Walker (In the Company of Snipers #21) - Irish Winters Page 0,106
evil to ever nurture innocent new lives. A woman who slaughtered lambs didn’t deserve to bear children.
Just as her pity party swelled around her like a cold, wet blanket, Hotrod sank into her, and Persia forgot about death and blood and all the bright, dying reds splashed against evil blacks.
“Come for me, princess,” he whispered in her ear. “Come with me.”
Her body responded to his friction with heat and tears. Yet like a freaking baby, she buried her face under his chin, her arm still crooked around his neck. Holding on. Forever fighting the good fight, forever lost to the dark.
Hotrod began pumping in earnest, his body a machine with one goal, to hear her scream and to make her smile. But she couldn’t recover the high she’d had. She wanted to. She tried to. Yet every beat of their bodies was now out of sync. The friction between them hurt. She couldn’t pretend. “Stop,” she whispered huskily. “Hotrod, stop. I… I can’t.”
Instantly, he ceased moving. Still hard and thick, and wonderfully hot inside her, he peered down through hazy, oceanic-blue eyes. “What’s wrong? Did I hurt you?”
She shook her head, afraid he might see more than she wanted to share. “No, I… I just can’t.”
The tenderest light glimmered over his face. In one fell swoop, he rolled onto his back, taking her with him. Persia found herself sitting upright and straddling his hips. In plain sight. Where he could see everything. All of her. Where she had nowhere to hide and nothing to hide behind. Yet his palms gently cuffed her wrists, and his full attention was on her eyes instead of her breasts.
“Talk to me,” he said, his voice so damned soft and low she wanted to cry.
Persia shrugged, not making this any more personal than it already was. “Nothing. It happens.”
“Something,” he insisted quietly, tugging her down and flattening her to his chest. Hotrod tucked her head under his chin and crisscrossed his arms over her back, keeping one manly hand on each cheek of her ass. “Better?”
She nodded, struggling to hold herself together as she slipped her hands around his neck.
“I’m an ass. Should’ve let you sleep,” he murmured, his skillful fingers kneading her backside, his heavily muscled arms around her, making her feel safe and protected. Her, one of the FBI’s best covert operators. The woman who’d brought Domingo Zapata, one of the world’s most evil villains, down. Needing protection...
“No. It’s all right. It’s just… I just… I had a dream,” she whispered, blinking fast so no teardrops fell. The same dream. Forever and always, the same dream.
Reaching around her, he pulled the bedsheet up and over them, instantly easing her nakedness. “Want to talk about it?”
“Not really.” Persia ran her tongue over her dry lips, afraid to admit her weakness, but wanting someone to know why she needed that silly nightlight and how dark the nights really were without it. Hoping that someone could please, be Hotrod. But afraid speaking the dream out loud would make it real.
Yet she couldn’t go on like this. Forever hiding and running and falling apart.
The nightmare poured out of her slowly. “It’s a crazy, weird dream, that’s all. Stupid, really. I shouldn’t let it upset me, but…” She hesitated, about to ruin her bitch-of-the-beach persona once and for all.
“I’m listening,” he breathed, the warmth and feel of his male body so damned comforting.
“Okay. So… I’m running. It’s night and it’s dark, pitch black. Branches I can’t see slap my face and whip my eyes,” she confessed quietly. “They sting, but they’re not why I’m running. I’m covered in blood, Hotrod. Painted red like… like a devil.” Like him…
Persia closed her eyes, reliving the nightmare that had once been her daily life. Seeing Domingo’s evil, tattooed face and his flat black eyes again. “Someone’s chasing me. I look back and all I see are red and black shadows, a long black arm, and a big tattooed hand with short-stubby fingers. It’s like one of those cartoon arms, long like stretched putty with a huge, inflated gloved hand at the end of it. Only it’s not a glove. It’s him, Hotrod. It’s h-h-him.” Man, she wanted to die of embarrassment, but her mouth kept talking. “He’s reaching out to grab me. To drag me back. To make me see and do things—”
“Zapata?” Hotrod’s question was a soft, gentle, baritone vibration under her ear.
Swallowing hard, Persia nodded. Her heart was pounding by then, just like during and after every nightmare. Pounding