The Warrior (26 page)

“Is that the answer I'm going to get, as well?”

“Pretty much.”

She sighed. “If I asked you something else…would you tell me the truth?”

He frowned. “Depends.”

“Did you know about my father selling weapons illegally before we met?”

“No. Lord no. Why would you think that?”

“Well, you said he killed your wife…your family. I thought maybe it was because of the weapons he sold. That he was responsible in that way.”

John looked away for a few moments, then took a deep breath and made himself face her.

“It was a long time ago. But I made a promise, a vow that I would find the man who killed them before I died. It's just taken longer than I imagined, that's all.”

“But I don't understand…were they on foreign soil when—”

“No. He was the one who didn't belong. Look. Just let it be. You would never be able to understand.” Then he sighed. “Hell. Sometimes I don't understand, either.”

Alicia's fingers trembled. Her physical attraction to him was so strong that it made her ache. How ironic that she finally met a man she could see spending the rest of her life with and her father was responsible for destroying his family. She pushed her glass aside, then balled her hands in her lap and closed her eyes.

“It's going to be all right,” he said. “I promise.”

Alicia shook her head as she looked up. Her eyes were swimming with tears.

“No. It won't. The irony of it is that every day I wake up is one day less to live. Whether it's because I'm just going to grow old and die, or whether my loving father finally ends it for me, won't change the fact that I've gotten myself into a mess from which there is no escape.”

“You're talking in riddles,” he said.

She laughed, but it was not a funny sound. “You
should know,” she said, and shoved her chair back from the table and walked out of the room.

John started to follow her, then stopped long enough to go back and set all the security alarms, including the ones he'd located along the outer perimeter of the property. He wasn't going to let their conversation end like that, but didn't want anyone interrupting them unannounced, either.

As soon as he was satisfied that they were safe, he went to find Alicia.

A
licia felt sick. She could tell from what John wasn't saying that he fully expected them to be attacked. And since he wasn't, at the moment, in any kind of panic, she assumed it would be after dark. So what did that mean? Another night of fear? Another battle to be fought before they could find a safe place to hide for a while? Or was she kidding herself by believing she even had a future? She knew her father better than anyone. She'd seen him at his worst and barely remembered him at his best. Not since she was a small child had there been any tenderness between them, and whatever had been there had died when they buried her mother. It was as if whatever was good and gentle in Richard Ponte had ended with his wife's death. Afterward, he saw that Alicia was cared for, but he didn't bother himself with how it happened. It shouldn't have been surprising, then, that he'd been able to separate his emotions from his need for revenge. No one took down the king—not even the princess who'd sprung from his loins. She was
sick and tired of men who kept secrets, and that included John Nightwalker. So when he finally caught up to her and called for her to wait, she snapped.

She paused in the hallway, then turned. Her hands were curled into fists, and her body was stiff, as if braced for battle. She lifted her chin and glared.

“Wait? For what? For the next hit man to come calling? Oh…I know. You expect me to wait around while you dangle me like a carrot in front of my father's flunkies in hopes that he'll get tired of their failures and come on his own.”

Her accusation hit him like a slap in the face. He'd set aside his own agenda to keep her in one piece, and now this was what he got? He reacted without thinking and grabbed her by the shoulders, then yanked her forward until they were standing eye to eye.

If Alicia had known him better, she would have realized that the soft tone of his voice was deceptive, and that the grip he had on her shoulders was to keep himself from wringing her neck.

“I am not using you for bait, and you know it. I'd lay odds that your father isn't even on this continent, so there's no chance of him doing anything on his own. But if you're feeling all that misused and trapped…there's the door. Start walking. I won't stop you.”

His breath was hot on her face. His eyes were blazing. She felt his anger. She should have been afraid, but all she could do was remember him naked and gentle, holding her in his arms. Her fingers uncurled.
Walk away—now—before you do something you'll regret,
she told herself. Instead, she reached toward him and cupped his face with her hands.

“John…”

He flinched, then grabbed her by both wrists.

“Woman…”

Alicia heard the warning in his voice, but it didn't stop her. “I'm so tired of running. I'm tired of being afraid. I'm not asking you for anything permanent. I just want to forget…even if it's only for a while.”

