Loose Ends Page 26

  And yet he knew her—and that knowledge held her where she stood, her heart racing and breaking at the same time.

  Maybe only weeks, maybe months—he was telling the truth, and the truth hurt. She could see it all now, the worst of it running down the middle of his chest.

  Lord, she didn’t want him to die. With every beat of her heart she wanted him to have a chance. Whatever life had done to him, she wanted him to have better. Six years in the wasteland, he’d said, and she understood exactly what he’d meant.

  She let her gaze slide down the length of him, past his bandage. Scars or not, he was a work of art, every muscle delineated, the veins in his arms running like rivers into his palms, each a confluence of strength and testosterone, of conviction and the iron will to survive.

  A war-fighter, that’s what he’d been, and what he still was, a soldier to the core, and he wanted her. She felt it with every breath he took, the rising tide of his desire—and she knew there’d be no playing it safe tonight.

  Wild night. Wild girl, Con thought. She’d kicked some major ass for him in the alley, taking on those two pendejos at Mama’s, the poor bastards—and she’d called him a liar.

  She had it right. He remembered more than he wanted to admit, especially to her, of nights so dark he’d thought they’d never end, of fear and the pain that had broken him again and again, of grief so deep he’d prayed for death. But he’d been too strong to die, literally, every part of him honed and enhanced for indestructibility—except for the expiration date Dr. Souk had carved into his genes.

  Yeah, she’d seen right through him.

  He liked smart women. He could have walked away, gotten her gun back in her hand, and gone to find that damned ghost tracker. Or he could stay here and play Beauty and the Beast in the hallway with her.

  It was no contest in his mind, no contest in his heart, and she wasn’t running away, either.

  Done deal.

  He slid his hand around the back of her neck, and she slowly tilted her chin up and captured him with her long, green-eyed gaze. Yeah, she wanted this.

  Combing his fingers up through her hair, he closed his fist around a handful of silken strands and brought them to his face, and he breathed her in, the rich mélange of all she was: the girl of his forgotten dreams.

  She intrigued him like no other, enchanted him, everything about her. She worked in an art gallery, of all things, looked like she’d stepped off a catwalk, was fiercely street smart right down to her bones, and she was soft and smelled so damn good.

  God, he’d been without this for too long, always on the move, always on the hunt for the spymaster, and somewhere, deep down inside him, always on the hunt for her, the rarest thing on earth, a woman who knew him and cared.

  He’d had sex and, a few times, maybe even traces of love, since he’d broken free from Souk’s lab—but he hadn’t been known, and he’d felt the lack with every lover.

  Hell, he hadn’t known himself. There’d been no way for a woman to know him—but this one did. Even more amazing, he knew her. His longing for her had a past, and his need to be with her had taken on a life of its own.

  Lowering his mouth to hers, he kissed her, gently sliding his tongue inside when she opened for him. A small groan escaped her, and he deepened the kiss, feeling her body soften against him in a thousand lush and lovely ways.

  This was what he’d needed.

  Her.

  He’d needed to sink himself into the sweet mystery of a woman’s sensuality—this woman’s, the urban jungle girl with the backbone of steel and the .380 to back it up.

  Cupping her face in his other hand, he pressed her back against the wall and kissed her like there was no tomorrow—because who knew if there would be?

  Who in the hell ever knew?

  Not him, that was for damn sure.

  Opening his mouth wider, he kissed her deeper, longer, exploring her mouth and letting the taste of her slip into his veins like a drug. She sighed in his mouth, all the while with that compelling, fascinating grip on the waistband of his jeans, the backs of her fingers brushing against his skin. Geezus.

  The wind picked up outside, bringing with it a faint smattering of rain and a drumroll of far-off thunder—and he kissed her, endlessly, the taste of her infusing his senses, on and on and on. Through it all, through every moment of mouths and tongues, of need and heat, she moved with him, her body all curves and desire, the sheer eroticism of her running like wildfire from his heart to his groin.

