“So how do you go from being a soldier to this… this…”
“I’m still a soldier. Only I fight a different way.” He sighs. “As to how I got started, I can thank the wonders of psychological testing for that. Most men are put into basic combat. Sometimes they’re pulled out for specific programs, like computers or medicine. Me? I suppose they saw something in my results that said I’d be great at lying. And the hell of it is, they’re right.”
“It’s tearing you apart, isn’t it?”
“Why would you think that? I’m great at my job. The best.”
“Maybe it’s not me who’s wearing a blue pinafore and a leg strap for my dagger. Maybe it’s you. You go around being violent, slashing at everything you can see, but in reality you’re lost.”
His expression turns cold. His eyes could freeze me. “Don’t try to psychoanalyze me. Trust me, that’s above our pay grade.”
“It doesn’t take a psychiatrist to know you’re messed up about your parents.”
“Don’t.”
Why am I being so hard on him? I don’t go around psychoanalyzing people I meet, but this is different. We were locked up together. We escaped together. And now we’ve had sex. There’s a primal connection between us. Certainty roots inside me. Certainty that this man needs me to dig around in his emotional wounds. He’s got them clenched so tight in his fists that they’ll never really heal this way. “Or maybe you’re the one in a padded room. Maybe they locked you up after you killed your father, and everything else, meeting me, being a soldier, stealing the diamond, that was all a medically aided dream.”
He growls at me. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“No? Then tell me the truth.”
“I wish that were the case,” he bursts out. “I wish someone would lock me up for what I did. Not for killing my father. For failing to protect my mother. For being too damn late to protect her. Doesn’t matter that I was too young—that’s why I belonged in that cell. Or a padded white room. Wherever the hell they put people like me, people no one can trust.”
“I trust you,” I whisper.
He stands and stares at me, his eyes cold. I know what he’s going to say before the echo of the past emerges from his lips. “You should know better than to talk to someone like me. You should be afraid of me. And most of all, you shouldn’t trust me.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Elijah
I wasn’t exaggerating when I said the United States government doesn’t care what happens to a civilian during a deep-cover operation.
They know I have to do horrible things to survive. Adam could have fucked her, hurt her, killed her, and I could have done nothing to jeopardize my mission.
Not even save her life.
I’m supposed to be waiting in that jail cell right now, ready to die for my country, close by in case I can actually stop a terrorist attack. I could have escaped the first day. I could have left any goddamn time, but my cover meant staying there.
My orders were to remain with the operation.
Instead I’m babysitting a woman in the forests of northern France.
I don’t want to see the look on the lieutenant colonel’s face when he finds out I fucking deserted. Because that’s exactly how he’ll look at it. The fact that Holly is an innocent caught in the crossfire won’t matter to him.
The whisper of water cuts through the regular forest sounds, and I switch directions. It’s west when we need to be going south, the terrain more rugged this way, but it’s worth it. My mouth is parched, and Holly looks like she’s about to fall over. Sure enough, the soil becomes more soft and loamy. Soon the babble becomes a brook, and my throat clenches in anticipation.
She drops to her knees in the muddy edge, pressing her face into the water. It’s animalistic and strangely sexy, seeing her drink that way. Then she’s looking up at me, her lips glistening, water dripping down her chin. It’s a purely sensual look, though she probably has no idea. “Aren’t you going to drink?” she asks.
A man’s body is stupid enough to get hard, even when I clearly need the strength for other things. I drop down beside her, letting the mud soak the denim of my jeans and press my face into the water. I drink like a wolf, opening my mouth and letting it fill the space. A hard swallow. Beside me she’s cupping water and gulping it. I take her wrist, and water spills down her arms. “Slow down,” I say, my voice gruff. “You’ll throw up.”
She stares at me, and for a second I think she’s going to cry. Or maybe vomit. Or maybe ignore me and keep drinking. Instead she says in a droll tone, “Worst date ever.”
A strange joy sings through my chest, that she can find humor in this moment. I’ve eaten sweet blueberry crepes and delicately cooked quail with this woman, but none of them can touch the delicious moment of cool water.
I have to force myself to stop before I’ve had my fill, too.
Then I rip off my shirt and wring it out in the water. I dab the corner onto her cheek where there’s dried blood. That must have happened when she escaped. When Peter attacked her. I should have killed him sooner. I left him bleeding out in the church. He’s gone now.
Too late.
Every time I love someone, I’m too fucking late.
Love. No. I can’t love her. I can’t love her because it will only make her die. It’s the logic that comes from a child who saw his mother’s life drain from her eyes. It doesn’t matter that I’m grown-up now. It still holds an important, unshakeable truth.
I carefully pull her shirt over her arms, exposing her breasts in dirt-stained lace. She’s beautiful. Sensual. Devastating. But right now I’m focused on the wound at her side. I touch the edges, which are blue and yellow from the bleeding inside.
It’s one thing to know she must be injured. Another thing to see it in the light.
My hands are shaking. “I’m sorry,” I say, my voice uneven.
“It’s fine.” She gives me a brave, tremulous smile. “It didn’t hurt.”
For a second I stare at her, knowing she’s lying. Then I realize she means back in the clearing, when I fucked her. She thinks I’m apologizing for being careless with her injuries. And it’s so kind, the way she wants to forgive me for fucking her raw.
Even though she doesn’t know what I’ve done.
Suddenly I want her to know. I want her to see what a monster I am, so she stops looking up at me with those eyes full of hope and humor and light.
I’m not a man who deserves forgiveness.
“I could have walked out of that cell at any time.”
She blinks, not quite believing. Not wanting to believe. “What?”
“Every time they came in to beat me, I could have escaped. Every time Peter took a cigar to my skin, I could have broken his neck. I didn’t have a key to that lock, but I didn’t need one. The key was in my hands.”
Confusion tightens her brow. “Why are you telling me this?”
“So you understand.” I trace the angry red line where the metal bar cut into her flesh. It hurt her so badly, and even now it might kill her. Infection in a goddamn forest with no access to medicine or even soap. “I did this to you. I pushed you through the bars.”