Any man who spent a couple of minutes with her and didn’t fall for her didn’t deserve a Y chromosome.
Matt himself had already fallen.
“I’m really glad you’re feeling better.” He couldn’t get his fingers to detach from her skin. She was like a magnet to his hand.
Honor’s lips upturned. “Orgasms release oxytocin and they lower cortisol. That’s a very powerful endocrine reaction.” She opened her eyes to look him fully in the face. “To all intents and purposes, Matt Walker, you drugged me.”
Yep. Witty.
He moved his finger down the side of her face, outlined her lips. “Happy to oblige. Looking forward to doing it again.”
Her eyes opened at that. She could tell what he meant because she could feel it.
Matt pressed inward, tightening his buttocks. Her legs were fully open, she was very wet. He slid forward easily. Pulled back. Slid forward again.
Slowly. Savoring every moment. He lowered himself more fully onto her, supporting a little of his weight on his forearms. He was heavy and he didn’t want to crush her. Oh no. He wanted her to feel only pleasure. Judging by the sigh that ruffled his hair, it was working.
Matt threaded his fingers through that remarkable fiery hair until his hands cradled her head and closed his eyes. Touch and smell were more than enough.
Touch — oh my god. That silky skin. She was so soft and so firm all over. All woman, but strong. And that smell of roses and sex, it hit something deep in his brain and just switched him on.
He swelled inside her. “Wow,” she whispered. “I don’t know what you were thinking, but it was something else.”
He’d picked up the pace, couldn’t answer. Could barely talk. His entire being was concentrated on where he was joined to her, where she was so warm and wet and welcoming.
Time fractured, split, rearranged itself. He felt like he’d been in her forever because where else would he ever want to be? Inside her was softness and warmth and an excitement so fierce his heart was bouncing around inside his chest.
She curled around him again, legs twined around his, hands on his back, riding his thrusts. She was panting, moaning. Oh God, yes. Matt was going to make it good for her, keep it going, but then her fingernails bit into his ass and she arched and started convulsing around him and — he lost it.
The bed was creaking, pounding against the wall. They were both sweating, Matt more than her, bodies clinging together as he moved faster and faster …
With a shout, he thrust inside her as hard as he could and started coming in jets so strong he thought he’d pass out. And just as he began slowing down, her sheath would clutch him and he’d swell again. Which made her cry out and hold him more tightly and clench around him in rhythmic waves. Their bodies talking to each other in a language as old as time, on and on for what seemed like an eternity.
Finally they both quieted and his heart settled to a fast beat rather than the wild gallop of before. He took in a deep breath, let it out, settled on her heavily.
He should be a gentleman, roll off her. He didn’t have the strength to keep most of his weight on his forearms. Most of his weight was on her. When he could talk again he’d ask if he was crushing her.
In just a minute …
Matt drifted off to some quiet lush place where it was always sunny and warm. He had no idea how long he stayed in that place because time lost all meaning. All he knew was that he had no desire to move. He was exactly where he wanted to be — inside Honor Thomas, where it was warm and welcoming.
She drew in a big breath. Another. Ouch. That sounded like a wheeze. He was awake now but something had happened to his spine. It had disappeared. He’d lost use of his muscles, too.
Too bad. Maybe he’d just have to stay in this position forever. Worse things had happened. But when she wheezed again he was shocked into action. Or rather moved his fingers and toes.
Yup. They worked.
“I should get off you,” he said.
“Mm.” Her arms tightened around him briefly, but then she let him go. “Maybe, yeah. I love this but I also love breathing.”
“Breathing’s good. You’re a doctor, you know that.”
She expanded her chest to get some air. “I do like being like this. Maybe breathing’s overrated?”
He laughed, their bellies rubbing against each other. They were stuck together by their sweat and he could feel the wetness between her legs. Not romantic, but in a crazy way it was. They were as physically close as two human beings could get. He felt closer to her than he ever had to any other woman.
Usually when he noticed sweat and wet spots it was time to bug out. A quick shower and out the door. But not now. Now he was the one who was reluctant to move.
“I’m going to get up,” he announced lazily.
“Any moment now,” she answered.
They laughed. He lifted himself up a little. It was hard, but it also allowed him to look her in the eyes. Give a little, get a little. Man she was just so pretty after sex. Eyes shining, a glow in her cheeks. And the way she was looking at him … man.
He idly rubbed his chest where his heart had suddenly given a kick.
She pulled in a breath, nostrils opening. He knew what she was smelling.
“We should shower.” Her eyes half closed, lazily. “We smell.”
“We do,” he agreed. “It’s not a bad smell, though.”
“No.” Her face turned serious. She reached out and cupped his cheek. “Not bad at all. Even sort of nice. In a gross way.”
They both laughed again.
“You’re a gentleman,” she said and he nodded. “That means I get to shower first. And I mean shower shower, not frolic under the showerhead. I saw that gleam in your eye.”
“Busted,” he groaned, flopping over on his back. True, he was a gentleman. Sort of. The truth was, he was too blasted to get up and shower. He needed recovery time. Even better if he got credit for gentlemanliness for it.
