Ruthless Game
Page 10
“You are such a chicken. Bock. Bock. Bock.”
He refused to allow her very bad chicken impression to ruffle his feathers. He was above petty name-calling. The point was getting her in bed and out of danger. She couldn’t fixate on the pain, and it would just go away. He was certain of it. “Come on, Rose,” he said, keeping his voice low and gentle. “I’ll help you to the bathroom.”
She rolled her eyes. “Keep in mind I killed a man a few hours ago for less. I can make it to the bathroom on my own. Just turn on the generator and get me some hot water—please.”
He turned away from her before he shook some sense into her. He was trying to help her. Didn’t she get that? Kane stalked through the kitchen into the pantry where she had stocked meager supplies. While searching the house he had discovered the generator. He crouched down to study it. It ran on gas. There were four large cylinders feeding it. He started it, shocked at how loud it was. When he closed the door behind him, he realized the room was soundproof. The generator couldn’t be heard outside the room where it was housed.
“You hungry?” he called. He was starving.
“Not really,” she called back.
She sounded so weary and, if he was not mistaken, close to tears. He needed to find a way to connect with her. For all her bravado, she had to be scared. She’d chosen him to be her partner, and she was counting on him. She hadn’t tried to run from him. If she’d been serious about shooting him, she would have pulled the trigger without hesitation. She was a GhostWalker, trained practically from birth. She didn’t want him dead. She wanted his help.
He stood in the middle of the pantry, head hanging down, dragging in deep breaths. He had little fear when it came to confronting an enemy. But assisting at a birth—he shook his head. No way. Not when it was Rose. He had to get her to a hospital. If he could get to Mack, his team would come rescue them and bring a doctor.
Lights flickered on in the bedroom, and he heard her moving around. He turned them on in the pantry to inventory their supplies. She’d stocked the place mainly with canned foods, but she’d included protein such as ham and tuna and chicken. She had several shelves of vegetables and a variety of soups. He wasn’t going to starve. He brought out a can of chicken and rice soup and heated it, hoping to tempt her to eat something.
The shower abruptly went off as he poured two bowls and put them on a tray. The tray was intricate, hand-painted, and expensive. He gave her a few minutes to towel off and slide into bed. “Can I come in, Rose?” He didn’t want her to feel threatened in any way, although, if he was being honest with himself, he believed she belonged to him and he had the right to walk into her bedroom. He wanted her to feel the same way.
“I’ m decent.”
He paused in the doorway. She looked small, a porcelain doll with eyes too big for her face. The shape of almonds, they were dark and mysterious, eyes a man could fall into and never find his way out of. She looked exotic, her hair disheveled and still damp, midnight black, cascading around her face, giving her that little pixie look. He could have sworn tears stained her face, but her eyes were clear.
“I brought soup just in case you changed your mind. Are the pains easing up at all?” He manfully kept the hopeful note out of his tone.
“All the activity must have set them off. They seem to be getting farther apart, and they’re shorter in duration. From all the research I’ve done, that means false labor.”
He felt like a man given a reprieve right before a death sentence, but he kept his features expressionless. He wanted her to count on him, and she couldn’t do that if she knew he was petrified of delivering a baby.
“Will you try to eat something?” He walked farther into the room and set the tray on the end table. “It might help.”
She flashed him a smile that told him he didn’t know what he was talking about, but she picked up the bowl of soup and spoon, sank down in the middle of the bed, tailor fashion, her back against the headboard, and regarded him steadily. “So? You found an escape tunnel. I’ve been looking around. Everything of value is gone. I didn’t pay attention to that when he sent me here the first time. I was just so happy to find a safe place to give birth.”
He nodded his head. “That makes sense.” The son of a bitch would have known she was desperate to find a sanctuary for her child. Jimenez had dangled the house like a carrot in front of her.
“What do you think it all means?” She patted the bed beside her in invitation and moved to the far side of the mattress to give him room.
Sitting with her on a bed might not be the best of ideas. He wouldn’t be making any moves on her, not while she was so pregnant she looked like she might explode, but his body didn’t have the same sense his brain did. The moment he saw her or smelled her, every cell in his body went on alert.
