J Ward - Crave

More vomiting.

He wasn’t sure exactly when Adrian came in, because round three of heaving hopped up the bunny trail when it dawned on him that he didn’t know whether she was safe from what had been done to him. After all, she was captured. She was stuck there in that hellhole. And Devina had plenty of things that were male-like.

“Here,” Adrian said, passing over a cold washcloth.

Jim couldn’t wipe his face because it hurt too much, so he patted at it, feeling the cool dampness like a balm against his flaming cheeks and burning lips.

Hanging his head, he noticed that he’d left fresh bloodstains on the creamy tile from the wounds that had reopened on his knees.

Yeah, immortal didn’t mean embalmed; that was for sure.

Adrian sat down next to him, his face far too pale as he stared across the toilet seat. “You want me to get you into the shower? That’s what helps me when she…”

As their eyes locked, it was survivor-to-survivor.

“Ah, shit…” As Jim spoke, his voice was rough and his throat felt like it had been hit with a plumber’s snake. “She saw me like this. Sissy… she saw this.”

He couldn’t believe he said it, but keeping that inside was a no-go.

Unable to retain eye contact, Jim squeezed his lids shut and eased back against the flank of the tub. As the water fell like rain in the shower behind him, and the hard floor bit into his ass, he whispered, “She saw me ruined.”

It was the last thing he said before he passed the fuck out.

You wouldn’t have thought that a six-thousand-square-foot town house with three floors-four, if you counted the basement where the wine cellar was-could be cramped as a shoe box.

But as the morning dragged on and bloomed into noon, Grier felt like she couldn’t get enough air… or any alone time with Isaac. Her father was a pacing, eagle-eyed presence who seemed to fill every room, even when he wasn’t in it. And Isaac was just as bad, constantly moving around, glancing out windows, going up and back from the front of the house to the kitchen.

By two o’clock, she couldn’t stand it any longer and went to organize her bedroom closet. Which was ridiculous, because it was already tidy-although she found a quick cure for that.

After standing in the middle of the room and doing a three-sixty on the rows of clothes hanging by category, she took each and every blouse, skirt, dress, suit, and pair of slacks off the racks and tossed them into a pile on the floor. Ostensibly, she was reordering the various sections. In reality, she was giving herself a mess to clean up so she could enjoy a slice of control.

Hanger by hanger, item by item, she set about righting her wardrobe.

God… Isaac.

If she’d heard him right, down in the kitchen, by the coffeemaker… he’d said that he loved her.

Come on… of course she’d heard him right. And his incredible eyes had confirmed what her ears had struggled to comprehend.

There were a lot of buts, however, that the lawyer in her wanted to lay out. The thing was, the woman under the attorney-at-law didn’t care about any of that: she felt something equally as strong.

Naturally, logic told her not to trust the emotion in either of their cases, pointing out that it was all a matter of the circumstance, the drama, the tension, the sex-God, the sex. Except her heart had a different theory. She’d felt the spark between them the instant she’d laid eyes on him, and his decision to come forward and do the right thing about his corrupt, dangerous boss… well, that was even better than the amazing orgasms.

It made her respect the hell out of him.

As she retrieved one of her black pin-striped suits, she briefly entertained a fantasy where they ended up together on some safe, remote island with nothing but what to have for lunch and dinner to weigh on their minds. The Gilligan’s Island daydream with all its tropical never-going-to-happens was a nice diversion, but she wasn’t fooling herself. Isaac was going to disappear. The government was going to take him and hide him until whatever congressional hearings or judicial procedures rolled out. And if he didn’t end up in jail for war atrocities here in the States, he might well get extradited to some foreign hell.

Which was why he’d said what he had. It was his good-bye.

“Wow.”

Grier spun on her heels, the suit in her hand flaring out in a circle around her body before settling back down-as if it had momentarily forgotten its reserve, only to regain its composure.

And didn’t she know how the damn thing felt.

Isaac cursed himself. “Sorry, I really need to learn how to knock.”

Grier eased up a little. “I’m also jumpy as hell.”

Cocking his brow, he measured the pile in the middle of the creamy carpet. “Lot of clothes.”

“Probably too many. I need to give some to Goodwill.”

He came forward and picked up one of her gowns. It was long and black, like all of them, because she wasn’t a sparkles or color kind of girl. “Where does this go?”

“Ah…” There was only one section with the bar set high enough for full-lengths. So she’d dumped them for nothing but a rehang. “There. In the corner, please.”

He carried the evening dress over and set it where it had been. Then he went back for the next one, straightening the padded shoulders on their padded satin seat. Before he put it in place, he surprised her by bending down to put his nose to the neckline.

“This smells like your perfume,” he murmured before placing it on the brass rod.

Didn’t that just send a shiver through her-in a good way. Unfortunately, the tingle was overridden by everything that was hanging over them. “Have you heard from… them?”

“No.”

“What are you going to do if they don’t get back to you.”

“They will.”

He didn’t say anything further, just picked up a taffeta gown with a velvet bodice and a broad tartan sash. “Christmas dress?”

“Yes.”

“It’s pretty.”

“Thank you. Isaac?” When he looked at her, she said, “I-”

He cut her off. “What’s that sound?”

“What sound-”

The suit fell from her hands as she recognized the subtle beeping and she scrambled to take the fob to the security system out of her pocket. Sure enough, a red light was flashing. “Someone’s in the house.”

She cut the noise and started for the phone by the bed, but he caught her arm. “No. No police. We’ve got enough innocent lives caught up in this already.”

His gun came out and so did a tube about as long as her fist. As he screwed the silencer on the end of the muzzle, he looked around and then stalked over to the grated crawl space where the mechanicals of the security system were.

Keeping the weapon in hand, he popped off the metal face. “Get in there. And do not come out until I-”

“I can help-”

The expression on his face made her take a step back: His stare was cold and utterly foreign-like she was looking into frosted glass… with no hope of ever seeing what was behind it.

“Get in there, now.”

Her eyes flicked to the gun and then returned to his harsh and unforgiving face. It was hard to know what was more frightening: the idea that someone was in her house, or the stranger standing in front of her. And then it dawned on her…

“Oh, my God, my father!”

“I got him. But I can’t be effective if I’m worrying about you.” The weapon pointed at the black hole he’d opened up. “Go now.”

Putting her faith in him, Grier ducked out of view, crouching down and breathing the musty air of the eaves as Isaac put the grate back in place. There was a shift, click, shift, click as the thing was locked to the wall, and then through the slats, she watched him leave at a jog, quiet as a passing shadow.