  Geezus, she smelled like an angel, so female, so profoundly rich, a thousand scents layering and melding together to form a picture of her in his mind. She was golden light with a rose-colored center pulsing brightly at her core.

  “J.T.” she murmured, and for the first time, the name felt right, the way she felt right.

  “Hey, baby,” he whispered against her lips. I’m here for you. And he was, whatever she wanted, whatever she needed, he was the man who could bring it.

  “You … me, this is …” Her voice trailed off as she tunneled her hands up into his hair and held him for the sweet kisses she was pressing to the side of his face, along the length of his jaw, to his lips.

  “Real,” he murmured. So real.

  Four years ago, on a night when he’d been high in the mountains of Honduras, on a wild and lonely stretch of the Cordillera Isabella, he’d fallen asleep and woken to a sky full of stars, millions upon millions of them strewn across the darkness. In all of them, there had been one brighter than all the rest, one that had held his attention and drawn him in, until he’d felt the scent and essence of it reaching across the eons of endless time, felt it tease him with an incomprehensible nearness from light-years away—and he’d wondered, oh, God, he’d wondered what Souk had really wrought within him, what the possibilities were, how far he could go, if he dared.

  She was the same, the star here on earth, incomprehensibly alluring, beyond the erotic lushness of her body, beyond the compelling enticement of her kiss—farther, deeper, to the taste of her sinking into his cells and freeing him from the bondage of loneliness, of always and forever being alone.

  This was his need, not hers. Out of the millions of people who’d passed him on thousands of street corners in hundreds of cities across the world, only one had ever stopped him in his tracks, only one had triggered the most primal parts of his brain with remembrance.

  Her.

  “I missed you,” she murmured. “Even if you weren’t ever my boyfriend, I missed you.”

  So sweet, so welcome. He’d missed everybody in the world, including himself. It had been a strange, mind-bending dilemma, wondering why he was so goddamned alone. Knowing there had to be someone somewhere who knew him. Hoping there was someone who missed him.

  And all along, there had been her.

  She shifted her hips, and with his hand sliding up her leg and under her dress, pulling her in close, they found their rhythm—up against the wall and going down fast.

  Yeah, he needed this. Precious woman, he wanted to get lost in her, and there wasn’t a doubt in his mind that she could do it for him.

  He cupped her bottom, and her fingers went to the top button on his jeans.

  “John Thomas,” she whispered. “John Thomas Chronopolous.”

  Yeah, that was him, the guy she was undressing one button at a time.

  Helping her out and helping himself, he took off her belt, then found the zipper tab on her dress and eased it down her back. When he reached the end, she gave another graceful shrug of her shoulders, and the golden sheath slipped off her and pooled in a pile at her feet.

  Geezus. He followed the slide of material down her body with his gaze, and every part of him that was hard got harder—the curvaceous mounds of her breasts filling out the lacy cups of a black bra, a waist he could span with his hands, black lace panties slung around a pair of silky hips, and she was standing there in front of him in a pair of spike-heeled ankle boots.

  All was right with the wor
ld—and it only got better when she shoved his jeans and boxers over his hips.

  “Oh,” she said, staring down at him. “Oh, my.”

  Oh, my, my, my was right, he thought. Just having her look at him sent a surge of pleasure through him, made him ache with wanting her, with wanting to see her beautifully, wonderfully naked. The panties were nice, real heartbreakers, but they had to go, along with the bra.

  He quickly untied his boots and toed out of them, then pushed his jeans the rest of the way off his body and kicked them aside.

  “Don’t worry, Jane. I won’t hurt you,” he promised, leaning down, kissing her cheek, and pushing her undies down her legs. He’d had a plan for what happened next, a real simple plan that began and ended with removing her bra—but he got sidetracked with the panty business.

  He wanted to be careful with her. He wanted to take things slow, to really savor the taste and feel of her—next time.

