WAY OF THE SHADOWS

by Cynthia Eden

  But his hand locked around her shoulder, and he spun her right back to face him.

  “Thomas—”

  His mouth crashed down on hers. She was so shocked by the move she just stood there a moment. Then...

  “Damn it, I’m sorry.” He tore his mouth from hers, but he didn’t let her go. Thomas stared down at her with glittering eyes. “Let’s try that again....”

  And this time, the kiss was softer. Tempting her, not taking or demanding, but seducing her instead.

  Her emotions were about to rip her apart. She shouldn’t just be standing in his arms.

  I’ll always be with you. The memory of those words didn’t scare her. The words made her feel safe. The way being with Thomas always did.

  Her hands rose to curl around his shoulders. She shouldn’t be in his arms, no, but nothing had ever felt more right to her before.

  His mouth pressed to hers, and her lips parted. He kissed her, deeply, sensually, and she rose onto her toes in front of him. The anger that had been blasting through her changed. Desire rose, igniting like a firestorm because, suddenly, it was all too much. The past. The present. The fire. The fear.

  She didn’t want to think anymore. She only wanted to feel. And Thomas, he was very, very good at making her feel.

  Her hands shoved against his coat. He let her go, just for a moment, and that coat hit the floor. He stared at her, and she could read his gaze then, no problem. Lust and heavy desire shined in his eyes. “Noelle...”

  She shook her head. She’d asked him to talk. He’d refused. Now... Now she just wanted to keep feeling.

  Noelle tossed aside her coat. Kicked off her boots and ditched her socks. She was stripping in front of him, when she’d never had the courage to do this before, not in front of the only two lovers she’d had. She’d been so nervous with them. So afraid.

  But there wasn’t any room for fear. Not with him.

  Thomas pulled her against him and kissed her again, even as his hands slid over her flesh. His fingertips were rough, callused, but he was so careful as he caressed her. She arched into his touch. Wanting more. Needing more. She needed everything he had to give.

  Lies. Truth. She didn’t know the line between them anymore.

  She didn’t know what was memory. What was hope. She only knew desire.

  He pulled her down onto the rug in front of the fireplace. She could hear the wind howling outside. She could feel the mad drumbeat of her heart, shaking her from the inside.

  He ditched his clothes, and then he—he just gazed down at her.

  “You’re the most perfect thing that I’ve ever seen.”

  No, she wasn’t. Her breasts were too small. Her legs too long and—

  He bent his head and took her nipple into his mouth. A surge of heat had her gasping his name. He kept kissing her breast, licking her nipple, even as his hand slid down her body. Her legs spread for him, and his fingers explored her flesh.

  “Warm,” his voice rumbled against her, “so...hot and perfect.”

  She felt as if she were burning then. The cold was long gone. Her breath heaved out in pants as he took his time learning her body. Stroking. Licking. Touching.

  Kissing.

  Everywhere.

  Her nails bit into his shoulders. It had never been like this for her before. The passion so intense, her body responding so quickly. Maybe it was the adrenaline. The fear. The fury.

  Or maybe it was just the man.

  He positioned himself between her legs. His eyes blazed and—

  “I need to protect you...”

  Understanding dawned for her. She shook her head. “I’m safe.” She was on contraception, and she was clean. All of the agents underwent regular physicals and—

  “I’m clean,” he gritted out, “and I want you...more than I’ve ever wanted anyone or anything.”

  “Then take me,” she heard herself whisper.

  His fingers caught hers and he pinned her hands to the rug. He stared into her eyes, his face a mask of stark need as he thrust inside her.

  He drove deep and filled her completely. She gasped at the sensation because it had been so long for her, and sex with her other lovers had never been like this.

  Heat. Need. Passion.

  He withdrew. Plunged deep. Again and again. Her legs wrapped around his hips as she surged up to meet his thrusts. Every hard glide of his body pushed him right over her sensitive core, and her body tightened. Release was close, so very close and—

  Noelle screamed when the pleasure hit her. No gentle wave. No crest of release. But an avalanche, which rolled right over her, stealing her breath and making her heart slam into her ribs. She cried out Thomas’s name, so lost in him she could barely see. Her body trembled, spasmed and she held on to him as fiercely as she could.

  Then he drove into her once more. He stiffened, and the growl that broke from him was her name.

  She tried to focus on him because she wanted to see him in that moment. The hard angles of his face. The pleasure in his eyes.

  He bent toward her. He kissed her.

  And he kept thrusting.

  Her breath caught and she arched toward him. Because she realized the pleasure wasn’t over.

  It was just beginning.

  * * *

  WHEN NOELLE OPENED her eyes, she was still by the fire. The rest of the house was dark, but the fire blazed. Thomas was in front of the hearth, wearing a pair of jeans. He bent forward as she watched and he stirred up the flames.

  “The power’s out,” he said, without looking back at her.

  A soft cover surrounded her body. She didn’t even know where that cover had come from, but she pulled it closer.

  “We should stay down here,” Thomas said, his attention seemingly on the blaze. “It’s warmer here, as long as we keep the fire going.”

