Elite Metal-ARE-epub (78 page)

They might never enjoy a full night sleep again.

Slowly, he moved. With her hands where he wanted them, he let his own roam her body. Her breast filled his palm and with every thrust of his hips and jolt of her muscles against his cock, he squeezed them.

“Eli.” She gritted her teeth.

“Why are you holding back?” He couldn’t help his smile. Rose felt so right, so completely perfect the way she welcomed her into his body. And it seemed she actually liked what he did.

How had he gotten so lucky? “I told you to come when I was in you. Anytime you want to, you can.”

“It feels so good.” She strained her neck. Rose was close. Another few seconds and she would explode around him. Then it would be beautiful. Jesus, he was so close himself. “I don’t want it to end.”

“We can be together again and again. A million different ways. Until neither of us can move. Sweetheart, I need you to come because it’s the most beautiful fucking thing I’ve ever seen in my whole ridiculous life.”

He’d never been more honest. If her hands were free she’d be able to feel how fast his heart beat and it wasn’t only because she gave him more physical pleasure than he’d ever known before. No, it was because when he was with Rose all he wanted to do was speak the truth

His gorgeous woman who the universe shoved in his direction although he’d never in a million years have expected her.

“Ah, Eli. Yes. I’m coming...” Her words stuttered and her muscles spasmed around him. Wetness drenched his cock as she shattered around him.

His ears rang and he held off, breathing through the push to come inside of her hard. He wouldn’t, not until she’d reached all her pleasure. Rose’s needs came first because indulging her carnally was the only thing he could give to her. The rest of his life he’d always have to hold back. Together in the bedroom he’d make sure she possessed all of him.

Maybe it would be enough.

His body shattered and he thought maybe his soul did too.

* * * * *

Now

The other sniper fled.
Fucking coward
.

Stalking a woman and a child, killing a grandmother—those things were easy. Facing him
mano a mano
would have taken some goddamned courage and clearly his target was a pansy ass.

He shook his head. Now would have been a useful time to have a spotter. When things had gone to hell in a hand basket during Operation Phoenix his spotter ranked among the casualties.

Never again. He’d have liked the opportunity to say goodbye to Zinc.

Plat wouldn’t lose someone else who was his responsibility…Particularly by his absence.

He stopped moving. The hair on the back of his neck didn’t stand to attention the way they did when someone stared at him. The cold air move over his skin. What caught his attention?

It wasn’t something in the present…no, a memory played with his mind and for once it contained nothing to do with Rose.

The memory of his dead spotter made his pause. He very rarely gave  Zinc much of a thought. Not because he hadn’t liked the man, he had. They’d been on the verge of being friends and he didn’t have many of those. Dealing with anything to do with the fuck up of Phoenix gave him a horrible headache.

He’d never done emotions well.

Spotters…he’d not used one since he’d agreed to become Platinum again, to leave Elijah behind, to put Rose into a past he’d never visit again.

Plat squatted down. He ran his hands through the cold ground.

Rodgers. It had been his only solo assignment since Warbucks brought them all in. A single sniper against the other. He’d taken the son-of-a-bitch and loved every second of bringing the evil mother fucker down.

Only…why had Rodgers been alone?

He grabbed his phone and scanned through the notebook where he’d jotted notes about the assignment before he’d done it. Months passed and it took him a minute to find the old notes. Fortunately, he never deleted anything or he’d be royally screwed.

There in black text with a question mark next to it was a random piece of information he’d forgotten because it hadn’t applied the day of the hunt. Rodgers always used a spotter—his wife.

Dora Rodgers. She hadn’t been there. Bernardo Rodgers died alone. Hadn’t he?

His spidey-sense tingled again. If his guess was true, and the more he sat with the idea, the more it made sense.

He’d killed her husband. She knew how to use a sniper rifle—albeit badly—and how to conduct dirty business.

Plat killed her family. She wanted his. Rubbing his chin, he stared at the cabin where he’d left the two people in the universe outside of his team he loved, even if they both hated him.

