True Shot (30 page)

CHAPTER FORTY

M
ac rolled onto his side, reaching for Sam in the dark, already smiling as naughty thoughts tumbled through his head. He’d start with her nipples, he thought. Fingers first, then tongue and perhaps a little teeth. Her nipples were extra sensitive, and he could make her arch right off the bed when he played them just right.

But Sam wasn’t in bed with him anymore, and the sheets where he hadn’t been lying felt cool to the touch.

He sat up and reached for the lamp on the bedside table. He heard a noise at the same moment that the light chased the darkness from the hotel room. In the bathroom. Not vomiting, thank God. Something else, though. Something he didn’t immediately recognize, and when he did, his skin flashed cold.

“Shit.” Shoving aside the bedclothes, he hopped out of bed, grabbed his boxers and stepped into them as he half-walked, half-stumbled to the bathroom door. “Sam?”

Nothing but silence on the other side of the door.

“Sam? You okay in there?”

He heard her sniff, followed by what sounded suspiciously like a hiccup.

He knocked a knuckle against the door. “Sam?”

When she still didn’t respond, and his heart started jumping all over the place, he said, “I’m coming in, okay?”

He turned the knob and pushed the door open a couple of inches. He froze when he saw her. She was on the floor, her back against the side of the tub and her face buried in a towel. Her hair hung around her face and hands in damp strands. She shook so much her shoulders quaked.

“Jesus, Sam,” he murmured, opening the door fully and going in to drop to one knee beside her. “What’s wrong?”

She shook her head, face still buried in the towel. She was crying. No, not just crying. Sobbing.

He reached for her without thought, and his alarm grew as his palm brushed over her back and he felt the cold, wet material of the pajama top plastered against her back.

“You’re soaked to the skin. What the hell happened? Did you have a nightmare?” As he asked, it hit him: flashback. A really bad one this time.

“Oh, baby,” he said softly, and pressed a kiss to the crown of her head. “Let’s get you into some dry clothes, okay?”

She raised her head finally, her swallow audible. Tears and grief had left her eyes red and puffy. “I’m fine. I can change myself.”

His chest muscles squeezed at the ragged hoarseness of her voice. “I know you can. But you don’t have to. I’ll help you.”

“You’ve done enough.”

He stilled at her flat tone. This was not the same woman he’d made love with repeatedly throughout the night. “Talk to me, Sam. What’s going on?”

He thought she wasn’t going to answer, but then her eyes latched onto his for about half a second before skipping away. “I remember everything.”

His stomach did a slow roll. “Shouldn’t that be something to celebrate?”

She pushed to her feet and brushed by him to go to the sink, where she splashed water on her face then blotted it dry. Then she headed into the bedroom, dragging the sodden top over her head along the way.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“I have to go.”

“Go? Go where?”

“Away from here.” She fished a top and jeans out of the Dillard’s bag and started tugging off the tags. “My instincts were screaming at me not to come here, but I agreed to it anyway. I should have listened.”

He followed her around the room as she dressed. “Maybe you should take a breath and think this through. You’re safe here.”

“But you’re not.” She stopped in midstep and covered her face with both hands. “Oh, God.”

He put a hand at her hip to steady her. “What, Sam?”

“Charlie and Alex.”

“They’ll be here soon.”

“It’s not safe for them. They . . . you . . .
all of you
can’t be anywhere near me.”

He grasped her shoulders and turned her fully toward him. “You need to calm down.”

“I don’t have time—”

“Take time. Please.”

She pressed her shaking hands against his bare chest, palms flat, and looked into his eyes. Her gaze lost focus, and a light shudder coursed through her. A moment later, she was back, eyes overflowing as she quietly shattered before his eyes.

“We made a mistake,” she said. “
I
made a mistake. I never should have let this happen when I had no memory.”

He released her and stepped back, dread buzzing to the top of his head. “Is there someone else?”

Tears streamed unchecked down her cheeks. “No.”

“That Sledge guy you wanted to call when we first got into this. Is he—”

“No. He’s a friend. That’s all. There’s never been anyone else, Mac. Only you. But I can’t do this. I can’t be here at all.”

He had the impression that she never allowed herself to cry like this, especially in front of another person. “You need to talk to me, Sam. Tell me what you’re thinking.”

She swiped at her running nose. “Flinn will use Charlie and Alex to flush me out.”

Surprise that she’d actually told him threw him off, but he recovered quickly. “We’ve taken precautions. No one can possibly know they’re coming here.”

“And what about after we leave? I can’t protect them forever, Mac.” Her voice broke on his name. “I have to go.”

The anger rolled over him in a wave, eroding his usual, easygoing control. “So, what, you’re just going to take off on your sisters again and not look back for another fourteen years?”

She winced and looked away, closing her eyes for a brief moment before sniffing and meeting his gaze, stronger now, resolved. “You know it’s not what I want.”

He turned away, unable to look at her without wanting to shout at her to stop being a damn spy and be the woman she’d been the past three days. “I think it is what you want. Going back to Lake Avalon would be hard. Making things right with Charlie and Alex would be hard. And you’re all about the easy way, aren’t you?”

