by S A Gardner
I pushed at his chest, panting. “I did, and now you’ll tell me why you asked that. If Jake is in the know, he could provide us with invaluable insider information.”
His hiss all but sandblasted me. “We don’t need it.”
“Oh, yeah? We don’t need to know that there are about four hundred in there, that they rotate every two weeks and that the security is geared toward break-outs not break-ins?”
This brought him sitting up fully, all traces of passion and indulgence evaporated right off his chiseled-in-stone face. “He couldn’t have told you all that if you didn’t ask. How did you? Dios, Calista, if you let him suspect you were scouting info for a rescue op…”
“How could he suspect anything, Damian?” I interrupted him. “He knew me as a doctor working in an aid agency. He even joked about my questions, asked if I was asking to stage a Rambo-like rescue mission.”
“It could mean he does suspect—”
“His making fun of it means he can’t even begin to suspect.”
“Even so, we don’t need his info. We’ll locate the militants’ stronghold tonight. Then it’s a couple more days of following their schedules, and laying a plan of attack. What he has to offer isn’t worth the risk of tipping them off.” When I tried to object again, he overrode me, his voice a blade. “He may be the most intelligent man in the solar system, but that only takes into account his intellect. Can you vouch for how someone in his situation may react to hope of salvation, after so many years of incarceration?”
His point was suddenly clear. Too clear.
Dammit. I hated it when he made inescapable sense.
Before I could say anything, he pressed. “Are a few more days of the same old no hope on his side, and no appeasement on yours, too big a price for the mission’s success?”
No price was too big. And Jake would probably suffer more with anxiety, if he knew our plans. And though I couldn’t see the new him losing it under any circumstances, if there was the least chance he might, it might fulfill Damian’s prophecy.
I had to face it. Jake didn’t need to know. I needed to tell him.
I really hated it when Damian was right. About me.
Why bother have a skull at all with a mind so see-through?
“I need your word, Calista.”
I got up, started walking to the tent’s door before he touched me again, snared me into more madness or heartache.
He followed, radiating exasperation and hunger. “Calista.”
“Oh, you have it.” I tossed over my shoulder. “Put it to good use. Now hop to it. I need a dozen suture kits for this evening, and five hundred tetanus shots for tomorrow morning.”
“Yes, Dr. St. James.”
His dark rumble almost had me whirl around and pounce on him.
It took control I didn’t know I had not to answer his “Tonight, after the patrol, my tent” command/plea with a resounding “Yes.”
I staggered out of the tent, leaving him to resolve his own…huge dilemma.
Frigid air slapped through my lust-fogged mind. And it was only then I remembered. What I’d forgotten to ask.
I’d ended this historical interrogation opportunity without asking one crucial question.
Why he was here on this mission at all?
Now I knew the facts, it made less sense than ever.
Why had he relinquished his decision-maker’s role for an executioner’s again?
Was he here because of me? Again?
No. I wouldn’t even presume to come up with explanations. I’d been wrong too many times about his motivations.
But though I was deduction-disabled where he was concerned, I felt that whatever the truth was, if I ever found it out, I wouldn’t like it one bit.
But what else was new?
At least I now sort of knew where we stood.
Caught in a web of passion, in the bottom of an abyss of turmoil.
Thirty-Eight
We found the militants’ base.
It took two nights, three close calls and one literal cliffhanger along the way. José ended up with a broken left forearm and Ari with a bone-deep calf gash. I got to play doctor a mile up, in tempest-level rain and winds.
Damian had tethered me as I worked, afraid the torrents would sweep me over the edge. Which had been a legitimate fear. But the same measures that would have been standard before, now I knew the depth of his feelings for me, felt excessive, obsessive. Not that I wouldn’t have done the same.
But all in all, everything went as predicted. Far better than predicted.
During our exploration of the base’s perimeters, to determine all possible routes of approach, attack and retreat, we discovered an ingeniously concealed passage into a new route that led all the way down the mountain.
It was gently sloping, wide and secure enough for a vehicle the size of our trailers to make it all the way up there.
Sure enough, we found another grotto garage on the other side, filled with high-end vehicles.
We tracked the route down until it forked. We split, each team following a tire-track-filled branch. The one my team followed circumvented the minefields and led into North Ossetia. The other branch was a roundabout, highly disguised yet safe route to the camp. The route we hadn’t been told about.
The bastards had let us come through the minefields, thinking it was the only route.
That still made no sense to me.
Ed pointed out evidence that suggested that this route was new. A few weeks old at most. It still didn’t explain why they hadn’t told us about it. Not to mention how it had escaped PACT intelligence radar.
A spectacularly empty expression transmitted Damian’s opinion of that. His own people had messed up bad. He wasn’t happy. And neither would they be, once he returned.
As for why the militants weren’t using it, from the looks of the vehicle fleet in the garage, the high ranks reserved it for themselves, either leaving the small fry militants who frequented the camp in the dark about its existence, or denying them access to it. After all, why make their lives easier? Felt like something the treacherous head honchos would do.
