“Quinn, I don’t think this is a good idea,” she told him.
“Daisy Jane, if we waited until you figured it was time, we’d both be long dead and mummified. It’s up to me to move things on.”
He lowered his head slightly. She could feel his breath on her cheek.
“Stop calling me that.”
“Sure thing, Daisy Jane.”
Before she could protest or attack, he kissed her.
She’d known he was going to. How could she not? So why hadn’t she bolted?
The answer became clear the second his mouth brushed against hers, sending heat flaring through her entire body.
She wanted this. She who had always prided herself on never trusting a man enough to let him get close wanted to give in. Not to any man. Just to Quinn. Just this once.
She must have dropped her cue because her hands were suddenly empty when she raised her arms and locked them around his neck. His lips were warm, firm and searching. She liked how he moved back and forth, teasing her, arousing her. Impatient for more, she parted her mouth, inviting him inside.
He responded with an eagerness that made her press against him. They touched from shoulders to knees, with her breasts flattening against his chest and her stomach nestling his rapidly growing arousal.
His tongue slipped into her mouth. She greeted him with a soft caress, then circled him. He responded in kind. The sensual contact made her breasts ache. When his hands slipped from her hips to her rear, she arched harder against him. He dug into her curves, squeezing.
His long fingers brushed against the backs of her thighs. Liquid need melted her from the inside out. He was hard to her soft-so male and powerful. The length and breadth of his erection made her wonder what he would look like naked. Every part of his body would be strong and unyielding. From there it was a short, erotic step to imagining herself on the pool table, legs spread, him filling her as they –
The image was so real, she felt a jolt deep inside. As if he’d really entered her. Passion grew, as did a steady, throbbing ache. She wanted him to be inside of her. She wanted him to touch her. If he put his fingers between her legs and rubbed against her slick, wet flesh she could...
Terror swept through her as she completed the thought. If he touched her, she would give in. She would surrender control.
“No!” she gasped as she pulled free. “Stop.”
Prepared to push him away, she was surprised when he instantly stepped back.
“D.J.? What’s wrong?”
“I –” She was shaking. Her chest hurt and she couldn’t breathe. “I can’t,” she gasped, then turned and ran.
By the time she got home, she’d managed to catch her breath, but the trembling lasted for hours. She felt both frightened and embarrassed.
So Quinn had kissed her. It didn’t mean anything. People kissed all the time. She’d made a big deal out of nothing.
Only it wasn’t nothing to her. Quinn had asked if she’d beaten up the guys who got too close. That had never been a problem because she managed to scare them all off. Even when she hadn’t meant to.
How many times had she been left alone, lonely, wondering what she’d done wrong? How many times had she wished she could trust enough to be honest, to explain why being involved was so scary for her? But no one had ever stuck around long enough for her to gather her courage. After a time, she’d stopped missing them. She’d moved on. Just as she would do when Quinn left.
She wouldn’t remember him for long. He wouldn’t matter. He didn’t matter.
D.J. sat in the dark and tried to avoid the one thing she refused to admit. That she was lying about all of it. Especially about Quinn.
Quinn’s cell phone rang early the next morning. As there was only one person with the number, he knew who was on the other end.
“Reynolds,” he said when he’d pushed the talk button.
“Hey, Quinn.”
“Major.”
“How’s it going?”
Quinn wasn’t sure why his commanding officer was calling. Major Ron Banner didn’t do social. Either he’d received the report or he’d made a decision. Quinn wasn’t sure which he wanted it to be. If his boss was looking for an answer... Quinn didn’t have one yet.
“I’m doing great,” Quinn told him.
“Good. You’re visiting family, right?”
“Yeah. Big reunion kind of thing.”
“Sounds fun.”
Quinn picked up his coffee. “But it’s not the reason you called.”
“Fair enough. The report’s back.”
“And?”
“The shrinks think it’s a good thing you refused to take out the target. He was your former mentor, you had an emotional connection with him, and the situation wasn’t life-and-death. They feel that if circumstances had been different, had he been threatening innocents, you would have taken care of him. They called it controlled resistance. It seems you have a moral code.”
“Who knew,” Quinn said dryly, more than able to read between the lines. Yeah, the psychologists had given him a gold star. That didn’t matter squat to his CO. “You’re still pissed I didn’t follow orders.”
“It makes my life complicated,” his boss admitted. “But you know it happens.”
“Because your team of assassins is a temperamental bunch?”
“Something like that. You passed on a kill. What I want to know is if it’s going to happen again. The shrinks say you’re ready and willing to return to the job. I’m not so sure. You still want to be a killer, Quinn?”
Those in charge, those who wrote the handbooks, passed out assignments and made sure the men were debriefed, psychoanalyzed, and kept happy used words like targets and operatives. Quinn, his boss and those on the team called it like it was.
When he wasn’t busy rescuing Americans from sticky situations and honing his skills, he was moving around the world, taking out those who had been deemed undesirable. He was an assassin on the government payroll. As Ron said – a killer.
Quinn considered the question and realized he didn’t have an answer. Not yet. “I don’t know. I need more time.”
“Take as much as you’d like. I only want you onboard if you’re a hundred percent. No second-guessing, no conscience.” “Fair enough.” “You’ll stay in touch?” “Sure thing.”
He heard Banner making notes in a file. “Say another three weeks?” his boss asked. “Fine.”
Quinn disconnected the call and dropped his cell phone on the bed. In three weeks his CO would call again and ask the same question. “You still want to be a killer?” That time Quinn planned to have an answer.
Did he? Sometimes he told himself it was just a job. He was given an assignment and he carried it out. At the end of the month, he got paid. No big deal.
