Lear Read online

  Breathing.

  Darkness.

  I had to pee…badly.

  I was asleep in a narrow twin bed, on a thin mattress over ancient springs. In a cabin, in the woods outside Madison, Wisconsin.

  Under me was Lear Winter, still snoring.

  His arm was wrapped around me, resting possessively on my ass cheek. My cheek was nuzzled against his body armor, tucked up under his chin, my nose against his throat, smelling him, all but tasting him, hearing and feeling his pulse against my forehead. My hand was draped low on his belly, centimeters from his cock, and my thigh was thrown over his, the toe of my boot hooked around his ankle.

  An intimacy unlike anything I’d ever experienced.

  I suppressed my need to pee and focused on what I was feeling—he was asleep, and I was sleepy enough that I had no ability to pretend I didn’t like this.

  Comfortable. Surrounded. Safe. Warm. Intimate.

  I lay in the silence, hearing and feeling his pulse, smelling him, lulled into comfort by the strength of his arm around me.

  In this moment, I felt…utterly feminine. No sharp edges. No bloody conscience. No deadly skills. No suppressed military record, no off-book secret ops gone horribly wrong. Just me, Danielle Cuddy, alone in a man’s arms, and okay with it.

  But good goddamn, I had to pee so fucking bad.

  I reluctantly wriggled out from under his arm, and off the bed, the springs protesting loudly. I glanced down at Lear, who murmured, blinked, and peered at me in the near-complete darkness, his eyes glittering dully.

  “Where you going?” he murmured.

  “Pee,” I whispered back.

  He smirked. “Why are you whispering?”

  I snickered, and spoke in a normal volume. “Automatic instinct from being in a dark room at night?”

  “You remember where the outhouse is?” he asked.

  I nodded. “Out the back door, about twenty paces.”

  “You cool with an outhouse?”

  I frowned. “Do I have a choice?”

  “No.” He indicated the small, portable chemical toilet in a corner, which I’d overlooked; it resembled one of those free-standing training potties for little kids, and was probably meant to serve in the event of a siege. “I mean, there’s that, but no real bathroom.”

  “Yeah… I’m cool with an outhouse.” I laughed. “But, I am a covert operative and former US Army scout sniper. An outhouse is a luxury compared to some of the situations I’ve been in.”

  “Ever shit your pants?” he suggested, with a laugh.

  “Close—in a hole in the ground while my spotter kept guard. I’ve peed myself rather than leave my position, though.”

  He nodded. “You’re not a sniper if you haven’t pissed your pants a few times.”

  I did a wiggle. “Speaking of pissing your pants, I’m about to, so…” I headed for the back door.

  “Cuddy—do a scan, first. No security measures are perfect. I know you know, just reminding you.”

  I snagged my HK off the back of the chair where I’d left it, slung it on, and slipped out the back door, and stood there in the near darkness, listening, smelling, watching the edges of shadows for movement. All was still and silent—or as still and silent as any forest can be; trees sway in the constant gentle breeze, crickets chirp. An owl hoots softly, and somewhere far away, a coyote cries mournfully.

  When I was certain I was alone, I made quick work of my business in the outhouse. Coming back inside, I found Lear making a fire in the fireplace; the wood was all very dry and gave off little to no smoke; it was still risky, but we were both operating on the assumption of when we were discovered rather than if.

  He glanced at me. “I’m going out for some recon. If we’re lucky, I’ll snag a deer.”

  “Sounds good. Protein would be good.”

  There was a small closet beside the back door—he rummaged in it, came out with a compound bow and a small clutch of razor-tipped hunting arrows. Checking it over, he decided the bow was ready for action. He slung his Steyr Aug around his back to hang off to one side out of the way of his draw arm, clipped the quiver to his webbing, and gave me a two-finger salute.

  “Back soon.”

  “Good hunting,” I said.

  He just smiled at me, and vanished out the door, melting into the darkness.

  I tended the fire; found a percolator under the sink and grounds in the cabinet, and set the pot to brewing.

  Cleaned the HK.

