скачать книгу бесплатно
Gunner flinched. “After the last mission, I knew you’d do something like this.” He glanced over his shoulder. Since Gunner was big, easily six foot three, with wide shoulders, she couldn’t see what he was looking at when he glared behind him.
But she had a pretty good idea.
Colin.
“Any man?” Gunner asked as that hard, dark gaze came back to her. “Is that what you’re—”
Her cheeks felt numb. “Don’t say another word.” She wanted to slug him. “You don’t have the right to say anything to me, to judge me.” She’d wanted Gunner, had let him become too important to her in the past few years, but enough. “Slade is gone. I’ve moved on.” She pushed at him.
Gunner stepped back.
Good. She marched away from him and didn’t look back.
Colin stood as she approached. “I want that dance,” Sydney said, and she pretty much dragged him onto the small floor.
She didn’t know what Gunner’s game was. But he wasn’t controlling her. He didn’t want her. He’d made that clear when she’d tried to kiss him on that case in Texas.
Colin’s hands settled along her hips. She was wearing a pair of jeans, a top that was a little low and strappy sandals that pushed her a bit higher than her normal five-foot-six height. Colin was big, not as tall or muscled as Gunner, and—
“You don’t want to come between us.”
Gunner was there. Again. On the dance floor. And he’d just pulled Colin away from her.
This was insane.
“Sydney, come with me,” Gunner said in that low growl of his.
Colin shook his head. “Look, buddy, I don’t care if you are her friend, you don’t—”
“Is that what I am, Sydney?” Gunner asked, his voice flat. “Your friend?
He had been. After that nightmare two years ago, he’d become her rock. The man she depended on. The one who’d pulled her through her darkest time.
But she wanted him to be more than that.
She wanted more.
He didn’t.
“I don’t know what you are,” she told him. “But you should leave.” Because she was tired of living only for the job. She’d find happiness. Everyone else did. She wanted to have a real home one day. A family.
Not just mission after mission.
Why couldn’t someone be waiting on her when she came home? Someone who loved her? Wanted her?
“You heard the lady,” Colin muttered.
But Gunner wasn’t moving. He had started to give Colin a killing glare.
Colin made the mistake of stepping toward Gunner. Of shoving against his chest. “You need to back off—” Colin began.
Definitely a mistake.
Gunner grabbed that shoving hand and twisted it. Colin’s words choked off, and the dancers around them froze as they realized what was happening.
In less than three seconds, Gunner had Colin on his knees…all from that hold that Gunner had on Colin’s hand. Sydney knew the twist that Gunner was using could be incredibly painful, and if Gunner just pulled a little more, Colin’s bones would snap.
This scene was turning into a nightmare.
“Gunner, let him go!” Sydney grabbed his arm. “You’re making a scene!”
“No, he did that when he shoved me.” But Gunner let the other man go.
Colin scrambled away, eyes wide, cheeks flushed. He headed for the door as fast as he could.
Well, so much for that dance. So much for the whole night. Sydney turned from Gunner and started marching for the door. The plan had been stupid, anyway. As if she was going to find some kind of Prince Charming in a bar like this.
She pushed open the front door, and the night air rushed over her. Sydney took two more steps, then…
She stopped. “Tell me that you aren’t following me home.” Because she knew he was behind her. As a rule, Gunner could move pretty soundlessly. That was one of the reasons he’d been so good during his time as a SEAL sharpshooter. But she could feel him, so she knew he was trailing her.
“We need to talk.”
Fabulous. “I thought there wasn’t anything to say. I mean, you had your chance at Whiskey Ridge…” When she’d ditched her pride and told him that she needed him.
But he’d stayed aloof.
Gunner always held back with her. Always saw the ghost of her fiancé, his half brother, between them.
She knew now that he wasn’t ever going to let that ghost go. She might want Gunner. Want him so badly that her heart had seemed to break when he kept pulling away, but she’d survive his rejection.
She’d survived much worse than not being wanted by Gunner Ortez.
“What do you want from me?” Gunner asked her.
Everything.
Sydney turned toward him. “I want you to look at me and just see a woman. Not a ghost.”
A muscle jerked in his jaw. “You’re pushing me too much.”
She shook her head. “I’m not pushing you at all. You’re the one who came here, to my town. You’re the one who showed up in the bar.” Frustrated, she demanded, “How did you even find me here? Did you follow my GPS location?” All of the EOD agents had trackers installed on their phones. But if he’d used that tracking system…Stalker much. “Now I’m the one walking away.”
