Mind Game (39 page)

“You always seem to say the right thing to make me feel better.”

Nicolas didn’t think so. She wasn’t feeling any better, but she was making an attempt to make him feel better. He remained quiet until he found the condo and got her inside. Lily had promised there would be clothes for Dahlia and sure enough, the closet in the bedroom had several pairs of jeans, shirts, and a dress or two and the dresser had underwear. Dahlia stared down at it then looked at him inquiringly.

“Lily. Don’t ask me how. We give her a shopping list, tell her where we want the stuff, and she delivers. Anything from weapons to ladies’ underwear.”

“She’s very involved in what you all do, isn’t she?” She worked to keep the wistful note from her voice.

“Yes. She’s a tremendous asset to us. Whitney set up trust funds for all of us, but when we’re out on a mission or we’re working for the Whitney Trust, Lily uses the power and money behind her name.”

“Does that bother you?”

“No.” He shrugged. “Whatever works and smoothes the way.” He lifted the pair of silky pajamas from the drawer. “These are beautiful, but I’m fond of you in my shirt.”

Dahlia took the pajamas out of his hands. “You’ve never seen me in anything else. You might change your mind.” The pajamas were a soft pale blue. The top was a little sexier than she’d ever worn, but Nicolas had seen her without clothes so she didn’t mind trying it. “I’m going to take a shower. Would you mind trying to find something for my headache? It just refuses to go away.”

“I’ve got something in my pack.” He retrieved the pack from the entryway where he’d left it when he’d gone through the condo on a quick check for exits and fast escapes. The water was already running and the bathroom steamy when he stepped inside the tiled room. Dahlia was in a large square Jacuzzi, her body covered with churning bubbles and her head pillowed by a small rolled towel on the back of the tub. He could see her breasts floating enticingly, peeking through the curtain of bubbles. Steam drifted around her, giving her a mysterious, elusive appearance. Her mane of black hair was slicked back from her face and her incredible skin gleamed at him. Nicolas felt the sexual jolt all the way through his body. How could he look at her body, her incredible skin, and not feel the urgent demand of every cell in his own body? She opened her eyes to catch him staring at her.

“Are you coming in?”

His breath caught in his throat. “Is it a good idea?” There were lines of weariness on her face and he couldn’t tell if the droplets of water on her face were from the steam or from tears. “Baby, you’re so tired, and I don’t know if I’ve got the willpower it would take to keep my hands to myself.”

“I want you to come in with me. The water’s hot and relaxing. We both need it, and it was such a nice surprise.”

Nicolas didn’t wait for a second invitation. He stripped quickly, loving the fact that she never took her eyes from him. She didn’t wince or look away from the stark demands of his body. He watched her take a deep breath and let it out, focusing on him completely in the way she had.

He stepped to the side of the Jacuzzi. “It is a nice surprise.” He stepped into the hot churning water. At once the bubbles licked at his thighs. Before he could sink down into the water, Dahlia cupped his sac, her hands hot and moist. The temperature in the room increased along with his pulse.

“Has anyone ever told you what a really extraordinary person you are, Nicolas?”

He felt her breath on him, the flick of her tongue. He closed his eyes for a moment, briefly savoring her touch. “Dahlia.” He caught her shoulders and held her away from him. “This isn’t about me. I want you, honey, you have no idea how much, but when we stop, it’s all going to be there between us, and I don’t want that.”

Dahlia leaned back again, her expression impossible to read. “So what do you want, Nicolas? Everyone wants something.”

“Of course I want something. Don’t you? Don’t you want something for yourself? Doesn’t a relationship matter to you? Isn’t that wanting something? Hell, yes, I want something from you, and it isn’t just your body.”

“Is that what you think I was offering you?”

“Wasn’t it?”

Dahlia was always as honest as she could be with herself and she didn’t like the answer. “Okay, maybe I was. Maybe I wanted that to be what you wanted from me.”

“I love you, Dahlia.” He sank down into the churning water and pulled her into his arms. “I love all of you.”

She turned her face into his throat and wished she could cry like a normal person. She felt she was screaming inside, clawing at her own heart, yet she couldn’t tell him.

Couldn’t share it with him. This one person who had shown her kindness. Who proclaimed to love her for who she was, monster or not. She kissed his throat and pushed away from him.

“Did you bring the aspirin?”

