by Lucy Monroe
Looking over his shoulder to Cowboy, Kadin asked, “Can you get my pack?”
“Sure thing, Trig.” Cowboy dumped a pack inside the door with a smirk.
The other man must have grabbed it with his own when they got out of the Land Rover. Kadin wasn’t even surprised. They were Atrati, after all. Semper paratus, semper fatalis. Always ready, always deadly.
Kadin nodded his thanks and carried Rachel to the bed. Eva was right behind them.
The doc examined a barely-awake Rachel, taking her blood pressure before changing the bandages over the abrasions on her wrists. “These look better. She probably won’t need the gauze after tomorrow.”
“Good.”
“Without proper medical facilities, I can’t run the tests I’d like, but it looks like she’s doing fine.” Eva turned to face Kadin. “She needs sleep more than anything else right now.”
“She’ll get it.”
“You could use some, too.” Eva’s voice held censure.
Kadin just shrugged.
“Don’t have to watch over me,” Rachel slurred from the bed.
He turned to face her, wanting to rage at the vulnerability in her pale eyes. “It’s a pleasure, angel.”
She shook her head, wincing in pain from the movement.
Eva’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Your muscles sore?”
“Yes.”
“That’s to be expected.” Eva gave Kadin a measured look. “A massage would help, though.”
Chapter Six
“You think I should give her a massage?” Kadin asked, glad that in his tone, at least, surprise overrode the other emotions cascading through him.
“It will help her muscles recover from the shock-induced contractions.”
Kadin knew that his field medic was right, but his sudden fear made him want to continue protesting, anyway. He couldn’t even touch Rachel without feeling things he’d spent the best part of a decade avoiding.
Oh, he hadn’t been celibate or anything, but neither had he touched another person with tenderness and care in all that time. Sex was just that. Sex. Screwing. Stress release.
Emotion hadn’t entered into him since the last time he’d been with Rachel. He didn’t show or receive affection from anyone but his family, and he’d kept them at a distance about the same number of years.
His mom never gave up, but Trigger did his best to be on assignment for all the major holidays. The people he loved, whom he’d fought his entire adult life to protect, deserved something better than to say grace over dinner with a killer.
This wasn’t a family dinner, though; this was something a hell of a lot harder.
Touching the one woman who had ever laid claim to his heart was something he knew he should not do.
“If you’d rather, I can do it.” Eva cocked her head, studying him, her eyes questioning.
She was a woman. She was a doctor. And still Kadin found himself growling out his refusal. “I’ll do it.”
Eva didn’t seem surprised as she nodded her agreement and then stood up and moved toward the door. “I’ll get the caretaker’s wife to send up some soup. Try to get her to eat.”
He’d dismissed the medic from his mind before the door shut on her retreat.
A sound of protest from the bed had Kadin fixing his attention back on the scrubs-clad woman lying so still.
Her brown hair was messy, her blue eyes were bloodshot, there were bruises on her cheeks, and the scrubs did one hell of a job hiding any feminine attributes, but Rachel was still the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.
Her bottom lip protruded in a purely unconscious but adorable expression. “Not hungry.”
“Maybe you’ll feel more like eating after the massage.”
“No massage,” she slurred. Even in exhaustion, there was a stubborn tilt to her chin.
Kadin shook his head, finding himself smiling despite the situation, and shifted until the bed brushed his calves.
Built into the wall with decorative scrollwork around the base, it was as narrow as a double but longer and a lot closer to the floor than his bed at home.
He lowered himself to the futonlike mattress and gave Rachel his best do-what-the-hell- I-say-or-else look.
She just glared back, her mouth moving into a mulish line.
He brushed her hair away from her forehead, noticing she didn’t flinch this time. “You want to stay in Morocco?”
“For now.” Her eyes narrowed, as if she was trying to figure out where this was going.
He knew damn well what she was thinking, and it wasn’t that she’d go back to the States sometime soon, either. The woman intended to go wherever Jamila Massri was, and Kadin’s best guess was, that would mean a return to Egypt for Rachel.
“You want to stay, you let us do what we can to help you heal. That means you eat the soup when it comes up, and you sleep tonight without trying to sneak out of bed to find a computer to do some research.”
The way Rachel’s blue eyes flared, he knew he’d hit a nerve with that one.
“And you let me give you a massage.”
“Eva can do the massage. She’s the doc.”
“And I know your body better than she ever will.”
Rachel’s sharp intake of breath put a sharp pain into his own chest, but she didn’t argue the point. She just looked at him as if he’d betrayed her all over again.
He looked back, letting his own “stubborn” show. He didn’t know why this was so important to him. He had no claim on the woman lying on the bed, but that didn’t stop him from needing to do this for her.
“Not fair, Kadin.”
He nodded, making no effort to disagree. “I can be a real bastard.”
Her blue eyes widened and then narrowed. “No. The men who did this to me? They’re the bastards. You’re just a pain in my backside.”
“Good to know.” That inexplicable urge to smile was back.
