“No thanks.” Wulf’s voice sounded muffled, as if he’d tucked his chin to his chest. He lifted her nearly to her tiptoes and shifted her along the wall so fast she had to crab step to keep her feet in line with her hips.
“What are you—”
Without turning their bodies from the wall, Wulf hauled her over Santa Maria’s threshold and kicked the door closed.
“Hey—” She wiggled and tried to peer at the door behind them, but his shoulders and chest blocked her sightlines, as if he’d doubled in size. “Why—”
“Move.” Locking her wrist in an iron grip, he dropped her flat-footed and hustled her across the sanctuary.
Chapter Twelve
“What’s wrong?” Theresa demanded as her leather-soled ballet flats skidded across the church’s marble floor.
“Guy was too nosy.” Despite Wulf’s size, his feet skimmed noiselessly through the interior as he dragged her between columns.
“Nosy? What do you mean?” Behind them the door to the courtyard opened. Outside light penetrated as far as the first aisle, but didn’t illuminate the entire nave.
“Had his phone out.” Wulf pushed her through an almost unnoticeable door into a short hall. Each wall canted differently, and none of the corners formed right angles, as if the room enclosed a void where separate buildings failed to join. “He was taking pictures.”
“It’s a tourist spot.” She rolled her eyes. “That’s what people do.”
“Of us. Only us. Not the Mouth.” He shoved something from the floor—a wedge—under the door behind them and drove it deeper with the heel of his shoe. Clearly he wasn’t joking. “Didn’t you notice?”
She’d noticed his behavior change, nothing else, but she wasn’t the trained threat sensor that he was. “Are you sure?” Even asking that made her tense, as if she stood at the top of a stadium, looking down a hundred rows.
“Yes.” He opened one of the two other doors to reveal an ascending flight of steps, and then he whipped the new hat from her head and tossed it to the point where the stairs vanished at a turn. The soft swish as it toppled one step lower was followed by the whine of ancient hinges as he partially closed the stairway door.
And then followed by a squeak next to her.
The brass knob on the door between her and the sanctuary rotated first one way, then slowly back. Someone wanted to come in. Part of her brain inventoried her systemic reactions like she would a patient’s responses. Respiration speeding to produce more oxygen? Check. Muscles from neck tendons to foot arches tensing for flight? Check. The rest of her watched as faster spins rattled the knob mechanism, and then she heard a thunk as something heavy, heavy like a man’s fist, hit the wood.
Someone really wanted in.
She smothered a gasp as the person pounded again, but the metal-bound door held square in its frame and the wedge didn’t shift. When she would have stared, transfixed by the shaking knob, Wulf grabbed her wrist and pulled her through the third opening and into a hall. A carpet runner with a grayed path down the center led to a massive door. Thrusting it wide, he revealed sunlight, and then they were out, away from the pounding that beat alongside her heart.
She followed him around a corner and faltered in front of Santa Maria’s arches. A line of oblivious tourists stretched from the portico to the sidewalk. “Why back here?”
“There.” He pointed to another double-decker bus and ran, still holding her wrist.
To stay connected to her arm, she sprinted with him to the end of the block, and he hauled her on board a moment before the doors snapped at their heels. They’d made it. Eyes closed, she panted against his shoulder while relief turned her knees to overcooked linguine. She clutched his waist to stay upright. His scent, evergreen and soap, wrapped her in safety as the bus lurched from the curb. A man hadn’t held her like this, with his arm looped around her shoulder and his hip bumping her hip, in too long. She’d missed that connection of curves and planes, the feeling of two different-size bodies filling one space.
“People on the bus go up and down.” Under her cheek, his chest vibrated like a big cat, a very big cat, whose paw kneaded her spine in time with his words. “Up and down, up—”
“Stop that.” Her order, drawn out and trembling, held no authority. “This isn’t the place.” Her cotton dress left no doubts about every corded muscle and bulging whatever that Wulf pressed against her hip. Jammed next to him in the doorway, she could feel that he was hot and, she strongly suspected, half-hard.
“Stop,” she whispered again, despite the stupid-crazy part of her that wanted to arch closer in a bus vestibule.
“Negative on that request.” His fingers snuck past her intentions and circled into the small of her back. “After a successful E-and-E is the perfect place for—” he nestled her deeper into his body, “—this.”
“You’ll be escaping and evading without that hand if you don’t move it.” Women at Caddie joked about guys with boners after successful missions, so she knew his post-adrenaline reaction had jack to do with her. Just like her trembling and wide-open senses had nothing whatsoever to do with him. Nothing. She inserted a forearm between them and pushed, almost as hard as a chest compression, but he only let her reclaim six inches of space.
“Let go, Ser—” She broke off before she spit out his rank. Don’t draw attention to military affiliation in public, security briefings emphasized before anyone could take leave.
A man coughed loudly into the pause, drawing her attention past Wulf’s shoulder. The bus driver leered back. They had an audience.
“Biglietti?” He honked with one hand and gestured for tickets with the other.
“Sì, sì,” she said. “Un minuto per favore.” Fumbling with her purse, she caught the eye of the motorbike driver stopped outside the glass doors. He was grinning too. Crap. Every Roman on the road had witnessed their clutch.
Wulf didn’t drop his arms, which meant she had to stay contorted while she hunted through sunglasses, tissues and the map. Damn, she could not focus with her entire side plastered against him.
His hand skimmed her hip from belt to thigh.
She clenched her teeth. “I told you. Stop it.”
“Don’t want you to stumble at a sudden stop.” His whisper ruffled the hair at her neck, an emergency-code-level distraction that did not help her to find the tickets. She’d used the bag for a day and a half and it was already a Dumpster.
The driver made a sound like puh-tou.
Kicking Wulf’s shin with her flats would only hurt her. Finally, she extracted two slips of paper. Her left elbow connected briefly but satisfyingly with Wulf’s solar plexus as she liberated herself and flourished the tickets. She marched past the circular stairs that led to the crowded sightseeing deck and aimed for a bench seat at the rear of the inside compartment.
No surprise, he followed. At least he didn’t sit, so she had space to breathe.
After she straightened her dress hem and crossed her ankles, she felt composed enough to speak. “What happened at the church?”
The bus turned a corner while she watched him cling to an overhead strap and peer out the rear window. Then he answered. “I don’t like having my picture taken.”
“That was a bit much to avoid an online photo album.” Her boss had circulated mandatory reading about soldiers with complex post-traumatic stress as a result of ongoing battle exposure rather than an isolated, acute trauma. She’d spent her deployment huddled in relative safety at Camp Caddie, but Wulf encountered real enemies with every mission. He was trained to anticipate a gun or a bomb under any jacket, in any package or car. Shifting gears to enjoy a vacation probably challenged him to his core. “How many tours have you had?”