Seven Days to Forever (27 page)

The bed wasn’t made. The bedding was still in a tangled heap the way it had been left yesterday. He laid her in the center of the mattress and tugged off her shoes. Then he unzipped her pants and started to tug them off, too.

She put her hand on his arm. “Flynn…”

“Don’t worry, Abbie. I know you’re tired. You’ve been running on fumes for the past hour. I want to take off your pants because there are bloodstains on them.”

She had almost forgotten. She didn’t look. She lifted her hips to help.

He pulled up the sheet and tucked it around her. “Do you need to use the bathroom?”

She shook her head.

“Okay.” He withdrew several ammunition clips from the pockets of his jumpsuit, dropped them on the floor and sat on the edge of the bed to discard his boots.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“All I want to do is hold you, Abbie.” He stretched out on top of the covers beside her and opened his arms. “Please, let me stay with you until you fall asleep.”

The longing in his gaze was her undoing. She’d been wrong. She could love him more. With a grateful sigh she moved into his embrace and put her head on his chest.

His arms settled around her back. He exhaled slowly. “Damn, that feels good.”

She listened to his heartbeat, soaking in his strength and his familiar scent. She felt drained, completely boneless. Every overloaded nerve in her body was crying for rest. But she needed Flynn more than she needed sleep.

And she needed to talk. The horror had to come out. Now that she was safe in Flynn’s embrace, she could let it go. “Part of me can’t believe this was all real.”

“It will fade after a while.” His voice was a soothing rumble under her ear.

“The Vilyases thought I was brave. I wasn’t. I was terrified.”

“You did well. By ramming that car, you saved Matteo’s life.”

“There was nothing else I could do after they shot Sarah. They were going to kill an innocent child.”

“Yes.”

“Why? How can people do things like that?”

He stroked her hair. “They didn’t see him as a person. All they could see was their political agenda.”

“They wouldn’t have surrendered.”

“No. That’s why we had to shoot them.”

Red light flashed behind her eyes, an image from the nightmare. Pencil-thin beams from laser sights piercing the car windows. Explosions of glass. The air filled with hot wet splatters. Her breath hitched.

“It’s all right, Abbie,” Flynn said. “It’s over now.”

She remembered the sudden silence. The smell of blood and death. Limp weight pinning her in her crouch.
Dead
weight. Oh, God.

“Abbie, it’s over,” he repeated firmly. “You’re safe.”

She exhaled hard and focused on Flynn’s strong heartbeat. The nightmare faded. “I wish I could forget,” she said.

He continued to run his hand over her hair. Long, calming strokes, the warmth of his touch drawing her back from the memories. “We have people who can help you deal with this. After a mission, a lot of men need support. I can call someone.”

“No, Flynn. I didn’t go through the kind of trauma Matteo did. I don’t need a psychiatrist. I just need…this. I need you to hold me.”

“You got it. As long as you want.”

She knew he didn’t mean that. He would have to get back to the command center eventually. Until he did, though, she was going to treasure every minute.

He’d tried to warn her. So had Sarah. His world really was too different from hers. How could she ask him to open his heart? Now that she’d experienced what he had to deal with, she understood why he would need his distance to survive. If she really loved him, she would want what was best for him, wouldn’t she?

But she wasn’t some heroic commando, she was just an ordinary woman in love. She still wasn’t ready to let him go. She curled her arm around his waist. “What time is it?”

He twisted his wrist to look at his watch, then slipped the watch off and laid it on the bedside table. “Just after three.”

“Is that all? Are you sure?”

“Seems longer, doesn’t it?”

“The past week seems like a lifetime.”

“Time takes on a different quality during a mission. Speeds up and slows down whether you want it to or not.” He spread his fingers over her back. “It felt as if the chopper took years to get to you.”

“I knew you would come, Flynn.”

His chest moved as he swallowed hard. “I shouldn’t have left you, Abbie. I shouldn’t have let them put you in danger.”

She could feel the tension gathering in his body. His muscles quivered. He was squeezing her to him so tightly it was verging on painful. She lifted her head to look at him. “It was nobody’s fault. Life doesn’t always go according to plan. You’ve shown me that. There aren’t any guarantees, even in my safe, ordinary, normal world. I could get hit by a truck when I cross the street on my way to the library next week.”