“Yeah, well …” Her voice trailed off.
He leaned over her, his hands fisted on either side of her hips, the heat from her body calling to him. He did his best to ignore the message. “The massage will be easier and more effective with skin contact, but if you want to leave your scrubs on, I’ll work around them.”
There. Look at him, being all reasonable and shit.
That gut-wrenching vulnerability washed through her eyes again. “I …”
“It’s okay, Rach. Whatever you want.”
She took a deep breath and looked at some point over his shoulder, the wheels turning in her head so loud, he could hear them. “No scrubs,” she finally whispered.
He was so shocked by her decision, it didn’t register at first. But when it did, his body had a wholly unacceptable reaction. He’d thump himself, but he wasn’t about to draw her attention to his condition.
“Okay, then. Will you let me help you?”
An infinitesimal nod was his only answer.
Kadin pulled a thin blanket from where it was folded at the foot of the bed. “Let’s put this over you, all right?”
She didn’t answer, but neither did she push the covering away as he gently laid it over her.
He reached under it and took hold of the elastic waistband on the scrubs. “Can you lift your hips?”
Rachel didn’t bother to answer Kadin with words but tilted her pelvis so he could slide the loose-fitting pants down her thighs.
Her throat was still sore, but that wasn’t why.
Acknowledging any of this verbally was beyond her. She’d fought him on doing the massage, but all the while she’d known she wanted his hands on her and no one else’s.
He made her feel safe like no one else could do right now or maybe ever again.
When he’d asked if she wanted skin contact for the massage, she’d realized that she didn’t just want it, she needed it. The connection of one human being to another.
The feel of his big, strong hands giving comfort when her body had known so much pain.
Deep inside, where her soul
resided, she knew that if she didn’t let someone touch her now, she’d never let anyone touch her again. And since the thought of anyone besides Kadin touching her made Rachel’s stomach cramp in preparation for heaving, Kadin Marks was it. No matter what she’d said to the contrary.
Rachel had known he wouldn’t let the doctor do the massage, just as he’d known that ultimately Rachel would cave on his doing it.
Ten years of separation didn’t change some things. No amount of time could.
Like the fact that, at his core, Kadin was a decent man who would protect her with his life. Equally certain was the fact that while she might have made mistakes in the past, Rachel wasn’t a woman who could walk away from Jamila Massri and the train wreck waiting to happen to her life.
Kadin was careful as he removed her top, both to protect her modesty and not strain her muscles in any way. He’d always been capable of a gentleness at odds with his hulking muscles and often-acerbic nature.
That care took about five times as long as it did when she undressed herself, but she wasn’t complaining. He’d managed to get both bottoms and top off with minimal discomfort to her.
Even after the muscle relaxers and anti-inflammatories Eva had given Rachel, her entire body ached.
The slightest movement sent twinges of pain zinging along her nerve endings. Yet even with the discomfort, her body responded subtly to Kadin’s nearness and his touch.
Rachel’s nipples tightened in peaks that pressed against the light blanket he’d laid over her, her body craving a touch that had little to do with healing massage. It was insane.
Yet he had always drawn forth this intrinsic, nearly atavistic sexual reaction from her. When they’d been young and in love and she’d trusted him with more than her life, with the deepest recesses of her heart, too, she’d believed that kind of sexual desire normal. It was all she’d known.
He was her first. And the only man she’d given more than her body.
But she’d learned the truth over time. Rachel had never experienced that natural sensuality with another man, not even anything remotely similar.
Regardless, if it weren’t happening again right now, Rachel would have thought this response of her body impossible. She had believed that such a reaction was beyond her now.
It had been so long since she’d wanted someone, since before Linny’s death, and never the way Rachel used to want Kadin. After what she’d been through, the very last thing she should feel now was the stirring of desire.
And yet there was an emptiness in her core that she knew instinctively only he could fill.
She shook her head in denial. This could not be happening.
Kadin misunderstood and stopped, his hands on her stilling in their initial ministrations to her feet. “Do you want me to get Eva?”
“No.”
“You shook your head.”
“Ignore me.”
“That’s never going to happen, angel.”
And she knew he meant it. He would push to get his own way, but ultimately, if she said no, he’d respect that.
“You’re a different kind of man, Kadin.”
It was his turn to shake his head. “You don’t know what I am.”
“I bet I can guess.” And though she would have been clueless ten years ago as to what that look in his eyes meant, she wasn’t anymore.
She’d spent enough time around hardened agents, the ones who had been forced to kill in the line of duty, to know what that particular expression meant.
Kadin had gotten the name Trigger for something other than being fast on the draw sexually. In fact, as quick as he might be to arousal, the man took his time getting off.
Or at least he used to.
Kadin’s expression turned troubled. “Yeah, maybe you can, at that.”
She closed her eyes and without comment rolled onto her stomach under the light blanket. They were not going to get into her choices and why she’d made them.
Not now. Not ever, if she had anything to say about it.
