Wicked Sexy (Wicked Games Series Book 2) (33 page)

S
he’s
in surgery for four hours. I’ve seen war, lost people I love, been through a lot of tough shit in my life, but those four hours are the longest and darkest I’ve ever spent.

SOAR picked us up right on schedule in the designated LZ. The Black Hawk has a capacity for eighteen fully loaded soldiers, and we were only six, plus one injured woman and one injured girl. Juanita was semiconscious when Murphy and Reid found her, dumped on the floor like trash in a storage room on the first level of the caves. The doctor at the hospital in Fairbanks says she’ll have a nasty scar on her back, but she’ll eventually be fine.

Physically, she’ll be fine. How she reacts mentally to her ordeal remains to be seen. Courtesy of Uncle Sam, her mother and all six siblings are being flown in, which hopefully will help begin the healing process. It’s always better to have your team by your side in times of trouble.

We’ve been debriefed by the CIA, which is exactly as bad as having all your teeth pulled by a medieval dentist. The four Marines who teamed up with us on the op—Murphy, Kasey, Reid, and Big Swingin’ Dick, a man of few words and one hell of a reputation—have gone back to Camp Pendleton, after receiving my thanks and an invitation to join Metrix once they leave the corps, should they be of a mind.

Now it’s only Ryan and me, pacing the halls of this cold, depressing, podunk hospital, doing everything I can not to do something I haven’t done in over twenty years since Mikey died.

Cry.

“Brother,” says Ryan, watching me from his plastic chair in the waiting room. His bulk makes it look like a piece of child’s furniture. “It’s gonna be okay.”

“Yep,” I say, and turn around and pace the other direction over the crappy, frayed brown carpet. The chairs are brown too. The walls are a lighter brown. Even the
plants
are brown. It’s like this place is one giant turd.

“She’s a fighter. You know that.”

“Yep.”

“She was conscious during the flight to the hospital. That’s a good sign.”

Conscious, but not speaking. She just gripped my hand and stared up at me, her green eyes huge, her pulse faint.

Her blood leaking all over the goddamned place.

“Yep.”

Ryan sighs, realizing that no matter what he says his pep talk won’t make me feel peppy.

After another half an hour, a doctor walks into the waiting room. He’s a different doctor from the one who attended Juanita. This one, although younger, looks tired and more than a little cranky. Because Ryan and I are the only ones in the waiting room, his glower is directed at us.

“Mr. West?”

“Hughes,” I correct without thinking.

The doctor turns his glare to Ryan. “Are you Mr. West?”

Ryan looks startled. “Uh…”

“Who is the husband of Tabitha West?” snaps the doctor.

I step forward, my heart hammering. “Yes. Sorry. That’s me.”

The doctor sends me a sympathetic stare. “Your wife is out of surgery.”

I can tell by the way he’s acting that Tabby is anything but dead. But wife—God. That stops me cold. Did she tell him I was her husband? The thought makes me dizzy with hope.

“I can see her?”

“Oh, she’s all yours,” says the doctor. “Room 204.” He turns and walks away.

Ryan says, “Go on, brother,” but I’m already running.

I navigate the winding hospital corridors quickly to find the right section of rooms. When I’m halfway down the hall from room two zero four, I hear muffled shouting and slow from a run to a trot.

It’s a woman who’s shouting, her angry voice echoing down the hall. She’s demanding to see someone
right now
, shouting like she’s possessed.

I yank open the door of Tabby’s room and step inside. Tabby is lying in bed, hooked up to a lot of machines and some hanging bags of clear liquid. A nurse is leaning over her bed, trying to calm her.

“Please, Miss West, you can’t get out of bed. The doctor has—”

“I don’t care about the fucking doctor!” she roars. “I need to see
Connor
!”

When I say, “I’m here, princess,” the shouting stops.

The nurse looks over at me, straightens, and sighs. “Thank the Lord.” She leaves, chuckling softly on her way out.

Tabby’s eyes eat me up. Without a word, she holds out her arms. It takes me less than a heartbeat to be in them.

She buries her face in my neck and hugs me harder than someone who just woke up from surgery should have the strength to do. I cradle her, kiss her hair, her temple, rock her in my arms as I sit on the edge of the bed, trying to be as gentle as I can while still getting what I need. Namely, contact.

