Fatal Truth: Shadow Force International (25 page)

He was powerful and definitely in control. All the potential she’d believed the future held now seemed out of reach. She was hiding in a safe house, afraid to go out in public, and no longer able to barter on her looks or her fame.

Yet, sitting there with Coldplay, she felt almost relieved. Happy. She had the potential now to do something really important—reveal the truth about the man in the Oval Office.

No more secrets.
She wasn’t keeping her mouth shut anymore.

“I’m about to do something prohibited by my contract,” she said, not giving a damn.

He gave her a questioning look, but he was trained to make educated guesses. Outthink his enemy. He was wary, like always, but almost…anticipating. “And what is that?”

Before she could change her mind, she leaned forward. “We’ll blame it on the wine.”

Tilting her head, she gently touched his lips with hers. Surprisingly, he didn’t back away.

His lips were warm and firm and she felt him suck in his breath. Closing her eyes, she kissed him again, lingering, sliding her lips to the corner of his mouth and sneaking her tongue out to taste him.

He moaned.

It was so faint, she almost didn’t hear it. But he didn’t touch her, didn’t draw her close and deepen the kiss. He simply sat there.

Alrighty then.

Savanna sat back, then shot to her feet and looked down at his broad shoulders and his delicious mouth. His eyes didn’t rise to meet hers and she felt ridiculously embarrassed.

She wanted more but he didn’t. He probably got this all the time—women throwing themselves at him—even if she was his first protection case.

“I’m going to go to bed now.” She put her head down. The hollowness was back and it wasn’t just in her stomach now. It invaded her chest too. “Wake me if the decryption software works and you’re able to read that USB.”

Her feet felt like concrete blocks as she dragged herself out of the living room and to the stairs to find a bedroom.

H
E WAS A
drowning man.

Savanna’s kiss—her boldness—had nearly done him in.

He was a SEAL for God’s sake. An assassin. A man in control of his body and his emotions.

And yet this woman…this willow-thin, in-your-face, beautiful woman was killing him.

The pain in her face, the incredulity of her situation, had made him want to comfort and protect her. Those huge blue eyes had drawn him in, her toughness trying to cover her vulnerability.

She’d been devastated that her own news station had turned against her, pissed that Lindsey had stolen her show, hurt that her ex-boyfriend—what a loser—had turned her into a psychotic bitch on national television.

Everything they’d said about her was a lie to create doubt about her stability and competence.

He knew the feeling.

Guilt slammed him.

Why do
I
feel guilty? She ruined my life and now she’s getting a taste of her own damn medicine.

But he knew her now. Knew she hadn’t made up stories about him and ruined his life on purpose. She’d been lied to, had put her trust in the wrong people.

He’d known she was going to kiss him. Hell, he’d
wanted
her to kiss him. And then she had and his world had spun down to that one moment, the soft brush of her lips against his.

For the first time in a long time, he’d felt need. True, honest, raw need. Suffusing. Saturating. Flooding his system with desire.

Drowning him.

He couldn’t let her—or anyone—get under his skin like this. It was pretty fucking sad that after all of his training, all the shit he’d lived through, that a single kiss could upend his carefully controlled existence.

He was better than this. Emotions, feelings, a thing of his past. There was no room for them in his present or future. Detachment was his mantra, and…

Shit
.

Glancing down, he realized he was still sitting rigid on the couch. Savanna’s kiss had paralyzed him. All but one important part anyway. The bulge in his pants was freaking huge.

Yep, even though she’d fled the room minutes ago, embarrassed, her sweet backside beckoning to him as she walked out, his dick continued to remain hard as steel. It strained against his zipper, nearly painful in its diligence to escape.

Follow her
.

Scrubbing his face with his hands, he shook off the longing, the need. While he’d entertained a few fantasies inside Witcher of fucking Ms. Savanna Bunkett
over
, he’d never actually thought about fucking her.

Now, all his mind wanted to do was think about that big ol’ bed on the third floor and her spread wide on top of it, naked and waiting for him.

Pathetic
. A woman hadn’t touched him in so long, hadn’t kissed him, he’d turned into a horny pushover the minute one did.

Trace pushed himself off the couch, adjusting his pants and his painful erection. Grabbing Savanna’s wine glass, he downed the remaining liquid in the bottom, wishing it was something stronger, because it was going to be one long-ass night if he had to keep himself from taking the stairs to that master suite two at a time.

Chapter Sixteen

_____________________

______________________________________________________

C
OMPARED TO SOME
of the hellholes Trace had lived in, the safe house felt like a mansion.

He found a room that would work to release his tension with tall windows that overlooked the rear garden next to the library he’d told Savanna about. His pulse was elevated and he needed to center himself.

Killing a man barely raised his blood pressure. Being in the center of combat relaxed him. He could rely on his training, trust his heightened natural abilities.

Being alone in a house with Savanna, being subjected to her probing questions and hot, supple body, however, had him crawling out of his skin.

It was no surprise she’d guessed he was a former SEAL. The part about the experimental drugs and the DOD, though, was too close for comfort.

Focus on that, he told himself. Not her kiss.

Stripping down to his underwear, he left the lights off and took a seat on the floor facing the bank of windows—the snow provided enough reflection from the night sky and the landscape lights that he could see just fine. His heightened night vision didn’t hurt either.

The gardens and woods behind the house were covered in snow, the storm winding down as it approached midnight. He’d checked in with his fellow guards and all was normal.

