by Debra Webb
“Emotionally it couldn’t have been much different than what you probably went through.” Only the night insects answered him. “You know, like the five stages of grief.”
“I know them,” she bit out.
“Right. So I was in denial that the capture was serious,” he admitted. “Sure, it was obvious I was in trouble, but I didn’t believe it would last. As a United States soldier I was sure someone would track me down and pull me out.”
She slid those charms across the fine gold chain.
“Denial lasted me a good couple of weeks. I was trained to be patient, to look for the right opening. I knew they wouldn’t leave me out there without good reason. So I did what I could to gather useful intel.
“My captors ignored me at first. They weren’t what you’d call hospitable, but they didn’t do anything obnoxious. I kept my mind on you. More denial, I suppose. In my head I was with you every day, imagining the perfect apology so you couldn’t resist me.”
“I’m sure I would’ve caved instantly, whatever you’d planned,” she confessed.
Progress! Instead of a fist pump, he rubbed the scars on his knuckles. “They marched me across the mountains for a week, and while I was sure they’d taken another soldier that night, I never saw him. When we reached their camp, when I saw it was a prison, I went full-tilt pissed off. That held me for months, the anger during the day and dreaming about coming back to you at night. It even held me up when the torture started, but it wasn’t long before I was bargaining.”
Her face turned and the pale moonlight caressed her cheek. He wanted to touch, to feel the softness of her skin under his fingers, but he resisted. “I didn’t bargain with them, just God, the army, the universe. We’re trained for that crap, you know.”
She shifted closer, by intent or reflex he didn’t care. Their bodies brushed at shoulder and thigh and inside he rejoiced at her unspoken support.
“Movies and books tell you the reality is worse than the training. And everyone thinks they know how they’ll deal with it. But until you’re in it, you don’t know there’s something beyond the pain or the humiliation when your body gives in,” he said. “The worst part is not knowing where the end of the line is.”
She gave a little gasp but didn’t interrupt him.
“It’s impossible to underestimate the value of knowing there’s a time limit for any given activity. June has thirty days and then July begins. If you hate June, you know there’s an end, right?”
“Right,” she whispered.
“There was none of that. It’s all an untenable, unending hell. The food barely met the definition, and a body reacts before it adjusts.” He laughed. “In the early days I complimented the food, saying it tasted like pork chops just to piss them off, to prove they couldn’t break me.”
“But they tried.” She covered her mouth with her hand. “Sorry.”
“Of course they tried,” he agreed. “That was their job. Mine was to heal up and stay alive. They thought I had some valuable information about military installations, in their country or ours, I’m not sure. I heard them torturing other prisoners about the same stuff, but I didn’t hear anyone give up anything you couldn’t find on the internet.”
“Impressive.”
He snorted. “I suppose. I just don’t think that crew understood the layers of protocol and firepower they’d face if they attacked.” Thank God, he thought. “Every damn day that I could think clearly enough I bargained with the mud and air and the rats in my cell,” he continued. “Just for it all to end. The shrinks say the depression gets mixed in, that the stages cycle through and repeat or something like that.”
“Yeah, I heard the same thing.”
Somehow, knowing she’d grieved, knowing she hadn’t just left their wedding day relieved to be free of him made him feel better. Stupid, but true. “Acceptance,” he said on a sigh. “I can’t really pinpoint when that kicked in. Had to be after the first year. But accepting the situation gave me more days when I looked for a way out. In the cells we developed allies, identified the human rats planted to erode our flagging morale or to get information we wouldn’t admit during the interrogations.”
“Drew.”
“That’s existing as a POW.” He knew she was fuming and it made him admit the rest. “Eventually you find a way out. It took me nearly six years before I finally managed to escape, but I was the only American that day. The only good news was, surviving the elements felt like a cakewalk after torture and interrogation.”
* * *
“OH, DREW.” ADDISON swallowed, grateful he hadn’t gone into more detail about what he’d endured. The few scars she’d noticed on his hands and just under his collarbone were surely just a tiny preview. He was leaner than he’d been, and she suddenly wondered how long it had taken him to get back to this point. Six years of horrendous conditions compounded by nothing but pain and loss when he returned home. She couldn’t imagine it. Admiration for his fortitude had her wishing she could ease just a small piece of his burden. “I’m so sorry.” She covered his hands with hers, leaned in just a little more.
“You don’t owe me an apology.” He brushed his lips across her temple.
Countless times in his absence she’d missed that touch, that tender move that made her feel so cherished. She’d wished a thousand times that he’d walk back into her life, and now that he had done so, she’d made him feel unwelcome.
“How long have you been in the States?” She stroked her thumb across the back of his hand. Feeling the hard ridges of scars, she nearly wept for how he must’ve earned them.
“Two years give or take. I’ve spent most of that time in hospitals and rehab facilities.”
“They should have called me.” She gazed into his eyes, but his expression was hard to read in the night shadows. “You should have called me.”
“I couldn’t,” he said, his gaze drifting to her lips. “I—I was too broken. You wouldn’t have wanted to see me like that.”