He cupped her head in his hands, his gaze suddenly fierce. “Don’t say that.”

“It’s true. I see now that you were right. All we can count on is the moment.”

He looked at her mouth. “When I heard you had been taken, I wasn’t thinking about the moment, Abbie. I was thinking about all the moments yet to come.”

“Flynn, will you kiss me?”

“You need to sleep. I’ll hold you, that’s all.”

“I can sleep tomorrow.”

“You’re exhausted. You’ve been through hell.”

“Kiss me.” She stretched on top of him and brought her face closer to his. “Then I’ll be able to go to sleep.”

“Abbie…”

“Don’t you want to kiss me?”

He tunneled his fingers into her hair. “Oh, Abbie. I want to do a lot more than that.”

She rubbed her lips over the cleft in his chin. “Please, Flynn,” she whispered. “I’m afraid of what I’ll see if I close my eyes now.”

He hooked his leg over hers and rolled to his side. He started with her forehead, brushing aside her hair to trail tender, featherlight kisses to her temple. He kissed the line of her jaw and the hollow at the base of her throat.

She moved against him, trying to stir the passion that she knew he could give her, hoping that desire would shut down her brain. She reached between them and found him already hard. With the back of her fingers she traced his arousal, welcoming the answering throb that started between her legs.

He slid further down the bed, easing himself out of her grasp. “Not like this, Abbie.”

She reached for the zipper on the front of his jumpsuit. “Please, Flynn. I want—”

“I know what you want.” He caught her hand and brought it to his mouth. He kissed each of her fingers, her palm, her knuckles. He took her other hand and breathed lightly on the bandage that wrapped her wrist, then dipped his tongue in the crease of her elbow. “You’ve told me exactly what you want.”

“What are you talking about?”

He pulled aside the sheet he’d wrapped her in and pressed a lingering kiss to her hip. His cheeks moved in a smile. “When I figure it out, you’ll be the first to know.”

She gave up talking then. It took too much energy to form a thought. Flynn kissed the curve of her ribs and the underside of her chin. He rubbed his lips over the bruises she’d gotten when she’d been thrown from the van. He sifted his fingers through her hair as tenderly as when he’d removed the shards of glass. Then he stripped off his clothes and used the heat of his body to caress her from her toes to her neck.

He didn’t touch her breasts. He didn’t kiss her mouth. He kept his hands away from her thighs, yet by the time he pulled her on top of him, she was trembling with the need to join her body to his.

They flowed together between one breath and the next. It was gentle, amazing. Precious. He took her in his arms, shifting his hips in a slow, sure rhythm that bound her to him even while she soared. When she finally closed her eyes, she didn’t see blood or death. She saw candles. Tall, thick and glowing with warmth. She held on to Flynn and basked in their heat.

* * *

It was almost dawn when Flynn awoke. He was spooned around Abbie’s back, his arms crossed over hers, as if even in his sleep he hadn’t wanted to let her go.

He should head back to the command center soon. The mission was over. He had a duty to his team….

But he also had a duty to Abbie. She had been so generous, giving emotional support to everyone else throughout this mission, that he couldn’t imagine leaving her until he could be sure she was all right.

He took her good hand and twined their fingers together. Who was he kidding? He couldn’t imagine leaving her at all.

The thought should have jarred him, but it didn’t. He breathed in the scent of Abbie’s hair as he looked around the bedroom. Her bloodstained clothes lay on the floor next to his black assault jumpsuit, her lace underwear draped over his discarded boots.

We’ve had different lives, but we still want the same things. I can see it in your eyes, Flynn. I feel it in the way you hold me.

That’s what Abbie had told him the last time they’d been together on this bed. She’d told him she loved him. What did she feel when he held her now? She hadn’t mentioned love at all.

She hadn’t needed to. He had seen it in her gaze and felt it in the way she clung to him even in her sleep. He closed his eyes and listened to the sound of her soft, even breathing. The last time they’d been on this bed, he’d been so hot for her he hadn’t wanted to waste much time sleeping. The sex had been better than anything he’d experienced before. Yet tonight he would have been content just to hold her….