Going through a set of stretches, he held each one until his muscles strained and his breathing increased. He listened to the sound of his breath and let the cascade of wild thoughts—and the images of a naked Savanna—flit through his mind and disappear as he took his practice deeper.

The thoughts slowed with his breathing. The images of long legs, a flat stomach, and those lips that could bring a man to his knees, didn’t.

Fighting mental chaos never worked. You had to give in to it. Acknowledge it. Make peace with it.

But making peace with the fantasies running through his head would mean getting rid of the massive hard-on between his legs. And the only way he wanted to do that was by going upstairs and waking the sexy woman sleeping there.

Once his body was tired and sweating from the extreme poses he forced it into, he’d achieved a reasonable amount of headspace again. His fantasies were still there, along with the hard-on, but he could feel his pulse slowing, his breath coming easier.

Two hours. It took two hours of holding poses to feel the release he needed from the mental chaos. Never had it taken so long.

That’s what Savanna did to him—threw his internal rhythms off, made him crazy.

Meditation came next, his mind happy to continue the struggle to make peace with his Savanna fantasies. Even if they were now “friends” in her book, there was no good end to this situation. Once she found out who he was, that he’d deceived her, it wouldn’t matter that he’d also saved her life. She would hate him.

Like always, that thought dampened the fire in his gut, and clearing his mind came easier as he folded his primed body into a restorative sit and stared out at the snow-covered garden.

He set the timer on his watch, and a few minutes later, his body slipped into the deep space of mediation between nothingness and sleep. He welcomed it, his body needing the recharge.

Sometime later, his nose woke him before the alarm, as he picked up a scent that never failed to make his mouth water.

Bacon.

A quick check of his watch showed he’d slept for two hours. It was now four in the morning.

Tapping his comm, he checked in with his team as he dressed. “Perimeter check?”

“Frosty as ever,” came the reply from Poison. “My piss freezes before it hits the ground every time I take a leak.”

A snort sounded from Henley, a new arrival, followed by a horrible rendition of some Disney song, telling Poison to let it go. “Other than the frozen landscape, all’s secure, mate.”

“Copy that.”

The laptop was still working on decrypting the USB. Sounds from downstairs made him stop for a second and listen. The occasional muffled bang of a pan, the clink of silverware—how long had it been since he’d heard those normal, homey sounds?

Trace made his way downstairs cautiously. No one could have gotten through the security team or the surveillance system, so that only left one person who could be cooking bacon.

Savanna.

At four in the morning?

A tiny amount of light spilled from the kitchen. Not enough to be from the bright overhead lights, but…

Trace turned the corner and saw Savanna standing at the stove, the bacon scent now mixed with other smells that reminded him of his childhood home, his grandmother.

Pancakes.

She was working by candlelight, humming what sounded a lot like the Happy Birthday tune under her breath. For a moment, he was transported back to a tiny kitchen, his grandmother tinkering with eggs and biscuits.

Stepping into the room, he watched Savanna for a long moment, soaking her up. She’d bundled up in sweatpants and a long-sleeve T-shirt, both of which looked too big on her, yet worked with the smells she was generating of home and casual family breakfasts.

“Are the lights not working?” he said and she jumped, flipping a pancake on the floor.

Gripping the spatula to her chest, she laughed out a nervous breath. “You shouldn’t sneak up on people like that!”

“Sorry.” He closed the distance to the stove and picked up the fallen pancake, tossing it in the sink. “Couldn’t sleep?”

She turned her face away, and in the candlelight, he saw wetness on her cheeks. “I kept seeing that man every time I closed my eyes. All that blood.” She shuddered. “I needed to do something.”

“So you decided to make breakfast by candlelight?”

“The night is so quiet and so beautiful out there.” She pointed the spatula at the window. “I don’t get that kind of view at my apartment. The bright lights in here seemed too harsh and turned the windows black so I couldn’t see outside.”

Quiet and beautiful wasn’t exactly how he’d describe the snowy landscape.
Cold. Brutal. Lonely
. How many times had he sat in harsh elements watching his targets at four in the morning? It was the perfect time to take them off guard. He fought the urge to close the shade. The windows were one-ways, bulletproof. He still wanted to close off the world.

She looked at him and smiled. Her face looked vulnerable, delicate. “I like candlelight. It’s…gentle.”

He liked the candlelight too. Watching the soft light flicker over her face, he could forget the tears on her cheeks and imagine the two of them were a normal couple. That she wasn’t scared and that he was something more than her bodyguard.

But they weren’t a normal couple. Hell, they weren’t a couple period. Two days ago, he’d wanted nothing to do with her, and even though now he wanted to sweep her up in his arms and kiss away her tears, that was never going to happen.

The shadows of his life were as cold and dark as the landscape outside. Inhospitable and unforgiving.

Exactly why he couldn’t tell Savanna who he was yet. Maybe never. Even if he wasn’t a traitor to his country, he was an assassin. It had become clear to him while he was meditating. He couldn’t shut off that past, couldn’t deny its existence no matter how much he wanted to. She would never understand or accept that, and why should she?

He was on his own.

Shaking off the past memories and the coldness they brought with them, he motioned to a bag on the counter. “Are those chocolate chips?”

“The pantry is stocked with everything imaginable. I found three kinds of syrup too.” She flipped a pancake. “Parker would be in heaven. Every year since I was eight, I always made chocolate chip pancakes for her birthday…”

Her voice trailed off and she swiped at her cheeks. “Anyway, I had a craving for pancakes. And bacon.” She glanced out the window again. “I hope she’s safe in this storm.”