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Aurora looks up at me through the gorgeous red hair tumbled across her sharp green eyes. Goddamn did I fall hard for her all those years ago. She was so damn beautiful, and so good. But she was also so untouchable, and nothing I could even get close to. She was Sienna’s best friend, for fuck’s sake. She was off limits.
But that didn’t stop me from wanting her. It never stopped me from craving her above anything else. And it did nothing to slow me from falling in love with her. Years later, none of that has changed. In fact, it’s only gotten stronger.
“How?” She whispers. “How are you… how are you alive?” She says it with disbelief in her voice. It’s as if even in my arms, looking right at me, she still can’t trust that I’m real. I can’t really blame her, but she better believe I’m real. I’m real, she’s really in my arms, and I’m really never letting go this time.
“You,” I hiss. My hands grip her tightly. My muscles clench, and my very skin burns with the need for her. I’ve been hard all damn night imagining this moment, and now that it’s here, I’m even harder. “I’m alive because of you, Aurora,” I growl.
She stares at me in disbelief. Her face is flushed pink, and those beautiful green eyes shine bright. “Me?”
I nod, and my grip tightens on her. “You.”
It’s a little bit bigger of a story than that, obviously. But she’s the heart of it. She’s the rock that I clung to all this time. A little over a year ago, my buddy Luke and I were in a convoy driving through warlord territory in Turkmenistan near the Iran border. We were working for a private security group at the time when we got hit with an ambush; roadside IEDs, rockets, all of it.
The whole squad was killed but me, or so I thought at the time. I woke up hours later in the burning wreckage of a Humvee with a gun in my face. The Jihad Brotherhood, run by a real piece of work named Hasaan Bin Hadim, found me. They put me in chains and hauled me back to their hideout. I think the plan was to kill me on camera for some dumbass death to America bullshit. But when they figured out I spoke some decent Arabic and some passable Kurdish, they held off.
“Carter, I… I don’t understand,” she gasps.
“Luke isn’t the only one who made it out of that ambush,” I grunt. “Though I thought he was dead too until a month ago. A terror group called the Jihad Brotherhood found me after the attack and took me prisoner. I could speak Arabic, which kept me alive at first. I was also carrying our squad’s communication equipment when we got hit, so they thought I was the tech brains of the group.” I smile grimly. “I wasn’t about to tell them otherwise if it was going to keep me alive.”
But language skills and computers ain’t the only thing they found. I’m not telling her this part, because I don’t want to scare her. But when they put me to work as their new tech guy, the threat was the picture they found in my flak jacket. I carried Aurora’s picture around with me everywhere over there. Not even Luke knew, but she was always there, right next to my heart. The fuckers found it and figured out who she was.
They used that knowledge to bind me. The threat was always that she’d be hurt somehow if I ran or disobeyed. So for the last year, I’ve been playing tech support for one of the world’s most deadly terror groups. But not a day went by when I wasn’t thinking of Aurora.
“How did you get out?” she gasps. Her hands grip my arms, like she’s finally wrapping her head around me actually being real and holding her. “Did they let you go?”
I smile grimly. “Not willingly.” I could explain that I used my position as technology guru to follow her online. How I watched her from across the world, and how I used the hacking tools at my disposal to see that she’s joined a goddamn forum where girls sold their first times for money. I didn’t judge. I knew how desperate she and her mom were. But I also knew I had to get the fuck out and get to her. Or I’d lose her entirely.
I could also tell Aurora about shooting my way out and killing them all. But I also wonder if maybe I never will, because I don’t know if she needs to know about shit like that. “What matters is, I’m out, and I’m back.” I look into her beautiful eyes and take a slow breath. “And now, I’ve got you.”
Aurora blushes shyly. It only gets me harder and makes my pulse thump faster. She looks away with a frown. “Carter, what are you doing here? At this address? I have to tell you something…” She closes her eyes tightly. “I’m here—”
“I’m ParkAvePlayboyX, Aurora,” I say gently. I reach up to cup her face with both of my hands, and I look into her eyes. “I’ve watched you for so damn long, angel,” I whisper. “And no one else was going to get their goddamn hands on you.No one.” I grind my teeth. Aurora gasps when my hand drops to her waist to pull her tight against my body.
“I’ve waited years for you, Aurora,” I growl. “And you’re finally, finally mine.” I kiss her lips for the very first time, and I finally know I’m home.
3
Aurora
It’slike a daydream come to life. Kissing Carter Holloway is something I’ve literally fantasized about for years, and it’s actually really happening. His mouth burns hotly to mine, and I open my lips for him. I moan and push into him on autopilot. It’s like the fantasy is playing out around me, and I’m reacting like I have in my dreams a million times.
He slams the door shut behind me and then pushes me against it. I gasp and tremble when his big hands grip my waist tightly. I’ve dreamed of kissing Carter since before I should have been. And now that it’s real and actually happening? It’sbetterthan the fantasy. It blows the fantasy out of the water. His kiss is hard and demanding, and his hands hold me like I belong to him. My brain is still rushing to catch up with what the hell is happening right now. But my heart is already there, and that’s what matters.
Carter pulls away with a groan, and I gasp for air. My pulse is running wild as I look into his gorgeous blue eyes. “How?” I gasp. “If they didn’t let you go, were you rescued?”
“In a way,” he growls. “But I got out myself.”
“But this apartment?” I frown. “And it’s been you that I’ve been messaging with?” He clenches his jaw and nods somberly. I’m still in dreamland, but suddenly the dots start to connect, and I start to frown. “How long?” I say icily.
His brow furrows, and I know he knows what I mean. “Aurora…”
“How long?” I snap. “Carter how fucking have you been back from the dead without fucking telling people?! Without telling me?!”
“I couldn’t,” he hisses. His teeth grind, and he looks away. There’s a heavy shadow on his face, and I immediately regret snapping at him. “Fuck, Aurora. Of course, I wanted to tell you! When I shot my way out of there—”
My eyes widen, and he closes his eyes. “Forget I said that.”
“You what?!”
