Unfaded Glory

Damara walked gingerly toward the door and was reminded of her activities with every step. She was incredibly sore, but each twinge of discomfort brought back a memory of a touch, a caress. It made her sigh. She wished she could linger and they could do it again.

But her father had a saying about wishing in one hand and holding goat crap in the other. The wishing hand was always empty.

She stepped under the spray of the hot water, and, just like she’d wanted it to wash away the guilt, she let it wash away any possible regret. This was what she’d wanted, and she’d gotten it. Damara wouldn’t complain now.

She’d focus on the next step of their journey. He’d done everything she’d asked of him and more.

Damara relaxed into the water, letting it pour over her. An array of little bottles were lined up for her to try, and she sniffed each one until she found one that smelled vaguely of home. Jasmine.

When she was done, she bundled herself up in a fluffy towel and wondered what she should put on. She didn’t have any other clothes. The thought of putting her dirty fatigues back on was less than appealing.

She should’ve known Byron would take care of it.

A brand-new T-shirt lay folded on her side of the bed. The sheets had been changed as well, and he lay sprawled on one of the chaise couches at the end of the bed, eyes closed.

She couldn’t tell if he was sleeping, but she knew he hadn’t slept at all in the past twenty-four hours. If he was, she didn’t want to disturb him.

Their food had arrived, too.

Damara shimmied into the T-shirt and panties that were folded discreetly beneath it and attacked her food with gusto.

She didn’t know if it was because of the adrenaline or everything else that had happened to her, but the lamb was the best she’d ever tasted. It melted on her tongue. She didn’t realize how decadent it really was until Byron spoke. His eyes were still closed.

“Woman, if you keep making those sounds, I’m going to have you flat on your back again in about five seconds.”

Damara shivered, delighted at the thought. “With lamb breath and all?”

“Lamb breath, dog breath, I don’t care.” He’d flung an arm over his head; his eyes were still closed.

“You don’t look like you’ll be doing much of anything to me,” she teased.

“I’ve been up for thirty-six hours.”

Of course he hadn’t said anything. As if it was unmanly to sleep or something. “So go to sleep.”

“I’m trying, but you’re having mouthgasms with your lamb,” he said drily.

“I’m sorry.” Her apology was sincere.

“It’s all right—I was only teasing. I never sleep well anyway. Insomnia.”

“After thirty-six hours, I imagine you’d have to pass out sometime.” She thought about the pain she’d seen in his eyes. Damara would bet anything he had nightmares and that was why he didn’t want 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, but I can be sore later, too. You and I won’t get later.” She brushed her lips against his carefully. “I don’t get to explore any of the new places I’ve been, the things I’ve seen. But I can explore you.”

It was official. She was killing him.

And it was a glorious death. He’d drown in her, be lost in her, anything she wanted from him so long as she kept touching him. He forgot everything when he wrapped himself in her.

Damara ran her hands up his thighs and hooked her thumbs around the belt loops in his fatigues.

“You don’t need these.”

He obliged her and let her peel them off him. Then he sank down into the Jacuzzi tub and pulled her into his lap so she was astride him.

The wet T-shirt was even sexier than if she was naked. Her dark skin was a contrast beneath the white of the shirt and her nipples were hard dusky peaks that begged for his attention.

Byron loved the way she felt against him in the water, soft, wet and slick. She braced her palms on his shoulders and bit her lip as she rolled her hips experimentally against him.

The moonlight was a slash of light that knifed through the darkness and fell like a fey ribbon on her hair. Just like it would on the open dark sea. He wanted to bury himself in it, and her. It would be so easy to push her panties aside and drive home deep into her heat.

Byron liked teasing them both a bit, too, dragging it out, making the sensation last. It had been a while since he’d been with a woman, and he’d never been with a woman like Damara Petrakis.

He let her grind on him, work her hips and cleft against him and crank herself higher. Byron liked the way her lips parted and her intake of breath, the way the soft material of the tee clung to her. He liked everything about this.

“Tell me what you like. Tell me how to make this good for you,” she whispered against his ear.

He thought of every deviant thing he’d imagined doing to her, every fantasy he’d had in the past twenty-four hours, and none of them compared with what was happening to him right now.

