Badger Read online

  “Both,” she said quietly. “I certainly recognize there’s something between us. I would love to see it develop.” Her lips twitched. “Not just because I love your house.”

  At that he laughed. He reached for her hand. Without hesitation she placed hers in it. “In that case, I’ll tell you the reason why my focus is shifting and why I’m rethinking my path of vengeance. Not that I’m letting it go but maybe broadening it to allow the rest of the men to take part—if they want to. I don’t want to place this burden on their shoulders if they’re content to walk away. Also they need to know about the audio file and make their own decision afterward. I can’t keep this from them. I won’t. There has to be an answer that doesn’t involve one of us being the traitor.”

  She smiled and nodded, then pushed further. “And?”

  “It’s you,” he said simply. “When I first met you, I didn’t give a damn. I would go after this guy, and I would take him out. If I went out at the same time, I didn’t care.”

  She nodded. “I could see that. It always bothered me.”

  “And you were never short on telling me that,” he said in a dry tone.

  She flashed a smile at him. “Somebody had to. You’re too good a man to go on a suicide mission.”

  “Part of the reason why I didn’t give a damn was because I had nothing here to hold me back. To make me want to come home again.”

  She studied him for a long moment. “You loved your family a lot, didn’t you?”

  “We were very close. My dad and I, we did everything together. And Mom, … well, she was just very special. And, although I had a lot of relationships over the years, I never found that special one. … However, when I went on a mission, I knew I had to come home for my parents’ sake. It would kill them if I didn’t make it back. It almost killed them when I was blown to shit. But they were here, right at my side, helping me every step of the way. When I lost them, I lost something else. I lost that root, that connection inside. I lost anybody here who cared if I went or not—except Dotty.”

  Dotty jumped up onto the lounger beside his good leg. He stroked her back in long soothing strokes. “Dotty is great company.”

  Kat shook her head. “It was hard on both of you. But,” she said gently, “you still had your friends. You still had the other teammates.”

  He nodded. “I did, but I could justify doing that to them because I would be doing it for them too. I would give them closure.”

  “Did you ever ask them if they needed it?”

  He shook his head. “No. I don’t even know if they all know what I’m doing. Obviously Erick, Cade and Talon do, but I’m not sure about the other three.”

  “Maybe you need to meet with them. Get it all out in the open. Assign some duties. If you’re on a mission, everybody would have a part of the job. Everybody would be tasked with something to do to help move this forward. To complete the mission. You don’t have to be a lone ranger. I realize you were the team leader, carrying the burden of responsibility and guilt for your team being blown up, for losing Mouse. Yet you don’t have to do this by yourself. You never did.”

  He squeezed her fingers gently, sliding the thick pad of his thumb across the long finger bones of her hand. “But I felt alone. And, when you feel alone, you think you are alone. I saw this as my job. Something I had to complete alone. And that’s what I’ve been grappling with this last year and a half. And I hadn’t realized I wasn’t alone any longer—had never been alone—until I went to England. With Cade and Talon and Erick.”

  She sat quietly, waiting.

  He knew he had to get it all out to finish this. “In England, somehow I realized you were there. You were always there. Every time I turned around, you were there. Before England, some days—when I didn’t have appointments with you—there’d be an email from you, telling me about results or a new plan. A new adaptation on my prosthetic or a new idea. I hadn’t realized how much I loved opening up my email, hoping there would be something from you. How much I looked forward to our appointments. Even if only because I got to see you. When you were kidnapped, that was my first clue, my first scare. But I never really made sense of it all until in England, when the gunman held his weapon on you, and I realized just how close I was to losing you.”

  She smiled. “You know? It’s funny. When that gunman arrived at our room, I wasn’t worried.”

  “How could you not be worried? It’s not like you’ve spent a lifetime at the other end of a gun.”

  She laughed. “No, but I knew you were there. I knew the others were there too. And I knew you wouldn’t let him hurt me. It just wasn’t your style.”

