“Then it’s better to rid ourselves of Grange now,” she said quietly, though he could hear the trepidation in her voice.
His hands smoothed over her back, relishing the feel of warm, silken flesh and well-toned muscle. She was like a young she-wolf. Lean and fit.
“I’m going to send you to the Breed compound before I go after Grange,” he finally decided. “You were right; separating you from Cassie wasn’t a good idea. We’ll let his men get a good look at you in town, then I’ll send you back…”
“The hell you will.” She sat up, her eyes sparkling in fury as she faced him, her nakedness all but forgotten as her gaze cut into him with lethal intent. “I won’t be pushed aside and protected, Dash. I deserve the chance to do this.”
“And if you are carrying our child?” he asked her softly. “Do you deserve the chance to risk that life?”
“If I conceive, then any child would be placed at risk by the very fact that it will be a naturally conceived Breed,” she reminded him angrily. “I’m not stupid, Dash. There are a lot of things I’ve taken into consideration. I haven’t made these decisions lightly.”
He stared up at her, frowning. “You don’t discuss anything you’ve considered with me, Elizabeth. How would I know what you anticipate?”
She rolled her eyes. He had never seen that particular expression of female exasperation from her before. It was endearing.
“You’re one to talk,” she snapped. “You weren’t even going to tell me you were a Breed, Dash. Wouldn’t I have been in for a hell of a surprise when you locked inside me if I hadn’t known?”
“Yeah, would have been nice to have had someone else as shocked as I was,” he growled. He watched her, seeing the anger, but seeing something more. A cool, quiet calm that was as much a part of her as the heat of her sensuality, the depth of her acceptance. As though the past two years had tempered a steel core of strength inside her soul. She was the most giving woman he had known, and the strongest. The years had been cruel, harder on her than he could have imagined, but her very survival had molded her into a warrior.
“I do have a mind, you know?” she finally told him with an air of amusement. “You’ve seen me as this soft little woman that needs to be protected and coddled. I don’t want to be protected. I don’t want to be coddled. I want to share the responsibilities, Dash.”
She should have been born a Breed. She was as tough as either of the two Feline females he had met.
“I know you have a mind,” he told her quietly. “I have nothing but the greatest respect, Elizabeth, for the very fact that you still live. Most women would have failed to even rescue Cassie, let alone run with her for two years.”
She shook her head, a sharp sigh emitting from between her lips as she moved from the bed.
“You sound very patronizing, Dash,” she told him softly as she pulled on her robe. “Any mother would have given her life to protect her baby. I got lucky.”
“You were smart.” He sat up in the bed, watching her curiously. “I’m not patronizing you, Elizabeth. If I didn’t think you had what it takes, you would be in Virginia with Cassie rather than here, training to go after those files and Grange. Never doubt I don’t have the highest respect for you. As a woman, a mother, and a mate.”
“A mate,” she murmured, shaking her head. “You found me less than two weeks ago, and you’ve already claimed me for life.” She pushed her fingers through her hair as she skirted the window and curled up in the large chair that sat on the far wall.
Distance. He saw the need to escape the intimacy that the bed afforded and he allowed her that. For now. The days they had spent together had been so rushed, so filled with the need to protect Cassie and then to complete the minimum amount of training he required. There had been little time to talk. What he knew in his soul had never been expressed to Elizabeth. Not that he had the words to do that now, but he saw in her a need to know more than she had learned so far.
“I found you over a year ago, Elizabeth,” he reminded her. “Through Cassie’s letters.”
“The letters.” She sighed deeply. “God, it was so dangerous putting her in school then. I don’t know how I let her talk me into that. I was completely against letting her go and allowing the pen pal thing,
Dash. I worried myself to exhaustion that year.”
“I know you did.” And he did know. Somehow, some way, he connected to both Elizabeth and her child. Seeing their pain. Their fear. “When the letters began, I had just been in an accident, Elizabeth. I lost men I had fought with for years. Good men. Friends. No one was expecting me to live. I was in a drug-induced coma the first three months of those letters. If it hadn’t been for my commanding officer’s belief that Cassie’s letters would penetrate it, I would be dead now.”
Her eyes widened slowly, flickering with pain, fear.
“I didn’t know.”
“I know you didn’t,” he said gently. “My CO wrote her back at first, until I could. But while I was in that haze…” He shook his head. “I wanted to die then. I was tired of hiding, of having no one. I had let myself get close to the men in that unit, and then they were gone as well. I was tired of fighting. Then he read that letter. And I saw you, Elizabeth. I saw you just as you are now. Your hair tangled around you, your eyes dark and haunted, and I knew I had to live. I knew you and Cassie needed me. Each letter only strengthened that impression.”
He watched her breathe out roughly, saw the shock, the bemusement in her eyes as he moved from the bed and walked to her.
Her gaze flickered to his straining erection, but at this moment, it wasn’t sex he needed. He knelt in front of her, staring back at her, his arms lying along the sides of the chair.
“I saw you crying, Elizabeth. I heard you whisper my name and ask God on a prayer to bring you a miracle. And in just that instant I woke up. I made myself wake up, because I knew to my soul you were my mate. My woman. And I knew I had to find you.”
Her eyes were filled with tears, brilliant sapphire gems that pierced his heart with beauty and her pain.
“I was,” she whispered before swallowing tightly, her voice hoarse. “I was standing there, and it was raining. Cassie had gone to bed whispering that you would save us. How did she know, Dash? How could she have known?”