Unfaded Glory (22 page)

“Hope for the best—plan for the worst. If you're lucky, they meet in the middle.” He drew her close again. “But you have me. So you know I'll catch you when you jump.”

“How long do I have you?”

He didn't answer her. “It's almost time to go, Damara.”

“One more time around the floor?” She wanted to make this moment stretch as long as she could because when it was over, it was over.

“Once more.”

She glided with him to the symphonic strains, loving and dreading each step. Damara let herself feel his muscles move beneath her fingers and committed every sensation to memory. She'd have tattooed it there with a hundred needles if she could've. Their bodies were in a perfect synchronicity, playing on each other like a violin and a bow, their friction producing a beautifully haunting song. And when he led her to the kitchen entryway, she shed her woman's heart and became the princess she had to be.

CHAPTER TWENTY

B
YRON
TRIED
TO
shut off his emotions and focus on the mission.

Slipping out to the car had been easy. A couple of older matrons noticed as they slipped through the kitchen, but they'd eyed the couple with the kind of knowing smiles that made Byron wonder just what kind of trouble they'd gotten into in their youth.

It was strange the way they treated him now. He'd left a pariah and returned a hero. It was what he'd wanted, for the people of Glory to finally see something more in him than just the delinquent.

Now that they did, he felt like a fraud. He was just the bad kid gone a little worse who managed to turn it into a living.

Yet, there was still a use for him. Maybe not in Glory, but in Castallegna.

He was going to kill a king. Then she'd be safe. He thought about her smile, her eyes, the way she fit against him. The way some kind of higher knowledge seemed to be balanced with her innocence. Then he thought about Grisha, and what men like him did in the world. What men like him did to women.

He would die, too. This time, he'd make sure. So would his brother.

So would anyone who compromised Damara's safety.

Petrakis and Kulokav didn't know it yet, but they'd just opened the gateway to hell and the devil was about to come calling.

The car drove straight out on to the tarmac and to the waiting plane. Damara changed out of her wedding dress once they were on board. He instructed Gregson to register a flight plan to Barcelona, but in reality, they'd be landing on a small Greek island not too far from Castallegna.

Then Byron would bring the fight to their door. His blood coursed hot at the thought; his adrenaline spiked as his body prepared for war.

Damara must've seen the darkness in him because she asked, “What's wrong?”

He looked at her, wearing the same style of fatigues she'd been wearing when they'd met. Their circumstances seemed to have come full circle. “I'm taking the Jewel back where she belongs. She won't be mine anymore.” He didn't want to fight about her brother, not now when this was all the time they had left together.

“She'll always be yours,” Damara confided, face alight with the passion of her convictions. It was like he'd thought when he'd first met her—it was the ones who burned with a cause that were dangerous. How very right he'd been.

How he wished that it were true, that the Jewel would always be his. Some part of her would belong to him. For a moment, he'd allowed that to be true. But now he had to set her free. This was the best thing he could do for her, because he knew that she'd spread her wings and be more glorious than anything that could be for the likes of him. “I want you to get married for real, Damara. I want you to have a family. I want you to be happy.”

“Happy is with you.” She said it so sure of herself. As if her answer was never in question. As if there was no other answer.

He couldn't imagine it, no matter how he wanted to. “Do you really want to be Belinda Foxworth?” He wouldn't do that to her, even if it was what she thought she wanted. Watching the road for a traveler who never came home, heart aching and unsure, lost and alone, wondering why he didn't come back. No, he'd never want that life for her.

“If that's the way it goes.” Damara shrugged. “I'm not afraid of what I can't change, but I am afraid of what I can. That maybe I don't know the difference.”

Everything about her sliced him deep and stitched him together at the same time. Her words were so honest and heartfelt, and he knew exactly what she meant. He wanted every moment with her. “Technically, this is our honeymoon. All twelve hours of it. Come with me to the lavatory.”

She shook her head. “No way.”

He made a show of bouncing on the couch. “Right here, then?”

“No.” Her eyes widened. “Someone will see.”

“Someone will not see. There's just you and me and the pilot, and he's busy flying the plane.”