“Impossible.” She shook her head. If he’d called, if she’d known, she would’ve been by his bedside in an instant, been with him through every step of his recovery.
“Even now, Addi—”
She silenced him with a kiss. A gentle, sweet touch of her lips against his. Barely more than a whisper, but she felt desire sizzle through her bloodstream.
“Addi,” he murmured, brushing his thumb along her jaw. “You need to know I could still break. Some sounds, certain contact throws me off. If something happens—”
“It won’t. I trust you.” She kissed him again, lingering this time, enjoying the way her body remembered him.
“Hang on.” He took her face in his hands, held her just out of reach. “Let me say it.”
“Okay.”
“If they find you and I...falter, promise me you’ll run.”
She couldn’t stand the idea of leaving him to fight for the sole purpose of buying her time to escape. Not now. Her fingers curled around his hands, slid down his wrists. “I promise,” she lied. He wouldn’t listen to reason right now, and logical arguments were the last thing on her mind.
With his taste on her lips once more, need for him roared through her like an unquenchable craving. A need for him she thought long dead. “Seal it with a kiss?”
He hesitated so long she wondered if he’d forgotten all the x’s and o’s under the red lipstick print she’d added to her signature with every letter she’d sent him. Then, finally, with agonizing deliberation, he covered her mouth with his. His warm, firm lips washed away the tension she’d been carrying and her body went pliant.
Angling, she parted her lips and the first tentative stroke of his tongue had her moaning. He tasted of strong coffee and spices from dinner and the delightful, edgy temptation she remembered. Her pulse drummed in her ears. Here was the kiss, the passion she thought she was incapable of ever feeling again. She couldn’t get close enough to his heat, his heart.
His whiskers rasped under her fingertips
as she rediscovered the shape of him. Leaner, yes, but still Drew, the man she loved. Had never stopped loving. She wanted to tell him, but she knew he wouldn’t believe her. She’d rather show him how nothing had changed.
She grinned as he pulled her across his lap, his hands sliding up the back of her thin tank top. Pressed against him from breast to core, his thighs hot and strong under hers, she felt complete, powerful. The danger of her present circumstances forgotten for the moment.
She kissed him deeply, reveling in the warm, sensual haze that had always come over her when she was with him. Only him.
His erection nudged at her through the denim shorts and she gripped his shoulders as she rocked against him. She moaned, the friction of the fabric between them deliciously unbearable. He made that familiar rumble of pleasure in his throat as she rocked again, sucking lightly on his tongue.
Being a single mom hadn’t left her much time for dating, and her few experiences had never compared to Drew. She’d thought motherhood had killed her passion. Now she knew better. The most intimate parts of her—body and soul—wouldn’t settle for anyone but him.
She dipped her head, trailing kisses along his hard jaw, down his throat and across the scar under his collarbone. His pulse raced under her mouth.
His hands covered her breasts through her shirt, thumbs bringing her nipples to hard peaks through the thin layers of her bra and tank top. Her head dropped back as she arched into his touch. She was tugging at the hem of his T-shirt, desperate to get it out of the way, when an owl called from a tree nearby. She jerked back, remembering where they were and that their son was resting on the other side of a thin wall.
“We can’t do this.”
“What?” He stared up at her, his eyes glazed over, his breath quick.
She pushed against his shoulders, using every ounce of her willpower to scoot out of his reach. “This, Drew.” She gulped in air. “This isn’t the right time.”
“Right time,” he echoed, pushing a hand through his hair.
Suddenly she felt too exposed, as if the entirety of the swamp stood by, judging her. “We’re outside.” A lousy excuse and the wrong thing to say as his eyes locked with hers. Her cheeks flooded with heat when she realized they were both recalling a particularly erotic interlude during a weekend camping trip in a Mississippi state park.
“We’ll go inside,” he said, catching her hand.
“No.” Only one of them was thinking clearly. She pulled free. Inside was worse than outside with Andy asleep in one of the two beds. She’d never had cause to explain a man in her bed to her son, and she wasn’t about to start now. Remembering how it had been between her and Drew, she vowed that when they made love again—if things went that far—their son wouldn’t be within hearing distance. “This—” she waved a hand between them “—has to wait.”
“Okay.” Drew pushed to his feet and moved to the bottom of the steps. “I’ll just do a perimeter check.”
“Don’t bother. We’re safe,” she said. “Everett doesn’t know about my connections here.”
But Drew left without another word. She watched him go, debating the wisdom of waiting outside for his return. Better, she decided, if she hurried in and pretended to be asleep when he got back.
Her legs were rubbery, her skin prickling with every sensation as she tried to settle down in bed. She needed the rest, but her body wanted the exciting promise of pleasure in Drew’s arms. It shocked her, embarrassed her a little how much she’d wanted him. Needed him. One kiss and she’d blotted out all risk, all thought of his commitments as well as her own.
What did that mean for the future, assuming they survived Craig’s inevitable efforts to find her? Her heart already had designs on reclaiming what they’d lost, but that wasn’t practical.
Was it?
Exasperated with herself, she rolled to her side, putting her back to the door. She closed her eyes, but it was an exercise in futility until he came back.