“I’m not going to bite,” she said.
He realized he’d hesitated too long. “I didn’t want to make you uncomfortable.” Which was partially true.
“It isn’t like we haven’t shared a bed before,” she reminded.
Immediately the image of her writhing beneath him rose up to haunt him. His c**k reacted, hard and full and aching, desperate for the feel of her tight, hot sheath surrounding him. Cursing under his breath, he eased his body gingerly onto the bed, trying not to inhale and draw her scent into his lungs.
“Are you going to tell me what you think about Diego Jimenez?” she prompted.
“Tell me how you met him,” Kane said. “I need all the information to make any kind of judgment.” The soup tasted good. He hadn’t eaten for hours and realized he was very hungry. He nudged her with his shoulder. “Just try it, sweetheart.”
She surprised him by eating a few spoonfuls before she spoke. “I’d been moving, staying in the back country or in the mountains mostly. There were women willing to help me when they found out I was pregnant, but I knew I had to find a place Whitney wouldn’t be able to track me so easily to have the baby. I couldn’t take the chance of a doctor or midwife writing anything on paper. Whitney is searching for me; I know because he sent a couple of his goons on two occasions that I know of. I barely escaped both times.”
“How the hell did he find you?”
“I don’t know. I tried looking for a second tracking device. There was one in my hip, but I removed it myself. I got rid of all my clothes, everything I had previously owned, but he always seems to be breathing down my neck.” She looked at him. “I promised you I would take care of the baby and keep her out of Whitney’s hands, and I mean to keep that promise.”
“Why the hell did you pull a gun on me, Rose? You knew I helped you escape. You knew I turned him in. I risked my career and my life to try to get his ugly program dragged into the light of day.”
She took a couple more spoonfuls of soup, her gaze downcast, but he felt her stiffen, as if steadying herself to tell him the truth. “I was afraid. I knew you trusted your team; I could tell by the way you worked with them, that easy camaraderie that only comes when people have relied on one another through dangerous situations. You told me to get on the helicopter, but you weren’t getting on with me. You would have sent me away.”
“Where you would have been safe and had medical attention,” he reminded. He could tell she found it difficult to admit that she was afraid.
She bent her head again, and he couldn’t help but look at the vulnerable nape of her neck. He had the sudden urge to lean over and brush his mouth over that soft spot.
“I needed you, Kane, not your friends. They aren’t my friends. They aren’t people I trust. I’ve lived too long in captivity and I’ve had a taste of freedom. I won’t let our child live like I had to, with Whitney documenting every single moment of my life and dictating what I could and couldn’t do.”
“I understand.” And damn it all, he did. She’d been trained to be a soldier, experimented on, and then shoved into a breeding program. It was a monstrous life she’d led, and had it been him, he would have done anything to get free and stay that way. “Tell me about Jimenez.”
She flashed a brief, rather wan smile. “I’m getting there in my own roundabout way. I knew I had to find a safe place to have the baby, and just in case, learn how to deliver it myself.”
“You f**king have to be kidding me, Rose,” he burst out. “You make me crazy. You really do. Both of you could die, don’t you know that?”
“Of course I know it,” she said. “I’m not crazy and I’m not stupid. I’m careful, Kane. I studied hard. I was careful to learn about pregnancy and what I needed to make the baby healthy.”
“You didn’t have a blood test, or any of the tests, did you?”
“How could I?” she defended. She sounded close to tears. “I did the best I could for her. Better both of us dead than back with Whitney.”
Kane put the empty soup bowl down and slipped his arm around her shoulder. “I know you did. It’s just the thought of you out there alone, trying to figure it all out by yourself, when I should have been there with you, makes me want to shoot somebody.”
She leaned into him. “Preferably not me.”
He laughed at her choice of words. “Not you, sweetheart. You might make me want to pull out every hair on my head, but I’d never hurt you.”
