Duty At What Cost?

by Michelle Conder

  ‘Wait,’ he advised softly. ‘Ava, baby, if you keep doing that I’m going to lose control.’

  He shifted out of her hold, smiling as the sound of protest she made in the back of her throat turned to relief when he took the tip of her breast into his mouth.

  She writhed beneath him and he released her imprisoned legs to stroke his hand between her thighs. She was hot and wet, so close to her climax he could feel the tiny tremors of her release beneath his fingers.

  ‘Not yet, baby. I want to be inside you when you come.’

  ‘I can’t help it,’ she moaned. ‘You’ve pushed me too far.’

  ‘Not yet, I haven’t.’ He urged her legs wider and positioned himself at the apex of her body. ‘But I intend to.’

  On a single powerful thrust he surged deep, pausing just long enough to let her expand around him before moving again. She whimpered desperately and dragged his face down to hers.

  A primal sense of satisfaction rushed through him as he established a steady rhythm, rolling his hips against hers and causing a string of sensual spasms throughout her body that sucked him in even deeper.

  Driving into her, Wolfe didn’t stop until he felt her go still, poised on the edge of her release. He held her there as long as he could, but she moved against him, sobbing as her climax consumed her, her inner contractions forcing his own body to speed towards a release that burned hotter than the West Australian sun.

  * * *

  Wolfe woke and knew instantly that he’d overslept—something he hadn’t done since before his army days. And in his arms was a woman who twisted his insides into knots Houdini would struggle to break out of. He thought about his inflexible rules: short, sweet and simple. Only one of them had been upheld last night, and it wasn’t short or simple.

  He lifted a strand of her hair and closed his eyes as he breathed in the soft floral fragrance, ignoring the screaming pain in his back from muscles still stiff from lack of use.

  He’d ignored them the night before, too, when they’d been screaming from overuse. He’d lost track of the amount of times they’d made love, each time eclipsing the last in a way he would have said was impossible. And it wasn’t just the sex he’d wanted, he realised uneasily. He liked her. He liked spending time with her. Watching her. Listening to her. Being challenged by her. Somehow, in a short space of time, she had come to mean more to him than any other woman ever had. More than he wanted her to. More than he was willing to think about.

  She gave a small moan and snuggled deeper into his shoulder. Irresistible.

  ‘What time is it?’

  He glanced down and smiled as her eyes remained scrunched closed. ‘I take it you’re not a morning person?’

  She rolled onto her back and shifted her head onto the pillow. ‘Not really. You?’

  ‘Always.’ He propped up on his side. ‘In fact I’m never up late, even after spending most of the night awake. I think you’re making me soft.’

  She glanced briefly down his body. ‘I hope not.’

  Wolfe gave a chuckle. ‘Witch,’ he said against her mouth, and her lips opened under his in a way that made him think about taking her again.

  Remember the rules, a timely voice reminded him forcefully.

  Yeah, the rules. The ones he was breaking faster than a politician broke election promises.

  He jumped out of bed and reached for the jeans he’d discarded on the floor the night before. ‘How about you take a minute to wake up while I fix something to eat?’

  ‘Oh, Wolfe, your back looks terrible.’

  He glanced over his shoulder. ‘It’ll heal.’ He yanked a T-shirt over his head and his belly clenched as he saw Ava staring in that region. ‘How are your hands?’

  ‘Quoi?’

  He couldn’t prevent a crooked smile from curling one side of his mouth when she looked at him with dazed eyes. ‘Your hands? How are they?’

  She made a great show of looking at them, but he suspected she was trying to hide her blush from him. She never blushed, as far as he knew, and the sight was pleasing on a purely male level.

  ‘Sore.’

  ‘I’ll take a look at them after breakfast,’ he promised, grasping her wrists lightly and dropping a kiss against each bandage before he thought better of it.

  * * *

  Ava paused in the doorway of the kitchen and watched Wolfe flip something in the frying pan. His lithe, narrow-hipped frame drew her eye like a flame drew a moth.

