She had welcomed him home. Didn’t she know that home was a cold memory he’d worked hard to erase? Didn’t she understand that one of the reasons he was so good at his work was the very lack of protection and kindness he had growing up? His past had made him strong and ruthless. Now he had a skill for destruction without emotion or regret.
His mouth twisted in a bitter smile.
Welcome home.
They were inches apart, their bodies almost touching. They might as well have been on opposite sides of the ocean.
Lying on the rug, Baby sneezed. Her tail banged once.
“You three troublemakers had better get some sleep,” he said quietly.
Butch rolled over, his legs in the air, while Sundance scratched at one paw.
A log hissed in the fireplace, setting off a rain of orange embers.
Maybe this was home, Wolfe thought dimly. Not a place, not a building, but a state of mind.
Or maybe it was a state of grace.
THE SAND WAS WHITE, crunching beneath his feet. The drinks were cold and the woman walking toward him, removing a skimpy red bikini bottom, was very hot. He felt his body respond, saw her inviting glance.
Suddenly her face changed. Not a stranger now, she smiled with Kit’s smile and laughed with Kit’s laugh.
She had a sprinkling of freckles across her breasts when he pulled off her bikini top. She was full and lush beneath his hands, whispering his name while her body flowed against him like silk.
He felt the sand, hot on his back, his body on fire as he slid one finger along her tight cleft, dragging a moan from her soft mouth. Sure and expert, he made her moan again, until she clawed his back and shuddered to a fierce climax with her legs wrapped around his waist.
Even then he focused on her response, goading her to pleasure with expert skill. He had been trained to know a woman’s body, trained to use her arousal against her when a mission required it. The training was completely impersonal, and he’d never felt a hint of guilt at using it.
Until he looked into Kit’s dark eyes in the middle of a hot, reckless dream.
Wood creaked.
Cool air brushed his face.
Wolfe shot to his feet as the dream fled. One hand on his holstered Sig, he clawed back to wakefulness, checking for intruders in the same instant.
She was up on the stairs silhouetted against the light from the hall, a pillow and blanket bunched under her arm. The dogs were right beside her.
“What’s wrong?” he demanded, his voice hoarse.
“I couldn’t sleep. I thought maybe we could talk.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
THE PERFUME HIT HIM FIRST, light and subtle. As Kit’s body moved, Wolfe saw firelight glow in her hair.
Sometimes life conspired to destroy all your best plans.
She tossed her pillow down beyond the end of the couch and wrapped her blanket close, sliding onto the floor. Light touched the rug and the priceless old Pueblo pottery, brushing her face with restless color.
Her beauty unnerved him. Her strength inspired him.
But this wasn’t anything like he’d foreseen. Their talk was supposed to be impersonal.
Oblivious to his discomfort, she wriggled until she got comfortable and then leaned over to scratch Baby’s head. “Wolfe, about tonight in the shower…”
“You can’t talk down there.”
“I’m fine. I’ve got my pillow and—”
Muttering, he scooped her into his arms and lifted her onto the couch, tucking the blanket around her. “Go to sleep.”
“But we need to talk.”
Hell.
Suddenly talking seemed like a lousy idea. He was pretty sure that talking would be a prelude to touching and taking her about a dozen different ways.
Grimly he moved to a chair, praying that distance and a little discomfort would help clear his mind. Pulling up a leather ottoman, he stretched out his long legs. “Okay, we’ll talk. Shoot.”
Kit cleared her throat.
Wolfe scratched his neck.
Neither said a word.
Branches tapped at one of the windows and the fire hissed, strangely intimate in the silence of the night.
Kit sighed. “It’s been…a long time. I don’t know where to start.”
Didn’t that just make two of them?
She tugged the blanket up to her neck. “I’d talk about you, but I’m not sure that you’re the same you I used to know. The things you’ve done and places you’ve been have changed you, I think. You must be very good at what you do….” She seemed to hesitate.
“So I’ve been told. What’s the but?”
“But you left and I stayed. Sometimes I feel as if my life is rushing past me like a river, and I’m stranded on a boulder in the middle watching the boats go back and forth, bound for Rio and Hong Kong. Everyone’s happy and having fun but me.”
“You want to travel? I never knew that.”
“On bad days, I feel trapped. There’s always the ranch, always the responsibilities. I’m an O’Halloran in a town where almost everyone knew my parents, and most of them expect me to fail and lose the ranch.”
“Are there a lot of bad days?” he asked quietly.
“Not so many.” She grimaced. “But when everyone knows you, it’s hard to stretch your wings. Harder still to break a few rules.”
She wanted to break rules? This was more news to Wolfe. “Do you get many of these rule-breaking urges?” He felt Baby brush his leg and curl up next to the ottoman, her head across his feet. As moonlight streamed through a high window, he had a sharp sense of belonging, so fierce that the weight of it constricted his throat.
Foxfire meant no ties and no family. You couldn’t talk about your training or any mission, past or future. After a while, the team was all the family you could afford. No one else would ever understand the danger and the pressure that became your daily fare.
Wolfe had never minded the isolation before.
Now he did. Here in the firelight he wanted more.
