Read Online Delta: Retribution by Cristin Harber - Free Book Online Page B

excuse to crawl all over his body again.
    “I’m waiting.”
    “Tell you anything…” She sighed. “I never had a one-night stand before you.”
    “You’ve had some after me?”
    “God, no!” She laughed, feeling somewhat better. “You’re awful.”
    “So, why did you? And the name thing? I don’t get it. I don’t get anything about you. I’ve never met anyone… so complicated.”
    “Complicated?” She groaned into the phone and would’ve hit her head on the steering wheel, if it hadn’t meant she’d run off the road and die in a fiery crash.
    “Alright, complicated is wrong. How about… complex?”
    “Um—”
    “Okay, wrong again. Maybe that doesn’t sound any better. Shit. I want to know about you. You don’t make sense, and I’m dying to find out why.”
    “Okay.” She exited the highway. “I’d been told a million times that I’d get myself into trouble. That the security clearances didn’t do crap to protect me, and that they were using me for cheap, smart labor. My job scares me, school’s overwhelming me because I can’t catch up, and my dad makes me… uneasy.”
    “Clarify uneasy , Cinderella.” His voice growled low.
    She pushed her head back into the headrest as she moved into a turning lane for her neighborhood. “He’s a dick. His name is Brian. He hates that I was smart. My mom died in a car crash, and he blamed me. I don’t know why. But somewhere along the line he started telling me everything I did was wrong, and somewhere along the line, I started believing him.”
    “Brian sounds like a fuck.”
    She smiled. “He is.”
    “You know that whatever he says is bullshit, right? Weak people need others to take down so they don’t feel so low and lonely at the bottom of their shit pile.”
    “I’m a broken person to begin with. Not as strong as I want to be.”
    “Nothing I’ve seen about you is broken. I promise you, Mar.”
    She laughed sadly. “I don’t think you’ve seen the real me.”
    “Wrong. I think I’m the only person who has seen the real you.”
    God, he was right. It hurt to admit it. And he wasn’t going to be around. He had promised her that. But each passing second, she was more sucked into feelings she couldn’t run from. Marlena pulled into her driveway. “Trace?”
    “Yeah, babe?”
    Even the casualness in his voice hurt her. “We can’t do this. I can’t show up unannounced, and you can’t drive me to scream your name.” Tears slipped down her cheeks. Fake confidence, self-preservation? Who knew what this was? But it was needed. “I can’t do it, and I’m sorry.”
    “What?” Anger poured through the phone.
    “I’m falling for you. Like seriously can’t breathe for wanting you to kiss me. Hold me.” She couldn’t believe she’d said that out loud. “And neither of us needs that burden. I’m sorry, Trace.”
    She hung up and let the tears pour.
    ***
    What the fuck ? Was there anything more irritating than Marlena McCloud? She was falling for him? No way. First, how could anyone fall for a man who refused to live a normal life? Second, what the fuck did she just do? Break off their little… partnership, after running off on him again ?
    The walls closed in on him just as they did before she arrived. Delta thought he was one round of bad news away from cracking up, and maybe they were right. He’d been booted from his SEAL team. The way his head spun at that moment, Delta would be next, and then he’d have no way or resources to find Michael’s tag.
    No. Screw that . Trace wanted blood. He needed it. That was what would get him over Michael, over the ache of losing his SEAL team and over the discomfort that put a pang in his chest, knowing that Marlena wouldn’t be around while he was home.
    No, not home. Grounded . Because as soon as he had the green light, he’d be gone, and he wasn’t looking back. No way. Sugar-scented sheets couldn’t pull him back.
    Except they could. Damn it . He scrubbed his face. Dog