I shifted awkwardly. Didn’t sound like the usual abuse. Didn’t sound like the Niall I’d invited into my home less than forty-eight hours ago. Didn’t sound like the guy whose jaw I once punched. “People are more tolerant than they’re given credit for, you know.”
“You have a gift,” he continued, as if I hadn’t spoken. He swallowed hard. “I always envied it.”
I just stared. His eyes were fastened on my mouth, as if he waited to see what might spill out of it. I remembered that as a habit of his—especially when he wanted me. It had been too long since I’d seen that look of desire without it being mixed up and corrupted by a hell of a lot of other, less comfortable feelings. But it seemed he wasn’t exactly putting out the welcome mat. In fact he looked confused… uncertain. A little shocked. Like he had when he’d arrived with the other guys, his home just having crumbled around his ears. But this time, I didn’t think he was thinking about his fixtures and fittings.
It was the first time for a long time that I’d stopped to consider how Niall Sutherland might be feeling about me.
Then he seemed to realize that he’d spoken rather uncharacteristically; a flush appeared high on his cheeks, and his scowl returned. “Whatever. I think I must be overtired too. I meant to tell you, the girl called here earlier. Is it Sheri?” I nodded confirmation. “She called several times, actually. Brought more food in for us both, for supper. I’m afraid your share is congealing in the kitchen.”
“She’s a friend,” I said, just for something to fill the quietness. There were strange reactions rippling in my chest cavity like butterflies trapped in a jar.
He smiled again, a little wistfully. “She likes you, Tanner. A little more than a friend, I think.” His gaze darted uncertainly over me. I was suddenly very conscious of a trickle of sweat just below my throat; I noticed I had a smattering of golden toast crumbs in the creases of my sweats. What were the flickers of emotion I could see in his eyes? What the hell was wrong with me, thinking Niall Sutherland and wistfully in the same mental sentence?
He cleared his throat. “Anyway, she went to help Greg off the park, so she’s not been around here since. I’ll go get your bed ready. I hope your friends will leave you in peace for a while. We need to get you through this night as calmly as possible.”
He turned away, rather abruptly.
I wondered whether this ‘truce’ business was really going to be one of my brighter ideas.
Tuesday 23:07
I STIRRED in bed, biting back a groan as I accidentally nudged my bruised arm against the wall. The room was semi-dark, strangely shadowed. The moonlight was diffused by clouds, but there was additional illumination from the lights of other, nearby trailers, reflecting through my bedroom window. I’d made it to my own bed in the end, laying myself carefully on top of the sheets, keeping my undershirt and sweats on. Niall was taking the couch. Or at least, that’s where I left him. I lay on the thin mattress, wide awake from the many thoughts and feelings that had fuck all to do with the knitting wound on my arm, and then his silhouette appeared at the doorway.
“I’m still okay,” I said a little tersely, in case he thought I needed some more of his special brand of reluctant nursing. Hell, I could get myself to the toilet now, couldn’t I? The painkillers were doing their work again, and even if my mind were working overtime, most of my body felt a pleasant lassitude.
I couldn’t sleep, though.
“I had to consider that, you know,” he said. His face was in full shadow but his teeth glinted quickly in the dimness. “About Simon.”
“I know.” I didn’t say anything else. After all, we were in ‘truce’ mode, weren’t we? That was a good enough reason to bite back any sharp reply I might have discovered inside my restless brain. But I was also recognizing something else seeping its way into the dealings we had with each other. This current crisis was like a mission in itself—and both of us had emphasized the importance of finding our way through it. The mission was taking precedence over any hostile feelings we had for each other. And wasn’t that how it should be?
“You were right. We’d better stay put.” I could hear a muffled laugh and a friendly shout, somewhere far over the other side of the park; I thought I could hear the jangle of a dog tag and a sleepy snuffle outside. Probably Dylan still keeping watch. “We’ll wait for a call from Judith. We’re probably as safe here as anywhere, with people watching out for us. Maybe the attacker will think we’ve run out. Maybe it’ll be a bluff.”