Honor threw back the comforter, letting cold air into their little nest. He could hear her padding to the bathroom, the shower being turned on. The shower wasn’t the only thing being turned on, though. He was getting all heated up thinking of her under that shower, slowly soaping up a washcloth, wiping her breasts, down over her belly, between her legs …
The soft porn images were cut off by Honor pulling at his arm. “Your turn.”
He hadn’t even realized that the water had stopped running. She did everything fast, his lady.
Honor slid into the bed, eyeing his half boner bobbing in front of him as he shuffled to the bathroom, zonked with exhaustion and with hopeful lust. He glanced down at himself. Half boners were not a good look.
He made it a cold shower, so the boner would go down and so the shower would be short.
She lifted herself on one elbow and watched him as he walked back across the room. “Why does one of your boots have a knobby thing at the top?”
He stopped, trying to switch gears. “Knobby thing?”
She pointed at his right boot, lying askew on the floor. Ah. He bent, picked his boot up and slid out his Kershaw knife. It was razor sharp but didn’t gleam because of the black oxide coating.
“A knife in a boot?”
“Damn right. Very handy. In fact, I used it to cut the fishing line when I caught you in the river. Without it, I’d have had to pull back and wait for it to be pulled out of your flesh.”
She looked at it, at him. “Is that the knife you used?”
He slid the Kershaw back into the boot. “Nope. I had to leave it on the river bank. But I always have extras.”
She was silent, taking it in. He let her. This was part of who he was. She nodded once, meeting his eyes.
At the bed, he smiled down at her and made a rolling gesture. “Scoot over.”
She did, lifted the comforter, lying on her side so they were facing each other.
“So.” She reached out, touched his face, slid her hand down to cup his shoul
der. “You never really answered my question, you know. All you did was waylay me with sex. It worked, mind you. But the oxytocin is dropping and the neocortex is firing back up.”
He heard one word in three because he was so fascinated by that beautiful face. “What?”
Her lips turned up. “When we started this conversation, I asked you what Jacko meant when he asked if you were done sulking up here in the mountains. Why are you up here when your job is in town at ASI?”
It felt like a bucket of cold water dashed in his face. Matt abruptly came into himself and withdrew. He was still right next to her, still touching her but he felt like he was a million miles away.
She waited, watching him.
She waited, this woman who’d been abducted, kept drugged, managed to escape only to nearly drown. Who hadn’t once complained.
She wasn’t pushing him for an explanation, either. No morbid curiosity in her gaze. There was simply warm acceptance, whatever he said.
Her job, probably. Her job led her to take care of people without any judgment at all. Matt was suddenly absolutely certain that she was a fantastic doctor, not only very capable but also very human.
“I’m not employed by ASI,” he said. The words were wrenched out of him, coming from his mouth before he’d decided to talk.
She frowned, her grip on his shoulder tightening. “You’re not? But everyone talked as if —”
“This isn’t easy.” Matt sighed. Evidently he was going to do this. He didn’t want to but he was going to. “John and the Senior have me on the payroll but my bank has instructions not to deposit the money they keep sending me.”
There was nothing on her face but acceptance. “I didn’t even know you could do that at a bank.”
“You can’t. I had to negotiate it, because my bosses gave instructions to their bank not to accept the money coming back to them from my account. So there’s now a considerable sum waiting … in limbo I guess.”
“And who is the Senior?”
“We call him that because he was a Senior Chief in the Teams, which is somewhere between God and Satan, and as powerful as both. His name is Douglas Kowalski and together with John Huntington — Suzanne’s husband — they own ASI. Though we are all given shares. The company is growing really fast. All of us are going to be very rich one day.”
Her eyes searched his. “You don’t care.”
He sighed. “No, I don’t. I mean I’m not stupid, but money isn’t that much of a motivator for me. I need to derive meaning from what I do.”
Honor nodded. “Same here.”
Yeah, if her father was super rich but she refused to step into the company, he imagined that money wasn’t that big a motivator for her, either.
“Don’t get me wrong. I like ASI and they do good work. I like and trust my bosses and my coworkers. They do good stuff and there’s no nonsense like there was —”
He looked away a moment, jaws working, the words not coming out. An anvil was sitting right on his chest, heavy iron, making it hard to breathe.
She didn’t press. Didn’t do anything, really, except watch him. Watch as he worked his way through it. He’d never talked about it to anyone who didn’t already know, didn’t already have the facts.
“Like there was in the Teams,” he finished. Now the anvil had moved up into his goddamned throat.
Her eyes searched his, back and forth, back and forth, flashes of silver.
“I imagine being a SEAL wasn’t easy,” she said finally. “That’s what you were, right? A SEAL?”
He nodded. Something about her calm easy manner, her sympathetic unjudging eyes, made him relax a little. He pulled in some air, pushed it back out. Did it again. He could breathe.
“Yeah. Being a SEAL is a hard and dangerous job. But we train hard, too. And we all work together. So that part is great. Everyone on the Teams has each other’s back. But sometimes, sometimes other aspects weren’t great.”