  He turned as if sensing her and gave her a lazy grin. ‘The clothes fit, then?’

  Ava glanced down at the oversized T-shirt and board shorts she’d had to roll twice at the waist to keep them up. ‘I think that might be a grave exaggeration, but they’re not falling off.’

  His gaze lingered on her legs. ‘Eggs, bacon.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Tomatoes in two minutes. It’s not nouvelle cuisine.’

  ‘I don’t need anything fancy,’ she assured him.

  He gave her such an open, clear-eyed smile before turning back to the stove that Ava felt something inside her shift and fall into place. Shell-shocked, she couldn’t move.

  She loved him.

  She had been trying to ignore the feelings burbling away inside her for so long but...mon Dieu, she had loved him from that first night. Had she? A lump rose in her throat as she recalled how gentle he had been with her mother’s cat. At the time she’d told him that she hated him but she hadn’t. Not even then.

  ‘You okay?’

  Ava glanced up from the terracotta tiles to find Wolfe holding a spatula and wearing a frown. ‘Fine.’

  ‘Well, that’s a surefire answer saying that you’re not.’

  ‘No. I am.’ She strolled into the room as if she hadn’t just made a discovery that would irrevocably change her for ever. She couldn’t tell him. Not only were her emotions too new, she didn’t know how to tell him. And she was pretty sure he wasn’t feeling the same thing she was, so she smiled instead. ‘Really. I was just thinking of last night.’

  ‘Good to know I make you scowl.’

  ‘The other part.’

  ‘Come here.’ He pulled her in close. Kissed her mouth.

  His warmth made her heart swell but she didn’t let herself think it was more than it was. ‘The eggs are burning,’ she said faintly, wanting space.

  His gaze was piercing, as if he was trying to read her, and she painted on another smile. ‘I’ll get the orange juice.’

  ‘I’ve made fresh coffee, as well.’

  Coffee. Yes. That would help her jumbled thoughts.

  She opened the fridge. Funny, but when she had imagined realising she was in love with someone it hadn’t been anything like this. She’d imagined she might be at a restaurant, or in bed, somewhere cosy, wrapped up in her lover’s embrace. One of them would say it and then the other...they’d smile, share the moment...

  ‘It’s right there.’

  Ava started as Wolfe reached around her and pulled a carton from the door, his other hand resting on the small of her back.

  ‘Are you sure you’re okay?’

  ‘Positive.’ Positive she might never be okay again. That was what she was positive about. Because Wolfe wouldn’t want her love. He wasn’t a man who wanted any woman’s love. In fact if she told him how she felt it would probably send him running in the other direction.

  * * *

  Ava pulled her foot up onto a wooden chair and hooked her arm around her knee, nursing what remained of her coffee in both hands. They’d decided to eat their food outside by the infinity pool, but although the view was magnificent she had barely paid it any attention.

  ‘So, tell me why you joined the army,’ she asked, intrigued by some of the stories he’d told her about the time he’d spent with Gilles when they were younger.

  Wolfe set down his fork and pushed his empty plate away, reaching for his own coffee. He took his time stretching out his long legs, his jeans riding so low she could just see the ridge of that fascinating muscle that wrappe
d around his hipbones where his T-shirt didn’t quite cover him.

  ‘Couldn’t think of anything else to do with my time.’

  ‘Really?’ She dragged her eyes back to his face as if she hadn’t just been ogling him. She didn’t believe a man with his keen intelligence would make such a decision so casually. If she had to guess she’d say it had something to do with his need to protect everyone around him. Like his brother. His father. ‘That was it?’

  His eyes narrowed, as if he could discern her thoughts. ‘Don’t make me out to be some sort of hero, Ava, because I’m not.’

  Even without the cool words she could see the sudden tension in him and wondered if it was because this was the first personal question she had asked him since that night he had talked about his family.

  Trying not to let his response completely ruin the mood between them, Ava cast her eyes over the golden cliff-faces and tiered flowerbeds that tripped down towards a horseshoe-shaped blue lagoon. ‘Wow, this view is really something. Is the whole island this beautiful?’