“A double bluff, in case we actually do,” he said. Another glint of teeth in a small smile.
“Yeah. Something like that.” I shifted again on the bed and wondered why I felt vulnerable. I was fully clothed, I was in my own place, and no one had tried to kill me for several hours. “There must be a motive to be found, Niall. We need to talk to the other guys. We need to do some more thinking.”
“Tomorrow,” came his murmur. He didn’t move away from the doorway, though.
I rolled away to face the wall, protecting my bad arm this time. Wished I had some more of those elephant tablets. I could feel his eyes on me; I could smell the soft cleanliness of soap on his skin. I knew how his thin shirt would feel against my fingers if I moved to peel it off over his head. I knew how his dark hair would spring back on his head and then fall forward on to his brow again. I knew how his deep-hued eyes would flash at me as I pushed his torso back against the pale cotton sheet.
I remembered too, too many words in the darkness.
“Get some sleep,” I said, a little hoarsely.
Let me be.
I ROLLED over on to my back and sighed. It beat holding my breath. The trying to sleep was still a big fail, even after another hour or so. And Niall was at my doorway again. He’d been there for the last few minutes. I turned my head to acknowledge him. “Hey, you. Can’t you sleep?”
“No.” This time, he stepped into the room. His breath seemed loud in the silence. “But then, neither can you.”
I smiled to myself. He was damned right. “The wound’s nagging me, I guess.”
“It might be leaking. I’ll dress it again.”
He sat carefully on the edge of my bed, so I had to roll over further to give him space. He already held the bandages, and his movements were smooth and efficient. I watched his hands work, long fingers wrapping the cloth around me, palms brushing against my bare skin. “Very little leakage,” he said. “It’s healing well.”
It didn’t hurt very much at all now, but I didn’t reply. My tongue felt thick in my mouth. That, or someone had cauterized my vocal chords in the last two minutes.
“When you were hit,” he said, and then paused. “Shit.”
I grimaced in the dim light, trying to see his expression.
“It was shock, obviously,” he said, as if he talked to himself. “I don’t know why else I felt so bad.”
Huh?
“Three months, Tanner. I’ve not seen you for three months. Now I see you for a couple of days, under protest, for God’s sake, both of us uncomfortable with it all, both of us really pissed….”
“Yeah,” I said, my tongue having returned to life. “Ditto.”
“But I didn’t expect to feel this way.” He was looking away from me now, the unused roll of white bandage forgotten on his lap. His head tilted back, and I saw the silhouette of his throat as he swallowed. “I never thought being here with you would be this hard.”
“Niall,” I said. Rather ironically for me, I was beginning to realize just how hard it wasn’t. “Did you do that? When I went down. Did you cover me with your body?”
He was silent for a moment. He pressed his hands on his thighs and the mattress shifted under him. “There could have been more than one shot. I didn’t know how badly you’d been hit. You were an open target there on the ground.”
Explanations. But not excuses.
“It was a fucking stupid thing to do,” I said. I don’t think I meant to say it aloud.
Astonishingly, h
e laughed. “Yes, it was. It was the shock, like I said. I couldn’t believe how I felt when I saw you go down—when I saw your body fold against the bullet.” He looked at me then, and even in the dark I could see his expression. His eyes spoke for him. I thought you were dead.
I pulled myself up to sitting. The clean, fresh binding felt good, and strength was returning to my limbs. He stayed where he was, so we were almost face to face, less than a foot apart. “Guess we’re quits then.”
He looked bemused.
“That’s how I felt when you got stabbed.” I’ll never forgive myself for it. “And I’d have sat up in the night, dressing your wounds, like you’ve done for me. Whatever you needed. I’d have done it, Niall.” Whatever the fuck it took. “Just so happened you wanted some other nurse’s attention.”
“But I didn’t.”
