by Maya Banks
She stroked him lovingly with her mouth and her hands. She touched him with gentleness that he felt in the deepest parts of his heart.
After a moment, she laid her cheek over the top of his thigh and continued to work him down from his orgasm with her hand.
“Shea, I’m so damn sorry,” he said when he finally got control of his tongue.
She raised her head, her brows furrowed in confusion. “What are you apologizing for?”
His cheeks heated and he prayed she couldn’t see him actually blushing. “I think that might give new meaning to the word premature.”
She smiled then, dazzling him, warming him like a ray of sunshine. She crawled up his body and snuggled into the crook of his arm. She laid her head on his chest and rubbed her hand up and down his side.
“Tonight was all for you, Nathan. I love that you want me so much. That I can drive you crazy. I wanted it to last but only because I wanted to give you more pleasure. You didn’t disappoint me and you have no reason to be embarrassed.”
He pulled her up and rolled until they faced each other. “You did give me pleasure. So much that I can’t even feel my feet. ‘Thank you’ sounds so lame. I don’t even have the words to tell you what you mean to me.”
She smiled again, this time a shy, adorable smile as she ducked her head self-consciously. It delighted him that she could be so bold and wanton one minute and adorably shy the next.
He leaned in to kiss her because he couldn’t stand not to. Just as their lips met, a knock sounded at the door.
CHAPTER 24
SHEA stiffened, her eyes growing wide with apprehension. Nathan scrambled out of bed and motioned her toward the bathroom as he yanked his clothing on.
“Get the pistol. Then go into the bathroom and get dressed. Hurry. Don’t come out until I tell you. Understand? And if anyone but me comes through that door, you shoot.”
She nodded and quickly did as he directed.
He grabbed one of the rifles, made sure the other was within easy reach, and then he eased over to the door. There was no way to know who was out there. It might just be the manager. But Nathan wasn’t taking any chances.
Jamming the rifle to his shoulder, he threw open the door and to his shock came face-to-face with Donovan. And he didn’t look pleased to be greeted with the barrel of a rifle.
Nathan eased the rifle down, even more surprised as he saw Ethan and Swanny standing on either side of Donovan.
Donovan looked pointedly at the gun. “Planning to shoot us?”
Nathan gestured for them to hurry in and he shut the door behind them. “How the fuck did you get here so fast? I just spoke to Sam an hour or so ago.”
“We might have already been in the neighborhood,” Ethan said.
“You didn’t exactly cover your tracks that well,” Donovan pointed out. “We trailed you to Crescent City. We were there when Sam called us and told us you were here. We grabbed a faster gear and hauled ass up here.”
Swanny hung back, his silent gaze taking in his surroundings. While Ethan and Donovan were focused on Nathan, Swanny was checking out the rest of the room. Almost as though he were looking for someone. Shea?
What was Swanny doing here anyway?
When Nathan asked just that question, Swanny finally turned his stare to him.
“You didn’t expect me to just leave you in whatever mess you’ve gotten yourself into. If you did, fuck you.”
Nathan let out a sharp chuckle. “No, I guess I didn’t. I should have expected this. The real question is how you got these hard-asses to agree to let you come.”
Ethan and Donovan exchanged raised eyebrow glances.
“Hard-asses? He’s calling us hard-asses?” Donovan asked in mock incredulity.
“So where’s Shea?” Ethan demanded.
“In the bathroom,” Nathan said in a tight voice. “I’ll go get her.”
The moment Shea was mentioned, Swanny looked uneasy. He turned his face away so that the side that wasn’t scarred was facing the rest of them.
Nathan went to the bathroom door and knocked softly. “Shea? You can come out. My brothers are here.”
The door opened and she stood there, clutching the Glock, looking nervous as hell and so uncertain that he softened from head to toe. He reached in to take her hand and then pulled her to him, uncaring of whether his brothers could see or not.
“You have nothing to worry about,” he murmured.
