“Seven months might be nothing to you. What’s that compared to fifteen hundred years? One three-thousandth of your life?” Her elbows dropped to her waist and the vase rested on her shoulder. She sounded choked as she turned away. “It’s a bit more of mine.”
“I’m here now.” He didn’t think his breathing would steady until she set the crystal down completely and he could hold her. “I’m staying.”
“It’s too late!” The couch pillows muffled the slam of the vase as she threw it onto the cushions. “Go away. Just. Go. Away.” She sounded close to tears.
“I won’t. Not again.” If he could connect with her, stroke her cheek or her hair, maybe they could heal together. “Not if I can help it.”
“Well, that’s a convenient qualifier, isn’t it? Then I’ll leave.” She turned to the door.
He couldn’t let her walk away this time, not without taking action.
“Hey! Put me down!” Theresa hadn’t expected to see the floor from this angle.
“You wanted to leave.”
“I meant alone!” As Wulf climbed the stairs, the jostling made her grab for any anchor within reach. His butt was as firm as she remembered, and the surprising desire to keep squeezing caused her to let go. Then she realized how far away the hall had receded.
Below them, her mother popped into the foyer. “Ca-a-a-rl, Ra-a-ay-mond,” she yelled over her shoulder. “You won’t believe this.”
As Wulf passed the first landing, Theresa stuck her tongue out at the woman who would trade her soul for a son-in-law. “Aren’t you going to stop him? Or rescue your only daughter?”
“Mr. Wilson, would you like coffee?”
A simper. Her mother had simpered at the barbarian.
“No, thank you, ma’am. I suspect your daughter would dump it on me and I don’t want to cause a mess.” Politeness would secure his spot at the top of her mother’s list. Not that many others remained on the list, but still. His manners made her grind her teeth with anger.
“Stop sucking up!” She smacked the only thing she could reach—that very nice butt—while he chuckled, dammit. “Pillaging and carrying off maidens comes naturally to you, brute.”
“Maidens?” His laughter vibrated her thighs as he climbed the top steps. “Haven’t met one in years, but yeah, it’s like biking.” When his hand curved over her bottom, she tried to kick him, but he clamped an arm across her knees. “You never forget how to grab a wench.” He paused in the hall. “Which door?”
“I’m not telling.” That was a new low in maturity, and totally his fault. Totally.
He shouldered open the correct one. “Were you ever this frilly?”
She made the rudest sound she could manage while hanging upside down, but all he did was laugh again. Half expecting him to thump her on the bed and fall on her—half wanting him to, if she was honest—she refused to be disappointed when he lowered her gently and hovered. The individual amber-and-brown flecks that gave depth to his blue eyes drew her hand closer, and she touched his freshly shaved cheek. It felt as smooth as the silk embroidery he’d once given her, a scrap stuffed away with the rest of her dreams.
“Theresa.” The whisper in her palm conjured memories of nights and days side by side in Italy. When he lowered himself to the bed, mere inches separated them, not oceans or ranks.
“Why didn’t you call?” She bit her tongue for asking and stuck her hand under her pillow. “Forget it.”
His cheeks and mouth sagged into something softer than anger, perhaps sorrow or resignation or...she’d never be a pity fuck. Never.
“Don’t. Don’t you dare feel sorry for me.”
“I don’t.” He’d moved so close that it forced her to move to the far edge of her pillow, but she couldn’t evade the hand that fell onto her arm like a weight. “I feel guilty.”
“The IED wasn’t your fault.”
“You don’t know?” His expression grew tenser, and the lines on his forehead and around his mouth deepened. “No one told you about the bomb?”
“Told me what?” Cold leached into her bones at his use of the word bomb instead of IED. He wasn’t the type of man who would be imprecise about munitions. Somehow her flesh knew before the rest of her that something was about to break very bad.
“It wasn’t the Taliban.”
Oh, Mother of God. Fear and memories of the carnage at Montebelli choked her.
“Black and Swan planted a bomb on the SUV’s frame. Inside the wire.”
The minutes that passed might have been hours as her arms hugged her chest. A detached part of her knew the onset of chills resulted from deep shock, and she needed to be warmer. Wulf’s body anchored the quilt to the bed, leaving her no choice but to shift close enough to steal his heat. Thigh to thigh with him, she burrowed her forehead against his chest while he ran one of his hands from her shoulder to her elbow and back, but even that contact didn’t stop her shivers. The ticking part of her brain recognized she should have been upset or demanded answers, but a surreal clarity prompted her to wonder why it mattered. Taliban or Black and Swan, the result was identical. Her leg was gone. So was her job and her independence. The who and why felt irrelevant.
“It’s my fault.” His voice was so low that even meshed this close, she barely heard.
“Because your team was fighting the heroin smuggling?” At the VA, the Senate hearings on Black and Swan’s drug corruption had been a constant on television.
“More than that.” He paused for a long time. “I told you about the other immortal, the head of Black and Swan. With the personal vendetta against my brother.”
His collar button would leave a dent in her cheek, but she didn’t want to move.
“He must have known it was only a matter of time until the money was cut off. Apparently because I refused to give up, Ivar intended to negotiate compensation, but Unferth drugged him.”
While he talked, his arms squeezed her until she could barely inflate her chest enough to breathe the air that had been warmed by his skin.
“He tortured Ivar. Badly. If you hadn’t saved me in the sewer...”
Her, save him? Was that how he remembered their time in Rome?
“Unferth sent pictures of what he’d done to my brother.” His voice cracked, and he paused to gulp air.
Pressed this close, she couldn’t see his face, but she recognized his need to absorb the comfort of another person’s hold. She’d felt that need for months, with nothing but her pillow on hand, but now she had him. Breathing the outdoor scent of his soap and another she thought of as Wulf himself, she clutched him tightly.
“I was Ivar’s only chance and I couldn’t risk breaking cover, not even a phone call to you. I’m sorry. Will you give me—us—another shot?”
Instead of disturbing her, his revelations seemed to slip the missing pieces into place, mirroring how their legs and torsos fit naturally together. “Yes.”
The moment stretched until her eyes drifted closed and her heart steadied to match the beat under her ear.
“Will you do something completely normal with me?” His voice sounded slow and thick with lethargy to match hers.
“No sewers, castles or firebug ninjas?”
“Afraid my plans aren’t that exciting. Just your mother’s cooking and whatever vino Carl serves.” He loosened his hold and tucked her hair behind her ear to look into her face. “What do you say to a hot date downstairs while I let your family grill me?”