Hard to Hold Read online

  She was starting things she couldn’t finish yet, and this time she wasn’t the one to pull away, not like she had last night. Instead, he backed off, slowly, as if it was the last thing he wanted to do, held her gaze for a few seconds before he said, “Good night, Isabelle,” and walked out the door.

  She pressed her hand over her heart as if she could slow the rate by sheer will. She put her head back against the closed door and rubbed her mouth with her fingers. Her lips felt full and tingly. But the way he’d kissed her, like he wasn’t afraid she’d break if he’d really touched her, had nearly broken her.

  It was only ten P.M. and she was far too keyed up to sleep. She wandered into the bathroom, which she hadn’t looked at the other night when Jake brought her up here to look around, and saw the large Jacuzzi tub and knew instantly that she’d have to give it a try.

  As the water ran, she stripped her clothes off and left them in a pile on the floor. There was a full-length mirror that hung on the back of the door and she stared at herself critically, not with a doctor’s eye, but with a woman’s.

  She was filling out again—her curves coming back slowly, her breasts filling out to the size they were in the months before Africa. She’d never been considered voluptuous, but she’d always looked healthy. She made a mental note that she’d need to go shopping for some real food tomorrow and then shook her head as she pictured Jake sitting down and waiting for her to cook him dinner.

  Men like that have secrets. So many secrets. They’ll push you away if you try to get too close.

  Yeah, well, so did women like Isabelle. Jake was letting her in slowly; soon, she’d have to do the same.

  She turned the water off and the jets on and climbed into the tub. God, it was nice. Soothing. The perfect way to end the day. Any day.

  She let her head loll back against the porcelain and felt her body begin to relax under the kneading pressure of the jets. She spread her legs slightly and realized that besides being relaxed, she was completely turned on. It didn’t hurt that Jake was at the forefront of her mind, or that if she closed her eyes she could picture him sitting at the side of the tub actually watching her, and that was some picture.

  She angled her body and the hot spray was fast becoming his hands, his tongue and she wasn’t sure, at first, that she was going to be able to do this. But she squeezed her eyes tight and pictured his face and let her hand trail between her legs.

  “Jake,” she murmured, her finger working her hot flesh, her back pressed against the hard tub.

  As her fingers circled faster, as the pressure built, she thought about calling out to him, about getting out of the water and walking naked and dripping into his room, the same way she’d walked into his life.

  “No,” she said loudly. Not like this. She stood and grabbed for a towel.

  Jake left Isabelle’s door once he heard the water running. His hand had remained on the doorknob; he turned it and he’d felt the door give slightly—she hadn’t locked it.

  Dammit.

  He pulled himself away and headed down to the second floor. He’d already taken a cold shower tonight, after he’d left the bar, wired the house even tighter than it already was, before he’d gone to pick up Isabelle. He’d made the mistake of taking a nap in his bed and woke up with a hard-on and his face buried in a pillow that smelled like Isabelle’s shampoo.

  He’d gotten immediately into the shower without bothering to wait until it got hot, knowing all the while that cold water wasn’t going to do anything for him.

  Forehead pressed to the tile, water pouring down his back, he’d stroked himself slowly. He’d wanted to draw his orgasm out, would have much preferred to not be doing this alone, and it had been too fucking long for him. Nearly four days since he’d been home and two months before that …

  Since he’d rescued Isabelle. Fuck. He’d paused, hand on his cock, and wondered what the hell was happening to him. If he was losing his edge.

  He’d planned on letting her in, just enough to keep her comfortable, safe. But he’d let her in more than he ever had any woman that night in Africa, and there was no taking that back.

  But tonight—fuck—there was no other word for it, he just ached. Everywhere. Like he needed to be touched and touched well. And now, sitting in his room, listening to the water running in the room above his, he still did.

  He wondered if Isabelle was thinking about him.

  There was no way that one self-serving hand-job was going to be enough. Not for long.

  Kissing her again hadn’t been the smartest move, either. He rubbed his hands over his eyes and sighed.

  There were women he could call, women who’d come over and share his bed at a moment’s notice, who wouldn’t care that he preferred to sleep alone or not sleep at all. There had always been women, lots of them—from an age when he should’ve been too innocent to understand. But he’d never been innocent. Neither had Nick, and Chris had grown up along the Bayou with the most permissive parents on the planet. Never mind the fact that Maggie had been a midwife and Chris had been raised around half-naked, screaming women. Screaming for all the wrong reasons, of course, and loud enough to make Chris not all that child-friendly.

  Still, Chris had been the first and the only of the three of them to have a serious relationship. He and Jules had dated from the age of fourteen until they’d both turned twenty-three, when she’d gone out on tour and decided she couldn’t handle the inherent danger of Chris’s job any longer.

  Nick had announced a long time ago that he was never marrying. Never, he would emphasize, loudly enough that they would all tell him to shut up before he lost his voice. Tracheal operations had done a number on his vocal cords for the first nine years of his life, and they were all protective of it.