Quickly he shut down his emotions, trying to pull back from a world he couldn’t afford—and a belonging that could never be real.
He realized Kit was studying him, her face shimmering in the firelight. “What about you? How does coming back home make you feel?”
Home. That word again.
He started to dismiss the question with a shrug. How could he explain that feelings, all feelings, had become foreign to his life? He could calculate wind resistance and bullet trajectory without a second thought, but emotions scared the hell out of him. Even now it was a struggle to dig down and find the sensations he had become adept at burying.
Leaning back, he stared into the fire. “Like crap. You weren’t dumb growing up. You knew that my parents—” He stabbed his fingers through his hair. “No lies. I promised myself that when I left home. No euphemisms and no rosy pictures later. Only the truth.”
“Which is?”
There was calm interest in her voice, not pity or revulsion. Growing up, Wolfe had known only the latter two from friends and acquaintances. As a result, he’d learned never to discuss his childhood with anyone. At first he’d been too frightened of his father’s retribution. Later he’d been too resigned, certain that no one, friend or professional, could help him. So he’d helped himself. In the process he had reclaimed his life and his pride by stripping away all feelings of family from his memory. Going back through it now felt like crossing a minefield in bare feet.
“My mother—well, she didn’t want me, not that it was personal. She didn’t want ties of any sort, and a kid was just that. I heard her tell my father often enough that I was a mistake.”
“She didn’t deserve to have a child,” Kit said fiercely.
“Probably not. But she got one. And I wasn’t the easiest person to live with.” Wolfe laced his fingers behind his neck, surprised by a sudden flood of memories.
Waking up to a silent and empty house on Christmas morning. Pleading for a dog one summer
and being hit for the request. Coming home after school with a note from the football coach, anxious because Wolfe had played half a game with a sprained ankle that he hadn’t reported to anyone.
And wasn’t that funny because he’d lived most of his childhood with some kind of bruise, cut or sprain incurred during his father’s binges or his mother’s forgetfulness.
But the worse had been when his father was stony and sober, cornering him in the kitchen or somewhere in the cramped garage where Wolfe generally went to escape the unbearable tension of a loveless house.
When his father was sober, he knew exactly what he was doing. He took his time planning the best way to inflict pain.
One summer he’d burned the half dozen books a teacher had given Wolfe—and then he’d burned Wolfe’s neck with the same lighter. Another time he’d grabbed his son’s arm and broken it carefully, precisely in three places without a flicker of emotion. When Wolfe had cried out, just once, he’d gotten his other arm broken as an object lesson while his mother looked on blankly.
He’d never cried again after that, never shown any emotions to the two people he’d come to hate with white-hot ferocity.
He knew, rationally, that he was not to blame for any of the things that had happened to him as a boy. As a man he’d sorted through the layered pain of old memories and concluded that his only mistake had been being born to such imperfect, unhappy people.
He’d put the pain and self-analysis behind him at sixteen and swore that he would never leave himself open to betrayal by another person again.
Now Cruz had betrayed him and the country he’d vowed to protect. But even worse was the betrayal of his own control. He of all people should know better. Trust was an illusion, safety a prize won only through the force of constant vigilance.
But looking at Kit, feeling Baby’s warm head nestled on his foot, he felt safe in a way he never had before. Worse yet, he wanted to hold that precious sensation wrapped around him forever. But there was no safety in life. When violence came, as it surely would, he had to respond instantly. If he relaxed or knew a moment’s weakness, someone could end up dead.
So he’d tell Kit what he could and hope it drove her away, filled with revulsion for the misfit parents whose blood and genes he shared. With distance and detachment restored, he and Kit would be safe from this dangerous distraction.
“I hate them, whether you do or not.” Her voice was rough.
“I never took it personally. I was just a kid—some kind of stranger who wandered in front of the train wreck that was their lives. They’re both dead now, and I’m not going to wallow in bad memories.”
“You don’t hate them? You don’t even care that they were complete monsters?” She sounded outraged, furious on his behalf.
“Hate makes you just as weak as love. I can’t afford to feel either one.”
Kit stared as if he’d spoken Martian to her. He tried again. “Look, I was lucky. I got away and lots of kids don’t.” He scratched Baby’s head slowly. “If it hadn’t been for your parents, I might have stolen a car or picked a fight and ended up in jail—but I didn’t. I owe your parents for that, and even more I owe you and Trace for making me see that families don’t always deal in pain.”
She nodded slowly, staring into the fire. “I remember thinking how skinny you were that week you came to live with us. My mom said we weren’t supposed to ask you any questions about what happened. Trace kept bragging that he was going to find out even if he got punished.”
“No one asked me anything, as I recall.” And he recalled that first week perfectly.
Kit rested her chin on her knees. “Mom said to give it time. If we still had questions, we could ask you later. But after a week you weren’t a stranger anymore and we forgot all about it. Kids don’t worry about things the way adults do, I guess.” She straightened, hands locked. “But I’m not a child now and I’m asking you straight. They hurt you, didn’t they? They left scars and bruises—inside and out.”
Wolfe felt pressure build in his throat. Odd how hard it could be to say one little word, even years later. “Yes.”