  He laughed. He gently squeezed her fingers once again. “No, but, for a moment there, I wasn’t so sure. If he’d pulled that trigger, you’d be gone. And I knew then nothing would stop me from getting to the bottom of this. Even now I won’t stop. You need to understand that. This is not something I can just turn away from. With this break in the case, I do want to bring in the other men. I’m hoping they can take the next step with my help and maybe allow me to get the surgery done. One of the other things that came to mind was the fact that, although I could do what I needed to do in England, if things had gotten much more physical, I don’t know that my leg could have handled it.”

  “That’s why you were wincing in the hotel room, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did something happen when you met the informant? Did you fall? Did you get injured?” She’s swung her legs over on the lounger to face him, a frown forming on her face. “Did you hurt yourself?”

  He shrugged. “It wasn’t even so much that. It’s just the leg gave out from under me because, of course, it doesn’t fit properly. And I went down to try and help him, but it was already too late. And, by the time I searched the rest of the apartment and made it back to the pub, the leg was in much-less-than-prime condition.”

  She nodded. “And, if you hadn’t had that happen then, you wouldn’t have been reminded about the weakness of your leg. So maybe England was a good thing after all.”

  “England was a great thing,” he said with a smile. “It helped a lot. I don’t think it did you any good …” His eyes searched hers, looking for any signs of trauma from the last few days.

  She shook her head. “It helped me too. No, it didn’t give me the peace and quiet of a holiday. But it let me see the three of you in action. Four of you actually, once Talon arrived. It gave me a better idea of how you need to use your legs and what you are up against on a day-to-day basis when you’re in the service. And it also let me see a different side of you. You never once tried to hide your disabilities. Even now I can see the scar tissue, the damage your body sustained …”

  “You’ve already seen it all, Doc,” he said quietly. “No point in making myself look pretty. I’m well past that.”

  “But before, you were very damaged on the inside. Now I can see you’re healing. And that’s a very important step.”

  “I might never heal properly,” he warned. “I still need answers.”

  “And you need to come to terms with the fact you might not get all the answers you want. And, in spite of it all, you have to put one leg in front of the other.”

  He laughed and lifted his stump slightly. “That would be a whole lot easier to do if it wasn’t constantly soring up. The surgeon did say it wasn’t a major operation but …”

  “It’s not. It’s just, after all the surgeries you went through, any operation was too much until now.”

  He nodded slowly, rubbing the top of the muscle. “I hate the idea of therapy work again.”

  “Not much of it this time. But you’re not afraid of the work. You’re not afraid of the pain. As a matter of fact, you’ve been incredibly dedicated to get as far as you have already.” She studied his chest muscles. “The amount of muscle you have regained, the strength you have rebuilt …” She shook her head. “It’s amazing.”

  “I’m not pretty to look at.”

 
She turned to stare at him. “Since when did I do pretty?”

  At that he laughed. Because she was right. Everybody who walked into her door was damaged in some way. “I didn’t expect, when I walked into your office, to meet somebody I would care about like I’m starting to care about you.”

  She shook her head. “I didn’t expect that either. And there’s no starting to care. You might be afraid of it. You might not trust it. But you already care—whether you’re ready to admit it or not.”

  He smiled and pulled her slowly, inexorably closer to him. “You’re right,” he whispered against her lips. “I care.”

  And he kissed her.

  Chapter 15

  Kat loved the feel of his firm lips against her own. She was afraid of hurting him. His stump was already sore, and she was in an awkward position, crushed half in his arms up against the lounge and half on the tile floor. But she didn’t want to move. This was just so special, actually making it to this point in the relationship. He’d come through such major awakenings.

  She was so damn happy that he had decided to do the surgery. She understood his reticence with all the pain and the problems he’d had up until now. But there was a time to quit, and this wasn’t it.

