Her leg, her back, her chest, and even her hand throbbed and burned. Worst of all, she didn’t have an anchor to keep the psychic overload from frying her brain. She was wide open to assault, and that was more frightening than all the physical wounds in the world. She felt rather than heard movement near her and kept her eyes closed, her breathing even. There was no sound of footsteps, but she had the impression of someone large and very powerful leaning over her.
She wanted to hold her breath, self-preservation rising sharply, but then he would know she was awake. She drew in her breath and took him into her lungs. He smelled of death and blood and spice and outdoors. He smelled dangerous and like everything she didn’t want—everything she feared. But her heart accelerated and her womb clenched and her stomach did a frightening little flip. Her eyes flew open, in spite of all her resolve. In spite of the danger. In spite of her years of training and discipline. Her gaze collided with his.
His eyes were the most frightening she’d ever seen. Cold steel. A glacier, so frozen she felt as if the cold burned her skin everywhere his gaze touched. There was no mercy. No compassion. A killer’s eyes. Hard and watchful and utterly without emotion. They appeared gray, but were light enough to be silver. His lashes were jet black like his hair. His face should have been beautiful—it was constructed with care and attention to detail and bone structure—but several shiny, rigid scars crisscrossed his skin, running from under both eyes to his jaw and across his cheeks and up into his forehead. One scar dissected his lips, nearly cutting them in half. The scars ran down his neck and disappeared into his shirt, creating an unrelenting mask, a Frankenstein effect. The cuts were precise and cold and had obviously been inflicted with great care.
“Have you looked your fill, or do you need a little more time?”
His voice made her toes want to curl. Her reaction to him was disturbing and not at all that of a soldier—she was reacting entirely as a woman, and she hadn’t even known that was possible. She couldn’t tear her gaze from his, and before she could stop herself, the pads of her fingers traced one rigid scar down the length of his cheek. She braced herself for the psychic backlash—the onslaught of his thoughts and emotions, the shards of glass tearing into her skull that always accompanied touch, or even close proximity to others—but she could only feel the heat of his skin and the hard ridges that had been sliced into it.
He caught her wrist, the sound of flesh slapping flesh loud. His grip was vise-like, but for all that, surprisingly gentle. “What are you doing?”
She swallowed the lump in her throat threatening to choke her. What was she doing? This man was her enemy. More importantly, he was a man, and she detested men and everything they stood for. She could respect and admire soldiers, but not relate to them at all when they were off duty. Men were brutes without loyalty, in spite of the camaraderie among the soldiers. She was not going to feel compassion for an enemy, especially one who obviously couldn’t feel sympathy for others. He was probably the interrogator, a sadist bent on hurting others the way he’d been hurt.
She should have pulled her arm away, but she felt helpless to do anything but soothe him. His mask was just that, a layer over the strange masculine beauty of his face. He seemed so alone. So cut off and distant. “Does it still hurt?” Her thumb slid in a small caress over his arm where the ridges continued. Her voice was unnaturally husky and she had no idea what she was doing—only that when she touched him, the pain in her body receded and everything feminine inside her reached out to this one man.
He blinked. His only reaction. There was no change of expression. No smile. Nothing but that one small downward drift of his lashes. She thought he might have swallowed, but he turned his head slightly, his peculiar light eyes drifting over her face, seeing inside of her, seeing how vulnerable she felt, more woman than soldier, half-ashamed, half-mesmerized.
He hadn’t pulled his arm away from her, she realized. It was like touching a tiger, a wild, exhilarating experience. She coaxed his cooperation with that small caress, the pad of her thumb brushing gently back and forth over those terrible, relentless scars, keeping him from whirling around and perhaps killing her with one stroke, or bolting into the underbrush, forever lost before she could uncover his secrets and know the man behind the mask. He trembled, the smallest of reactions, but she felt it, rather like a great untamed predator shuddering beneath a first touch.
He turned his hand over, wrapping his fingers around hers, effectively stilling her efforts. Again, she was struck by the gentleness of his touch. She hadn’t known gentleness in her life. She’d never touched another human being the way she had him. She looked down at their joined hands and saw the scars running up his arm and into his sleeve. The moment seemed somehow surreal and distant from her. Her life had been filled with training and exercise, a narrow tunnel of expertise and little else other than duty. His life seemed exotic and mysterious. There was a wealth of knowledge behind those cold eyes. There was something hot and dangerous burning beneath the glacier of ice that called to her.
His thumb slid over the sensitive skin of her inner wrist. A single stroke. Feather-light. She felt her womb spasm. His touch was electric. The smooth silk of her skin in contrast to the violent scars of his. She wasn’t without flaws, but that small touch made her feel flawless and beautiful when she’d never felt that way. She wasn’t whole or complete, but he made her feel it when nothing else ever had.
Where the pad of his thumb passed over her skin, tiny flames licked and spread until she felt the burn rushing up to her br**sts and down lower to the junction between her legs. One touch. That was all it took and she was utterly aware of him as a man and herself as a woman. She pulled her hand away, stricken at the break in contact, but afraid of giving too much of herself away.
Her gaze remained locked with his as if he held her there mercilessly, in the bright spotlight. She tried not to flinch, tried not to moisten suddenly dry lips. She’d been interrogated a hundred times—more, even—and she’d never felt so nervous.
“Why did you want to kill the senator?” His voice was mild, not accusing, the inflection almost gentle.
The question shocked her. She stared at him wide-eyed, frowning a little, trying to assimilate why he would ask such a thing. “You were there to kill the senator. We were protecting him.”
“If you were there to protect him, why did your entire team leave him behind when we acquired you?”