“I left the tablets on the sink.” Nicolas leaned back as she climbed out of the Jacuzzi. “This is one of those moments when the relationship manual would come in handy, don’t you think?”

A fleeting smile curved her mouth and was gone. “I don’t think the manual covers this, Nicolas. I don’t think anything does.”

She took the tablets and dried off, leaving him to the hot water as she paced through the house in her silken pajamas. Dahlia wandered through each of the rooms on bare feet wondering what it would be like to be a normal woman with a family, to have a house like this one and fill it with laughter and happiness. Her hair was damp from the Jacuzzi and made a wide wet column down her back. Even the water bubbling around her, as hot as she could stand it, could not take away the ferocious headache jabbing through her skull. She paused by the window and stared out into the night, feeling restless and moody. She wanted to walk away into the night and disappear. Had she been in the bayou, she might have done so.

Nicolas came up behind her and leaned over her, putting a hand on either side of the windowsill caging her in. “Come to bed, Dahlia. You need to sleep.”

She didn’t turn around but pressed back against his body. “It’s strange knowing someone wants me dead,” she mused aloud. “All of my life, I’ve known I was different and maybe in some way a monster, dangerous to others. I even knew I wasn’t lovable, but I never once thought they would want me dead.”

He rubbed his face against the nape of her neck. “No one is going to kill you, Dahlia, not if I have anything to say about. And you’re very lovable. I don’t love anyone else. I haven’t since I was a boy.”

She ignored his confession because she had to. She couldn’t think about Nicolas and what it would mean if he were like the others. “I thought they were my friends, Nicolas. Max and Jesse. I thought they cared about me the way friends care about one another.” How could she say she wanted to doubt him? That she was afraid if he was deceiving her in some way she would never recover? How could she admit she was a coward, wanting to run from him even more than the others.

“Calhoun was tortured, Dahlia,” Nicolas reminded. “He refused to give them any information about you.” He straightened up, turned her around to face him, catching her chin so she was forced to meet his black gaze.

“That’s so,” she conceded, “but then if his orders were to never say a word about me, wouldn’t he follow them, the same way Max followed them?”

It was the first time he heard a trace of bitterness in her voice.

“Don’t do that, Dahlia, don’t let them change you. Don’t let anything change who you are. You made your own world with your own code, and you did it yourself. It defines who you are.”

Dahlia looked up at his sculpted face and the dark intensity of his eyes. “You believe that, don’t you? You think I’m worth so very much.”

“To me, everything,” Nicolas admitted.

“Why? Why am I important to you, yet someone else would want me dead? Why would my mother give me up to an orphanage rather than keep me? She just threw me away, and the orphanage people followed her example. I don’t even know the first thing about my culture, about my people. I don’t even know who my people are.”

“The GhostWalkers are your people. Does it matter so much where we came from? It’s who we are now that counts.” Nicolas led her toward the bed. There was too much pain and sorrow in her eyes. “You need to sleep, Dahlia, nothing is so important that you should put off sleeping. It will help your headache.”

She just stood there looking helpless, very unlike his Dahlia. Nicolas lifted her easily into his arms, holding her tightly to his chest. He feathered kisses from her temple to the corner of her mouth. “You just need to sleep, honey. Let it all go away.”

Dahlia allowed him to put her on the bed, and when he lay down beside her, she turned to him, familiar now with the heat and comfort of his body. She didn’t want to need him, but she found she did. She didn’t have any fight left in her and she needed his strength.

Nicolas glanced at his watch. His team was moving at three, to see what they could find in a soft probe of the NCIS agents’ homes. He had plenty of time, it was barely dark. He gathered Dahlia close and rocked her gently. “All the gifts you have, Dahlia, are incredible. Yes, there are drawbacks to using them, but we saved Calhoun’s life together. He wouldn’t have made it without us working at healing him.”

“Healing is your gift, Nicolas, not mine.” Her voice was drowsy, her long lashes feathering down toward her cheeks.

He kissed the top of her head. “I think you’re wrong. I may have the power inside of me, but it’s locked away. Without you, I have no key. That’s what you are, you can focus the power and aim it exactly where it needs to go. I simply release it. We work well together.”

“I’m tired, Nicolas. Really, really tired.”

The sheer weariness in her voice was heartbreaking to him. Nicolas held her closer to him, wanting to find a way to comfort her. He kept rocking her, as gently as he could, brushing kisses in her hair until she fell asleep in his arms.

