by Amy Gamet
And what better mate for the damsel than the SEAL?
Shut up, Olivia.
Hawk squeezed her against him, his erection pressing into her belly. She wanted to be free of these voices, these new expectations she had for herself. He was here. He’d finally come to help her. She no longer needed to be strong.
Her eyes popped open.
There was no going back.
Once she’d seen herself for the waif she was, she couldn’t take away that knowledge, the desire to improve. She was on her own journey of self-discovery whether she wanted it or not.
“We don’t have to make love if you don’t want to,” he said.
She looked up at him. “I want to. Just go slow, okay? It’s been a long time.”
His eyes darkened and she saw the depth of his desire. Her hands skated up his arms until she linked them behind his head. He leaned down and gave her a gentle kiss.
She couldn’t remember a time when he’d been so sweet. She kissed him back tentatively, expecting him to pick up the pace when he saw she was willing, but he did not.
She fitted her body more tightly against his. This time he kissed her, but he kissed her like they could be making out all night, not just a means to an end, and the first pulse of desire beat between her legs.
She opened her mouth, exploring, tasting him, pleased when she made him groan. She’d missed this—the connection with him, the fire in her breast. He took her head in his hands, but even though he held her captive, she was still very much in charge of their kisses.
Her cheeks gradually flooded with heat. “I love feeling how hard you are against me,” she whispered. “Sometimes I would imagine you were with me when I fell asleep and we were making love, but nothing compares to this.”
He cursed under his breath.
She let her hands trail up his back beneath his shirt, feeling the bunched muscles he would use to move inside her. The thought had her purring like a cat, her body undulating against his as he tasted her mouth with his tongue.
How many times had she imagined this? Had she wanted him in her bed, his body warm against hers? In the daytime she longed for his company and protection, but in the night she wanted his body to bring hers to life.
They kept kissing.
She was hot, overheating, and she took off her shirt in one fluid motion, his hands instantly coming to her breasts. She remembered the myriad times he’d touched her, orchestrating her response from her hardened nipples with his mouth and hands, and she longed for him to do it again.
She met his eyes, reaching inside the cups of her bra and lifting her breasts out of them. He moved down her body, capturing a nipple in his mouth and caressing it with his tongue before taking it inside. She gasped at the sensation, her knees buckling, and he held her up.
Now he was moving, reacting to her, no longer waiting for her to take the lead. He unfastened her pants, pushing them down her legs with her underwear, leaving her with only the bra beneath her breasts, forcing them upward.
She fumbled with the button on his jeans until he moved her hands out of the way, anxious to free himself, his cock hard and thick in her eager hands.
“Livy,” he whispered, picking her up, and her legs came around his torso before he turned around and pressed her firmly against the wall.
She wanted him to take her like this, and she arched her hips forward. “Please,” she begged.
He found her entrance, filling her completely in one hard thrust. The wall was unforgiving as she took his full length, sensation exploding outward from her center and covering her limbs.
This is what I needed.
Her body remembered this. He felt glorious inside her as he filled her and retreated, his breathing heavy, groans of pleasure in her ear as he pumped into her sensitive center.
Her legs were suspended in the air, Trevor gripping her beneath her knees to hold her against the wall, the force of his thrusts and his obvious need for her driving her frenzied response.
She closed her eyes, pinpoints of light rushing past as she climbed higher, Trevor’s sounds changing as her muscles clenched tightly around him. She couldn’t escape his thrusting, couldn’t pull back, and the feelings overwhelmed her. His thrusts came faster, harder, prolonging her orgasm longer than she could believe until he joined her at the pinnacle, his muscles straining as he came.
Her breathing came fast in the darkness. Trevor retreated several inches and pushed into her again, the movement on her overly sensitized body making her cry out.
This was as close as two people could become. No one had ever let their soul mingle with someone else’s the way she did with him—she was certain of it now—and she would never let him get so far away from her as to forget it in the future.
He moved his head, resting forehead to forehead, his breath matching hers. They were one person, finally reunited and whole. “I love you,” she whispered.
“I love you, too, baby.”
5
Olivia used her toes to flip the drain switch down and let some water out of the tub, not willing to stop the flow of hot water into the bath. The noise and sensation were soothing, and her soul needed soothing right now.
An acting teacher once told her it was normal to feel defeated and down after a comedic scene, and she wondered now if it was normal to feel sad and emotional after mind-blowing sex with the man she loved.
Probably not.
She wiped at her runny nose and leaned her head back against the porcelain. It wasn’t just the sex that had her head in a tizzy. She’d felt the hard square in Trevor’s pants pocket and would bet money there was an engagement ring inside.
She shouldn’t have been surprised. They’d talked about marriage plenty of times before. She’d even taken to calling him her fiancé before she’d come to France, and God knows she’d been happy about it.
She furrowed her brow. When had she stopped calling him that? She searched her memory for a single moment, a deliberate decision, but found nothing. There was only the sense that everything had been rushed and out of her control.