The heartbeat monitor attached to her finger is going crazy, beeping so fast I half expect another nurse to come bursting into the room to see what’s wrong.

I release a ragged breath. “Goddamn, sweetheart. Don’t ever scare me like that again. I don’t think my poor senior ticker could take it.”

Tabby keeps her face hidden, her arms tight around my back. She doesn’t answer, doesn’t take the bait of my weak-ass joke, just burrows in deeper.

“Doctor says Juanita’s gonna be fine,” I murmur, knowing she’ll be worried. “Her family is on their way now. Flying in on Uncle Sam’s dime, all seven of ’em. Should be here soon. So, that’s good.”

Tabby’s still silent, holding on to me for dear life. The beeping of the monitor hasn’t slowed.

“And me and Ryan are good too, we’re okay, none of the boys on the op got hurt. Well, you knew that already.”

She still isn’t saying anything, and I’m out of people to talk about. She already knows about Søren because I told her in the bird on the way to the hospital.

And speaking of that fucker…

I clear my throat, say softly, “And about Søren.”

She stiffens.

I make my voice as gentle as I can. “I know about you being related. And about your parents, what happened. I got filled in on everything while you were in surgery. And I just want to say…I need you to know that I gave him a choice. But he didn’t—”

She puts her finger to my lips to stop me.

Maybe she just needs me to shut up and hold her.
Maybe she’s in pain.
Oh shit—am I hurting her?

When I try to gently withdraw, Tabby makes a desperate noise and won’t let me go.

“Are you hurting, sweetheart?”

She nods.

Now my heartbeat is galloping as fast as hers. “Well, shit, lemme get the doctor! Get you some more pain meds—”

“No!” Her voice is muffled because she’s talking into my shirt. “It’s not my leg. I mean it is, it hurts like a bitch, but that’s not…that’s not…”

When she gulps in air and her shoulders start to shake, I realize she’s desperately trying to hold back tears. I gently peel her off me and cup her face in my hands. Her eyes are watering. She’s biting her lip.

“Talk to me.”

She swallows hard, blinking rapidly. Gripping my biceps, she hoarsely says, “I want you to promise you won’t call or come visit me. You need to forget about me and go on with your life.”

I stare at her, in total shock. “What?”

“I mean it. If you call, I won’t come to the phone. If you write, I’ll tear it up without reading it. I’ll refuse to see you—”

“You’re breaking up with me?” I say, astonished and so fucking hurt, it’s like my heart’s being cut out with a razor blade. “
Now?
”

A lone tear crests her lower lashes and tracks a slow path down her pale cheek. “Of course.”

It’s only a three letter word but I’m in so much agony, I’m not sure I’ll be able to get it out. “Why?”

She looks at me like I’m the stupidest man on earth. “Because I’m not that selfish!”

We stare at each other in silence while the heart monitor goes fucking nuts. Finally, I can’t take it anymore. “Tabitha. You just came out of a very long surgery. Your head isn’t working right—”

“My head is fine!”

My voice rises. “Then what the fuck are you talking about?”

She’s quiet for a moment, and then it all comes out in a blurted rush.

“I know the CIA is here, Connor, I heard the nurses talking! It was nice that they’re letting us say good-bye, I don’t know what you had to promise them to let them do that, but I know they’re going to walk in here any second and put handcuffs on me and take me away and I’ll never see you again so if you think I’m the kind of woman who would ask you to spend the next twenty years waiting for me while I rot in a federal prison somewhere then
you don’t know me very well at all
!”

She cuts off abruptly, breathing hard, shaking, her face bright red.

And now I understand.

I start to weakly laugh. Relief washes over me in waves.

“This is funny to you?” she asks, outraged.

I pull her toward me and kiss her, very softly, on the lips. “Sweetheart. The CIA isn’t taking you anywhere. They want to talk to you as soon as you’re up to it, but you’re not going to prison.”

She blinks a few times, falling still in my arms. She whispers, “What?”

I shake my head, kiss her again.
Her lips are cold. Need to fix that.
“O’Doul. He wrote your letter before he went to Miami. Emailed it to his boss, the Director of the FBI, and sent another copy to the NSA. Said any website cracking you did on the job was at his direct request. He honored your agreement.”

