Chapter 17
17
NATHAN
N athan didn’t want to wake up. He was warm and safe and holding Caden. Not just holding, but cuddling . He’d even go so far as to say they were snuggling. Not one-sided half-assed snuggling, but the kind of snuggling that had two consenting adults and full-on participation. It was enough to pretend he didn’t feel Reid poking him in the face and go back to sleep.
“Nathan, I can tell that you are awake. Stop pretending.” If goddamn Reid and his goddamn social ineptitude woke her up, Nathan was going to kill him. “You were never very good at playing possum.”
Did the man not see that he was cuddling Caden Quinn, thief extraordinaire and quintessential badass? Two pre-qualifiers he’d never known he’d had for potential life partners.
His brothers, the same ones who also loved human contact and feeling a warm body snuggled all nicely against them but pretended like they didn’t need it, gave him hell about it. He was as human and needy and comfort-seeking as the next guy (the next guy being any one of his emotionally stunted brothers). He could not care less what those insecure jack-wagons thought. Nathan loved cuddling, and he didn’t care who knew it. Be it animal or human, Nathan cuddled. He cuddled hard.
“Nathan.” Voice impatient and bordering on annoyed, Reid poked him harder in the face. Nathan continued to pretend he didn’t exist and reveled in the feel of Caden cuddled up to him.
For Caden, he knew it was different. From what he’d learned about her, she’d been conditioned not to ever want human contact. Contact meant getting hit. And being the badass that she was, pretended not to need it, much like his brothers. She did, however, enjoy it.
The way she was clinging to him like he was going to up and float away was a testament to that fact. Her legs were wrapped around his waist and her good arm was twined around his bicep. Her face was pushed into his chest. Even in sleep, when she was supposed to be relaxed, her fingers dug into his flesh like ten little anchors.
“Nathan.” It was an annoyed huff, followed by a couple more pokes.
Nathan didn’t want to wake up. He didn’t want to stop snuggling, and dammit, didn’t he deserve a nap after the shitastical week he’d had? The face poking got more insistent and hard. Why wasn’t he allowed to sleep? Reid had already patched him up. There was no reason he should be waking up.
“What?” Nathan didn’t open his eyes, wanting to keep the illusion of being asleep for a little bit longer.
“Nate.” Another poke. “Nate.”
Still not opening his eyes, Nathan shifted to swat at the infuriating finger. White hot searing pain ripped down his back and arm and reminded the former soldier that he was sporting two shiny new bullet holes. The drugs had worn off, and he was now officially awake. His empty stomach churned and rolled. Cold sweat broke out all over his skin and sent tiny shivers down his spine.
“Goddammit Reid! What the hell do you want?” It came out less angry and more pathetic than he was aiming for.
“I want you to get off of her,” Reid snapped, all impatient, like Nathan should be able to read his mind.
Nathan tensed, instinctively going into battle mode and squaring his position on top of the sleeping woman. No goddamn way was he getting off of her. She was cuddling him. Holding him like he was important to her. He wasn’t letting her go. They’d have to pry his dead goddamn body off of her.
“What? You gonna kick my ass for providing medical care?” He could practically hear Reid rolling his eyes.
Unfortunately, Nathan was evolved enough to realize that he couldn’t drag her off to his cave and keep her all to himself, like the Neanderthal part of his brain was telling him to do. It was a nice scenario to play out in his head and maybe later when they were both fully recovered, but he had to be reasonable about things. She needed medical attention and she probably couldn’t breathe too well with his entire body weight on top of her.
Still though, Nathan had to reassure himself that his brother wasn’t telling him that he couldn’t have her. He wasn’t. Reid was just doing his job. It was almost embarrassing how long it took to convince himself to relax his guard. The man eventually got a grip enough to carefully extract himself from their tangled limbs.
“Careful, don’t rip your stitches again. And if either of you take out your IVs again, I will keep you both in medical comas forever.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Nate perched on the edge of the bed and had to take a few breaths to steady himself.
He’d been shot before, a few times actually, so he was familiar with the burning sensation running up his leg and arm. Didn’t mean he particularly liked the feeling, it was just familiar.
Tortured and starving was a new thing to him. He wasn’t exactly hungry. He felt hollow and shaky and like he might die if he didn’t eat, but the thought of food made his tongue sit heavy in his mouth and his stomach churn.
“Are you in pain?” Reid wasn’t paying attention to him; his full focus was on the mercenary and the handheld... doctor things (were definitely not the right words but Nathan could only ask so much of his aching brain) in his hands.