  She pulled her head back slowly, staring at him, her hand stroking alongside his face. “Wow. I wasn’t expecting that.”

  He chuckled. “Maybe not, Doc. But resisting the urge was well beyond me.”

  She leaned forward and kissed him gently. And then wrapped her arms around his neck and hugged him. Dotty, as if sensing what was coming, slid to the ground and moved to lie a few feet away. Badger pulled her into his lap, twisting her up so her legs were over the side. She frowned at him. “Will this hurt you?”

  He shook his head. “No, your weight is on the good side.”

  She smiled. “All right then.”

  They sat in each other’s arms for a long moment. “I’ll have to give him a phone call in the morning,” he said.

  She nodded. “You could be weeks getting a surgery date.”

  “I’ll be lucky if it’s not months.”

  She laughed. “True enough.” She sighed happily. “I really want to go back in the pool, but, at the same time, I don’t want to move.”

  “Well, I’d offer to carry you …”

  She laughed. “No, definitely not. Maybe when you get a new leg on that stump but not right now.” She disengaged her arms, sat up gently, and tried to keep the weight off his bad leg. She hopped to her feet and then held out a hand. “Maybe I can help you get to the water.”

  He rolled his eyes at her, hopped up in one smooth movement until he stood on his one strong leg, and he looked at the distance between him and the edge of the pool and his crutches on the far side of the lounger, and then back at her.

  She tilted an eyebrow. “It takes a strong man to accept help when it’s needed.”

  “And it takes a strong woman to actually ask for help when she needs it,” he reminded her with a big grin. But his hand closed over hers.

  Using her support, he made several hops to the edge of the pool and dove in. She followed at a slower pace. He was right. She’d had a hard time accepting any help several days ago. How soon she’d made major steps forward too.

  When he broke the surface, she still stood poolside, minus her ivory leg, contemplating her own personal changes. He called out, “What’s the matter?”

  She shook her head and jumped in. When she broke through the surface of the water to gasp for air, she said, “I think we must be good together. We’re certainly both growing and changing.”

  “Oh, we’re definitely good together,” he said.

  He grabbed her and pulled her toward him. He was standing upright, but the water was too deep here for her, so she couldn’t stand on her tiptoes. He wrapped her leg around his waist and tucked her up close. This time when he lowered his head, there was no exploratory tentativeness to his touch. He held her face, fingers firmly on either side of her head, as he kissed her. Heat sparked between them to a point she thought the temperature of the pool must be rising degree by degree.

  She wrapped her arms around him and held him close, feeling his response at the heart of her. She’d never made love in a pool, but she couldn’t wait.

  When he finally released her, she didn’t want to let go. She clung to his neck and kissed him back, her own need clawing inside her. She stroked her fingers through his hair, tugging as she twisted and slid her silky body in the water against his. Skin against skin, they stood for a long moment. When she came up for air, she gasped. “Wow.”

  He laughed.

  When he tossed something behind her, she twisted to look, realizing that somehow he’d managed to take her bikini top off, and she hadn’t even noticed. She stared down at her plump breasts pressed against his bare chest and smiled. “There is something lovely about a man who’s good in the water,” she said with arched eyebrows.

  “You’ve seen nothing yet,” he murmured as he pulled her down for yet another kiss.

  He stroked up her back and around her shoulders coming up to cup her breasts. The feel of his hands, hot and firm, so different from her own soft gentle skin. He was hard everywhere, just bones and planes and muscles, scar tissue, damaged body parts blended into healthy body parts. He was such a man of contrast. But there was no mistaking his intent or his passion.

  She didn’t even realize when her bottoms came off. Or when he lost his own. But, when she slid her hands down his back to explore his buttocks, she slid one hand around to the front of him, finding just smooth skin and no material.

