled his comm from his pocket. He swiped the screen and typed a few things, then held it up to show her that the tracking was no longer in operation. After that, he deleted the app in front of her. He put the comm back in his pocket.

  “You should have told me.”

  Ewan didn’t protest or agree. He murmured a good night and left the kitchen ahead of her. Nina waited a minute or two, feeling awkward about following him too closely. In the hallway she paused, looking up and expecting to see darkness, but Ewan’s silhouette was outlined at the top of the stairs. With her foot on the bottom step and a hand on the railing, Nina blinked.

  It wasn’t Ewan. It was shadows and more memories, a jumbled rush of them. Nothing concrete or solid, more like a rushing waterfall of images, smells, and emotions. None of it made sense, but she opened herself up to it, letting the half-memories batter her until she had to gasp aloud. Then it all passed, fast as that, and she was left feeling as though she’d run a few miles through sticky mud.

  I promise you, Nina, the last thing in the world you’d be able to do is break my heart.

  That was it, though. Nothing more. And although she tried to go back to sleep, by the time the sun began its first gray-pink shining into her window, all she’d done was stare up at the ceiling with her eyes wide, waiting for more memories that didn’t come.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The weather-tempering system Ewan had paid a fortune to set up around the island didn’t stop storms, and this one had started shortly after the airtranspo left after dropping off the next month’s supplies. Lightning forked the sky in the distance, far enough away that the thunder rumbling after it was still covered up by the sound of the waves surrounding them. A tension crackled in the air, though, and while he wanted to blame it on the electricity in the sky, he knew it was because of what had happened between him and Nina.

  He couldn’t blame her for being angry at him. He was mad at himself for being so careless as to let her see the comm and the tracker. He hadn’t, of course, really deleted the app, and he was angry, too, about still lying to her about it. Of course she’d felt violated when she found out; he could not, however, tell her the truth, nor could he have the tracker disabled, in case something went wrong, and all of this had become a clusterfuck he could not seem to reconcile.

  It had made the past few days terrible and awkward. He’d told Aggie about what had happened and assumed she would let Jerome know, too. Ewan had half-expected a lecture from the older woman and was half-disappointed when she didn’t give him one. Like she couldn’t even manage to find the strength to scold him because he’d messed up so badly, he thought with a sour twist of his mouth.

  Once again he’d been a prime sphincter, and Nina would have to forgive him for his stupidity. Yet how could he blame himself for it this time, when everything he’d done was solely to keep her safe? To protect her the way she’d spent so much time protecting him? Sometimes, a lie wasn’t a betrayal, it was a lifesaver.

  Aggie had not called him down to dinner, which was proof of her disapproval. In truth, he hadn’t been very hungry, and he’d been avoiding Nina anyway. In the kitchen he made himself a quick sandwich and ate it without much enjoyment. What he really wanted was a drink, something stronger than wine.

  Nina was in the den. She glanced up when he hovered in the doorway, but said nothing. Seated in the battered recliner, she had her tablet in her hands. She’d been reading. He wanted to come in, pour them both a glass of whiskey, to sip it with her while they laughed about something. Anything. She acknowledged him with a glance and a small nod, but there was no invitation in it.

  Ewan headed upstairs for his bathroom. A cold shower was definitely in order. Hell, if the skies hadn’t been tossing down lightning bolts like a strobe light, he’d have simply gone outside and let the rain soak him. Instead, he stripped down quickly and stepped into the shower to let the icy needles stab at him over and over.

  It didn’t help. His cock ached and his balls hung heavy with the arousal that had gone without release for so many months. He turned his back to the spray and leaned with one arm against the wall. Eyes closed, he braced himself against the sting.

  The frigid water would not take away the ache or his desire. It could not chase away the memories of how she had felt against him and the taste of her mouth. He wanted to take his swelling erection into his fist and stroke away this ache, but he knew it wouldn’t do much to help. He couldn’t stop thinking about kissing her, touching her, sliding his thickness inside her.

  The woman downstairs was as beautiful to him as she had ever been. He saw glints of their past when she laughed with him, or when she attacked a good meal with enthusiastic gratitude. Watching her when she was working her body in the garden or running along the beach, in those moments of showing her physical prowess and recovery, Ewan’s love for her had become an agony he’d believed could not get any worse . . . until now, when she was avoiding him.

  And now, despite the arctic water raining down on him and how awful he felt about what had happened, his defiant cock surged to an expectant, eager life. He gripped it with a groan, stroking lightly. He stopped, fingers tightening behind the head, squeezing back the pleasure. It had been so long since his last orgasm that these few strokes had already urged a few drops of slickness from the slit.

  A few more strokes would finish him off. Release some of the pressure. Shaking from desire and the icy water, Ewan fucked into his fist until he came.

  Then, turning so he could rinse his hands and chest clean, he tipped his face into the shower and tried to keep his heart from giving up.

