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“You’re always misplacing things,” he responded. Then he pulled a small case out of his pocket and handed it to her.
Caesar went on alert. So did Ava. But she didn’t lower her gaze from his and what she saw in his eyes was frightening—a plea, relief, hope?
She was batshit crazy. Cap didn’t do feelings. He’d told her so himself right after he’d shown her video of her father’s corpse on the streets of Moscow and then proceeded to tell her everything General Andrew Madigan the Third had done to betray his country. His family.
“Take them, Ava,” Cap said.
She’d have a chance to hear him now. “How did you know I’d started using these?”
He smiled and said nothing.
The technology hadn’t been available when she’d fled her old life. It hadn’t been until about a year ago that she’d reached out to a former classmate who’d gone to Georgia Tech. He’d developed the earpiece technology that would allow Ava to actually translate sound into words and push those words deep into her destroyed auditory canals. She’d lost her hearing at the age of eighteen. She and Olivia had gone swimming in a small pond behind their house, not knowing that recent rains had allowed a particular bacteria to grow in abundance. Olivia had come away unscathed. Ava had developed a fever, her brain had swelled, and by the time it was all said and done, she’d lost her hearing.
She was lucky to have survived.
The technology her classmate developed had given her a new lease on hearing. The tiny buds hurt though, and sometimes the sounds were too much after such a long period of silence.
“We need to talk, Ava. Please put them in.”
His mouth was beautifully formed, lips full and so damn kissable. She’d loved kissing Cap. Loved feeling him deep inside her body. Hell she’d loved him.
Then he’d cut her so deep she’d run to flee the pain of it. She’d kept running because the people who’d killed her father had made it their mission to take her out. Had Olivia not already been gone, they’d be after her too.
Maybe Olivia was the lucky one. Ava hated herself for thinking that. She missed her twin the way a soldier, someone like John Keegan standing behind Cap right now, would miss a limb.
She took the small case and opened it, The design had changed again in the last year. These appeared smaller but better conformed to an ear canal. Maybe they wouldn’t hurt as bad as the last set.
She pushed them into her ears, flicked the tiny switch on the case and almost went to her knees as sound invaded her mind. Ava was inundated with it—breathing, night birds taking flight, the scrape of boots on the cement.
Cap reached for her, but she folded in on herself, trying to slow her thinking, focus on just one thing as she tried to breathe. She held a hand up, warding him off and just waited for the cacophony to ease.
Finally, it did. She didn’t know how long she’d been bent at the waist and she really didn’t care. Ava wiped her eyes and stood straight, staring at Cap and waiting for what came next.
“Turn it down.” He made a twisting motion with his hand and then pointed to the case in her hand. He’d mouthed the words, mindful of her pain.
She caught on, turning the volume on the case down.
“Can you hear me?” he asked, and oh dear God, she almost went to her knees again!
His voice was as gorgeous as his face. Deep, almost growling, it was velvet over sandpaper and it stroked deep inside Ava, soothing places she hadn’t even known needed it.
She could burrow inside his voice and stay there forever.
“Give her a moment, Cap,” this voice was sultry, seductive and dulcet.
Ava’s gaze arrowed to the woman now standing beside Captain Jacobs. She was taller than Ava, probably five-eight or so and had a body that would stop a Mack truck at a hundred yards. Stacked, in voice and body, she laid a hand on Cap’s shoulder and rubbed, clearly staking a claim and daring Ava with her midnight gaze to dispute it. “Poor thing is tired, and now you’ve given her hearing back. Let’s get her settled and then we can—”
“I don’t need to get settled, and I damn sure am not a poor tired thing,” she addressed the woman and had to stop because the sound of her own voice was so foreign it formed tears in her eyes again.
Cap stepped toward her. Ava stepped back and once again hit a wall made of flesh. Cap’s gaze hardened and he said, “Don’t touch her.”
The man behind her grunted, or snorted, or maybe he chuckled, Ava wasn’t sure. The big guy behind her stepped around and Ava turned her head. A smile broke over her face before she could stop it.
“Holland!”
“I see you, minx. Still causing trouble,” Holland said and his voice rang in her ears. Deeper than Cap’s but not as precious to her.
She swallowed hard and tore her gaze from the man who used to joke with her about being slippery as a minx. There were important things to take care of—namely her safety.
