The Unwanted

wearing his jeans. Their breathing had calmed, but her heart was still racing along and hearing him say that wasn’t exactly going to bring about calming thoughts, either.

Destin popped one eye open and stared up at Caleb. He pushed up onto his elbow, peering down at her.

Her head, her heart, her soul, all of her felt too full of him.

Something niggled and tugged at her but she suspected if she looked at it too hard just then, she’d be pissed. Instead, she sighed. “You’ve been holding back secrets, babe.”

The tip of his finger stroked down her nose. “You weren’t ready to hear them.”

Part of her wanted to argue with him. He’d been feeling everything she felt, suffering everything she suffered…and she hadn’t known. It didn’t matter that she wasn’t ready. She should have been. This was the man she loved and she should be able to cope with whatever he had to cope with.

A sharp tug on her hair had her opening her eyes to glare at him. “Hey!”

He cocked a brow at her. “You were already coping with it…you lived with it, remember?” Then he sighed and sat up, skimming a hand back over his hair. “I caught the residual while you were making a connection and I dealt with it. I didn’t want to make it worse for you than it already was.”

“So what changed?” she asked quietly.

“We did.” He glanced back at her and she saw the truth of that in his face. He was still so painfully gorgeous it hurt to look at him, but there was something different about his face. Not just that he was older, or harder.

It was more. He looked more level. Not so closed off, despite what she’d thought when she’d first seen him in the office just days earlier.

As for her?

Yeah. She’d definitely changed. Swallowing the knot in her throat, she asked softly, “And how do we handle the jobs and stuff? You work for the FBI. I work for Oz.”

He shifted in the bed and covered her knee with his hand. “It’s early yet, we can figure that out as we go. All that matters now is you…you’re the one for me. The one, the only.”

His words made her heart shudder in her chest…shudder. Quiver, roll over and just…sigh. “Caleb,” she whispered. Laying a hand on his cheek, she leaned over and pressed her brow to his.

“The only,” he said again, his voice soft and gentle. “All that matters. Everything else is just noise. As for a job? I can always quit and freelance for Oz. Or you can think about going freelance for the Bureau.”

“Shit.” Passing a hand over the back of her mouth, she tried to get her heart back into its normal rhythm. “Yeah. Me, back in the Bureau. Like that would happen. After the way I fucked up with them? They don’t want me back.”

He bent down and pressed his lips to her thigh. “Jones sort of runs his own ship. If he thinks you’d be good to have around, he’ll pull strings, move heaven and hell to get you in. If that’s what you want.”

“I want you.” She stroked her hand over his hair. “That’s all I know for sure.”

“Then the rest we’ll work out.” He lifted up and pressed his lips to her neck. “We’ll deal with the details later. Is that good enough?”

“Hell yes. Now…” She shifted around and pushed him onto his back. “I think we’ve got five years of time to make up for. And we don’t really have to check out just yet…right?”

He was grinning as she bent down and covered his mouth with hers. “Absolutely.”

Author’s Note

According to RAINN (Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network), there is a sexual assault every two minutes in the U.S. Almost half of the victims are under eighteen. Eighty percent are under the age of thirty. Fifty percent of sexual assaults are not reported to the police and ninety-seven percent of rapists will never spend a day in jail.

Two-thirds of assaults are committed by somebody the victim knows. Almost forty percent of the assaults are committed by friends or acquaintances.

Drug-facilitated sexual assault remains common. Drugs like GBL can be slipped into a strong-tasting drink and the victim may act normally, i.e., they might not look drunk or act out of it, but they won’t remember anything that happened while the drug was in their system. It’s metabolized fast and will leave body within twenty-four hours.

Rape doesn’t happen to “other” people. It happens to people in all walks of life.

Learn more at www.rainn.org.

About the Author

Shiloh Walker has been writing since she was a kid. She fell in love with vampires with the book Bunnicula and has worked her way up to the more…ah…serious works of fiction. She loves reading and writing just about every kind of romance. Once upon a time she worked as a nurse, but now she writes full-time and lives with her family in the Midwest. She writes romantic suspense and paranormal romance, and urban fantasy under the name J.C. Daniels. For more about Shiloh Walker, please visit her website www.shilohwalker.com or join her newsletter shilohwalker.fanbridge.com. Also, check her out on Facebook and Twitter.