AllFreeNovel
Share Us
CARTER
“You’re not real, are you?” I stared at her, uncertain I’d heard her correctly. Was I so tired and disoriented I’d also become delusional?
“I guess you should kiss me to find out,” she whispered, and I forgot all over again about the news I needed to share, right along with the mission itself.
I gathered her in my arms, lifted her from the floor and carried her over to the bed. I couldn’t have her now. But fucking hell, I’d have her for just one more minute. The theme of the last two days when she was near me.
Holding myself over her, I felt the heavy weight of the cross slip between us, settling between her breasts. Shifting my eyes to her face, I’d swear it was as if she saw the man I was at thirty looking back at her. The man I’d been before I’d become corrupted by the world.
She saw someone worth saving, and it gave me . . . well, fuck, it gave me hope.
I dipped in and sucked her bottom lip before catching her tongue with my own.
At her moan, I closed my eyes and gave her as much of myself as possible in that kiss.
The parts of me I’d locked away as a kid—seeing my dad hurting from fighting with my mom, all the way to the parts of me that had become broken from fights with Rebecca. All of it. I wordlessly gave it to Diana through that kiss. A kiss that seemed to free something in my chest, hoping she’d understand me in a way I doubted anyone else ever had.
I could love this woman. Maybe I already did. Maybe she was right, and people were destined to be together, not only in this life but in whatever came after.
I ignored the scars of the past, and their horrible timing, trying to manifest into physical pain. Trying to steal me from this moment and this amazing woman.
“Carter,” she whispered.
“Yeah?” I asked, somewhat in a daze, pushing myself up on my forearms to better see her.
“I think I might know how to protect us from an attack.”
Not what I’d been expecting from our kiss. Her words also reminded me I had an update to give her.
Her smile reached her deep blue eyes, excitement lighting her up. “Music is usually what inspires my best ideas, but apparently your kiss just did instead.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.” I rolled to my side, and she turned toward me, resting her elbow on the bed and her cheek on her palm. “What’s on your mind?”
“Newton’s first law of motion to be exact.” Another sweet smile from her, and I had to resist the impulse to lean in and kiss her.
“Oh really?” I arched a brow, curious where my little genius planned to take me next. My heart was still racing, my head and the rest of my body not yet catching up.
“An object in motion stays in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force.”
“I’m familiar with that law.” I reached for her hair, threading my fingers through her locks. Getting turned on by science was a first. Not that I’d yet to “shut down” from our kiss. Talk about an object in motion . . . And I’m smiling again. Probably a goofy one, too. This woman was changing me faster than my heart was beating.
“It came to me because of us. We can’t seem to stop ourselves no matter how much we try to behave. We keep staying in motion, you know?”
That’s one way to put it. I narrowed my eyes. “I definitely get the part where we’re struggling to keep our hands off each other no matter how much we try, even with . . .” Ahh. I finally caught on. Damn, this woman was smart.
“What if we don’t need to recreate the wheel here to stop the attack? With the right cyber minds helping me, I think we just might be able to counteract an attack. At the least, stop the damage an EMP weapon would inflict. Aka, no fallout. No chaos.”
“Cyber minds, huh?”
“Gwen. Maybe Gray’s sister? Anyone else you know and trust would be great, too.”
Some of the President’s people could help out, like Harper Brooks. I’d worked with her not only on an op with the Agency, but to take down Andrew Cutter. It helped she was also married to one of POTUS’s off-the-books SEALs.
“If we combine my expertise with theirs, I think that’s how we stop an attack from causing mass devastation. No need to go hide out in a bunker when all hell breaks loose.”
“Because it won’t break loose,” I finished her line of thought, liking where she was going with this. I let go of her hair, and we both sat upright. I bent my knee and hooked my arm around it. “And Newton’s law can help, huh?”
“Since we can’t exactly create a Faraday shield to enclose around cities, we need to stop the pulse at the source,” she explained, eyes wide, clearly invigorated and energized. “We need to create an unbalanced force to stop the motion from happening. And by motion, I mean the electromagnetic pulse. Electromagnets only work when an electric current is turned on. We need to find a way to jam the signal so it can never transmit.”
