by Olivia Gates
Dante’s stomach heaved. Gulnar ran a loving hand over his cheek, his head. “So she was getting rid of the competition, huh? I was right about the fatal attraction scenario, then. See what you do to women, Dante? She was willing to kill for you.”
“One more word out of either of you…” Dante shredded the words and spat them out. “And I’m liable to break the woman’s neck on sight!”
Emilio shook his head. “You won’t see her. She’s been taken into custody by the Badovnan authorities.”
“Lucky her.” Dante stood up, scooping Gulnar in his arms. “Let’s get out of here.”
Emilio closed the emergency bag, jumped to his feet. “You never said anything I liked better, Guerriero.”
Four soldiers immediately flanked them as they came out of the room, escorted them outside where the rebel installation was being turned upside down and everyone was in custody. And there was Molokai, on a stretcher.
“Is he dead?” Gulnar asked.
Emilio snorted in disgust. “He isn’t even seriously injured.”
“I’ll have a word with him,” Dante snarled.
“Dante—let it go, my love.”
He gave her lips a fierce press. “Stay with Emilio, amore. I’ll be a minute.”
She lowered her eyes, accepting his decision. His priceless Gulnar, giving him total freedom, when she knew one more word would have bent him to her will.
He approached the man who’d caused so much death and destruction, a bloody, flimsy body that housed a twisted and even flimsier soul. Molokai talked first. “How did you know?”
“About the remote-controlled detonation? You mean you don’t remember that you bragged, like the insecure nothing that you are? As for knowing that your men didn’t know how you were using them, that’s what small, sick creatures like you always do.”
“This isn’t the end, Guerriero,” Molokai rasped.
Dante shrugged. “It never is. But it is for you. I doubt you’ll make it out of prison. Your fellow Badovnans are on to you now. Good riddance, Molokai.”
Before the man said anything else, Dante had already deleted him from his mind, turned to Gulnar. Only she mattered.
She threw herself into his arms. He crushed her to him, every insupportable alternate scenario, all the things that could have gone wrong, polluting his soul, crushing down on his sanity.
But she was all right. She was alive and well and he’d make sure she was never in danger again. He had to get her out of here. Out of this region. Out of this lifestyle.
Eight hours later they were lying in bed in a hotel room in Zvetnia, Badovna’s new official capital. They’d stumbled into the shower as soon as they’d entered, made desperate, ferocious love there, then again in bed, longer, tender and far more devastating. They now caressed and murmured and moaned their relief and their love.
Then Gulnar was getting out of bed. Dante clung to her. With a lingering kiss, she disentangled herself gently and headed for the bathroom.
Dante waited for her to come back, his whole being throbbing in impatience. She finally came out—dressed.
He jackknifed in bed. “Gulnar, where do you think you’re going?”
She didn’t meet his eyes, bent to the backpack Emilio had gotten her, checked her papers, her money. “Back to GAO’s office in Srajna to reschedule my reassignment.”
He didn’t even feel himself move, just found himself in front of her, his arms hauling her to him. “You’re not staying here at all, Gulnar. You’re coming with me to the States.”
She looked at him now, eyes wide, startled. “You mean…you changed your mind?”
He enfolded her in a shuddering embrace. “When I thought I’d lost you, I would have sold my soul a hundred times over for one more breath, and damned myself to hell for the way I was going to throw away the time we could have together. You were right. May God forgive me, but I can’t end it now…”
Her shutters slammed down again, all her animation snuffed in a second. “You mean you will—later?”
“We have to be sensible about this, amore. I want you with me until…”
She pushed out of his arms, her emerald eyes, the windows of her rich soul, blank. “Until you relapse? Is that your plan? Then I’m supposed to desert you?”
He spread his arms, agitated. He had to make her agree to this. “You won’t be deserting me. It’s what I’d want you to do!”
She tilted her head at him. “Will you promise to leave me, too, if I get sick or crippled? This has to be a two-way deal, you know?”
“Don’t be ridiculous…”
“Don’t you! You’re alive and healthy six years after having cancer diagnosed. I’d say your chances aren’t any worse than mine of contracting a debilitating illness or getting maimed in an accident.”
“Don’t say that!”
Suddenly she shrugged and her eyes—What was that he saw there? He didn’t understand it, and it frightened him more than anything. “And, anyway, even if we settle this, I always realized I can’t be with you. Here we were just a man and a woman, but in your home I’ll be what I really am and you’ll be what you really are.”
This was what he’d instinctively dreaded. He saw where she was leading and he was damned if he’d let her go there. “You’re the woman I love, my woman. I’m nothing but your man.”