“Yes, shit.” A throb in his head made him lurch forward.
“Need more drugs?”
“I don’t want to be all loopy again so soon.” The vibration of his voice caused his head to throb harder.
“You won’t. I’ll give you something to numb the pain, but keep you alert.”
“M’kay.”
“So remind me, ‘cause I’m kinda fuzzy on this, why exactly were you in Moscow again?” The voice was not Reids. It was Holden’s. Pissy, snippy Holden. Mentally, the soldier groaned.
In waltzed Holden, looking all kinds of angry and impatient. The same way he’d looked when Nathan had jumped off the roof and broken his arm twice. Despite all outward indicators, it was his ‘concerned’ face. Nathan didn’t want to deal with him or his many faces.
“Vacationing.” Nate tried to keep the snap out of his voice, but it wasn’t working. Holden, the darling, was immune to Nathan’s bad moods. Well, he wasn’t so much immune as he was just ignoring it. For the moment.
“You hate crowds, you hate Moscow in particular, and you don’t ski. Did I miss any other tourist attraction that you could possibly pretend to have an interest in?” There was a very short pause, in which Holden pretended like he expected an answer. “Or were you really there because that’s where Marskib’s base of operations is and you’re still keeping tabs on the son of a bitch?”
As usual, Holden cut right to the soft spot and went at it with both barrels. Nathan held in another groan. So maybe vacationing wasn’t the only thing on his Moscow itinerary, but that didn’t mean he’d gone looking for trouble. He’d just happened to be in Moscow and he’d just happened to frequent seedy pubs and he’d just happened to slip in a question or seven that just happened to revolve around Marskib and his organization.
“Nate, I know what it’s like to fail a mission, but it was not your fault. And you can’t go off on your own with no backup!”
“Holden.” Guilt knifed his insides until he felt like he was going to puke. “Can we not right now?”
“Fine.” Holden folded his arms across his chest and shifted his position against the wall.
Nathan ignored the guilty rage building in his gut and watched through the throb in his head as his brother glared at him.
Holden took after their mother in looks. He was shorter than Nathan by two inches. He had her bright blue eyes and her soft smile. Nathan took after their father, being the bigger and beefier of the two. But when Holden was angry, their father showed through his features, what with the scowl and the pinched lines of his face and the way his eyebrows pulled down in the middle. Nathan closed his eyes against the sight. He did not want to think about his scumbag father.
“Okay.” It took all of thirty seconds for Holden to start in on him again. “So then, let’s talk about the mercenary you brought home.”
“Her name is Caden, and what about her?”
“She’s a mercenary , Nathan.” He made sure to annunciate every sound in the word like Nathan had never heard it before.
“Yeah, she is.” Nathan shifted in his seat on the bed to crack an eye open at his brother. “What’s your point?”
His hackles were in the upright position and a scowl was growing on his face. Nathan internally sighed and resigned himself to an argument because that’s what Holden’s scowls always meant.
“Well, I guess my point is that she is a mercenary. A woman who kills, maims, and steals for money, and you have her in the same house as Mom.”
“Stop with that look.” Nathan was growling and glaring and getting all kinds of offended.
“What look? I’m not doing any look!”
“Yes, you are! It’s the ‘I disapprove because I’m a jerk’ look.”
“Well, I disapprove and my face is gonna show it.” Holden shook his head in seeming disbelief and Nathan wanted to deck him. “Why do you think this is a good idea?"
Nathan let out a sigh and ran a hand over his face. Holden, by nature, was suspicious and untrusting. It was most likely wreaking havoc on his protect-what’s-mine mindset, but the man was going to have to deal with it.
“She is a good person.” There was no way to convince Holden of anything he didn’t see for himself, but he was going to try, anyway. The throb in his head was lessening, and the nauseous feeling in his gut was dissipating.
“A good person?” It wasn’t really a question, more of Holden trying to process the thought.
“And you should be thanking her. This woman has saved my life. I don’t know how many times. So don’t look at her like that when she wakes up. I’ll already have a hard enough time convincing her to stay without your face messin’ it up.”
“Stay? You want a killer and a thief to stay here? Here with Ellen and Bobby?” All incredulous, like Nathan had given Dracula an all-access pass.
“Yes goddammit, she’s just as much of a killer as you or me. She’s a good damn human being and a soldier before anything else, you ass. So if you can’t keep your face polite, you need to leave.”
Nathan watched as surprise and anger morphed his brother’s features. There was a moment of fight in him, but his shoulders relaxed and he crossed his arms in grudging surrender.
