He quietly entered and saw her standing by her bed. The ache in his heart increased tenfold because she looked gaunt and pale beneath the fluorescent lights above her. The look in her eyes devastated him as he closed the door behind him. Tonight, he was going to put on an act for her benefit. Alexa couldn’t know how miserable he was, how badly he felt at losing her before they ever had a chance to connect solidly with one another.
“Maybe these will cheer you up?” he said, holding out the bouquet. He saw her expression soften as their fingers met. “I’m sorry these roses look so wimpy. It was all they had.”
Touched, Alexa whispered, “No . . . they’re beautiful . . . thank you,” and she gave him a sweet look as she leaned over, inhaling them. Lifting her face from them, she said, “They smell wonderful, Gage. This was so thoughtful of you,” as she delicately touched one of the red blooms.
Nervously, he moved his hands down the sides of his trousers. “I got lucky,” he murmured, making a gesture toward the bouquet. “I found some gold foil and green ribbon. I wanted it to symbolize the color of your eyes, as I saw them.”
Alexa shook her head and placed the roses on the tray table. “You are just too good to be true, Gage Hunter.” She walked up to him as he opened his arms to her. He was a warrior, and he was tender, and she drowned in his blue eyes that told her so much. Encircling his shoulders, she leaned up on tiptoes, caressing his mouth, hearing him groan, his arms instantly folding her against him.
It was a kiss she never wanted to end. It took the last of her strength not to cry as he exquisitely reciprocated her questing lips against his, coaxing them open, tasting her, asking her to taste him—and she did. His masculine scent spiraled down through her body, sending heat and yearning suddenly exploding through it. Since her cave experience, Alexa had felt numb in some ways. Miraculously, Gage made her traumatized body and mind want once more.
Crushing herself wantonly against him, feeling his erection pressing against her belly, she moaned, deepening the kiss, moving her tongue slowly against his, her breasts growing firm, the nipples hardening. Alexa, shocked, realized she hadn’t felt anything like this since her capture.
The warmth of Gage’s mouth was like magic flowing across her lips, and she couldn’t get enough of being connected with him. Her heart broke as she realized this could be the last time she would see him. Would she ever see him again? Alexa didn’t know, and a sob made her throat tighten as she pulled away from his mouth, breathing unsteadily, submerged in his intense, burning gaze. “I don’t want to leave you,” she managed to say.
He lifted his hand, smoothing her loose hair away from her cheek. “Listen,” he teased her huskily, “I’m kinda like a bad cold. Once you get me, you can’t get rid of me.” He saw hope come to her glistening hazel eyes. Saw her lips part, begging to be taken again by him.
“You’re the best cold I’ve ever contracted, Hunter.”
He smiled a little and kept her in his light embrace over her bruised shoulders, content to have her arms wrapped around his waist, leaning against him, trusting him. And then he became serious, holding her gaze. “The best thing is for you to go home, Alexa. It’s ideal under the circumstances. You’ll get the time you need to sort everything out. You’ll have your parents nearby, your sister, Tal. Matt will join you in March. You’ll be with people who love and care for you. That’s the difference between healing and an open wound, and as much as I’m going to miss you, I know this is the right thing for you to do.”
“In some ways, Gage, we know each other so well. In other ways, I barely know you at all,” Alexa told him shakily.
His mouth crooked. “It isn’t like we’ve had time to explore one another, is it?”
Shaking her head, she relished his warmth, his gentle strength, even though he was a man. Blips of how she was handled in the cave kept cropping up, and Alexa kept trying to ignore them, because Gage was not like those monsters. He gave her peace. Security. A sense of caring that she would have called love, but she wasn’t certain about that. “I want to know everything about you,” she said, her voice strained. “Everything. My parents taught me that we are the way we are today because of our parents and the way we were raised. Your folks must have loved you so much because they’ve given you everything that I need right now.”
