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* * *
SUFFOCATING DARKNESS, THE KIND with the blackest shadows, was where fear liked to hide.
The soft voice that sang such sweet songs, the voice that brought love to life during those scary, drowsy moments before sleep, was suddenly ragged and hysterical, almost unrecognizable through the fear.
Even in Mirie’s worst nightmares, all the terrors Stefan and Petre said hid in the shadowy places under her bed had never hinted at this sort of fear that made her want to bury her head beneath the blankets and never come out. Not ever.
This was fear like she had never imagined.
How could she have? Her life was filled with laughter. The soft voice of her mama tinkled with laughter and scattered worries like the courtyard fountain splashed water on the tiles.
She had never, ever heard anyone scream with such fear.
That fear paralyzed Mirie, made her eyes squeeze shut and her hands shake. Choked her. No, that was Nanny, smothering her with knotted old fingers and a bony chest. Nanny’s hissing voice shushed Mirie in the darkness, demanded silence, but Mirie was sure she would never make a sound again, not with Mama’s hysterical pleas in her ears. Desperate, agonized screams.
“Not my babies. Not my babies.”
Tat-tat-tat-tat-tat.
Then silence.
* * *
MIRIE AWOKE. FOR A stunning moment, all she could see was red. Red so violently bright, swelling and dripping, as if the world had erupted in a geyser of blood.
With the breath locked tight in her chest, reality receded, and no matter how hard she tried to grasp it, there was distance between the scene before her eyes and the awareness in her head. She could only feel the rapid-fire thudding of her heart, ready to erupt in another geyser of blood.
Tat-tat-tat-tat-tat.
Her heart throbbed so hard it hurt, trapped with the breath in her chest, a weight crushing everything inside her, pressure so great she would die because she couldn’t breathe.
But there was no death here. No!
One word finally penetrated her awareness, and the vision faded, bleaching the memory to dusty shades of gunmetal and smoke. The way she felt inside.
There was no impending eruption, just the pounding of blood in her ears.
And a long-ago nightmare.
Mirie drew a shuddering breath that dispelled the pressure the tiniest bit. She remembered.
Bunică. Men with guns. The dead priest.
And Drei. She felt his strong body tight around her, his arms holding her securely, the cloying warmth of heat and skin.
The pounding of another heartbeat beneath her cheek. Only his heart beat solid and steady, as if wanting to set the example for her own, reminding her not to panic.
But calm seemed beyond grasp, even though she was so much warmer now. There was no gunfire in the crackling quiet. Nothing to fear in Drei’s arms.
His face rested on the top of her head, so heavy her neck arched beneath the weight. Given the pace of his breathing, she thought he might be dozing.
She would do nothing to disturb him or this moment. Not until she had regained control of herself. The nightmares were no stranger. But she had not had one in a long time. She shouldn’t be surprised to have one now, back in this place of so many memories. A place where she had once had a life.
A life Mirie had once dreamed of, simple, intimate, but filled with so much love.
She should feel something for the loss, shouldn’t she?
She was wrapped nearly naked in a man’s arms. Such an occurrence hadn’t happened since her high-school boyfriend. She remembered the strong warmth of a man’s arms, the intimacy of skin against skin.
Shouldn’t she feel something?
Gratitude. Embarrassment. Awkwardness. Something.
Nothing.
A twig snapped, sending sparks raining over the flames, a swelling of light that made the surrounding darkness darker. Two people in a cave buried beneath a mountain of snow. They could be the only two people alive in the world. They could die here and who would find them before they withered to ash and bone?
Thanks to the media, many would notice her passing, but none would really care. Mirie didn’t even know if Drei would be missed. She had seen no evidence of a life in all these years they’d been together. She was his work, and his life it seemed.
Her heartbeat wouldn’t slow down. Her thoughts raced with what-might-have-beens and what-could-never-bes. Mirie had no patience for self-indulgence. Maybe the adrenaline that had fueled the nightmare had sparked this overwhelming loneliness, or maybe it was simply because Drei held her in his arms.
