Dani
Two days later, we were finally on board Marcus’s jet, headed for home.
He’d scared the hell out of me, and I’d never let him forget it. After he’d been treated as much as he could be at the medical clinic, he’d been transported to the capital city for further testing. He’d stayed a few days there for observation after the tests had come out negative for fractures. Marcus had one hell of a concussion, but he was recovering.
Luckily, the suicide bomber had been inexperienced. Just a girl, really, somewhere around the age of eighteen. Alone, she’d wandered into the wrong part of the town, and there had been plenty of damage, but no fatalities except for the rebel bomber.
I mourned the life of somebody that young, and I’d felt a profound sadness that she’d been so full of violence.
“Hey, are you okay?” Marcus asked from his supine position on the bed. We’d lifted off and then I’d insisted on bringing him back to rest.
I was sitting cross-legged next to him, lost in my thoughts as I looked at the bandage on his forehead. I’d lost count of the number of sutures it had taken to close his laceration, but it was healing well. “Just tired, I guess,” I answered as I smiled down at him.
“You are in a bed now,” he reminded me.
I rubbed a hand over my eyes. “I know. But I’ve had a hard time sleeping.”
“Worried about me?” he asked curiously.
I gave him an exasperated look. “Yes, I was worried.”
“I have a pretty hard head,” he said in an amused tone, his hand stroking over my back with a soothing touch.
His palms and fingers were already healing. Luckily, the damage to his hands had been superficial.
I snorted. “For once, I’m glad you’re hard-headed.”
I maneuvered my body down so I could lie next to him on my side, my head propped up on my hand.
“I’m doing all right. So why the pensive look on your face?” he asked in a tender voice.
Gently, I reached up to stroke the hair from his forehead. “I just keep thinking how things could have worked out. If you’d been closer, it could have been really bad.”
“Don’t, Dani,” he said sternly. “Don’t drive yourself crazy with how ugly it could have been. I tortured myself with the same thoughts for the first day after it happened. Then I realized how damn lucky we are. I’m focusing on the fact that we’re both still here, and relatively unscathed.”
Marcus could make light of his injuries, but I couldn’t. Otherwise, he was right. I really needed to be glad we were both still alive. He would heal, and be back to normal in a week or so. Except for maybe a small scar, he wouldn’t have any lasting effects from the explosion.
“I know you’re right, but I was really scared,” I confided.
Marcus wrapped an arm around my waist and pulled me against his body. I relaxed, letting my head drop onto his chest.
“You asked me once what I was afraid of,” Marcus said thoughtfully.
“I remember,” I muttered.
“What happened is exactly what I’m fucking terrified about,” he said in a graveled voice. “I’m scared as hell that something will happen to you. You don’t exactly live a noneventful life, and that worries me. I don’t get uptight about very many things, but losing you or seeing you hurt again is my greatest fear. I can’t see you brutalized and broken again, Dani. It almost killed me after we pulled you out of that rebel camp.”
My eyes teared up, and no matter how hard I tried to blink them back, they still fell. “But I survived, Marcus. Maybe I’ll never be quite the same as I was before it happened, but I realized even before the bombing that going back had somehow set me free.”
He was silent for a moment before he asked, “Do you mean that?”
“Yes. I’m not saying that I don’t need to keep meeting with my counselor, but I think everything fell into place, all I need to do now is sort it all out. I’m not anxious anymore. I doubt I’ll ever be as fearless as I used to be. But some of that lack of fear was based on the fact that I’d never really understood how quickly life could end. I’d never really experienced intense pain or fear. After I did, I was warier.”
“I never want to see you afraid, in pain, or anxious,” he grumbled.
“I don’t welcome it, either,” I admitted. “But I have to admit that no matter how much I’d like to go back and be the same person I was before the kidnapping, I can’t. I have to be okay with who I am now.”
“Are you?”
“Yeah. I think I am,” I mused.
“Did going back make you want to get your old life back?” he asked hesitantly.
I sighed. “No. I can never go back. I have to move forward. I’d like to stay a freelance investigative reporter wherever there are stories to be told. But I’m not sad I gave up my beat anymore. I’ve discovered that I don’t always have to be in every hot spot in the world. I can find my stories that need to be told in all parts of the world.”
“Thank fuck,” Marcus cursed. “I want you to be with me.”
I tried to ignore the way my heart was galloping inside my chest. I loved Marcus with every fiber of my being, but I wasn’t going to get my hopes up that our time wasn’t going to be limited. “You’ll go back to traveling eventually,” I said lightly, trying to pretend that separating wouldn’t tear my heart out.
“Not as much,” he informed me. “It seems my executives are doing my job quite well overseas, and if the government doesn’t have a problem with me training somebody to do some of my intel work, I think I have the perfect man to take over.”
“You’re going to stop being James Bond?” I asked incredulously.
“I’m not playing James Bond, and yes, I don’t think I’d mind turning some of that over to somebody younger. I’m tired of not eating chocolate,” he teased. “It’s not that I won’t travel, and I’ll still meet up with some of my contacts for intel, but I’m about ready to spend more time with my family and at my home in Rocky Springs. I regret that I’ve missed so much because I’m constantly away.”
I understood how alone a person could feel when they were traveling all the time. I’d felt separated from my siblings for a long time, and I missed them. “I missed my family, too,” I confessed. “I think I just kept myself too busy to notice.”