Only she didn’t get to walk far. Four steps was all she took. Then Gunner’s hands were on her shoulders. He spun her back around and lifted her up on her tiptoes.
“When I close my eyes, I see your face.”
His words, so gravel-rough, had her heart racing.
“I don’t see a ghost, I just see you.” His eyes were on her mouth. “You’re driving me crazy, taking over every moment of my life.”
She couldn’t breathe. Because what he was saying—that was the way she felt. As if he’d taken over her life.
“I tried to walk away. I tried to be strong.” His head lowered. “But I don’t want you to be with anyone else.”
Sydney didn’t want to be with any other man. “Gunner…”
“There are some lines that if you cross them, you can’t ever go back.”
“I don’t want to go back.” There was nothing in her past to go back to. Only death.
Gunner was life.
“I won’t be able to let you go.”
She wouldn’t let him go. Before Gunner could say anything else, Sydney wrapped her hands around his neck and she pulled his head down toward her.
The kiss wasn’t easy or gentle. Wasn’t the tentative kiss of soon-to-be lovers.
It was hard and deep—consuming. The touch of his lips sent need spiraling through her. Then she was crushed against him. Holding on as tight as she could as he tasted her, and she tasted him, and all of the longing that she’d held inside so tightly broke from her control.
This was Gunner. This wasn’t a dream. This was real.
And there was no going back.
HE SHOULD LET her go. Gunner knew he shouldn’t have followed her to Baton Rouge, but he’d been afraid.
I don’t want to lose her.
Sydney Sloan. The woman he’d wanted since the moment he first met her. Even when she’d been planning to marry his brother, Gunner had wanted her.
They were back at her house. He’d followed her from the bar, feeling the hunger for her burn just beneath his skin.
She stood on the porch now. The swamp waited behind her, and the sound of crickets filled the air.
He was closing in on her. There was still time to pull back, still time to do the right thing.
But he wasn’t sure what was right anymore. Slade was gone, buried in a jungle in South America. Sydney was alive. There, just a few feet away, and wonder of wonders, the woman actually wanted him.
She knew about his darkness. About the sins that marked his soul, but she still wanted him.
He would die for her.
So he followed her up the steps to the home that she’d once loved so much, before her family had passed away and left her alone. She opened the door for him. Light spilled out onto the porch.
Onto her.
There would be no going back.
The wooden porch creaked beneath his feet. Her hand was up, reaching for him, and Gunner was pretty sure he’d had this same dream before. Only then, he’d wakened alone, sweating and tangled in his sheets, with her name on his lips.
Make this good for her. Give her pleasure.
Because he only wanted Sydney to know pleasure. She’d known too much pain in her life.
He crossed the threshold with her. Pushed the door shut behind them.
Her breath came a little too fast, and she shifted from her right foot to her left. He’d been in this house before. It carried her sweet scent, light vanilla, and he knew just where her bedroom waited.
Down the hallway, second door on the right.
Could he make it that far?
“Gunner…”
He loved the way she said his name. Breathless. Eager.
Can’t make it that far. He’d done well to make it out of the street and into her house.
Gunner pulled Sydney against him, breathed in that vanilla scent and locked his hands around her waist. Those jeans had been driving him crazy. “I—I can’t go slow.”
“Good.”
She surprised him. Always.
Then his mouth was on hers. He thrust his tongue past her lips, and she was the sweetest thing he’d ever tasted.
Before, he’d told himself to stay hands-off, but in Mexico, when she’d walked away and hadn’t looked back, he’d realized that she was too important to lose.
Now his hands were most definitely on her.
Her breasts were pressed against his chest. Her hips arched against him. He wanted her naked. He wanted to kiss every inch of her.
And he would. The second time.
The first time—the time that should have been perfect—need was controlling him. Raw lust.
So he stripped her. He couldn’t take his mouth from hers. His hands learned her body and slid over her silken flesh even as he shoved down her jeans.
He heard her kick off the sandals that had made him ache. He would have liked for her to keep them on—another time.
Then they were falling together onto her sofa. He was kissing her neck now, inhaling more of that wonderful scent, even as his hands went between her thighs. He meant to pull away her panties, but his fingers were too rough and the silk tore.
Sydney just laughed.
He loved her laugh.
After Peru, it had taken too long for her laugh to come back.