A man and woman mimicking intimacy.
She willed herself to calm down, but couldn’t grasp the edges of this panic. She was a woman who could lie in a man’s arms, surrounded in the warm cocoon of his hard body, smooth and settled with years of muscle, so unlike the boy in her memory. She remembered.
Drei held her like a man comfortable with a woman in his arms. Not too eager. Not overly impressed. Just easy.
But she only felt alone.
She didn’t want to be this woman, to pass from her life as Bunică had, only with many more years ahead, trudging through day after day, enduring, existing, knowing only duty, and obligation, and emptiness, feeling dead inside.
Until death claimed her for real.
Tat-tat-tat-tat-tat.
The fire sputtered, and Mirie stiffened at the sound. Drei exhaled heavily, a man who didn’t want to be disturbed, but who was attuned to her slightest motion, even in sleep.
Definitely asleep.
His breath fluttered against her ear, a slight burst of warmth she may not have noticed except for the way it caressed such sensitive skin. A velvet touch that reached down deep inside and drew the faintest reply.
A tingle low in her belly.
An echo of something she had forgotten.
She leaned into Drei, not wanting to disturb him yet desperate to know if the sensation was real or her imagination.
That one tiny feeling accomplished what she hadn’t been able to do on her own. Her breathing finally slowed, her pulse stilled, as if every fiber of her focused.
Drei’s breaths came soft and even, as solid as the man himself. But she felt nothing, heard only the crackling fire. Mirie held her breath and leaned in a bit more....
There it was again. A tingle that made her insides hum, a fragile tremor as if someplace deep inside her yawned, shrugging off a long sleep.
More like a coma, actually, but not death.
Not death.
CHAPTER FOUR
DREW WASN’T SURE what awoke him, but he damned sure shouldn’t have been sleeping. The struggle to control his physical reaction to the feel of Mirie pressed against him had worn him out more than battling the snow.
He had wanted to stop time with the feel of her in his arms. But something was off with her. He sensed it, knew it was probably what had awoken him. He didn’t think she was asleep. Her body was too tense, too aware.
Scanning the shadows for any sign of a threat, he found the cave as he had left it, trusted his years of training to alert him to an intrusion. The fire was holding up, so he hadn’t been out for long.
Shifting against the wall, he glanced down at her, dark lashes forming half circles on her pale cheeks, her mouth parted around shallow breaths.
“Are you all right?” he asked automatically.
His voice intruded on the quiet, but her only reply was to nod. She surprised him by sliding her arms around his chest. Repositioning herself, she relaxed a little, but her breath hitched in her throat, an unexpected sound.
Frowning into her hair, Drew resisted the need to interrogate her. She was warm, so any threat of hypothermia was gone. She’d had a tough day, but she would deal with her losses, wouldn’t let him see her fear. That much he knew. If hanging on to him made her feel better right now, then he would find some way to cope.
Not by sleeping.
No, he had to remain stone-cold sober to this assault on his senses. The heat melded their skin together. Her hair tickled his nose with every breath. Her sleek curves unfolded against him so he could feel the length of her soft thighs, the way she fitted into the curve of his body.
She exhaled a sigh, and her mouth shuddered against his skin, soft and yielding. His pulse began to race, rebelling wildly against his best intentions. And they were the very best. Just useless against the feel of her in his arms. A familiar burning started inside, a reaction that was going toe to toe with his discipline.
Drew was having a tough day, too.
He would take armed assassins over facing down this humiliating lack of self-control.
Mirie had no idea she was playing with fire—and not the blaze making this icy cavern habitable, either. And he didn’t want to deal with the consequences of her realizing just how fragile his restraint was around her. He couldn’t afford any change that might jeopardize their relationship. He was her close-protection guard and a U.S. sleeper operative.
Not a man.
So with his jaw clenched tight, he forced himself to focus on making out the cave entrance beyond the firelight, the gray light from the storm beyond. He deliberated how to fashion a makeshift pan to melt snow. They would need water soon, and frozen snow was no option to quench thirst.
