Deadly Hunter

by Rachel Lee

  More food for thought. They had led very different lives, and she tried to envision being immersed in a world where threat was almost always imminent. “I can’t imagine the adjustments you’re making.”

  “Some are harder than others,” he admitted.

  Maybe, she thought, he was seeing a threat to her only because he was accustomed to viewing things that way. Maybe he couldn’t entirely let go of being on high alert for an attacker. That thought had crossed her mind before, but knowing him better now, she couldn’t quite believe he was manufacturing all of this out of some highly developed sense of paranoia.

  Mainly because he was right. Someone had smashed the rear window of her car. Someone had used an illicit poison and might not realize it likely couldn’t be traced to him. Someone might indeed think they had something to fear, and smashing her window might have been an attempt to scare her off.

  Maybe she should scare more easily, but that wasn’t the world she came from. Not at all. She might have more to learn from Jerrod than she realized.

  “How serious do you think this threat is?”

  “Probably minimal unless you happen to get close to something. But since we wouldn’t know what’s close, we might not know when we’re getting into trouble.”

  “What a thought.”

  “It’s one I’m used to.” He shrugged a little and she saw the hitch in his movement.

  “More ibuprofen?” she asked. “My doc said it’s okay to take four at a time if I need to.”

  “Standard prescription dose. I’m okay. It’ll get to work in a minute.” He paused. “Allison, I’m honestly not trying to frighten you. And I’m sure you must think I’m as near a nut as makes no difference.”

  “I don’t think that at all!” In an instant, flashover occurred. She went from the deep-seated ache he caused in her to anger. “I think you’re an experienced soldier. I gather the stuff you did was like special ops, SEALs, whatever. In an agency that nobody knows about, which I guess means your missions were even tougher. But I do not think you’re a nut. God, I hate this.”

  “Hate what?”

  “We’ve been bouncing all over the emotional map today. I think I hurt you at least twice....”

  “No way,” he interrupted.

  “Hush. My reaction to your weapons. That couldn’t have felt good. And then I said something a little while ago and I saw your reaction. Or felt it. Regardless, up and down, back and forth and now you’re calling yourself a nut?”

  “It must seem that way.”

  “Well, it doesn’t. There’s some adjusting going on here for both of us. All I know is, I’m worn out. Back and forth, up or down, who knows? I’m questioning myself, my feelings, my thoughts.... How about a break?”

  “Sure,” he answered. “What kind of break?”

  “Well, that’s the problem, isn’t it? I’m starting to feel like one of the six hundred riding into the valley of death in that poem about the Light Brigade.”

  His jaw dropped a little. Clearly, she had astonished him.

  “You know,” she said, “cannon to the front of them, cannon to the left... However it goes. Danger everywhere.”

  “Oh, man. I didn’t want to make you feel that way.”

  “Of course you didn’t. And it’s not you. At least not all you. Unfortunately, that’s how I’m feeling and I need a break.”

  He hesitated. “So what kind of break do you want? Cards? TV? Just find a chair and read a book?”

  Escape wouldn’t be enough, she realized. She needed to deal with something. Act. Take care, somehow, of at least one of the things that was plaguing her.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “It’s the middle of the night, and I need action. But there’s none to take right now.” Well, there was one thing, a voice inside her whispered. One question she could get answered, one she could put to rest. Unless it cratered her even more.

  But that was out of the question. His back was hurting. Damn, the frustration inside her had begun to reach a boiling point.

  Then it struck her how badly she was overreacting. What had really happened? She’d learned something about herself, painful to be sure, but necessary. She’d faced an internal terror that she had needed to face. Ordinarily she coped well with things, so why was she having trouble coping today?

  The reason sat across from her. She could deal with it all except for wanting him so badly the ache nearly overwhelmed her. Even the possible threat he sensed pursuing her wasn’t troubling her as much as being near him.

  Skewed priorities, she tried to tell herself, but knew they weren’t skewed at all. She needed to take one final step to heal that hole inside herself, and what better time than when the man she wanted was here and, if he was correct, she might be facing a very real danger. One that had him concerned enough to not want to leave her alone.

  A week ago he couldn’t even say hi to her. Now he was planted in her house like a knight-errant ready to go into battle carrying her scarf. Worse, he might be right to be concerned.

  What if I never have another chance to find out?

  * * *

  Jerrod watched the emotions play over her face, for once finding her nearly unreadable. He could tell she was troubled, and he hated to think he’d made her life harder, but he couldn’t ignore the parameters of the situation.

  He had instincts honed from long years in the worst situations imaginable. That he still lived and breathed owed to those instincts, owed to trusting them. They were telling him that something was seriously wrong, that some kind of noose might be closing in. That some threat was stalking her.

  It barely rippled across his thoughts that he might be the one at risk because he had come to a place where he knew no one, and few enough even knew he was here. Nor did he have any reason to think anyone wanted him.