  He twisted slightly to let her hand find his erection, hot, full and so damn big it was hard for her to do anything but stop in stunned amazement. She knew his physical dimensions almost as well as she knew her own. It was part of the research she had to do, part of the work she had to do to fit him properly for prosthetics. But at no point had there been anything sexual in her research. Now though …

  By the low light, she slowly explored his full length, stroking, caressing, teasing, and when she finally slid her thumb over the slit at the top, he moaned in joy.

  Before she realized it, he gripped her by the hips and shifted his position so she was now straddling him fully. With him placed at the heart of her, he slowly lowered her onto him. She gasped and froze, her body arching backward in the water as the waves lapped around them.

  “Are you okay?”

  She nodded. But trying to speak and breathe appeared to be too much. She sighed in joy. “I’m more than fine.”

  Instead of him controlling the motion, she slowly slid all the way down his shaft until he was seated deep inside her. The two of them sighed and moaned as she was sealed against him. She leaned forward until her breasts were pushed up against his chest. And she kissed him, her fingers stroking through his hair, rich, thick, lovingly caressing the curls, pulling them back off his face. He wrapped his arms around her and held her tight, letting the joy of being together overwhelm them both.

  Slowly he stroked her back, her hips, her thigh, exploring the soft flesh in his arms. She leaned back, dropped her arms around his neck and smiled. “Can’t say I have ever tried it this way,” she murmured.

  “We’ll make it work,” he promised.

  She let her head fall back, her face tilted to the evening sky and started to ride. She moaned, her breath catching in the back of her throat with each stroke and slide as her hips rose and fell, a sweet delicious torment building inside.

  And finally he pinned her up against the pool wall. “Sorry, I can’t wait.” He took over control, slamming into her over and over again until she was whimpering, helplessly caught in the throes of passion. Her climax broke, her cries flying free through the silent night. And still he drove deeper and deeper and deeper, riding her through her own orgasm until his body stiffened, his fingers on her hips clenched tight, and he ground himself against her, a long guttural sound filling the air.

  He sagged onto her, hi
s arms coming around to protect her from the cement on her back. She knew there’d be scrapes, and she didn’t care one bit. It was worth it. It was all worth it. She wrapped her arms around his neck, kissed his cheek and just cuddled him close. Togetherness like this was worth everything.

  Against her ear he whispered, “Okay?”

  She leaned forward, smiled up at the worry in his dark gaze and nodded. “Never better.”

  He grinned, kissed her again and said, “Now this is something I could get used to.”

  “I was just thinking that.” And she laughed. The sound free and easy. And she knew they’d taken a corner she hadn’t dared hope for. But she was so damn happy. She wrapped her arms around his back and lay her head against his heart. “I’m really happy right now.”

  He wrapped his arms around her and crushed her against his chest. “You and me both.”

  Badger wanted to pick her up and carry her to his room and make love to her over and over again. But the sad reality was, that wouldn’t happen. Until he got his leg fixed and could wear a prosthetic properly, such debonair moves were beyond him. He knew it wouldn’t matter to her, but he wasn’t the man he wanted to be.

  When he was whole and healthy, he could have carried her to his bed with no problem. Making love like this would show every unpleasant defect he could possibly have. That she’d already seen his records and most of his body didn’t seem to make one bit of difference when it came to intimacy at this level.

  He slowly separated from her. “Do you want to stay down here or go up to my room?”

  “Let’s go to your room,” she said quietly. And, as if understanding his discomfort, she made her way out of the pool and grabbed the towel again. He watched as she slipped on the beautiful ivory leg. He’d seen her casualness, her acceptance of her physical state and knew he had a long way to go in that regard. But, with her here, to keep it real, he knew he’d get there. She dried off and collected the dishes. “I’ll take these into the kitchen.”

  He made his way out of the pool, sat down on the side of the lounge and dried off. Then he grabbed his crutches, the towel she’d forgotten and his towel, and made his way inside. He leaned against the countertop and stared at her as she deliberately avoided looking at him. “Doesn’t look quite the same in the light of day, does it?”