“It’s already good for me. Like you said, you don’t get to tour the cities we’ve been to, but you can tour me.”

Her hands slid over his shoulders, his biceps, her fingers pausing to explore the muscle there. Testing his bulk, his strength. Damara scored her nails lightly down his chest, and his eyes fluttered closed at the sensation. So she did it again.

Down his pecs, his abdominals and down lower still until she wrapped her hand around him.

“What about this? Do you like it?” She moved her hand slowly.

He curled his fingers around hers and applied more pressure, just a bit more speed. “Like this.”

“I like how powerful your body is. How strong.”

Her words were as intoxicating as her touch.

His hips moved up to meet her caress and when he would have told her to stop, to slow down, she kissed him.

“It makes me feel powerful to do this to you,” she said against his mouth before kissing him again.

Her kisses were sweet and had been almost chaste at first, but she learned quickly—tasting him, darting her tongue against the edge of his lip, making the same motions with her tongue against his in time to the strokes of her hand.

She was almost too good to be true.

Any minute he’d wake up and find it had all been a dream and he’d be spilling into his hand thinking about a woman who wasn’t real.

Wave after wave of pleasure rolled over him in great swells until he was swept out to a sea of bliss.

She was still kissing him even though her hand had stilled and he found he didn’t want to stop. When he did, he’d have to fall back to earth, be slammed back into a reality where he knew being with her was wrong.

Damara felt so good in his arms—so right. The thought kept playing over in his head, as if that would make it all okay.

It didn’t.

He finally broke the kiss. “There’s a car coming for us in a few hours. We should be ready.”

“Okay.” She seemed so fragile now, so breakable.

Her lips were swollen and raw from his kisses and it made him want to kiss her more. Byron had to find the line again and remember that he couldn’t cross it.

Yes, in just a few hours, he’d hand her over to another operative and she’d go stateside. He’d go back to his house and manufactured life in Marsala. Even though he’d never see her again, he’d think about tonight and the princess for a long time.

“What should I put on?”

She turned away from him and trudged up out of the Jacuzzi tub.

“There are clothes in the closet.”

Her shoulders were squared, back straight, and she walked dripping, but regal, back inside their room.

He looked up at the sky and then to Damara’s profile as she dressed. Byron couldn’t believe that she didn’t know how beautiful she was. Maybe he should’ve told her. He’d already complicated things enough as it was.

Byron grabbed his fatigues and walked naked into the bathroom, where he showered quickly, rinsing the chlorine from the Jacuzzi tub from his skin and hair. He noticed an open bottle on the ledge, and he brought it close so he could smell it.

Jasmine, just like Damara. He inhaled the scent and closed his eyes, committing the scent along with the memory of her to stone in his mind.

After he’d dressed in the slacks and shirt he’d had the concierge purchase along with Damara’s clothes, he saw she’d curled up on the chaise.

After all her talk of being powerful and strong, and after how fierce she’d been fleeing both Tunis and the pirates, she seemed so vulnerable now and very much in need of protection.

In need of him.

It wouldn’t hurt to comfort her now, to hold her for a few more hours. He’d trespassed already by being with her. He owed it to Damara to keep her safe, even from himself.

He sat next to her and put his arm around her slim shoulders.

She melted into him as if they were two pieces of the same whole.

Byron couldn’t let himself make that comparison—not now, not ever. He pushed it out of his head.

“Everything is going to be fine, Damara.”

“Do you swear?”

It seemed like such a little-girl thing for her to ask him. So full of trust and promise, brimming with hope. Byron knew it would be kinder to be honest, but he found he couldn’t. He’d have promised her the moon would taste like peaches if that was what would make her happy.

“I swear.”

She sighed and leaned her head against his chest, wrinkling his shirt.

Byron didn’t care about wrinkles. He just wanted her to feel safe.

“I wish you were going with me.”

“I have to stay here. I’ll make sure you get on the plane safely. Then another operative will get you to Renner.”

“I don’t know the other operative,” she said, her voice small.

“You don’t know me, either.”

“I know enough.”

The part of him that was infected with guilt wanted to confess to her why she was wrong. It wanted to tell her every bad thing he’d ever done, and it wanted her to hate him for it.

“Don’t trust anyone but yourself, Princess.”

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