  But it was possible. Anything was possible. He closed his eyes, feeling for the shape of the problem, little as he knew. Letting gut instincts add themselves to knowledge. No, any way he looked at it, Allison seemed to be at highest risk here, and he honestly didn’t know enough to gauge just how bad that risk might be.

  So, until proved otherwise, he had to assume the worst case. Wisdom from long experience advised him that it seldom paid to assume anything else. Best to be prepared for the worst.

  When he opened his eyes, he saw Allison looking at him. Something in her expression... He could almost feel the aching need in her, one answered immediately by his own body.

  It would be wrong, so wrong, that he knew he couldn’t live with himself. He had nothing to offer, nothing to promise. Every cell in his body might be hammering for satisfaction. With every breath she drew he couldn’t help noticing the rise of her breasts. When she moved, his gaze wanted to fix on her rounded hips. And when she smiled...

  She hadn’t done a single deliberately provocative thing, which ought to warn him off, yet everything about her seemed to provoke his most primal needs. When had that last happened to him, if ever?

  He was a man accustomed to women wanting him, women who knew how to offer themselves, how to flirt, how to get his attention and rev his motor. This woman wasn’t at all like that. She practically broadcast her own innocence, even though it was plain to him that she wanted him, too.

  But wanting wasn’t enough this time. He’d had to break a lot of rules in his life in order to accomplish his missions, but he still had a few bright lines he hadn’t crossed, and he wasn’t about to start crossing them now.

  The air between them was almost pregnant with need, and yet she didn’t seem to know how to protect herself. How to take charge of what was trying to happen between them. So he had to do it, somehow, and he wasn’t much more experienced at that than she.

  How did you put a halt to something like this without hurting a woman? She had already admitted how exposed and
vulnerable she felt, and while she didn’t blame him for that, it remained he had managed to stir all of this up for her. So how the hell did you unstir a pot without just stirring it more?

  He never should have kissed her either time. The memory of her mouth against his created longings deeper than thought. Hell, those two kisses had almost seemed to touch his soul.

  Spending all afternoon and evening alone with her, talking with her, holding her... In one day he’d gotten a taste of the kind of life he’d never really known, at least not since leaving for the academy over fifteen years ago. It was not a life he had pined for, either. At least he thought he hadn’t.

  But now... Hell. Using his back as an excuse, he rose. “I’ve got to move.” Pacing helped calm him. It always had. Even in the most dangerous of situations, as long as he was marching, calm accompanied him. It didn’t mean he wasn’t fully alert, but it was more useful to be calm. Always.

  Her kitchen was big enough, so he didn’t leave the room, although he could have expanded his path. Somehow he felt that might be the wrong thing to do at this juncture, and he always listened to such feelings.

  “So,” he said. The short circle he was marching granted him a bit of detachment with more on the way.

  “Yes? So?”

  “So,” he said again. “I’m trying to figure out how to tell you more about me.”

  “It’s none of my business, Jerrod.”

  He halted and looked straight at her—maybe not the wisest move. Emotions flickered in her brown eyes, the endless play of minute changes on her face, all of it seemed to be broadcasting her uncertainty, her desires, her fears. If he was mixed up, she beat him by a mile right then. It would be a smart thing to keep in mind.

  “Yeah, it’s your business,” he said. “I’m planting myself in the middle of your life. I’m scaring you, probably in more than one way and... Well, you need to know something about me. It only seems right. You’ve trusted me in some pretty important ways. Now you get to decide if that trust is misplaced.”

  “But...”

  He just shook his head and resumed his pacing. “I can’t give you details. Classified. I can’t even tell you what countries I’ve been to. Classified. Or how many languages I speak. Classified. Covert really means covert. I can tell you that you might have come across the results of some of my work in the papers, but I can’t tell you any more than that. I can tell you that you can count the number of people who actually know what I did, apart from my team members, on your fingers and toes, and many of those in the know don’t even know who I am.”

  “The invisible man,” she murmured.

  “Damn near. For my protection. For theirs. I had a public role for general consumption that had nothing to do with what I really did.”

  “So you could be at risk?” Her voice sounded thin.

  “It’s possible, but not likely. I was deeply buried. Very deeply buried. I can tell you that I infiltrated solo on a number of occasions because it would have been dangerous to place additional operatives.”

  He glanced at her and saw she looked horrified. Some part of him took savage satisfaction in that. Maybe she’d toss him out on his butt and he could protect her from afar. That would certainly protect her from him.

  “Anyway,” he went on, still pacing, “I did a lot of things you’re better off not knowing about. You’ll sleep better not understanding some of the dangers we’ve faced over the years, or how they were handled.”

  “What you said about preserving innocence.”

  “Exactly. It’s important. But I’m a dangerous man when I need to be.”

  “I’d already guessed that,” she murmured. “Why are you telling me this?”

  “Because I owe it to you. Because you need to know who and what you’re dealing with. I spent a lot of years doing things that will never appear on a résumé. Things that don’t qualify me for a normal job.”

  She appeared almost sad as she gazed at him. “How do you feel about that?” she asked.

  He pulled the chair back, spun it around and straddled it, stretching his back by leaning forward as far as he could. “How do I feel about it? Why?”

