“Oh,” he said. “I feel you, all right.”
She made an impatient gesture with her free hand, indicating the tangle of their bodies; the other still pressed the pendant to his skin. “Not
He shook his head. “No tattling. Unless you want to tattle on yourself.”
She looked down at them, at their intersecting bodies, and then back to him. “I’ll just let you guess.”
He laughed, a mere sharp huff of air. “
Gwen could have slapped herself. She pried her foot free—no matter that it had been very pleasantly cradled just where his thigh met his butt—and pushed herself up, pressing the pendant down in emphasis before she gingerly lifted her hand. “Okay? That do you?”
She hadn’t expected his reaction to be moderately cross. “Hell. Now
“Take it how you like,” she said, realizing suddenly that she meant it. So much emotional intimacy in this past day, beyond what any two strangers could expect of one another and twining with the fleeting moments of mutual want and response and no little amount of aching.
No coincidence that they were here together, this place, this time. No doubt what they’d so suddenly come to mean to one another—or the trust they’d each earned. The only question was how long it would all last.
Gwen found herself not caring.
And she shoulda been in Vegas.
“Stay there,” she said. “I’ll get a washcloth for us, and we’ll see what we can figure out about those cuffs. I happen to have the key.”
“I told you to
Gwen’s voice came insistent in his ear, sounding both irritated and worried. Her hands worked gently at his arm—patting, wrapping. The sound of ripping tape. The snatch of something at the hair on his forearm.
“Sorry,” she murmured. “But
He remembered it then. The blade, whispering so subtly in his mind, barely filtering through the effect of the pendant. Urging him, nudging him...pushing him to remove the pendant.
“Ow,” he said, not opening his eyes.
“Baby,” she told him. “You fainted.”
A featherlight tight brushed across his brow; he belatedly recognized lips and wished for them back when they’d gone. “Go to sleep,” she said. “It won’t happen again.”
He did, for the moment, believe her.
Gwen’s voice came tired in his ear—something reassuring, which was all that mattered for the moment. Her hands moved gently over his skin—damp cloth, healing touch. His arms throbbed; his body ached.
“Just patching you up again,” she said. “Please excuse me if I don’t even try to resist enjoying it. The touching part, anyway. Not the bandaging part.”
“Ow,” he said.
“Baby,” she told him. “You had already fainted.”
Her fingers trailed down his side, unexpectedly proprietary. “Go back to sleep,” she said, as if she was actually the boss of him. “You’re safe for now.”
He did, for the moment, believe her.
Something snored in Mac’s ear.
A quiet, girly snore, there and gone again.
Mac opened his eyes. Saw, to his relief, not the filthy carpet in the nighttime darkness, but instead the more distant ceiling.
In the dark. The almost complete darkness, obscuring every fine detail—just as it should but as he barely remembered it ever doing.
The pieces fell into place. He was on the floor of their hotel room, on his back—one hand still cuffed to the bed, his head on a pillow, his shirt gone, a blanket soft against his skin.
His free arm, pretty much asleep, curved around Gwen as she used his shoulder for a pillow and tickled the side of his face with her magnificent hair. She draped over him, her leg resting over his, her arm heavy on his chest, her hand resting directly over the faintly raised tattoo over his heart.
Her breath tickled his skin.
His arms still throbbed; his body still ached. The blade hadn’t worked on it, not any of it. A glance at his cuffed arm showed him the pendant, duct-taped to his lower arm above the bandaging there. Hot pink even in the darkness.
Slow as he was, he could put it together. She’d gone out, gotten supplies, cleaned him up again— proprietary hands—and trusted him just enough to uncuff one arm. Leaving him to heal the old-fashioned way— slowly. Without interference. Without any price to pay.
Of that much he was sure. As soon as he lost contact with the pendant—or it failed on its own—the blade would come roaring back, exacting its price for these moments of freedom.
Freedom.
His mind, his own. His thoughts, his own. His feelings...
His own.
His body...
That, he thought, currently belonged to Gwen.
“Mmm,” she said, barely waking, rubbing her cheek against his bare skin.
Oh, hell yeah. All Gwen’s.
He found himself grinning.
She lifted her head; he thought he discerned a frown. A reach, a stretch, a soft grunt, all during which she managed to push herself quite firmly against him, and a light clicked on. Mac made a sound of protest, squinting away, but figured it out quickly enough—the inadequate little dresser lamp, relocated here to the floor.
She said, “Was that a
He said, “Come here,” and trapped her leg beneath his own.
“Me?” she asked, waking fast, brow lifted—some sarcasm there. Challenging him.
He thought back over it—the moment in front of the hotel, the night of battle and illness, the day crammed with such intensities of vulnerability and trust that might not come in a decade of partnership. “Let me,” he said, pulling her close with that one numbed arm, abruptly enough so she lost all her breath in a short laugh, “be perfectly clear.”
She let herself fall on top of him—hesitating there for a moment, pressing against him from top to bottom and tangled along the way. When her smile came again, it was slow. “Yeah,” she said, moving subtly against him—not so subtle that it didn’t inspire an instant catch of his breath, a tremble of return thrust. “This was pretty much there from the start, wasn’t it?”
Probably he was supposed to say words. He didn’t have them. She took his face in her hands—thumbs stroking the stubble of the past day, mouth coming down on his, hair tumbling free to surround them. Her leg twined between his thighs, her shirt crept up to give him soft skin, her breasts pressed against his chest with nipples sprung hard. One hand left his face to creep down his chest, lying flat against his stomach and reaching lower.