  This time slid past “careful” the moment he slid his hand between her legs, into the soft, secret warmth of her, into intimacy. It was surrender to the heat of the moment, the strung-out sweetness. It was hot and getting hotter with every soft kiss she pressed to his mouth, with every slide of her hands over his body, with every time he teased her with his fingers. She read him like a page of Braille, her fingers tracing every curve of muscle, every line of scar tissue. He was a beast, no doubt about it, but there was only tenderness and need in her touch—and only reverence in his. She was silky hot and wet, and softly whispering in his mouth of her needs and desire.

  Oh, yeah, sweetheart. It had been a real big night, lots of speed and screamin’ tires, lots of danger and some bad, rough stuff—and what they needed, what he was going to give her was release from all that tension, a chance to escape the harshness of the night, if only for a while.

  He reached for her leg and drew it up around his waist, making room for himself in the cradle of her hips, and he rocked against her.

  “Mmmm …” She moved with him, pressing herself against him, and he pushed up inside her—so slowly, so mind-bendingly slowly.

  When he was only partway in, she caught her breath on a small gasp, and he kissed her mouth.

  “I won’t hurt you, baby,” he whispered against her lips. And he wouldn’t. He was going to give her pleasure, as much as she could take.

  With his hands holding on to her hips, pressing her back against the wall, he dropped to his knees and kissed her belly.

  “J.T.?”

  He answered her question with the soft slide of his tongue up through the center of her desire—and so it went, with her melting into his mouth and him loving every minute of it while the rain came down and the thunder rolled.

  When she came, it was so intensely erotic, an electrifying turn-on for him, the way her body went rigid in his arms with her hands tangled in his hair, holding him close. He let her ride the sweetness for as long as it lasted, his tongue teasing her, until she went limp against the wall. With the taste of her still warm and wondrous in his mouth, he rose to his feet and fitted himself to her. He was so ready, and this time when he slid in, so was she, soft and still pulsing with the contractions of her pleasure.

  She sighed, and the deeper he went, the softer she groaned.

  “Mmmm … J.T.” She spread her legs a little wider, taking him in, taking all of him, her hands linked behind his neck, her hips moving with him on every thrust.

  The girl was a rock star, the rhythm of her lovemaking running through her, matching his own, her hands still in his hair. The temperature in the hall rose by degrees, and he felt every one of them on his skin and in the sheen of sweat limning them both.

  “I cried for you,” she whispered against his mouth, then dragged her tongue across his lower lip and bit him so very softly—and he didn’t know what tore him up more, the gentle bite or her confession. Both went straight through him on a wave of desperate need to fuck her so sweetly, to dry her long-gone tears, and somehow to love her until she was his.

  Wild Thing. He’d known the first time he’d seen her, known there was something between them, some connection making her impossible to ignore. He’d seen her so many times, and every time, she’d made an indelible impression on his heart.

  Now they were here, wrapped around each other, drenched in desire and need, and all he wanted to do was thrust into her harder and faster, more and more and more, to find his pleasure in her body, to let the sweet, slick heat of her consume him and take everything he had.

  One deep slide after another, he pumped himself into her, again and again, reaching and striving for the moment of inevitable release. When it came, it came on him slow and hard, pulsing through him and damn near dragging him to his knees.

  Geezus.

  He pushed deeper, burying himself to the hilt inside her, and she tightened around him. He groaned with the pleasure and pushed into her again, loving the hot, wet feel of her around his cock. This was life. Her breath was warm on his neck, coming in short gasps. Her breasts were pressed against his chest, and one of her legs was half wrapped around him with the heel of her black suede ankle boot pressing into his ass. He could feel her heart racing, feel the heat of her satisfaction. Whatever else he was, he was safely, surely, wildly, intensely alive deep inside her.

  She turned her head and opened her mouth on his shoulder, her teeth closing on him not so gently this time, and he felt half a smile curve the corner of his mouth.

  Sweet woman. For this moment in time, she was all his.

  He carried her into the closest bedroom and followed her down onto the bed, onto the luxury of a soft cotton patchwork quilt, still inside her. With their arms around each other and her leg coming around him again, her head still nestled into the crook of his shoulder, they were cocooned, one entity—and so they breathed, warm and safe, so very safe.

