by India Kells
Unable to look at him, her emotions clogging her vocal cords, she simply nodded before taking another step and breaking their connection, once and for all.
Chapter 11
Dylan felt like she was swimming in a dark pool of dense goo—a little between feeling sick, feeling high, and feeling very tired. Her memories were blurry of where she was sleeping, and as her eyes were still too heavy to open up, she tried instead to remember her last coherent thought. Faces melted one into the other, but the stubborn, bearded face of Owen—with his swirling blue eyes—came to her mind more often than the others. Beatrice was frowning and Lance had that annoying smirk on his angel face. Everyone irritated her now. Why?
The farmhouse. That was the last place she remembered. The safe house where Lance had driven them to meet Beatrice. And then what?
She struggled to push beyond the hazy feeling in her brain. The safe house, she was about to leave. Alone. Lance had prepared a meal before she went. The recurring thought that something was wrong came often to her mind. Beatrice was too resigned, Owen too compliant, Lance too happy. Or was she the one losing her mind? And that point in time was the last event recorded in her mind.
Her body itched and she moved, feeling a pillow under her cheek, a sheet twisting around her. I’m in a bed? That thought cleared her thoughts enough, forcing her eyes to open. She was in a bed all right. A strange one, in a strange room. No light except a soft glow coming from under the door. To confirm it was night, she pushed herself up and wobbled to the window. A street. She was in a second-story apartment in a city. No lock on the window. She turned a little too fast and her world tilted. With both palms pressed against the nearby wall, she waited to regain her equilibrium. That’s when she heard footsteps from the other room. Panic rose, memories of her abduction coming to grab her by the throat with a vengeance. But she wasn’t the same naïve woman as before, and her abductor would learn it until he crawled in blood. She looked around, trying to find any kind of weapon, but she couldn’t focus and fell to her knees. Suddenly, light flooded the room and she braced for an attack.
“Dylan, are you all right?” It was easy to recognize Owen’s familiar voice and his silhouette framed in light. Noticing that she was wearing the same clothes as at the farmhouse, she was immediately self-conscious. At that moment, her legs gave out and she fell to her knees.
“What happened to me? Where are we?” Her voice sounded strange even to her.
“Don’t move, wait.” Owen crouched in front of her, and she couldn’t help but recoil as he went to touch her. He seemed to remember her request and clasped his hands, remaining close by. “Take it easy, you’ll fall and hurt yourself.”
That was a moot point, as she didn’t think she could stand straight again. “What happened to me? Answer me, Sorenson.” As anger bubbled inside of her; she felt more like her old self. Good.
“I will explain, but not sitting on the floor. Can you stand up? I made coffee in the kitchen, and you also can get something to eat.”
Dylan tried to push herself up to her feet, but she was still partially trapped in a fog. She wanted answers, but she needed to be on equal footing with Owen. So, reluctantly, she bit back a remark and sighed. “You’ll have to help me up, Sorenson.”
Owen nodded, but instead of taking her arm and pulling her up, he put a knee on the floor and slid an arm under her knees and one behind her back before scooping her up. Slightly disoriented, Dylan held Owen’s muscled shoulders in a deadly grip.
“I won’t drop you, Dylan.” His deep, low voice made her shiver.
She couldn’t answer. It was the overwhelming presence of this man holding her too close.
Once in the kitchen, he gently sat her on a stool at the counter and went to pour two mugs of coffee. Her head stopped buzzing and she got a look around. She could see that this apartment was not an anonymous safe house—it was lived in. One glance in the living room showed family pictures on the wall, and in the kitchen there was a grocery list scribbled on the fridge. This was a male apartment, with lots of dark woods and leather furniture.
“Owen? Is this your apartment?”
He came back with two steaming mugs and pushed one before her. She ignored it.
“I wondered how long it would take you to find out with your cop skills.”
“More like interrogation skills. You just confirmed an educated guess. My real question is; why is it you own a place when there is nothing under your name in the official records?”
He smiled before taking a sip of coffee. “And that brain of yours is back.”
“Yeah, and the more it’s back, the more it’s pissed. You have some explaining to do before the rest of my body beats you to a bloody pulp. And start with when you drugged me.”
Owen leaned against the counter. “To be totally honest, the drug came from Beatrice and it was Lance who put it in your meal. I didn’t know their plans until later.”
Closing her eyes, Dylan prayed for patience. Beatrice was her best friend, but sometimes she wanted to strangle her when she went all alpha on everyone.
“Can you tell me why? Especially when we all came to an understanding? You’re harboring a fugitive, for God’s sake! A possible terrorist in the eyes of the law. Are you all insane?”
Owen took another drink of his coffee, clearly undeterred, which was even more exasperating. “Beatrice had a better idea.”
Dylan clenched her teeth. “A better idea? That’s your answer?”
