Dark of Night (31 page)

She turned up the computer's volume so that she'd hear when a response entered her inbox.

And then she turned back to Decker—who may or may not have been bleeding to death from a second gunshot wound in his leg.

She didn't have a choice; she just had to do it. She took a deep breath, exhaled hard, and unfastened Decker's belt. Silently apologizing to him, she unbuttoned and unzipped his pants, then pulled them down to his knees.

His thighs were like tree trunks—well, okay, maybe not redwoods, but still… For a man of Decker's size and seemingly slender build, he looked as if he ran marathons in his spare time. She knew he didn't—she would've heard about it by now, in the office, over coffee. Wouldn't she have? Maybe not from Decker himself, but from someone.

His legs were tan, with crisp, springy man-hair that, on his right side, was damp and matted with blood, but beautifully uninjured. Except— shit—his tightie-whities were dark red, again on his right side, and Tracy took another deep breath and pulled them down, too, freeing—eek!—an extremely impressive package that she had no business looking at, so she didn't, except God, it was
right
there, flopping about as she made sure he hadn't been shot in that vulnerable juncture between leg and groin.

She tried to be businesslike, tried to think in medical terms as she then tipped him onto his side to make sure he hadn't been shot in the gluteus maximus. He hadn't been.
Nice
gluteus maximus. Okay, wrong,
wrong—
that was another inappropriate thought, and she shouldn't be thinking it, except it was true. It was a simple fact. A completely no-ulterior-motive, emotion-and attraction-free observation—nice glutes—and yes, maybe later she could attempt to sell herself the Brooklyn Bridge.

She pulled up his overshirt and T-shirt, and his back was smooth and tan and muscular and unmarred, save for what looked like a terrible raspberry all across his shoulder blades—no doubt from sliding in the dirt, pushed back by the explosion as he'd tried to shield her from harm. She had several similar rug-burn-like scrapes on various parts of her own body, she was sure, but none as bad as that one.

Tracy lowered him back down as gently as she could, and there were his man-parts again—which she was really only looking at because she was trying to decide whether or not to pull his blood-soaked briefs back up, or find him a clean pair from his luggage in the back of the truck, when she realized …

His eyelids were fluttering.

“Oh, my God,” Tracy said, her heart leaping into her throat as she leaned over him. “Decker! Deck!”

She pushed his hair back from his face, touched the rasp of unshaven beard on his lean cheeks, and he opened his eyes.

He opened his eyes!

And he looked straight at her, frowned slightly, and said, “Tracy. What the hell
…?”

And Tracy couldn't stop herself. “Thank God you're all right,” she said, and burst into tears, which was stupid—she knew it was stupid—and foolish and girly and all those things she tried so hard not to be. Tried and nearly always failed.

But it hadn't just been the threat of his bleeding to death that had scared her. That bump on his head had also been a terrifying prospect.

Sam Starrett liked to tell a story about their boss, Tom Paoletti, who'd once been his commanding officer when they were both back in the SEAL teams. Tom had received a near-fatal head injury while out on an op, in the middle of some godforsaken desert. Sam occasionally did an imitation of Tom walking around and giving orders—and then gingerly lowering himself to the ground and saying, “Tunnel vision's getting worse. Sorry to be such a motherfucking pain in the ass, men, but I'm checking out now. Goddamn
son
of a—”

Everyone always laughed when Sam did his impression, closing his eyes and going limp mid-sentence. Tracy had always assumed that Tom's walking and talking right up to falling unconscious was an exaggeration— part of the good-natured mocking and ribbing that happened daily in the office, but Tom had told her, no. Even with a head injury bad enough to put someone into a next-step-is-death coma, there was often a stretch of time called the “lucid interval.” And it could end rather abruptly.

It seemed unlikely that, if the drive from the motel to Sam and Alyssa's house had been Decker's lucid interval, he would rouse from a coma without extensive medical intervention.