  Off in the distance, he could see the lightning flash, the rain moving west, toward the heart of the city.

  He held her close and felt her relax in his arms, her body softening against his, her hand coming up between them. Slowly she ran her fingers down the long, torturous path of the scar tracking the length of his chest.

  A sigh escaped her, and he tightened his hold on her. He should have died from such a wound. Sometimes he wondered if he had and then been the recipient of a miracle—like tonight. She felt like a miracle to him.

  He could protect her. He could protect her without fail, no matter what she’d seen, no matter what or who came after her. He was the rock against which all others were broken. Until his last breath, he was the Guardian down to the marrow of his bones, and, somehow, she was tied up in all of it.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  “Scott Church, went by the call sign Monk, yeah, I got it,” Hawkins said into his radio. “A Navy SEAL?” Un-fucking-believable. “It took more than a Navy SEAL to do what we saw at Mama’s back door.”

  “Skeeter’s searching the LeedTech files at light speed,” Dylan’s voice came back at him. “Three years ago, Lancaster started selling our boys to a doc named Greg Patterson. He took up where Souk left off and tweaked the whole system … hold on …”

  The line went silent. After a moment, Dylan came back on the radio.

  “This mission just hit the fan again.”

  Hawkins swore under his breath.

  “Skeeter ran a search,” Dylan continued, “and came across a news story out of Bangkok dated two weeks ago. Greg Patterson is dead. So she and Cherie hacked their way into the police report, and it looks like he was … fuck …”

  Hawkins waited through a moment of silence, then jumped in. “Fuck what?”

  “Eaten.”

  “Eaten?” Geezus. He flashed back on the bite taken out of King’s arm. This was starting to piss him off.

  “Yeah,” Dylan said, “a real gruesome crime scene. The report also had a list of the files on Dr. Patterson’s desk at the time of his demise.”

  “LeedTech?” It had to be.

  “Specifically, t
he file on J. T. Chronopolous, a.k.a. Conroy Farrel. The Thai cops matched the bloody fingerprints on it to Scott Church, but they can’t find the Frogman.”

  “Because they’re not looking in Denver.” He swore again. “Maybe we should give them a call.”

  “No,” Dylan said. “The bastard is ours. If you so much as get a glimpse of this asshole, you take him out. No introductions, no warning, no questions. There’s a damn good chance he’s after our boy. Any questions we’ve got, we’ll ask Randolph Lancaster. No one on my team gets torn apart like King and Rock, or goddamn eaten. Nobody. Got it?” Dylan’s voice was hard, uncompromising.

  “Loretta ain’t gonna like it,” Hawkins felt obliged to point out, no matter how much he agreed with Dylan. “She’s going to want to cuff him, read him his rights, print him, and lock him up, all legal-like and prosecutable.”

  “Nobody’s going to get this guy in front of a judge,” Dylan said. “Think Red Dog with another hundred pounds of muscle and less than half the usable brain space, flood it with testosterone and a freaking boatload of psychopharmacueticals. Scott Church is the first soldier Patterson didn’t kill. All the other men Lancaster sold to him died under the knife. From what we’ve seen, this Monk guy is barely human, and I mean that genetically. I want him dead.”

  “Copy.” Hawkins glanced over at Creed, who wasn’t any happier in this damn urban jungle behind Bagger’s Market than he was right now. Dropping a .45 into the guy wasn’t the problem. He and Creed would both happily take the shot and let the boss go mano a mano with Lieutenant Loretta over the fallout, but finding the inhuman bastard was proving to be one helluva problem.

  “I want you and Creed to quit dicking around out there and get the damn job done,” Dylan said. “Make it so, Superman.”

  Dicking around?

  “Yes, sir.”

  The radio went silent, and Creed gave him a questioning look. “What’s up?”

  “We’re supposed to quit dicking around.”

  Creed nodded. “Good idea.”

  Yeah, a damn good idea.

  “Navy SEAL, huh?” Creed said.