  * * *

  Nina didn’t think she’d ever get used to sleeping so poorly. She’d tossed and turned for what had felt like forever, then woken several times with her heart beating fast and once, a scream she’d managed to bite back before letting it out. She wasn’t sure she was glad she couldn’t remember the nightmares. It might have made them easier to get over if she could force herself to put them aside.

  On the other hand, she was very glad she hadn’t had more sexy dreams, not about her faceless stranger and not about Ewan, either.

  This morning she’d finally stopped trying to convince herself she was going to get back to sleep after she woke for the third or fourth time to the same night sky. She’d done some stretching and another
round of those weird exercises, which had taken her until dawn. Then a run, all before anyone else was awake. Part of her was waiting for Ewan to show up, led to her location by that tracking system he’d deleted but could easily have reloaded onto his comm. Part of her hoped he would, even if it meant he’d disregarded her wishes.

  By the time she got back, lights in the kitchen alerted her to Aggie’s presence. Nina didn’t feel like talking, so she ducked in through the front door. A hot shower and some warm, dry clothes should have made her feel better, but didn’t.

  She was sad.

  Sad about the gray weather and the intermittent rain, about the lack of sun, about the fact that the only memories she had from before the island were faint and wispy as the constant mist off the sea. She knew she’d had a family. She remembered bits and pieces of her childhood, vague and formless. She could, if she tried hard enough, bring back memories of her adolescence and early adulthood. It gave her a headache to do it. She’d struggled for an hour to remember the color of her childhood bedroom, only to be laid low with a stabbing agony in her temples that had made Nina question if the memory had been worth the pain.

  She was sad, too, because since she’d discovered that Ewan had been monitoring her, the friendship that had begun to blossom had stalled. He was her boss, she reminded herself now, angrily, as she combed through her wet hair and tried to tie it back off her face so it wouldn’t get in her eyes. The curls rioted around her face, untamed.

  He was her boss, not her friend. But she’d trusted him, and now she wasn’t sure she could. The feeling unsettled her, this sense of loss, as though she were grieving for something she’d lost without knowing it had belonged to her in the first place.

  She didn’t have to stay here. Ewan had made that clear. She was not a prisoner on the island. She was free to leave at any time.

  Her gorge rose at the thought of it. Where would she go? What would she do? She had money in her account, payment for the months of work she’d been doing. She’d be able to find a place to live on her own. Maybe even a job. She’d done it before, right? Her brain refused to give her the information, but it was going to do that whether or not she was here or somewhere else. She’d stayed because in the beginning the idea of doing anything else had been too overwhelming while her body healed.

  Now, she stayed because . . . because . . . With a hitching sigh, Nina shook her head. She didn’t know why she stayed, except that every time she tried to imagine leaving, she felt so sick it became impossible to keep thinking about it. Yesterday when she’d forced herself to keep trying, she’d actually almost vomited.

  She had a suspicion Ewan had been avoiding her, and that had been fine because she wasn’t sure how to make small talk with him. Still, she had work to do, and even if it was useless and sort of insulting, it was better than nothing. Upstairs in the attic office, she braced herself for the sight of him.

  He wasn’t there. Nina went to the window that looked out over the ocean. Her fingers gripped the edge of the white-painted sill. She searched for any sight of something beyond the water, even though she knew they were too far from the mainland to even catch a glimpse. Tears burned in her eyes and slipped down her cheeks; she tasted salt.

  The sound of footsteps on the attic stairs forced her to hastily wipe her face and turn, but she couldn’t seem to manage even the most insincere of smiles. Ewan noticed. He paused, a hand on the half-wall dividing the stairs from the rest of the attic.

  “Nina?”

  She burst into tears, harsh and braying and embarrassing. Nina tried to breathe past the sobbing, but the wrenching pain in her chest made it too hard. She turned back to the window, trying not to let him see, but of course there was no hiding this outburst from Ewan. Hell, she thought through the onslaught of emotions ripping her apart, Aggie was sure to hear her downstairs, and Jerome out in the garden. She wouldn’t have been surprised if the sound of her agony had echoed all the way to the people on the mainland.

  With that thought, the next rasping gasp of sobs turned into a stuttering burst of laughter. It hurt as much as the tears had, burning in her throat and sending waves of aching distress through her chest as she tried to grab a breath. Her knees buckled and she sagged with one hand still on the windowsill.

  “Hey. It’s all right. Nina, come here.” From behind her, Ewan’s low voice sounded concerned.

  In the next moment, his hand fell on her shoulder. Strong fingers squeezed. She resisted turning, too mortified to face him with her nose running and eyes pasted shut with goo.

  He said her name, softer this time. Nina gave in and let him pull her close. The front of his sweater smelled of Aggie’s laundry soap and the salt air outside. Beneath it, a hint of body heat and the faintest tang of sweat sent a winding thread of comfort through her entire body. She drew a breath. Then another. At the third, the hysterics eased.