Wincing internally, Gage leaned over, pressing a chaste kiss to her brow. “Alexa, I probably have no right to ask you this, but when I return home I want to come and visit you. I’d like to pick up where we left off, if you still feel the same toward me . . . toward us . . .”
Her eyes shone with more green and gold in their depths than they had recently, and Gage’s heart lifted with hope.
“I’d like that, Gage. A lot.”
“June’s a good time, early summer. I’ve never been back to the Washington, D.C., area.”
“It is beautiful at that time of year,” she said. “I want you to come see me, Gage. We can stay in touch by email and Skype until then?” She searched his gaze, never wanting anything so much as for him to say yes to her request.
“I’d like that.” Not quite believing his ears, but feeling threads of joy weaving around his heart, he said, “Alexa, I don’t have much. That’s what worries me about us. I’m not rich. I’m just a Marine Corps sniper. I don’t have any other trade. I’m a high school graduate, that’s all.”
She moved her hand across his chest, feeling his flesh tighten beneath her fingers. “And you have the courage of a lion, Gage. You put your life on the line for others. You’re willing to sacrifice yourself to save others.” She tilted her head, gazing deep into his darkened blue eyes. “Those are far more important qualities to me than anything you’ve just said. Money can’t buy a person’s courage, or their tenderness. Or sensitivity to others.” Her voice broke. “If it hadn’t been for you, I wouldn’t be here today.” She pressed her hand against her lips, beads of tears on her thick red lashes as she stared up at him.
“You’re such a softy, Ms. Culver,” he teased, kissing each of her eyes and smoothing her tears away with his fingers.
Opening her eyes, sniffing, she rattled, “Don’t you dare belittle yourself like that to me again, Gage. Do you think I care about any of that? I’ve had nearly a week with you and I like what I see. I always did.”
Looking away for a moment, Gage felt a ton of heaviness dissolve within him. Cocking his head toward her, he rasped, “And I’ve always liked what I see in you, Alexa.”
The vibration in his voice was like a song through her body, her heart opening wide to him. “Then let’s see one another when you get out? Please?”
“I can’t stay as long as I might want to, Alexa. I’ll need a job. There’s a lot I have to do when I separate from the Corps.”
“Whatever you can share with me will be enough, Gage.”
“We’ll work it out,” he promised, grazing her cheek, wanting so badly to love her, but it was the wrong place and wrong time. In the back of Gage’s mind he wondered if Alexa would be well enough by June to want anything more than a friendship with him.
He knew what he wanted. He wanted Alexa forever in his bed, tucked beside him each night. His dreams had become torrid and filled with hopes he didn’t dare to believe could come true.
“Okay,” she said, “like you said once, we’ll take it an hour at a time.”
“Yeah, my dad taught me that when I was real young. He taught me patience when I was a pretty antsy kid.” Gage smiled fondly in remembrance.
“When you come for a visit I want to hear about your parents and your sister. Bring your photos, your stories. I want to know them even though they’re no longer here. You are who you are today because of your family.”
Her sincerity damn near buckled him. “I’d like that,” he murmured. With Alexa, he had a salt-of-the-earth kind of woman. No one would ever guess her family was one of the richest in the world. She could have sidestepped going into the military and fighting for her country. She could have had it so easy,
but that wasn’t the road she’d chosen. Gage knew it was because of her parents. General Culver had instilled a love of America into his three children. And Mrs. Culver had the world’s largest charity organization. She too was giving back to those who had so much less. Alexa had been shaped by both of them to be of service to her country and to others. In Gage’s eyes, that was more than commendable. It made her someone he respected. Never mind that he was falling helplessly in love with this brave redheaded woman. They had so much to discuss, to hammer out between them. Most of all, Gage was realizing more and more each day he spent with her and her parents that these were people who were loyal to others. There were no manipulations, no games. They were dirt honest, as he’d been raised to be.
“By then, I hope I’ll be back in the saddle working at Artemis Security with Tal and Matt. Matt’s coming home in March to take over the KNR division. I’m going to be the director of the Safe House division within the firm.”