Rose studied Kane’s face—that face she dreamt about for eight long months. His beautiful, masculine carved features and his vivid piercing green eyes took her breath away. She couldn’t look too long at him, afraid he’d see her reaction. From the window of her cell and the workout yard, she’d watched him just like a stalker might. Looking had turned into longing. He was a strong, confident male, definitely one who was skilled in his chosen profession. She watched other males, all strong as well, step back when he walked through a small crowd, yet he always seemed to treat everyone fairly. She loved everything about him from his wide shoulders to the strong lines in his face and his sudden, heart-stopping smile.
She had dreamt of him long before she betrayed him. Wanting him. Building fantasies and unrealistic dreams until she became almost obsessed with him. When Whitney insisted on bringing in those horrible men with their lecherous smiles, uncaring that she didn’t want them, men willing to force her, she’d become a desperate woman who would do anything to escape. A woman who would sell another human being into a living hell to gain her own freedom. She swallowed hard and looked away, ashamed of her need and her cowardice. She sold him out, and even now, she couldn’t let him go.
“Rose, what is it?”
His voice was so gentle it turned her heart over. She felt his baby kick inside her, a strong reminder she would always have a part of him. The soup tasted like ashes now, the seeds of guilt and shame stripping her of all appetite. She placed the bowl on the nightstand. He was a man of honor, and she’d taken his pride, forced him into an untenable position with no way out. He loathed himself for getting her pregnant, and no matter how many times she told him it had been her choice, her decision, he refused to allow her to shoulder the blame. He was waiting patiently for her to answer his simple question—“What is it?”—but the answer wasn’t nearly as simple as the question.
“I’m sorry I got you into this, Kane, but I’m not sorry you’re here with me. I’m afraid.”
There. She’d admitted it out loud. If the truth were told, she was terrified. She was so tired and she desperately needed to rest, to spend twenty-four hours without fear.
She’d been alone for so long, scared for herself and for the baby. She looked up at him, ashamed, but unable to lie to him. “I need you.”
She loved his face, all those hard lines, his strong jaw, those cool, clear eyes. There was no subterfuge in Kane. He didn’t have a hidden agenda—not like she had. He didn’t lie about how he felt. He didn’t hide the fact that his body wanted her and he was uncomfortable with it. She doubted if there were too many men like him in the world. She didn’t need just anyone; she needed him.
He refused to allow her very bad chicken impression to ruffle his feathers. He was above petty name-calling. The point was getting her in bed and out of danger. She couldn’t fixate on the pain, and it would just go away. He was certain of it. “Come on, Rose,” he said, keeping his voice low and gentle. “I’ll help you to the bathroom.”
She rolled her eyes. “Keep in mind I killed a man a few hours ago for less. I can make it to the bathroom on my own. Just turn on the generator and get me some hot water—please.”
He turned away from her before he shook some sense into her. He was trying to help her. Didn’t she get that? Kane stalked through the kitchen into the pantry where she had stocked meager supplies. While searching the house he had discovered the generator. He crouched down to study it. It ran on gas. There were four large cylinders feeding it. He started it, shocked at how loud it was. When he closed the door behind him, he realized the room was soundproof. The generator couldn’t be heard outside the room where it was housed.
“You hungry?” he called. He was starving.
“Not really,” she called back.
She sounded so weary and, if he was not mistaken, close to tears. He needed to find a way to connect with her. For all her bravado, she had to be scared. She’d chosen him to be her partner, and she was counting on him. She hadn’t tried to run from him. If she’d been serious about shooting him, she would have pulled the trigger without hesitation. She was a GhostWalker, trained practically from birth. She didn’t want him dead. She wanted his help.
He stood in the middle of the pantry, head hanging down, dragging in deep breaths. He had little fear when it came to confronting an enemy. But assisting at a birth—he shook his head. No way. Not when it was Rose. He had to get her to a hospital. If he could get to Mack, his team would come rescue them and bring a doctor.
Lights flickered on in the bedroom, and he heard her moving around. He turned them on in the pantry to inventory their supplies. She’d stocked the place mainly with canned foods, but she’d included protein such as ham and tuna and chicken. She had several shelves of vegetables and a variety of soups. He wasn’t going to starve. He brought out a can of chicken and rice soup and heated it, hoping to tempt her to eat something.
