“Do you need help with anything?” she asked.
“Nope,” I rushed out and she flinched at my harsh response, making me feel like an asshole. But the only help I needed from her was her going to bed, which would put much needed distance between us. “I’m going to upload the pictures Dec took tonight and send them to Garrett, and hopefully we’ll have something by morning,” I explained, hoping to soften my previous response.
“Who’s Garrett?”
“He works with us. A roadside bomb ended his career in the military and due to his injuries, he doesn’t deploy with one of our teams. He’s strictly intel. Anything computer-related goes through him.”
“But he’s okay now? His injury?”
Her sweet concern for my teammate wasn’t helping my quest to push her away. Instead it made me want to pull her into my arms. What the hell was it about Anaya Baker that had me so tied in knots? Why couldn’t I stop thinking the craziest shit when she was around? Pull her into my arms? Where the fuck had that come from?
“Yeah, he’s fine. It was a long time ago.”
“Good.” She smiled. “If you’re sure, I’m gonna head to bed.”
And why did her smile make me feel so fucking good?
“I’m sure. Get some sleep.”
“Night.”
“Goodnight, Anaya.”
It had taken me almost two hours to get all the pictures sorted, uploaded, and a SITREP drafted and sent to Garrett. And through it all I was still thinking about Anaya. Her ferocious desire to save a bunch of girls she’d never met, never even seen. Most people would’ve gone home, thinking that it was horrible what was happening but wouldn’t have made the choice to help. But not Anaya, she faced her fears straight on. How she thought she was screwed up was beyond me.
My attention went to my laptop when I got an immediate email back from Garrett. He was running the images now and would have something for us in a few hours. Good, the sooner we knew what we were dealing with the better. None of us wanted to delay getting the girls to safety, but we had to be smart about it.
My eyes were getting heavy and I debated making sure Declan was awake and ready to take over watch so I could take a nap when I heard a blood-curdling scream.
Before I could think better of it, I was in Anaya’s room. But at the last second, I stopped myself from touching her. My palms were mere millimeters from her arms, fighting the urge to shake her awake. So close I could feel her nightmare rolling off her in waves.
“Anaya. Wake up.” She started to shout again, and I had no choice. I grabbed her arms and shook. “Anaya,” I snapped. “Wake. Up.”
Her eyes came open wide and in shock and I immediately yanked my hands back.
“What’s wrong?” she slurred.
“You had a nightmare.”
She blinked the sleep from her eyes and her brows furrowed. Any other situation, I’d think the look was cute as hell. But right then knowing that something so horrific had happened in her dreams that she’d thrashed and shouted in her sleep made me murderous.
“Shit. I did?”
“You good in here?” Declan asked from the doorway.
“Yeah.”
“I got watch,” he said, and I heard the door click closed.
“You always sleep with the light on?” I inquired.
“No. But I fell asleep reading.” I glanced at the bed and next to her was the paperback.
Don’t go there, I reminded myself, eyeing the book.
I glanced back at her face and she was covered in sweat. “You’re burning up under all those covers.”
I started to pull the comforter back, but she clung to it.
“I’m fine.”
“Sweetheart, you have sweat rolling down your face. You’re all bundled up and you’re wearing sweats.”
“No, I’m not,” she muttered.
My gaze shifted to the floor and both the sweats and tee were there.
Good Christ, she was naked, or damn close to it, under the covers. Fuck, shit, fuck. Now was not the time to think about her sweaty and half-naked but damn if I could stop the visions from flooding.
Dick. I was a total dick.
“Let’s at least take off the blanket. You can leave the sheet on.”
Relief washed over me when I noticed her bra straps. At least she was wearing something.
And didn’t that thought make me an even bigger dick? She’d just woken up from a nightmare and all I was thinking about was what she had on.
Get your damn head out of the gutter and on straight.
Anaya pushed down the heavy comforter but kept the sheet pulled up to her throat.
“You wanna talk about your dream?”
“No.”
“All right. I’ll let you get back to sleep.”
One hand left the sheet, shot out, and grabbed my wrist. “Will you stay here with me for a few minutes?”
It looked like it pained her to ask.
“Of course.”
I was half-sitting on the mattress and she moved over, giving me more room.
What was I supposed to do now? Sit like this with my ass on the edge of the bed? Lie next to her? That didn’t sound like a good option for a variety of reasons. One being I wanted desperately to be in this bed with her, just not under these circumstances.
Anaya rolled to her side facing me and shook her head against the pillow.
“I’m being ridiculous. You have to be exhausted. You don’t—”
I made a split-second decision, one I hoped wouldn’t bite me in the ass but I couldn’t stop myself from making it. I simply couldn’t pull myself away. The unexplainable tether was shortening with every moment I was with her. I was playing a dangerous game that would likely have disastrous consequences. But the fuck of it was, I was willing to pay the penalty if it meant I got to be near her.
“Scoot over a little more.”
When she moved to the other side of the queen-sized bed, I kicked off my boots, pulled my holster and gun free, set them on the nightstand, and laid down next to her on my side.
