“No, I didn't kidnap you. Do you remember getting home?”
Dillon scoffed incredulously, still trying to wiggle out from underneath Elka, but the dog was happy to be right where she was. “Of course I remember getting home.”
“Anything after that?” Nasa snapped his fingers, and to Dillon's horror, Elka got up and slid right between Nasa's spread knees to snuggle up to him like he was her new best friend.
It seriously messed with her head to see Nasa's huge hands rubbing all over Elka's slick coat and getting happy doggie grumbles when he dug into a good spot.
“What the fuck did you do to my dog?”
A weak smile curled at the corner of Nasa's mouth, drawing attention to the thick, pouty curve of his bottom lip, and the kissable thinner upper curve.
“We've had a few days to get to know one another.”
“A few days?” She half-shrieked, causing Elka to lose the love-struck look she had going for Nasa and scramble back up on the bed to plaster herself on top of Dillon, as though she were about to have a panic attack.
Nasa took a deep breath and sat up with a weary sigh as he pulled his hand down across his face.
It freaked her out more than Dillon cared to admit, seeing that big hand tremble.
“You drove back to your place on Wednesday. It's Friday now, just past eight in the morning. You wouldn't stay at the compound, so Top put some guys we work with on your tail just to make sure nothing happened to you.”
Dillon opened her mouth to impress upon Nasa how much that displeased her—with much cursing involved—but stopped as memories fired across her brain with all the gentleness of shotgun blasts.
The smell of cigarettes… blue octopus… the coppery tang of blood… a bright red splash across the white paint of her house…
“Easy, Tiger Lily, you're alright. You're safe.” Nasa shoved Elka to her other side and curved his hands over Dillon's shoulders.
He stroked her arms from shoulder to elbow, speaking to her in a deep, commanding voice that at any other time might have instilled a sense of calm.
Right now, she was too far gone to focus on his face instead of the nightmarish memories that boiled and oozed like poison inside of her.
A sickening wave of heat rolled through her, followed by an ice cold rush that made sweat pop out on her upper lip.
“Bathroom. Now.”
Nasa didn't ask questions. He scooped her up and practically flew across the room, out into the hallway, and into a bathroom.
She was too busy being hunched face first over the toilet to notice how gentle he'd been. Too involved with heaving and choking, as nothing but bile came up, to realize he hadn't left her.
When she could breathe again, Dillon let herself rest there, hugging the damn toilet with tears dripping off her lashes. She wanted to be far away from all this bullshit.
To rewind the clock to the day before Ghost had invaded her home.
To have said yes to the transport job instead of letting one of the others handle it.
If she'd gone on that trip, she wouldn't have been home for Ghost to find.
Nasa's hand settled on her back, and without thinking, she hollowed her spine in order to evade his touch.
“Dillon—”
“Don't,” she hissed, both mortified and extremely pissed off, her voice echoing in the damn toilet bowl. “Don't touch me.”
She was so weak she could barely lift her own arm up to flush the toilet before pushing herself backward, the tile squealing and dragging against her bare skin until she hit the far wall.
Dillon sat there with her knees drawn up, resting her head back with her eyes closed, desperate to wake herself up from this terrible dream.
“I understand why you're struggling right now, but I promise you, you're safe here. You're safe with me.”
There was kindness in what Nasa said to her. Dillon heard it. She understood it. Part of her was even grateful for it, but knowing he'd seen her in her wakest, vulnerable state made her react in the same way a cornered animal would.
“You know nothing about me,” Dillon snapped coldly, opening her eyes to glare at him with all the impotent rage she felt inside. “You have no idea what I'm dealing with or how I'm struggling.”
Dillon expected Nasa to get up and walk out, but to her extreme discomfort, he settled in with his back against the vanity.
He drew his feet up to loosely hug his splayed knees, his fingers laced together, meeting her gaze without flinching.
Banked behind a wall of extreme patience, she could see the rage that brightened the deep blue of his eyes.
“I was twenty years old when I went to work for DARPA. Programed a fuck ton of projects for weapon defense systems and strategic military targeting.
"I was running my research division by the time I was twenty-four, and six months later, I was in a federal prison, accused of selling classified research to the Chinese to the tune of a hundred million dollars.”
Dillon knew better than to judge people based on the way they looked, but if someone had asked her to guess what Nasa did for a living, she would have bought ex-con in a biker gang easily.
Computer programmer and defense system creator for the government would have probably been at the very bottom of the list, for the same reasons people would never guess she’d once been on a fast track to work for the United Nations as a translator, instead of the paranoid, safe-house building basket case she was today.
“I waited for two years to be exonerated, and after I got out—not because I was proven innocent but because they didn't have actual evidence to prove my guilt—I was threatened with execution