The shower abruptly went off as he poured two bowls and put them on a tray. The tray was intricate, hand-painted, and expensive. He gave her a few minutes to towel off and slide into bed. “Can I come in, Rose?” He didn’t want her to feel threatened in any way, although, if he was being honest with himself, he believed she belonged to him and he had the right to walk into her bedroom. He wanted her to feel the same way.
“I’ m decent.”
He paused in the doorway. She looked small, a porcelain doll with eyes too big for her face. The shape of almonds, they were dark and mysterious, eyes a man could fall into and never find his way out of. She looked exotic, her hair disheveled and still damp, midnight black, cascading around her face, giving her that little pixie look. He could have sworn tears stained her face, but her eyes were clear.
“I brought soup just in case you changed your mind. Are the pains easing up at all?” He manfully kept the hopeful note out of his tone.
“All the activity must have set them off. They seem to be getting farther apart, and they’re shorter in duration. From all the research I’ve done, that means false labor.”
He felt like a man given a reprieve right before a death sentence, but he kept his features expressionless. He wanted her to count on him, and she couldn’t do that if she knew he was petrified of delivering a baby.
“Will you try to eat something?” He walked farther into the room and set the tray on the end table. “It might help.”
She flashed him a smile that told him he didn’t know what he was talking about, but she picked up the bowl of soup and spoon, sank down in the middle of the bed, tailor fashion, her back against the headboard, and regarded him steadily. “So? You found an escape tunnel. I’ve been looking around. Everything of value is gone. I didn’t pay attention to that when he sent me here the first time. I was just so happy to find a safe place to give birth.”
He nodded his head. “That makes sense.” The son of a bitch would have known she was desperate to find a sanctuary for her child. Jimenez had dangled the house like a carrot in front of her.
“What do you think it all means?” She patted the bed beside her in invitation and moved to the far side of the mattress to give him room.
Sitting with her on a bed might not be the best of ideas. He wouldn’t be making any moves on her, not while she was so pregnant she looked like she might explode, but his body didn’t have the same sense his brain did. The moment he saw her or smelled her, every cell in his body went on alert.
“I’m not going to bite,” she said.
He realized he’d hesitated too long. “I didn’t want to make you uncomfortable.” Which was partially true.
“It isn’t like we haven’t shared a bed before,” she reminded.
Immediately the image of her writhing beneath him rose up to haunt him. His c**k reacted, hard and full and aching, desperate for the feel of her tight, hot sheath surrounding him. Cursing under his breath, he eased his body gingerly onto the bed, trying not to inhale and draw her scent into his lungs.
“Are you going to tell me what you think about Diego Jimenez?” she prompted.
“Tell me how you met him,” Kane said. “I need all the information to make any kind of judgment.” The soup tasted good. He hadn’t eaten for hours and realized he was very hungry. He nudged her with his shoulder. “Just try it, sweetheart.”
She surprised him by eating a few spoonfuls before she spoke. “I’d been moving, staying in the back country or in the mountains mostly. There were women willing to help me when they found out I was pregnant, but I knew I had to find a place Whitney wouldn’t be able to track me so easily to have the baby. I couldn’t take the chance of a doctor or midwife writing anything on paper. Whitney is searching for me; I know because he sent a couple of his goons on two occasions that I know of. I barely escaped both times.”
“How the hell did he find you?”
“I don’t know. I tried looking for a second tracking device. There was one in my hip, but I removed it myself. I got rid of all my clothes, everything I had previously owned, but he always seems to be breathing down my neck.” She looked at him. “I promised you I would take care of the baby and keep her out of Whitney’s hands, and I mean to keep that promise.”
“Why the hell did you pull a gun on me, Rose? You knew I helped you escape. You knew I turned him in. I risked my career and my life to try to get his ugly program dragged into the light of day.”
She took a couple more spoonfuls of soup, her gaze downcast, but he felt her stiffen, as if steadying herself to tell him the truth. “I was afraid. I knew you trusted your team; I could tell by the way you worked with them, that easy camaraderie that only comes when people have relied on one another through dangerous situations. You told me to get on the helicopter, but you weren’t getting on with me. You would have sent me away.”