“I imagine,” he said, catching several strands of her hair and tucking them behind her ear, “that you’ll find your work very satisfying. You’ll be helping an awful lot of people who need a hand up. You’re just the person to do that, Alexa. You have a goodness in you that I’ve rarely found in anyone else.” Except for his family.
Alexa pressed her hand to his heart. She could feel the slow, hard beat of it beneath her palm. “Takes one to know one, you know? You’ve been a wonderful surprise to me ever since I met you, Gage. My big sister, Tal, always kids me about being psychic and feeling things around other people. I’ve got to admit, she’s right. When I met you I was so powerfully drawn to you, I didn’t know what to do. It was shocking in a good way.” She smiled a little, holding his gaze. “That’s why I chased you.” She watched his mouth curve ruefully.
“That’s what you were doing?”
“Yes. I think it rattled you.”
He smiled more. “I have to admit, I was surprised by your boldness.”
“I didn’t think snipers ever got rattled.”
A chuckle rolled through his chest. “You flummoxed me, for sure.” Sighing, he cupped her jaw and placed a light kiss on her smiling lips. “Here I was, a lowly Marine sergeant, and this gorgeous redheaded pilot comes after me like a laser-guided rocket. What was I to think?”
Her heart lifted with joy because, right now, Gage was vulnerable with her, open, inviting her into his world and how he saw her. A rush of pleasure blotted out all the darkness that was buried deep within her. “Well,” she said coyly, “when I leaned over to kiss you that night in the Humvee, you sure didn’t seem shocked. You were right there, Hunter, kissing me back. Weren’t you?”
He laughed for the first time since she’d been kidnapped, Alexa had that effect on him, on his heart. “I like a woman who goes after what she wants,” he said, grinning.
“Just one of my many skills.”
“Yes, I was surprised when you leaned over to kiss me.”
“Why didn’t you kiss me, then?”
He saw a spark of the old Alexa come to her eyes. It was such a gift for them to have this moment. She was in an up cycle, and Gage reveled in it and in her. “Because you were an officer and I’m enlisted, that’s why.”
“I didn’t let it stop me, did I?”
“No, you sure didn’t, and I’ve got to tell you, I was a very happy man when you dive-bombed me.”
Playfully, she hit his upper arm. “Really, Gage. Do you think I’ve ever done that before?”
Shrugging, he said, “I don’t know.” Alexa looked delicious when she pouted, those large, intelligent eyes flashing with playfulness. He was getting a glimpse of the woman he always suspected was hiding behind the officer’s uniform. And he’d been right. Gage was almost giddy with that discovery.
“Well, I’ve never been this forward with a man in my life. But it was your fault.”
“I see. It’s always the guy’s fault, right?” Now he did laugh, and rocked her a little in his arms, their hips against one another. Gage knew she must have felt his erection. He was almost in pain from it, but he wouldn’t have traded this moment with Alexa for the world. She didn’t tease him, didn’t roll her hips or make a suggestive move that told him she was comfortable with the next step in their intimacy. She made him hungry. Made him dream. Made him hope. If only . . . if only he could tell her.
CHAPTER 19
Gage could barely contain his emotions as he swung his Harley into the hidden parking lot at Artemis Security. A week earlier, Alexa had alerted the security officers at the entrance that he would be coming to the company to see her. The June sunlight showed off the Virginia rural area to perfection. It was a far cry from the dry desert of Afghanistan. He parked his bike in the underground parking lot beneath the 1850s restored farmhouse. If he hadn’t been in email and Skype contact with Alexa since she’d left Bagram, he’d have been fooled, thinking that this was a working farm.
As he walked to the elevator, he noticed the tight security. From Alexa’s encrypted emails back and forth between them, he’d learned a lot more about Artemis and the role it played in trying to protect their eighteen hundred charity locations around the world. At the elevator, a guard took the pass that Alexa had sent to him. The guard took it, nodded, and allowed him into the elevator then the sentry called Alexa on his radio, letting her know that Gage was coming up to the fifth floor. The officer keyed in a code for that floor only and then stepped out, giving him a nod.