Face-to-face but plenty of room between us. Space I needed more than her.
“This okay?”
“Yeah,” she sighed. “I swear, I’m normally not this much of a baby.”
“Tonight was hard on all of us. More so on you.”
“And Declan, too.”
I tamped down the jealousy that had crept up at hearing her concern for my friend and agreed, “Yes, and for Dec, too.”
“I haven’t had a nightmare in a long time,” she started. “Not even after what happened in the village after the rebels came and destroyed everything. I could hear people crying and begging. But I hadn’t had any bad dreams.”
Anaya’s eyes left mine and she focused on my hand between us. I opened my fingers and left it palm side up in invitation but made no move to touch her.
Much to my shock she started to trace the lines on my hand with her finger. The touch so simple, yet it still garnered a strong reaction.
“It was because I was thinking about the girls,” she whispered.
My attention went to the book still on the bed, now laying by her hip and something dawned on me.
“In that book, the woman is kept in—”
“I’m not a total freak. I don’t get triggered from reading a book. I know the difference between reality and fiction. Hell, I worked with missing children for almost five years.”
“What does trigger you?”
“Normally nothing. Well, that’s kind of a lie. Obviously, you saw my reaction to being caged in. I don’t like to feel trapped or restrained in any way. That always sends me over the edge. But tonight, it was seeing those men go into the house. And knowing what was happening to the girls.”
I nodded my understanding, even though I could never understand what Anaya was feeling, I had rescued my fair share of trafficked women. Both young and old. Shitbags didn’t have an age preference. Older women were at just as much risk as the you
ng ones.
“Tell me something about you?” she asked quietly.
I thought about something lighthearted I could tell her and found I had to search way back before I could come up with something that didn’t involve death and destruction.
“I grew up in small town in eastern Wyoming called Pine Bluffs. Population twelve-hundred.”
“Twelve hundred?” she gasped.
“Yep. One elementary school, and one junior high and high school combined. I’m telling you the truth when I tell you I knew every kid in town and my parents knew every one of their parents. As you can imagine there wasn’t much to do except cause trouble. And when young boys wanna find trouble, they find it. Nothing but wide-open spaces and clean air.” I smiled remembering all the fun we’d had. “Pine Bluffs borders Nebraska. So, when I was a kid my friends and I would ride our bikes over the border into Nebraska thinking we were hot shit being in a different state alone without our parents. This one time we figured we go south into Colorado.”
“How old were you?”
“Ten maybe eleven.”
“Holy crap.” Anaya smiled.
“Yeah, so the Colorado border was a little farther, almost thirteen miles. But we figured we could do it. We all got on our bikes and headed down old Country Road 164. Our only problem was after almost two hours of riding we hadn’t seen the Colorado sign and we started to get nervous. There was nothing around. I mean nothing. We were on an old dirt road and hadn’t seen another car or house for about thirty minutes.”
“What’d you guys do?”
“We kept riding until we finally spotted an old trailer and stopped to see if someone was home. Thankfully there was, and the old man informed us we’d crossed over into Colorado five miles back.”
“Oh, no. Seriously?”
“Yep.” I smiled at the memory. “There was no marker on the country road welcoming you to Colorado. And let’s just say, by the time my dad had driven to pick us up because there was no way we were peddling back, Wyoming wasn’t very welcoming either.”
“How much trouble did you get into?”
“Dad took my bike for a month. And back then, as a boy my bike was everything and a month was a lifetime. Now he laughs about it, but when it happened, he was pissed. We all would’ve gotten away with it if we could’ve ridden home but we were all too tired.”
“No one knew you were gone?”
“It was summertime and back then you were up out of the house with the sun or else mom or dad would find chores for you to do and you didn’t come home until sundown. Pine Bluffs, Wyoming, looks like it was frozen in time. No one thinks twice about letting their kids roam around or where they are. It’s a different world.”
“That must’ve been nice.” The sadness in her voice gutted me. “Do your parents still live there?”
“No. They sold the ranch and moved to Cheyenne. My dad took a retirement job, as he calls it, with the farm bureau and my mom’s always been a homemaker.”
Anaya yawned then smiled. “It sounds like the perfect place to grow up.”
“It was. Close your eyes and try to get some sleep.”
“Will you stay?”
Her innocent request had my heart pounding in my chest. More trust. And the more she gave the more I wanted to take. The more I wanted to prove to her she was safe with me. I wanted to give to her in return, but what I wanted to give were not things she’d welcome. And those things had nothing to do with sex and everything to do with me tearing down the walls she’d erected and showing her how good life could be. I didn’t think Anaya had a lot of happy in her life. She’d admitted to being closed off, and that was a damn shame because she was missing out. Knowledge that pissed me off. She had so much to offer the world, to offer a man, so she had no business hiding away allowing her life to pass her by.
“If you want me to.”
“Thanks,” she whispered, and her eyes drifted closed.
It didn’t take her long to find sleep, but I couldn’t turn my brain off. All I could think about was how different our childhoods were. I grew up with June and Ward Cleaver in a sleepy small town and she grew up in group homes with monsters lurking around every corner. Totally fucked.
