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“You think you’re going to have any difficulty lying to one vampire?” Logan asked.
“If you’d ever met Sig, you wouldn’t have to ask. ”
“Come a time you feel you’re no longer safe, you make the call and we’ll extract you. ”
I laughed, my first real non-crazed laugh since I’d been free, and the sound was so unfamiliar to me I almost jumped. “Logan, with all due respect to you, I’m not a double agent. You need me for intel on all the things that go bump in the night, fine, I’ll help you. But I’m not giving anyone up, and I’m not telling you anything I don’t feel comfortable sharing. I appreciate what the FBI did for me, and whatever part the military played, I’m grateful to you too, but you don’t understand the first damned thing about vampires. So here’s my first bit of insider information for you. ”
“What’s that?”
“The moment I no longer feel protected by my own council, I’m already dead. Because that’s the only way I get out of there. Understand?”
“Yes, Ms. McQueen. I believe I do. ”
“Good. Now bring me Desmond Alvarez. ”
They left, Tyler offering me a brotherly pat on the shoulder before taking his exit, and I resumed pacing the room. Logan had told me Desmond was in a room next door, yet the time between their exit and his arrival felt interminable.
When the door reopened, I froze in my tracks, staring at the entry like a frightened deer stares at an oncoming car, knowing what was inevitable but unable to move out of its way.
He wore a similarly shocked expression, like he hadn’t believed he’d get to see me when they brought him into the room.
“Secret?”
I’d missed him. I thought I’d understood the depth to which I could long for someone, but seeing him in front of me told me I had no idea. My hands trembled to touch him, and a hideous-sounding sob wrested free of my throat.
I’d been drowning, a
nd he was the oxygen I hadn’t known I needed.
“Des—”
He didn’t give me an opportunity to finish saying his name. In one moment he was filling the doorway with his body, and in the next I was in his arms. He lifted me full off the floor and supported my weight easily with a hand on either thigh, latching me to him.
I wrapped my arms around his neck, clinging to him like he was the last refuge on an angry sea. When he kissed me, I felt years of my life being restored. His kiss and its sweet-and-sour limey tang was the last piece of the puzzle falling into place.
His lips tasted salty, and when I pulled my face back, tears were streaming down his cheeks. I kissed each one, reveling in the joy that brought rather than the horrible anguish that had been causing mine.
“I thought…” He drifted off when he began placing soft kisses on my cheeks and nose before finding my mouth and seizing it in a way that left me clinging to him and gasping for air. His kiss was ferocious and claiming, burdened with need. I knew what he’d thought because I’d seen the look on his face once before when he believed I was dying.
He’d thought the same thing I had about Holden.
Desmond had believed he was never going to see me alive again.
I touched his face, letting my fingers memorize every line and groove, savoring the rough tug of his short beard on my palms. When I’d left he’d had a bit of stubble, but it had evidently been quite some time since he had bothered with a razor.
“I like your beard,” I mumbled, scratching it with my fingernails.
He laughed lightly and pressed his forehead against my sternum, where his laughter vanished into tears. When he righted himself and put me on the floor, his cheeks were stained from crying, but I didn’t think I could recall ever seeing him so damned happy.
“They wouldn’t tell me anything. I wasn’t allowed to see you, and no one would explain what had happened to you. What happened?”
The idea of telling my story again so soon after the major’s rigorous debriefing was more than I could bear. I shook my head and placed a hand on his chest over his heart. “Not now. ”
“Tell me something. ”
“How much do you know?”
“The last time I spoke to you was two weeks ago when you were flying to San Francisco. ” He guided me to the chair Logan had previously been sitting in, then took Tyler’s former seat for himself. “I waited about two days since I knew you were on council business and I didn’t want to interrupt anything at the wrong time, but when you hadn’t called me in over forty-eight hours, I started to worry. I tried calling you, and I tried calling Holden since I knew he was with you, but neither of you were answering. So I called Lucas. ”
