Free The McClane Apocalypse: Book Two by Kate Morris Page A

changed.
    “Hold on, here we go,” he says abruptly and pulls lightly on the reins so as to not send Hannah off the back.
    “And what about the torture you mentioned?” she asks as they come down a short incline toward the back pasture of the farm where the cattle graze peacefully. Does she forget nothing?
    “Hannah,” Kelly warns.
    “I want to know you, Kelly. All of you,” she argues so convincingly. When he glances up at her, the sun streaking through her lovely locks, he’s awestruck by her charm and innocence and unknowing sensuality.
    “God, why do you do this? You don’t need to hear about shit like that,” he grumbles at her.
    “Don’t speak the Lord’s name in anger, Kelly. And don’t swear or Grams might hear you,” she teases and berates him at the same time. She is a dog with a bone and not about to let up on him. “Now, tell me. I don’t just want to know the pretty.”
    “With you that’s all there is- the pretty. With someone like me, it’s all ugly,” he self-criticizes.
    “That’s not true. You are good and kind and helpful. And besides, I’m not just the pretty, Kelly. I’m... well, I can be...,” she stops, at a loss for words and frowns.
    “See? Even you can’t think of anything. Like I said, you’re just all good,” he corrects her. “Lean back. We’re going down the hill toward the fence.” She does as he says, but when they come to flat ground again, she’s right back at it.
    “Well, ok, I’m boring. I’ll admit that much...” she says, but Kelly interrupts her.
    “No, you see that’s not what I’m saying. You’re not boring at all. You’re actually very... interesting,” to say the least, he thinks. She’s also sexy as hell and the most unaware, sensual woman he’s ever known. “But I’m all kinds of dark and bad and screwed up, Hannah. You can’t do what we had to do and think that you aren’t.”
    Hannah reaches down, which scares the shit out of Kelly because he’s afraid she’ll fall off but somehow doesn’t, and touches his head and then down to his shoulder.
    “Tell me,” she says insistently but still in her angelic, soft voice.
    “Ok, fine. Sometimes when we would catch bad-guys, they would have information that we needed so we could catch more bad-guys that they didn’t want to tell us about or at least tell us where they were hiding. Me and John and some of the other guys in our Special Ops unit would get them to... divulge that information,” he explains without giving up any of the gory details. Talking about making another man piss himself from pain and fear isn’t what he wants Hannah to know about him. He’d been an animal when the situation had called for it. And the situation had called for it many times.
    “How?” Well, of course she wants to know the exact details of the macabre events.
    “No, I’m not telling you that. And you can threaten me and bully me all you want. You’ll not get that information.” This gets a riotous laugh from her.
    “Me bully you? That’s a good one,” she says and tosses her head back and laughs again, exposing the naked flesh of her long neck that he’d like to kiss and lick and travel further south.
    Kelly stops again to open and re-shut the gate to the inner pasture where they continue to the barn, and he helps her down again. Where she floats right down the front of him like an innocent seductress again, whether she knows it or not. The mare sidesteps, impatient to be free of them, and bumps Hannah even closer into him, further testing his restraint, which is already thin at best. He wants so badly to kiss her right here in the open barnyard, right in front of anyone who might see.
    “I need to take this saddle off and get her out to pasture,” he quickly rattles out to dissuade his degenerate thoughts and mostly to get rid of her.
    “Ok, I’ll help.” Of course she will. Kelly bites his bottom lip until it is too painful to continue doing so.
    He takes her and the horse into