Conner had always been a weak man in the presence of a beautiful figure, but this time, it was a pair of brown eyes that brought him to his knees.
For days, two men fought inside him: One urged him to remain steadfast, to respect the man who had at one point been his boss, but the other wanted a taste of the tantalizing women his ex-boss no longer wanted, a woman who, like him, was plagued by her own Darkness, and thus couldn't be infected by his. It was the latter who enchanted his dreams.
In this one, she had entered his room late in the evening, wanting to repay him for all he'd done in her honor. Conner would sit up, and watch her unwrap his gift for him, then she'd join him under the covers, sooth his tension away, and her soulful whimpers would bounce off the bedroom walls.
The ecstasy ended the moment a deep voice groaned his name.
Conner broke from his slumber, turned on the bedside lamp, and a quick glance at the alarm clock revealed that it was four in the morning.
His pupils shrunk too fast, sparking a headache, and he opened his eyes enough to study the bulky silhouette sitting on the edge of his bed. "Coach?"
Max wore a winter coat and boots. "Something's happened."
Conner's eyes opened all the way. "Delilah?"
Max scuffed, as if he'd predicted such a reaction. "A pipe burst in the gym, and I'm driving back to the valley to check it out."
A pipe burst at this hour? Conner pulled the bed sheets off his lap and prepared to stand. "Alright, let's move."
Max placed a hand on his shoulder. "Not you, champ. Your fights's tomorrow, and Hector's dropping by this afternoon to go over fight footage with you, so until then, get plenty of rest. I won't be coming back up the mountain, but Hector offered to drive you and your girl back home this afternoon."
Conner groaned. It wasn't the first time Max labeled Delilah as his, and he and Delilah were tired of correcting him.
Max leaned in, but kept his back straight, his manner stringent. "You and Delilah will have the cabin to yourselves, but I want no funny business."
Conner felt every ounce of blood rush to his neck and face, and he pulled the covers over his lap. "Coach, c'mon now."
"Do you remember what I told you about a man's sex drive being tied to his fighting ability?"
Yes, every time you caught me staring.
"She's a pretty girl, you're a man, and believe me, son, when the weather's cold, this cabin gets... cozy."
For the first time, Conner wondered if Max had reason to worry. If he took out his primal energy on Delilah in a way that satisfied them both, who would know?
Everyone, if I lose the fight.
Max studied the ceiling. "Ruben and Nina borrowed this cabin for their honeymoon, and this may have been the room where they made me a grandfather."
Conner looked at the bedsheets as though they'd never been washed, and kicked them off his body. So much for sleeping in another hour.
Max stood, a triumphant grin on his face as he walked to the door. "Keep your hands to yourselves, and put a shirt on before you see her. She likes you, you know?"
As soon as Max left, Conner dropped his head on the pillow and licked his grin like an enamored teenager, contemplating Max's final words.
***
Conner wasn't sure if it was the piercing sun rays or a familiar voice calling his name that brought him back from his second dream of the morning, and even though it wasn't as pleasant as the first one, by the time he was awake, he'd already forgotten.
The living room couch wasn't as plush as the bed, but after Max's earlier revelation, Conner couldn't lie in it another minute, and as soon as he heard Max's car pull out of the driveway, he grabbed a clean blanket from the closet and made a bed out of the couch. He could have worn more than his boxer briefs and socks, but breaking one of Max's rules was his way exacting vengeance for not telling him sooner that his bed was contaminated.
He felt a warm hand on his bare chest pushing him, like he was a drowned person about to receive mouth-to-mouth. Through the thin slit of his eyelids, he found a shape that looked like Delilah and smiled. It wasn't his earlier dream, but it was close enough.
She was in shorts, a Columbia University t-shirt, and a large cotton bathrobe. "Wake up, Cowboy, before Max catches me in this outfit. It's past seven and you have to train."
Conner closed his eyes to keep the silky skin of her thighs away, but her consternation moved him, and she looked so irresistible when she worried.
Delilah pulled Conner's arm, then groaned when she failed to elevate him. "Ugh, get up, or Max will find you slacking and blame me."
"Coach ain't here."
She dropped his arm, panting from the light workout.
Conner sat up, keeping his waist covered with the blanket. "He drove back to the valley, but Hector's driving us back."
Delilah sighed, then walked to the kitchen where she opened the junk food cabinet and pulled out a box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch, her usual breakfast when Max made Conner egg white and spinach omelettes.
The commotion re-energized him. "What time do you wanna train?"
She returned to the living room with the open box, feeding herself pieces of cereal as she sat where Conner's legs had been. "Let's skip training."
He frowned. "Don't you wanna get your money's worth?"
"That's just it," said Delilah. "I don't want our last day together to be training and fighting."
The realization stung him out of his morning bliss. If he lost and reenlisted, would he never see Delilah again?