  ‘The other side gets the wind straight off the Atlantic, so it’s a bit scrubbier, but basically yes.’

  ‘Do you come here often?’

  ‘Not as often as I’d like.’

  Ava sighed. ‘It’s so relaxing here. It’s as if the real world is another planet. If I had my way I’d stay for ever.’

  The scrape of wood against terracotta brought her eyes back to him.

  ‘It’s deceptively dangerous. That cove down there is relatively sheltered, but the island can get twenty-five-foot waves at times, and then the beaches are littered with seaweed.’

  His tone was much darker than it needed to be and Ava suspected he was talking about more than just the island. She suspected it was a warning for her not to fall for him, but if it was it was not only too late but completely unnecessary. What did he think she was going to do? Stalk him?

  ‘And speaking of for ever...we didn’t use protection last night.’

  Ah, so that was what had triggered his tension. Ava felt her stomach bottom out. She hadn’t even thought of it. She’d been so absorbed by her feelings for him, by her anxiety about what to do...

  ‘I can see you’re shocked.’ He gathered up their plates, the harsh sound of cutlery sliding against porcelain jarring her. ‘If you’re pregnant it will change things.’

  She was shocked—but more because the prospect didn’t make her nearly as unhappy as he thought. In fact it made her feel elated to think of herself carrying his child. Something she definitely wasn’t prepared to admit when his face had taken on all the levity of a thundercloud.

  ‘What do you mean?’ And still her silly, hopeful heart beat just a little faster as she waited for him to declare his love for her. Ask her to marry him.

  ‘You’ll have to cancel any plans you have to marry the Prince of Triole, for one thing.’

  Quoi?

  Ava stared at him. He thought she was going to marry Lorenzo? And he’d still slept with her! Controlling her temper by a thread, Ava arched her brow. ‘No?’

  One of the knives on the plate he was holding clattered onto the tiles but neither one of them broke eye contact to locate it. ‘No. You’ll be marrying me.’

  ‘You?’ She hadn’t expected him to say that and it threw her off balance. ‘I already told you I wouldn’t marry without love.’

  He paused, his brows pulled together. ‘Not even for a child?’

  Dull colour flooded her cheeks and a breeze rustled the nearby shrubs. Trap a man who so clearly wanted his freedom? ‘I’d rather be a single parent.’

  He glared at her. ‘Since I don’t hold the same view you’d better hope you’re not pregnant. Because if you are you will marry me, Ava.’

  * * *

  ‘You’d better hope you’re not pregnant. Because if you are you will marry me.’

  Wolfe leaned his elbows on his desk and cupped his face in his hands. What an idiot.

  Before, when she’d been sitting on his deck, he’d been looking at her and thinking how lovely she was. How much he enjoyed having her in his home. In his life. Then she’d mentioned for ever and he’d broken out in a cold sweat. It was as if she’d read his mind.

  Panicked, he realised that in making breakfast and playing house with her he was not only still breaking all his rules with her but grinding them into the dust for good measure. This must have been how his father had felt about his mother. How else to explain why he’d taken her back over and over? Wolfe had vowed never to let a woman mean so much to him that she weakened him in the same way. But that had nothing to do with Ava, did it?

  Hell, he’d acted like an ass and he owed her an apology.

  A big apology.

  After checking once more for updates on the bomb blast that had ripped her gallery in half, he scoured the house and found her walking on the beach.

  She was a vision of loveliness, with his large blue T-shirt swamping her lanky frame and her mane of dark hair rippling down her back. Watching her, Wolfe felt a now familiar tug in his chest and knew he was in trouble. Deep trouble.

  Not that it would do him any good to think that way. She’d made it pretty clear before that she saw him as nothing more than a temporary entity in her life.

  ‘I’d rather be a single parent.’

  Just the thought of her vehemence made him see red. Made his anger— He stopped. Blinked. What the hell was wrong with him? Had a brick from her building landed on his head last night and messed with his brain? Surely nothing else could explain his seesawing emotions.

