Longest Night (21 page)

She laughed without stopping, hands clenching on the backs of his thighs for balance. She was in an awkward crouch, not on her knees on the damp earth, and she kept having to pull back to breathe through her sniffling from the cold. He didn't dare move, though all he wanted was to thrust forward into her mouth. He had no idea how he'd gone so quickly from fatally bored to so aroused that he wouldn't notice if a bear attacked, except to ask it to wait and let him finish.

Then she found her balance, resting one knee on his boot, and it hurt enough to momentarily distract him until she took his cock deeper, fighting her gag reflex and swallowing until her nose pressed against his body.

“Oh, fuck. God, Cecily, don't stop. Please,” he grated out, aware in some distant way that his voice had taken on overtones of pleading. “Please, don't stop.”

Thankfully, she didn't even hesitate but kept at it instead, letting the gentle press of his hand guide her to move faster, taking him another fraction of an inch deeper into her mouth. Ian tried to gasp out a warning, but his mind had stopped functioning.

He came in a flash of blinding pleasure and affection he'd never even imagined, because love had never been tied up with sex for him. If he'd been able to speak, he might have let his thoughts—his feelings—escape, but it was all he could do to breathe. He didn't even flinch when cold fingertips brushed his abdomen as she pulled up his boxers, fastened his jeans, and then fumbled to get his belt buckled in place.

Cursing the gloves that made his fingers clumsy, he tried to help Cecily to her feet, but just ended up uselessly petting her parka. Laughing at his efforts, she fisted her bare hands into his jacket and kissed him, slow and sweet, filling the air with the warmth of their mingled breath.

“Thanks for last night,” she whispered against his lips.

All but purring inside, Ian crossed his hands at the small of her back, holding her close, ignoring the rifle and field glasses trapped between their bodies. “Can we go hunting again tomorrow?”

November 2

As the little aircraft taxied to a stop, Ian glanced sidelong at Cecily, who was busy with the controls. Tension had crept into her body and expression over the last hour as Little Prairie Air Traffic Control had guided them through the crowded airspace—well, crowded compared to Pinelake. Now, he could almost see the protective walls surrounding her. Necessary as they were, he hated them. He wondered if they'd ever truly be gone, or if she would simply learn how to better hide them.

“You don't have to do this,” he insisted.

“After yesterday?” She laughed tightly and shook her head. Then she unlatched the door, letting a blast of cold air into the warm passenger compartment. Quickly, he zipped up his parka and exited his side of the plane.

He huffed, breath steaming in the frigid air, and fumbled his gloves out of his pockets as the chill settled into his fingers. Little Prairie wasn't nearly as remote as Pinelake, but that meant nothing when it came to fighting against the bitter chill. They'd discussed the trip to Little Prairie last night and this morning, and she'd absolutely refused to change her mind. She'd even gone so far as to tell him he could stay back at the cabin—as if he'd send her off alone?

Absolutely not. Especially not when she was doing this for
his
benefit, not her own.

So he walked beside her, trying to find the right space to offer comfort and support without crowding her. She led the way to the small terminal, where a security guard checked their identification and allowed them to enter. She looked around, then headed in the direction of a sign that promised car rentals. “You have a driver's license, city boy?”

Ian grinned, wishing she'd take off her sunglasses so he could see her eyes. “Yes, though driving in Manhattan is a futile effort. Makes it easier to steal Preston's car when I go on vacation, though.” He was relieved that her answering laugh was a bit closer to normal.

Soon enough, they were in possession of a set of keys to a Ford Taurus and a paper map. Cecily followed him out to the parking lot and opened the map. He stopped looking for the car and glanced at the map. He'd been carrying his cell phone out of habit. Now, he powered it up and was relieved to see he had signal. As his phone started syncing with a backlog of emails and messages, he opened his navigation and said, “GPS. What's the destination address?”

“GPS? Really?” She turned away from the map to stare at the phone.

With anyone else, Ian would have asked sharp questions about living under a rock or in a dark cave. “Don't you have a—of course you don't,” he said, momentarily caught off guard at the idea of someone in this modern age who owned an airplane, even a little one, but not a smartphone. And with no television and minimal Internet access, it was all too possible that she'd never even seen one.

He handed the phone to her, hit the lock button on the key fob, and then followed the sound of the horn to their car. He unlocked the doors and opened Cecily's. She gave him a tense smile of thanks, offered him the phone, and got into the passenger seat.

As he circled around to the driver's seat, he scanned his notifications. Over forty texts and twelve voice mails. He got into the car with a sigh and started the engine, reopening the navigation app. “Just put the health clinic address in here, and it'll tell us where to go.”