You never tried to control anything.
There hadn’t been any time between Marco and Trevor, no quiet space with herself to reflect on anything. So when she’d come to France and begun working on this movie, the contrast between the strong female lead and her own confused mind had been striking.
Marco had led their relationship. He was in charge, and she’d let him walk all over her. Then Trevor came into her life and he was such a strong alpha man, he’d also taken the lead. But now she wasn’t so sure she wanted to blindly follow what someone else said was right for their relationship, or for her.
She wanted more than that from Trevor.
I love him more than that.
Truth was, she’d been scared deep down that her changing feelings about her own place in this world would also change her relationship with him, but tonight had steadied her nerves.
What they shared was real and, as he’d gone to great lengths to show her tonight, very much within her control. She looked at her left hand, the empty ring finger no longer misshapen from Marco’s engagement ring. If only her heart were completely back to normal, as well.
She closed her eyes and sighed. Once she felt safe again, the rest of her life would fall back into place. She knew it would.
Every man she thought of from the movie was suddenly suspect, with no way to know which of them was actually a danger. There was Evan Lockheed, the director. Her co-star, Anthony Weir. Michael Roth, who played the Marquis de Sage. Her mind ran through another dozen names.
While Trevor had his sights set on finding the man responsible, she was far more realistic. The movie had two more weeks of filming and it was highly unlikely they’d catch him in that time.
What if you continue to get threats back home?
She couldn’t think about that right now, needing to believe it was related to the film, and the stalker would stay behind in France when she left.
&
nbsp; She flipped the drain closed, her mind drifting to the movie and the scenes they’d be filming tomorrow. There were two of them, the first a hospital scene where her lover died, the second a shower scene where she broke down crying for him.
Her mind mixed the images of the shower scene from the movie and the stalker letter about washing her hair. One day you’ll wash your hair for me, naked in the shower, water dripping off your glorious breasts.
Her eyes opened wide.
She had a body double for the shower scene, since her contract specified no nudity. Evan had been unhappy about that. He’d spoken to her when she first arrived in France, trying to convince her to no avail. Suddenly she was reading the stalker’s letter as if he was lamenting she wouldn’t be the one in that shower.
One day you’ll wash your hair for me, naked in the shower…
She sat up abruptly, water sloshing from one end of the tub to the other. One day you’ll wash your hair for me…
For me.
Was it possible her stalker was talking about tomorrow’s scene, lamenting it wouldn’t actually be her?
She climbed out and wrapped herself in a towel, hastily turning on a light in the dark bedroom, lining up the stalker’s letters with trembling hands.
“Livy? What is it?” Trevor called from the bed.
“The shower scene in the movie calls for the actress to be naked, but I’m having a body double do it. The second letter could be about the shower scene.”
She heard him pulling on his jeans, and he came to stand beside her. “What about the others?”
“Should I cut you and make you bleed? There’s a scene near the end of the film where my husband cuts me with a knife. And this one, I’ll hurt you until you say you’re mine forever, could be from the film, too. She goes to the grave of her lover and says she’ll belong to him forever. Trevor, whoever’s sending these letters has access to the script.”
“How much does that narrow it down?”
“By more than half. Most of the staffers don’t need script access.”
“Call the director and have him note people who do on his list.”
An electric tingle shot up her spine. Was it possible evil was closer to her than anyone else on the movie? Anthony. Michael. Evan. “He wanted me to do the shower scene myself.”
“Who did?”
She swallowed. “The director. Evan Lockheed.”
“Then he might be our man.”
She nodded, nausea bubbling up the back of her throat. She remembered every time he’d put his hands on her to adjust her blocking, every stare across the room. She’d thought it was just a director being overly protective of his vision for the film, but it could have been more.
It could have been deadly.
6
It was only nine o’clock but it seemed far later, Trevor’s sense of time obliterated by jet lag and his lack of sleep last night. Fortunately the GPS unit in Olivia’s car spoke English, which enabled him to find his way back to the studio with ease.
He’d left her sleeping with a note in case she awoke. He needed to check out the night security at the studio firsthand, and he wanted to go see Mac.
The parking lot was deserted. He tucked his firearm into its holster and grabbed a flashlight from his bag. The main door of the studio was locked and clearly armed with a security system, so he began looking for other entrances.
He’d memorized the map of the premises on the plane. Though it showed vast open areas that in reality were dotted with sets, the building layout was the same. He made his way to each of four separate side entrances, finding two of them unlocked, and slipped inside the last one.
He was less than a hundred yards from Livy’s dressing room.
So much for security.
She’d explained to him as they were cuddled in bed that many of the cast chose to board at the studio rather than rent flats or hotel rooms offsite. Since they were located a long way from the big city, many of the actors had taken advantage of that on this film, including her co-star, Anthony Weir, whose room was two doors down from hers.
A little too close for Hawk’s comfort.