She didn’t know what quirk of fate had brought Kadin back into her life, but she was too smart to think it was anything but temporary.
She’d given up on the hope of having Kadin in her life. Not right away. Not ten years ago, but she had eventually gotten it. Stubbornly believing they were meant to be together and doing the one thing she thought would prove that to him had cost her the other person in her life Rachel had loved with her whole heart.
Even if she could forgive Kadin for walking away, she’d never forgive herself for the choices she’d made after he was gone.
That this man had been the one to rescue her just proved what a cynical, vicious bitch fate was.
“We’re going to talk, Rachel.” Kadin re-started his massage of her feet, strong fingers pushing firmly into her arches. “Don’t you doubt it, angel, but not right now when your throat needs to rest more than I need answers.”
“Small mercies,” she quipped.
The husky quality of her voice made it sound like she was flirting when in fact she’d only intended to be a smart-ass, hiding pain that had nothing to do with being tortured behind sarcasm.
His chuckle said he knew her intention and appreciated the result regardless.
That ready, throwaway laugh sent a shiver of fear through her. There had been a time when this man had known her in ways no one else on earth, even her sister, could come close to doing.
Rachel didn’t want any indication that maybe he still did. Even on the most superficial level.
Her love for this man had cost her everything.
She had nothing else to give.
“They were amateurs,” he said in a tone between relieved and something she couldn’t quite name. “They left your feet alone.”
She agreed with a short jerk of her head. Her interrogators might not have been experienced or trained in the fine arts of torture, but the electric jolts through her body had been enough. To hurt her badly. To make her consider death before she broke.
Something in the quality of her silence must have gotten to Kadin, because he paused with his hands on her ankles. “They nearly broke you.”
“How do you know they didn’t?” she asked in a bare whisper.
“I know.”
Another zing of atavistic fear went through her. “You think you do.”
“Yes, angel, I do.”
She was going to protest the nickname but knew it would be a waste of breath, and she only had so many words right now.
It wasn’t words but groans of pleasure-filled relief that came out of her mouth a moment later as he began working on her right leg with both hands. The tension that had been holding her muscles rigid and in pain, even when she slept, began to seep out of her.
“Good?” he asked, clearly not expecting a reply.
And she didn’t give him one.
Her body was aware of who was touching her on the most primal level, and because of that, she found herself relaxing to a degree she had forgotten was possible.
No matter what had gone between them, she knew in the deepest recesses of her being that she was safe in Kadin Marks’s hands.
That knowledge was dangerous to her head and her heart.
“That’s right, angel. Let yourself go. You’ll feel a hell of a lot better for it later.” He continued rubbing the stiffness out of her leg with steady, careful movements.
Old memories melded with the present. A young man who dreamed of being a soldier putting his hands on a young woman’s body, a woman who dreamed only of loving him.
Kadin had made it bearable after she lost her parents, made her believe that life wasn’t all about loss and pain. They’d learned about passion together, had dreamed of the future they would share, and they had brought Linny into those dreams. Rachel wasn’t the only one devastated when Kadin said he wasn’t coming back.
For the first time in years, those final memories took a backseat to what had come before, and Rachel found it easier to breathe
if she just let them.
Rachel slipped into an almost trancelike state as Kadin worked her muscles and reminded her body that touch did not always come with pain.
Kadin could sense that Rachel wasn’t sleeping, but he didn’t think she was completely aware, either.
And he was damn glad.
If she had been, she might have noticed the ridge in his pants, or the way his own breathing had gone rough even as his fingers ached with the need to do more than massage the smooth skin under them.
He wanted to touch and caress her, bring her pleasure the way he used to. Back in the days when he had the right to touch her with intimacy, not just healing.
Despite his own lust-filled discomfort, he exulted with each sign that her body was relaxing and letting go of the pain from the torture.
There were burn marks where the leads had touched her, but other than that, her beautiful skin was mostly unmarked.
And so damn soft. Perfect.
She was thinner than she’d been as a teenager, but her curves were more womanly, and her muscles were toned in a way that spoke of a serious fitness regimen. Or training.
He pressed into the muscles between her shoulder blades, increasingly grateful with each knot he felt loosening under his fingers. “You lift weights.”
Rachel just made a noncommittal noise.
He smiled. “Time to turn over.”
He didn’t wait for her to answer but gently rolled her, preserving her modesty with the blanket as he did so.
Her eyelids fluttered and for a brief moment opened, revealing the pale blue gaze he’d spent the last decade remembering in the darkest hours of the night. “Thanks.”
Then her eyes fluttered shut again, her body boneless against the bed.
He went back to her feet, starting the massage again, determined to give her front as much attention as he had her back.
His cock hardened to the point of pain as he was allowed to touch but not caress the woman who starred in every one of his fantasies. Both sexual and of the family he knew he was never going to have.
Desire coursed through his blood like hot lava, making him sweat, and he had to breathe shallowly or start panting.
Her eyes slid open, the pale blue filled with a hazy concern. “Are you okay?”