  Keeping the blanket with her, Noelle sat up. She brought her knees in front of her and watched Thomas.

  “I didn’t...mean for that to happen.” His voice was low, rasping, and his shoulders were tense. “I know I pounced on you and—”

  “If this is the part where you apologize,” she said, a bit surprised by the bite in her own voice, “don’t. I knew exactly what I was doing and exactly what I wanted.”

  He looked back at her.

  “You,” Noelle told him simply. “I wanted to be with you.”

  He swallowed. She saw the faint movement of his Adam’s apple. “There are things you don’t know about me.”

  She lifted her brows at that. “I’d say I know you pretty well by now.” Biblically well.

  He glanced toward the fire once more. “You know what you read in the files Mercer gave you, but with me... He wouldn’t have shown you everything.”

  Noelle forced herself to take slow, deep breaths. “And why not?”

  The flames crackled.

  “My father was a solider.” Thomas spoke slowly. “He was a damn good fighter and a good man.” His hand lifted and he stared at it for a second. Then he struck out with a powerful force that seemed to whip through the air around him. His hand was perfectly straight as it moved in a series of fast, hard glides—attacks that were both beautiful...and brutal. “He taught me how to fight when most kids were learning how to read and write. He wanted me to be prepared, always prepared for what life might throw at me.”

  She waited.

  “My mother didn’t like being a soldier’s wife. She left, and she took me with her.” His jaw hardened. “And he died on his next mission.”

  “I’m sorry.” The words felt so hollow to her.

  “My dad was good at what he did. His walls were full of medals and commendations. But when he lost us, I think he just stopped caring.” He rubbed a hand over his face. “I realized then ju
st how dangerous love could be to a man. Love makes you weak. Vulnerable.”

  She shook her head, even though he couldn’t see the move. “It doesn’t have to be like that.”

  “It does...when love becomes an obsession. When it’s all you think about. When you can’t do your mission because you’re seeing a woman in your head. You’re worried about her, thinking about her, and you can’t protect your team, much less yourself.”

  She didn’t know what to say then.

  “I intended to live my life without any commitments. The missions were my life, and women... Sex was a necessity I took care of when I needed it.”

  Noelle stiffened. Her hold on the cover tightened. Okay, he’d better not have just said she was some kind of itch he’d taken care of. The man needed to think again. He wasn’t—

  He faced her. “You’re different, and I can’t afford the weakness that you make me feel.”

  That was both good and insulting. “I’m not a weakness to you.”

  “Yes,” he said softly. “You are. More than you know.” He rolled back his shoulders. “I should’ve known once wouldn’t be enough with you.”

  She distinctly remembered at least two times. During the third, she’d—

  “I should have kept my hands off you, but I couldn’t.”

  Noelle cleared her throat. “I didn’t want them off. I wanted you.”

  He shook his head. “No, you just wanted to stop being afraid, and I was close and convenient.”

  Oh, the hell no, he hadn’t just said that. Noelle jumped to her feet. The cover almost fell, so she scrambled to keep it over her. Then she stalked toward Thomas, and she jabbed him in the chest with her index finger. “Listen up, soldier,” Noelle snapped at him.

  His brows lifted.

  “You are many things, but trust me, convenient isn’t one of them.” Not by a long shot. “You’re infuriating, you’re secretive and you’re deadly. Convenient doesn’t even make your top-ten list.”

  “Then why were you with me? Why did you give yourself to me?” The words held a hard demand.

  She licked her lips and swore she could still taste him. “Because I needed you right then...” She thought of his words. “More than I needed anyone or anything.” Even the secrets of her past. Secrets her gut told her he knew.

  He didn’t speak. Maybe he was back to being Strong and Silent. That was okay. Noelle found she had plenty to say. “What happened between us tonight wasn’t about the past. It was only about the present. About me needing you. About you needing me. I’m not looking for forever.” Was that why he was giving her the spiel about sex being a necessity? She straightened her shoulders and vowed not to crumble. “I just needed you, because when you look at me—” and she’d seen this in his gaze “—you see me. Flaws. Strengths. You seem to see all of me, and you want what you see.”

  He didn’t realize how important that was to her. She felt broken on the inside, but he looked at her with such hunger, such desire.

  Maybe it was time for them to be completely honest. They were alone in the cabin. Separated from the rest of the world by the storm. “I know you were there,” she whispered.

  Because Noelle was watching him so closely, she saw the slight hardening of his mouth.

  “It’s not me being confused. I hear your voice, and I know you were there when I was taken.” There had been so many law enforcement personnel swarming the little cabin when she was rescued. Had he been a deputy back then? A face that she couldn’t remember, but a voice that had stayed with her? “What I don’t understand is...why...after everything, you just won’t admit the truth to me. It’s my life. I should have the highest possible clearance when it comes to me.”

  His hand rose. The back of his fingers brushed over her cheek. He swallowed and whispered, “I was there.”

  It took an instant for those words to sink in. “When the rescuers came for me?”

  His eyes closed. “I saw you in my mind for years after that night. I hated to leave you, but I didn’t have a choice. The mission I was on meant that I couldn’t be compromised. Other lives were at stake.”