She was less exuberant than usual, and for a second he wondered if she missed Max, but this shift began the day he started training with Hector. Could she be upset about having to share him?
He moved in closer. "If you don't wanna train, what do you wanna do?"
She looked down and shrugged.
Uh oh. "What's wrong?"
Delilah rested the cereal box on the floor, all of the world's problems hanging on her bones. "Why do you do it?"
Did I miss something? Her question came off as a complaint. "Do what?"
"Stand up for people who didn't ask you to, like you did for that Mexican kid at the gym, or like you did for me."
He wanted to focus on her question, but his attention was on her breath, that like her skin, was a tempting cinnamon sugar.
She stood. "Why are you stepping in when you don't have to?"
Conner couldn't tell if she was mad, but if she was, he was, too. "And who says I don't have to?"
"Stop acting like you don't see it."
A laugh escaped him. "See what?"
"That this isn't your fight."
Conner blinked, as it became clear what she was asking, and what was supposed to be humility turned to indignation. Who was she, gorgeous as she was, to tell him what should and shouldn't matter to him?
"I mean, do you want to absolve yourself of white guilt or convince everyone you're not—"
"Not what, a bigot?" said Conner.
Delilah crossed her arms, then uncrossed them, neither of her feet able to hold her weight as she looked in every direction that wasn't straight at Conner.
He stood, not bothering to bring the blanket with him. "Is that what you think?"
She stepped closer, talking sense into him with controlled patience. "You have a free pass to be indifferent, to turn the other way and say it's not your problem, so why go through all this trouble when you don't have to?"
Conner's heart shrank in rejection. "You don't want me fighting for you?"
Her eyes sunk to the bottom of the sea, and her voice failed her. "I just don't want you to die."
She was the first person, who wasn't blood, who ached to keep him alive, and the sad sight was bringing him out of his displeasure. He pulled her to his bare chest, pressing her head to his shoulder, and as poor as the timing was, his nose loved the way she smelled in the morning. The heat radiating from her tears burned his skin, but he fought the pain, like he'd fight anything for her.
She snorted a teaspoon of tears. "I made up the death threats."
"I know," said Conner.
She looked up at him. "You did?"
Conner squeezed the tip of her chin and nodded.
Delilah held him tight, trying to be one with him. "I'm sorry I dragged you into this. I just don't want to lose you out there."
Conner didn't know if she meant Afghanistan or the cage, but either way, he couldn't tell her, with indubitable certainty, that he would come out of this ordeal unscathed. He'd never been more ambivalent about his future.
Somewhere in the embrace, Delilah moved her hands from Conner's back to the sides of her head.
He let her pull out of his hold. "What's wrong?"
He kept his hands on her shoulders, searching her eyes for signs of life, and when he found nothing, his mental alarm went off. She was doing so well...
Delilah held herself, scouring the room as she pushed and pulled breaths through clenched teeth, clinging to reality.
He held her head and forced her to look at him. "Stay with me, Little Bird."
She grabbed at her chest like she was pulling her heart out and saving it from beating to death, her eyes were pinched shut, and her lower lip trembled.
Conner wished for a magical syringe that could inject all his affection into her and chase The Darkness away.
How much longer would The Darkness destroy their lives, and what did their spirits need to defeat such a debilitating force? It was a never-ending cycle, as the questions alone fed The Darkness with fury, but he'd sink to the pit of The Darkness before he'd let it take the woman in his arms away.
He brought her ear close to his lips. "Listen to me, Birdie, if you come back right now, I promise, I'll make everything alright."
The trembling of her body and painful whimpers told him the message didn't go through, and he snaked his arms around the top of her back to deliver his message again. "I feel human when I fight, when I protect folks who need me."
Spasms flickered through Delilah's torso, and as her whimpering stopped, the post-sob hiccups began.
He smiled, relieved. "Did you know that protecting the weak is what separates us from the animals?"
He couldn't tell if the jerks were Delilah nodding or her hiccups.
Conner froze, as he always did when doubts were shattered. He rested his forehead on hers. "I don't know if The Brotherhood meant to send me to protect you, but I don't care anymore. I never knew I could be so gentle and human, until I met you. You... humanized me."
Every second he held her, her trembling settled, and the digging of her hands on his bare skin became less desperate.
She lifted her head from his shoulder, with curious eyes. "Will we always be friends?"
He combed loose hairs back on her head. "Damn right, 'cause someone's gotta look after your bratty butt."
She hiccuped a giggle, the crying making her lips swell into an adorable pucker.
Standing that close, the inside of her lip looked smooth and soft, and Conner wondered if her mouth tasted of cinnamon sugar.
Delilah studied the hairs on his chest. "You didn't need me to humanize you, because you're not the bad guy."
