Her lips moved beneath his and his heart stopped. He jerked back to look at her and her eyes shot open, then she shot up to a sitting position, spluttering. He almost blacked out.
She swayed, too, slumped back, holding her head. “Molokai…he shot his man—he fell on me. I barely turned my face away before hitting the ground…” Her eyes focused on his distorting face and panic flooded them. “Dante, darling—what happened? Are you hurt?”
“Are you? I can’t find any wounds and there is so much blood…” His words choked, his hands feverish all over her, his tears running faster.
“It has to be that guy’s. I only hit my head—again…” He immediately pounced, examining her head, revisited nightmares of their first day, of fractures and accumulating intracranial bleeding robbing him of all reason. She caught at his hands, brought him down to her, rubbing her face against his. His buried his face into hers harder. He’d never, never let go. At least until…She groaned and he jackknifed up. “I’m OK. I know I am. It’s just I have a wrecking ball inside my head. I always end up hitting the ground head first. Seems my head is the heaviest part of me!”
“And since it’s also the toughest part of you, we shouldn’t worry.”
Both Dante and Gulnar blinked and swung their heads towards the speaker. Emilio!
“You both OK, then?” Emilio lips were tilted into a half-smile. His eyes were anything but humorous. Both Dante and Gulnar, still clinging to each other, nodded mutely at him. “That was too close, folks. If it weren’t for the info we got from Helena, we would never have found you. Yeah, your instincts about her were correct, Dante. She’s Molokai’s mole and she worked with Tatiana to distract the guards at the camp’s access point near our tents. There were many casualties.”
“Damn! Damn!” Dante snarled. “I should have heeded my instincts. And GAO should—must have—a better screening system for its recruits.”
They were silent for a moment. Then Gulnar moved. Dante swooped to support her within the curve of his body. She chewed her flushed lip thoughtfully. “How did you find her out?”
Emilio pursed his lips, his face grim. “She seemed agitated after the attack and your disappearance became known. Her agitation felt disproportionate to her attachment to either of you and I got suspicious. I…persuaded her to talk. She was distraught that they took you, too. It was why she was so agitated in the first place. You’re her precious Dr. Guerriero!”
Dante’s stomach heaved. Gulnar ran a loving hand over his cheek, his head. “So she was getting rid of the competition, huh? I was right about the fatal attraction scenario, then. See what you do to women, Dante? She was willing to kill for you.”
“One more word out of either of you…” Dante shredded the words and spat them out. “And I’m liable to break the woman’s neck on sight!”
Emilio shook his head. “You won’t see her. She’s been taken into custody by the Badovnan authorities.”
“Lucky her.” Dante stood up, scooping Gulnar in his arms. “Let’s get out of here.”
Emilio closed the emergency bag, jumped to his feet. “You never said anything I liked better, Guerriero.”
Four soldiers immediately flanked them as they came out of the room, escorted them outside where the rebel installation was being turned upside down and everyone was in custody. And there was Molokai, on a stretcher.
“Is he dead?” Gulnar asked.
Emilio snorted in disgust. “He isn’t even seriously injured.”
“I’ll have a word with him,” Dante snarled.
“Dante—let it go, my love.”
He gave her lips a fierce press. “Stay with Emilio, amore. I’ll be a minute.”
She lowered her eyes, accepting his decision. His priceless Gulnar, giving him total freedom, when she knew one more word would have bent him to her will.
He approached the man who’d caused so much death and destruction, a bloody, flimsy body that housed a twisted and even flimsier soul. Molokai talked first. “How did you know?”
“About the remote-controlled detonation? You mean you don’t remember that you bragged, like the insecure nothing that you are? As for knowing that your men didn’t know how you were using them, that’s what small, sick creatures like you always do.”
“This isn’t the end, Guerriero,” Molokai rasped.
Dante shrugged. “It never is. But it is for you. I doubt you’ll make it out of prison. Your fellow Badovnans are on to you now. Good riddance, Molokai.”
Before the man said anything else, Dante had already deleted him from his mind, turned to Gulnar. Only she mattered.
