t’s last game, she thought, but not hers. “I wasn’t playing. I was just watching. Observing the details.” She sighed once, rubbed her hands over her face. “If you don’t watch, if you don’t see, you don’t know. But it weirded on me, the way dreams do.”
“How?”
“The dead, the dying, their faces. All those people I don’t know until they’re dead.”
In those eyes, so blue in the starlight, came understanding. “Your victims.”
“Yeah.” The pang in her heart was pity, weighted down by resignation. “I can’t help them, can’t save them. And their killers are out there, free, killing more. It’s a slaughter.” And the simmer beneath it was an anger that bubbled up in her voice. “We put them away, but it doesn’t stop it. We know that. We all know that. There’s always more. He was there. You have to figure he’d be there.”
“Your father.”
“But he’s just one of the many now.”
Still she trembled, just a little, so he rubbed her arms to warm them.
“I’m not engaged. I’m not playing. I’m not one of them. Not one of the dead or dying, not one of the killers. Just an observer.”
“It’s how you stop them,” he said quietly. “It’s how you save those you can.”
And some of the weight eased. “I guess it is. I watched Bart fight. I know what’s going to happen, but I have to watch because I might have missed a detail. I might see something new. But it happens just the way I see it happen. Then the Black Knight, his killer, turns to me. Looks at me. It’s just a dream, but I go for my weapon because he’s coming for me. I can feel the ground shake and feel the wind. But all I have against that fucking sword is the little knife I used all those years ago, in that horrible room in Dallas.”
She looked down at her hand, empty now. “That’s all I have, and it won’t be enough, not this time. The sword comes down, and I feel that, too. Just for a second before I wake up.”
She let out a breath. “Sometimes they crowd me.”
“Yes. I know.”
“Killers and victims. They get in your head, and they never really leave.” She cupped his face now. “They’ll get in yours, because you can’t just step aside, just watch me do the job. You can’t just observe any more than I can. I’m in the game, always one of the players. Now, you are, too.”
“Do you think I regret that?”
“One day you might. I wouldn’t blame you.”
“I knew you for a cop the minute I laid eyes on you. And I knew without understanding how or why, that you would change things. I’ll never regret that moment, or any that followed.” He gave her shoulders a little shake—as comforting as a kiss. “You have to understand you’re not alone on the battlefield. And since that moment, that first moment? Neither am I.”
“I used to think I was better off alone, that I needed to be. And maybe I did. But not anymore.”
She touched her lips to his cheek, then the other. “And never again.”
Then laid her lips warm and soft on his.
What they brought to each other closed all the rest outside. A touch, a taste, a promise renewed.
He enclosed her, brought her in, brought her close. He knew, she thought, simply knew she needed to be held, to have his arms around her. His hands warming her skin were gentle, so gentle after the blood and brutality of the dream. His lips, those slow, tender kisses offered her peace and solace, and love.
Passion would come, she knew. It was a low fire always kindled between them. But for now he gave her what she reached for, could always reach for with him. He gave her comfort.
Did she know, could she know what it meant to him when she turned to him, when she opened herself to him like this? In absolute trust.
Her strength, her valor remained a constant wonder to him, as did her unrelenting determination to defend those who could no longer defend themselves. These moments, when she allowed her vulnerabilities, her doubts, her fears to tremble to the surface compelled him to take care. In these moments he could show her it wasn’t just the warrior he loved, he treasured, but the woman, the whole of her. The dark and the light.
Softly, softly, as if tending wounds, he stroked her skin, unknotted muscles tight from the day and the dream. And when she sighed, he laid his lips on her heart.
It beat for him.
In the blue wash of moonlight, she moved for him, rising up, another sigh, giving over. Giving.
Her fingers slid through his hair, glided down his back and up again. An easy rhythm even when her breath quickened and her sigh deepened to moan.