“Where you would have been safe and had medical attention,” he reminded. He could tell she found it difficult to admit that she was afraid.
She bent her head again, and he couldn’t help but look at the vulnerable nape of her neck. He had the sudden urge to lean over and brush his mouth over that soft spot.
“I needed you, Kane, not your friends. They aren’t my friends. They aren’t people I trust. I’ve lived too long in captivity and I’ve had a taste of freedom. I won’t let our child live like I had to, with Whitney documenting every single moment of my life and dictating what I could and couldn’t do.”
“I understand.” And damn it all, he did. She’d been trained to be a soldier, experimented on, and then shoved into a breeding program. It was a monstrous life she’d led, and had it been him, he would have done anything to get free and stay that way. “Tell me about Jimenez.”
She flashed a brief, rather wan smile. “I’m getting there in my own roundabout way. I knew I had to find a safe place to have the baby, and just in case, learn how to deliver it myself.”
“You f**king have to be kidding me, Rose,” he burst out. “You make me crazy. You really do. Both of you could die, don’t you know that?”
“Of course I know it,” she said. “I’m not crazy and I’m not stupid. I’m careful, Kane. I studied hard. I was careful to learn about pregnancy and what I needed to make the baby healthy.”
“You didn’t have a blood test, or any of the tests, did you?”
“How could I?” she defended. She sounded close to tears. “I did the best I could for her. Better both of us dead than back with Whitney.”
Kane put the empty soup bowl down and slipped his arm around her shoulder. “I know you did. It’s just the thought of you out there alone, trying to figure it all out by yourself, when I should have been there with you, makes me want to shoot somebody.”
She leaned into him. “Preferably not me.”
He laughed at her choice of words. “Not you, sweetheart. You might make me want to pull out every hair on my head, but I’d never hurt you.”
Rose studied Kane’s face—that face she dreamt about for eight long months. His beautiful, masculine carved features and his vivid piercing green eyes took her breath away. She couldn’t look too long at him, afraid he’d see her reaction. From the window of her cell and the workout yard, she’d watched him just like a stalker might. Looking had turned into longing. He was a strong, confident male, definitely one who was skilled in his chosen profession. She watched other males, all strong as well, step back when he walked through a small crowd, yet he always seemed to treat everyone fairly. She loved everything about him from his wide shoulders to the strong lines in his face and his sudden, heart-stopping smile.
She had dreamt of him long before she betrayed him. Wanting him. Building fantasies and unrealistic dreams until she became almost obsessed with him. When Whitney insisted on bringing in those horrible men with their lecherous smiles, uncaring that she didn’t want them, men willing to force her, she’d become a desperate woman who would do anything to escape. A woman who would sell another human being into a living hell to gain her own freedom. She swallowed hard and looked away, ashamed of her need and her cowardice. She sold him out, and even now, she couldn’t let him go.
“Rose, what is it?”
His voice was so gentle it turned her heart over. She felt his baby kick inside her, a strong reminder she would always have a part of him. The soup tasted like ashes now, the seeds of guilt and shame stripping her of all appetite. She placed the bowl on the nightstand. He was a man of honor, and she’d taken his pride, forced him into an untenable position with no way out. He loathed himself for getting her pregnant, and no matter how many times she told him it had been her choice, her decision, he refused to allow her to shoulder the blame. He was waiting patiently for her to answer his simple question—“What is it?”—but the answer wasn’t nearly as simple as the question.
“I’m sorry I got you into this, Kane, but I’m not sorry you’re here with me. I’m afraid.”
There. She’d admitted it out loud. If the truth were told, she was terrified. She was so tired and she desperately needed to rest, to spend twenty-four hours without fear.
She’d been alone for so long, scared for herself and for the baby. She looked up at him, ashamed, but unable to lie to him. “I need you.”
She loved his face, all those hard lines, his strong jaw, those cool, clear eyes. There was no subterfuge in Kane. He didn’t have a hidden agenda—not like she had. He didn’t lie about how he felt. He didn’t hide the fact that his body wanted her and he was uncomfortable with it. She doubted if there were too many men like him in the world. She didn’t need just anyone; she needed him.
