Damon laughed. “So do we. What did he say, by the way?”
“That you’re to stay in bed for the next couple weeks.”
“No way in hell I’m doing that,” he barked. “Those kinds of lies won’t get you anywhere.”
She smiled, then leaned over and added, “Okay, fine. He said to stay in bed for a week, and then you can slowly start to resume some easy activity.”
He reached up, grabbed her, and pulled her close. “You know that my chest is doing much better. I can get up. I can stretch, and I’m even doing some of those exercises.”
“Not so fast,” she said.
“Well, how about other exercises?” He waggled his eyes.
“Hell no,” she murmured. “That’s definitely out.”
“It’s never definitely out,” he snapped in a light tone as he leaned over and kissed her. “I’ve wanted this for a very long time, you know?”
“In that case you can wait for a little bit longer.”
He smiled. “It’s really good for stress relief.”
“Yeah, like I’ll get sucked into that,” she argued, but she was smiling.
“It is good to see you feeling so happy.”
“Hey, nothing like having all that energy flow through me. It’s a miracle in a way. But it was pretty scary.”
He kissed her gently and then kissed her again. Before she knew it, she was flat on her back, and he was lying gently at her side. And his hands were underneath her nightie.
“Good God.” She twisted beneath him. “You are bloody dangerous.”
“I am when I’m focused,” he muttered, “and you know how focused I can be.”
She glared at him. “It’s still a no.”
“What if I made it a maybe?”
She burst out laughing. “How are there maybes in this world?”
“There are tons of maybes,” he noted. “See? Like maybe you want me to kiss you like this,” he murmured, gently kissing first her lips, then her cheeks, and then her temples. “And maybe you want me to do a little more, like kiss you down here.” He slid the lacey gown up to her collarbone, where he kissed just underneath and all the way down to her breastbone.
She arched beneath him. “It’s really not a good idea.”
“And I guarantee you,” he murmured, as he kissed her some more, then sliding his tongue over her plump breast, taking her nipple deep into his mouth, “this is exactly what the doctor ordered.”
She was beyond talking when he suckled her other breast. “Be careful of your chest,” she mumbled in amazement.
“I’m doing better.”
“Yeah, but you can’t be that much better.”
“Oh, you might be surprised.” And he slid his fingers down to the apex of her thighs.
She shuddered out a gasp. “My God.”
“I’ll be gentle,” he murmured.
At that, she burst out laughing, only to have her laughs turned to groans, as he slid into the soft, moist folds at the heart of her. “Gentle? You’ll be gentle with me?” she teased. “You should be gentle with yourself.”
“I promise, slow and steady. Just like pushups.”
She groaned at that analogy. “You seriously won’t—” And then he was right there. She opened her thighs wider, as he slid all the way home. She shuddered at the feel of him. “My God,” she whispered. “Why the hell did we wait all these years?”
“Because I’m a fool.” He held one of her hands gently to his chest.
“If you hurt yourself …” she warned.
“Yeah, you’ll do what?” he asked, gently teasing her lips with his own.
“I might just force you to go to bed and to stay there for a little longer,” she whispered. “And, if you’re a really bad boy, I might just crawl in there with you.”
“Where the hell is the incentive to be good?” he asked her in amazement.
She smiled. “Because, if you’d be good, I might keep you in bed for the next month, just to make sure that you’re healing properly.”
He lowered his head. “You can take me to bed any damn time you want to. But I would like a little more than just having you in my bed. Given a choice, I’d like to keep you in my heart, which, as you well know, is exactly where you belong.”
She slid her arms around his neck and whispered, “Done. That’s a deal I can get behind.”
When he lowered his head and started to move, she thought she’d died and gone to heaven. Her body vibrated at an odd rate only to sudden calm, as if in an eye of a storm. She opened her eyes to see the two of them enwrapped in a weird bubble. “Energy?” she asked in a barest whisper.
“Love.”
And damn if the vibration didn’t speed up, but now it was smoother, more intense, and somehow she knew it was both their energies joined, … as one. When she exploded minutes later, hearing him join her on the cusp of an orgasm, she knew that her life, even though it had been hellish for a few weeks, was about to get a whole lot better.
By the time he collapsed beside her, she checked him over and asked, “Are you hurt?”
“Never,” he breathed. “Personally I think that’s a hell of a good way to exercise my chest muscles. We should do it again soon.” He closed his eyes and dropped into a deep sleep.
She lay snuggled up tightly against him, wondering how beautiful life would get for them as a couple. Yeah, she was well aware of a lot of shitty aspects to this situation right now, but, with him at her side, she figured she’d handle anything that came her way.
Epilogue
Wade Simco wandered the small space. “Why are we in here? The place is empty.” He turned to look at Terk.
“We’re here,” Terk replied, “because this concrete room is reinforced with steel. We need to build a tunnel to get out through but to also stop anybody from coming in.”
“You really think it’s that Iranian group we hunted down who’s attacking us? But we thought we got them all?”
Terk nodded. “Like they thought they got all of us.”
Wade shook his head. “I don’t see how anybody could have survived our attack. Didn’t you have Tasha checking that angle?”
“She’s still working on it. Will take some time. But the Iranian group could have been training a shadow crew for all we knew. And I don’t know anybody else with the same skills,” he stated. “Didn’t your brother train over there?” At Wade’s silent nod, Terk added, “So, considering that, maybe Iran is our best option.”
“I got it,” Wade said, “but damn.”
“I know. I know,” Terk agreed. “And we need more people. Merk is bringing in somebody else to help with communication.”
“What about Tasha?” Wade asked.
“Oh, we definitely need her, but we also need somebody else to help Tasha and us. According to Merk, this person is really good.”
“Have you ever worked with him before?”
“Her. No, I haven’t, but I trust my brother. It’s somebody he has known for a long time, although he did say that she had worked for the team but more as a freelancer.”