This woman could break him when nothing that had come earlier in his life ever had.
It was an observation, not a judgment. Shylah liked the way Draden seemed to reserve his conclusions until he had the facts.
His team consisted of a group of mavericks. They were cohesive when they needed to be, but their strength was their individual thinking. Many of their enhancements enabled them to do their jobs better alone then in a group. The idea had been that the GhostWalkers easily could do teamwork or perform alone.
They were coarse and crude. They made rude finger gestures to one another and they were their scars like badges. They were a family, unbreakable, loyal and absolutely powerful when they stood together.
He liked that she gave the questions thought. That she actually saw the mysteries and worked at solving them.
There was kindness in her and compassion. Two characteristics he didn’t have. Or at least, not in abundance. He was the perfect killing machine. He didn’t need to feel bad. Once unleashed, set on a course, he followed it until it was done.
Emma, I’ll never be easy. I won’t. I’m not going to pretend your life will be a bed of roses, but I can tell you that no man will ever need you more, or want you more, or love you more than I will.
He fought for his country, but mostly he fought for the people in his country so they had freedom to make choices. He just hoped they’d be good ones.
He hoped they were wrong, but he had a bad feeling, that nagging one that always told him he was right. He didn’t like knowing, but that radar had saved not only him, but his fellow GhostWalkers on more than one occasion.
He pulled her into his arms and kissed her like she was his and had been for years. Like he was a man dying and she was his greatest love. He felt like she was. Shylah Cosmos. His only little peony. His delicate flower. Dependable. Long-lived.
You have to commit to us. Just like you’re part of Torpedo Ink, I have to be part of you. You have to be all in.
She had the faint taste of sass and sweet. Lethal and home. The combination was deadly to a man like him.
He’d been lucky enough to find a home with Team Four of the GhostWalkers in the Pararescue Unit. In his life, those men had been the first he’d ever given his allegiance to, and that had been hard-won.
He wanted Shylah to see past his physical appearance to ‘him’. He needed her to care who he was.
Francesca was... extraordinary. A gift. A miracle. She just gave herself to him. He was connected to her through their shadows and he knew how she felt. Frightened, bordering on terror. Still, he mattered to her. She saw him, not the Stefano the rest of the world saw, but the man inside who needed. Who didn’t want to stand alone. She gave herself to that man.
Once he had told her he wanted her to stay, she’d been lost in the wonder of that. No one ever wanted her. No one.
I believe that in matters of the heart there is no such thing as compromise. Love means that you give each other everything.
Other people were so unsuccessful at fending off love! Members of Congress who had affairs with their aides, or students who I’d known in college, girls who as freshmen declared themselves lesbians, then graduated with boyfriends- to give in to such love represents, for them, a capitulation or a betrayal, yet apparently the pull was so strong that they couldn’t resist. That was what I didn’t understand, how people made the leap from not mattering in each others’ lives to mattering.
I could never, I knew then, lose myself “in love.” Margery had accused me of coldness, and she was right, but she was also wrong: For me, for always, the paramount organ of passion was the mind. Unnatural, unbalanced, perhaps, but it was true: Without intellect, there could be no love.
Yes yes yes I do like you. I am afraid to write the stronger word.