Wait For Me (5 page)

Dane laughed and shook his head. “You know, after this, after the calls I made and the information my friends came up with on you, you’ll be lucky if you’re not thrown under the bus for several deaths and disappearances of some high-level officials around the world.”

“Drug dealers. Cartels. Gunrunners. Terrorists. Yeah, I’m
quakin
’ in my boots. You need to turn your ass around and get the hell off my property. You’re
spoutin
’ shit you don’t know anything about.”

“Or what? You going to add me to the list?”

“I just might.”

She couldn’t see Vin’s face, but she knew that tone and it sent shivers down her spine. “Okay, that’s it, boys. I’ve heard enough. Recess is over.” Mel stood in the doorway of the workshop. Naked or not, she was tired of the pissing contest. She needed answers and she wouldn’t be getting them anytime soon if she didn’t put a stop to this.

“Go back inside, baby.”

“I will not go back inside,
baby
. I appreciate y’all sticking up for what’s left of my honor, but, Dane, it’s time for you to leave and, Vin, it’s time we had a talk.”

“Mel—”

“No, Dane.” She cut him off with an impatient wave of her hand. “You need to go. I appreciate you bringing all this to light, but it doesn’t concern you anymore. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have run to you when
Vinny
left the last time. It was wrong of me. If I’m going to be with him, I have to be stronger the next time. Thank you for pointing it out.” She’d always known how strong she had to be, how strong a military wife or girlfriend had to be, but she’d only been eighteen when he left. She had grown up some, but given all this, she obviously had more growing up to do.

“Come with me. We’ll forget all about this and—”

“And what? You’ve called me a whore, said I’m pathetic. I don’t think you’d be forgetting anything and I know I sure as hell wouldn’t be. I’m sorry.”

Dane glared at her, his anger escalated with each of her words, but she’d apologized and that was all she could do. They stared at one another for a few moments longer until he shook his head and laughed. “You’ll come to your senses.” He patted
Vinny
on the chest, and Mel knew that had been a bad decision on Dane’s part. “Good luck, buddy.”

Vin caught Dane’s wrist and twisted his arm behind his back before anyone could take a breath. “I don’t need good luck, buddy. I have it. I’ve always had it. It’s standing naked right over there with the memory of my dick inside her body. She’s my good luck and yours is about to run out unless you leave. She asked you nicely. I won’t do the same.”

He shoved Dane away and the blond man stumbled, nearly fell, but again caught himself at the last second. His cheeks were flushed and he was so very angry. Mel thought Dane might take a run at
Vinny
and she held her breath. Instead, he just spit at
Vinny’s
feet and turned away. He didn’t even spare her another glance as he got in his car and turned the key. He slammed the gear shift in place and spun his tires as he peeled out of the gravel drive.

Silence filled the space between her and
Vinny
, along with a huge helping of anxiety. He was staring at the ground, and Mel didn’t know if she should go over to him or not, so she remained rooted to the spot in the doorway.

She guessed she should have felt uncomfortable or even embarrassed at still being naked while he was still fully clothed but there was a strange comfort in it. She was completely bared to him, in every way possible yet he remained just out of reach, parts of him continuing to remain hidden from her.

Love was a funny thing.

“I don’t care, you know,” she said into the chasm made up of feet and inches. She didn’t know she was going to say that until the words passed her lips, but she knew they were true nonetheless.

“You should care.” He pivoted on his heel and faced her. His eyes were full of heat, anger, lust. She felt the fire of them burning between them. “You should care,” he repeated. “Some of what Dane said was true.”

“I don’t care. It doesn’t change who you are with me.”

Vinny
shook his head and slowly advanced on her. She thought about shrinking back inside the workshop, but held her ground. She had to live up to her words. “No, it doesn’t. Who I am with you is what makes it possible for me to still be the man I need to be when I’m not with you.”

“I think I get that.”

“But you do need to remember that whatever Dane’s motives, he was telling at least partial truths, whether he knows it or not. What I do isn’t pretty and in many cases could get me killed. The agencies and the companies I’m farmed out to would sacrifice me in the space of a heartbeat if they ever thought I was a liability and your boyfriend poking around could create just that.”

“He’s not my fucking boyfriend,” she shouted. “You are,” she offered a little more calmly and softly. Mel nibbled her lip. “M-maybe you have something I could put on? This conversation is probably best had with me dressed.”

“Why? I like looking at you. If you walk out of here, it’ll likely be the last time I see you and I’d rather see you beautiful and naked and wearing my marks than see you all covered up.”

“It’s not exactly a level playing field,
Vinny
,” she said softly.

He smiled. Just a quirk of his lips and it tugged at her heart. His eyes were full of tender sentiment and the ever-present lust that didn’t seem to abate between them no matter what the topic. “Is that what you’re looking for? Level playing field? Equal ground? I can do that.”

In front of her, without a bit of hesitation,
Vinny
discarded his shirt and she was sure she wasn’t able to contain the horror on her face at the bruised vision that was his stomach and ribs. And she’d been right. There, on his side, was a still healing bullet wound, puckered and dark. He had a new blade wound too. It slashed across his ribs down to his stomach. It was raised and an angry red. Funny, she’d become uncommonly good at discerning what weapon created what hole or line or mark on his skin.

“It’s not very pretty, is it?” he asked, pulling her gaze up to his face again. Mel shook her head.

“How can you even move?” she managed to croak out around the lump in her throat.