His lips quirked. Again, who was he kidding? From the moment he’d pulled her out of that car and into his arms, he’d been pulsing with the need to reaffirm her survival in the most primitive way possible. But she deserved more than battlefield lust and adrenaline. She deserved her dreams.

Something creaked in the living room. Flynn’s eyes snapped open. He was instantly on full alert. He focused his senses on the shadowed doorway to the hall. There was no further sound, but a current of air stirred Abbie’s hair against his chin.

They weren’t alone.

The dead bolt he’d installed last week should have kept out a run-of-the-mill thief. Could the intruder be some leftover LLA dreg who had somehow escaped the sweep?

He assessed his options as he eased out of bed. He had ammo, but he hadn’t brought any weapons into Abbie’s apartment. It made no difference—if someone tried to harm Abbie, he would kill them with his bare hands. He moved to the bedroom door and listened.

There was a faint thud, followed by a whispered oath.

Flynn padded silently toward the living room. In the predawn glow that filtered through the sliding glass doors to the balcony, he saw two large male figures. He knew who they were—he was well accustomed to recognizing them in the dark. He let his muscles relax and reached for the light.

Rafe was sitting on the arm of the sofa. He had cleaned up and changed from his jumpsuit to army fatigues. “You’re slipping, O’Toole. Took you almost five seconds.”

Jack stood beside the avocado plant. Like Rafe, he had donned fatigues. He squinted against the light as he brushed leaves from his green camouflage-patterned shirt. More leaves littered the carpet at his feet. “What is this thing, anyway?”

“Abbie’s intruder alarm,” Flynn muttered. He went back to the bedroom, checked to make sure Abbie still slept, then grabbed his shorts and closed the bedroom door. He pulled them on and returned to the living room. “What the hell are you two doing here?”

Rafe gave him a loose salute. “Taxi service.”

“Mother Hen ordered us to pick you up before you annoy the major again,” Jack said.

“I thought Sarah was in the hospital,” Flynn said.

“She is. She’s supposed to be sedated, but these Yankees don’t know her. They gave her a phone.”

“How’s she doing?”

“Her prognosis is excellent if she follows orders and takes things easy.” Jack chuckled. “Which is unlikely. Do I need to look in on Abbie?”

“She’s sleeping. I want you line up a trauma counselor for her, just in case.”

“You got it.” Jack glanced toward the bedroom, then looked at Flynn. “She did well. The men all admire her courage.”

“So do I.”

“Ironic, isn’t it?” Jack said. “She saved the Vilyas boy three times. Twice by messing up the drop, the third time by bad driving.”

Flynn wasn’t sure he’d ever reach the point where he could laugh about it. The memory of what might have happened would haunt him to his last day. He rubbed the back of his neck and looked at Rafe. “Any more news on the LLA?”

“Plenty. Some of the documents we found at the LLA base that were in Ladavian turned out to be future plans. Names, places, dates. The Royal Guard is already moving in to round up the cells in Ladavia.”

“That’s more than we’d hoped,” Flynn said.

“Yeah.” Rafe gave him a long look. “Funny what we can find when we aren’t even looking, isn’t it? Have you thought about it yet?”

“About what?”

“The mission’s over.” Rafe pointed to the apartment door. A flowered tapestry-patterned suitcase rested on the floor beside the closet. “We packed up Abbie’s stuff for her.”

“She’ll appreciate that.”

“We had to pack yours, too,” Jack said. “The warehouse is cleared out. The transport’s loading to take us back to Bragg.”

Flynn had known this was coming. The men would have started disassembling the command center the moment Matteo had been delivered to his parents. The tent, the folding cots, chairs and tables, the weapons and electronic equipment, everything that had comprised their home for the past week would be packed up and loaded into the vehicles that had brought them here. Nothing would remain in the warehouse to mark their presence except some footprints on the floor.

The mission was over. He should be on his way to Bragg with his team, analyzing the details of this mission and anticipating the challenge of the next. It was what he did. It was the only life he knew.

Or it had been, until Abbie had come into it. Flynn walked past Rafe to pick up the phone.

“What are you doing?” Jack asked. “We don’t have much time.”

“I’m not going with you. I’m calling the major.” He punched in the number of Redinger’s cell phone. “I need to request an emergency leave so I don’t go down as AWOL.”