“But they know about me,” she whispered back. “They’ll think I’m crazy.”
He pulled her back so he could look down at her. “Then I’m as crazy as you are. Swanny’s here too.”
“Swanny?”
She pushed Nathan aside and strode into the room, staring at the three men assembled.
Ethan and Donovan stared at her with open curiosity while Swanny kept his face averted. Donovan’s eyes widened when he caught sight of the Glock that Shea was holding.
“Swanny,” she whispered. She thrust the gun at Nathan and then hurried over to Swanny.
He wore a look of panic as she turned him to face her. She grasped his hands and stared up at him with soft wonder.
“Swanny, it’s really you.”
The poor guy looked terrified by the tiny woman standing in front of him. He acted like he didn’t know whether to shit or go blind.
Then she threw her arms around him and hugged him fiercely. Swanny’s dismay turned to bafflement and finally wonder. Shea pulled away and then put her hand to the scars on Swanny’s face. Shame crowded into his eyes but she was having none of that. She leaned up on tiptoe and kissed his scarred cheek.
“I’m so glad you’re okay. I worried so much about you and Nathan over the last several months.”
He stared at her with an open mouth. He closed it and reopened it multiple times but nothing seemed to come out. Then his entire expression softened and he reached tentatively to touch her hair, almost as if he wasn’t quite sure he wasn’t having a hallucination.
“Thank you,” he said hoarsely. “I’ll never forget what you did for Nathan and for me.”
She squeezed him again and gave him another kiss on the cheek. Then she seemed to realize that Donovan and Ethan were staring at her. She flushed and all but ran back to Nathan. He caught her hand, squeezed and pulled her into his side.
“Shea, I want you to meet my brothers, Ethan and Donovan. Guys, this is Shea.”
He wasn’t entirely certain how his brothers were going to handle a potentially awkward situation. To his surprise, Donovan stepped forward and took Shea’s hand from Nathan and held it in his own.
“I owe you a great debt,” Donovan said gravely. “You returned my brother to his family. For that you have my thanks.”
She flushed with pleasure and gifted Donovan with a beautiful smile.
“I’m Ethan,” Ethan said as he pushed forward. “I’m happy to meet you, Shea.”
She included Ethan in her smile, but she clung shyly to Nathan’s side.
“Not to cut short the pleasantries, but maybe you better fill us in on what’s going on,” Donovan said. “The abbreviated version if you don’t mind. We need to get the hell on the road. We can talk more at length on the plane.”
Shea frowned and looked like she’d argue, but Nathan squeezed her hand, silently asking her to hear them out. Her mouth relaxed, and he eased her to the bed so she could sit.
He sat next to her while Swanny slid down the wall by the window to sit on the floor. Ethan leaned against the door and Donovan slouched in the rickety chair by the desk.
Nathan glanced down at Shea. I have to tell them everything. You know that.
She didn’t react to his form of communication but nodded her acceptance.
Carefully he explained Shea’s abilities. There was a lot of doubt reflected in Ethan’s and Donovan’s faces. Not Swanny’s, though. Swanny just nodded and his expression remained impassive.
When he got to the part where Shea left him after his brothers rescu
ed him in Afghanistan, he urged Shea to take over and relate her part.
In a halting voice, she recounted the time she spent on the run. She was candid about Grace, their parents’ murder, and was equally blunt about her treatment at her captors’ hands.
The other men’s expressions turned black, and Donovan scowled so hard that Shea looked warily at him.
“I’d like to get my hands on those assholes,” Donovan muttered.
It didn’t surprise Nathan that Van had such a fierce reaction to Shea’s story. He was a born sucker for women and children, and he got violent when either were abused.
“Tell us about Grace,” Ethan said. “Where is she now?”
Shea’s mouth turned down into a sad frown. “I don’t know. She went to our parents’ house. The last time I talked to her, I saw enough to know she was there. It’s why Nathan and I went there today.”
