Guard of Honor by Tracie Delaney
Chapter Twenty-Two
The driveback to the safe house flashed by in what felt like half the time it’d taken them to travel to the restaurant. Honor couldn’t figure it out, but something had changed deep inside her, almost as if she’d found the key to freedom. She’d gone out to dinner in a crowded restaurant, and apart from a moment of panic on the way, she’d nailed it. The entire time, all she’d thought about was how amazing it was to enjoy a delicious meal with a sinfully sexy guy sitting beside her. She hadn’t permanently scanned the restaurant, nerves on high alert, or jumped every time the door had opened or a particularly excitable guest had laughed a little too loudly.
The upturn in her fortunes had come so fast that it made her head spin. The difference between Mack and her other bodyguards was that he’d pushed her, and pushed hard. An authoritarian, demanding man with a hint of marshmallow inside of him had been exactly what she’d needed to force her into making a change that she now believed had been within her all along.
His admission, albeit given grudgingly, that he felt something for her wouldn’t stop running around in her head. She wasn’t stupid. Mack had made it clear that their futures lay on different paths, but it stroked her badly wounded ego to know that she could make a man like Mack feel something deeper than surface attraction.
If she thought about it, she knew very little about the man, other than scant details he’d been willing to share, but it hadn’t stopped them from forming a deep connection, which, even when they parted, would stay with her for a very long time.
She would ignore the way her heart twisted whenever her mind turned to a life without him. “Live in the now,” Mack had suggested, and she intended to do just that.
They half ran, half fell up the stairs, discarding their clothes on the way to her bedroom. Maybe the glass of wine she’d enjoyed—the first in quite a while—had given her a shot of Dutch courage. She jumped on him the second he kicked the bedroom door shut, wrapping her thighs around his waist and rubbing erotically against him.
His chest rumbled in a growl that arrowed directly between her legs. He spun her around, slamming her back into the wall, treating her rougher than he had up until this point, and she loved it. Even before the abduction, she’d spent her whole life wrapped in cotton wool, and the men she’d hung around had all been Yale types from well-to-do families. The sex had been gentle and nice—and forgettable.
“You’ve been holding out on me,” she panted, gasping when Mack sucked hard on her nipple. “God yeah, have you ever.”
“Too much?” he muttered.
“No. Hell no. Not enough.”
Another growl erupted from him. He gripped her ass, carried her over to the bed, and dropped her onto the mattress, then flipped her onto her front.
“Get on your knees, Red.”
She heard the nightstand drawer open and the sound of a condom packet being ripped open. Ass in the air, chest flattened against the bed, she braced herself for him.
The head of his cock pressed against her entrance, and he drove inside, faster and harsher than their previous encounters. His fingers dug into her hips, and as he thrust forward, he pulled her back. She grunted as suppressed air forced itself from her lungs.
Relentless, Mack powered into her, barely allowing space for her to breathe. He hadn’t only held out on her, but he’d also hidden his true self. Brutal, uncompromising, fierce.
Addictive.
He made her feel reborn. He made her feel alive.
But most of all, he made her feel like a woman.
His fingers found her clit, and he rubbed and pinched and caressed, switching from light to heavy pressure, and all the while, he pounded into her from behind without breaking rhythm. Her stomach lurched and swirled and undulated, and an unstoppable force swelled within her. She hovered on the edge, then careened down the other side, plunging into a climax that rendered her momentarily blind, deaf, and dumb.
But, God, she felt. She felt it all. Every last amazing second. Her muscles shuddered, her orgasm seemingly never-ending.
Mack rammed into her three more times, then stilled, finding his release on a quietly expelled breath of air. She readied herself for a pinch as he pulled out. Instead, he wrapped a heavily muscled forearm around her chest and eased her upright, his chest a solid wall at her back. His lips traced a path along the back of her neck, and he gently caressed her breasts, bringing her down slowly.
“Talk to me, Red.”
“You’re… that… oh… I’ll never be the same again.”
Chuckling, he brought her chin around and captured her mouth in a kiss. “I might have to go a bit easier next time.”
“Don’t you dare,” she admonished.
He lifted her up and pulled out. After discarding the condom in the bathroom, he lay beside her, reaching for her hand in the semidarkness, the moon outside her window providing muted light.
“Knew you were a tough one.”
“You told me once that I couldn’t handle a man like you.” She giggled. “Proved you wrong, Military Man.”
He didn’t return her laugh. In fact, his face twisted, and he sat up and planted his feet flat on the floor, his hands braced on his thighs.
She touched his back. He shuffled out of reach. “What did I say?”
