Mine to Keep

“Not…me…” The words wheezed from Ben.

Trace lifted his arm.

Ben sucked in a deep gulp of air.

Trace’s shoulders tensed. “I let you up here because of the past. Reese told me you’d come by before. That you had a message for me. Deliver it, now.”

A rough bark of laughter escaped Ben as the redness slowly faded from his cheeks. “The past…that’s what we have to worry about. It’s not dead. It’s coming back, and it’s going to burn us all.”

The man wasn’t making any sense.

But Reese’s body had turned to stone beside her. So maybe the cryptic words made sense to him.

Skye could be the only one in the dark.

“Do you believe in ghosts?” Ben asked as he blinked up at Trace.

“No.” Trace’s response was instant. “The dead are in the ground. They can’t hurt us anymore.”

“Don’t be too sure.” Ben’s lips twisted. “You took from him, and now he knows what to take from you. He’s coming after us all, and he won’t stop, not until he’s destroyed us…the same way we tried to destroy him.”

“Ben…” Now Trace’s voice had roughened. Deepened. “Have you been taking your meds?”

At that question, Ben’s eyes flashed angrily. “I don’t need them! I don’t need the fuckin’ things!” He shouldered past Trace and staggered across the room. “I know what’s happening. He’s here. Watching. I know!”

Skye bit her bottom lip to hold back the instinctive cry that wanted to break free. The way this Ben was acting…it’s so familiar.

“Have you been hearing the voices again?” Trace asked.

Tears stung Skye’s eyes. This was too much like her own past.

“Sometimes,” Ben said, his voice hoarse, as he turned back to stare at Trace. “But they’re just trying to warn me. Death is coming for us, Weston! We have to be ready.” He ran a hand through his hair. “Kill or be killed. Just like in the old days.”

Trace hadn’t told her about his “old days” in the military. He hadn’t talked about the military at all.

“You need to take your medication,” Trace said.

Her heart was aching.

Trace paced steadily toward Ben.

Ben shook his head. “It makes me…weak. Dulls my senses. I have to be ready.” He jabbed a finger toward Trace. “You have to be ready. He’s gonna make you suffer more. You’re the one who killed her. I-I wasn’t.”

Her?

Trace put his hands on Ben’s shoulders. “You’re confused again. The past is over. You need to let it go.”

Ben sucked in a sharp breath. Then he jerked away from Trace. His accusing finger pointed right at Skye. “She’ll die.”

This was not the homecoming that Skye had anticipated.

“No, she won’t.” Trace was certain. “Because I will destroy anyone who ever tries to hurt her.”

Goosebumps rose onto Skye’s arms.

“And that includes you,” Trace told the man. “Don’t ever come near her again, do you understand?”

Ben blinked. “I-I was warning you.” Confusion seemed to thicken his words. “Paying my debt.”

“Consider it paid.” Trace’s gaze flickered toward Reese. “Now Reese will escort you out. He can take you back home—”

“I don’t have a home. Don’t got nothing.” Again, a lost tone had entered Ben’s voice. “Maybe…you ever think you should’ve just let me die? Instead of dragging me out—”

“Reese will make sure you get set up at a hotel tonight. We’ll contact the VA.” Trace’s expression was grim. “They’ll get your meds going again.”

Ben’s mouth tightened. “Then I’ll be a dead man.” He turned on his heel. Hurried for the door.

Reese was right behind him.

But, before Ben left, he cast one last glance toward Skye. “You still look the same,” he told her. “Just like the picture Weston kept. An angel in hell…”

“I-I don’t understand,” Skye began.

“I hope you don’t die,” Ben said. “He’s coming and you need to be ready.”

“Out.” Trace snarled, his patience seemingly gone.

And…just like that…the mysterious Ben was gone. Reese followed him out, and Trace secured the door behind them.

Skye was left alone with Trace.

Only…

Trace was different.

He stalked toward her, his steps sure, but his eyes shone with an emotion that she couldn’t decipher.

“Wh-what was that about?” She hated the stutter in her voice as much as she hated the nervousness twisting her guts in knots.

“Ben Sharpe had a…hard time during his enlistment. The last mission went wrong, and he came back—”

“Broken?” Skye finished because that was how the man had looked.

And it’s the way my mother had appeared. So many times. There’d been no mistaking the look in Ben’s eyes.

“He wasn’t the same,” Trace said instead. Then he rolled his shoulders, as if trying to push the past away. “Reese will see to it that he’s taken care of. Don’t worry.”

“But Ben said someone was watching him.” And, not too long ago, she’d gone to Trace and told him the same thing. Someone is watching me. She’d been afraid that Trace wouldn’t believe her. The cops sure hadn’t bought her story.

But Trace had.

He’d protected her. Saved her life.

“When he’s off his meds, Ben has hallucinations. He talks to people who aren’t there. He sees people who aren’t there.”

Just like her mother. Skye swallowed. “But are you sure—”

He kissed her. His lips—so warm and sensual—pressed to hers. “Don’t worry about him,” he whispered against her lips. “You don’t have anything to fear from Ben.”

It wasn’t Ben that she was afraid of. It was his warning that wouldn’t stop playing through her mind.

He’d said death was coming. “Are you safe?” Skye asked Trace, lifting her lashes to look into his bright gaze.

“Always,” he told her, and she wanted to believe him.

After all, Trace wouldn’t lie to her…

Would he?

His hands closed around her shoulders. He seemed so warm and solid, so incredibly strong before her. “I don’t want that part of my life ever touching you.”

She shook her head. “That’s not going to work. We can’t be that way.”