Finally she heard him, deliberately clearing his throat and scraping the dirt from his boots on the top step. She placed her hand on the shotgun anyway until the door opened and she heard his voice.
“All clear,” he murmured.
She didn’t dare reply.
Chapter Twelve
Only when Drew heard Addi’s breath even out did he let himself doze off. It didn’t qualify as sleep, disturbed by the contrast of recalling her sweet body in his hands and the imminent danger he sensed closing in on them.
There’d been no sign near the markers he’d placed, but he felt the threat lurking in the shadows. Paranoia was a symptom of what he’d survived, and he struggled to keep his weaknesses at bay. Another move would cause more problems than it solved. Telling his body to stand down, he closed his eyes. With Addi a mere arm’s length away, he couldn’t stop wishing he’d done things differently.
If he’d escaped the prison sooner. If he’d just said no when the knock had sounded on his hotel room door. He thought of what she’d endured without any support and kicked himself for not grabbing the minister and insisting they exchange vows before the mission. She would’ve had access to his military benefits that way. He had known how to make the most of his available time and he’d squandered it.
In a twilight sleep he had that sweet dream of her walking down the aisle, but this time she wore a cotton tank top and denim shorts. It sounded just as miraculous when she said, “I do.”
The floor squeaked, tearing him from the dream until he realized it was Addi rolling over.
What would it take to get her to open up about those years? He’d probably shared more with her than he should have, but in the moment he couldn’t have stopped the tide of words. He finally understood what the shrinks meant about finding a confidant. Her reaction, those hot kisses, had been unexpected, filling the desolate places in his soul and smoothing out the raw edges.
He was dreaming of their first kiss as husband and wife. This time they were at the front of a small chapel with sunlight streaming through stained-glass windows. She wore a white gown worthy of a princess, and he’d just lifted her veil when he heard the slide and scrape of something near the cabin.
Awake once more, he held his breath, listening and counting the passing seconds. At the count of eleven, he heard the unmistakable sound of boots on the ground.
No time to waste wondering how they’d been found—it was time to go. With dead calm and absolute silence, he looked over to Addi. She was already sitting up, the shotgun across her knees. Good woman.
“I’ll look,” he whispered. They needed some idea of what they were up against. “Take the bag and wait with Andy.”
She nodded, moving quietly to do as he said.
He headed for the door, leaving his pistol in the holster at his hip. Based on the sounds that had woken him, he assumed the boats had been spotted despite his efforts to conceal them. They’d have to push through the swamp and hope they found a safe place to hide. He intended to clear a path.
Wincing as the door hinges creaked, he dropped to one knee just outside the opening, braced for any reaction.
A silhouette rushed up the stairs, handgun raised. Clearly not a case of hunters or kids messing around. Adrenaline zipped along his nerves, bringing all his senses to high alert. Waiting for the perfect moment, he reached out and grabbed the black boot just before it hit the top step. Before the man could shout, Drew flipped him feet over head back down the steps.
In the commotion, he heard two more low voices check in by radio. A team of three. It made sense. Three men in a strike boat would be agile and mobile and feel confident about overpowering a scared mother and child. But were other teams searching other pockets and cabins in the swamp?
Only one way to find out.
Using the shadows, he eased back against the wall of the cabin, watching to see if the others showed themselves. A man passed under his position, heading for his pal at the bottom of the stairs. He heard the whispered comments and the call for rein
forcements.
Damn.
Make a stand or run?
Run.
It was the best option. Out in the swamps they had the slight advantage of understanding the terrain. In the cabin, they were sitting ducks with limited ammunition. He crept back inside, hoping Addi didn’t shoot him before he could get them out. He found her tucked between the beds, shotgun loaded and ready.
“Take the bag,” he said. He scooped Andy into his arms. “Down the steps and bear right to the swamp. I’ll follow you.”
Eyes narrowed, she gave a short nod and opened the door. When they cleared the steps without incident, he felt a prickling at the back of his neck. It was too easy.
He paused behind the wide trunk of a live oak tree. “Stay behind me,” he instructed.
Her eyes went wide and her lips parted on a protest, but he didn’t have time to debate and discuss. He winced as his boots splashed into the shallow water, followed by hers.
Someone shouted, but they didn’t heed the warning. A bullet whizzed by and he felt a moment’s panic that the shooter had hit Addi. “Keep going,” she said, putting a hand on his shoulder.
He did. Covering Andy’s head with one hand, he moved as quietly and swiftly as he was able.
“Where we going?” Andy whispered sleepily.
“Some bad guys showed up.”
“Really? Why?”
The excitement wasn’t necessarily the best reaction, but it beat panic in Drew’s opinion. “I’m not sure.”
“Did you shoot ’em?”
“No.”
“Are you gonna?”
“If I have to. I won’t let them hurt you.”
“I know that.”
The little boy’s certainty fueled Drew’s determination and steadied him more than he would’ve thought possible.
“I can ride piggyback and you can shoot.”
And the boy would be between them, better protected. “All right, but you have to stay awake and stay quiet.”