He wanted her. She knew enough about men to see that. But he didn't love her, and she wasn't going to waste her energy pining for a man who was locked in the past. But they could use each other for comfort, and right now that was all she wanted.

“Please,” she whispered.

He grunted, as if she'd just punched him in the gut, but it was his only hesitation. Suddenly he was pulling her shirt over her head, popping the hook on her bra and yanking her panties and shorts down around her feet. Before she could react, she was in his arms.

The swift surge of lust that rose in response was painful. She couldn't remember ever wanting a man this much in her life. Her heart was beating so fast she couldn't think, and when he kicked open the door to his bedroom and took her inside, she was physically shaking.

“Hurry,” she begged.

John was out of his clothes within seconds and left them where they fell. His erection was hard and aching. His only intention was to bury it deep inside her where she was tight and hot and wet. Then he crawled onto the bed.

“Let me in.”

Her legs parted of their own accord as he slid a finger into the V between them, testing to see if she was ready.

She was.

Considering the situation, foreplay wasn't happening. He rose up, then moved over her, before slamming himself into her.

Going deep.

Falling fast.

Losing what was left of his control.

One long minute passed, then another and another, as Alicia rocked against him, taking everything he was willing to give. When she began to burn, she locked her legs around his waist and pulled him deeper, moaning softly as he rode her down. Over and over, thrust after thrust, mindless ecstasy built and built until there was nothing to do but burn out.

One moment Alicia was flying with the feeling, never wanting it to end. Then the climax hit—hard and fast—rolling through her body in waves that wouldn't stop. She threw her arms up over her head, grabbed hold of the headboard and screamed.

Her physical reaction to their lovemaking sent John over the edge into an animal lust for completion. When it came, the emotions that came with it shocked him. Even though he'd started this without any motivation other than lust, everything changed when he finally let go. Spilling his seed into her should have left him feeling sated. But it was just the reverse. For the first time in centuries, he felt as if he would never get enough. Even more, the lost, lonely feeling that he'd lived with for so long was no longer there. With Alicia's arms around his neck and her legs around his waist, he felt a sense of having come home. The muscles in his arms were trembling as he finally gave up and collapsed on top of her, burying his face against the curve of her neck as she quietly sobbed.

He didn't know if the crying was good or bad, but the sound killed him. He kissed the side of her cheek, then her eyes.

“Alicia…baby.”

“Shh…please…don't talk…don't move. Give me this time, I beg you. Let me pretend that this mattered to you as much as it mattered to me.”

He groaned, then rose up on one elbow and cupped her tearstained face with the palm of his hand.

“There was no pretense,” he said softly, and brushed his lips across hers, nipping, pulling, then teasing them apart before starting all over again. “I didn't mean for this to happen, but you can't pretend it hasn't, and I don't want to forget.”

Alicia's eyes widened. After all these years of thinking she would never find her soulmate, could John Nightwalker be the one? Right now it felt so, and she was too full of emotion to debate it.

She ran her fingers across his back, tracing the scars scattered here and there upon his body, all the while wondering how he had survived them. He seemed invincible. And because she was learning to trust him, he made her believe they might actually make this work.

Then he leaned down, whispered in her ear, and sent her right back to that place between heaven and earth where only lovers abide.

 

It was almost dark when John woke up. Alicia was wrapped around his body so tightly that he couldn't move without waking her up. He sighed, then slid his arm beneath her and pulled her even closer. To hell with staying still. He wanted her awake again. He wanted—

An alarm began to ring. As sounds went, it was small, but it was deadly. It was the only warning they were going to get that the perimeter had been breached.

“Alicia!” he said, and yanked her up into his arms before she was fully awake.

“What? What's happening?” she mumbled, startled by the sudden awakening, then scared by the look on his face.

“He's here,” John said. He pulled the sheet off his bed, wrapped her up in it and headed for his closet.

“What are you doing? Wait!”

“Shut up and listen,” he said swiftly as he pushed a rack of hangers aside and punched a switch at the back of the closet. A door swung open. “There's a light on your right, just inside the door. It's an old bomb shelter. It was here when I bought the land. I built the house over it. There's food and blankets, water and light. Get down there, and don't come up until I come for you.”