I shrugged as if to say “why are we dragging this up again”?
He shuddered slightly. “Then again, I don’t know if I did. It was a terrible time. I didn’t know what I wanted. It was like everything changed then. Everything was distorted.”
“I thought you said you didn’t want the mission post-mortem again,” I said weakly.
He wasn’t listening. “I wasn’t much support to you, was I? I lost sight of it all. You suffered because of me, as well as suffering yourself.” His eyes shone in the darkness with a vivid fierceness. “I never meant you to.”
I stared at him, seeing the faint glow of reflected light around the shape of his rigid body. What the fuck was he going on about? “You were the one who was injured, Niall.”
He shook his head, a quick, dismissive movement. “My body was. But you were in shock. I didn’t understand your distress. I couldn’t see it.”
I leaned slightly toward him, fascinated. “You’ve never talked like this before.”
“I should have done. Joe told me a few home truths, only recently.”
I bristled; my whole body tensed. He must have felt it, but he continued on regardless. There was a strange wildness to his tone, like he was running toward a cliff, and he knew damned well he was heading for the edge, but he didn’t slow down. “He told me there were other things I should have accounted for, not just the physical effects of the stabbing. He told me you would have been in shock, too, from the attack, from the investigation. I just saw your behavior and took you at face value. I never credited anything beyond that.”
I didn’t know anything about that. I’d been in shock? Well of course I had, but that was my problem. Daresay it was some syndrome that the head shrinkers had in their textbooks, but right then, I didn’t have time for it, did I? Don’t make me think about it. I didn’t want to now, I didn’t want to then; I’d been a little mad. Maybe more than a little.
Am I the last to be honest with myself? I gazed at Niall like he was the only thread holding me to the planet. My carelessness nearly got you killed. Who’s missing the point, me or you?
He was oblivious. “There was a hell of a lot I didn’t understand, Tanner. I know that’s no excuse, but I don’t know how I was meant to keep up. You were always so difficult to capture, like quicksilver. Quick in your responses, in your reactions. I was always several steps behind. I felt like dross beside you.”
“Crap!” The cry was dragged from me. “It wasn’t you, it was me. I felt a fool set against you. Lightweight. You said as much yourself.”
“But I never meant it.” He sounded very weary.
“Maybe not. I provoked you.”
He nodded so slightly I only just caught it. “We brought out the worst in each other.”
I nodded, more to myself than him. “Sometimes.” He’d laid his hand on the sheet now, a few inches from my own. I looked down at it, at the splayed fingers, at the tendons tight with tension across the back of his hand.
“Yes,” he agreed. “Sometimes.”
And the best….
“And the best.” It was an uncanny echo of my thoughts. Astonishing that it should be Niall—Mr. Silence-is-Golden—who now spoke so openly. “I just… wanted you, Tanner. Desperately. Always. In any way possible. Never stopped to think things through sensibly. Never spent enough time getting to know you properly.”
I tried to breathe normally, but my chest felt as if it were in a vice. He was speaking my own thoughts; he was laying open my own regrets.
He turned toward me again, a strong muscular shape in the half dark room. His voice had softened. “You look better. There’s color in your face.”
“Soon back to normal,” I said too brightly. If some sniper doesn’t get me first.
“The fight,” he said. “I regret it. Bitterly.”
“Yeah.” So do I, my heart screamed at me, but the words were still in the mire of self-pity at the back of my throat. “But that’s all over now, isn’t it? We’re both agreed on that.” I stared again at the dapples of shadow running over the skin of his hand. I knew my own hand ached to reach out and touch him. What was happening here to me? To us? My head remembered the hurtful shit, yet my body ached from the sensual memory of him.
“It was just so painful, Tanner. Such confusion.” His voice had an unfamiliar break in it. “To see you withdrawing from me—to see your awkwardness with me.”
“Better we parted,” I said very quietly. I didn’t want to discuss this; I didn’t want to hear this. “Guess we could have chosen a slightly less public way to do it, though.”