  Cleaned the spare weapons, one by one, thoroughly, including all the handguns.

  An hour and a half later, Lear still wasn’t back, and I was starting to worry; I had expected him to be back before now.

  Another hour went by, and my nerves were jangling.

  Finally, two and a half hours after he left, he stumbled through the back door, dragging a corpse with him.

  A human one.

  He was covered in blood, his bow was missing, and he was favoring one leg.

  I sighed. “What the fuck, Lear?”

  He just grinned. “Caught a kill squad trying to sneak in.” He gestured at the body. “This fucker is still alive, and I plan to get some information out of him.”

  I arched an eyebrow. “You’re a skilled torturer, too?”

  He shook his head. “Skilled, no.”

  I raised both eyebrows. “That was a joke. You’ve actually tortured someone before?”

  He hesitated, eyes on mine. “Would you think less of me if I said yes?”

  I shook my head. “Not at all. I’d be relieved that I wasn’t the only one of us who has.” I gestured at the body. “Can I make a suggestion, though?”

  He paused in the act of trying to get the body over the threshold. “What?”

  “Leave him outside. Gag him, tie him to a tree, and wait for him to come around on his own. You don’t want him in here.”

  He sighed. “I should’ve known that.”

  I smiled. “I’m glad you didn’t.”

  “Why?”

  I shrugged. “Means you’re not good at it, which means you don’t do it often.” A pause, and a grin. “At least one of us should have a soul and something like a conscience.”

  “Meaning you don’t?”

  I sighed, shrugged. “Not really, no.”

  He frowned, head tilted to one side. “I don’t believe that.”

  I pulled the percolator off the fire. “Believe what you want. Truth is, if I had to, I’d pull his fingernails off with a pair of pliers.”

  “If you had to, to get the information you needed, and you wouldn’t enjoy it.”

  I laughed. “Okay, so I have a little bit of a soul. Because no, I wouldn’t enjoy it, but I’d do it if I had to.”

  He nodded. “So would I.” He gestured at the body’s feet. “Help me with this dickhead.”

  I helped him carry the unconscious merc outside, into the woods, and we tied him to a tree with twine from a coil Lear produced from somewhere. We gagged him with an old dishrag and duct tape, and left him, head lolling, in the shadows of the forest.

  “I wonder if the coyotes will bother him,” I asked.

  Lear shook his head. “Doubtful. I wouldn’t cry too hard if they did, though.”

  “How many were in the squad?”

  “Just three. I think they were looking for us. They clearly know our general vicinity, but not an exact location.” Back inside, Lear splashed water on his face and washed his hands, and the water in the sink ran pink. “It’s definitely Alice tracking us. No one else could keep finding us with this kind of speed. It also means this is a very well-planned and -funded op, to keep mobilizing as much manpower as we’re coming up against.”

  “Where are the other two?” I asked, taking another rag from a cabinet beside the sink, and wiping at Lear’s face where he’d missed spots of blood.

  Lear stood and let me dab, and suddenly I was aware of our proximity—that he was inches from me, that his eyes were on mine.

  “At the botto
m of a ravine,” he answered in a low murmur. “Covered in leaves, branches.”

  “How’d you come across them?” I asked, wiping away the last of the blood from under his nostril.

  He grinned. “I thought they were deer at first. And then I thought they were hunters, but the weapons they were carrying and the way they moved gave them away. And one of them spoke to the other in Belarusian or something like that, and I realized they were Cain’s men. Alice must have tracked the Blazer to Madison, and now they’re searching the area around it hoping to come across us.” He frowned, rubbing his temples. “Should’ve traded vehicles at some point. Rookie mistake.”

  “Would the kill squad have found us here?” I asked.

  “I didn’t see the point taking the chance. They’ll know we’re in the area for sure when these fuckers don’t check in, but they already knew we were here somewhere. And I took them out quite a ways from here.” He shrugged. “I’m hoping it bought us more time.”

  I tossed the towel on the counter. “More time for what?”

  He shrugged again. “I don’t know. Time to rest, make plans, and for my team to coordinate.”

