Way of the Shadows (Shadow Agents #8)(23)
Author: Cynthia Eden

She didn’t know what to say then.

“I intended to live my life without any commitments. The missions were my life, and women… Sex was a necessity I took care of when I needed it.”

Noelle stiffened. Her hold on the cover tightened. Okay, he’d better not have just said she was some kind of itch he’d taken care of. The man needed to think again. He wasn’t—

He faced her. “You’re different, and I can’t afford the weakness that you make me feel.”

That was both good and insulting. “I’m not a weakness to you.”

“Yes,” he said softly. “You are. More than you know.” He rolled back his shoulders. “I should’ve known once wouldn’t be enough with you.”

She distinctly remembered at least two times. During the third, she’d—

“I should have kept my hands off you, but I couldn’t.”

Noelle cleared her throat. “I didn’t want them off. I wanted you.”

He shook his head. “No, you just wanted to stop being afraid, and I was close and convenient.”

Oh, the hell no, he hadn’t just said that. Noelle jumped to her feet. The cover almost fell, so she scrambled to keep it over her. Then she stalked toward Thomas, and she jabbed him in the chest with her index finger. “Listen up, soldier,” Noelle snapped at him.

His brows lifted.

“You are many things, but trust me, convenient isn’t one of them.” Not by a long shot. “You’re infuriating, you’re secretive and you’re deadly. Convenient doesn’t even make your top-ten list.”

“Then why were you with me? Why did you give yourself to me?” The words held a hard demand.

She licked her lips and swore she could still taste him. “Because I needed you right then…” She thought of his words. “More than I needed anyone or anything.” Even the secrets of her past. Secrets her gut told her he knew.

He didn’t speak. Maybe he was back to being Strong and Silent. That was okay. Noelle found she had plenty to say. “What happened between us tonight wasn’t about the past. It was only about the present. About me needing you. About you needing me. I’m not looking for forever.” Was that why he was giving her the spiel about sex being a necessity? She straightened her shoulders and vowed not to crumble. “I just needed you, because when you look at me—” and she’d seen this in his gaze “—you see me. Flaws. Strengths. You seem to see all of me, and you want what you see.”

He didn’t realize how important that was to her. She felt broken on the inside, but he looked at her with such hunger, such desire.

Maybe it was time for them to be completely honest. They were alone in the cabin. Separated from the rest of the world by the storm. “I know you were there,” she whispered.

Because Noelle was watching him so closely, she saw the slight hardening of his mouth.

“It’s not me being confused. I hear your voice, and I know you were there when I was taken.” There had been so many law enforcement personnel swarming the little cabin when she was rescued. Had he been a deputy back then? A face that she couldn’t remember, but a voice that had stayed with her? “What I don’t understand is…why…after everything, you just won’t admit the truth to me. It’s my life. I should have the highest possible clearance when it comes to me.”

His hand rose. The back of his fingers brushed over her cheek. He swallowed and whispered, “I was there.”

It took an instant for those words to sink in. “When the rescuers came for me?”

His eyes closed. “I saw you in my mind for years after that night. I hated to leave you, but I didn’t have a choice. The mission I was on meant that I couldn’t be compromised. Other lives were at stake.”

Her heart should have been racing. Instead, its beat was slow. Everything felt slow for her right then. “You didn’t answer my question.”

His eyes opened.

“Were you there when the rescuers came?” She remembered a deputy, a guy with a wide-brimmed hat who’d pulled her from the chair and guided her from the cabin. After she’d gotten outside, the deputy had vanished. But he’d been…good to her. He’d pulled her from the darkness and—

Thomas shook his head.

Her heart stopped then. “Thomas?”

“I was told never to talk about that night.”

She couldn’t have this conversation covered only in a blanket. And she couldn’t leave the room right then, not if her life depended on it. “Who told you?”

“Mercer.”

The puppet master. The man always pulling the strings. The man who’d been in and out of Noelle’s life for years. “Why?”

“Because EOD agents can’t be compromised, you know that.”

She had to figure this out before she shattered. “You’re thirty-seven.”

His head inclined toward her.

“Fifteen years ago…you would have only been twenty-two.” The background file Mercer had given to her had indicated Thomas hadn’t joined the EOD until he was twenty-seven, after he’d spent years working operations as an Army Ranger.

“I was twenty-two, and I’d been killing for the government for years by then.”

“You weren’t EOD.” He couldn’t have been.

Thomas simply stared back at her.

“Tell me!”

“I’ve been with the EOD since I was twenty-one years old.” His lips twisted. “I told you, I was very, very good at my job.”

A wave of dizziness had her stepping back from him. “Mercer knows what happened to me, too, doesn’t he?” He’s known, and for years, he’s said nothing.

Thomas nodded.

“Why? It’s my life!” Anger was cracking through her.

“But other lives were on the line. We thought… We thought your abduction was an isolated incident.” He tried to reach out for her, but she flinched back. “I didn’t know there were other girls involved, not until we found those pictures.”

Had Mercer known? Was that why he’d been so adamant she investigate the senator? “Tell me everything.”

“Clearance—”

“Don’t!” How dare he throw that up to her? “You just made love to me. There were no barriers between us. It was you and it was me.” She heaved out a breath. Her heart wasn’t beating slowly anymore. It was thundering in her chest. “I’ve had a void in my mind for years. A void that you could fill. All you had to do was speak. Just…tell me.” She was about to rip that cover in two with her grip. “Do it now, Thomas. Tell me. I’m not crazy. I remember your voice, I remember—”