But how could he concentrate on anything but the way her breasts molded to his chest, the swelling softness pressed full against him? The skimpy fabric of her bra was no protection.
When she stretched against him, his pulse galvanized. He wanted to thrust off the cloak binding them together. Heightened awareness was making him read so much more into the moment than was possible.
Lust was making him lose his mind. And this was an argument not to ignore his needs the way he too often did. He was a man in the intimate employ of a woman he wanted but couldn’t have. Of course normal relationships were out even if he had wanted one—that was not the life he had chosen—but he never lacked for companionship when he was off duty, taking the occasional leave. They didn’t happen often, but he always tried to make the most of them when they did.
But if he had seen to his own needs, he might be able to resist Mirie now. She sought warmth and comfort, lying here in the arms of someone she should be able to trust, an entirely natural response to their situation. And he should be worthy of her trust. He should shut down reactions that were inappropriate at best, forbidden at worst.
Torture either way.
But Drew’s best intentions meant nothing when Mirie nestled still closer, nestled her face in the hollow of his throat. Not an accidental action, but an intentional one, an inquisitive one that ignited fire in its wake.
One purposeful touch, and the whole world shifted.
The boundaries that had long established their relationship dissolved as she leaned into him, a slight arch of her back that pressed her breasts against his chest and brought her mouth in line with the sensitive skin beneath his ear.
Her breaths came soft and warm against his skin, smooth, silken sighs. Had she noticed the way his every muscle had fossilized? Did she suspect that one touch would shatter his willpower into a million brittle pieces and litter this cave with his best intentions?
Drew didn’t know. He only knew his arms ached with the effort of holding her already. He couldn’t push her away or pull her close, because in this moment he was paralyzed by her vulnerability.
And his need.
* * *
HE TASTED MALE. Mirie wasn’t sure why she was so sure what male tasted like, since she had only tasted one man, and the actual details of long-ago teenage rendezvous had faded in the haze of years. Drei’s skin was the texture of rough velvet, faintly stubbled and redolent with a hint of sweat.
She was so aware of him, of the way his body surrounded hers, generously shared his heat. His strength beckoned her to stretch out against him, melt over the ridges and hollows of his hard muscles. She liked the solidness of him.
He was a man, not a boy.
Loneliness faded beneath this. She felt no embarrassment to be nearly naked in his arms, only awareness of him in a way she had never been before.
The feeling made perfect sense.
Drei felt right because he was right. The only person she could trust.
She had never thought of him as anything but her shadow. He was a fact of life that she had long ago accepted. He was always there and always had been.
She had never considered him as a man.
She’d been a child when he’d shown up. But that had been so long ago. A lifetime. Right now he was a man, and quite a handsome one with his gemstone eyes and chiseled strength. And not so old, either. What had once seemed ancient to a girl was nothing to the woman. Ten years. A decade on the rosary or all of God’s commandments.
How had she missed this? She had looked at him for years, but had never actually seen him until this very moment.
Arching her body lightly, just enough for her thigh to settle a little deeper between his, she tested the feel of her skin against the textured hardness of his, half-afraid he would stop her and demand to know what she was about.
But even worry left her feeling more alive than she had in so long. As the seconds passed, emptiness yielded to daring. It was easy to be bold in this moment. They might be dragged from this cave and shot, their bodies tossed into the gorge. They might slip into a calm death from exposure, locked together forever because the spring thaw never touched these peaks.
This man may yet give his life for her.
Perhaps they would survive, and the general and his men would collect them. They would remind her unnecessarily that the risks she took involved others by default. They would return her to the royal compound, and life would go on, never-ending commitments that blurred days into loneliness. Her whole existence strung along by tiny triumphs after hard-won accomplishments that were never good enough.
One step forward. Two back. Ninety-nine to go.
Once inside her glittering shell, she would return to looking at Drei but never really seeing him.
How could she not have seen him?
He lay so still around her, he might have been carved from marble.... No, nothing as refined. Stone, she decided. Craggy and rugged and enduring like these mountains.
