Drawing a calming breath, I refocus on Rick, a deep, almost foreboding rumble of thunder sounding loud nearby, low echoes vibrating through the sky in its aftermath. Rick disconnects his call and I glance upward, a drop of icy rain plopping onto my nose. It’s then, that the prickling sensation explodes into a warning. I try to turn but someone grabs me from behind. I reach for the powerful arm now shackling my waist, and the flashlight crashes to the ground. I think I call out. I’m not sure I do. My heart is racing, my adrenaline pumping too hard and fast. That’s when the cold steel blade presses to the delicate skin of my neck and I go still. Instantly, I know, I just know who my captor is, without ever seeing his face. This is Wes, and Rick killed his wife, by slicing her throat. He’s going to slice my throat, poetic justice, no doubt, in his mind. Rick straightens, turning toward us, his face chiseled in stone, but he’s not looking at me. He’s looking behind me at Wes and that blade he’d been using to dig is in his hand. I open my mouth to tell him I love him but I never get the chance. Suddenly his hand moves, and there’s a flash of steel. I barely know what’s happened, that he’s thrown the knife when Wes’s grip falls away, and I stumble forward onto my hands and knees. Heart thundering against my breastbone, still on the grass, I rotate to watch Rick straddle him, and shove the blade into his body.
I wake to a gasp, sitting up and clutching the sheet to my chest, adrenaline surging through me as if I was back at the graveyard. Rick is immediately sitting beside me, his strong arms wrapping my body. “Easy, baby. Easy. It was a nightmare.”
Struggling to control my breathing I twist to face him. “You didn’t even hesitate to throw that knife.”
His lashes lower, and he looks skyward before his eyes meet mine. “If I had you’d be dead instead of him.”
I rotate to face him, still chilled from the nightmare, still sheltering under the blanket. “I know that. I do. Do you know that right before Wes showed up, you were digging, and I was mesmerized by your hands? And you know what I thought?” I don’t give him time to reply. “I thought that your true power, that magic that makes you bigger than life, is your ability to give and take lives. And yet, Rick, you choose to save them over and over. That’s what happened last night. You took a life and you saved mine.”
“Don’t make me a hero, baby. That sets us both up for failure.”
“I need you to know that I see you, all of you. I see you, Rick. Really see you. I can handle the truth, whatever it is. I’m in this thing called ‘life’ with you. And I can handle what happened to me and us last night. I can handle how you kill because I know you don’t do it for sport. Trust me.”
“Baby—”
My hand goes to his cheek, the rasp of his two-day beard rough on my fingers. “Trust me.”
“I thought we had this conversation last night?”
“But we didn’t really have it, now did we? We didn’t go deep. We didn’t get past barriers. Do you know what I dreamed of last night?”
His brow furrows. “That—I killed Wes.”
“I dreamt that you saved me, Rick. Stop seeing everything through cracked lenses. And don’t tell me I see you through rose-colored glasses. You can kill but you are not a killer. Those are two different things.”
He inhales sharply and then to my shock, he throws away the blanket and stands up, straightening to his towering six foot five inches, his hard, naked body, knotted and tense. Without another word, he walks into the bathroom, but he doesn’t shut the door. The shower comes on and I have a flashback to another night, when his first patient had died on the table, with no fault of his. He’d gone to a hot shower and some part of me had felt it was to wash away the tears he didn’t feel he could afford, emotions he felt were dangerous in an operating room.
I give him a few minutes, as I did then, five, but not quite ten. Then and only then, I stand up and walk into the bathroom to find him just as I had that night, sitting on the floor of the shower. I don’t even hesitate. I walk to the shower, open the door, and step inside. His head is back against the wall, his eyes shut, and he doesn’t look at me. I go down to the floor with him, slide between his legs, my hands on his knees.
His head lifts, torment in his eyes. “What if I am a killer, Candace?”
That question tells me why I had that nightmare. It was my mind telling me how tormented Rick is over his past. It was my mind warning me that no matter what promises we’ve made to each other, his torment was, is, still a cross we must bear together. “Then I’m in love with a killer, but you’re not a killer.”
“You have no idea how many people I’ve killed.”
“I have a good idea.”
“You saw ten missions, Candace. I ran thousands.”
“I’m aware of that fact. I can do the math but what good does that do either of us?”
“It became who I was. It became all I was. Killing. It was a part of me.”
“It was your job.”
“It was a part of me,” he counters.
“You’re a part of me, Rick.”
I’ve barely spoken the words, and he’s pulling me into his lap. I settle on top of him, my legs straddling his hips, his hand sliding under my hair to my neck. His lips a breath from my lips. “You are a part of me, too. The good part of me.” His mouth closes down on mine, and he drinks me in, consumes me, owns me with that kiss. That’s the thing about Rick Savage. He consumes me inside and out, and while yes, it’s terrifying to have any one human have that much power over you, it’s also the best damn feeling I’ve ever known.
What follows is slow and sensual. Intense and raw. The way we touch. The way we both moan when he anchors me and lifts me and I slide down the hard length of his erection. The way our bodies move. The way we touch and kiss.
A long time later, we stand under the shower, and suds each other up, but we don’t speak, not with words. There’s a shift between us, a renewed intimacy. I can almost feel our bond secure, the locks that once bound us together, unite and settle into perfect, snug closure once again. I don’t know why, despite every talk we’ve had prior to this one, we needed what erupted between us this morning, but we did. In the aftermath, we’re closer for it. Stronger for it. It’s a good thing too because we have battles ahead of us. Starting with Saturday night. The night of my father’s extraction. The night Rick faces off with Tag. The last night I have to pretend to be Honest Gabe’s future wife.
CHAPTER TEN
Savage
Coffee, Candace and a hotel room.
It’s not Coffee, Candace, and home, but it’s a damn good second. We spend the hour after our shower, with both of us half-naked, sipping coffee and sharing a bathroom. Once she’s dressed in a black sweater and a snug pair of black jeans that hug her ass almost as well as I do, I’m left shirtless and in need of a shave.
For the first time in years, Candace sits down on the counter in front of me and lathers up my face. “Let’s see if I remember how to do this,” she teases, foaming me up, and I don’t miss the way her fingers linger over the scar on my face.
I catch her hand and kiss it. “It makes me more human,” I say solemnly. “It reminds me there are those you kill and those you save.”