The earth stopped beneath Conner's feet. How did she know what he had tried so hard to convince himself of?
He couldn't see a stranger in Delilah anymore, or even a friend. She saw him, all of him, and didn't run away.
I ain't the bad guy.
How could he have been so close to the cure to his melancholy and not realize it?
She stared back at him, face blank with confusion.
The completeness overwhelmed him, and although he didn't know how to reward someone who made him feel this content, he didn't mind being a slave to the search.
He took her in his hold, wanting to close as much distance between them as possible. Her lips begged for attention, and his mouth found refuge in hers.
Delilah didn't wait to kiss him back. She hung from his neck with all the acclaim she could muster for the man who saved her life.
Conner felt that long-forgotten need to lose himself in someone, that liquid electricity that made him want to pound on his chest and own the universe. However long he'd been dissatisfied with life before was irrelevant.
Her breasts pressed against his chest ordered him to hold her waist from beneath her robe, hating the layers that came between them.
Delilah's hands moved along the back of his scalp and in the neck space below, the movement of her lips pleading for more.
He invaded her mouth's space with his tongue as his hands explored the skin on her lower back, beneath her shirt.
She groaned inside a sigh. "Conner?"
One time was all it took for his ears to become addicted to the way she said his name. He moved his mouth from her lips to her neck as if to respond.
She gasped, then chuckled like she had a secret.
He pulled away to admire her.
Delilah smiled with her bottom lip bit. Her right hand traveled down his left arm, grabbed the hand attached to it, and she took two steps backwards, tugging him forward.
Conner licked his lips, dazzled by the flustered mess he'd made of them both. He let her pull his arm, but didn't move. "What are you doing?"
Delilah pouted her lips and begged, nudging her head to the hallway, the one that led to her bedroom. "C'mon, throw this city girl over your shoulder and show her how rowdy cowboys get in the sack."
His heartbeat was visible through his chest, and he didn't need to look at his waist to know what his body was telling her.
Devour her. Christen your new play thing.
But as hard as he ordered his legs to surrender to her direction, they wouldn't walk.
Delilah eyes, once sad, twinkled with sexual energy. "What, you like the couch?"
He liked every surface around the cabin that could sustain her body weight.
She grinned, pressing her breasts to his chest, and kissed spots on his neck not covered with beard hairs as she slipped her shoulders out of her bathrobe.
Her touch triggered the worst reality check of Conner's life, and he whimpered in misery on the inside. Damn it, damn it, DAMN it.
When Delilah noticed that his arms weren't around her, she stopped and looked at him. "Nervous?"
Conner gulped. "I can't."
Delilah looked down at his boxer briefs, slipping a finger between his sensitive skin and the elastic waistband. "Relax, I have something you can wrap it in first."
He sighed, grabbing her wrists with as much endearment as he could to pull her hands from him. "I shouldn't."
Delilah studied his dilated pupils, then the enticing skin over his muscles.
Conner did the same with her. "I want you something fierce, but I gotta stay sharp."
She blinked, adjusting her balance to the shift in her universe.
Conner bent down, picked up her robe, and hung it over her shoulders.
Delilah cast her gaze downwards, embarrassed. "Damn, I don't know what came over me. I just broke up with JR, and I can't have you thinking I—"
Conner put his hand up. "No, no, I'm the one who kissed you."
"It's about time."
They both laughed, too nervous to do anything else.
Delilah smirked. "It would have been one hell of a workout."
Conner scuffed. "You'd be sleeping in for days."
She cleared her throat, still spellbound. "Guess I'll head to my room alone."
Conner rubbed the back of his neck, imagining the wanton things she would do to herself. "Mind keeping it down, for my sake?"
"You can watch," she sang.
Conner scrunched his eyes and shook his head with his exasperated face buried in his hands, then moved his fingers up to rake his scalp.
Delilah reached for his waistband again. "At least give a girl some inspiration and let her see what you're packing."
He stepped back before Delilah could reach, keeping his eyelids pinched. "Just go."
With her robe pulled tight against her, she power-walked to the room she'd slept in.
Conner opened his eyes again, his body aching as he watched her leave without him. "And lock the door."
As if to respond, she slammed her door closed.
The liquid electricity still ran where blood once was. He tried to sit, but it wasn't comfortable, and for a second he considered helping Delilah have her fun without him having any, but it was too big a risk.
He looked out the glass door that led to the balcony, and next to the outdoor grill was a man-size molehill of fresh snow that formed overnight. The thought of getting in it was almost painful, but it would work better than a cold shower. He stepped out into the cold morning, and dropped his bare back on the snow pile.
Punishing shocks stung his hot skin, but all arousal vanished.
All he could think about to distract himself from the misery was turning Knowlton's face into a burst gusher of blood, and once that was done, he could remain where Delilah was.
Some Valentine's Day this has turned out to be.