“You don’t understand.”

He whirled toward her. “No,
you
don’t understand! I’ve been friends with Charlie and Alex for a long time. You broke their hearts when you ran away, Sam. And now I’ve brought you back to them, and you’re going to walk away before you even see them again? What the hell?”

“This isn’t about Charlie and Alex,” she said softly.

“Like hell it’s not.”

“I didn’t want to come back here. I told you—”

“Oh, so it’s my fault your sisters are going to lose you all over again. That’s bullshit, and you know it. You’re the one in control here. You’re the one who gets to make the decisions, and your decision is to run. That’s
easy
for you.”

She advanced on him fast, and the next thing he knew, she’d shoved him up against the wall. “It’s not easy. It was
never
easy.”

He grasped her wrists and turned fast, twisting her around so that her back was against the wall, the maneuver far more gentle than she’d done with him. When she struggled against his grip, he leaned into her, front to front, subduing her with his superior weight. She might have been a trained fighter, might have been able to take him apart limb by limb when in fighting form, but at the moment she was shaky and drained, and he easily pinned her.

“You can’t muscle your way out of this one, Sam.”

She tried to yank away, but he held fast. “You can’t just pack up and walk out of here like the past three days didn’t happen. You have people who care about you, who want to help you.”

“You don’t know anything—”

“You think I don’t know what it’s like to find yourself at rock bottom? Believe me, sister, I’ve been there. I was there a week ago, stressed out of my mind and in danger of heading straight for the bottom of a bottle. Your sisters snapped me out of that. Now I’m returning the favor.”

She turned her head aside, closing her eyes tightly, as if she could shut him out by pure will. He jerked her forward by the wrists and waited until she looked at him again. He didn’t have to wait as long as he’d expected.

“All I’m asking,” he said, “is that you think about what you’re doing. You’re not yourself.”

“I haven’t been myself for the past three days.”

“I don’t think that’s true. You’ve been more yourself the past three days than you’ve been in fourteen years.”

“There’s no way out of this, Mac. Don’t you think I would have tried a long time ago?”

“It’s time you made the choice to trust someone to help you.”

“I can’t.”

“You have to.”

“Flinn will kill you. He’ll kill Charlie and Alex. My parents. He’ll take everyone I love away from me. You don’t know him like I do. He’s . . . evil.”

“And what’s to stop him from using any one of us, or all of us, to flush you out after you leave?”

“I’ll make sure that doesn’t happen.”

“How?”

“I don’t know yet, but I will. You’ll have to trust me.”

“Sam.” He said her name softly, and for the first time in his life, words failed him.

So he kissed her.

It took her several seconds to respond, but her arms finally went around his neck, and she kissed him like she was dying. She tasted of salt and grief and desperation, and he gave her everything he had to show her they could get through this. Together.

When Mac carried her to bed, she let him. When he gently laid her out and undressed her with intimate care, she let him. When he murmured and sighed and kissed her eyes and brows and temples, caressed her aching breasts with reverent hands, she let him. She lost herself in him, lost the thread of why she had to leave this man, lost the fear and doubt and pain. Love rolled in to fill the empty places left behind, love and warmth and security.

When he slipped into her, hot and hard and oh so sweet, she arched to meet his thrust, her eyes open and fixed on his, his name on her lips.

“Mac.”

He smiled as he moved, slow and easy, taking his time building the pleasure, never looking away from her gaze as he stroked into her. He made love to her with tender ferocity, telling her with his body and his eyes that if she left him, she’d die. Again. Sam Trudeau died fourteen years ago. Mac Hunter had resurrected her in three days.

A tear slipped back into her hair, and he stopped it with his lips. His breathing grew ragged in time with hers, and he kissed her more urgently as the pleasure grew, kissed her with lips and tongue and teeth, demanding that she accept what he was showing her, giving her. His heart. His soul.

“I’m falling in love with you,” he murmured against the side of her neck, against the throb under her skin.

Her heart soared with those words, followed by her body, the climax detonating inside her like a supernova, flashes of light and heat and release arching her head back on a serrated moan. He followed a moment later, a harsh groan escaping his lips as his body vibrated against hers. When he buried his face in her neck, his breath fast and uneven against her skin, she opened herself to his release. It rolled through her on a second wave, just as intense and blinding as the first. Her muscles stretched taut, and her name echoed in her—his—mind.

The depth of his emotion and love shook her, shocked her. She didn’t deserve this. She didn’t deserve him.

And yet she clung to him, reluctant to let go.

He started to withdraw, but she put her arms around him to hold him in place, savoring the connection, the minute twitches of his softening cock nestled inside her. He responded with a soft kiss at the corner of her mouth, a nuzzle of his nose against her cheek.

“We’re going to be okay, Sam,” he whispered.

She closed her eyes as he settled beside her and gathered her into his arms.

“We’re going to be okay.”

She wished she could believe that.