Nicolas lay awake just watching over her. He’d found himself in many tight corners in his life, but none had ever felt like this one. He looked down at her face and wondered how she had become so important to him, so
necessary
to him. She looked like a porcelain doll with her petal-soft skin and her exotic eyes. He smoothed back the tumble of hair when she curled up tighter into the fetal position.

She made a soft sound of distress, then a low keening noise. Nicolas felt his heart shatter when she sobbed in her sleep. Her fists clenched and her body trembled, and the sounds were wrenched from her as if she couldn’t contain the overwhelming grief one more moment.

“Baby, don’t do this.” He whispered the words. Why had he thought if she cried she’d feel better? It was too much, too much sorrow for her. He pulled her beneath him, lying over her, somehow trying with his body to protect her from the grief.

She came awake, her eyes wide, black. Swimming with tears. “Nicolas? What is it?” She touched his face, the lines of worry there.

“You’re crying, honey. I thought it would be good for you to cry, but not like this, not in your sleep where I can’t share it with you.”

“I can’t be crying.” Dahlia wiped at the tears on her face with a kind of horror. “I never cry.”

“You are crying.”

“I can’t stop.” She looked desperate. “Make me stop, Nicolas. Make it stop.”

Nicolas found her mouth with his, kissing her deeply, taking the cries from her throat and swallowing them, making them his own. He took her breath into his body and swept his tongue over her tears, tasting them. Keeping them. He deepened the kiss, urgency mingling with tenderness, taking her away from a place he couldn’t follow her to, bringing her back into his world. Their world.

The silk of her pajamas rubbed over his skin, her skin, feeding the growing need rising in a slow smoldering heat between them. He ran his hands over her body, cupping her breasts, feeling the tuck of her waist through the thin layer of silk, shaping every curve even as his mouth stayed welded, kiss for kiss, to hers. “It’s all right,
kiciciyapi mitawa,
” he whispered. “Everything will be all right.” He kissed her eyes, his tongue capturing more tears before they could fall, going back again and again to her soft lips. “You’re with me. You’ll always have me.”

He kissed her with long drugging kisses, making her almost senseless, unable to think anymore, taking every sorrow and replacing it with erotic pleasure. All the while his hands stroked and explored, slowly pushed the silken pajamas aside until he had bare skin. Until she lay beneath him completely naked, her eyes wild for him, pleading with him, and her hips rising to try to meet his.

Nicolas shook his head, his expression tender. “Not this time. I want you to know I love you, Dahlia. I want you to feel it. I’m going to make love to you, a long slow assault on your senses. I want you to know you’re mine, that you really belong with me.” He bent his head to her throat, lapped at the valley between her breasts. “You’re so beautiful.” He murmured the words against her breasts, took her nipple into her mouth, heard her soft cry and took his time, paying attention to both breasts and her narrow rib cage before taking a small foray across her stomach to her belly button.

“Nicolas,” Dahlia caught two fistfuls of hair. “I can’t stand it. I want you.”

“Yes you can. You can stand me loving you.” He traced the path lower, spreading her thighs with gentle hands and dipping his head to taste her.

Dahlia’s hips lifted for him, giving him the opportunity to cup her bottom and bring her to him. He took his time, enjoying her frantic little cries, a stark contrast to her earlier sobs. She tried to pull him over her, to wrap her legs around him, which only opened her more to his exploration. She came with a wild bucking of her hips. He entered her, felt the continuing ripples as her muscles gripped him tightly and spiraled out of control. He moved then, long deep strokes, robbing her of breath until her eyes began to glaze and he felt her nails dig into his back, and he laughed softly with satisfaction as she came again.

Breathless, Dahlia could only lie beneath him as Nicolas began to ride her in earnest, his body surging with strength into hers, bringing her to another fever pitch when she thought it impossible. She clung to him, watching his face, the stern, almost harsh angles and planes that were so beautiful to her. She could see his pleasure growing with each thrust of his hips. His hands bit into her hips and dragged her to him with each stroke so that they came together hard, so that the pleasure was so much it bordered on pain. She could feel him moving in her, deep in her tight folds, her heat surrounding him, drawing him to her very core. The pressure built and built and the air sparkled and sizzled and the flames flickered everywhere, and deep inside when the volcano thundered and spread fire through her body, through his, she felt utter contentment and total peace.