The route’s discovery meant that setting up our plan and executing it would work far better than projected.
My team caught up with Damian’s on the route back to the camp and we made it back at dawn after nine hours of grueling physical exertion, bushed but exhilarated by our new discovery.
This was going to work. I could taste it.
Then I was tasting Damian who’d dragged me to his tent the moment we arrived, taken me down on the airbed. How he still had stamina for that was beyond me.
Now I finally broke free and staggered up to me feet.
He rose to his elbows, groaned, “Come back to bed, Calista.”
He said that exactly the same way he had that night in my apartment. Now I knew how he’d felt about me all along, I knew the serum had only unleashed the truth of his desires.
But after his confessions, and with Jake coming in hours, I was spinning on one gigantic merry-go-round of guilt.
I had this new view of myself as a black widow. Worse, a Typhoid Mary, who brought suffering and devastation wherever she went.
When I didn’t comply, he rose, took me in his arms again. Trying to escape it all, I started squirming.
His arms tightened around me, snaring me in his insistence. “We don’t have to make love. Let me wrap around you as we sleep.”
And I wanted him all around me, surrendering care and consciousness to our intimacy.
But not make love, too?
“Yeah, right.”
He licked smiling lips that said my skepticism was well-placed. “If you’re worried about crucial sleeping time, I can promise swift satisfaction.”
I’d bet. Lightning swift, the way I was primed. I’d probably have another premature orgasm the moment he thrust inside me, or even before he did.
He sobered, pressed me harder. “We’ve wasted enough time, Calista.
Who knows how much more we have left?”
“Trying to make me desperate, Damian?”
“Is it working?”
And how. The idea of anything happening to him rated up there with having all my limbs cut off. And my heart. I wasn’t telling him that.
I kissed him though, putting all my confusion in the fierce mingling of flesh. Then I pushed him away.
He let me this time, his eyes brooding. “Do you want me to stop pursuing you?”
“Would you?”
“The words hell and freezing over come to mind.”
I laughed, giddy in spite of everything to feel that purity and power of emotion and commitment from him.
I tried to pinch his cheek, failed to find enough flesh. “Hold that thought.”
Then I marched him out of my tent. One more touch and I would have hauled him inside me. Not a good idea when in three hours I had to be up and in surgery.
Not a good idea, period.
He walked away, but not before he gave me a last glance. One that said I wasn’t beneath him right now because he’d decided not to give me that touch that would have ended my resistance.
It also made me admit he was right. And I didn’t like it one bit. That all that prevented me from surrendering to our mutual need, come what may, was his control.
Had always been his control.
A control that was fast running out.
I didn’t want to think what would happen when it did.
But I had to. If we’d caused death and destruction with both of us stifling our passion, what catastrophes would it cause now it was declared, if it was fully unleashed?
How many more lives would we destroy?
None, that was how many. Never again.
Thirty-Nine
“Are you sure this was how they all died?”
The young man, my informant as the guys called him, nodded.
“I need more details,” I pressed. “If it’s a contagious disease, we can take steps toward stopping further contamination and spread.”
Murvan smoothed his lank blond hair from his eyes, blinked his hesitation at me. He really wanted to share his suspicions of how thousands of his fellow refugees had died.
His mouth opened. So did the door of the minor surgery compartment after a perfunctory knock. I immediately felt Jake’s presence, saw its effect on Murvan. The guy freaked out.
Murvan jumped to his feet, blabbering something about being needed back in the camp’s school. I barely held him back to finish wrapping his stitched forearm in gauze and jab him with antibiotic and tetanus shots.
After he bolted out, I turned on Jake. “So good of you to scare off my patient.”
Jake raised his immaculate eyebrows. “Don’t look at me. I just walked in. He’s the one who behaved as if he was caught making lewd advances, and was scared of being roughed up by the competition.”
Murvan had been making excuses to come here. This last injury could have been self-inflicted. Damian made him twitchy, too. And no, it wasn’t over any obsession with li’l ol’ me. If the truth was as ugly as I thought, Murvan would be right to be terrified of anyone who might overhear any of it. He’d taken a gamble on trusting me. He wasn’t about to trust anyone else. Especially someone who seemed so favored by the militants like Jake.
“So, what’s going on here?” Jake pulled off his gloves, threw them in the bin, picking up my list and scanning the cases I had for my afternoon. He’d been in the adjacent compartment performing minor surgeries all morning.
“You tell me. You’ve been coming here longer.”
“I actually meant why you’re working alone and I had two highly qualified nurses and an anesthesiologist helping me.”
Because Murvan would only talk to me alone. In respect to his explicit anxiety, I couldn’t share. God, I hated hiding stuff from Jake more with every passing second. And until I had him out of here, I had to suck it up and keep him in the dark.
I shrugged. “I didn’t need anyone.”
His lips quirked. “And I did?”
I tried to make my answer less lame. “You’re the new, shiny doctor, and a bonafide magician, too. They deserted me for you because they’re curious and awestruck. And smitten, too, if I know anything.”