“Yes,” he said. “Definitely would have been better without the audience.” He laughed, but with no real humor. Sighing, he shifted on the bed and the bandages fell to the floor with a soft thump, rolling over against the wall. His hand opened on top of the sheet beside me, then fisted up again.
“How did it get so bad, Niall?” I was surprised again to hear my words aloud.
“I can’t tell you.”
“No of course you damned well can’t—”
“No,” he interrupted. “Because you won’t let me. I can’t find the words like you can. Never could. I may have been too quick to judge you, but then you never gave me time to find out to the contrary. You’re so abrasive sometimes.”
I pursed my mouth. “You’re not exactly sweetness and light yourself.”
And then he laughed again, genuinely, startling me afresh. “I don’t think I ever was, was I? You’re right. God knows how we ever got together in the first place.”
But we did.
His eyes met mine and held my gaze, demanding, perhaps, that I didn’t chicken out. There was a triangle of light in the center of each of his dark pupils, like someone had drawn him as a wide-eyed cartoon in the night. “It’s still not easy, is it? There’s too much—or not enough—between us. I’m sorry that all this is happening to you because of me. That I’m the target, not you. That you can’t continue on your search for your own space without my hindrance.”
The pained edge in his voice hurt me. And yet his eyes were still hungry. They drank me in, as if he’d been heavily dehydrated but now found relief. Things were shifting in my mind like a kaleidoscope. My memory of our relationship was taking on a new tone.
“Don’t be,” I said. “Don’t be sorry, that is. Whatever happens with this, I know I can trust you.”
“But you didn’t always before.”
“No,” I replied. Couldn’t trust myself at the moment, to know what was right.
“I… didn’t see that I had to justify myself to you, Tanner. About Joe, about anything. You should have known me better.”
Yeah. Maybe I should. Self-disgust crushed me, regret twisted its knife. “I was stupid. End of story.”
He shook his head very gently, and I felt the vibration in the air as we leaned in toward each other. I don’t know what happened next—or rather, I don’t know why we let it. It was as if something tugged at me against my will, as if both of us were lassoed and drawn in for capture, like hapless, dumb animals. The mattress creaked beneath us, and I felt a gentle crick in my neck as it stretched itself. Just a foot or so betwee
n us, didn’t I say? Our breath bridged it, combining in the cool night air. Our words were just whispered sound, our protests melted into raw emotion.
His hands never touched me, nor did I reach out those last few inches to hold him. The only things that touched were our mouths. Hesitantly, like bashful new lovers. Lips dry with caution, yet damp with need. Lips that knew each other’s intimately, yet had forgotten the pure pleasure of the touch. It was like the taste of darkness and fear and ecstasy, all combining together with the wash of heartache and lust. The skin of his cheek smoothed mine; the slight bristles of my neglected chin scraped across his jaw. I felt his eyelashes brush at my eyes as my lids closed beneath him.
His tongue nudged at my lips, and they parted. He slid the tip in alongside mine, his breath expelling into my mouth with a sigh of desire. We melded even closer, mouths together like a single caress, our shoulders now pressing against each other with perfect choreography, allowing the familiar twist of our bodies to draw the other in.
It was like coming home.
THE FLAME of desire consumed me. I swear I could feel its heat like a real fire. I’d been fairly lukewarm about this part of my life since my flight from the Team. Not that there hadn’t been the occasional opportunities at the park for sexual adventure. There’d been guys passing through without demands or emotional baggage to overload me, and sometimes a healthy interest in me in return. But I’d never taken anything further, never wanted anyone that much. Never got over the memories, perhaps, or had been fighting shy of the hassle. Something like that. Whatever. Now I heard the thread of a moan, and at first I couldn’t have told whether it were from me or Niall.
It was him; it was only a gasp. “Tanner.”
Dreamspinner Press Year Four Greatest Hits Page 87