  She pushed away from him a bit. “Sorry.”

  “Don’t be.” Ewan drew his fingertips across her forehead, pushing the hair off her face.

  Nina shook her head and backed a few steps away. “I need some tissues.”

  “Oh. Right.” Ewan frowned and looked around the room. His gaze fell on the built-in shelves on each side of the window. “I think . . .”

  “Got it.” Nina grabbed the box, which had a soft thickness of dust on top of it. She helped herself to a few much-needed tissues to blow her nose and wipe her eyes. When she’d cleaned herself up, she said again, “Sorry.”

  “Really. Don’t be,” Ewan said. “It’s fine. I mean, it’s not fine. It’s obviously terrible for you to feel bad enough to cry. But it’s okay that you do.”

  Nina managed a small smile and cleared her throat. “I can’t seem to get myself regulated. One minute I’m overcome with these waves and waves of . . . well, it’s grief. It hurts. Here.”

  She tapped her heart. Then, after a hesitation, she tapped herself between the eyes. Each temple.

  “All of those places?” Ewan asked.

  She nodded.

  Without another word, he pulled her gently closer again. This time, she let herself rest in his embrace for a few minutes. His heart thumped against her cheek. She could hear the shush-shush of the blood pushing through his veins.

  No, she couldn’t hear that, and it was insane to think so. She pushed back from him. He gave her a curious look.

  “I heard . . . I thought . . .” Nina shook her head. “Never mind. I’m all right now. It’s the feelings. They’re so strong. I’m sad for no reason, then I’m happy for no reason.”

  She took another step back away from him, too aware of how much she’d enjoyed the way he’d held her. Ewan went to the window to look out, much the way Nina had been doing earlier. She liked being able to look at his profile in the misty light. Angry with him or not, she had to admit she could not stop herself from . . . well. From wanting him.

  He glanced over his shoulder at her. “I wouldn’t say for no reason. You’ve been through so much. It’s normal to have emotions, Nina.”

  Something in his voice gave her pause. He sounded both happy and sad, sort of the way she’d been feeling. But why? Nina took another couple of tissues and blew her nose again. She cleared her throat.

  “I don’t feel normal,” she admitted in a low voice.

  Ewan turned from the window with a frown darkening his handsome face. More than handsome, Nina thought. Gorgeous. Heat tickled her cheeks and the base of her throat, and she forced herself not to stare at him like he was an ice cream cone on a summer day. It was simply another rush of emotions, she told herself. Swirling, tangled, and overwrought. Why, then, did this feel so . . . good? So necessary? The grief and joy that had wracked her earlier was nothing compared to this rush and push of desire that made her feel as though she’d been waiting her entire life for it.

  Ewan’s frown softened. “Maybe nobody ever feels normal.”

  “Yeah.” Nina didn’t know what else to say about that. She straightened her shoulders and p
ushed away the completely irrational urge to leap into his arms and kiss him.

  Onegod, the thought of it, his mouth on hers. Tongues, stroking. His big, warm hands cupping her butt. She could press her body to his and feel him getting hard for her. They would get down on the floor, naked, thrusting, moaning. . . .

  “I’m going downstairs,” she managed to say without her voice shaking. “Is it all right if I take the day off?”

  “Of course. And you don’t . . . you don’t have to . . .” Ewan cleared his throat.

  She could barely make herself look at him, but when she did, his expression was so twisted with sorrow and guilt that she physically recoiled from it.

  “You don’t have to ask my permission,” he finished.

  Nina lifted her chin and forced herself to meet his eyes. “You’re the boss.”

  He looked like she’d slapped him. “Yes. Take the day off. That’s fine. Take as many days off as you need.”

  With a tight nod, she left the office. She made it to her bedroom and locked the door behind her before her knees gave out and she went to them on the hardwood floor. Her fingers curled, nails digging into the wood as she shook.

  Then she was fighting sobs again, with no idea of where this grief had come from, only that the sense of loss was tearing her to pieces. She’d become a glass dropped on a tile floor.

  Shattered.

  CHAPTER NINE

  It killed him to see Nina in pain. To hear her tell him about how much it hurt, and where. Yet a part of Ewan rejoiced at her emotional outbursts, because it hadn’t been so long ago that she’d been incapable of the highs and lows of feeling. She’d worried she wouldn’t be able to have any depth of emotion ever again.

  He also hated how helpless watching her cry made him feel. This morning in the office, he’d pulled her into his arms because he’d been unable to stop himself from offering her comfort. It was crossing a line, no question about that, but she’d allowed it. Now, he’d locked his bedroom door to pull out his personal comm so he could call Doc Zulik. Ewan had hired an entire team to take care of Nina in the first days after her accident. The best the world could offer. One by one, their expertise had no longer been needed, until finally only Zulik remained. He hadn’t been to the island in months and wasn’t scheduled to return for a few more, but Ewan knew the doc talked with Nina regularly via comm.