  But Jake had always hovered somewhere in the middle of thinking that he’d never find one woman who got him and wondering if it was possible. Kenny and Maggie were held up before him as a perfect model, but the despair Kenny had suffered when Maggie died made Jake wonder if maybe it wasn’t worth it.

  Of course, Kenny always talked about the whole it-is-better-to-have-loved-and-lost thing … but the way Jake had watched Kenny mourn for the last twelve years told a different story.

  Just the thought of losing Isabelle made him sweat—and he didn’t even have her. Not yet.

  CHAPTER

  12

  Clutch ended up behind the wheel. Sarah split her time between pointing her weapon at him and the single rebel jeep that followed them out to the main road, which partially solved the problem of trying to keep a man as highly trained as Clutch prisoner. He’d have a hard time escaping from her while driving like a maniac to save both their lives, but she suspected he could still do so if he really wanted to.

  Machine-gun fire sprayed the car as Clutch swerved from side to side, and she prayed the bullets wouldn’t hit the tires or the gas tank. Heart pounding, she fired a few shots of her own blindly for cover out the window and then she stuck her head through the opened sunroof for two straight shots that blew out the jeep’s tires. She fired a few more times, watched the vehicle rock, and knew she’d hit the driver.

  She sank back down into her seat and held the gun on him again. “Floor it.”

  He cursed at her order but also gave her a fleeting glance with more than a hint of surprise in it—and a grudging respect, if the morning light wasn’t playing tricks on her.

  “There’s more where they came from,” he told her.

  “They won’t catch us this time. Take the fork left,” she instructed.

  He did so, swerved to avoid the biggest holes left in the dirt roads from the rainy season and the machine-gun fire that sprayed over them for a few more seconds. She knew these winding paths like the back of her hand—when she drove she could close her eyes and read the red dirt like Braille.

  She’d done the same on his body, night after night in the handmade feather bed in his house in Ujiji, with the windows open and their cries mingling with th
e sounds of the night.

  “Go off-road here.” She motioned to a break in the dense foliage, one she’d pitched the ancient car through more times than she could count. “We’ll lose them.”

  “And then you think you’ll lose me too?” he asked as the vehicle jolted underneath them. He hit his head on the roof and cursed viciously as the car cut a swath through the jungle and finally found some level ground.

  She steeled herself against him, the way his voice always seemed to soothe the pit of despair in her stomach … the way his hands would stroke her until everything felt just right. “Yes, well, to quote one of your favorite phrases, payback’s a bitch, isn’t it?”

  “In case your memory’s gone, you left me, Sarah. You left when I wouldn’t train you.”

  “I left because you kept calling out for Fay in your sleep,” she said, tightened her grip around the barrel of the 9mm until her palm ached and burned the way her insides had every time Clutch had called the other woman’s name while she’d been lying naked next to him.

  She noticed he gripped the wheel tighter, drove harder through the brush as if outrunning his own demons. She could’ve told him that wasn’t possible.

  “You never said anything,” he said finally. “I didn’t know … didn’t know I did that.”

  “Now you do. Pull over here.”

  “Are you going to shoot me if I don’t? Do you hate me that much?”

  Did she? Sometimes, at night, she’d lay awake, skating on the thin line between hating Clutch and wishing she was back in his arms, before he’d refused her the one thing she’d asked of him.

  “What about training me, then?” she asked, and Clutch uttered a short laugh before he realized she was serious.

  Once he did, he shook his head sharply. “You wouldn’t make a good merc.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because you need the will to live. You lost that somewhere along the way. Find that and we’ll talk.”

  “Fuck you, American boy,” she spat. “I know more about the will to live than you’ll ever understand.”

  “You’re just pissed that I hit on the truth.”

  She jerked out of his grasp, rubbed her wrist where he’d held her. “Oh, that’s rich. What? You know that poor little Sarah’s family lost their land and their money and that I’ll do anything to help them? You don’t know shit.” Her accent grew more clipped, even as she muttered words in native Shona.

  “I know enough.”

  “Do you? Do you know what it’s like to have everything taken from you—suddenly? To have the bottom drop out of your world? To lose everything you’ve ever known, and there’s not a single thing you can do about it?”

  “Yeah, I do,” he said quietly. “Live or die, Sarah. Figure that out first and then the rest will be enough.”

  And even though she’d believed him, she’d packed her things and left him watching her from his front porch.

  “Rafe trained me,” she told him.

  “I can see that. He also used you. But you can still help,” he said, his foot firmly on the gas pedal. He was going to call her bluff.

  “Help Isabelle?” she asked.

  “Help yourself.”

  She heard something in his voice she couldn’t place. Pity, maybe? Which made her angry and sick to her stomach at the same time.

  “The way you helped me? Pull the fuck over, Clutch. Do it now.”

  He jerked the wheel hard to the left, gears grinding as he brought the car to a stop in the middle of the road.

  “There you go, leading with your chin again.”

  “Is that another one of your cute American-boy phrases?” she asked.

  “The American-boy thing gets old fast,” he growled, a low rumble in his chest as she forced a hand she wasn’t sure she was prepared to play.

  “Get the hell out of my car.”