Donovan turned his sharp stare to Nathan. “You did what?”
Again Nathan recounted the events for his brothers. “I uploaded video surveillance footage to your email. I was hoping you’d be able to take a look. If Grace was there, we should be able to see what happened. I also got shots of the guys who were there today before they blew a hole in the wall. Van, they looked military. They weren’t amateurs, that’s for damn sure.”
Ethan’s expression blackened. “You should have damn well waited for us before going into an unknown situation like that. You pull a stunt like that again and I’ll kick your ass.”
“It was my fault,” Shea quietly interjected. “I had to go. I didn’t know if Grace was still there. Or if she was hurt or if she’d been captured. I had to know. I had to see what I could find out. Nathan wanted to call you in but I worried it would take too much time and that we’d be too late if we waited.”
Donovan stared hard at Shea, his eyes going soft. “It would seem to me that you’ve spent a hell of a lot of time looking out for everyone but yourself.”
Shea shook her head in denial.
“You’ve got us to do that now,” Donovan continued. “We’re not going to let these assholes—whoever they are—so much as get near you again.”
Ethan nodded his agreement.
“What do you want to do, Van?” Nathan asked. “I don’t think we should bring this kind of trouble home.”
“We could take her to one of the safe houses,” Ethan suggested. “There’s the cabin Sam took Sophie to in Virginia.”
Donovan frowned for a long moment. “I’ll call Sam, give him an update on the situation and we’ll figure out our best course of action. Either way we’re getting the hell out of here.”
“But what about Grace?” Shea demanded. “I can’t just leave here. I won’t leave her.”
Donovan acknowledged her with a nod. “I need some time to go over the footage Nathan was able to upload. We have to put the pieces together and come up with as much of the puzzle as we can. We can’t do that here. We need to be in a safe place where I also have access to all of KGI’s resources.”
Shea slapped her hand on her forehead. “The journal. God, Nathan, the journal. I just forgot all about it. Maybe there’s something in there.”
She started to scramble off the bed, but Nathan snagged her hand. “There’ll be plenty of time to read it when we’re in the air. Right now our priority is getting you the hell out of here and to a safe place.”
When she would have protested again, he pressed his mouth to hers. When he drew away, he ran his hand over her hair. “We aren’t going to leave Grace, baby. I promise. I need to get you away from here. Once we’re out of here, I swear to you we’ll do everything in our power to locate her.”
Slowly she nodded.
“I’ll get Resnick to put some feelers out to find out what government agency might be interested in Shea’s and Grace’s abilities,” Donovan said.
Shea raised her head in alarm. “No! You can’t tell anyone else about us!”
Donovan held up his hand. “We aren’t going to tell the world. Just Resnick. He’s someone we trust. He has no incentive to fuck us over. We do too much of his dirty work for him. If the government is looking for you, he’ll find out. A faceless enemy does us no good. We need to know exactly whom we’re dealing with. The only way to do that is to go on the offensive and not wait around for them to find us. We hunt them. Not the other way around.”
“Hell yeah,” Swanny said, speaking up for the first time. “Count me in.”
Nathan almost laughed at the enthusiasm in Swanny’s voice. It was the first time Nathan had seen him worked up about anything since they got back from Afghanistan. Hell, it was the first time that Nathan had felt a purpose. It felt pretty damn good.
CHAPTER 25
THEY took off the next morning after sending the other jet ahead to a different location as a decoy. After a few derogatory remarks from Donovan about Nathan stealing a Kelly jet, Nathan endured a lecture about leaving KGI in a lurch if they’d been called up for a mission and been left with limited transportation means.
Shea had separated herself from the men. And Nathan. He wasn’t entirely sure he liked it. But she was curled up in the corner of the wraparound couch, a reading light on as she flipped through the journal she’d found at her parents’ house.
His brothers were talking, but Nathan had tuned them out. His focus was on Shea. It was obvious whatever she was reading distressed her. She was pale. Her fingers gripped the edges of the book and she turned each page with a seeming sense of dread. Almost like she was afraid of what she’d find.