  Ava’s soft laugh reached him from across the sand and forced his attention back to the present moment.

  She turned slightly to twist her hair out of her face and Wolfe forgot all about his apology when he saw that she was on her phone.

  When had she got that? And, more importantly, hadn’t he told her not to use it while she was here?

  Totally off balance, he let his frustration and volatile emotions morph into savage anger. ‘Dammit, are you stupid? You don’t make calls on a mobile phone.’

  * * *

  Ava spun round at the sound of Wolfe’s harsh voice and nearly dropped her phone in the water. She could still hear Baden’s voice but could no longer make out the words, her attention totally focused on the furious expression on Wolfe’s face. Her breath caught and she felt as if she was thirteen years old and being confronted by her disapproving father.

  ‘I have to go.’ She disconnected the phone just as Wolfe reached her.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ he said, breathing fire and brimstone at her.

  ‘Ice-skating?’

  ‘Dammit, Ava. I told you not to make mobile phone calls from the island.’

  She frowned, pretty sure that he hadn’t. ‘No, you didn’t.’

  ‘Yes. I. Did.’

  ‘No. You. Did. Not. But anyway I didn’t make a call. I received one.’ She’d found her phone on Wolfe’s chest of drawers after breakfast and checking her messages had helped take her mind off just how futile her feelings for him were.

  ‘Answering it works the same way,’ he said through gritted teeth. ‘It gives away our location to anyone with the equipment to utilise it.’

  ‘You use yours,’ she felt stung into retorting.

  ‘Mine’s encrypted.’

  Ava shoved her hands on her hips. ‘Well, nobody told me that.’

  Wolfe shook his head and ground his jaw as if she were a complete imbecile. ‘I knew this wouldn’t work.’

  ‘I have no idea what you’re referring to, but I’ve had enough of your overbearing attitude for one day,’ she fumed. ‘And, so you don’t have to worry, it was just Baden checking up on me after the bomb. I hope that is not against your rules?’

  She stalked off in the direction of the house. This was exactly like her father, judging her and finding her lacking. It hurt. Despite everything she had promised herself she had given Wolfe the power to hurt her. She had no one else to blame but hersel
f.

  As she passed the pool she glanced down at the phone in her hand and in a fit of pique her father would say was incredibly impulsive tossed it into the water.

  ‘Dammit, that was a fool thing to do.’

  She spun around, not realising that Wolfe had followed so closely behind her. ‘Like climbing that dumb wall at Gilles’s. I wish I’d never done that either. Maybe then we would never have met.’

  ‘We would have met.’

  Caught off guard by his brooding tone, she felt all her anger leave her body and for a minute stood in front of him feeling strangely lost.

  She needed a cup of tea. Yes, that would help her regroup. She glanced once more at the rippling pool as she stalked off. It had been stupid to toss her phone in it, particularly since she still had messages to check.

  ‘What are you doing now?’

  Ava opened a cupboard near the kitchen sink in search of mugs. ‘Making tea. Do you want some?’

  ‘No. The cups are above your head.’

  ‘Do you have lemon verbena, by any chance?’

  Wolfe expelled a long breath and some of the tension seemed to leach out of him. ‘I have no idea.’ He strode to a cupboard and started rifling through containers. ‘No. Will peppermint do?’

  ‘Yes.’ Their eyes connected. Held. ‘Thank you.’

  * * *

  Wolfe watched her pour boiling water into a mug and berated himself for letting his frustration at the situation cloud his objectivity. No wonder he hadn’t located her brother’s killer yet.

  And she’d been right before. He hadn’t told her not to use her phone. He’d meant to. But that wasn’t the same thing. And mistakes like that got people killed.

  Could get her killed.

  Now he’d have to change their location. Find another safe place. Because he wouldn’t risk her life, no matter how small the chance that the killer had the skills to track her to the island. He didn’t know who he was dealing with and it was time to act as if he had some sort of a clue as to how to do his job.

  He blew out a breath.

  He needed to apologise to her. Again.