“Civilian GPS,” she said with a little shake of her head. She prodded uncertainly at the on-screen keyboard. “I never thought it would happen.”

***

“This is the only reason to come to civilization,” Cecily declared as she pulled open the door to an unfamiliar fast food restaurant.

Ian glanced skeptically at the gaudy red scrawl on the side of the building. He'd never been one for fast food, even in college. “Who's Tim Horton?” he asked, following her inside.

“Poor thing, you,” she said mock-sadly. Despite the fact that the unremarkable beige restaurant was crowded, with three-quarters of the plastic tables occupied, she walked right in without hesitation.

Noticing that she was rubbing at her arm, he asked, “Did they take blood?”

She nodded, darting a glance at him as she got into line. “Yeah, but that was easy. You get used to it in the military. I ended up getting a birth control shot instead of pills. It's a little sore.”

He moved a hand to the small of her back, and gave her a grateful smile. Despite having lived in isolation for seven years, she'd insisted on STI testing for herself. At the rehab clinic, the doctors had taken his blood every week, or so it seemed, and STI testing had been part of his intake screening.

The smell of coffee distracted him. They moved up the line to the counter, where he was faced not just with coffee but with an array of doughnuts and pastries. Fifteen minutes later, he was riding a fantastic sugar high, washing down the remains of his third doughnut with rich coffee. Cecily grinned at him, having taken the more traditional route of starting with chili, saving her doughnut for last. Faced with a boring chicken panini of his own, he eyed her doughnut and lifted a hand.

“Yes,” she said, giving him a warning glare.

“Hm?”

“Yes, I am going to eat that.” She kicked his shin under the table. “Eat your lunch. We'll get more to go, if you want.”

He turned and smiled at her. “You know me so well,” he said and picked up his sandwich. A bite proved it to be almost as good as the doughnut had been, which seemed somehow
wrong
. “Is this why you chose to come to Little Prairie?”

“Hm? Oh. No, this is a chain. They're all over Canada,” she said, scraping her spoon in the bowl to get at the last of her chili.

“And yet, you live in the one town in Canada that
doesn't
have these?” he asked, using the sandwich to point at her still-untouched doughnut.

With another affectionate nudge, she promised, “We'll come back whenever you like, at least until the snow sets in.”

“Do you need to come back for the test results?”

She shook her head and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “We'll go to Pinelake Monday or Tuesday and use the phone at the airfield.”

Ian nodded, hiding his disappointment at having to wait—though when he thought about it, the shot would require a week or so to take effect. So he finished half of his sandwich, and then changed the subject, saying, “I spoke to Preston.”

She swallowed her bite of doughnut. “Oh? How is he?”

“Good. Meaning overworked, but he's not happy unless he's busy,” Ian said with a wry smile. “He also said that if I didn't pass on his greetings and gratitude, he'd shoot me, so there's that.”

She grinned. “He's a sweetheart.”

“That's one word for it.”

November 7

Cecily bagged her second deer barely an hour into the hunt, thanks to an unlikely shot of opportunity. She'd been just ten yards away from the group of does when the wind blew just right and the snow cleared enough for her to see the herd, brown fur blending seamlessly against winter-bare brown trees. This time, she let Ian field dress the carcass, and he took to the task with grim determination.

By late afternoon, they were back at the cabin, carcass dressed and butchered, meat packed away in the deep freezer. Cecily made tea and set a pot of stew to reheat. When she heard a slap on the table, she glanced over at him and saw he'd dropped her paperback onto the kitchen table.

“There's a sequel. There has to be, with that ending,” he complained as he sat down. He twisted so he could put his feet up on Cecily's usual chair. “It's not the one you're writing now, though.”

“I finished the sequel this summer. Don't have a final copy yet,” she answered apologetically. “I got the proof but had to send it back.”

He huffed in irritation. “And you don't have an electronic copy.”

“Actually, I do. It's—” She blinked, watching as he pushed his chair away and left, long strides taking him back into the living room. A moment later, she heard the desk drawer open. “—on my laptop,” she finished, amused, and pulled the tea bags out of the mugs.

“The battery's dead!” he called. “What's the point of having a laptop if you're going to let the battery run down?”

“I don't actually use it, in case you haven't noticed, except to email my publisher.” She frowned, stirring sugar into his tea with loud clinks of the spoon. She'd set up a new email account for her writing, mostly so she wouldn't have to deal with messages from old friends from her past life.

She checked the fire in the stove, trying to gauge if it was hot enough to scorch the bottom of the stew, and then brought the tea out to the living room. Ian had made a mess of the desk, stacking his laptop on her in-progress stack of manuscript pages to make room for the second laptop, with the power cord draped over the box of blank paper on the other side.