  “What did Rafe tell you, Sarah? What could he have told you that would make it all right to turn on a woman who was your friend?” he asked tightly, still not making a move to leave.

  I want everyone in that family to hurt, Sarah. I want them to hurt the way I hurt—I know you can understand that. If you could get revenge on the people who hurt your family, you’d do it. I know you would.

  “He didn’t tell me anything.”

  “I know you better than that … better than you know yourself.” He surprised her by grabbing the door handle and kicking his way out of the car and she fought the urge to pull him back. He was giving up on her again.

  She ignored the fact that she was the one about to do the running away, same as last year, as she pulled herself over the console into the driver’s seat he’d abandoned.

  “You still want to prove me wrong about all of this,” he said as he dragged his bag out of the backseat and even though she knew it was full of weapons, he still made no move to overpower her. Not with physical force, anyway. “You have no idea what Rafe’s capable of.”

  “Just like you, right?

  “I would never do that.” He hit the side of the car with his fists and she jumped involuntarily. “Did he hurt you, Sarah? Because if he did …”

  “What would you do?” she asked with a calm she didn’t feel, saw the torment in his pale eyes and wondered what kind of ghosts drove a man like him. Many times she thought about going back to him, begging for something he would never be able to give her.

  What could he give her now? Redemption? Hope? Love? He wasn’t equipped for any of those things. Come to think of it, neither was she.

  What would he do?

  Clutch was going to kill Rafe anyway—there was no way to capture and turn Rafe in to proper authorities. There were no proper authorities here, no law in this country except the one the mercs made themselves. By rights, he shouldn’t even be going after Rafe. The other men would tell him it was bad karma to go after one of your own.

  His cell phone, set to vibrate, continued to burn a hole in his left pocket, the way it had as he’d driven through the back countryside of Ruyigi. He ignored it, knew exactly who it was and why they were calling—he was two hours late checking in, had been saving Sarah when he should have been reporting for duty and saving his own ass.

  They were all being chased by someone, and he’d always known he wasn’t the only one being chased by ghosts.

  “How do you know what Rafe did to Isabelle? How do you know it’s true?” she finally asked him.

  “How do you know it’s not?” he demanded, and then he softened his tone. “Sarah, don’t sell any more of your soul than you already have.”

  It took a few minutes, but she lowered her weapon. “I’ll take you to where he stays. He was supposed to meet me at the clinic tonight. He told me he knew people would start to come after him.” She spoke quietly, her voice echoing in the stillness of the car’s interior and he remembered making love to her in this car, after he’d watched her sing karaoke at the Impala Hotel last year. “He said that’s why he didn’t send me money last week—he didn’t want to put anyone on my trail.”

  “Then you should stay back.”

  “You won’t be able to find his place without me,” she said, and he wanted to tell her that she underestimated him, that he could track his way through this country, through any country, but he didn’t.

  The less she truly knew about him, the better. “I’ve been doing things without you for a long time.”

  Things the marshals who’d put him in the Witness Protection Program at the age of seven—long before he’d joined the military and Delta Force, before GOST had gotten ahold of him for further training—had told him.

  Forget your real name.

  No friends to the house.

  Don’t talk about your past.

  Don’t expect any long-term relationships.

  With those rules in mind and a control that bordered on ruthless, Clutch had nearly thrown Sarah out the first night they’d met, before he’d succumbed to her. She’d been hot against him, her fingers nearly tearing the fabric
of his shirt, his pants …

  Sarah made him lose control, let down his guard in ways he never should have; he’d both loved and hated her for it.

  But he remembered every single second they’d spent together, held them tightly, like a treasure he refused to let anyone take from him.

  “I almost came back to you.” Her eyes held a fresh grief that twisted his gut, and no, he couldn’t do this.

  “I wouldn’t have taken you back.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  That made two of them. He studied her in the early morning light, gauging whether or not he could truly trust her.

  Last time he’d seen her, her hair had been shorter—spiky and dyed blond with red streaks. Now it was long enough to fall over her forehead in a way that softened her features. He knew there were tattoos along her left arm—practically a sleeve of them—and a sun around her navel.

  He’d spent time memorizing that sun with his fingers, his tongue …

  Who was he kidding, there was no one left to trust. And still, he got back into the car with her.

  Isabelle’s hair was still damp when she knocked on the half-opened door and walked into Jake’s space. The handcuffs she’d seen on the floor the night before were gone—a pile of papers were pushed off to the side of the coffee table and there were a few big hardback books on the couch next to him.

  He’d changed from what he’d had on earlier. Now he wore an old collared shirt, buttoned only halfway up, with a big rip along the biceps, and a pair of sweats. His feet were bare, and God, he had nice-looking feet. Big, same as his hands. Capable, strong.

  You’re getting turned on by feet. You have problems.

  “What’s up?” he asked as she approached the couch. “Did you come down to learn more self-defense moves?”

  “Do I need them with you?”

  “Depends on who you ask.” He pointed to his side. “How long does this bandage have to stay on?”

  “Fourteen days, usually.”

  “How long has it been on now?”