Again, he looked away, though it was hard to wrench his gaze from hers. He tried to look away but there wasn’t anything to look at in the room that was better than looking at her.
“Your superiors?” she asked softly. “They had you and your guys doing things that didn’t sit well with you?”
He stared. “Yeah. How did you know?”
She shrugged. “My hospital administrators regularly turn away bleeding and broken people who don’t have insurance. I know all about terrible bosses.”
“It wasn’t my bosses, really. Our commanders were tough but they led from the front. No, it was the brass back home and some guys coming in from the outside. From a three-letter agency, mainly.”
She nodded. “Who had other priorities.”
Honor was making this all sound … normal. The anvil lifted away a little more.
“Yeah. Very different priorities. For a while we were tasked with liaising with an Afghan warlord in the foothills of the Hindu Kush. Al Rashid. Nasty mean son of a bitch, but the word was we were operating on the principle of ‘my enemy’s enemy is my friend’. So he was officially our friend. We were told that there were other priorities involved. He was a nasty and ignorant son of a bitch but keeping him happy seemed to be important. So I held my breath when I talked to him and did my best not to punch him in the face. Though every time he opened his mouth it was a real temptation. Our terp was embarrassed at what he had to translate.”
“Do you think it was heroin? That was the priority?”
He stared at her.
Honor shrugged. “I read the news. If you’re not fighting the Taliban what other priorities could there be? You don’t seem to be the kind of man who would promote the heroin trade.”
The anvil was gone but his chest burned.
“Fuck no.” She didn’t even blink at the profanity and he relaxed a little. No way could he get through this without a few f-bombs. “The man from the three-letter agency was involved in the heroin trade, I am absolutely certain. And the warlord was sitting on miles and miles of poppy fields. We had orders to keep him happy.”
She grimaced. “That must have been hard.”
Fuck yeah. “You have no idea.”
“Actually,” she said, her voice soft. “I think I do. Go on.” Her thumb was caressing the back of his hand, a smooth regular motion that somehow synched with the beat of his heart.
Her touch calmed him.
“So. There was a firefight where we had to defend the warlord and his property. From on high was the word that we were fighting the Taliban but I think it was just some poor fucks in the area who wanted to get rid of the warlord. Well, we saved the warlord’s ass for about the tenth time. And I lost two of my men.”
Chavez and O’Leary. Two of the finest men he’d ever met. Al Rashid hadn’t been worthy of shining their combat boots.
Her hand tightened around his.
“I had to put their belongings into a box together with their tags to send to their families. Chavez had a wife and two kids. O’Leary a girlfriend he was going to ask to marry him. They’d died to save that nasty fuck’s life and to make sure someone had access to the poppy fields.”
“I’m so sorry,” she breathed. He looked at her and saw that it was true. She was sorry, it showed in her face and eyes. It made it easier to go on.
He nodded. “So you’ll understand that when I went up to his compound without an appointment to deliver some news, I wasn’t in the best of moods. His headquarters was basically a hovel of crumbling stucco walls with flea-infested rugs on the floor and a few rickety pieces of furniture. But he had brand new weapons and brand new SUVs and gold rings on every finger of his hand.”
It came back to him in a rush. The heat of an unrelenting sun beating down, the sight of an emaciated villager beating some poor mangy dog, the smell of dust and untreated sewage, sullen eyes following his progress through the unpaved streets leading to the compound, then everyone disappearing all at once.
Gritting his teeth as he walked into the village because the warlo
rd had an aura of crazy nastiness that required every ounce of self control he had.
Entering that village of beaten-down souls was like entering hell itself. He hated it, his men hated it, but they had their orders and they did what they’d been told to do. They bitched on the way there and on the way back but they were complete pros while there.
Just the memory of that place now made his heart beat faster. “The village was completely deserted by the time we came to the compound. And I could hear screams.”
Her eyes widened. “Screams?”
He nodded. The sound still woke him up in his nightmares. “Screams. The screams of a child. High pitched and desperate.”
She let go of his hand to cover her mouth. “Oh no,” she breathed.
She understood. She was like him. The thought of children being mistreated drove him insane. He’d thought everyone was like that until he’d found out the hard way that some people liked hurting kids. But she felt the same way he did. God knew how many mistreated kids she’d seen in the ER.
“I ran, my men behind me. The screams were coming from the compound. I thought — I thought someone had finally come to assassinate the warlord, maybe a kid with an explosive vest, and I was bound to defend the fuckhead. We rushed into the courtyard and then into the main room. No one was assassinating the warlord.”
“What did you see?” she whispered.
Matt’s teeth clenched so hard he was surprised shards weren’t shooting out his ears.
“I saw the warlord raping a little boy so hard he was screaming in pain.”
“Oh God.” Her voice was just a thread, eyes wide.
Matt closed his, but it didn’t do any good. For the rest of his life he’d see that vicious scene over and over and feel the same things over and over. Horror and rage and disgust.
He huffed out a breath. “It’s called bacha bazi, which basically translates as boy toys.” He was looking away but slid his eyes back to her face for a moment. She was pale, horrified.
Midnight Renegade (Men of Midnight Book 7) Page 12