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But if Callahan, who loved Mandy with a singleness of mind and heart and soul, could walk away from her to protect her, Cody could do the same with Keira. He could lock away his desire, place it where it wouldn’t put her at risk. Because a man whose emotions governed him grew careless of his surroundings, as he’d already proven. And he couldn’t afford to be careless, not where the team—not where Keira—was concerned.
“You’re right,” he told Callahan eventually, although he had to drag the words out. “Thanks.”
The other man shrugged. “I owed you” was all he said.
Cody started to ask for what, and then he remembered. A long drive in the dead of night with this man at his side, and a promise extracted from him against his will. A promise that he’d take care of Mandy if Callahan didn’t survive that night’s deadly encounter with David Pennington. A promise that would have destroyed Cody because he’d known by then that Mandy would never love him, could never love him as she loved Ryan Callahan. But he had promised.
God had been kind—Callahan had survived, and Cody had been spared the cruelest fate a man could face. Even being shot by Mandy wasn’t as bad as what could have happened to him.
And now there was Keira. He realized with a start that he finally understood where Callahan had been coming from when he’d forced that promise from him. Because if anything happened to him, if Keira was in danger and he wasn’t there to rescue her as he had once before...Cody couldn’t even bear to think of it.
Keira thought she was tough, and maybe she was. She could take care of herself under normal circumstances, maybe even under fire—she’d been a marine after all, same as him. But the New World Militia wasn’t a normal circumstance—not by a long shot. And wanting to protect her had absolutely nothing to do with whether or not she could protect herself.
His right hand clenched as coldness descended on him. Anyone who touched Keira was a dead man.
Chapter 9
Keira dumped the contents of three cans of beef stew and two cans of green beans into a large pot, placed it on a burner of the propane stove and watched it as it heated. Most likely the men wouldn’t care she’d combined the cans, and it was faster this way, less to clean up afterward.
But she wasn’t thinking about the food, even as she stirred the pot. She was thinking about Cody. About his kiss. Kisses, she amended. The one outside that had roused her physically so that she hadn’t cared about anything but having him touch her. And the one in here that had roused such powerful emotions it had wreaked havoc on her heart.
Her body still ached with unrequited desire from both kisses. She hadn’t realized a woman could hurt that way, the way a man could. That her body could need fulfillment and release. And she hadn’t realized how deep the well of her own passion was. Cody had done that to her, had awakened desires that didn’t fit with the accusations thrown at her by back-to-back high-school boyfriends—that she was frigid, sexless. Accusations she’d come to believe and accept about herself. Until now.
Cody’s first kiss had awakened her body. His second kiss had awakened her heart. And while the first kiss had taught her what it meant to want a man, strong and virile, to hold her in his arms and ignite the fire, it was the second kiss she would remember forever.
At first she had tasted his contrition, but that hadn’t lasted long. Then she’d tasted his desire, and it was a potent aphrodisiac, taking her places she’d never dreamed of going. When Cody had kissed her, she’d had a vision of the two of them in the middle of nowhere, nothing but the blue sky above them. Then his golden head blotting out the sun, his vivid blue eyes alight with passion.
When he’d pulled her hips into his and she’d felt him against her softness, she had suddenly wanted to lie down with him looming over her, his lean, muscled body taut against hers. She had wanted to slide her hands across those muscles and make him tremble as he made her tremble. And she had wanted—needed—him inside her, driving for release, both his and hers.
Not sex. Any man could have given her that. She wanted Cody—his smile that melted her heart, as well as his passion that melted the ice. She wanted him to fill the emptiness inside, a place she hadn’t even known existed until he showed her what need was. She’d been that close to completely losing control, not caring where they were or who else was around. Then Ryan Callahan’s yawn had impinged on her consciousness, and she’d been shocked...and dismayed at herself.