He laughed. It felt so weird. So heart-wrenchingly wonderful. Hearing him laugh. Having him here like this.
For the past five days, he’d been coming, like clockwork, from nine am sharp till sunset. Working with me, taking charge most of the time, achieving so much together. And it had felt so incredible. So natural. As if the past eight years hadn’t happened. As if we’d go on like this forever.
As if tomorrow all hell wasn’t breaking loose.
Jake touched the backs of two fingers to the side of my neck. “What about you? Curious and smitten yourself?”
My eyes closed, at his touch, at the intensity, in his all-seeing eyes, fueling his suddenly raw words.
There he went again, probing my feelings for him.
And I again wondered, what did it matter to him what I felt, when he believed our destinies would diverge again forever? Did he just need the comfort of knowing if it were possible, I’d be with him again?
If I thought I’d never see him again, I would have given him that comfort. But I was getting him out of here. Whatever I said now would have ripple effects I couldn’t afford.
Choking on regret, that after all these years I couldn’t offer him solace, but only a mute, evasive smile, I rushed to prep for the next patient.
To block his warping effect, I focused on anything else. The buzz of diagnostic equipment, the movements of my team in the next compartment. The despondency of knowing our work here was ending with so much left undone.
This was our last day here. We were not only running out of supplies, our plan was in place.
It had to be tomorrow, or never.
But Jake wasn’t taking evasions this time. He came up behind me, placed a cold, electrifying hand on my arm.
“I know I’ve been dead to you for too long.” His voice was low, injected with a calm and terrible emotion. “That you’ve given up and moved on. I know you’re confused. But you still feel a lot for me.” He pulled me back against him, in a fierce, pleading embrace. “I’m not confused. I’ve loved you from the moment I saw you, and every moment since. And here you are, the same, yet so much more than the woman whose memory has kept me alive.”
My heart did its best to uproot itself. When it couldn’t, it smashed itself against my ribs.
It was excruciating. His admission, his hands gripping my belly, his hard body seeking mine. I wanted to press back into him, offer him a declaration of equal weight. I wanted to bolt away. To weep.
He was everything I ever thought I wanted in a partner. With this new toughness and intensity to him, he was more so than ever. My once magnanimous, appreciative lover. Could he be again, if I gave it a chance?
He was right. I did feel a lot for him. Even if what I felt for him in the past was a dim memory, now awe and fascination, guilt and compassion, attraction and the sheer emotional burden of meaning so much to him were such an inextricable mess.
And there was no way I could struggle out of his arms. I had to make him let me go without causing him further distress.
Before I could, he turned me around and took my lips.
And I remembered everything I’d forgotten about him.
They deluged me, old memories and new discoveries. The same deep connection with a fresh taste, a new proprietary, hypnotic feel.
But there was something else, too. Seemed the story about having a woman here hadn’t been a fabrication to allay my doubts. This was the kiss of a man who’d been practicing.
This somehow made it easier for me to kick to the surface of his drowning kiss.
At my stiffening, he trailed hunger and worship down my cheek and neck, his voice ragged with both. “Are you afraid to kiss me back because you’ll leave me again? Afraid to h
urt me? You won’t. I’m hoarding memories, Cali. Memories of a far lesser you have sustained me so far. Memories of the new you will fuel the rest of my life.”
Now what could a woman say to that?
Maybe in other circumstances I could have been flattered. Now it only oppressed and tore me apart inside.
Unable to bear it anymore, I extricated myself and stood two steps away, panting, examining the brooding, beseeching sensuality on his starkly handsome face. His gaze dissected my expression back.
Change the subject.
He didn’t give me the chance, spoke first. “If you had a choice, Cali, would you be mine again?”
“I was never exactly ‘yours,’ Jake,” I choked.
“Is this feminist indignation? Extremely misplaced, since I was very much yours. I still am.”
Give me an effing break. Squash my heart to paste, why don’t you?
I tried again to stop him. “Jake, this isn’t the time…”
“Then when? When we’re saying goodbye? I need to tell you how I feel now. I realize you may have formed new ties, new allegiances, that you may feel torn.”
So he did read me in complete accuracy again. But I hadn’t given what I feel the right term. Torn? Try shredded.
And that was before he went on.
“Under any other circumstances I would have given you, us, time, let our attraction, our shared interests, knowledge and convictions work their magic, as they did before.” This time when he tried to pull me back into him, I bolted. He spread his empty arms, looking so defeated. “But I don’t have time.”
Impending heart attack at his despair aside, this reminded me. I didn’t have time.
He’d interrupted my investigation with Murvan. And whatever Damian said, that we must focus only on our plan, I had to find out the truth behind the unexplained deaths.
“Jake, I’m not trying to avoid this…” He raised one of these autocratic eyebrows and I burst out laughing. I was riding an emotional yo-yo gone mad. “Okay, just a bit.” I snorted at the understatement, thumped my forehead and hopefully my jittery brain back in place. “But I’m concerned about something bigger than you and me. The rocketing mortality rates in the camp in the last year.”