“Is it bad?”
“Hell no.” He chuckled. “Did it feel bad?”
“No.” She sounded just a tad frightened. “It was really—exhilarating to choose to come. I felt it happening. It was like a hot spot right beside my clit, and I knew that if I didn’t move and just waited, that I would reach my orgasm. And once I decided that, I felt as if my whole body took over.”
“And it felt pretty damn good, right?”
“Yes!” She moaned. “It felt so good that I want to go again!”
Bones laughed. “How about we give it just a little break, hmm?”
“Mmm,” she purred. “Is your tongue all worn out?”
She was sounding sassy and confident. Soon his job would be done, and then what would happen?
Chapter Fourteen
Marina felt light. No. She felt free. Yes. That was it. She had walked out of that prison so many months ago, but until right now she had still felt like a captive. Now she truly understood what people meant by the phrase “knock one loose”. It was incredible.
The lights were off now. Or at least, the overheads were off. The computer screens still gave off a bluish green glow. That was what Bones had dedicated the final corner of his living space to. He had a corner desk, three different monitors, and what looked like a desktop and a laptop computer. There were maps and charts pinned to a white board with scribbled notes all around them. It looked like something off a cheesy crime show. The real light came from a desk lamp left on. Marina couldn’t be certain that Bones hadn’t left the light on for her. It seemed like something that he would do, and after her jarring sexual release she had sort of dropped off to sleep.
The sleeping platform was incredibly comfortable. She was curled up against Bones’s chest. She could hear his light snoring behind her and wondered how deeply asleep he really was. She suspected that the SEAL never truly slept. Much like her, the primal portions of his brain were far too alert to allow for total surrender.
He stretched, and she knew that he wasn’t really down for the count. “Can’t sleep?”
“Do you ever really fall asleep anymore?” she whispered the question, already knowing the answer. “I feel like I haven’t slept like that since before all of this began.”
“Tell me what it was like before,” he suggested.
Marina thought about that for a moment. What had she really been like? What summed up her whole life? “I was the quintessential cheerleader. I was popular and confident, and I had tons of friends.”
“What else?” he pressed.
Marina realized quite suddenly that she actually didn’t want to go back to the way she had been. “I was shallow.”
“I find that hard to believe.” His lips nibbled the joint of her neck and shoulder. “Someone who was truly shallow would have welcomed the opportunity to go back to the life she had before. A shallow person wouldn’t feel a burden of responsibility for the women who didn’t get out of that hellhole alive.”
“I wouldn’t want to go back to what I was.” Marina was both relieved and appalled. “Maybe I thought I wanted it back the way it was just because I thought it would make everyone else happy, but I would hate it.”
“Why?”
She mulled it over for a moment. “I wouldn’t have gained anything.” Then she squirmed around to face him. “That’s what you’ve been trying to tell me since I met you, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“How can you stand me?”
“Easily.” His gruff tone soothed her somehow. “You’re human, Marina. You’ve been through a lot. You have scars inside and out. What isn’t to respect?”
“Sometimes it feels like nobody saw me until you came along.” The truth of that statement gutted her.
HOW COULD HE ever walk away from this woman now? Bones felt his gut clench as he contemplated his next assignment as a SEAL. The chain of command was fucking with every single member of his team, and had been since they had decided to embroil themselves in this investigation. Romero had already been called back to active duty and was having a hell of a time getting that decision reversed. What would Bones do when he was recalled?
“I was a cheerleader,” Marina whispered. She was staring at him, and Bones felt emotionally naked before her. “What were you?”
“Growing up?” He never talked about his past. Even his team knew to leave that topic alone. “I don’t like to talk about it.”
“Why not?”
“Because it wasn’t pretty.”
“You’ve made it to where you are,” she pointed out. “So no matter what shaped you into the man you are, it was all worthwhile.”
Bones snorted. The woman had no idea what she was saying. “You’d think differently if you knew what I was like in my younger years.”
“Truly?” Two lines appeared between her eyebrows as she frowned up at him. “Because you’ve been nothing but a blessing to my life, and I don’t care how you got here. I’m only thankful that you did.”
It was strange. No matter how many times his brothers-in-arms told him the same sorts of things, Bones never bought their gratitude. A SEAL team was only as good as the men assigned to it. They were all proficient in as many categories as they could be. A team wasn’t split up into specialized functions for each member, because that weakened the team. That meant that each member of Bones’s SEAL team was lethal in his own right. He was part of a team, but not indispensable. At least, not the way he saw it. But what Marina was saying had a different effect on the way he saw things.
She touched his cheek with her fingertips. “Tell me, Bones. You could start with a name. I very much doubt you were born being called Bones.”
“Marlon,” he said quickly. The name slipped out before he could think better of it. “My name is Marlon Jackson.”
“You’re from Baltimore?”