“You never commented on what I said,” he reminded me.
“What?”
“I want you to be with me, Dani. I want you to stay with me. Will you?” His voice was hopeful.
“I don’t know if I can,” I replied honestly, tears still pouring from my eyes and landing on the bare skin of his chest.
“Why?” he grunted.
I was quiet, afraid to tell him about everything I was thinking. I didn’t want him to feel pressured for more, but I had to be true to myself. “I love you, Marcus.”
He rolled onto his side and propped his head up, forcing me to do the same, so we were facing each other. “What did you say?”
“You heard me. I love you so much it hurts. I’m not sure I can be in a relationship with you and not want more than just sex.”
“You and I have never been all about sex,” he protested. “Jesus, Dani! Can’t you feel it? I think I’ve known that we were more than just sexually attracted for a long time, but I didn’t want to acknowledge it. Yeah. Okay. My primary instinct was to fuck you, and that’s never gone away. But I think we both know this has never completely been about sex.”
“I didn’t think so, but I wasn’t sure what you wanted. I didn’t know if you wanted love, but I can’t not say it anymore.”
“I fucking want it all,” he said in a warning voice. “I want everything you’re willing to give, and then I’ll want more after that.”
“You want something that involves a commitment?”
“Oh, hell, yeah. I want you and I to be as committed as two people can get,” he answered in a husky voice. “I want to hammer out some kind of compromise so we can travel together, and be home at the same damn time. I want you to marry me, and wear my ring on your finger so every bastard out there knows that you’re mine.”
“You want me to marry you?” I asked apprehensively.
Marcus Colter wasn’t a marrying type of guy…or I’d never seen him as one until now.
“I can’t believe you would ever doubt that I wanted us to be together. I love you, too, Danica. Say you’ll marry me so I don’t have to have a heart attack over whether or not you’re going to agree.”
My eyes met his in a clash of intensity that was flowing between the two of us.
Maybe I’d always had doubts about where we could go as a couple, but now that I knew he loved me, too, I felt like I could fly. “Yes,” I answered simply.
“Yes, you will?” Marcus probed. “Will you marry me? I don’t have a ring yet, but—”
I put a gentle hand in his hair and cut off his words as I leaned forward to kiss him. I didn’t give a damn about a ring, or the formalities. All I needed to know was that he loved me.
Everything else was nothing more than inconsequential details.
He wrapped an arm around my waist and then pushed me onto my back, his mouth demanding as he took control of the embrace.
It was the sweetest, hottest kiss I’d ever experienced.
He lingered, nipping at my bottom lip, and then soothing it with his tongue.
The kiss wasn’t carnal, and I wasn’t about to let it get out of control. It wasn’t going anywhere. Marcus was fresh out of the hospital. The last thing he needed right now was bedroom Olympics.
But we could savor the moment, and all of the emotions that went along with deciding that we loved each other so much that we wanted to spend the rest of our lives together.
When he finally lifted his head, I looked into his eyes and simply said, “Yes. I’ll marry you. I’ll stay with you. I’ll continue to let you steal my chocolate for as long as we both shall live,” I joked. “Now you need to get some rest.”
“I’d rather get you naked,” he answered.
“No sex. We both just admitted this isn’t all about sex. And you just got out of the hospital. No strenuous activities for you.”
His expression was disappointed. “I know it’s not all sexual, but that doesn’t mean I still don’t desperately want you naked.”
I wanted him, too, but I was content to wait. “Your health is my biggest priority.”
“Mine, too,” he said in a grim voice. “My balls are blue right now.”
I laughed out loud. I couldn’t believe he actually wanted to have sex when he was still recovering from his injuries. “Go to sleep,” I insisted, pushing him onto his back. “The last thing you need to think about right now is getting laid.”
“It’s the first thing I’m thinking about,” he answered glumly.
“You can go a few days without,” I told him as I settled beside him and put my head on his chest.
“Yeah, I can,” he admitted. “Hell, I used to go without for months, or even a year. But since the first time I touched you in Florida, I can’t fucking think about anything else.”
I smiled against the smooth skin of his chest. Honestly, I pretty much felt the same way, but I wasn’t going to admit it right now. “I love you, Marcus,” I murmured instead.
“Christ! I love you, too, baby,” he said in a husky voice as he wrapped his arms tightly around me. “You can check one more thing off your bucket list because you’re never going to find a guy who loves you as much as I do.”
I sighed, happy as I heard Marcus’s breathing even out, a definite sign that he was exhausted and needed to rest.
He wants to spend the rest of our lives together. He wants to marry me.
I decided it was finally time for me to close the window of my past and throw open the door to my future with Marcus.
A tear trickled down my cheek, but it wasn’t from sadness or fear. It was created from the intense joy that was in my heart, and the knowledge that Marcus loved me as much as I loved him.
All of the pain I’d gone through was over, and I was finally ready to move on.
Knowing that I was sprinting forward with a man I loved more than life itself made my new mindset that much sweeter than it ever had been before.
He was the important piece of the puzzle of my life that had always been missing, even though I’d never known it until he had been fit snugly into that empty space.
I fell into an exhausted sleep, held safely in his arms, knowing that no matter how irritated I made him, and vice versa, there would always be love.