“You don't even have a password?” he asked.

“Why bother? You're the first person to touch the thing beside me since I bought it, and you'd probably guess any password I thought up,” she said, finding a clear spot for his tea, well away from the manuscript.

“True.” He smiled at her. “The code for your gun safe is three-one-oh-three-four-six-one-six. Does it mean anything?”

“Other than the fact that you're terrifying?”

With a huff of amusement, he turned, saying, “It's a simple trick. One of my clients showed me. I'll show you.”

Thinking it involved the laptop, she leaned in just as he rose. His elbow hit her arm, jostling her, and hot tea splashed everywhere, soaking through her button-down shirt and jeans and his sleeve.

The cup fell from her hand. She backed away and hit the couch with bruising force, overwhelmed by the memory of hot pain searing through her, pain she couldn't control, couldn't stop. She clawed her shirt away from her skin, panic rising up in her chest. She heard a footstep. Harsh voices shouted at her too fast for her to understand their words, every shout punctuated by more heat. More pain. She lashed out with a clumsy kick as she reached back, shoving something out of her way to make room to fight or escape.

“Cecily!”

The sound of her name—her first name, rather than her rank—cut through the suffocating, disorienting fear that gripped her.
Ian
, she thought, and the panic receded a notch. Dizzy, she crouched down so she could sit on the floor before she lost her balance and fell. She took a deep breath and heat seared into her skin, over her ribs, threatening to drag her under again.

“I'm fine,” she said tightly, more for her own benefit than Ian's. Her fingers burned, clenched around the cooling fabric, but she could breathe. She knew he was nearby, just a few feet away, giving her the space she needed.

She opened her eyes, staring at the floor, and took a few more breaths. Her pulse started to slow, and a tiny, incredulous part of her mind thought that this hadn't been so bad. Her shirt was still warm under her hand and cool where she'd pulled it away from her body, allowing air to flow. It couldn't have been more than two minutes, start to finish. Maybe less. That was a hell of a lot better than two hours.

He moved, not to approach Cecily but to leave the room. She closed her eyes and leaned against the wood slats forming the back of the sofa. She had to find a way to stop this from happening. Ian would only tolerate this for so long before he left, and she'd be alone again. She was alone
now
—a thought that threatened to pull her under once more.

Then he returned, settling down on the floor nearby, a foot of space carefully left between them. “Take off your wet shirt,” he said, holding out her warm bathrobe.

Her hesitation lasted less than a second. She tried to undo her shirt buttons, but her hands were shaking from the adrenaline still flooding her system. The harder she tried to steady herself, the worse the trembling became, until finally, embarrassed, she said, “Ian…”

Without a word, he leaned over and unbuttoned her shirt. He let her pull it off and took it. Cecily fought to tug the robe over herself, shivering from the cold air on wet skin.

“Do you need help standing?”

The denial was on her lips, but that, too, was pointless. She nodded and held out a hand, not meeting his eyes. “Please.”

He took her hand and steadied himself, offering her balance without trying to guide her or cling to her. Embarrassed, hating that this kept happening to her, she murmured apologies which he ignored in favor of keeping her upright. When she was standing, he tugged the thick terry cloth closed, holding it at the waist with his free hand.

“Did it burn your legs?”

“No. Maybe. Shit, I don't know,” she admitted. She thought about the effort it would take to get through her belt and jeans, and she was still wearing her boots. She gave up on the idea. Instead, she buried her face against his chest, breathing in the smoky wool of his soft sweater.

He let go of the robe and gently took her by the arms, making no move to hold her, to trap her, until she pressed closer, as if she could burrow into his warmth. Then his arms closed around her, and he pressed a kiss to her hair, offering a silent, comforting presence and demanding nothing in return.

***

Inside, Ian berated himself. He should have been more careful. He kept any hint of his thoughts out of his body language, knowing her senses were heightened on a subconscious level. She'd be looking for any hint that he was disappointed in her lack of self-control, and he was determined that she wouldn't see anything she could possibly misinterpret that way.

It had to be ten minutes before Cecily tensed, lifting her head fractionally. “This isn't going to work,” she said, striving to control her voice. She was good enough to fool anyone who wasn't Ian. “I can't—I wouldn't make it even a day in Manhattan.”

“Not like this, no,” he agreed. He felt her surprise in the way she drew back just slightly, a shift of weight onto her heels. “I'm not asking you to leave now, though. I'm asking you to trust me—to let me help you. That's all.”

“What's the point?” she sighed, breath warm through the layers of shirts he wore. She leaned into his arms again, resignation heavy in the slump of her shoulders and the way her head bowed.

