Still Mine Read Online Free PDF Page B

return for supplying him with all the cutting-edge technology and controlled substances. It was a tradeoff he’d enjoyed completely until that meeting on the beach.
    The genius-level IQ inside his head didn’t know how to deal with Jonnie. She wasn’t anything remotely like the women he’d met on post. Maybe she had all the same parts, but one glance from her eyes and he’d been enchanted far beyond just the idea of having sex with her. Her sweet smile, the simple way she teased him when she didn’t even know his name. He’d transformed into her slave, fascinated with every tentative smile. Each little flutter of her eyelashes, or the way her breasts moved beneath her shirt. He had her sultry walk memorized because he’d watched her so intently, every second that he could.
    Giving her up had been worse than death.
    Across the tarmac, a soldier moved confidently towards a helicopter. Major Nolan Durant paused for a moment, his attention settling on him. Squaring his shoulders, Paul moved forward. He’d done it to protect her. Not something based in logic, it had been borne from fear. The only thing that he’d ever been more scared of than his own death was Jonnie being used against him. A tool to force him to turn traitor.
    He couldn’t take it. Flat out, it scared him shitless. It sent a chill down his spine as he considered how close she’d already come to assuming that role. Love wasn’t supposed to do that to a person. He’d had no right to inflict such a burden onto anyone, at least not without asking. He’d lied to her the first time he’d met her. Leading her into a life that was a smokescreen. Too damn fascinated with her rosy view of the world, he’d installed her on base before really thinking about what sort of stain it might leave on her.
    And then she’d told him she wanted to begin a family.
    It was the only reason he’d allowed her to be told he was dead. She was so full of life. It just sickened him to think what living with him might cost her. So, he’d let her go, but the world was an unforgiving place. His one lapse of attention to logic wasn’t going to remain buried.
    Nolan Durant closed the remaining distance between them. “I can move a little slower, if you’re planning to come to your senses and get my orders rescinded.”
    Paul didn’t answer the man immediately. He rarely thought clearly when it came to Jonnie. In a way, he didn’t want to change that. Even believing him dead, she was his escape. Surveillance photos made their way onto his desk every two weeks. He’d watched her silently, cheering her on while dreading the arrival of photographic evidence that she’d let another man into her heart.
    It still hadn’t come. That one detail stuck in his mind, refusing to allow him to turn her over to anyone else. She was still his. She didn’t know how to take shallow pleasure in sex without love. That was the thing haunting him. That link, binding him to her heart.
    “Maybe I’ve finally come to my senses after six years.”
    “I wonder what she’ll think about it.”
    Something shot down his spine. It surged through every layer of skin and nerve tissue that made up his body before slamming into his head. But it didn’t wash up into the thinking portions of his head. Instead it triggered all the trip lines connected to his feelings. The idea of Jonnie was too strong, the single idea that she was going to be within arm’s reach…intoxicating. She hadn’t moved on either. They were still linked to each other. Nothing seemed to matter beyond that fact.
    “I can’t wait to find out, my friend.” Paul sent the major a solid stare. “This time, no one is going to tell me that she can’t handle my life. She proved her ability rather well, didn’t she?”
    “She did that well enough.”
    Nolan stared at him for a long moment before the head of base security turned on a heel and headed towards his helicopter. There was clear purpose in the way the man moved. That