But lately things weren’t so simple. He knew he could go back to work tomorrow and do a hell of a job. But what did that say about him? What did that make him? And did he want to be that man?
Restlessness filled him. He stood and paced the length of the room, then glanced at the clock. He was supposed to have a lesson with D.J. in an hour or so, but there was no way he could do that. Not today.
He grabbed his keys and headed out to tell her.
Fifteen minutes later he walked into her office and found her on the phone. She smiled at him, then flushed and turned away.
He remembered the pool game, the kiss and how she’d run out on him. Thinking about what went wrong had kept him up half the night. Had it just been the previous day? It felt like a lifetime ago.
He dropped his keys onto her desk and headed back to the workout room. There was a punching bag in the corner. He walked toward it, grabbing tape as he went.
After he’d shrugged out of his shirt, taped his hands and pulled on gloves, he faced the bag. He warmed up with a few easy swings. He jogged in place and stretched out muscles. As heat loosened him up, he focused on the bag and went to work.
He punched methodically, treating the bag like a person, breaking down the midsection, then going for the head. When his mind’s eye told him that enemy was bloodied and broken, he mentally replaced him with someone new and fresh, then started in on him.
Energy filled him. His ability to focus allowed him to laser in on the bag. Blow after blow sent it spinning, wobbling. Sweat dripped down his face and chest. He cleared his mind of everything but the way his body moved, the power of his hits and the rhythm of his feet.
Sometime later he sensed D.J.’s presence. She hovered just at the edge of his peripheral vision. He finished the sequence, then stopped and faced her. “I had some things to work out,” he said.
She nodded.
“There won’t be a lesson today.”
“I understand,” she said.
He wondered if she did. He wondered what she saw when she looked at him. He was normally so controlled. So careful. “Are you afraid?” he asked.
She raised her chin slightly. “Of course not.”
He had the feeling that she was almost telling the truth.
He knew if he moved toward her now, while the pain and confusion was still with him, that she would back away. He would see more than fear in her eyes – he would see terror.
Who had done that to her? A parent? A boyfriend? Had she been attacked? Raped? What? There was something in her past. Something dark and ugly. It had left her scarred and broken. It had shaped who and what she was.
He supposed there were those who would be put off by the imperfection. Disgusted maybe. Not him. He wanted to know what had happened so he wouldn’t make any wrong moves. He didn’t want her to be afraid of him. He wanted her to feel safe.
Dumb-ass, he told himself. Like that was ever going to happen. As if he could ever be good enough for her. As if they could have something together.
He turned back to the bag and pounded it until it swung like a flag in a gale-force wind. He hit the bag over and over, until his muscles ached and he couldn’t see with all the sweat burning his eyes. Until he was too tired to ask questions or care about answers.
When he stopped, she was still there. Still watching. He pulled off the gloves, then worked the tape from his hands. He sensed that she wanted to speak, and prayed she would stay silent. What was there to say?
He’d been wrong to want her, to kiss her. To like her. He’d allowed himself to forget who and what he was. A killer. A man without a soul.
His CO wanted answers, and Quinn didn’t want to deal with the questions. How did he know what he wanted from life? How was he to find the best way to go? If he walked away from his job, from all of it, then what? Could he find his way back to normal? Did he even remember what that was?
All those people last night at Rebecca’s house. They’d been family, yet they were strangers. Even Gage. None of them knew what he did, who he was. If he walked away, could he be a part of them? Did he want to be?
He grabbed his shirt and brushed his damp hair off his forehead.
“I’ll see you around,” he told her.
D.J. nodded without speaking.
He wanted to explain, but what was there to say? He was going to find high ground, hole up and lick his wounds. He was a solitary creature and no matter what else he wanted, that wasn’t going to change.
That afternoon D.J. tried to focus on paperwork, but she was having trouble concentrating. She kept thinking about Quinn, about what had happened that morning.
She’d dreaded their session together because of the kiss at Rebecca’s and her reaction to it. She’d wanted to be cool and sophisticated. She’d wanted to impress him. Passion had threatened to overwhelm her and she’d bolted like a scared schoolgirl.
She’d tried to think of a reason to cancel their session. Before she could come up with one, he’d stalked into the office, looking exactly like what he was-a dangerous man. Something in his eyes had made her want to get out of his way. Suddenly the kiss didn’t matter. Not when she had to face down a warrior.
He hadn’t worked out on her punching bag, he’d attacked it, as if it possessed demons. She could still hear the sound of his gloves hitting the bag. The steady thumps, the low grunts of effort, the shuffle of his feet on the floor.
Something had happened, but she didn’t know what. Something had set him off. At first she’d thought they could spar together and he would deal with whatever was bothering him. But after she’d seen him at the punching bag, she’d known that wasn’t possible. He’d become too deadly.
D.J. stood and walked out of the office. After locking the front door, she crossed the small parking lot to her SUV and climbed inside. When Quinn had walked out that morning, she’d thought he looked...alone. Crazy, she told herself. If Quinn was a solitary person, it was by choice. But she couldn’t shake the notion that he’d been feeling isolated and separate – sensations she was intimately familiar with.
She drove through town but not toward her place. She wasn’t ready to go home – not yet. She cruised past the shopping mall, a park, several restaurants before finding herself in front of Quinn’s hotel.
Without knowing if it was smart or right or even safe, she pulled in and parked. Ten minutes of considering options didn’t clear her mind or give her any ideas.
Cursing both him and herself, she climbed out and headed for the three-story building. Minutes later she knocked on his hotel room.