Owen nodded, and judging by the grin tugging at his lips, she wasn’t going to like it. Wanting to be on equal footing, she pushed herself up, but the drug was still making her legs feel like jelly. She was certain that her ass would hit the floor, but when her world steadied again, it was Owen’s face that filled her clearing vision with a hand on her arm and one on her hip. She swallowed and tried to make light of the fact that she didn’t mind this man touching her, a real feat. Probably an effect of the drug. And being so close, she could touch him, too. For an instant, she wondered if his golden beard was as soft as it appeared. As her gaze drifted to his mouth, it opened slightly, inviting, and she simply reacted. Before her fears and pains resurfaced, her mouth was on his. A thought fluttered in her mind: I’m kissing another human being, Owen Sorenson to boot, and I’m not hyperventilating!
For an instant, the ever-present anxiety was gone … something she never would have thought possible. It was as if she was brought back in time, before the kidnapping and the torture, where there was peace, pleasure, and sensations. Now, surrounded by heat, her hands clutching thick, silky strands of hair and her mouth craving that taste—all male, coffee, and Owen—she couldn’t get enough. At first, his hand remained on her arm and hip as he pulled her against his hard body. Muscles and arousal. Dylan moaned and let her hands drift lower on his chest.
Arms circled her, and his moan made her core throb. Surfing on the feelings, she was almost lost to them when she felt Owen sliding his hands under her shirt. This simple, natural touch was like a bucket of ice crashing down over her head and she shoved him away.
Full-blown panic quickly replaced lust, and it took all her self-control not to let herself be swept into the abyss. Wheezing, she focused on her breath. When she got her heartbeat under control and could focus again, she realized that she was curled into a tight ball on the floor, in the corner of the counter and kitchen wall. Owen was six feet away, kneeling, his hands on the floor, telling her to relax and breathe with his low, soothing voice. When she locked her gaze on him, she started to mirror his breathing. Inch by inch, her body relaxed again, until she could lean back against the wall and stop her legs and arms from trembling. Owen didn’t move an inch, waiting.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Owen.” Still out of breath, she had to tell him that.
“Don’t. I pushed you, I shouldn’t have taken advantage of you. Not after what you told me.”
Dylan snickered, breathless. “Nobody takes advantage of me, Owen. I was a very willing partic
ipant. Damn, I was the one who initiated it. It was the first time I had forgotten about it … and then it swamped me.”
“It’s when I touched your skin, right? That’s when you had a flashback?”
“It’s not a flashback. It’s more like panic drowning me, a flash flood. The fact that you might have …”
“Might have what?”
She swallowed reflexively, but forced herself to say the words. “That you might have felt the marks, the scars. The proof of what my torturer did to me.”
The man blinked as he looked at her. When he spoke, his voice was calm, but she detected barely contained emotion. “You won’t believe me for what I’m about to say, but I’ll say it anyway. You’re a warrior, Dylan, like the people of Purgatory, like the men I fought with, like my brothers. And because sometimes, we fight and lose, we get broken, wounded, scared. I wouldn’t ever judge you for what you went through. I find you attractive, not only because of your body, but because of the fire I see in you. My body is scarred, too. And burnt. And wounded. It’s not something I would change either. It comes with the job.”
Dylan rolled her eyes. “You say that because you’re a man. Scars on a warrior look good. Not on a woman, especially when the scars were artistically carved by a madman.”
“I don’t agree with your theory.”
“I tested that theory. The last man I got naked in front of … well, let’s say it didn’t end well.”
As she said it, Dylan winced, regretting her admission. At her words, the energy shifted, and the easy-going, compassionate man was replaced by a very angry SEAL.
“He what?” It was strange to hear fury in his voice when his face seemed so calm. He was usually such a quiet man.
“Forget about that. It’s in the past.” Backtracking so quickly seemed to make matters worse.
Owen leaned forward, hands back on the floor, as if both trying to get closer and restraining himself of doing so. “That’s bull crap, and you know it.”
“It’s not!”
“It is, otherwise, that moron would be dead and you would be naked right now.”
Dylan rubbed her face, torn between laughing or sobbing in despair. Instead, she let her head fall against the wall in a loud thump. “Can we go back to the topic where you drugged me and kidnapped me to God knows where?”
Owen nodded. “Okay. We’ll drop this subject for now, but it isn’t over, Dylan.”
“I’m not your mission. So, you can drop the mighty Navy SEAL’s attitude.”
Getting to his feet, Owen waited for her to get up, giving her space. “Like it or not, you are, Dylan. Get used to it.”
Chapter 12
That’s the problem with stubborn men. You had to find other ways to get through them. And Dylan hadn’t found one yet. Owen was like some kind of unbreachable firewall. She hadn’t uncovered his weakness yet. He resisted her taunts, and never got nervous or irritated … well, not with her anyway, and treated her like she had a brain and that it mattered to him. And the worse of the worst, he wanted her. It was impossible to ignore.
When he kissed her, and plastered his body against hers, there was absolutely no doubt that he was aroused. Lusting, desiring her.