So it was far more likely that his head injury wasn't all that massive. And for that, Tracy sobbed her relief. She wanted to grab him and hold on to him, but she was afraid to jar his injured arm, and—oh, yeah, don't grab him
there—
he was naked from the waist down. Well, not totally, since his
boots were still on and his pants and briefs were around his knees. It not only looked really awkward, it
was
really awkward. And embarrassing.

“Good news! You weren't shot in the butt,” she wanted to tell him, but she couldn't get the words out, she was crying too hard.

And he didn't seem to care, because he started to sit up, wincing as he put weight on his injured arm, but then lowering himself back down. “Whoa. Light-headed … I'm … Jesus …” Still, he reached up to touch her, to push her stringy, straggly hair back from her face so he could better see her. “Are you hurt?”

She couldn't answer. She just shook her head no, as she tried—and failed—to stop crying.

“You sure?” He looked like he was going to give sitting up another try, light-headedness be damned, so she put her hand on his chest, to keep him lying down. He touched her arm with a hand that was warm, with fingers that were slightly rough against her bare skin.

And she forced some words out. “I'm sure. I'm fine. But you're not.”

“What the hell happened?” He winced again as he shifted his injured arm, checking the makeshift bandage she'd applied—and she realized he was still foggy.

“You were shot,” she said. “You also hit your head when the bomb went off. At the motel… ?”

As she watched, his memory came stuttering back. She could see his growing awareness—coupled with confusion—in his eyes.

She helped him along by telling him, “We're hiding in Sam and Alyssa's garage. We're safe. You made sure we weren't followed.”

And suddenly he
did
sit up, banishing his light-headedness with sheer will as he grabbed both of her arms, his face suddenly fierce. “Did we really get a text from Tess? She and Jules are alive? God, please say yes.”

She nodded. Said it. “Yes.”

It was quite possibly both the craziest and the most beautiful thing she'd ever seen. It was certainly the last thing she'd expected, but as Lawrence Decker gazed at her, his eyes filled with tears. “They're alive,” he whispered, not exactly a question, but not an absolute statement, either—as if he couldn't quite believe it.

Tracy nodded, laughing even as she, once again, began to cry.

Decker laughed, too. “Thank you,
thank
you, sweet Jesus,” he
breathed. And out of all the solemn and self-proclaimed-holy religious services Tracy had attended back when she still lived with her parents and they made her go both to temple and to church, his six barely voiced words were
the
most heartfelt and sincere prayer of thanks she'd ever heard in her life.

He pulled her against him in a crushing embrace that was probably no more than a dodge to keep her from watching him fight to push his tears away, but Tracy didn't care. He was warm and he was solid and he was
alive,
and she wrapped her arms around him, too. She held on tightly as she sobbed shamelessly into his shirt, nearly overcome by her own relief.

She wasn't relieved—as he obviously was—about Tess and Jules, because she'd never truly believed that they were dead. No, her relief was all about this man with his beautiful never-the-same-color eyes. They'd been mostly green in this light—or maybe it was the sheen of tears that had made them look so exotic.

“It's okay,” he murmured, his arms tight around her, his hand in her hair, stroking down her back—warm and soothing and solid. “It's going to be okay, thank God.” His voice was a rich rumble in his chest, but she felt it catch, felt his body shake, and she knew he was fighting like hell to keep himself from crying the way she was, and it didn't seem fair.

“It
is
okay,” she pulled back to tell him, but then there he was—his face, those eyes, that usually tight, grim mouth—mere inches from her.

Which was when he kissed her.

And again, she knew instantly as his mouth crushed down on hers— demanding and hard—that his motive was purely about not letting her see him cry. Or maybe he was kissing her so that he wouldn't cry. Maybe it was a substitute release that would keep those tears that brimmed in his eyes from overflowing.

But then, God, it didn't matter
why
he was kissing her—only that he
was.
Because kissing Decker was nothing like she'd expected. She'd imagined that locking lips with him would be not unlike surfing the lava spilling out of a volcano. But she was wrong—it was a thousand times more extreme. He was rough, he was hungry, and he was completely in charge. No hesitation, no
May I?
No
maybe
about it. No hidden sweetness beneath the maelstrom. Just pure unadulterated, passionate sex, laced with ownership and domination as he took total possession of her mouth with his tongue, with his lips, with his
teeth,
and it should have turned her off, feminist that she was, but it didn't.