“Fine, I’ll keep my face judgment free, but I ain’t leaving this woman alone. Ain’t she the one that shot you? Twice ?” Holden was suddenly remembering all of Nathan’s bitching about this woman and Nathan was suddenly regretting all the complaining he’d done.
“Yes, she did. Good shots too, both of ‘em.” It came out more admiringly and less defensive than he was aiming for, but he was number one in the Caden Quinn Fan Club and would be the first to admit it.
“Are you serious—how?” Holden cut himself off and took position at the far side of the room, obviously deciding not to question his brother’s insanity.
“She’s the one that shot you in the ass?” Kade grinned, taking up the position Holden had vacated.
“Yep, and the one that kicked your ass.” Nathan took the trouble to insert that little tidbit. The scowl and the accompanying growl on his brother’s face was enough to make that trouble worth it.
“Yeah, what’s it like to be on our level now, oh-demoted-one?” Holden snickered from his side of the room.
“First of all, what have I told you about quoting Mulan at me? If you don’t love it, you don’t get to quote it.” He wasn’t grinning now. “And secondly, the woman—she—you weren’t there! I thought she was, I don’t know… not a fighter. I was not prepared for her to break her own damn arm.”
“Are we talking about when Kade got his ass handed to him?” Maddox appeared in the doorway, permanent wide smile on his face. “I watched that go down—I thought she was gonna kill him.”
“You watched but did nothing to help?” Kade was now outraged and looking all accusatory at Maddox.
“I was piloting the chopper. What’d you want me to do, land it on top of her?” Maddox was still smiling and making a beeline for the window seat.
“I don’t know, something other than giggling with D about it,” Kade returned, only slightly less miffed sounding.
Nathan was feeling marginally better now that there were numbing drugs in his system. It was good to be back. It was good to hear his brothers bickering again. Damn, it was good to be alive.
“Hey, I giggle like a man. ‘Sides Daisy was on the ground exploding shit; there was no giggling on her part.”
“Actually, she did do some giggling when she blew the charges,” Reid chimed in. “Crazy woman.” That was muttered, but not low enough for Nathan to miss.
“Of course, she giggled—she giggles. That’s D.” Maddox was smirking again and turning his attention back to Kade. “But what we were actually discussing is how Kade Savage can no longer lord over us with his undefeated title of two years running. Caden knocked him off that particular high horse.”
“She may have… caught me off guard, but I can still kick all your asses.” Kade was shoving his finger around the room like he was going to take them all on at once.
“No—no fighting.” Reid’s voice was authoritative and stern all at once. “Not until those ribs have healed, at least.”
Maddox let out a laugh at Kade’s scowl, and Holden even cracked a smile.
“Wait, wait—” Reid’s voice sounded again, this time concerned. “I’m Reid, remember?”
A small panicked sound came from behind him. Nathan wrenched himself around, forgetting about his injuries, but had to stop mid-wrench. The pain was somewhat numb, but he felt it now. White hot and tearing into his muscles. Caden was awake and panicking and he was sitting there uselessly. He had to reassure the mercenary before she went into defense mode and annihilated his brothers or hurt herself, but he was too slow.
A scuffle sounded behind him. A pained moan. A feminine grunt and then a body was flung off the bed behind him and landed with a thud on the floor at his feet.
He half expected it to be Reid. But Caden was the body moaning in pain before him. She glanced up at him, eyes wild and breathing heavy. She was battered six ways to Sunday, but she was alive. Alive, because she’d gotten them out. Even when they’d walked into a war zone and he’d been lying down, shot. She’d fought and fought and got them out.
Recognition sparked and the wild in her eyes dimmed a tad.
“Nathan.” She smiled.
An honest to god smile and pushed to her feet. She took position beside his seated figure and subconsciously squared her stance, preparing for an attack.
“Caden, it’s all right. You’re safe here. They’re my brothers.” It was aggravating how slowly his body was moving. “We’re safe.”
“You gonna live?” She was examining his bullet holes and ignoring Reid’s pointed huff.
“Yep. One bullet nicked an artery, but they both went clean through. Reid patched me up.” How could he tell her he brought her home to meet his parents without her bolting?
“Will you sit?” Impatient and concerned, Reid hovered three steps away, looking like he had murder in mind. “How are you burning through the meds so quickly? You should still be out cold. And you’ve pulled out your damn IV again.”
Caden sat.
Beside him.
Her knee touching his knee.
Her thigh touching his thigh.