Dora wasn’t getting to them. They’d come back to Texas with him. And then he’d finish the job properly. Both the sniper and his spotter would be gone, where they couldn’t hurt anyone anymore.

Chapter Six

Now

Rose watched
Plat
pace the room. His movements were quite different than the Elijah she’d known for a year. Her boyfriend had been still most of the time, controlled. This guy, wearing her love’s face, appeared really disgruntled.

She wasn’t sure exactly where she was. In the hours following Platinum’s invasion of the cabin, the strangest things happened. A private plane arrived, they’d been shuffled onto it, and despite the fact he’d remained eerily quiet, it’d been clear to her Kent’s discovered father seemed concerned for her safety. She and Kent must have been on the same page. They asked no questions and had been given zero in the way of answers.

After they landed, they’d been hauled off into a bullet proof—she’d actually asked and the driver with the biohazard tattoo on the back of his head grunted a yes—and eventually entered a compound she’d never dreamed she’d see in her life. Someone was spending a lot of money on the facility and she couldn’t imagine Uncle Sam was footing the bill.

Since she’d calmed down, the lack of information needed to change. As soon as he got off whatever call seemed to be taking up so much of his time.

“So you can take care of it?” He tapped his foot on the floor while he spoke on the phone. “I won’t have her arrested for kidnapping when she was hands down saving my kid from shit I—
we
—caused” Pause. “Uh-huh. Well you’re right of course. No, they’re both compromised. Yes. No, it is too much of a risk factor.”

His words confused her so she looked down at Kent. He slept, only not easily, every once in a while throwing himself over as if he couldn’t make himself comfortable. He was Eli, no Platinum’s—she needed to think of his name right—son. How could she have not noticed?

They shared the same, rare white blond hair. Beyond the obvious hair connection, Kent shared his eyes and the same long face. In retrospect, there could be no doubt they were father and son.

She stared at both of their faces almost every day for an entire year and she hadn’t known. How stupid was she? Was this how Lois Lane felt when she found out about Superman?
Glasses on, glasses off
…

The blond hunk, whatever he wanted to call himself, disconnected his call and regarded her silently. And there it was, the silent stillness she’d grown to find so comforting.

“Did you date me, make me fall in love with you, use me, to gather information about Kent?” There were a million questions she should be asking. Danger, death, and violence were all around them. The truth. How much of a fool had she been? How pathetic?

“Did I ask you about Kent once when we were together?” He didn’t move, didn’t even seem to breathe.

“No.” She choked on her answer. He hadn’t. In all of the days and nights they spent together he never brought Kent or any of her other children up. Sometimes she spoke about them when she told him about her day. Never by name…

He pursed his lips before he spoke as if he tasted something bad. “The first time you sat down next to me and I realized you were his teacher, I decided I would make you someone I could speak to, call up if I needed to. I wasn’t outside of his school for the fun of it. Like a moth, I couldn’t stay away from the flame that was Kent.”

“Why go through such a ruse then? Why not present yourself to his grandmother and be part of his life?” She stood up. Yes, her new line of questioning was much more on track. Rose could focus on something other than her broken heart and the strange disparity between her desire to throttle or kiss him.

“If only it were simple.” He shook his head. “I let them know I was going to explain our situation to you. They ran a quick background check on you and you’re not a risk. I wish you being safe made understanding what happened somehow easier.”

“You’re not making sense.” Yet her heart beat rapidly as if he confessed truths, which floored her. Or maybe it was anticipation riddling her with anxiety. She’d wanted answers for so long.

“Long before you met me, I was a mixed up kid. My father was rich. Other than checks cashed every month, I never saw him. Occasionally he got drunk and remembered he’d fathered a kid. He certainly never remembered my mother.” He shrugged. “Whine. Whine. Whine. Bad childhood.”

“Tell your story. I could do without the sarcastic avoidance.”

Although she did like hearing his voice again. Would it always make her feel connected to the world more? Or was her need to hear him leftover because he’d been more than her boyfriend, more than her love? He’d shown her parts of herself she’d never known she possessed. The kind of woman who could come only when he told her to, who loved the ties he used on her wrists, the ropes he would eventually press against her body.