  “Did you use your rifle to kill them?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “No. The bow.”

  I nodded. “Thought so. Even from a mile and a half, I’d have heard the reports.”

  “Exactly why I didn’t use the rifle.”

  “Smart,” I murmured.

  “I try.”

  God, the tension.

  Thick as pudding. Hot, crackling, sexual tension.

  His eyes were blazing, sparking green fire. He was vibrating, I realized. He was physically shaking. Adrenaline, post-kill thrill.

  I knew how I felt after a kill—the buzz, the wild adrenalized jangle in my skull, my veins, the pounding of my pulse, the quaver of need inside me, the instinctive urge to fuck, a primeval instinct of survival.

  I recognized it in him.

  The way he looked at me.

  Damn it, damn it, damn it.

  I don’t want to want him this way. This is supposed to be professional.

  Not personal.

  Yet, it was always personal.

  The sex was personal—the way he kissed me, the way we felt together.

  Even our mutual dependence on each other for survival right now was personal.

  There was nothing professional about this situation—that was the scary part. It was what worried me, what made me hesitate to act on my desires, right now.

  I couldn’t not, though. It was more than desire. It was need—in a deep, desperate way I’d never felt before, and against which I’m utterly helpless.

  There was a moment of silence, a stillness.

  Neither of us breathing.

  And then his mouth slammed onto mine, and I tasted his tongue and the tang of blood as his teeth smashed my lip, or was it his? It didn’t matter, the sting of pain was beautiful. Rousing. Wilding. I took his tongue into my mouth, palmed his cheeks in my hands and clutched him close, let myself kiss him like I’d never been kissed before, like I’ll never kiss anyone again.

  Just own it, I decided. Take it, accept it for what it is.

  No point pretending I didn’t feel what I felt, that I didn’t want what I wanted—him. All of him. My instincts were screaming at me to take this opportunity while it lasted—I knew damn well the odds were against us, no matter how good we both were, no matter how great we operated as a team. We may not make it out of this alive, and if I was going to die soon, I’d damn well better go out with a searing, vivid memory of the best sex a woman could ask for fresh in my mind.

  He broke away, but only just. “Who am I kissing right now?” he asked. “Danielle, or Cuddy?”

  I swallowed hard, grabbing onto the webbing of his vest. “I don’t know, Lear. Both? Neither?”

  He swept the ball cap off my head and tossed it aside, ran his fingers through my hair. “Both and neither, then. Some new part of you.”

  I nodded, closing my eyes at the feel of his hands in my hair, massaging my scalp. “Something I don’t have a name for,” I whispered. “It scares the fuck out of me, Lear.”

  “Me too,” he whispered back. “Feels…bigger than either of us.”

  “If we do this, Lear…” I opened my eyes and met his. “Will you lose respect for me as an operative?”

  “Does it seem like I did the first time?”

  “You didn’t know I was one, then.”

  “Right. So even more so now—I know precisely what you’re capable of, and I respect the fuck out of you for it.” He touched my chin with a finger. “It’s all you—Danielle…Cuddy, Danielle Cuddy.” A pause. “Dani.”

  I swallowed hard. “Not that.”

  “No?”

  I shook my head. “It’s a trigger for me.”

  He frowned. “Tell me. Let it go free. Let go of the power it has over you.”

  I shook my head again. “I’d rather keep trying to forget.” I loosened his webbing with a rip of Velcro. “I’d rather do other things with you than talk about old pain.”

  He captured my hands. “Tell me about Dani. Please.”

  “Fuck.” I closed my eyes. “Fine.”

  Chapter Six

  Risk and Reward

  A long, long silence as Danielle Cuddy summoned the courage to tell the story she so clearly has been suppressing for far too long.

  She paced away from me, to the fire, where she had my percolator at the edge of the heat staying warm. She poured us both a coffee into the dented tin camp mugs I kept here. I set mine down and took her HK from her, set it near to her hand. I slowly, deliberately started removing layers of my armor and gear as she began speaking.