He made his way to Weir’s room, hopeful the injured man was still recovering at the hospital. The lock was easily picked and he slipped inside. A quick search of Weir’s belongings turned up a pad of paper, which did not match the one used to write Olivia’s notes, a framed photograph of Weir holding another man, two blue pens, and lubricant suggestive of a male-male relationship.
It certainly looked like Weir was not the culprit.
While Lockheed was not staying at the studio, he did have a trailer on site and Hawk headed for that next. The lock on the director’s door was noticeably better, but no match for his SEAL training. He quickly unlocked it and entered the trailer.
The place was a mess, and he wondered halfheartedly if someone had tossed it before him. He searched through piles upon piles of scripts and other papers, but never found anything to link Lockheed to Olivia’s threatening letters.
The director had emailed her the list of male cast and crew with script access—a list with twenty-seven names on it—but anyone else with their own space at the studio was surely sleeping inside it. Trevor made his way back to his car and reprogrammed his GPS.
It was time for a far more difficult task.
He chided himself for thinking that way as he pulled back onto the road. There’d been a time when he looked up to his old CO like nobody’s business. Mac was twelve years older and light-years wiser than the young Trevor Hawkins had been, and Mac had been solely responsible for keeping Trevor’s ego at a reasonable level.
He’d had a lot to learn, and it was Mac who taught him. He became a soldier under his CO’s watchful eye, but two tours of duty later, Mac’s world came crashing to the ground around him like so much ash after an explosion, and that wasn’t even the worst of it.
No. The worst was the actual explosion that had taken Mac’s leg.
He turned sharply, following a road into the darkness. Mac’s military career had ended dramatically, while Hawk’s career with HERO Force would die on the goddamn vine. Hell, Mac probably could’ve gone on to run a company like HERO Force himself if his head had stayed in the damn game.
He narrowed his eyes.
Mac could run HERO Force.
It was crazy. There was no way. Everything he’d heard about Mac through the years wasn’t good. They said he was washed up, drinking too much, and hung up on trying to find his wife and kid, who, from all accounts, didn’t want to be found, least of all by Mac.
But was it true?
That was years ago. Maybe by now the other man had found his footing, created a new way to get by in the world. Perhaps he was even back to his old self, strong and capable and wise. The image of Mac as he had been back then got him thinking.
And I can start another office of HERO Force.
It was an idea that had been rattling around in his head since Olivia took this job in France. If he was in charge of his own branch of the security firm, he could do what he needed to do, much like Jax had chosen his own hours and involvement after Jessa had the baby.
It was a running joke that Cowboy was going to open a branch in Texas one day. But would it actually be possible? Would Jax go for it?
If Mac was doing better, he could run the operations just like Cowboy, and Hawk would be free to do as he pleased. He could still make a difference, still use his SEAL training for good, still make a positive impact on this world.
He made two quick turns and pulled up in front of a one-story stone house. He palmed the car keys and made his way up the walk, unsure of what he would find.
A shadow stood up from the front step. “Hawk.”
“Mac.” The men embraced. The light scent of alcohol lingered on the air. “We thought you were dead.”
“You text dead men a lot?” asked Mac, pulling back.
Hawk smirked. “I heard through the grapevine you survived. But I was there,
and that’s un-fucking-believable.”
“Come on in.”
Hawk followed him through a narrow hallway and into a kitchen before Mac turned around.
The last time Hawk had seen those eyes, they had been peering out at him through black face paint on an Afghan recon mission seven years ago. Just like that he was back there, gunfire punctuating the air like fireworks on the Fourth of July as Mac told him in no uncertain terms they would push through and complete their mission no matter the cost.
That woman is counting on us to save her husband.
Hawk remembered all of it. The final push to enter the compound, the explosion that followed. His own emotional reaction to losing three members of the team was nothing compared to Mac’s. He was responsible for each and every one of those men, not just on paper, but in his heart.
Mac moved to the counter and poured two fingers of whiskey in glasses, Hawk noting the differences time had made in his mentor. The lines on Mac’s face were to be expected. But the weariness, the broken capillaries along his CO’s cheeks, and the dark circles under his eyes spoke to great difficulty.
“Ooo rah,” said Mac, holding up his drink.
Trevor lifted his glass and drank, the liquor throwing his taste buds back in time. “How the hell did you survive the explosion?” he asked.
“I was thrown over the fence onto the next property.” He pulled up his pant leg, revealing a prosthetic. “Lost my leg.”
“Fuck. I heard.”
Mac chuckled, a deep, throaty sound. “Fuck is right. What about you? What are you doing now?”
“I work for a company called HERO Force. Private security. Black ops, ransom delivery. That sort of thing. What are you doing in France?”
“My wife’s family’s land.”
“Is she here?”
Mac eyed him candidly. “No, but I’m guessing you knew that, too. She left me when I couldn’t leave the job behind, couldn’t get my goddamn head out of my ass and remember I had a family who needed me. I figure one day she’ll come back here, but until then, if she doesn’t want to be found then I sure as hell can’t find her.” He finished his drink. “Why are you here, Hawk?”