Free Heart of Danger by Lisa Marie Rice

thought, and then he was swept away by a blast of painless incandescent heat that moved from his hand up his arm and across his chest. It was as if his body had been taken over by an alien entity. An entity that was warm and enveloping and sweet beyond description. For a second he wondered if he’d been drugged. If her hand somehow contained a micro-syringe and she had injected a dose of . . . something in him. He had no idea what. He’d never heard of a drug that could do this.
    Any further thought was impossible, he was in the grip of something powerful, more powerful than he was. He stared at her face as her features tightened, almost as if she were in pain. Her eyes glowed, as if some kind of light bomb had gone off behind them. As if they were a source of light themselves.
    That incredible heat now flowed through his entire body, suffusing it with a golden glow. He was completely blocked, as if in a cube of amber. He couldn’t move a muscle, each element of his body locked into place.
    “Boss?” Jon asked softly in his ear. “You okay?”
    “Should we come in?” Nick growled.
    Only it turned out he wasn’t frozen, he wasn’t locked. It’s just that his body didn’t want to dissipate that heat. He could move, and he did. A short, emphatic shake of his head. No.
    “Okay.” Jon let out a long breath. “Standing down. We don’t like it but we’re standing down.”
    He jerked his head. Yes, stand down.
    “You are grieving,” she said softly, that luminescent, hypnotic gaze never leaving his eyes. “Grieving badly. There is such sorrow in you, it swirls around like black smoke. You were betrayed by a man you loved like a father. A man you trusted wholeheartedly. Everything you knew about this man led you to believe he would die rather than betray those who trusted him, and yet—he betrayed you. For money . It hurts your heart even to think of it.”
    His hand had jerked slightly under hers and she exerted a slight downward pressure.
    It was ridiculous. She was a small woman. Slender, even fragile. Her hand was almost half the size of his. The idea that she could force him to keep still was ludicrous. And yet here he was, utterly incapable of moving even an inch away from that glowing light gray stare, her small hand tethering his.
    “You’re hurting,” she whispered. “So much. And you can’t show it because . . .” She tilted her head, as if listening to something, though her eyes never left his. “Because people count on you. And you’d rather die than betray them the way you were betrayed.”
    He couldn’t move. Nothing moved except his lungs. He felt as if she were flaying him alive, but painlessly. And at the same time, for the first time in his life, he knew someone else could see inside him.
    He’d worked a lifetime to keep his inner thoughts secret. As a child in violent foster homes, most thoughts or desires led to beatings. Later, in the military, nobody gave a fuck what he thought or felt about things as long as he did his duty, and he liked it that way just fine.
    Except Lucius. Lucius had seen into him. The pain rose helplessly, like black tidal waters, choking him. It never stopped. A year and it could still ambush him.
    “So sad,” she whispered. “You’re so sad. And yet under the smoke burns love, and duty. You’re determined to protect your people. A life where you can’t protect the innocent doesn’t make sense to you. You’d die to keep them safe.”
    Her words were a distant flutter, the sound hummingbird wings might make if amplified. They barely registered. What registered was this hot, melting sensation inside him. For the very first time in his life he felt a connection to someone that was blood- and bone-deep. It was nothing like the loyalty he felt to his men or had felt to Lucius. That had a different flavor, was something else entirely. However strong his ties might be, there was a definite place where they ended, and that was his skin.
    Here there were no