“Must there be a point? I want to do this.”

“I'm not one of your clients, for you to figure out if I'm guilty or innocent.”

“No, you're not.” His arms tightened protectively, possessively—two new feelings that he was discovering he liked. “It
is
a scientific process, though. I'm not some”—he cast his mind about, trying to find just the right words to express his feelings about the doctors back at rehab—“some
witch
doctor
stumbling about in your mind. I'm trained in logic. That's what you need, not voodoo.”

Her tension disappeared in a snorted, choked burst of laughter. “Voodoo?” She leaned back enough to look up at him, grinning a bit desperately. “
Voodoo?
”

He shrugged dismissively. “I understand you. The more I get to know you, the more I can see what should have been so obvious to whoever failed to help you before. Let
me
help you.”

“Why?” She reached up to touch his face. “Why is this so important? Three weeks ago, you didn't know I existed.”

“Three weeks ago, neither of us had a future worth living for,” he answered, feeling a little shiver crawl up his spine. A month ago, he would have killed someone to escape rehab and go back to Manhattan, even though he knew that Preston was right. The pressure of a career he loved would have driven him to take “just one more” painkiller.

He tightened his arms around her, ducking his head down to kiss her. “Tell me this isn't better,” he said, drawing back only enough to speak, lips brushing against Cecily's with each syllable. “Tell me you couldn't be content like this. Even happy.”

She shook her head, sliding a hand around the back of his neck to hold him close. “You'd just know I was lying, if I tried,” she whispered. “Trust you. That's all?”

He laughed quietly. “That's all.”

“You know that's not… Trust doesn't come easily for me.” Her expression went distant as she looked down so she could tie her robe closed, though she didn't step away from him. “I can say ‘I trust you' all day, but…”

“I know. But that's only here,” he said, touching her forehead. “Inside, you already do trust me.”

With a faint smile, she challenged, “Cocky, aren't you?”

“I'm right.” Then, in a rare fit of modesty, he corrected himself. “I'm almost always right.”

That got a laugh. “Humble, too.”

He grinned and touched her chin to lift her face, meeting her eyes. “Look at the evidence. You fell asleep beside me. I woke you from your nightmares, and you barely moved. You didn't try to attack me or defend yourself. You already trust me.”

She took a deep breath and tipped her head back, eyes falling closed. “Okay. Okay, I can see that,” she said slowly, opening her eyes again. “But look at this. I mean, it was a fucking cup of tea, not—”

“Sensory association.” Ian stepped back, sliding his hand down her arm so he could lace their fingers together. He lifted his other hand to touch her chest, just above the collar of her bathrobe. “Heat. Burns. I should have been more careful.”

The tension returned to her body, though she didn't pull away. “How could you possibly have known how I'd react? Even I wouldn't have guessed I'd—”

“I don't
guess
,” Ian corrected, flattening his hand to feel her heartbeat. “It's an obvious mental connection. I'll be more careful in the future.”

“I don't want you treating me like I'm made of glass.”

“I wouldn't want you if you were.” He looked into her eyes, searching for that strength, and quietly asked, “You don't see it, do you? You don't know how strong you actually are.”

This time, she did pull away. She turned and walked for the bedroom, head bowed as she unbuckled her belt. “Strong enough that I live
here
? I'm not exactly impressed.”

“Strong enough that you're alive at all.” He followed, resisting the urge to chase her down and pull her close. The sight of her wasn't enough to soothe his irrational fear at the thought of losing her.

With a bitter little laugh, she said, “Yes, well. They did a good enough job of drumming that into my head at the hospital, even if they didn't accomplish much else.”

“What?”

“‘Suicide isn't an answer,'” she quoted.

Ian had known that she must have considered suicide, though only in a distant, rational way. Actually hearing her say the word was enough to break his resolve, like a knife in his heart. He crossed to where she stood by the fire in four quick strides. Startled, Cecily looked up, meeting his eyes for an instant before he pulled her into his arms. He told himself he shouldn't be holding her like this—that it would be too much, especially with the heavy emotional darkness pressing in on them from both sides—but he needed to feel her breath and heartbeat and warmth, to reassure some primitive corner of his mind that she was safe and alive. His breath came in strained gasps, and something in his chest shattered into spikes of hot pain.

Then her arms circled him, holding him just as tightly. “It's all right,” she said softly, pressing a kiss to his throat. “It's okay. I'm here.”

Of course she was. He wanted to snap at her for being so transparent, but he couldn't breathe enough to speak. He couldn't let go because he
needed
her in his arms, though all he could do was cling to her in silence as her hand pressed gentle circles against his back, as though he were the one in need of comforting.