Private Maneuvers (Wingmen Warriors 4)

Shock sucker punched him. Max sat up and turned her to face him. "You're kicking me out of your bed."

"I'm telling you that you can leave."

"Maybe I don't want to leave."

"Geez, Max." Her fists punched the mattress, pulling the sheet too damned taut against her breasts. "I'm being straight with you. Don't play mind games with me."

"I'm not the one playing here, Darcy. You're the one who's running scared."

She jabbed a finger in his face. "Don't you ever, ever call me a coward."

"Then why the hell are you so damned scared to have a conversation with me?''

He stared into her unblinking eyes and couldn't stop the replay of those same eyes sliding closed with pleasure as water streaked down her face. Why was he pushing this? He should just flip her on her back and slide into her until they both couldn't think, much less talk.

Darcy looked away. She rolled from the bed and to her feet, taking the sheet with her. She scooped her boots off the floor and dropped them into the closet.

She knelt to tug his T-shirt from under the bed. "We are talking."

No they weren't. He was freaking losing his mind while she played Molly Maid. "We're not talking. You're asking questions. Poking and prodding at my past. You talk and talk but you never share one damned piece of yourself."

Darcy shot to her feet and nailed him with angry eyes. "I told you about my father, and look what you did with that information. You used it against me."

"Okay. I deserve that." He pitched aside the light-weight blanket and sat on the edge of the bed. "But I think I also deserve a little slack because keeping you alive seemed more important at the time."

Her stormy face calmed, his T-shirt dangling from her hands. "What about later? After I learned the facts and wasn't operating in the dark. You could have given me the choice whether to stay or go. Except you didn't trust that I would make the right decision. You didn't trust that I can protect myself."

He grabbed the trailing hem of his T-shirt in her grip and dragged her forward until she stood between his knees. She'd demanded he open up to her and she could damn well reciprocate now that she'd unlocked the floodgates. He wasn't hanging out on top of this wave alone. "Why is being able to protect yourself so important? You still haven't told me."

"You know why." Her gaze never faltered, but her skin chilled against the embrace of his thighs. "You've read my file."

"That's not the same as you telling me." His hand grazed up to palm her neck. His thumb stroked her soft cheek. "You'll let me into your body, but you won't let me into your head."

She jerked as if slapped. Darcy hitched the sheet higher as if to shield herself.

Flinging his T-shirt in his lap, she backed away. "You want my guts spilled all over the floor? Fine. I was kidnapped when I was thirteen years old. An extremist terrorist group, who wanted the military base gone from the island, decided to make their statement in a big way."

Her words gathered force, rolling out of her in the hurricane he'd unleashed. "So they snatched me from a luau, right under all those damned flyers' noses.

They took me. They locked me up in an old World War II bunker and kept me there for a week."

The pain in her voice in spite of her composed face jolted through him with as much power as her words. Hearing, seeing what she'd been through shredded his insides. He'd witnessed scenarios like hers before firsthand while pulling someone out of a hell like the one she described. But this was Darcy.

Damn it, he righted these kinds of wrongs for a living. A totally illogical part of him wanted to have been there for her then. Resolved to be there for her now.

Boundaries be damned. He yanked her back into his arms and dropped her into his lap, her spine as straight and rigid as her unbroken will.

But she didn't pull away.

He stroked his hands up and down her back and let her talk. He'd asked for this, after all, and he would see it through for her.

She clutched that shield of a sheet in a white-knuckled fist. "If I made any noise, they threw bugs and rats in there to keep me company."

Max forced the red haze of fury away as he thought of what hell she must have endured the past weeks with all those "accidents."

He wanted to find the person responsible and kill him. Twice. Except her records indicated they were already dead, taken out during the raid to rescue her. "I'm so sorry, Darcy."

She laughed, a wobbly half effort that brought his arms tighter around her. "So, yeah, I have intimacy issues. I like my personal space. Big flipping deal. It doesn't stop me from getting up in the morning and doing my job. It doesn't stop me from living my life. And if I'm not living it the way you want me to, then tough. Just who do you think you are making me spill my guts like that?''