He pushed her forward, watched until she found the light, then grabbed for his clothes.

They had time for one frantic look at each other, and then John slammed the closet door shut and her inside. As he was putting on clothes, Alicia was scrambling down the steps, still wrapped in the sheet, trying not to fall.

She got to the bottom step, raced across the cold concrete floor to the single bed and jumped up on it before pulling the sheet more tightly around her. It was cold and quiet—so quiet. How would she know what was going on up there if she couldn't hear? What if he never came back? What if she died down here? Scared half out of her mind, all she knew to do was pray.

John put on a pair of pants, slid his knife into his boot and managed to slip out the front door way ahead of the
intruder's arrival. He'd set the perimeter alarms a good distance away so he would have time to reconnoiter on his own. And he'd coded the different beacons so that he would know from which direction the perimeter had been breached.

He allowed himself one last thought for the woman in the middle of this hell, then crouched down and began to move silently through the night. Once he was a good distance away from the house, he began to circle. A few moments later, he caught a glimpse of moonlight reflecting off metal and guessed it was a gun. He paused, watching, waiting for a silhouette to separate itself from the rest of the shadows. When the shadow took shape, he palmed his knife. Now he was the one on the hunt.

 

Sam Watkins was still riding the high of having located his target so quickly. He'd already made up his mind that this windfall was going to be the kickoff to his retirement. Two million dollars in Mexico was like twenty million in the States. He planned to head for the coast, maybe Puerto Vallarta, maybe Cozumel, and find himself a little hacienda and a pretty senorita to warm his bed and cook his food. He would be set for life.

All he had to do was this one last job.

Something moved off to his right. He paused long enough to identify the sound, as he'd done off and on since he'd left his vehicle miles away. His trek to the house had flushed out a half-dozen desert denizens, including a coyote, a lizard and a night owl. His only concern was making sure he hadn't stirred up a rattlesnake. Confident
that all he'd disturbed was another ranging coyote, he shifted his focus back to the house in the near distance.

He could see what appeared to be a small glow from one set of back windows, which was most likely a light shining from a room on the other side of the house.

He grinned. Either they were already asleep or they were otherwise engaged. This was going to be a piece of cake. He touched the butt of the semiautomatic in his shoulder holster out of habit, then shifted focus. He would check for a security system, disarm it if there was one, then pop right in.

The last thing he expected was a touch on his shoulder. He spun, then caught a glimpse of a shadow between him and the mountains behind him. Suddenly the gun was no longer in his holster and he was spitting bits of desert out of his mouth.

“You're trespassing,” John said softly, and rested the point of his knife against the back of the man's neck as he held him facedown in the sand.

“Listen,” Sam started to say, hoping he could talk his way out of this.

“No,
you
listen. I need the answers to two questions or I shove this knife right through your third and fourth vertebrae, at which time you will still be alive, but you'll never move a muscle below your jaw for the rest of your natural life.”

“Jesus…Jesus…don't, mister, don't.”

John applied a fraction more pressure to emphasis his seriousness. “I find it ironic that you decide to call upon your God to spare your life when you came here with every intention of taking one.”

Sam shuddered. The lack of emotion in the man's voice was genuinely frightening.

“I'll talk. Just don't cut me.”

“I know you're here to kill Alicia Ponte. Who hired you?”

“Her old man.”

Up until now, they'd been operating on assumptions, but hearing the truth from the hit man's mouth was shocking.

“How much?”

“Two mil.”

“Shame you're not going to get to spend it,” John said, then hit the man on the back of the head with the butt of his knife. The moment Sam went limp, John pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and made one call. He waited, listening as it rang once, then twice, then three times. Just as he was afraid that his call was going to go to voice mail, it was answered.

“Damn it, John, do you know what time it is here?”

“It's not that late, old man, so wake up and listen to me. Ponte sent another hit man.”

Corbin was already grabbing for his glasses as he was crawling out of bed. “Are you two okay? Where are you? Do you need—”

“I have everything under control,” John said.