Chapter 28
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Diana sprawled on her bed, skin damp, breaths coming in pants. Alex lay on his back beside her, one arm thrown over his face. He was not, however, breathing like he’d run a marathon. Time to work on her fitness levels, apparently.
In moments like this, she felt satiated and limp—but also alone because he wasn’t touching her anymore.
As if he hadn’t just touched her into several back-to-back orgasms. What was wrong with her?
She closed her eyes and told herself to stop being ridiculous and needy.
But then his fingers touched hers, and the gathering tension in her heart ebbed. He threaded their fingers together and gave hers a squeeze.
“I can feel the change in you,” he said, his voice a deep rumble in the darkness. “When we’re done and you’re lying beside me, something happens.”
She sucked in a breath, shock and fear twisting together. “I’m fine. Really.”
He went up on an elbow beside her. She opened her eyes to find him studying her. She couldn’t help the tight squeeze in her heart, or the way her soul stretched toward his like a flower seeking light.
“Where do you go, Diana?”
“I don’t go anywhere. I’m right here.”
“You go somewhere in your head. I can feel the disconnect.”
She sighed and closed her eyes a moment. “I’m reminding myself this isn’t real. We aren’t building a relationship, and once we get what we want from the deception, it’ll be over.”
“I think you know by now there’s something going on here.
What it is, I have no idea. But it’s more than a simple deception to get into the militia and find the traitors.
Assuming we make it inside, live through what we gotta do, and stop these fuckers from stealing this technology and turning it against the world, then maybe we’ll find out we’ve got something we want to keep exploring. ”
Her throat was tight. “Maybe.”
He dipped his head, his lips meeting hers, and her bones melted. Again. Or was it still?
“Not gonna lie,” he said against her mouth, “this isn’t what I expected. You aren’t what I expected.”
“Same. I don’t even like you.”
His fingers slid between her folds, stroked her still-sensitive body until her back arched and she knew she could come again if he kept it up. “I don’t like you either,” he whispered. “But I’m kind of addicted to making you come.”
That was all it took to send her tumbling over the edge, her body shaking as she splintered apart. She already couldn’t catch her breath and now he’d stolen what little she had left.
“I could live inside here,” he growled possessively, his fingers sliding deep, wrenching more feeling from her. “Just fucking slide in here and stay.”
She gripped his arm and held him in place before he could pull away, rode his fingers until the last tremors faded.
“Fuck, baby. So hot for me. So damned perfect.” He gathered her to him, tucking her into his body, and dragging the covers up.
She burrowed into the safety of his arms, breathing in his scent. Pine forest, spice, leather, steel, and gunpowder. Fanciful.
But true. He smelled like all those things, maybe not simultaneously, but she’d smelled them on him at one time or another. Alex Bishop was the most deliciously masculine man she’d ever been with.
Her phone dinged with a text. Not just any tone, but her mother’s tone. Diana sighed and pulled away to reach for it. The screen lit up, invading the cocoon of darkness.
Mother:
Will you be home for Thanksgiving? I’m planning the seating and I really must know as soon as possible.
Diana clicked the button to make it dark and dropped it on the nightstand. Then she burrowed into Alex again. He didn’t ask, but she suddenly wanted to tell him.
“My mother. She absolutely must know, as soon as possible, if I’m going to be home for Thanksgiving. She’s planning the seating and it’s critical I tell her right damn now. Probably so she can seat me next to the richest, most connected, most eligible bachelor in attendance.”
“Do you usually go home for Thanksgiving?”
There was an ache in the vicinity of her heart. “Not if I can get out of it, no. I’d rather be working. Last year, I went to Cracker Barrel with Ackerman. His wife left him, so we were both alone.”
“And you prefer that to being with your family?”
She suddenly felt like an asshole. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be talking about this.”
“Why not? Because my parents are dead?”
“Well, yes. I didn’t mean to be insensitive.” Not to mention she didn’t know what kind of holidays he’d had with his family. He had terrible memories of Alaska, but before that? She wanted to ask but didn’t.
“You aren’t insensitive, Diana. I want you to tell me things.
And before you think everything about my life was hell, I actually had a good childhood until the years we went remote.
My parents were good people. They adopted me as a baby, because they couldn’t have children, and I had a good life.
Even when we first got to Alaska, I had a good life.