Baby moved her head, draping her body over his other foot. Butch snored noisily.
“I hate them for it. If they were here, I’d hurt them back.” Her voice was harsh with emotion. “I’d hit them the way someone should have hit them all those years ago.”
“Forget about it.” Wolfe wanted to smooth the tension from her face and feel her mouth soften under his. Suddenly the future was far more important than dry details of a barren past. “I have, believe me. You want me to hate them? I can’t.” His voice fell. “You want me to forgive them? I can’t do that either. All I can do is keep going—and make damned sure that I never turn into what they became.”
“I always knew you were different. What you just said proves it.” Her voice was soft and sleepy.
Wolfe stared at the fire. “Don’t put me on a pedestal, Kit. My feet are every inch clay.”
And they have polymer-based joint enhancements.
Not that he could tell her that.
When she didn’t answer, he looked up and saw that she’d fallen asleep. He was spilling his guts out here and she was sleeping right through it.
He eased her back against the couch and smoothed the blanket over her, with the dogs watching every move. But when he tried to leave, she rolled onto her side and anchored his arm beneath his body.
“Umhm.”
Her scent reached him, faint as a memory. She moved again, in the opposite direction this time, her head against his thigh as he stood beside her. With one tug of her hand, she pulled him onto the couch, and before he knew it she was wedged against him, curled across his chest.
He closed his eyes, wanting miles of distance between their bodies.
Wanting never to move again.
“Are you asleep?” he whispered.
“Nhm.”
Yeah, that was asleep.
She murmured and twisted, kicking off the blanket while her pink nightshirt climbed up long glorious legs, giving Wolfe a glimpse of white panties. Lust hit him like the blast from a Harrier jet engine, but he didn’t move, afraid he would wake her, afraid he might plan to wake her in the most intimate, demanding of ways.
So this was hell, he thought. Being close to so much pleasure—forbidden to do anything but look.
And look he did. With her restless twisting, he had more to see every second, until he finally had to close his eyes to guard his sanity. Life wasn’t remotely fair.
But he’d learned that long ago.
She muttered hoarsely. Wolfe realized it was a command for the dogs. “Down,” she repeated sleepily.
Which was damned good advice for him, too.
Unfortunately, his body wasn’t close to listening. The zipper of his jeans strained tighter, and he shifted, trying to get comfortable.
After five more minutes he gave up the effort. Due to the ongoing variety of medications to support Foxfire’s bio-enhancements, his system responded with hair-trigger speed and prolonged endurance.
Not that his sexual skills would even be an issue with Kit. He wasn’t going down that road. Not now, not ever. She deserved more than a trained killer beefed up with medication and secret technology. She needed a regular life and a nice, normal husband, the kind of man with an optimistic outlook and sensible career plans.
Wolfe hated the jerk already.
Without warning she twisted again. Her head slid onto his thigh, her breath warm and damp through his worn jeans. Closing his eyes, he tried to forget that her lips were inches from his straining zipper.
He opened the top snap of his jeans and forced himself to relax, drawing upon all the control he possessed. Bush firefights and predawn raids hadn’t gotten to him. Neither would this. By sheer force of will he put himself in a different place, cut off from both pain and pleasure, running over a black sand beach beneath a quarter moon.
Better.
His breathing slowed. On
ce his control returned, he felt a wave of relief. He wasn’t losing his edge after all.
Kit muttered sleepily. Her nails dug into his thighs.
“Easy, honey.” He moved her searching fingers away from his legs and out of the danger zone, but she pulled free, caught in bad dreams.
Her fist hit his jaw. Then her elbow slammed into his thigh. Wolfe had no choice but to lift her against his chest to calm her struggles. As he held her still, he tried not to notice the way her nightshirt climbed up to her waist.
Her eyes snapped open, dazed with sleep. “What?” she snapped.
“Not a thing. You were dreaming.”
Her body froze. “It’s really you, not a dream?”
He smiled tightly. “I guess that depends on what kind of dream you were having.”
She closed her eyes, and he saw her sudden flush. She turned her face into his bare chest and stretched sleepily. “You’re sure the dogs have enough water?”
“All systems go.”
She smiled against his chest. “Want an energetic but very low-paying job?”
“Already got one. Uncle Sam would probably take a dim view of me moonlighting.”
“Yeah, but what does the government know?”
Everything, he thought wryly. Through his imbedded chips he was tracked constantly. Even his heart rate and blood chemistry were monitored 24/7.
And knowing Ryker, there might be more bio-sensors implanted that Wolfe hadn’t been told about yet.
He had a sudden, arresting image of three scientists in white coats monitoring his conversations, maybe even using some kind of remote technology to view his life in real time via a tiny camera.
No, that can’t be possible.
There was a muffled chime between their bodies, and Kit grimaced. “Gotta take my pills. In my purse—”
He reached deftly to the end table. “Right here. Give me a minute and I’ll get you some water.”
HE WAS GONE for what seemed like forever.
Still groggy, Kit pushed to one elbow, peering into the shadows beyond the firelight.
Feeling jumpy. Just on the edge of frightened.
“Wolfe?”
Code Name: Bundle! Page 19