It only made her want more.

Which he gave her by touching her, his hands sweeping down her back to cover her bare butt, pulling her closer, massaging her—fingers slipping beneath the silk back of her thong, even as his other hand claimed her breast. There was nothing even remotely gentle about his touch as he found and caught her nipple between thumb and forefinger, and she heard herself moan as she kissed him and kissed him, as the heat she'd been fighting for seemingly
years
now pooled, liquid and hot, between her legs.

Which was when he pulled back. “Where the
fuck
are my pants?!”

T
racy was breathing as hard as Decker, who stared at her. She was, no doubt, as wild-eyed as he was.

“Yes. That. It wasn't …” Her voice came out sounding breathless and thin as she felt her face flush. “I didn't… Your shorts were covered with blood and I was afraid…. So I looked …”

She shifted, to move back even farther from him, and her arm brushed against him—against
him—
and oh, dear God. That was fast. Fast and furious, so to speak.

“Sorry,” she said, even as he said it too.

“Sorry, I'm … Adrenaline can really … you know. Ramp things up.”

“Really?” The word left her mouth even as she realized that the right thing to do was to not keep talking about it, but to kiss him again.

Except he was giving her the body-language equivalent of
stay back.
Which meant that the
real
right thing to do was to turn away and count the ridiculous number of life vests Sam and Alyssa had hanging on their garage wall—as if they were prepped and ready for the next big flood.

Instead, like an idiot, she actually stupidly glanced down and …

He'd tried to pull the tail of his shirt over himself, but it hadn't really done the trick.

“Wow,” she said—again, her mouth went off in advance of her brain, so she added, “Sorry.
Sorry.”
Although she wasn't quite sure what she was doubly sorry for. Kissing him back and
ramping things up?
Heck, those
kisses had ramped things up for her, too, although her ramped-up things weren't as obvious as his.

His tears—if there had even been any—were long gone. His eyes now brimmed with embarrassment as he reached for his briefs—apparently preferring them on, despite their blood-soaked condition. And yes, he was actually blushing, too—a thin line of flush beneath his tan, right along his cheekbones.

“It's, you know, physiological,” he told her. “Adrenaline kicks in and…. It, um, can be inconvenient.”

“Not for your girlfriend,” Tracy pointed out. “I mean,
Good-bye, honey. Have a nice day. Hope someone tries to kill you again because last night was amazing….
”

It was supposed to be a joke, but he didn't laugh.

His briefs were stuck on his right knee, and she tried to help him, which in hindsight was a stupid thing to do, because he really didn't want her help, especially with her own pants-free rear in his face. He said, “I got it, thanks,” in a voice that brooked no argument, which made her instantly let go.

He efficiently packed himself in, like some kind of dream male underwear model, to tightie-whities that were extra tight and no longer white.

“I can see why you were, uh, concerned,” he said as he reached down to untie his boots. “I'm a mess.”

He obviously wasn't going to attempt to pull his blood-soaked jeans back up so Tracy said, “If you want, I can throw them into the washing machine.”

“Yes,” he said, “that would be good. Thanks. I could really use a shower.”

“There's a wash sink out here,” Tracy said. It was surreal how polite they were being after licking the insides of each other's mouths. “Unless you know where the key to the house is … ?”

“No,” he said, “but I don't need it. Just give me a sec.” He got his second boot off, but then took a moment, closing his eyes and holding his forehead.

“Are you all right?” Tracy asked, her concern instantly back.

“Yeah,” he said. “Yes.”

“No tunnel vision, double vision, blurred vision … ?”

“I'm fine.” His words were countered when he reached up to touch the back of his head, and swore.

“Seriously, Decker,” she told him, helping him pull his jeans off his muscular calves, but keeping her distance this time, staying down by his feet. “It looks to me like you hit your head pretty hard. You've got to tell me—right away—if you start experiencing any symptoms of head injury. I mean, any symptoms in addition to falling out of your truck, unconscious … ?”