Trace stilled.

“No secrets,” she heard herself say. “That’s the way it needs to be. You know everything about me…” Every fear she had.

Every desire.

He let her go. “There are some things that you’re better off not knowing.”

“Trace…”

He lifted his hand. “Let it go, baby. Just…let it go. The past is buried, and all I care about is my future with you.”

“But that man—”

“He’s crazy!” Trace exploded.

She flinched. Not because of the anger in his voice, but because his words hit far too close to home. “And what if I am, one day? What if—”

She didn’t get to say more. Because Trace had her in his arms, holding her so tightly that she knew she might bruise, but Skye didn’t care.

“You aren’t. You won’t ever be.”

So easy for him to say.

But Trace hadn’t lived in a home with a mother who lost her hold on reality a little more each day. A woman who talked with people who weren’t there. A woman who hurt her daughter and never remembered doing it.

The doctors said her mother had been psychotic. Sometimes, too many times, Skye wondered if there was a ticking time bomb within herself.

That’s why I won’t go see the shrinks. I don’t want to know…

“You survived that sick bastard’s kidnapping. You’re the strongest woman I’ve ever met.” He’d lifted her up against him and buried his face in the curve of her neck. “I know crazy, Skye, and it’s not you.”

She could barely breathe in his grasp. Skye pushed against him, and Trace let her toes touch the floor once more. “I came to you,” she said, searching his eyes, “with the same story that Ben just told. Someone was watching me. You believed me.” What if he hadn’t? “Are you so certain that man wasn’t telling the truth?”

“Ben…he has a problem with reality. For the last few years, he’s been convinced that someone was after him.” His lips thinned. “He thought his past was chasing him.”

“What if it is?” He’d seemed so desperate.

Her mother had been desperate that way, once.

Her desperation had led her to take her own life—and to take the life of Skye’s father in the process.

“I’ll have another talk with him, okay?” Trace said. “If he’s being hunted by anything other than his own demons, I’ll find out.”

Relief had her shoulders slumping.

“Your heart’s too soft,” he growled, and Trace sounded angry. Odd, he didn’t usually get angry with her.

Everyone else? Oh, yes, but not her.

“You can’t be so trusting, Skye.” He let her go and stalked across the room. The marble floor gleamed beneath his feet. He stopped at the bar. A bar that took up half the left wall. Trace grabbed the decanter of whiskey and poured a sloshing glassful. “That trust can get you into trouble.”

Even though he wasn’t looking at her, Skye’s chin hitched up. “Trouble? You mean the kind where I trust the wrong man and nearly get killed because of it?”

He whirled around. “Skye—”

“Been there, done that,” she snapped at him. Her hands fisted. “I’ve got to say, this is one hell of a moving-in party.”

She spun on her heel and marched down the hallway. Her heartbeat sounded like drums in her ears and—

“I don’t…want it touching you.”

Skye paused a few steps away from their bedroom. Then, crap, she found herself storming back toward him. “What are you talking about?”

He drained the glass. Slammed it back on the bar. “I’ve done things that weren’t good, Skye. Things that—if you knew about them—they’d give you even more nightmares.”

He headed toward her with slow, determined steps. A predator, stalking his prey.

I’m the prey.

“I don’t want you to know about the things I did while we were apart. I want us to go forward. Fuck the past.” He stopped just a foot away and gazed down at her. She couldn’t read the expression in his eyes. “What we have is good. I’d damn well die for you, and you know that.”

She did. She also knew…

He’d kill for me.

The world saw Trace Weston as a suave businessman. A charmer who’d exploded onto the security scene. He’d amassed billions in record time.

But no one knew about his past.

Once, Skye had thought that she knew everything about him.

Now she was realizing that Trace had secrets he didn’t intend to share with her.

“Nothing can come between us now,” he told her.

Why did she feel like he was making a vow?

Trace smiled. The smile that had always made her breath come a little faster.

He advanced toward her. “You were right when you said this wasn’t the way to celebrate your moving in…”

“Trace.”

But he’d scooped her into his arms. He carried her to the bedroom. The room was dark. The sun was setting, and the light barely spilled through the curtains and onto his massive bed.

But…something was shining on his bed.

Skye glanced over, frowning, even as her arms tightened around Trace’s neck. “What is that?”

“It’s your welcome home present.” He kissed her and slowly lowered Skye to her feet.

Then his hands went to the back of her dress. A flick of his fingers unhooked the button near her nape, and the dress slid to the floor with a soft slither of sound.

She was left in her high heels, her black panties and her matching bra.

Trace was fully dressed.

“Don’t move,” he told her.

Then he reached around her, and, yes, the sparkle on the bed seemed even brighter now.

Diamonds. A necklace full of glittering diamonds.

He put the diamonds around her neck. They were cold, and she let out a little gasp.

A fortune. That’s what he just put around my neck.

She knew exactly how much those diamonds had cost him. In another life, she’d been a prima ballerina in New York. Before her car accident and her stalker, before the nightmares—

“Skye.” Her name was a sharp demand.

Her gaze flew to his face.

“Stay with me,” he ordered.

He always knew what she was thinking.

But do I know him?

The diamonds chilled her skin.

He lifted her hair, brushing it back over her shoulder. “You’re so beautiful.”

And he was the only man she’d ever loved.

At fifteen, he’d burst into her life, saving her from an attack. He’d been her hero then.

Her world.

But he’d left her. Gone away, and for ten years, they hadn’t seen one another.

What happened to him during those years?

He lowered his head and he kissed her neck. Her breath rushed out because that spot was so sensitive, and Trace knew that.