My dad…” She felt him swallow. “He fought in Desert Storm. It was the nineties, and the Kuwaiti oil fields were torched as the Iraqi army retreated. Toxic fumes filled the air, oil rained from the sky, and he was there in the middle of it. Something shifted in his brain, though it wasn’t immediately apparent.
He came home, stayed in the Army for a while, then left as he got more paranoid.
But I was a kid. I didn’t know how bad it was until it was too late.
My mom sheltered me from a lot of it. I thought Alaska was an adventure. ”
She wrapped her arms tighter around him. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. I got through it.”
He didn’t say anything more, and she bit the inside of her lip.
“You must think me so spoiled and ridiculous. I had everything growing up. Birthdays and holidays were lavish, with extravagant presents piled high beneath the tree at Christmas, and we took family vacations to exotic places every year. I never lacked for anything. If it could be bought, I could have it.”
“And things that couldn’t be bought?”
She loved that he understood enough to ask the question.
“Well, that’s different, isn’t it? I have no reason to complain about anything. Ever. I was safe, and I had the best of everything. But until I was four, I thought our nanny was my mother. I made the mistake of calling her mommy in front of my parents—and they fired her. I never saw her again.”
Even now, the confusion she’d felt at Melinda’s absence was easily called up from the depths of her heart. She’d cried and cried. Her brothers cried too, but not quite as hard as she had.
“I’m sorry, honey. That must have hurt.”
“I was a child. I didn’t know better, and honestly, if they’d been around more, maybe I would have known they were my parents and not just people with presents who sometimes stopped in to see us between social engagements.”
His arms squeezed a little tighter.
Her throat ached. “I had everything when I was a child. I have no reason to be ungrateful. But I’d have taken fewer things if I’d had more hugs, you know?
More love. That’s all I wanted. Somebody to hold me and love me and tell me I was special.
Somebody whose lap I could crawl into whenever I wanted, who would be there with attention and cookies, not with a message passed through a babysitter and a bunch of useless toys. ”
“It’s what every kid deserves. I’m sorry you didn’t have it, baby.”
She squeezed him back. “And I’m glad you did, but I’m sorry for what you went through when your dad was unwell. It seems so unfair. He served his country, and they couldn’t help him?”
“There were a lot of soldiers who got sick in one way or another. And I think they tried, but once he left the Army and decided to escape what he saw as a corrupt government and the erosion of his rights, what could anyone do? My mother could have refused to go. She probably should have, but she loved him and thought he’d feel better when they got away from everything.
When he could breathe fresh air and not hear voices in his head anymore. ”
“How did she die?” she asked gently.
She felt him stiffen. And then he sighed.
“She had a heart attack. She was fifty-two at the time, and she’d been having some shortness of breath and pain in her back.
It came and went over the course of weeks, but my dad didn’t think it was anything to worry about.
Neither did she. She insisted she was fine.
But she wasn’t. She died in her sleep. We tried to wake her the next morning, and she was cold. ”
“Oh God, Alex. I’m so sorry.” She kissed his jaw, hugged him tighter. He was trembling—but no, that was her. She was trembling for him. For the child he’d been.
“I should have done something,” he whispered, his voice sounding more tortured than she’d ever heard it.
“Should have insisted he send for the doctor. We had a sat phone. He could have called. I could have called, but I didn’t.
I was too scared of him to do it. And Mom insisted she was fine, it was just some indigestion and change of life stuff.
Jesus.” His voice was ragged as he pushed away from her and swung his legs over the side of the bed.
Her heart pounded. She didn’t know what to do. Go after him? Let him work through it alone?
“Alex. Don’t go. Please don’t go.”
The muscles of his back were taught in the moonlight slanting between the blinds. She thought he might drag his pants on and leave her. But he didn’t move. It was as if he was at war with himself.
“Please,” she whispered.
Finally, as her heart hammered, he slid in beside her again, dragging her into his arms and holding her tight, his face buried against her neck. Tears pricked her eyes and she squeezed them tight.
She felt him breathing into her skin, felt the quick beat of his heart. She lifted a hand to his head, stroked his hair, dug her fingers in and massaged his scalp.
“Thank you,” she whispered. “For telling me. I’m glad you stayed. I like having you in my bed. Also, I might like you just a little bit. But don’t tell anyone. I’ll deny it if you do.”
She wanted to make him laugh. He didn’t, but his arms tightened around her for a moment and his mouth moved against her skin.
“I like you too, Diana. More than I ever wanted to.”