“Mind over matter, I guess. I’ve learned to push through it until I don’t even feel it anymore.”

“So, it really is true. What Dane said? I mean, I know you said it was, but...” She hadn’t doubted it, not from the first moment Dane opened his mouth, not even when Vin said so. It all just made sense somehow, like puzzle pieces clicking into place. Seeing his wounds, the bruises... He was always in incredible danger and she liked to pretend he wasn’t. God, she was a fucking fool.

“For the most part, yes.”

“For the most part? What does that mean exactly? I thought you’d reenlisted with the Army.”

Vinny
pulled his boots off and slowly lowered the zipper on his pants. “I did and two years into my second term, I was recruited into a government agency for the remainder of my enlistment. They liked my particular skill set. Growing up hunting seems to be something valuable on a resume.”

“How long is that?”

“Two years.”

“What happens then? After the two years?”

“I come home or they hire me. My choice at that point.
I do kill when I need to, Mel. It’s always been part of the job, part of my position in the Army. I also go back out into the field when they need more feet on the ground.”

Mel shifted her feet. He really shouldn’t be stripping and she really should tell him to stop. Then again, she didn’t have anything to use for covering up and though she didn’t have an ego, she knew seeing her naked was just as distracting for him as seeing him naked was for her. “So you have two years left with this,” she said, more to herself than him. “Is it like, initiation? Or orientation? What is this?”

“Technically, it’s called Temporary Additional Duty. TAD for short. It’s a little abnormal, the time length. Usually it’s just a few months, three, sometimes six, but they wanted me for longer and with a few requests on my end, it’s what we agreed on.” His voice was so casual that he could have been talking about being an accountant.

“What are the requests?”

“One, is that I come home to you in between these temporary assignments.”

His erection, with the skin drawn so tight it had to ache, jutted toward her from a black nest of curls. Mel swallowed at the sight. She wanted to spread her legs and welcome him back between them. It was where he belonged. He knew that and so did she. No matter his job, she’d always known she belonged to him and him to her. She still put up a defense though, no matter how token and surface. “You must not be very good at it.”

Surprised blue eyes locked on her. “Why do you say that?”

He had her cornered and backed against the door frame. If she tried to move away, all he had to do was reach out an arm to trap her, a hand to grab her. Truth was, hard as it all was to take in, she didn’t want to get away from him. “You always come home wounded and with new scars.”

Vinny
chuckled low and the sound spiraled down to settle warmly in the pit of her belly. “I’m actually very good at it and scars are part of war, part of what I do.”

“Shouldn’t you be bigger?”

He looked down at his cock and she struggled not to follow the line of his gaze. In the end, she failed. He was gorgeous when hard and fully aroused. God, she was such a slut when it came to him. Why couldn’t she resist? Why didn’t any of this dampen her need to feel him inside her, her need to feel his hands on her, his mouth, his body pressed to hers? “You’ve never complained about my size before.”

She shook her head. “Not that. The rest of your body. Shouldn’t you be all buff or something? More muscled? You know, big.” She made a motion of flexing her arms to indicate what she meant. The slight smirk on his face made her feel a little silly but also made her hunger for a taste.“Some are. You’d be amazed at what some disguises and a little makeup can do to transform a guy like me. And my size means I can fit into a few tighter spots than guys who are buff. It also means I can move faster, that I’m lighter on my feet.”

“I guess that makes sense. How does it work? Can you tell me that? Can you tell me anything?”

“They want trained soldiers, these agencies. Part of what they do is provide support for the military. Before I re-upped, I was offered a spot with the CIA but I didn’t want that. I didn’t want my entire life to be a lie. I wanted life and freedom on my terms when I was out of the service.”

“I wouldn’t have blabbed,” she rushed to assure him. “You could have talked to me. You love me and you know how much I love you.”

“I know you wouldn’t have, baby, but I also know how scared you’d have been if you’d known the extent of what I did. No matter what you see on the news or in the papers, there are top-secret things I couldn’t tell you about before, and that I still can’t tell you about now. Even if you’d only known half of what I was doing, it wouldn’t have afforded you any peace of mind. I kept it all to myself so you wouldn’t worry as much.” He lifted his hand and his fingers grazed her cheek before turned and walked inside the shop. “It seems I was was wrong though, and for that, for leaving you out of it, for leaving you out of the decisions and the choices I made, I’m sorry. I thought I was doing the right thing.”

Her heart ached at the regret in his voice as she followed behind him. She settled on a second workbench, this one closer to the door. There were several surfaces at different heights for different types of projects. The one she currently sat on was for sanding and staining furniture.

Ever since she’d known him,
Vinny’d
loved working with his hands. She found that fascinating about him, as well as a turn on. She had the tools and he had the skills, the vision. “But why do you kill? There are other things you could do, aren’t there?” God, she sounded like an idiot. She sounded like she didn’t have but one marble rolling around in her head. He’d told her of the places he’d been, the sites he’d seen, but he’d never told her anything of what he’d seen or done in war. She’d asked, but he’d never said, not anything more than about the friends he’d made, the friends who’d died.

He shrugged and faced her. “I’m better with a gun than I am computers. I’ve been rifles since I was knee high to a grasshopper. Out in the woods when I’m hunting, I can disappear. I was a marksman before I even knew what one was. Those skills have made me the best at what I do. But, yes.
There are options, things I can look into, things I—”