Anaya Baker was an anomaly. A rare and special woman who’d managed to pull herself out of hell.
Chapter 7
My eyes came open with a start.
After I blinked the fuzziness away, Kyle came into focus.
I knew immediately why he was in bed with me. It had been a long time since I’d had a nightmare. Years of therapy had thankfully cured me of them, or time had. Either way, I no longer had night terrors. But last night my dream had been so real. Only I wasn’t back in the basement I’d been kept in, and I wasn’t chained to a wall or in a cage. I was in Amisha’s house forced to watch as men traipsed in and out. Even after I’d woken up, the girls’ cries rang in my ears.
I studied Kyle’s face for a moment, he looked different—relaxed. Less lethal, when his features were slack with sleep. There was no doubt about it, Kyle was good-looking. A hank of hair had fallen on his forehead, it was too dark to be called blond but too light to be called brown. I wasn’t sure what color to call it but I was sure I wanted to push the unruly piece back and see if it was as soft as it looked. But I wouldn’t, for a variety of reasons, the main being the gesture would be too forward and a little creepy. And besides, the sweep of hair almost made him look cute in a badass, former SEAL kind of way. Though he’d still yet to confirm he’d been special forces—but I knew. His movements and intensity belied his denials.
I smiled as my gaze traveled down to our hands. We were still on our sides facing one another; his hand was in the same place it had been last night when he’d offered it to me. We weren’t holding hands—not really—mine was just resting on top of his. The sight made me weirdly happy but at the same time sad knowing in a few days he’d be gone. It also made me wish I was the kind of woman who could go for what she wanted, who didn’t have hang-ups, who didn’t have a shipping container full of regrets. And not reaching out to touch Kyle was just another one of those regrets I’d stack on top of all the others. Another missed opportunity because I was too scared to ask for what I wanted.
Not that I thought Kyle would be receptive to me touching him, or that he’d close the distance between us so I could kiss him. A thought I couldn’t get out of my head, not since he’d had me against the wall, only to intensify when he’d laid beside me. His rejection would hurt, but moreover, I was totally out of line even thinking about kissing him.
“Everything okay?” Kyle asked.
His sleep-rough voice sent chills racing down my arms. Or was it the chilly air in the room? That, of course, was the most logical explanation for my sudden shiver, if the bedroom had indeed been cold. But it wasn’t, the air was stifling, leaving me to admit it was simply his sexy drawl that had made me shudder.
“Yeah.” I’d been so lost studying our connection I’d missed him waking up. “Sorry if I woke you.”
“You didn’t. I’ve been awake awhile.”
Oh, good Lord, had he seen me looking at him?
“You have?” My eyes snapped to his.
I started to move my hand away, but he closed his fingers around mine. His penetrating gaze held mine and I realized that last night in the moonlight, I’d been wrong, I’d thought his eyes were more green than brown. But this close with the sun spilling into the room, there were dark brown flecks that dotted his irises. They were spectacular, unique, powerful, and damn sexy.
“Anymore nightmares?”
“No.”
Mortification flooded, reminding me he was not in bed with me for sexy fun times. It was because I’d been weak and shaken after my nightmare. And then there was that part of me that needed to use that as an excuse to spend time with him. Maybe I should’ve felt guilty about being a little dishonest but I didn’t. And that brought a whole new set of uncomfortable feelings.
“Where’d you go
?” Kyle muttered.
“Huh?”
“You looked like you just took an unpleasant trip in your mind.”
Jeez, he didn’t miss much.
“You still wanna deny you were a SEAL?” I muttered.
“What does that have to do with anything?” He chuckled.
“You’re observant.”
“So? Because I pay attention means I was a SEAL?”
“Pretty much.”
Kyle’s broad smile made my stomach flipflop and since he’d already woken up my girly parts and shaken off the dust, they certainly noticed how sexy he looked first thing in the morning with a grin on his handsome face. Too bad he wasn’t smiling for other reasons.
He shook his head as if he could read my thoughts—which at this point I was worried he could—and asked, “Are you hungry?”
“More evasion,” I mumbled, then answered. “Yeah, I’m actually starving.”
“Good. You didn’t eat last night. I’ll get outta here so you can get up and get dressed.”
Heat hit my cheeks at the reminder I was only in my bra and panties, something that didn’t seem to faze him like it did me. With two men in the house, I’d had every intention of sleeping with sweats and a t-shirt. But within ten minutes of being in bed it was hotter than hell and I’d stripped down. By some miracle I’d been covered up when Kyle had come into the room.
I nodded my agreement, but Kyle didn’t move. His gaze lingered and his pupils dilated. He looked like he was deep in thought. Finally, he came out of his trance and let go of my hand, rolled to his back, then up to sit.
With another glance down at me that sent more goosebumps over my arms he got up and without another word he left the room.
As soon as the door clicked behind Kyle I was up out of bed and rummaging through my bag finding shorts and a t-shirt. I grabbed my toothbrush and darted out of the room, across the hall into the bathroom.
Kyle Page 7