“Not a chance.” But she looked around the cabin as if she expected to see someone else on board.

It occurred to him then that he'd never touch her that way again, but she deserved a better goodbye than being shagged in an airplane lavatory.

Sometimes, he could swear she could see right through his skin and into his soul. It was as if she knew his train of thought and she couldn't bear it. Either his sadness or her own. She stood as prim and proper as if she were going to an officer's ball and headed back toward the lavatory.

“This may not work.”

“You're right. I don't know how people do this. Maybe they're all much smaller men than me. But I couldn't take a p—use the facility in here if I tried.”

“You don't have to start watching your profanity now, Lt. Hawkins. Wasn't it you who said this was called fucking?” she teased, lightening the mood.

“Indeed, I was.” God, the feelings again. When would they stop? He was brimming with them, and he wanted to tell her he loved her. Because he did. When all the dark places in him had emptied out, all that was left was his love for her.

He didn't know how or why it had happened, but it had. His brain began running down logical reasons for the anomaly. That it was normal for people who experienced high-stress situations together to feel bonded. The adrenaline rush of fear was a lot like love. What that said about the world, he didn't know.

Or didn't want to think about.

The wedding was over. When they landed, so, too, would be their “honeymoon.” It could go no further than right here. He had to turn off these feelings, root them out of himself before they turned malevolent and devoured him from the inside out.

She giggled and squirmed, pretending to try to get away from him. But when he would've let her go, she locked her arm around his neck.

“This is getting to be a habit. So are we playing princess and the bodyguard?” He tried to think only about the physical, so he didn't have to feel all this sorrow.

“No, we're playing husband and his new wife.” He kissed her before she could say anything else. Byron supposed that was cowardly, but he just couldn't talk anymore and he didn't want to feel anything but her.

He pushed her up against the galley and he broke the kiss to turn her. She placed her hands on the sides of the counter. Byron pushed her fatigues off and pulled her panties down to her ankles.

Byron ran his hands along her silky hips and thighs; he couldn't get inside of her fast enough. He slipped his hand between them to ready her, but she was already wet for him.

“You really like this.” He thought of a hundred other scenarios he could play out with her if he'd had the time. If she were really his. Oh, the things he'd do to this body—he loved the sound of his name on her lips and she'd be screaming it to bring the rafters down. If only, if only...

“Oh, yes,” she said, her voice breathy. “Now do it.”

He'd joked about liking her to command him, but he didn't think there was anything sexier.

This wasn't just about sex. Or the heat that flared between them. It was about everything else, too. As much as he didn't want it to be. He couldn't fight it anymore. He knew it was going to hurt when she was gone, when he had to leave. Hell, it hurt now. There was no avoiding it. He was already in so deep he'd drowned in her.

After sheathing himself in the condom from his wallet, he drove deep inside her.

She cried out but pushed back against him, meeting his every thrust. She filled his senses, touch, scent, sound, sight and taste. The taste of her mouth was still on his tongue, the jasmine scent of her.

Her sweet warmth pulled him deeper, taking it all but giving him everything.

He lost himself in her every time he touched her. There was no beginning, no end, no nothing but the focused point of sensation where their bodies joined.

Byron was starting to need this with her, to feel this connection and this link. This was more than a need for his body—it was a need for his heart.

And when it was all over, he had to let it be just that.

Over.

* * *

T
HE
PLANE
LANDED
on a small Greek island that would have been the perfect honeymoon destination for a couple who wanted to be lost in each other. It was fairly deserted. From there, they took a skiff that had been docked for them and slipped right into a Castallegnian bay with no one the wiser.

Her brother and Kulokav's men ran the docks, but there were no docks, no trade routes here. Only a small abandoned hut that reminded her of the island they'd just left.

Again, Damara found herself wishing things were different.

It was just before dawn when they finally crept into the small hut, and Damara was exhausted. She should've slept on the plane, but she'd wanted to spend one last time with him.

She didn't understand how it was so easy for him to turn it off, to forget everything they were to each other.