  “Because I want to know.”

  He paused only a moment before hitting her with the hard truth. “I’m proud of what I did. It needed doing and I did it. Period.”

  “Good.”

  He arched a brow. “Good?”

  “I’m glad you’re proud of what you did. Is that so hard to understand? I may be a country girl, but I’m not totally innocent. It would be nice if we lived in a world where no one had to do what you did, but we don’t. I get it.”

  If he’d been hoping she’d send him packing, clearly that hope was gone. He stared at her, thinking she probably couldn’t guess the smallest part of the missions he had been sent on, then realized that while she might not have clear images of them, she at least seemed to sense they had often been ugly. Not always, but often.

  Then he spoke a thought aloud, one he’d never given voice to before. “I wonder how much intentions make up for dirty hands.” The thought that sometimes came to him in the middle of the night, the question he would never be able to answer.

  She flew from her chair and came around the table, leaning against his back and hugging him around his shoulders. “Oh, Jerrod,” she whispered. “Don’t ask yourself that.”

  “I do sometimes. Inevitably. The problem is I’m not fit to be my own judge and jury. I did what I had to do. I trusted that I wasn’t being misused, and that’s the end of it.”

  “You saved lives,” she said almost insistently.

  “I know I did. Most of the time, anyway.”

  The heat mushroomed in him again. Her embrace felt like a balm in some inexplicable way, but it also ignited the very fire he’d been trying to extinguish with his honesty.

  He could feel the firm mounds of her breasts against his back like burning coals. The warmth of her arms wrapped around him made him crave her skin against his. God, he was beginning to walk around in a permanent state of arousal, all because of one woman and her enchanting, intriguing nature and smile.

  He squeezed his eyes shut and fought for the self-control that was so deeply ingrained in him that he couldn’t believe he was in danger of losing it.

  “So,” he said, trying to lighten the moment before it turned into a nuclear explosion of need, “you still want to hang with me?”

  “Why wouldn’t I?”

  But she seemed to get the message. Her arms began to loosen and he felt her warmth against his back begin to withdraw.

  Funny, but that withdrawal seemed to push him over the tipping point.

  Ignoring his back, he twisted and rose at the same time, swinging his leg over the chair and catching her around the waist so they stood face-to-face.

  “I’m dangerous,” he reminded her.

  A fleeting second passed before he saw a smile begin to dawn on her face. “I know.”

  That was apparently working on her like an aphrodisiac. “What am I going to do with you?”

  “I can think of a few things.”

  It was the first coquetry he’d seen in her, and it fascinated him. Was this the pre-Lance Allison peeking out? “I’m sure you can. And I can think of a hundred more. Every single one of them delicious.”

  He wrapped her tightly in his arms then, pulling her up against his body, leaving her absolutely no doubt about how much he wanted her. Her eyes widened, then her lids drooped almost sleepily. She was his for the taking, but for once in his life he felt no triumph at a conquest.

  Now he definitely had to protect her from himself. Maybe from her own self, as well.

  Bending, he kissed her gently, and felt her worm immediately closer as her arms wrapped around him. She had made up her mind. But he hadn’t.

 
; Battling every urge that demanded he do otherwise, he lifted his head. Holding her with just one arm now, he found her breast through her sweatshirt and rubbed his hand over it gently. It was every bit as full and firm as he had thought. A soft sound of pleasure escaped her. Everything inside him demanded he press on, except for one sane voice that reminded him how vulnerable she was.

  “I’m sorry,” he murmured. “Not tonight. I just can’t tonight.”

  He dropped his hand from her breast and waited for her eyes to flutter open. “Your back?” she whispered.

  He nodded once, then kissed her again before letting her go. It was one of the hardest things he had ever done.

  “I’m sorry,” he said again.

  She surprised him. Rather than take umbrage, she reached out to cup his cheek, running her finger over the scar there. “Knife?” she asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Let me get you a heating pad. It might help. Then I’m going to bed.” Her smile was crooked. “This day has worn me out.”

  It had worn him out, too, he realized. An emotional lifetime had passed in just a few hours.

  Chapter 8

  Long before dawn, the hunter returned to his mountain aerie. He would be ready if they came again, and he’d thought of a way to separate them. Taking down two was not in his plan, and he was sure he could fix that.

  Humming, he drove into the mountains and began his hike. Parking a few miles away from his base was the most minimal of precautions, and he’d taken more careful ones than that. When he left, no one would even be able to guess that he’d spent so much time in that cave.

  When he left, he was going to feel ever so much better, too. So he continued to hum as he hiked.

  * * *

  Allison woke in the morning feeling like hell. For all she’d been worn out the night before, she hadn’t found sleep easily. All the things she had learned about herself insisted on roiling around in her mind, and desire for Jerrod wasn’t very far away. She’d engaged in an internal battle, and every time she’d thought sleep was right around the corner, an adrenaline rush would hit her with anxiety as a thought surfaced, or a feeling drove her mind in the wrong direction.