“But—but—I went into the NSA’s servers
after
…”

“Doesn’t matter. He said you were an integral part of the investigation, detailed what you’d done to help, even went so far as to recommend they bring you on as a systems security consultant. Had four agents sign as witnesses so no one could claim it had been faked. Add to that all the intel the CIA got from debriefing everyone involved about what went down… You’re clear. Although I think the NSA
really
wants to know how you did it.”

Her lower lip trembles. She looks at me with this amazed, disbelieving expression like…well, like she just got sprung from jail.

I grin at her. “You still gonna break up with me? ’Cause I’ve just gotten used to having you around, busting my balls. Would be a damn shame to let all that hard work you did breakin’ me in go to waste.”

Tabby drops her face into her hands and leans into my chest, whimpering.

I gather her in my arms. “Deep breaths, princess. They’re gonna think you’re having a heart attack in here.”

She whispers, “I am. I really think I am.”

I rub slow circles on her back, inhaling the scent of her hair, her skin. She smells like antiseptic, but beneath that, the warm, sweet scent that’s all her.

“Well, before you do, I have a question. It’s something I’ve been dying to ask.”

Slowly she pulls away, gazing at me with enormous eyes. The heart monitor skips a few beeps, and then starts back up even more furiously. With a little hitch in her voice she asks, “What is it?”

“How did you signal your location?”

She blinks, looking confused. “My…what?”

“Your location. In Alaska. You know, how we knew where to look for you. Did you gain access to Søren’s computer, or—”

“Hello Kitty.”

The answer alone is enough to confuse me, but the flat, embarrassed tone of her voice does too. I’m missing something, and I think it might be important. My brows climb. I wait patiently for more of an explanation.

She shakes her head, lets out this wry little laugh, and looks away, her cheeks flaming. “My watch. I installed a GPS chip in it, made some mods to the Google Earth software installed on my machine so they’d talk.”

“Wow. I’m impressed.”

She shrugs, still avoiding my eyes.

I gently take her chin in my hand. “Tabitha. Why aren’t you looking at me?”

“Nothing. It’s nothing.” She looks down at the thin blue blanket covering her legs and starts to pick at it.

Looks like I’m going on a fishing trip.
“Did you think I was gonna ask a different question?”

When she bites her lower lip, it comes to me in a flash that takes my breath away. “Wait. Did you think I was gonna
pop
a question? Like,
the
question?”

When she says, “
No!
” all flustered and embarrassed, I know the real answer is yes.

I take her face in my hands and get so close our noses are touching. Looking into her eyes, I say gruffly, “Do you
want
me to ask the question?”

She sniffs. “I want you to
want
to ask the question.”

My heart is doing this gymnastic thing under my sternum, like cartwheels and backflips and all kinds of strenuous athletic shit. I can hardly catch my breath. “And I want you to want to say yes to the question. But…”

She stops breathing and blinks up at me. “But?”

I stroke her cheeks with my thumbs and lean in even closer so my lips brush hers when I speak. “But there’s this little forbidden four-letter word I’m wanting to hear you say first.”

Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep!
Beep!
screeches the heart monitor.

Her voice shaking, she says, “Glove?”

I chuckle, shake my head. “You know very well that’s five letters. And to make it official you also need the word ‘I’ before and the word ‘you’ after. Proceed.”

“Um…I slove you?”

“Also five letters. And weird.”

“This is all weird.”

I’m trying to keep a straight face. “You’re telling me. Go on, I’m waiting. I haven’t got a lot of time you know. I’m elderly. Could kick the bucket any minute.”

She searches my face, stares deep into my eyes, inhales a slow, deep breath. Then she places her hands on both of my cheeks, and very solemnly says, “Connor Hughes, I loathe your sense of humor almost as much as I loathe your face. In fact, I loathe everything about you.”

My heart soars. “God, I love it when you talk in code,” I say gruffly, and crush my lips to hers.

In a few seconds, a nurse bursts into the room to find out what all the beeping is about.

“
Y
ou’re smashing me
.”

“You’re complaining?”

“If you didn’t weigh three hundred pounds, I wouldn’t be.”