She threw herself into his arms. He crushed her to him, every insupportable alternate scenario, all the things that could have gone wrong, polluting his soul, crushing down on his sanity.
But she was all right. She was alive and well and he’d make sure she was never in danger again. He had to get her out of here. Out of this region. Out of this lifestyle.
Eight hours later they were lying in bed in a hotel room in Zvetnia, Badovna’s new official capital. They’d stumbled into the shower as soon as they’d entered, made desperate, ferocious love there, then again in bed, longer, tender and far more devastating. They now caressed and murmured and moaned their relief and their love.
Then Gulnar was getting out of bed. Dante clung to her. With a lingering kiss, she disentangled herself gently and headed for the bathroom.
Dante waited for her to come back, his whole being throbbing in impatience. She finally came out—dressed.
He jackknifed in bed. “Gulnar, where do you think you’re going?”
She didn’t meet his eyes, bent to the backpack Emilio had gotten her, checked her papers, her money. “Back to GAO’s office in Srajna to reschedule my reassignment.”
He didn’t even feel himself move, just found himself in front of her, his arms hauling her to him. “You’re not staying here at all, Gulnar. You’re coming with me to the States.”
She looked at him now, eyes wide, startled. “You mean…you changed your mind?”
He enfolded her in a shuddering embrace. “When I thought I’d lost you, I would have sold my soul a hundred times over for one more breath, and damned myself to hell for the way I was going to throw away the time we could have together. You were right. May God forgive me, but I can’t end it now…”
Her shutters slammed down again, all her animation snuffed in a second. “You mean you will—later?”
“We have to be sensible about this, amore. I want you with me until…”
She pushed out of his arms, her emerald eyes, the windows of her rich soul, blank. “Until you relapse? Is that your plan? Then I’m supposed to desert you?”
He spread his arms, agitated. He had to make her agree to this. “You won’t be deserting me. It’s what I’d want you to do!”
She tilted her head at him. “Will you promise to leave me, too, if I get sick or crippled? This has to be a two-way deal, you know?”
“Don’t be ridiculous…”
“Don’t you! You’re alive and healthy six years after having cancer diagnosed. I’d say your chances aren’t any worse than mine of contracting a debilitating illness or getting maimed in an accident.”
“Don’t say that!”
Suddenly she shrugged and her eyes—What was that he saw there? He didn’t understand it, and it frightened him more than anything. “And, anyway, even if we settle this, I always realized I can’t be with you. Here we were just a man and a woman, but in your home I’ll be what I really am and you’ll be what you really are.”
This was what he’d instinctively dreaded. He saw where she was leading and he was damned if he’d let her go there. “You’re the woman I love, my woman. I’m nothing but your man.”
“We’re both so much more that just that, Dante. I’m the scarred refugee, the product of a lifetime in war zones. You’re the celebrated surgeon, the product of a stable life and society. You had a crisis, you fought your way out of it and now you’re ready to resume your life. I never wanted you to love me like I love you…”
“I love you more—more, Gulnar. I told you how I love you. I’ll dare death—and life—only if you let me love you.”
“Then love me, and come back whenever you can. I’ll be always here, waiting for you.”
“I’m taking you out of here. You’re never going to suffer or fear again.”
“What if I don’t know how to live in safety, in normality?”
He reached for her again. He had to stop this, end it. “Don’t be silly!”
She evaded him. “What happens if I don’t fit into your life? If you find out that what you feel for me is a combination of your personal despondency and the traumatic circumstances? The heightened emotions, the sharpened desires…”
“Would your feelings change if you lived away from danger? Would you love me less, need me less?”
She shook her head, bent to pick her backpack.
He caught her back in trembling arms. “Then don’t live with me! I’d planned it this way, originally. Those thirty-four days I stayed away? I went back to the States and arranged everything. I liquidated my assets and donated everything before I started wandering. But I had long-shot investments, shares in obscure projects that have become household names in the last four years. I sold my shares and put the money in the bank in your name. It’s a lot. I left instructions with my attorney to come for you after I’d left, to take you home and do everything for you. The only difference now is that I will stay in your life, in any sort of arrangement that works for you.”