Surrender the Dark Read Online Free

few minutes. After checking on the puppy, whom she’d finally sequestered out in the garage with a bowl of water, some old towels, and a safely perched space heater for company, she went to the kitchen and tested the chicken broth she’d set to simmering. It was warm. She poured some into a tall cup, plopped in a straw, and after taking a deep breath, walked back to her room.
    It shouldn’t have surprised her to find him with his eyes wide-open and his head elevated by a pillow he’d bent in half beneath his neck. It shouldn’t have, but it did.
    The sight of his chest caught her attention. It was bare except for the tape that peeked above her sheet. The forest-print fabric was draped halfway between his well-developed pecs and the taut tanned skin surroundinghis navel. Skin that was covered by tape now, but since she was the one who had wrapped him, she knew just about all there was to know about it. Where it was tight, where it was scarred, where it dipped, where it hugged muscle, where it was covered with fine swirls of dark hair. Where it wasn’t. Details she could have gone the rest of her life without ever knowing, but that for some strange reason would pop into her mind at the oddest moments.
    After days of the sort of intimacy she hadn’t indulged in for a very long time, she couldn’t say why she was reacting to the sight of his naked body in a way that was far from clinical.
    Realizing she was standing in the doorway, staring, she put one foot in front of the other … and eventually she was at his side. Again.
    “Thank you,” he said, staring at the cup in her hand.
    Those were two words she’d never thought to hear from him. She bit back the retort that sprang to her lips. His voice was still rough, but she could already hear the change. Yes, if he had anything to do with it—and of course, he had everything to do with it—his recovery would likely set medical records. She knew how he was.
    Controlling. Calculating. Cold. Unfeeling. Mechanical. And always and forever in charge. From the moment they were introduced, over seven years ago in the cramped quarters of her college counselor’s office, and every single moment since, he’d been in charge. Yes, she knew how he was.
    She could recall with perfect clarity their first meeting. How he’d listed, in that carefully controlled voice ofhis, always so damnably devoid of emotion, the reasons why her combination of personal traits made her the ideal courier for his private firm. No family or relatives. No contact with any of her foster families. No tendency to form close or lasting relationships. The sort of person no one seemed to notice. He did not mention her academic achievements, but since he’d been holding her school file in his hand, she was certain he was aware of her excellent record, as well as her interest in world history and political science.
    No, the things he’d mentioned weren’t found in any school file. They were the sort of things only someone close to her could have known, and the one person that could have been was her counselor. The older woman had gradually worn down Rae’s natural resistance to discussing herself or her own feelings. Rae had confided in the woman, telling her about her childhood, and about how her growing fascination with the grand scale of world politics was somehow helping her to sort out her own mixed-up past. Her most recent confidence had concerned her desire to work in the government, to get involved firsthand with the secret dealings between her country’s leaders and those of foreign nations.
    Rae remembered how betrayed she’d felt, and how quickly that sense of betrayal had faded in the face of the undeniably intriguing world this dark, emotionless stranger was offering her. This person who wanted her specifically because of who she was. That fact alone had been almost intoxicating.
    And in all that time this was the first thank-you she’d ever heard from him.
    “You’re welcome,” she