“Nothing.” He stood and walked over to the door. “Get some sleep, Red. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Wait,” she barked. “Stop right there.”
He paused, his hand on the doorknob.
Throwing herself off the bed, she marched over to him. “You’re really going to leave me less than two minutes after we’ve just shared an incredible experience? And that’s also after a monumental personal achievement for me tonight. Do you have any idea how happy I was until fifteen seconds ago?”
He shook his head, and he wouldn’t give her his eyes. “Sorry. But I already told you. I don’t sleep in the same room as anyone else.”
“Why?”
“I just don’t.”
She jabbed at his chest with her pointer finger. “You’re an asshole.”
“I am that, and so much more, Red.”
He opened the door and slid outside, the quiet click so much worse than if he’d slammed it. Honor stood there, her chest uncomfortably tight, the terrible sense of rejection making her feel sick. The other times they’d slept together, it had been morning, or early in the day, where getting up afterward was a perfectly normal thing to do. His “I don’t sleep with women” declaration had slipped her mind—until now.
“Fuck this.”
She dragged a T-shirt over her head and pulled on a pair of panties. Marching down the hall toward his bedroom, she banged on the door once, then strode inside.
He wasn’t there.
She marched downstairs and found him sitting on the rear deck, buck naked, a bottle of water dangling between his parted thighs, and his shoulders slightly bowed. Something about his body language stirred a feeling of dread within her. She paused, only for a second, and then slipped through the glass doors and took the seat next to his. He kept facing forward, his gaze fixed on the lake where the light from the moon shimmered across the glass-like surface.
“It’s so strange,” she began, leaving the rest of her thought dangling.
He sighed, but not in an irritated way. “What is?”
“You’ve always plugged talking as a way of exorcising our demons. From the very beginning, you told me that keeping things bottled up wasn’t conducive to healing. I’ll admit, at first, I thought you were full of shit. I tried the talking thing after my release, and it did nothing for me. But like you said, I wasn’t ready then, and so I didn’t commit.”
He swigged straight from the bottle, then set it on the table in front of him. “Your point?”
“My point is this. ‘I just don’t’ in response to my question of why you don’t sleep next to the women you fuck isn’t an answer; it’s avoidance. Just like refusing to tell me what happened in Syria is avoidance.”
He shrugged. “Also known as personal choice.”
Her jaw scissored from side to side, her palm itching to slap some sense into him. The trouble was, he struck her as the kind of man who wouldn’t take that lying down. And anyway, a woman hitting a man was just as bad as a man hitting a woman. There was no difference, as far as she was concerned.
“And here I was thinking you cared.”
His head whipped around. “I do care.”
“Really? Prove it.”
He snorted a laugh. “Nice try, Red.”
Her leg muscles quivered, and the heat of rising anger filled her chest. She scrambled to her feet. “Fine. Keep your stupid secrets. But tonight, what you did wasn’t cool. Screwing a woman and then staging a cut and run when her clit’s still throbbing from the orgasm you gave her… is shameful. You’re shameful. So, well done, Mack. You can sleep every night on your own because you won’t get another chance with me.”
Almost taking the door off its hinges, Honor stomped through the house. She got as far as the stairs before Mack’s strong arms wrapped around her waist, and he lifted her off her feet.
“Get off me,” she railed, kicking her legs.
“Honor, stop. Just stop.”
“I hate you,” she bit out. “I fucking hate you.”
“You’re right to hate me,” he said dully. “I hate me.”
He let her go. She whirled around, and something inside of her broke at the sight of his agonized expression.
“Please tell me,” she begged. “Whatever it is, I’ll never share with a single soul. You can trust me.”
She lightly touched his chest, tracing the ink embedded there. He covered her hand with his, his mouth pulled to one side, and she watched him go into battle with himself.
“I’ve never told anyone. Not my therapist, or a doctor. Not even Loris or any of my close friends.”
His eyes dropped to the floor, and then he sat on the bottom stair. She followed suit. Minutes passed where neither of them spoke. However long they sat here was fine with her. If he was going to tell her what was eating him up from the inside, then she had to let him do it in his own time. Pressing him would only heap on the pressure, and she knew how that felt. It always sent her scurrying for cover, even more determined not to share her private thoughts.
He inhaled through his nose, then breathed out. He repeated this three more times. And then he shifted his body toward her and lifted his chin, meeting her gaze.
“When you said I was shameful, you hit the nail square on the head. I am shameful, and not for what I did to you back there, even though that’s a fair description.” He hesitated, and his eyes briefly closed. “The reason I don’t sleep next to women is that I almost killed the last person I did that with. My wife.”