He wanted to go over to her. He wanted to pull her into his arms, but she had a tangible barrier constructed, both physically and mentally. He’d briefly tried touching her mind, more to reassure himself than to reassure her, but she was blocked off. She’d shut the door on him, and it frustrated him even as he knew she needed this time alone to process whatever it was she was reading.
It took him a moment to realize that Donovan was talking to him. Only when Ethan nudged him did he turn and stare at his brothers, his mind blank to whatever they’d been saying.
“Don’t you think it’s time you told us what the fuck is going on with you? Has been going on with you? Is it Shea? Is she why you’ve closed yourself off from the rest of us? Why you refused to come to us for help until now?”
Donovan spoke in low tones so that Shea wouldn’t overhear, but Nathan still glanced back to see that she was still firmly involved in her reading.
Then he turned back to his brothers and Swanny. At least Swanny would understand.
“What was I supposed to do, Van? There were times I thought I was crazy. Certifiable. She was with me when I went through unimaginable hell. She suffered it with me. She took my pain, my torture, and made it her own. And why? She didn’t know me. She put herself at risk. Huge risk.”
“You should have told us,” Ethan said. “We would have understood. What we didn’t understand is why you put this wall between you and your family. Hell, it wouldn’t have mattered to us if you were crazy as a loon. At least we could have helped.”
“How could you understand when I didn’t understand myself?” Nathan asked in a tired voice. “She left me when you came for me, that last time, when I knew I was finally going to get out alive. I went crazy because, for so long, she was all I had. She was the only hope I had. She was like this talisman for me and then she was gone. And then I began to wonder if she was real. Maybe I’d imagined her. But it always came back to those emails. The ones she sent Van. But then I had no idea how to find her, how to reach her, much less how to explain her to you. Everyone was already tiptoeing around me like they were afraid I’d lose my shit and start barking at the moon. And maybe I was. I just knew that I had to come to terms with what happened on my own. And then…”
He broke off, chanced another look in Shea’s direction.
“She’s a fucking miracle. My miracle. The day of Rusty’s graduation party, she spoke to me and she was so afraid. I knew those bastards had taken her
then. Several nights before that, she’d tried to reach out to me, but she was drugged and all I felt was her confusion and disorientation, but I knew it was her, and I knew something was terribly wrong. But again, what could I do? I didn’t know where she was. I didn’t even know who she was. Just her name. I’ve never felt so goddamn helpless in my life. But then she called for me. She’d escaped and was running for her life. Those bastards tortured her. They drugged her and tortured her and there wasn’t a goddamn thing I could do about it. But I could get to her as fast as I could. I could do that much. And I could do everything in my power to protect her. So I did.
“Could I have asked for your help? Yeah, but then I would have had to explain everything. I would have had to combat your disbelief. We would have wasted time that Shea didn’t have while you decided whether to believe me or lock my ass up in some mental facility. By the time we came up with some damn plan and coordinated KGI and figured out who was going to do what, it would have been too late for Shea, and I wasn’t going to let that happen.”
Ethan’s lips tightened into a fine line. He understood. He understood all too well and Nathan knew it. He’d once been faced with the situation of having to go in and rescue his wife, and he of all people knew Nathan’s frustration and why he’d made the choices he did.
Swanny merely nodded. Didn’t offer words, just nodded his agreement.
Donovan sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “I get it, man. I do. I just wish you’d come to us from the start. It’s been killing us to see you this way and not know what if anything we could do to help. You’re my brother and you have to know there isn’t a damn thing I wouldn’t do for you. Whether you’re crazy or not.”
Nathan smiled. “I know. I do know that, Van. I know I could have done things differently, but at the time it was what I thought I needed to do. I hate that I hurt you and the rest of the family. But when I came back…I wasn’t the same man. I wasn’t sure I could ever be that man again.”