Lying naked on top of me in his bed on a gloriously sunny Saturday morning, Connor pulls his brows together and sticks out his lower lip, pretending to be hurt. “I am
not
three hundred pounds. Are you saying you think I’m overweight?”

I kiss his chin. “Excuse me, but I’m a delicate flower. You said so yourself, remember?”

He frowns and shakes his head. “No. I can’t believe I’d ever describe you as ‘delicate.’”

“Well, you did. Although it was right after we’d had sex, so you were probably just being abnormally kind.”

He chuckles. “‘Abnormally’ kind? So now I’m obese
and
cruel?”

I kiss his chin again, adding a nip because I know he loves it when I use my teeth on him. “Oh, definitely,” I tease. “You’re just a big fat meanie. Everybody knows that.”

His grin comes on slow and sultry. His hair falls into his eyes, his face is flushed with afterglow, and the man is so damn gorgeous it almost hurts to look at him.

“There you go talking in code again, woman. You’re lucky I like you, or I’d be forced to take countermeasures.”

My smile is huge. “
Like
me? Now who’s talking in code?”

Very softly, he replies, “Well, I suppose since you’re living with me now, I
have
to like you. Even though it’s hard because you’re such an ugly, unpleasant shrew.”

He presses a gentle kiss to my lips and gets the look he always gets when he’s feeling especially mushy, all misty-eyed and bashful. It’s absolutely fucking adorable.

“Speaking of hard.” I roll my hips, pressing my pelvis against his erection. “Are you taking Viagra? Because you’re pretty spry for an old man. Three times in an hour, and you’re still erect? This thing doesn’t quit. It’s like the Energizer Bunny.”

He adopts a superior tone and looks at me down his nose. “Thing? I’ll have you know Zeus isn’t a thing. He’s a cherished body part and a dedicated servant to your pleasure. In fact, I think you should show him some respect for all the joy he’s brought you and give him a kiss.”

I start laughing. “
Zeus?
Seriously?”

With total innocence, Connor says, “Of course. King of the gods and ruler of the world. What else would I call him?”

“You’re right. Zeus it is. Now get off me, jarhead, I’ve got stuff to do, and I can’t spend the entire day in bed with you.” I push at his shoulders, but it’s like trying to move a mountain. He doesn’t budge.

Inhaling, his eyes closed, he rubs his cheek against mine. He murmurs, “What stuff could be more important than spending the day in bed with me?”

“Oh, only meeting with the head of the NSA to discuss the future of this country’s cyber defense programs.”

Once I was debriefed by the CIA at the hospital, the NSA came in. And once I was debriefed by
them
, I not only had a migraine but also a job offer.

It’s funny how life works. One minute you’re steeling yourself for a nice long stint in federal prison, the next you’re being asked to consult with Big Brother on secret government spy programs. It’s a good thing I have a robust sense of humor.

Connor’s eyes blink open. “That’s today? It’s the weekend.”

“It’s not like they keep regular office hours, honey.”

“Hmm.” The mushy look creeps back into Connor’s eyes. “I’ll let you up on one condition.”

I raise my eyebrows, waiting.

In a husky voice, he says, “Call me honey again.”

I adore it that he’s this big, badass, swaggering military dude who walks around with a gun strapped to his waist most of the time, but me calling him a pet name makes him all gooey.

God, he melts my heart.

I frame his face in my hands and whisper, “You’re my honey.”

He swallows, exhales a slow breath, says in a husky voice, “And you’re my princess.”

I nod. “And now that we’ve established that, please let me up.” Just to sweeten it, I bat my lashes and add, “Honey.”

Connor kisses me tenderly on the lips and then rolls off me. Standing naked at the side of the bed, he holds out a hand. I take it, allowing him to help me up because my injured leg still isn’t one hundred percent solid.

I was in a wheelchair for the first week after surgery, and then on crutches for a few more weeks. I should still be using the crutches but refuse to, even though it hurts to put my weight on my bad leg. I was lucky that the bullet didn’t shatter any bones or tear a major artery, but I have a slight limp, which may or may not be permanent. Only time will tell. Aside from the limp and a dull ache in my thigh in the morning and when the weather is cold, the only evidence of what happened is a shiny pink scar on my thigh about the size of a quarter.

