Night Rescuer

Chapter 12

Melina curled up on her side, failing to get comfortable on the hard ground. She missed John’s shoulder. Heck, she missed him. How long she lay there listening to the sounds of the night, she didn’t know. But it was a long time. Eventually, fatigue and the altitude caught up with her and her eyes drifted closed.

She dreamed of hangmen’s nooses and bleak, gray-blue eyes staring straight through her. She woke up with tears on her cheeks. Damn him! Why wouldn’t he reconsider his decision to kill himself? Didn’t he care enough about her not to rake her over the emotional coals like this? She raged silently into the night, crying and screaming inside her mind. It accomplished nothing except making her eyes puffy and her heart sore. He was being selfish and immature and whatever the male equivalent of a drama queen was! If he were here right now, she’d smack him around and tell him to quit acting like some damned martyr. Didn’t he understand that she needed him?

Eventually, her fury gave way to helplessness. There wasn’t a blessed thing she could do to talk him out of his decision to kill himself. It was a stark reminder of the solitary journey life ultimately could be. She had to walk her path and he had to walk his. She had no more control over him at the end of the day than he had over her. But then, she’d hoped what they were building between them wasn’t about control. She’d hoped it was about something deeper. Something more enduring. Something like…love.

She snorted into the sweatshirt serving as her pillow at that one. Love. Right. He loved her a hell of a lot if he was still determined to kill himself after all they’d shared with each other. If he was really that blind, maybe she was better off without him anyway.

But it was a bitter pill to swallow.

Who’d have guessed? She hadn’t allowed herself to care for someone in years, and when she finally did, she picked a man so absorbed in his own misery he couldn’t see past the end of his sorry nose. But then, maybe that was the point. Maybe she’d allowed herself to have feelings for him because there was no chance of him reciprocating her feelings for her. He was utterly safe for her to care about.

Okay, that was messed up. She was messed up.

Not like that was any big newsflash. After all, she was out here with the intent to trade her life for those of her parents and brother. At least there was a certain nobility to her sacrifice.

She jolted awake sometime later, chilled to the bone and panicked. Something was pressing over her mouth, cutting off her breathing. She grabbed for the hand, clawing frantically at it.

“Easy, darlin’,” John breathed from very nearby.

The cobwebs cleared from her brain, albeit sluggishly. That had been possibly the worst night’s sleep-or lack of it-in her entire life. She stared up at him and he cocked a questioning eyebrow at her. She nodded from beneath his hand. Yes, she was all here, now. She wouldn’t scream.

He lifted his hand away from her mouth, cautiously.

She mouthed, “Can we talk?”

“We can whisper,” he whispered.

“Well? Did you see them? Are they all right? How soon can we go get my family?”

“I saw them briefly. They were asleep under blankets, so I didn’t see much about their condition. But they didn’t look tortured.”

She flinched. How did tortured people look anyway? She supposed they would be bruised and maybe bloody. They must get a really haunted look in their eyes, too. The idea of her parents looking like that nearly made her choke.

“Hey, they’re alive,” John interrupted as a panic attack threatened to take hold of her. The blunt observation shocked some sense back into her. There was that. They were alive. Something to be thankful for.

“How are we going to get them out?”

He exhaled slowly. “About that…”

Her breath caught at the grim tone in his voice. This wasn’t going to be good news.

“It’s gonna be tough. Huayar’s people are good. Very good. Well armed. Well deployed.”

“What’s the plan now?” she asked grimly.

“First order of business-lie down and go back to sleep. We’re probably gonna have a long night tomorrow.”

Go back to sleep! He had to be kidding. But surprisingly enough, when he wedged himself in beside her in the tight space and pulled her into her usual position plastered to his side, she actually did fall back asleep reasonably quickly. She must be more exhausted than she’d realized. But then, emotional roller coasters did that to her. It was part of why she’d steadfastly refused to ride them for all these years. She should’ve known better. But no. She’d hopped on this runaway thrill ride of her own volition with full knowledge of what a colossal wreck it would turn out to be.

For a final time, Melina woke up, this time of her volition and in her own good time. John lay beside her as usual, his arm holding her close against his side and one of his thighs entangled with hers. It was how they usually slept-like they couldn’t get enough of one another.

To wake up beside him like this every morning, for a lifetime of mornings, now that would be heaven…strike that thought. Not happening.

Awareness that this was probably the last time she would ever wake up like this, his heart beating solidly beneath her ear, sent tears scalding down her cheeks. John shifted beneath her and she held back her sobs by force, refusing to give in to the grief. Not yet. There’d be time for that later.

But then his lips moved in her hair, and she was lost. Tears streamed down her face as she rolled over and wrapped her arms around his neck, burying her face in the crook of his shoulder.

“Hey, what’s this?” he murmured.

“Don’t ask,” she mumbled. She didn’t need him telling her not to care about him and to get over it. He was killing himself and that was that.

His arms wrapped around her with a depth of tenderness beyond anything she’d ever felt from him before. “Sweetheart. Don’t tear yourself up over me. I’m not worth it.”

She raised her head, gazing at him blearily. “So help me, John. If you say something like that to me one more time, I’m going to kick your ass.”

His eyebrows shot up and a startled chuckle rumbled in his chest beneath her. “Well, okay then.”

She glared at him for added emphasis.

He pressed his hand to the back of her head, drawing her down to him for a kiss so sweet it all but melted her innards. She sipped at him delicately, savoring the faint remnant of toothpaste on his breath. How could a guy who was about to die take time to brush his teeth before bed? The paradoxes of this man drove her crazy!

His palms cupped her cheeks, his fingertips sliding into her hair and drawing her head away from him fractionally. “Thanks,” he murmured.

“For what?”

“For caring about me.”

“I more than care for-” She broke off. She was not going there. She was not making any grand declarations of her feelings to a man who’d throw them away along with his life.

“Aww, baby. I really am a bastard, aren’t I?” He drew her close and then gently rolled over, reversing their positions. Slowly, he slid down her body, kissing his way lower, divesting her of her clothes and loving her with hands, and mouth and skin. At one point, he laid his head on her breast, and the two of them just breathed together. Nothing more. Just sharing the most basic act of life, their rib cages rising and falling in perfect synchronicity.

And then his body joined to hers seamlessly, pressing deep within her. Her pulse synched with his, and as he began to move inside her, her hips rose to meet him, finding and matching his rhythm as naturally and perfectly as their breathing.

Their lovemaking was achingly slow, each touch, each look, each caress savored as a precious gift between them. And through it all, she gazed up into his storm-tossed gaze, reading his heart in his eyes all the while. He cared for her, too. Maybe even loved her a little.

The crescendo of their sex built gradually in his eyes, darkening and intensifying until she was looking into the throat of a tornado. His turbulent gaze whirled her up and out of herself, pulling her along with him into a place of air, and light and infinite possibility. A place where they would both live forever and all their cares and woes were