His heart beating hard in his chest, Gage wondered how Alexa was going to react when she saw him. No longer did he have his beard. His longish hair was cut military short. He wore a pair of jeans, a black T-shirt, a black leather jacket, and motorcycle boots. Pushing up his red baseball cap with the Marine Corps emblem embroidered on the front, he settled his wraparound sunglasses above the bill, as well. He wondered what her reaction would be to him today.
The months since her capture had been rough on her. There were many times Gage had wished he’d been there in person for Alexa. She was still seeing a woman therapist, Dr. Becka Courtland, once a week. Tal Culver, the CEO of Artemis, had just hired Becka as their in-house psychiatrist, and Gage was glad for both her and Alexa. The therapy had been emotionally rough on Alexa, and although she didn’t say much about it, Gage had seen, during some of their Skype sessions, the stress in her face and in her eyes. Alexa couldn’t hide anything from him. The months apart had only deepened his love for her, even at a distance. They never talked about such things. Instead, from Gage’s perspective, they had gotten to know one another through sharing their lives with one another. Sometimes, their talks were funny, other times serious, heart-wrenching, or illuminating. He felt the time and distance was a blessing in disguise. He hoped she felt the same and he’d know pretty soon now, his stomach tight with tension.
As the elevator whooshed him upward, he ached to have quiet time with Alexa. They never talked about love, in fact, they both skirted around the topic. Gage also circumvented what had happened to his family, although he had shared with Alexa many stories of his childhood years, about his sister Jen and his parents. He just hadn’t told her the rest of the sordid story. That was something, if she brought it up, he’d tell her in person. Gage wasn’t looking forward to sharing it, but it was an integral part of him. If Alexa wanted to move forward with their growing relationship, then he had to come clean. She had to know.
He worried about telling her because she was actively dealing with her own trauma and Gage knew how long it had taken him to come out of the grief and shock of his family being murdered. It would be the same, in some ways, for Alexa.
When the doors opened, Gage broke into a welcoming smile as he saw Alexa waiting for him. The joy in her eyes reminded him of the old Alexa before the kidnapping. She was wearing a pink linen pantsuit with a tasteful white silk tee beneath it. Her red hair was a shining mantle around her shoulders. The Turkish gold earrings she wore fell halfway to her shoulders, giving her an exotic look.
“Gag
e!”
He gave her a bashful grin and opened his arms to her after he stepped off the elevator. The lobby was empty and he was glad. “Hey, you,” he growled, taking her into his arms. She smelled of sweetness as she launched herself against him, her arms going around the shoulders of his black leather jacket, reaching up, smiling. Alexa was warm and happy, and if Gage had any doubt that their relationship was real, that was answered as her lips met his in a soul-stealing kiss that rocked his world.
His world was focused completely on Alexa, the warmth of her mouth against his, her feminine scent, the softness of her breasts pressed to his jacketed chest, drove him hard with need. Love welled up through him swiftly, and he eased his mouth from hers, framing her face, drowning in her sparkling hazel eyes, which danced with unfettered happiness. She was so alive, like a wriggling puppy in his arms. He smiled down at her, his heart lifting, opening. He wanted her so damn badly.
“You look beautiful.” He grinned, lightly kissing her smiling mouth.
“And you look incredibly handsome! My God, Gage, you could pose as a model!”
He flushed, feeling heat rush to his face as he released her. Alexa immediately stepped back but reached out, sliding her hand into his.
“Well,” he muttered, “I don’t know about that,” and he gave her a hesitant grin.
“Phooey! Are you tired? Do you want to rest? Or would you like a tour of our offices? Tal and Matt are here. They’re down in the Bunker, the first two floors belowground, and they’d love to see you, too.” And then she added, giving him a coy look, “Tal has something she needs to speak to you about. Maybe we could go there first? And then I can give you the nickel tour of Artemis.”
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