Forbidden Stranger Read online

  Ewan looked stunned. Nina shook her head, embarrassed at where that had come from. It had not been a voice only in her head, this time. She wasn’t sure what to say or do.

  “I don’t know if I do, anymore,” she said in a lower voice. She gestured at the pocket of his robe, where he’d put the comm. “Why would you need to track me, without my knowledge or my consent?”

  He flinched, and she didn’t feel bad about that. She didn’t feel vindicated, either. She only felt weary and confused and sad.

  “What aren’t you telling me, Ewan?”

  “I want to be sure you don’t have another accident,” he said finally.

  Nina didn’t respond immediately. She crossed her arms over her chest to study him. “Tracking where I go isn’t going to stop me from having an accident. That’s why they’re called accidents, Ewan, because they happen by accident.”

  “If you do have another . . . accident . . .” he whispered fiercely, “I want to be able to get to you in time. That’s all. I’m sorry, I should have told you. But I didn’t think—”

  “You didn’t think I would ever find out.”

  Ewan nodded.

  Nina frowned and looked at her wrist. Knowledge filled her the way water will fill a bucket of rocks, trickling and slow but inexorable. “It’s connected to my ID chip?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you turn it off?”

  “Yes, but I don’t want to.”

  Her chin lifted, and she stared him down. “I’m not asking if you want to. I’m asking you if you can turn off that tracker. In fact, I’m telling you to.”

  A good minute or so passed before Ewan, with a scowl, pulled his comm from his pocket. He swiped the screen and typed a few things, then held it up to show her that the tracking was no longer in operation. After that, he deleted the app in front of her. He put the comm back in his pocket.

  “You should have told me.”

  Ewan didn’t protest or agree. He murmured a good night and left the kitchen ahead of her. Nina waited a minute or two, feeling awkward about following him too closely. In the hallway she paused, looking up and expecting to see darkness, but Ewan’s silhouette was outlined at the top of the stairs. With her foot on the bottom step and a hand on the railing, Nina blinked.

  It wasn’t Ewan. It was shadows and more memories, a jumbled rush of them. Nothing concrete or solid, more like a rushing waterfall of images, smells, and emotions. None of it made sense, but she opened herself up to it, letting the half-memories batter her until she had to gasp aloud. Then it all passed, fast as that, and she was left feeling as though she’d run a few miles through sticky mud.

  I promise you, Nina, the last thing in the world you’d be able to do is break my heart.

  That was it, though. Nothing more. And although she tried to go back to sleep, by the time the sun began its first gray-pink shining into her window, all she’d done was stare up at the ceiling with her eyes wide, waiting for more memories that didn’t come.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The weather-tempering system Ewan had paid a fortune to set up around the island didn’t stop storms, and this one had started shortly after the airtranspo left after dropping off the next month’s supplies. Lightning forked the sky in the distance, far enough away that the thunder rumbling after it was still covered up by the sound of the waves surrounding them. A tension crackled in the air, though, and while he wanted to blame it on the electricity in the sky, he knew it was because of what had happened between him and Nina.

  He couldn’t blame her for being angry at him. He was mad at himself for being so careless as to let her see the comm and the tracker. He hadn’t, of course, really deleted the app, and he was angry, too, about still lying to her about it. Of course she’d felt violated when she found out; he could not, however, tell her the truth, nor could he have the tracker disabled, in case something went wrong, and all of this had become a clusterfuck he could not seem to reconcile.

  It had made the past few days terrible and awkward. He’d told Aggie about what had happened and assumed she would let Jerome know, too. Ewan had half-expected a lecture from the older woman and was half-disappointed when she didn’t give him one. Like she couldn’t even manage to find the strength to scold him because he’d messed up so badly, he thought with a sour twist of his mouth.

  Once again he’d been a prime sphincter, and Nina would have to forgive him for his stupidity. Yet how could he blame himself for it this time, when everything he’d done was solely to keep her safe? To protect her the way she’d spent so much time protecting him? Sometimes, a lie wasn’t a betrayal, it was a lifesaver.

  Aggie had not called him down to dinner, which was proof of her disapproval. In truth, he hadn’t been very hungry, and he’d been avoiding Nina anyway. In the kitchen he made himself a quick sandwich and ate it without much enjoyment. What he really wanted was a drink, something stronger than wine.

  Nina was in the den. She glanced up when he hovered in the doorway, but said nothing. Seated in the battered recliner, she had her tablet in her hands. She’d been reading. He wanted to come in, pour them both a glass of whiskey, to sip it with her while they laughed about something. Anything. She acknowledged him with a glance and a small nod, but there was no invitation in it.

  Ewan headed upstairs for his bathroom. A cold shower was definitely in order. Hell, if the skies hadn’t been tossing down lightning bolts like a strobe light, he’d have simply gone outside and let the rain soak him. Instead, he stripped down quickly and stepped into the shower to let the icy needles stab at him over and over.

  It didn’t help. His cock ached and his balls hung heavy with the arousal that had gone without release for so many months. He turned his back to the spray and leaned with one arm against the wall. Eyes closed, he braced himself against the sting.

  The frigid water would not take away the ache or his desire. It could not chase away the memories of how she had felt against him and the taste of her mouth. He wanted to take his swelling erection into his fist and stroke away this ache, but he knew it wouldn’t do much to help. He couldn’t stop thinking about kissing her, touching her, sliding his thickness inside her.

  The woman downstairs was as beautiful to him as she had ever been. He saw glints of their past when she laughed with him, or when she attacked a good meal with enthusiastic gratitude. Watching her when she was working her body in the garden or running along the beach, in those moments of showing her physical prowess and recovery, Ewan’s love for her had become an agony he’d believed could not get any worse . . . until now, when she was avoiding him.

  And now, despite the arctic water raining down on him and how awful he felt about what had happened, his defiant cock surged to an expectant, eager life. He gripped it with a groan, stroking lightly. He stopped, fingers tightening behind the head, squeezing back the pleasure. It had been so long since his last orgasm that these few strokes had already urged a few drops of slickness from the slit.

  A few more strokes would finish him off. Release some of the pressure. Shaking from desire and the icy water, Ewan fucked into his fist until he came.

  Then, turning so he could rinse his hands and chest clean, he tipped his face into the shower and tried to keep his heart from giving up.

  * * *

  Nina didn’t think she’d ever get used to sleeping so poorly. She’d tossed and turned for what had felt like forever, then woken several times with her heart beating fast and once, a scream she’d managed to bite back before letting it out. She wasn’t sure she was glad she couldn’t remember the nightmares. It might have made them easier to get over if she could force herself to put them aside.

  On the other hand, she was very glad she hadn’t had more sexy dreams, not about her faceless stranger and not about Ewan, either.

  This morning she’d finally stopped trying to convince herself she was going to get back to sleep after she woke for the third or fourth time to the same night sky. She’d done some stretching and another