“Yes.” He curled his lip. It was very likely that the life of privilege and love that she had been born to would make her turn away from him in disgust when she heard his origins. “I was discarded by my mother when I was born. She left me on the doorstep of a hospital. From there I bounced around from foster home to foster home here in Baltimore. I saw more crap than any kid should.”
“But you thrived,” she whispered. “You survived, and you rose above that beginning.”
“It wasn’t from a lack of stupid decisions,” Bones told her regretfully. “If I hadn’t had a few teachers in high school that saw me as more than a delinquent, I would have been in jail before graduation.”
“But what happened?”
Bones remembered Mr. Hopkins. “ROTC. I joined because it was either that or detention, and for some reason the marching and drill work really appealed to me.”
“What appealed?” She was idly stroking his face, his neck, and touching his head. Her touch was driving him to distraction, but he would never tell her to stop. “I liked the organization. Everything else in my life was out of control, but that was always right on schedule and in perfect formation.”
MARINA THOUGHT ABOUT the boy he had probably been. It was difficult to imagine him as a delinquent. He was so good. The kindness practically bled out of his pores. She could feel him. His vibe was so inviting that she was shocked he didn’t get mobbed by strangers every time he left the house.
“You’re a good man, Bones,” she whispered.
He snorted. “You only think that because you and I have met under extraordinary circumstances.”
“What? So normally you would be mean to me or something?” she teased. “You would maybe tell me to man up and stop bitching, or call me a whiner or something? Or would you say the stuff to me that my family does? Would you tell me that I need to put all of this ridiculousness behind me and just get over the PTSD because it’s not real anyway?”
“No. Never!” His lethal tone of voice spoke volumes.
“Exactly,” she told him firmly. “You wouldn’t treat me that way because you’re a good man, Bones. And that is one of about a mi
llion reasons why I love you.”
Marina wished she could take the words back just as soon as they were out. Not because she didn’t mean them, but because she knew on a very basic level that Bones wasn’t ready to hear them. There was something about him that held an intrinsic drive to be a protector, and yet she sensed that he wasn’t exactly comfortable in that role. At least not permanently.
“Marina,” he growled. “You could do so much better than me.”
“Bones, I don’t want to argue about this. Not now. Not later.” Marina sighed. “How can I do better than the best man I’ve ever met?”
“You just can.” He restlessly ran a hand over his scalp. “I’m a SEAL. Do you know what that means?”
“It means you’re an incredibly dedicated and strong man,” she told him unflinchingly.
“It means I leave.”
His words were brutal, but she understood what he was saying. “You’re talking about the deployments.”
“Yes. What else?” He sounded frustrated.
They were lying on the bed together. She was snuggled into his side, staring up at his unfathomable expression, and he was holding onto her as though he never wanted to let go while he was talking about doing just that. She wondered if he even realized the dichotomy he was trying to portray.
BONES HEARD THE words coming out of his mouth, but couldn’t understand why Marina seemed to refuse to listen. He was telling her that being with him would leave her alone no matter what. How could she even entertain the idea after all she had been through?
“Marina, you deserve a relationship with a man who will be there for you always.” Even as he said the words he wanted to put his first through the face of whatever man dared to even think about her, let alone touch her.
“So you’re trying to ditch me already?” She raised her elegant eyebrows. “Geeze. We haven’t even gotten around to going all the way and you’re already trying to squirm out of the relationship thing. That’s got to be a record.”
“I’m not—” He had no desire to stomp on her fledgling confidence. “That’s not what I’m trying to do.”
“Bones, I’m not trying to hogtie you and drag you to the altar or something,” Marina assured him.
Bones was momentarily stunned speechless by the mental image of Marina in a long, white, filmy dress. He pictured her walking down the aisle toward a man who would promise to love and cherish her forever. The woman would make the most incredible bride. He was certain of that.
“Maybe we just need to get back to focusing on the case,” she told him with a yawn.
“It’s early yet.” He latched onto her words, hoping it was an opportunity to steer the conversation into less treacherous waters. “You should be sleeping.”
“I can’t sleep. My brain is too busy,” she explained.
Then she stretched. The woman was naked on his bed. The way she moved beneath the covers showed him every single curve in utter and perfect relief. He saw the rounded contours of her breasts and the narrow flare of her hips. Her legs brushed against his, and he wondered if it was possible to die of acute arousal. Except he shouldn’t be thinking about sex with her at all, considering the horrific conversation he’d just been having with her.
“Bones,” she whispered.
He felt so very slow and stupid. He was tired, and he was horny. It was a bad combination. “What?”
“I can see how much you want me,” she whispered. “Why do you keep doing so much for me without taking anything for yourself?”
“You.” He struggled to find the words. He didn’t want her to think he was minimizing or poking at her issues. “You needed to fix some things. My needs weren’t important.”
“In case you didn’t notice,” she said silkily, “you helped me get over at least one part of my issue.”
“One part?” he asked, feeling stupid.
“Sure. I came. But I still haven’t come during actual intercourse, you know?” The expression on her face was almost impossible to read. “I think we should probably try that. Don’t you think?”
