Page 63 of Long Past Deadly

She lifted her lips, but then kept nibbling around his. “Don’t kiss me in front of your crew ever again.”

Confused, he traced a finger across her cheek. “Why?”

“Because this is what will happen.” She slid a leg around him, and he lifted her into his arms. The heat. God. Up higher, she maneuvered her legs around his waist, pressing close. Achingly hard, he tightened the reigns. Not yet. Not like this.

“What did I miss?” He was still stuck in protecting her, easing her into intimacy. She was claiming.

She left his mouth and kissed his neck, her breaths brushing his skin until he couldn’t draw any of his own.

“I have missed so much.” She pulled back and the emotion in her blue eyes undid him. “You don’t understand. I’ve thought about you all night.”

He held her close and stepped away from the closet door. He sat on the bed, letting her straddle him or move aside if she wished. She stayed wrapped around him.

“Is this what you want?”

“What? You?” She licked her lips and everything in him seized.

Words came hard. “Yes, me.”

She shook her head, then nodded, and he was lost in the a turbulent river. “Lani, there’s time. I’m not going anywhere.”

“Not true. I either act or I lose.” Her fingers toyed with the buttons on his shirt. “And I don’t even know who I am anymore.”

Quaid huffed out a laugh. “You aren’t the only one. You’re the one who convinced me to give up my playboy persona. I don’t know how to live this Quaid either.”

“But does it feel right? Do you want to cover up again?”

“I’m not covering up. You were right. What about you?”

“I like kissing you. I want more. I’m living a half-alive existence buried in violence, and I don’t like it. I mean, not the work part, but I’m turning away from friends, from moments that could bring enjoyment, from closeness with a person I care about. I’ve turned those emotions off, shoved them somewhere, but my heart is fighting me.”

“I understand that. I have been hiding – from people’s expectations to family commitments. I need them to see me, but I won’t show them me. Well, except Mackey and Hunt and Cait. And Elizabeth. They earned it.”

Lani shifted, her hands stroking his shoulders. “What happened in Afghanistan? Can you tell me?”

Quaid tightened his grip, pulling her closer to the ache in his groin. Distraction was desperately needed to talk about this. “I had a friend. His name was Reid. I’d known him since junior high. His father was an ambassador, and their family crossed mine periodically. We went to the same boarding school. He followed me into the CIA – which went over with his family about as well as it did with mine.”

He shut his eyes, struggling against the grief, and stroked Lani’s back. The warmth bleeding through her shirt eased his turmoil. “He went undercover in Afghanistan and disappeared. The CIA set up a mission using SEAL assets and the Joint Command Hospital in Bagram. It was supposed to be a humanitarian mission to help a warlord whose son had been injured, but they added me to their roster and took me to his mountain retreat so I could search for Reid.”

“Hunt’s team?”

“Yes. It’s how we all met. Mackey I already knew from another mission, but I met Hunt and Cait there.”

“I sensed some wartime connection.”

“Well, it wasn’t a simple search. We got ambushed by terrorists, escaped into the mountains, did a hide and seek with weapons and RPGs. It got ugly. I got shot. I’m sitting here today because Cait and Hunt’s medic, Carter, kept me alive until we got to an extraction point. Thirty-six hours in that hellhole from start to finish. Never been more happy to see a medevac. I swear Cait kept her hands in my guts until they dumped me in a hospital surgery.”

“But you didn’t find your friend?”

“I didn’t, no. I ended up in a hospital in Germany. But Hunt kept searching. Finally found him.”

Her hands cupped his face. “He wasn’t alive?”

“No, dead. Hunt found his body.” He shifted his hands to lift Lani to her feet, but she wouldn’t let him. Her mouth settled on his with a gentle sweep over his eyes and his forehead.

“War is hell, whether its true war or the one I fight every day with killers and criminals. We live in a screwed up world, Quaid, and you and I both choose to operate there because we’re the tough ones. We protect.”

He stayed silent, listening with his heart not his head. Because those words were exactly why he’s joined the Marines, why he spent those years in the CIA, and why he chose QM with Mackey. But with this woman, it was more.