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Craig Cornwell had been a major in Army Intelligence and a traitor. He had been selling secrets to Iraqi terrorists, and when he’d known he would be identified for it, he had arranged for his daughter to be brought to Iraq, believing he could hold her for Chaya’s cooperation in helping him escape.
He couldn’t have known the cell he was tied to had already been targeted and that their headquarters would be taken out so violently.
Natches stared into her face now, paper white, her golden hazel and brown eyes dark with the memories that tore at him as well. And he wanted to howl out in rage, in agony. Because he felt the need to wipe the horror from her. To tear aside that wall she had placed between them.
“I don’t blame you. ” She tried to tear herself from his hold again. “I never blamed you for her death. ”
“You blamed me for saving you instead,” he snapped, fury rising inside him at the thought of losing her like that. “Is that what you wanted for me, Chaya? For us? To have it all end that way?”
And despite his anger, he could only touch her with tenderness. He lifted his free hand, brushed back the hair that fell over her forehead, and he ached.
“There was no us. ”
She only infuriated him with that statement, because he knew better. He’d always known better. From the moment he’d torn into that fucking cell and seen her struggling to drag that dead guard’s clothes on, her eyes swollen shut, lips bloodied, and courage shining in her face, he’d known there was going to be an “us. ” It was just a matter of time.
And later, buried in that hole, waiting on extraction, he shouldn’t have been attracted to her. She had been in shock. She had been hurt and fighting so valiantly to stay conscious. And in such a short time, she had dug her way inside him. Into a place he hadn’t realized existed within the killer he had been shaping himself into.
He’d breathed in her pain when she’d realized her husband had betrayed her to the enemy, that he had betrayed his country and their marriage. And he had soaked in her pain the night she’d lost her child. He’d stroked her trembling body as she’d begged him to hold back the horror of what she had seen. He had taken her, amid both their tears, and the next morning, when he’d awoken, she had been gone.
He released her now, grimacing, feeling his flesh tighten over his muscles, as though something within him stretched dangerously, confined by his own skin and growing impatient.
“I guess there wasn’t, because you were gone the next morning,” he bit out.
“And you were gone that night when I returned,” she snapped back, anger trembling in her voice, anger and something else. A finely threaded emotion that had his gaze sharpening on her pale face. “You didn’t come back. ”
Natches stared back at her, his eyes narrowing. Had she come looking for him when he had believed she was gone?
“I was called in that afternoon for a mission. It was a quick strike; I was flown directly to my drop-off. I returned three days later, and you had left Baghdad,” he told her.
He remembered his rage. He had torn apart his quarters with it, and then he had torn apart the hotel room they had shared. The MPs sent after him hadn’t fared very well either.
As he stared at her now, he remembered all the reasons why he had gone insane over losing her. The lush lips, the stubborn angle of her chin. The way she knew how to smile, the feel of her coming alive against him. He had known all that before the day she had lost little Beth. He’d known it because he had spent two weeks haunting that damned hospital, teasing a kiss out of her, a laugh. Knowing she was married, knowing she was bound to a traitor.
And she had known. She had known, and like a flower opening to the sun, she had slowly begun opening for him.
She shook her head now, her eyes, that deep golden gaze locked with his, the color shifting, shadowed with so much pain. “Timothy said he checked. He was there that morning I went in to finalize custody of Beth’s remains. ”
She crossed her arms over her breasts as though she were huggingthe pain inside herself when all he wanted to do was wipe it from her. “He wanted me to leave immediately to take Beth home, then join DHS. I wanted to talk to you first. ” She shrugged stiffly. “You were gone. He said he checked to see if you were on a mission and you weren’t. ”
Lying bastard. Natches grunted at that. “DHS ordered the mission. They had a line on Nassar Mallah. I went out after him. When I finished and returned, you were gone. ”
Chaya bit her lip as she moved across the room and lifted herself heavily onto one of the stools that sat at the counter. She looked tired; she looked hopeless. And that look tore at his heart.
“Sounds like Timothy. ” Her voice was nearly toneless. “But it didn’t matter, not really. I couldn’t function then, Natches. Not for either of us. ”
God he wanted to hold her now. What the hell was it about this woman? She was inside him, and five years of fighting it hadn’t managed to push her out of his soul.
Was it love? Hell if it felt like anything he had seen out of Dawg and Rowdy. He didn’t feel gentle. He felt like he wanted to devour her from head to toe. He wanted to roll around in oil with her. He wanted to lift her to that counter and spend hours eating the tastiest flesh he’d ever found between a woman’s thighs.
She was hurting, enmeshed in memories that he knew had to be ripping her guts to shreds. The sight of it made him crazy. He would do anything, say anything, to ease her pain, but by God she wasn’t hiding from him anymore.
She held that past between them like a spiked shield, and he’d had enough of it. Five years. He’d let her torment him through endless, aching nights. He’d suffered every nightmare he knew she suffered, and his pain for her sliced through his soul with each memory.
“You’ve had long enough to begin functioning then. ” He had to force himself to stand back from her, to not touch her.
She looked lost, lost and lonely, almost as broken as she had looked the day they told her her husband was the traitor who revealed her to the terrorists who had kidnapped her.
He watched as her shoulders straightened then, her chin lifted. He didn’t know what the hell she had in her mind now, but he knew exactly what she intended to do, and he’d be damned if he would let her.
