illy kissed her cheek and then Bailey gave her a quick hug. “Take care dear, and we’ll be seeing each other again soon.”
Tehya remained still, watching them warily now. She’d seen these two play their little high jinks on the men of the unit, but this was the first time she had been a recipient. It wasn’t a pleasant sensation. Now, she almost regretted the plots she had helped them with.
Within minutes, the small crowd had dispersed, slipping silently from the house, and leaving her alone with Jordan and the hunger heating between her thighs again.
Tehya wasn’t used to having neighbors, so the fact that her house was in the middle of a large block had been her opportunity to learn how to live among people. It wasn’t a crowded block, though. The houses were spaced a good distance apart, ensuring privacy. Her house sat in front of a line of sheltering trees and the two neighbors on the left of her were related and currently vacationing together.
Walking into the living room while Jordan locked up, Tehya pulled the heavy drapes carefully over the French doors, ensuring there wasn’t so much as a crack between the material for prying eyes to see into the house.
“So, you have plans C, D, E, and F?” she asked as he turned to her once again.
“G, H, and I, as well,” he informed her coolly. “You can never have too many plans, Tehya.”
Arrogance settled around him like a royal cloak.
“So you say.” She shrugged, crossed her arms over her breasts, cocked her hip and stared back at him, her brow arched.
“Don’t give me that look,” he warned her. “You could have stuck around to contribute to planning your own protection, rather than running off as you did.”
“Well, it was leave or commit murder,” she told him archly “Has anyone told you that you’re damned arrogant Jordan? Or that you could make a saint conspire to murder?
“Only every day you were around,” he snorted. He dropped his arms and stared back at her with a look of pure, hard dominance. “Why did you run, Tehya?”
She hadn’t expected him to question her.
“I’ve all but lived with you for six years, and you can’t guess that one?” she asked with a hint of sarcasm. “Do you have any idea how hard this is for me to accept? Sorrel is supposed to be dead!” she suddenly cried out, surprised by the vehemence that tore from her. “He’s not supposed to haunt me like this.”
Jordan heard the pain in her voice and once again fought the tearing at him, that urge to just do something to make her pain go away. It killed him to see or hear her pain.
Hell, she’d always had the power to do this to him. She forced him to feel emotions he didn’t know how to handle. She made him feel as though he were betraying both of them by being unable to what she made him feel when it rose tight and hard inside him as it did now.
“Tehya, the people who helped when you were young weren’t qualified to go up against Sorrel, and neither were you.” He braced his hands on the counter and forced himself not to touch her. “You were a child, not an adult, and it was no fault of yours. There was nothing you could do to change any of it.”
She turned her head away from him, her tongue peeking out to touch the point of her upper lip. Somber grief tightened her expression as she gave a little shrug, as though the explanations, the reasons why, really didn’t matter.
Her fingers raked through the heavy hair at the top of her head, causing those long, riotous curls to bounce around her shoulders, down her back and tempt his fingers. “It will never be over,” she whispered, her voice harsh. “He swore he would never release me, and even in death he’s managing to keep a hold on me.”
“It doesn’t matter how far you run, Tehya, or how hard you fight it, you’re going to have to realize the only hold Sorrel has on you is the one you’re allowing. I won’t let the past destroy you. And neither will your friends. But we need you to see, to believe we can do this together.”
She rubbed the back of her neck. She was irritated, frightened, and he was damned if he knew how to help.
The need to do something though, anything, to wipe that fear from her eyes clawed at the heart he didn’t know he still possessed until he met Tehya.
Her lips tightened as her dark green eyes seemed to glow in the frame of her pale face. That little spattering of freckles stood out in stark relief on her nose, clearly visible despite the tan that he knew covered her entire body.
“When Mother first escaped, she hid with me in a convent with Sister Mary, a friend she had known since she was young. She stayed only for a while, then left to make certain Father’s men hadn’t followed her. She called Sister Mary late one night, about three years later. Sister Mary pulled me from my bed and we ran. As we ran through the forest, I remember hearing gunshots. His men raped several of the sisters. The Reverend Mother had been tortured before they killed her. Horribly.”
He knew that. He had the file on the horrendous murders of the sisters at the Holy Blessings Convent.
“Sister Mary and I ran for several years,” she continued. “I saw Mother only rarely. Then one night we met with an ex-marine. Matthew Thomas.” She rubbed at her arms as though suddenly cold.
“Matthew slipped me into America, and I thought I would be safe with him. I thought he could defeat any monster, he was so strong. He and Mother had evidently had a relationship. I think they may have even loved each other.” She swallowed tightly her gaze stark with painful memories. “Several months later, Sister Mary’s body was found. She had died just after handing me over to Matthew. He and I both knew she would have told Sorrel who I was with, and where I was. She was so fragile, Jordan. So tiny.”
She stared back at him with those eyes so haunted it broke his heart. “When Matthew sent me to his friend Boyd in the Washington mountains, he told me he was going to take care of the problem once and for all. Then he would bring Mother to me, and we would be safe.” The pain in her face had his fingers aching to clench into fists. “Two months later Boyd pulled me out of bed in the middle of the night and we were on the run.” The first tear eased down her cheek. “Matthew’s body had been found. He had been skinned alive.”
Jordan couldn’t stand still another moment longer.
“Goddammit, I have the fucking files,” he bit out furiously as he took her in his arms and held her to him with an overwhelming need to take those painful memories out of her head. “I have the files, Tehya.”