I’ve got a few more invisible scars, but nothing that time won’t heal. Under Connor’s love and protective care, some of the nastiest have healed already.

Trying not to show worry on his face because he knows it makes me crazy when he worries, Connor steadies me when I wobble.

“You good?”

I bite back a gasp when pain spikes through my leg, and then meet his anxious eyes and smile. “Yep. All good.”

I can tell he knows I’m full of shit, but he only nods. We’re both proud and stubborn in the exact same way, which makes some things worse, and other things a lot better. Either way, it’s good to have someone who gets me, warts and all.

It’s even better to have someone who always has my back. To my deep surprise, I
love
being a team of more than one.

I release Connor’s big hand and make my way to the bathroom, feeling his gaze on me as I go.

He calls after me, “I’ll make some breakfast, yeah?”

“Sounds great. But be sure you make enough. Zeus and I worked up a big appetite!”

His chuckle is drowned out under the sound of cascading water as I turn the knob in the shower and the water comes on.

After my shower, I dry off and head to the walk-in closet. I had no idea when I moved into Connor’s enormous loft in the Meatpacking District of Manhattan that a man whose wardrobe consists almost entirely of T-shirts and cargo pants would have so much storage for clothes. His closet is even bigger than the one in my townhouse in Greenwich Village.

“Breakfast is ready, princess!” Connor shouts.

It’s faint because his loft is approximately the length of a football field, but I hear it and smile. “Coming!”

I throw on a short silk robe, drag a comb through my wet hair, and then make my way from the bedroom across the vast living area, admiring the view of the glistening Hudson River from the floor-to-ceiling windows. I find him in the kitchen, flipping eggs in a frying pan.

I slide onto one of the leather stools at the big oak island in the center of the kitchen. Now I busy myself admiring another view, this one of a big, muscular male wearing black boxer briefs and nothing else, making me breakfast at his ridiculous gourmet eight-burner stove.

I call it ridiculous because as far as I’m concerned, as long as takeout exists, there’s no need for a stove, especially one with
eight
burners. But as I’ve come to know, Connor Hughes is a man who does nothing by halves.

He turns and looks at me with one eyebrow lifted, a smirk on his handsome face. “I’d ask how you like your eggs, but I already know.”

“Oh? And how’s that?”

He suggestively looks me up and down, waggles his eyebrows, and then drawls, “Fertilized.”

I burst out laughing. “Oh my God, that was awful. You’ve been hanging around Ryan too much.”

He slides the fried eggs onto a plate, adds two slices of wheat toast that have popped up in the toaster, and a few slices of bacon from a plate covered in a paper towel next to the stove, and then presents it to me with a short bow.

I take a bite of the bacon—it’s chewy and meaty, perfectly cooked—and moan in happiness.

Connor rounds the island, sweeps my hair off my shoulder, and kisses me on the temple. “Eat up, sweetheart. You’re too thin.”

I stuff the rest of the bacon in my mouth. Between chews, I say, “That’s probably the most romantic thing a man could ever say to a woman.”

Connor leans one elbow on the island and cups my face in his hand. His look changes from teasing to contemplative. He strokes his thumb over my cheek.

Feeling uneasy, I swallow. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

It’s a moment before he answers. Streaming through the windows, the sun worships him, glinting mink and gold in his dark hair, bronzing his skin, sculpting his impressive abdominal muscles in highlights and shadow.

“Juanita sent me a text a few minutes ago.”

I drop the bacon and sit up ramrod straight. “Is she okay?”

I’ve seen her several times since returning to New York. The first was at her house a week after we returned from Alaska. Her mother didn’t want to let me in, but her siblings convinced her to. Juanita was in far better spirits than I would’ve been in her shoes. With her pet rat, Elvis, perched on her head, she told me how she’d been on her way back from my house the night she threw the switch, when she’d been nabbed on the street by a group of men in combat gear. A van had pulled up alongside her, they’d swarmed out, and that was all she remembered until she woke up in the caves. I’d hugged her and told her I loved her. She’d laughed and told me to suck a bag of dicks.

Then she showed me the scar on her back—sixty stiches, raw and red—and I broke down and cried.

She rolled her eyes and told me not to be such a pussy.