“Fair enough.” He nodded. “I joined the Marines and it turned out I possessed a real gift with a sniper rifle. I had the temperament too. I rose quickly through the ranks.”

“And the whole time you pretended to be a medical student named Elijah was why?”

“I’ll get to what happened during my strange year in New York. It wasn’t pretend. To say so is to use the wrong word. And when I was Eli, I was a medical student. None of the things I told you were lies. I simply didn’t happen to mention how once upon a time I had been called either Tom O’Connell or Platinum in the Corps.”

“You’re going to have to explain all of it.” Her stomach turned over.

Plat put his hands in front of himself as if he shielded an assault. “I will. I swear it. Telling you would be easier if you let me talk.”

“And that’s all I want to do in life, make things easier on you.”

“I deserve your scorn. Does it help to lash out at me?” He raised an eyebrow and rubbed his chin the way he did sometimes when he listened intently. She resisted the urge to stroke the slight dusting of blond whiskers there.

“No, actually. Go on.” She did need to hear the whole thing. Interrupting him didn’t finish this faster.

“Eventually I ended up on an elite recon team. We were the best of the best. A mission came in. Not to become too technical about things, we were sent to stop a shipment of plutonium from Russia to Iran. The whole thing went belly up. We lost some really good men. An entire team, in fact.” His voice hitched and her heart bled although she knew it shouldn’t. Why couldn’t she stop herself from caring?
Stupid, stupid Rose
.

“Elijah, Platinum. I don’t know what to call you.”

“Call me anything you want, Rose. Please give me your voice back. Not the same way you did on the plane or the car. I’ll take anything, okay? Whatever you want. Yell, scream, and curse. No more silence. Your voice…it matters to me.”

His words so closely echoed her thoughts, it was everything she could do not to start sobbing. If he cared as she did, what could have taken him away?

“Please finish, Platinum.”

“Um. Okay. Right. Things went to hell on the Phoenix mission and I wasn’t there. Afterwards, things moved fast. Cover ups. Hidden agendas. Those of us who were left were given new identities, our old ones being declared dead or we never existed. Tom disappeared as well as his nickname Platinum. Elijah was handed a new life and the ability to do what I always wanted to do only never admitted.”

“To be a doctor.” The very idea blew her mind. How could people simply disappear? Maybe her disbelief made her naïve. She thought what he spoke of was the stuff of movies.

“Yes. I started to daydream about it about two years before I could do it. When I retired from the Marines, I’d apply and go. My time table got moved up. Anyway, it wasn’t until then I knew Kent existed. His mother had been a…” He stared at the boy, his voice drifting off.

She rubbed the boy’s hair. “I think he’s out.”

“I’d known his mother for a single night. She wrote me and I never got the letters. Someone must have wanted me not to leave my job. I still don’t know exactly who sent them to me except I got them my first week back stateside. I couldn’t introduce myself to him. His father was gone. I did what I could to help him. Thought I covered myself pretty well.”

“His grandmother started trying to find things out. Maybe she opened some doors she shouldn’t have.”

He nodded. “In a million years, I wouldn’t have predicted discovery. Maybe I should have. I thought they were sure I was a dead beat dad.”

“Kent thought you were out there in the way only kids can think and his grandmother got confused by the money.”

“Right.” He nodded, his eyes distant. “Then after our night at your parents’ cabin, I was kidnapped.”

She gasped. “Kidnapped?” His story got more and more unbelievable.

“They call them the ghosts. I have no idea who they are. They pulled me off the street, hood over my head, the whole nine yards. I was fairly sure the reaper had come for me. My only two regrets were you and Kent.” He cleared his throat. “When I was next allowed to see, I was here. With all my former teammates. And we were given a choice. The chance to take down the people who killed the others in Russia. The opportunity to undo what happened as best we could. All I needed to do was be Platinum again.”

“And what happened to Elijah?” Her voice wavered.