“We’re both so much more that just that, Dante. I’m the scarred refugee, the product of a lifetime in war zones. You’re the celebrated surgeon, the product of a stable life and society. You had a crisis, you fought your way out of it and now you’re ready to resume your life. I never wanted you to love me like I love you…”
“I love you more—more, Gulnar. I told you how I love you. I’ll dare death—and life—only if you let me love you.”
“Then love me, and come back whenever you can. I’ll be always here, waiting for you.”
“I’m taking you out of here. You’re never going to suffer or fear again.”
“What if I don’t know how to live in safety, in normality?”
He reached for her again. He had to stop this, end it. “Don’t be silly!”
She evaded him. “What happens if I don’t fit into your life? If you find out that what you feel for me is a combination of your personal despondency and the traumatic circumstances? The heightened emotions, the sharpened desires…”
“Would your feelings change if you lived away from danger? Would you love me less, need me less?”
She shook her head, bent to pick her backpack.
He caught her back in trembling arms. “Then don’t live with me! I’d planned it this way, originally. Those thirty-four days I stayed away? I went back to the States and arranged everything. I liquidated my assets and donated everything before I started wandering. But I had long-shot investments, shares in obscure projects that have become household names in the last four years. I sold my shares and put the money in the bank in your name. It’s a lot. I left instructions with my attorney to come for you after I’d left, to take you home and do everything for you. The only difference now is that I will stay in your life, in any sort of arrangement that works for you.”
“Until you tell me it’s over? Or will I tell you? When I find me some healthy American and hook up with him?”
The very idea. His damned imagination. It was beyond agony. He squeezed his eyes, his arms convulsing around her. “Don’t.”
She squirmed against him, her voice thickening, drowning in anguish and tears. “Don’t what, Dante? Don’t show you how preposterous your proposition is?”
He buried his face in her neck, shook with the enormity of it all. “Gulnar—Gulnar—I can’t let you suffer ever again. Never on my account.”
She turned her face into his, scalding him with her tears, the rawness of her voice, of her torment. “Strange way you have of doing that, by slashing me to pieces.”
“And you’re doing the same to me, insisting on remaining here!” he choked.
“Just another
way of showing you how it feels to be stymied by a totally moronic piece of roundabout, destructive logic.”
“You mean…?”
“Yes, I mean!” She struggled out of his arms, turned on him, her eyes blazing. “I was teaching you a lesson. Making my point. I can only give you up if you don’t want me. But you do, and I’ll do anything—put up with anything—to fit in your world, to keep on deserving your love. I don’t care if I will be an outcast or whatever. I’ll be with you and I’ll do whatever is needed to remain with you. And whatever it is I have to do, it will be an honor and a privilege. And a pleasure. Not deserving you, losing your love and not fitting into your life are my fears, and that’s what I intend to do about them to be with you. I’ve long conquered my fear of losing your love. What will you do about your fears? How far will you go, how much will you endure to be with me?”
She reached for him, contained him in the only home he’d ever known, ever wanted. “I’ve loved a man who’d lost both his legs to the hip joint and there was only gratitude—happiness that he’d survived, that I was granted that extra time with him. There was no shadow of anguish or sacrifice then. Yes, beautiful, gentle Evraim. I left the refugee camp, I mourned and built my walls only when he died. Him, I loved. You’re my life, and beyond. So let what we have ward off everything, fear and doubt and illness. Let me be yours, for better or for worse.”
He pulled back, looked down at her and saw conviction to conquer fate, love to change destiny in her determined, streaming eyes. He knew then. He’d be with her to his dying day. And that day wasn’t coming any time soon. He’d make sure of it.
He bent and scooped her up. He placed her on the bed, loomed over her. He spread her arms, threaded their fingers and their gazes. “You want to know how far I’ll go? What I’ll endure? I’ll go as far as ninety and I’ll endure everything I’ve endured times a thousand. And I’ll be the happiest man in creation, doing it all. If you’ll take me, let me be yours, for better or for worse.”
She suddenly grabbed him, brought him on top of her, sank her lips in his. “I’ll take you, my heart, any way at all. Now, show me some better…”
His surprised chuckle erupted at her sudden change from super-charged emotion to all-out seduction. Her clothes dissolved in his hands. Then as he joined them, took them both home, he groaned to her, “I’ll show you better—and better. Cry out when I’m doing it right…”
She cried out all night.
ISBN: 978-1-4603-5837-5
THE HEROIC SURGEON
© Olivia Gates 2005
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All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.
First published in Great Britain 2005
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