“She’s fine,” Connor reassures me in a soothing voice, caressing my cheek. “She’s great, actually. She just wanted to find out what time she should come over for our barbeque tomorrow.”

My body sags in relief. I wonder if this is what it feels like to have kids, this constant, sick feeling of worry.

“Oh. Thank God. So why do you look so weird?”

“Do I?”

“Very.”

He smiles. “So I’m obese, cruel,
and
weird-looking. You poor thing. How do you put up with me?”

“Bacon,” I say seriously. “You make excellent bacon. It’s your one saving grace.”

“Aside from Zeus,” he answers in the same serious tone.

I nod. “Exactly. Now explain your face, please.”

He tugs on a lock of my hair. “Maybe I was just thinking about how much I like the color red.”

I shake my head. “Nice try.”

He looks at the ceiling, pretending to think. “Maybe I was contemplating what I should make you for dessert.”

“Dessert after breakfast? You know you’re a really bad liar, right?”

His eyes meet mine, and his smile fades. His voice drops an octave when he says, “Maybe I was wondering when you were going to put your townhouse on the market.”

“Oh. That.”

When I look down at my plate of food, Connor puts his knuckle under my chin and forces me to meet his eyes. “Yes. That.”

“Um. I can’t yet.”

His brows shoot up. “Why not? You expecting to move back in?”

“No. I mean, I hope not.”

His eyes get wide. I can’t tell if the look he’s giving me is anger or astonishment.

“You
hope
not?”

Feeling a little defensive, I say, “Well, we haven’t exactly talked about the future—”

“I’m in love with you,” he says abruptly. “You
are
my future.”

That takes my breath away. We’ve never said ‘I love you’ to each other. Even after the day in the hospital, it’s always just been ‘I loathe you.’ Our little inside joke.

I whisper, “So…then…you’re just one of those guys who doesn’t need the piece of paper?”

Connor looks at me like I’m speaking a foreign language that he doesn’t understand. “What. The. Hell. Are you talking about?”

All of a sudden, my face is flaming. I’m embarrassed and uncomfortable and wish we weren’t having this conversation. But we are, so I might as well get it over with. I blow out a breath, square my shoulders, and look him in the eye.

“I’m talking about marriage.”

Connor’s face transforms. He straightens, takes my face in his hands, and breathes, “Yes.”

I blink. “That wasn’t a question.”

“Yes it was. You just asked me to marry you.”

Is he fucking with me?
“Uh…”

“And I said yes.” He flutters his lashes. “Where’s my ring?”

He
is
fucking with me! I punch him in the shoulder. “You dick!”

Without missing a beat, he says, “Because I already have yours.”

I freeze. I’m pretty sure my heart stops beating, but I can’t tell because I’ve lost all sensation in my body. “You…what?”

Connor gently kisses me. He nuzzles my jaw and then whispers in my ear, “I had this big romantic production planned out—candlelight dinner, horse-drawn carriage ride in Central Park, down on bended knee, the whole thing—but since you beat me to the punch, I’ll just give you the ring and we’ll call it even.”

A little squeaky noise comes out of me.

He chuckles and kisses me again, drawing my tongue into his mouth, gently biting my lower lip. My heartbeat is all over the place. I place my hands on his chest, and they’re shaking.

When he pulls away, he’s breathing hard. His eyes drift open, and in them all I see is love.

I say breathlessly, “So where is it?”

He brushes my hair off my face. “Where’s mine?”

He’s teasing, but I’m in no mood for delays, so I improvise. I tear a strip of bacon in half, take his left hand, and wrap the piece of bacon around his ring finger, tucking the ends under so it stays in place. It’s a big, crumbly, greasy mess. He stares at it, looks at me, and then looks back at his hand.

I ask, “What do you think?”

“I think I can’t wait to tell our kids that you proposed to me with a bacon ring.”

“I didn’t pro—
kids
?”

He glances up at me with a glint in his eye and a smile playing around the edges of his mouth. “Four.”

My mouth falls open. “Four? You want
four
kids?”

He pulls me in against his strong chest, leaving a smear of bacon grease on my arm, and wraps his arms around me. He rests his chin on the top of my head. “You’re right. We should have eight. Start our own little army.”