Sighing, Dylan let her head fall under the beating hot spray of the shower. Eyes wide open, she observed how the water swirled and sluiced over her naked body. The marks, symbols, and signs marring her skin, she knew them by heart. When she looked at herself with dispassionate logic, she didn’t find them so bad. She had surfed the web countless times, looking at people who actually made scarring an art. But to be honest, Dylan couldn’t look at herself as any piece of art. Those marks were made against her will, by a man deemed to torture her. Images of Henry came to mind. Her sweetheart of a boyfriend, the man with not a single mean bone in his body, who supported her in the hospital and through therapy, who did everything to help her heal and find some sort of normalcy. If that man couldn’t bear to see her marked, no man on the face of the Earth would be able to. Not even the mighty Owen Sorenson.
Angrily, Dylan turned the water to a cold stream. As soon as she conjured up images of the Navy SEAL, she heated up. Now, the sensations of his hands were imprinted on her skin alongside her marks and his taste would take a long time to dissolve on her lips. Even through the desire, anger simmered. She didn’t know if it was the fact that the people she trusted kidnapped her or that she had let her guard down that made her so mad.
And what made her even angrier was that she understood why they did it. It was a brilliant plan to fake her death in a car crash over a cliff that burned the entire car to ashes and splash it all over the news. The feds would be off her back, and her creep would let his guard down. She had more questions, but Owen had pushed her into the shower, telling her that he would prepare something to eat in the meantime. She rather suspected that he needed to plan some more things behind her back. At least, he had confirmed that they were in Seattle, in his apartment. Again, how was it his place when she didn’t find any trace of ownership under his name? Another question pilling up on quite a huge mountain of them.
Shivering, Dylan shut the water and stepped out of the shower to dry off. In the bedroom, no trace of Owen, but instead neatly folded clothes on the bed. Her size. Beatrice’s doing no doubt.
Dressed in a hoodie and jeans, she went back to the kitchen. It smelled good, and now that the drug was mostly out of her system, she was famished. But as she heard Owen cooking, she made a detour by the living room. He had started a fire in the hearth, dispelling all traces of humidity. The roaring fire as the only light, she examined her surroundings, taking the time to glance at the few pictures on the mantle. The picture of the three blond, laughing boys, covered with mud, hugging each other made her smile. The youngest, Owen’s features were the easiest to recognize. A little more serious than his two other brothers. The middle child, Lance was the tallest and blondest of the trio. As she put the frame back down, she saw another family picture, one very sweet of the three boys, now men, hugging a small woman laughing. By the coloring and blue eyes, it was obviously their mother. How strange to see Owen without his beard. He looked so young. Several pictures were happy snapshots, a reminder of good moments. A couple of more professional pictures showed Owen, but also Lance and the other brother—what was his name again?—Wesley, in full Navy uniform. The official picture taken of each of them as they graduated to become Navy SEALs, the Budweiser pin gleaming on their chest. Another one that made her smile was the picture of Owen, flanked by his mother and two brothers as he obviously graduated from the Navy. So many smiles, she envied them.
Dylan didn’t turn when she sensed Owen coming into the living room.
“You were spying on my family pictures?”
“I wasn’t spying. You spy when something is hidden. I was admiring your family. You all look so young and happy.”
“Yeah, tough but good times. I guess I was lucky to have my mom and brothers.” He came closer, but left enough distance to make her comfortable.
“Yes, you were.” Dylan said it low, more for herself, but it made Owen take another step.
“What about you? Don’t you have a family missing you right now? We didn’t have time to think about that when we set up the accident. And Beatrice didn’t mention anything of that sort.”
Dylan abandoned the pictures to peruse his book collection. “No, I’m my only family. In the pictures, I see only your mother, what happened to your dad?”
Putting his hands in his pockets, Owen sat on the edge of the sofa as he probably pondered why she evaded his question. She knew that all his attention was on her, and she wasn’t sure if she liked it or not.
“My father was a drunk. My mother left him when I was ten. It’s been the four of us ever since.”
The tone of his voice made her turn. She wasn’t the only one being totally untruthful in this room. They had something in common, but she was a little less diplomatic than him in the matter. “What happened?”
&n
bsp; She saw him struggle to tell her or not. A sad story, no doubt. Feeling ashamed for having pushed the man when she wouldn’t divulge anything, Dylan shook her head. “You don’t have to tell me, Owen. It’s personal family matter, I understand.”
He arched a brow. “You know, for a hacker, you have incredible restraint.”
“I may be a hacker, but I don’t want to hurt anybody. And one look into your eyes told me that the memory hurt you. I suggest we drop the subject.”
“And what if we trade information instead?”
“Trade?”
“Yeah. I tell you about my sad childhood story if you tell me about yours.”
Dylan angled her head, biting her lip to prevent an amused smile. “What tells you I have a sad childhood story to tell?”