But she didn't argue with him or demand they talk it out. It was what it was. Instead, she crawled into the pallet on the floor next to him.

“We'll hide out here until I get the word from Renner about the Italian navy. They should be en route.”

She nodded sleepily.

“If I'm gone when you wake up, I just went down to catch a few fish. Don't worry.”

“I'm not going to—” And just like the last time she was in this part of the world with her now husband, she fell asleep cradled in his arms when she expected to be awake all of the long night.

Only when she awoke, it wasn't to gunshots like on the
Circe's Storm.
It was to Grisha Kulokav and his gun pointed at her head.

She fought down panic, trying to take in the situation. Where Byron was, where she was, orient herself to her surroundings. Instead of whimpering or cowering, she said, “My husband needs to work on his aim.”

“Husband? Indeed, Princess, you'd best hope that's not the case.”

They were already married. There was nothing he could do about it now. “And why is that?”

“Because then I'll have to make you a widow.”

“As if you could.”

“He already tried to kill me once, Princess. As you can see, he's not as effective as you might think.”

She didn't have any reply, so she lay there, refusing to wilt under the weight of his appraisal and the threat there.

He laughed. The bastard actually laughed with genuine mirth. “I do enjoy you, Princess. Vladimir thinks I should kill you or keep you as a mistress. But I think you are worthy.” His eyes slid up her body. “A beautiful bride indeed.” Grisha cocked his head to the side. “Abele, your brother, thinks the same. But I have other plans for you,
malenkaya.
Would you like to hear them?” He stroked a large meaty finger down her cheek.

“If it involves the usual threats like torture and death, probably not.” She was pleased with how calm she sounded, because her insides were twisted up like barbed wire. She'd never been more terrified.

He grinned again. “For all the trouble you've caused me, you've been less of a problem than your oh-so-royal brother. I want you for my wife, and I want Castallegna. Come with me now, and I will kill your brother and we will rule Castallegna together.”

“I've already told you, Grisha. There will be no ruling Castallegna. Not by us, anyway.”

“Abele killed your father to keep him from making the transition. Don't you think he'd do the same to you? All of these men who want to protect you and save you, but you won't let us kill the one thing that would hurt you.”

“What do you mean?” How did he know about her conversation with Byron? His promise?

A new thread of fear wound its way around her.

“I think I was pretty clear. He killed your father. It was no riding accident. Abele bashed his head in with a rock. He was very proud of this.”

“And you, are you very proud of this?”

“Proud of what? The lengths I have gone to so that I may secure my woman? Of course. I'm strong. As are you.” His chest puffed up with the pride he spoke of. He really didn't understand.

She had to find out if Byron was okay. Her brain processed that since they were discussing him, Grisha must not know he was on the island. So he was safe. Damara searched for her inner center, that peace that helped her forge through whatever was in her path.

“No. You haven't done anything good or noble. Nothing to be proud of.” Damara felt as though she were a weed trying to stand against a hurricane. What was she? A spoiled princess who'd never lived in the world, who ran away and caused a clash of nations. Men were willing to die for her.

No, not men.

Man. One man. Her husband.

She couldn't let him. Damara had to find a way to save him.

“I haven't hurt you or sent my torturers after you like Abele.”

“How did you know about that?” She cocked her head to the side.

“I know a lot of things, Princess.”

“If you knew about Tunisia before I fled Castallegna, why didn't you stop me?”

He shrugged as if the answer didn't matter. “I honestly didn't think you'd get that far. Then as things progressed, you showed your true mettle. I was impressed.”

Impressing the gangster had been the very last thing on her to-do list.

“Then you left with a man. I was not so well impressed with that.”

“I had to do what I had to do, Grisha. I still do.” Why wouldn't he understand? Worse, why did she keep trying to explain something to him he chose not to understand?

“Leave with me now and all will be well, Damara.”

“I can't. I've made commitments. I can't break my word.”

“Then your ranger will die, and so might you. Your brother has something planned for you. He knows you're here. A statement to the world about what defying him means. He's not too pleased to have been placed on a red notice, Interpol's wanted list. He's a king and above such things, you know.”