  Her heart should have been racing. Instead, its beat was slow. Everything felt slow for her right then. “You didn’t answer my question.”

  His eyes opened.

  “Were you there when the rescuers came?” She remembered a deputy, a guy with a wide-brimmed hat who’d pulled her from the chair and guided her from the cabin. After she’d gotten outside, the deputy had vanished. But he’d been...good to her. He’d pulled her from the darkness and—

  Thomas shook his head.

  Her heart stopped then. “Thomas?”

  “I was told never to talk about that night.”

  She couldn’t have this conversation covered only in a blanket. And she couldn’t leave the room right then, not if her life depended on it. “Who told you?”

  “Mercer.”

  The puppet master. The man always pulling the strings. The man who’d been in and out of Noelle’s life for years. “Why?”

  “Because EOD agents can’t be compromised, you know that.”

  She had to figure this out before she shattered. “You’re thirty-seven.”

  His head inclined toward her.

  “Fifteen years ago...you would have only been twenty-two.” The background file Mercer had given to her had indicated Thomas hadn’t joined the EOD until he was twenty-seven, after he’d spent years working operations as an Army Ranger.

  “I was twenty-two, and I’d been killing for the government for years by then.”

  “You weren’t EOD.” He couldn’t have been.

  Thomas simply stared back at her.

  “Tell me!”

  “I’ve been with the EOD since I was twenty-one years old.” His lips twisted. “I told you, I was very, very good at my job.”

  A wave of dizziness had her stepping back from him. “Mercer knows what happened to me, too, doesn’t he?” He’s known, and for years, he’s said nothing.

  Thomas nodded.

  “Why? It’s my life!” Anger was cracking through her.

  “But other lives were on the line. We thought... We thought your abduction was an isolated incident.” He tried to reach out for her, but she flinched back. “I didn’t know there were other girls involved, not until we found those pictures.”

  Had Mercer known? Was that why he’d been so adamant she investigate the senator? “Tell me everything.”

  “Clearance—”

  “Don’t!” How dare he throw that up to her? “You just made love to me. There were no barriers between us. It was you and it was me.” She heaved out a breath. Her heart wasn’t beating slowly anymore. It was thundering in her chest. “I’ve had a void in my mind for years. A void that you could fill. All you had to do was speak. Just...tell me.” She was about to rip that cover in two with her grip. “Do it now, Thomas. Tell me. I’m not crazy. I remember your voice, I remember—”

  “You were in the woods.” His voice was flat. Ice cold. “I heard your screams, so I ran to investigate.”

  Her knees almost gave way. She grabbed for the mantel and kept one hand around the cover that shielded her.

  His hands were fists at his sides. “You were fleeing in the woods. You were hysterical, crying, saying that a man was chasing you.” The faint lines around his mouth deepened in the firelight. “Hunting you.”

  Goose bumps rose on her skin.

  “I didn’t see anyone, and you... You were too pale. Your pupils were dilated, and I thought—I thought you were on drugs. At first.”

  She could only shake her head. But...the doctors had thought she’d been drugged. Rohypnol. Since it could cause memory loss, that had been the drug they suspected the most. And since it could be untraceable in the blood after the passa
ge of time, they’d figured her abductor must have given it to her.

  “Then I saw your hands. You had bruises around your wrists. As if you’d been tied up. Restrained.”

  Her lungs were starving for air, even though she was breathing as deeply as she could.

  “I never expected to find you in those woods. Saving you... It wasn’t my mission, but... I wasn’t going to let anyone hurt you.”

  “They found me in the cabin.” His story wasn’t making sense to her. She’d been in the cabin, not out in the open, in the woods.

  “Because I took you back there.”

  She stumbled away from the mantel. “I was tied up! You did that to me?”

  He tried to grab her, but even though she’d craved his touch before, she couldn’t stand it right then.

  And she needed clothes.

  Clothes!

  She spun away from him. Grabbed a flashlight and then she was running up the stairs.

  “Noelle!”

  Her world was shaking, and she wasn’t going to stand there, naked. She shoved open the door to her bedroom. Her flashlight hit on the bed. It was so cold in there. Icy.

  She grabbed for her suitcase, even as she heard him thundering up the stairs behind her. She yanked on her jeans. Pulled on a T-shirt. Didn’t slow down for underwear. Her teeth were chattering. So cold. So cold because—

  The window was open.

  Noelle froze.

  “We’ve started, and we aren’t stopping,” Thomas said as he stormed into her room. “Mercer is going to fire my ass, but I don’t care. I won’t hold back with you any longer. After what happened tonight, I can’t.”

  Her flashlight was on the window. “Why is it open?” It shouldn’t be open. It had been locked when they’d left before.

  Her light hit the floor. Snow was inside, some melted, some still a hard white.

  “Where’s your weapon?” Thomas asked her, voice whisper soft.

  The window was open, and it looked... It almost looked as if there were wet boot prints on the hardwood floor.

  “Downstairs.” There was no way someone could’ve gotten into the cabin, not while they were there and...making love.