Chapter Fifteen
Bones was going to hell. Fast. His mind was so tangled up between duty and desire that he could not decipher between what he wanted and what was possible. What good was he to a woman like Marina Reyes? He had been insane to believe that he could be good for her. She needed consistency and love that he was not capable of providing. He was a soldier. It was what he knew. If he left that behind he was nothing—had nothing.
He struggled to roll out of the bed and put some distance between them. He had no right to make promises. Not with his lips, and not even with his body. Therefore it was time to find some perspective. He had felt as though he needed to help her get over her control issues. Teaching her to let go and achieve release had been his goal. That was over. Now it was time to get back to the matter at hand.
“What are you doing?”
Her soft words nearly gutted him. Not because they held an accusation, but because they did not. How could she be so calm and accepting? Wasn’t this where she railed at him for using her?
Bones walked to his desk. He still wore only his cargo pants. Rubbing a hand down his face, he moved the mouse to wake up his desktop computer before standing back and looking at the board where he had scribbled his notes. All of that felt as though it had happened decades ago. Yet it should have been his here and now.
“We have work to do,” he murmured.
He heard her move behind him, but did not turn. He didn’t want to watch her get dressed. The thought of her leaving his bed was painful, but necessary. Reality was knocking, and it was time to go to work.
Bones stared at his notes, and then flipped open the folder he had taken from the harbormaster’s office. The containers on that ship were all stamped with the letters HJH. If they were actually the initials of the individual who was responsible for the entire operation, it would seem almost too easy. A corporation perhaps? In any case, he needed to find the answer and forward it on to Romero, Yates, and Sparks. From there his teammates could add that to the growing framework of information they were collecting on the network.
“Is it possible to cross reference any of your Middle Eastern suspects with those letters?” Marina asked, walking up behind him.
Bones could smell her light, feminine fragrance and felt his body coming alive with need. He slammed the lid on those feelings and shoved them into the kill-box before they could overwhelm him. That did not matter. It didn’t.
Marina appeared in his peripheral vision with nothing but her T-shirt on. Was she being indecent on purpose? And why would he ever apply that word to her? If she was confident enough to run around in a T-shirt—wait a second, that was his T-shirt—then he needed to be flattered as hell.
“Sorry.” Her tone said she was anything but. “It was handy and quicker than just pulling on my clothes again.”
He cleared his throat. “No problem.”
MARINA WISHED SHE knew what had gotten into Bones. Why was he so angry with her? She hadn’t done anything. At least, she didn’t think she had, which meant that whatever was going on had come directly from something inside of him. She had been working so hard with her therapist to identify her own issues and stop trying to assume that everyone else’s problems were her own. That insight was coming in pretty damn handy right now. So if Bones had his own demons—which was highly possible, given the circumstances—then she needed to be as understanding with his as he had been with hers.
He shuddered out a huge sigh. “Real life isn’t like one of those crime shows where some tech analyst sits behind a desk with fingers in every single database on the planet, types in a few cross reference parameters, and comes up with the answer.”
“I know it’s not. That’s why I was asking what was possible.” She was a little miffed that he thought her that naive. “I’m not a total newbie when it comes to this stuff, you know? I’ve been in the basement of the Baltimore Police Station and the newspapers going thr
ough microfiche and other public records trying to link missing persons cases. I know what real cold cases look like.”
“Sorry,” he grunted. Picking up his marker, he turned to the white board. He began scribbling a list of names. “When Whiteside, Algodones, and Paulsen were together in the Middle East, they were assigned to diplomatic missions involving these men.”
Marina quickly glanced over the list. “Princes?”
“From the UAE, yes.”
“United Arab Emigrates,” Marina mused. “Are there brothers?”
“Brothers?”
“Didn’t someone tell you guys that there was more than one?”
His brow furrowed. Then he tapped one of the names. “Jabaribn Armeen Al Saud had a brother.”
“Do you know what his name was?”
“I think it was Hasim.”
Marina put her fingers to work on Bones’s keyboard. She typed in Jabaribn Armeen Al Saud and immediately came up with an info page. “Apparently Jabar is a bit of a heartbreaker over there. And his older brother is named Hasim.”
“They treat their princes like celebrities,” Bones agreed.
“So if he did something bad, he would be forgiven.”
Marina watched Bones work the information through in his head. “What they’re doing wouldn’t be considered bad over there. It’s just business.”
“Disgusting,” Marina muttered. “But okay, for the sake of argument. Let’s say this Hasim guy is our sleazebag. His name starts with H. So H-J-H. Hasim and Jabar…” She let the name hang in the open while she sought the next piece. “What does the other H stand for?”
“There was another brother,” Bones murmured.
BONES RACKED HIS brain. There was something he needed to remember about those brothers. They were spoiled characters in a Stygian tragedy at best. Then Bones heard Marina suck in a sharp breath.
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