  “Mom was an addict, father was no one.” She slid a finger over the skin of her forearm, back and forth, in what seemed like a nervous gesture. “According to what I could dig up, my mother was a refugee from Lebanon, came over in the late seventies, early eighties. Land of the free and home of the brave didn’t treat her so well, and she ended up hooked on crack in the epidemic that was sweeping the country back then. Had a hookup with my father—for drugs, I’m assuming. He was half-black and half-Columbian, or so genetics testing tells me. Mom had me, gave me up for a closed adoption. Only, after she had me, the couple set to adopt me discovered I was born addicted to crack. They left me at a police station and ran off. I nearly died as an infant, and then got put into the system. Adopted at ten or eleven months by a single woman who desperately wanted a baby. From the reports I read, she was a good woman. I’d have been loved and taken care of.”

  I set my tactical webbing vest aside, and went about loosening the bulletproof armor underneath. “I don’t like where I know this is going.”

  She nodded, sipped coffee, not looking at me, letting me divest her of her gear. “She was murdered. I was two, and I was in the car with her. Some gangbangers shot her, threw her out of her car, and took off with me in the back seat, screaming. Once they made their getaway, they abandoned the car with me still in it.”

  “Jesus.”

  “So I ended up in the system again. Fostered out. But I was a problem child. I’d seen my mother murdered in front of me. Had been born addicted to crack, survived that, but wasn’t totally healthy yet. So I was shuffled around a lot, because no one could handle me for long.”

  I sighed. “I know all about that.”

  She eyed me. “Yeah, I know you do.” A pause. “Ended up with this foster couple. Jeff and Eileen Eschel. I was four.” She swallowed, paused, staring at me, and then resumed talking, but in a whisper. “Daniela Khoury.”

  “Daniela Khoury.”

  She nodded. “That was me. It was Jeff who first called me Dani.” Her eyes were distant, vacant.

  “No.” I heard my voice harden. “No way.”

  She nodded again, eyes dropping. “It started with him. He’d call me Dani when he was drunk and Eileen was at work. She was a night nurse at the hospital, so Jeff was alone with me a
ll night.”

  “Fucking hell. You were four.

  “After a while, he only called me Dani.” Another long pause. “I started acting out, for obvious reasons, so they sent me off to be rehomed…and somehow the nickname stuck.”

  “How many homes?”

  “One every six months or so, until I lied and forged my way into the army at fourteen.”

  “Fucking hell.”

  “Not all of them were bad. Some just couldn’t handle my problems for very long. And with every home where the male did shit to me, my problems got worse, so I’d last shorter times at the next place because I’d learn to anticipate being touched and whatever.” She blinked hard. “Sometimes I wondered if I somehow invited it, you know? Like I’ve talked to other girls who spent their lives being fostered like I was, and they weren’t all fucked over like I was. But it was just a constant for me, like I had some kind of target on my forehead that said ‘please molest me’.” She went hoarse. “I don’t fucking know.”

  “You didn’t deserve it,” I said. “You didn’t ask for it.”

  “I know,” she said, but her voice was quiet, low, and hesitant.

  I cup her face in both hands. “Danielle Cuddy.” I speak her full name clearly, firmly. “You listen to me.”

  She rolled her eyes. “I know, Lear. I’ve heard it all before.”

  I didn’t let go of her face. “No. You listen to me.”

  She gave me a bored look—but I saw beneath it. “Okay. I’m listening.”

  “You didn’t deserve it. You didn’t ask for it.”

  “I know.”

  “Say it.”

  She shook her head. “I wish it was that simple. I know it shouldn’t have happened. Not to me, not to anyone.”

  “Say it, goddammit.”

  She bit her lip. Her eyes watered. “You’re making me feel weak.” She swallowed hard. “I don’t fucking cry.” A break in her voice. “I’m a stone-cold killer. I don’t fucking cry because I had a bad childhood.”

  “You’re allowed to, though.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “Yes, you are.” I peeled her vest off, and I could tell she was in agony, that taking the bulletproof armor off was like stripping away a layer of protection emotionally as well as physically. “You’re safe, Danielle Cuddy. You’re safe here, you’re safe with me.”