Unfaded Glory. Sara Arden

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СКАЧАТЬ to sleep. She thought about the way he’d watched over her while she’d slept on the Circe’s Storm. He’d stayed awake to make sure she was safe. She could do the same for him.

      “Now that I’m full, I’m tired, too.” She got up from the table and made sure the door was locked, all the shades were closed and the lights were off. “Come to bed with me, Hawkins.”

      She made sure to use his last name so it wasn’t too intimate. So he didn’t think she expected or was trying to give anything more than what he wanted.

      “I’ll feel safer knowing you’re in bed with me,” she prodded.

      “I’m dirty.”

      “And I have lamb breath.” She grabbed his hand, and he hauled himself up from the chaise and followed her the short distance to the bed.

      He flopped down on the bed, shirtless, his fatigues half-unbuttoned and his feet hanging off the side. A gun had somehow managed to make its way to the nightstand.

      She studied him in the dimly lit room. His chiseled body, his scarred hands, the enticing way his fatigues looked like a half-wrapped present. Then back up to his face.

      “Are you going to stare or get in bed? Thought you were tired,” he grumbled.

      “You really don’t ever sleep, do you?”

      “Certainly not when I’m being stared at. I feel like a hare being stalked by a wolf.”

      She blushed. Her comportment tutor would probably have apoplexy if she could see her now. Damara wondered if there was even protocol for this. “You’re pretty to look at. What do you want from me?”

      “Pretty?” He cracked an eye open. “How’s that?”

      “Never mind. Go to sleep. I am.” She slipped under the covers and curled against him and pretended to sleep.

      “No, you’re not, but I’ll let you get away with it this time.” He wrapped an arm around her and held her close.

      With his arm around her, Damara felt as if she’d been hidden away from the world at large. Nothing could find her and nothing bad could touch her.

      * * *

      BYRON HAWKINS HAD fallen asleep breathing in the scent of jasmine with a soft woman in his arms.

      He awoke with a strangled scream in his throat and a cacophony of suffering in his head.

      His team.

      His whole team.

      Christ, the way they screamed.

      And it was his fault. His fault they screamed. His fault they never came home. Barnes with his easy smile and the dog-eared picture of his three-year-old daughter. Foxworth and his dreams for a life after his service.

      “There’s more to life than this, hoss.” Foxworth’s Texas twang thudded behind the noise of death.

      But there wasn’t. If Hawkins could go back and exchange himself for them, he’d do it. He never wondered what it would be like if he’d never given the order, because if it hadn’t been this, it would have been something else. He knew that.

      No matter what Renner told him. All his talk about PTSD, and therapy... He didn’t have PTSD. He was just born bad, and he knew it.

      Gentle fingers cupped his cheek. “Are you okay?” she murmured.

      He looked down at her, eyes half-lidded and sleepy but concern plain on her face. “Fine. Go back to sleep.”

      Somehow it was more horrible because she was awake. She’d become a witness to his shame. He had to get away from her, away from the forgiveness on her face, especially when it wasn’t hers to give.

      He untangled himself as quickly and gently as he could and went outside to stand on the giant balcony.

      They’d slept for the remainder of the day, and dusk had fallen. The city lights of Barcelona lit up the landscape like thousands of twinkling stars, and he thought of their conversation about starlight and stories to soothe children.

      That’s what she’d give him if he let her—a story to soothe everything that ached in him. But he deserved to suffer, deserved his pain.

      He scrubbed his hand over his face, sat down and dipped his feet into the Jacuzzi tub that was on the balcony. The hot water gurgled around his ankles and over his toes, giving him another sensation to concentrate on besides the buzzing in his head.

      The princess sat down next to him and dipped her feet in, as well. He didn’t want to look at her, talk to her, but his eyes were drawn to her dainty ankles.

      They were a gateway drug, because from there, he appraised her slim legs up to where the T-shirt brushed the tops of her thighs. Her nutmeg skin looked warm and smooth, so perfect. He remembered what it was like, running his hands all over her. The soft cries from her full lips.

      Fucking and killing—all he was good for.

      “Did you have a nightmare?” she asked.

      “Don’t want to talk about it.”

      He thought she’d pick at the scab, but she didn’t. “I didn’t even know this was out here. I’ve always wanted to try a Jacuzzi tub.”

      He arched a brow. “Seriously? You’re a princess. You didn’t have six or seven of these?”

      She laughed, the sound light. “No, my brother thought they were immodest and invited sin.”

      “They do.” Yes, they most certainly did, he thought, as his eyes raked over her.

      “You seem to be doing fine. I’m sitting here with my legs exposed all harlotlike, and yet you’re controlling yourself,” she teased.

      “It wouldn’t take much to push me over the edge.” He kept his tone light.

      “Oh, really? What do you define as ‘much’?” She slid one leg deeper into the water, watching him as she did so.

      Now she taunted him, dared him.

      He liked it.

      “You’re just about there.” He gave her a half grin.

      She slid all the way into the water, heedless of her T-shirt and panties, and moved to stand between his legs. Damara braced her hands on his thighs and leaned in close to his mouth. “Am I there yet?”

      He laughed, not because he thought she was funny but because she delighted him.

      In that moment, with his hands on her hips and her mouth only a breath away from his, she wasn’t a princess and he wasn’t a fuckup extraordinaire. They were just Byron and Damara.

      “Do you wanna be?”

      “Most definitely.”

      “Aren’t you sore?”

      “Sure, СКАЧАТЬ