Into Temptation

by Pam Godwin

  She explained how she left the shower running and hid beneath the bed, hoping to distract him long enough to escape. She had the knife and her wits—two things that saved her life. While it was hard to hear the details of her struggle, he was so fucking proud of her.

  “I asked him about the bridge. How did he know about it, and what did it have to do with him?” Her brows pulled together, and she chewed her lip. “He was pretty much dead at that point, but he mumbled something about Thur… Need? Like Thursday? Or thirsty? He never finished.”

  Baffled and agitated, he drummed his fingers on his knee. He’d briefed his team on everything he knew about Rylee Sutton, including her ex-husband, the suicide bridge, and her sexual history, as well as her hate-fuckfest with him.

  That had been a strange conversation. He never shared shit like that with anyone. But his secrecy in writing emails for ten years had started this mess. They deserved to know all the facts, no matter how personal.

  The consensus among everyone was that this had nothing to do with Rylee. They were dealing with a team of sophisticated spies and assassins who were likely using her to get to the Freedom Fighters. Probably a loose end from a sex trafficking ring they’d taken out in recent years.

  So how would her near-suicide on a bridge a decade ago have anything to do with this?

  The emails.

  That was the night he’d started writing.

  “I called Mason yesterday,” she said into the silence.

  Luke’s gaze snapped toward Liv, and every tendon in Tomas’ body went rigid.

  He wanted to bend Rylee over his knee and show her luscious ass just how foolish it was to contact anyone right now. But the damage was already done.

  Now he needed to understand the repercussions. “Tell me what was said. Every word.”

  “I used a disposable phone.”

  “Purchased from a corner store? It can be traced.”

  Despite the darkness, her face paled. Then she breathed in and walked through the conversation—Mason’s confession that he loved her, kept tabs on her, and wanted her back.

  “He reported me missing because Evan called him with claims that I was acting scared and disappeared.” She rubbed her temples. “That just isn’t true. Even weirder, Evan admitted to Mason that we were sleeping together. Why would he do that? To enrage Mason? To bait him?” She dropped her hands, her voice monotone. “I think Evan is behind all this. It doesn’t fit his personality, but there are too many things that don’t add up.”

  He exchanged a look with Liv in the rearview. Her gaze crystallized, issuing an order that shriveled his balls.

  Yeah, he knew what he had to do and didn’t need her controlling the situation from the front seat.

  Fuck, this was going to hurt.

  “Rylee, listen.” He clasped her hand, clenching tight as she tried to pull away. “Evan died at work today. He fell off a six-story building at his construction site.”

  “What?” She yanked frantically on her hand, her breaths gusting hard and angry. “No. It wasn’t on the news. They would’ve reported it. He wouldn’t fall off a fucking building. He’s smarter than that.”

  “His death is being investigated. They’ll rule it accidental, but you and I both know it was foul play.”

  “He’s not dead.” Her voice shook, her gaze brimmed with anguish and denial. “He’s not dead, Tommy. He’s not.”

  He would give anything to order the caravan off the road and chase everyone out of the car so she could wrap her emotions around this in private.

  Nothing like breaking down in front of strangers. He hadn’t been able to do it when he lost his mom and Caroline. He didn’t leak a tear at their funerals. Couldn’t open his soul to a therapist, either. He still didn’t know if he had it in him to show weakness in front of his closest friends.

  He felt her fighting it, battling the sobs in her chest, and pushing it all down. She trembled with the effort.

  She needed to let it out. He knew that from experience.

  All those years of writing emails, pouring his fears, sadness, and loneliness into the ether, and to think, someone had been listening to him after all. While he’d mourned his dead girlfriend, Rylee had been there for him through every word.

  Now the tables had turned. While she grieved her friend, her lover, he wasn’t jealous. He only felt an overwhelming, protective need to take away her pain.

  Gathering her in his arms, he fought her snarls and weak attempts to break free. Once she settled down, he held her on his lap, cradling her, wrapping her up with his body, and kissing the tears on her cheeks.

  “I hear you, Rylee.” He pressed his lips to her ear, breathing her in. “All of you. We’re still here. Our lives matter. Don’t shut down on me.”

  She stared up at him, her eyes swimming in rippling silver waters. A choking sound strangled in her throat. Another smothered sob. Then she circled her arms around his shoulders, buried her face in his neck, and wept silently, softly. Each painful hitch in her breath ripped him open and pulled her in.

  From the moment he met her, she’d sworn her intentions were innocent, claiming that all those years ago, she’d hurt with him, cried for him, and changed her major to psychology. For him. She’d taken a sabbatical and driven to his house because she wanted to help him.

  And he’d treated her like an enemy. Now that he knew the truth, he had to live with his crimes. But he wouldn’t live without her.

  Once they escaped the present danger, and they would escape it, he was going to smash through her intimacy issues and convince her she needed him as much as he needed her.

  “Evan Phillips didn’t make that call to her ex-husband.” Luke twisted in the front seat and met his eyes.

  “No, he didn’t.” Tomas didn’t have proof, but he knew at gut level her neighbor was an innocent casualty.

  Either Mason was lying about Evan’s phone call, or someone had called Mason, pretending to be Evan.

  The reason for Evan’s murder wasn’t apparent. It could’ve been retaliation of the jealous ex-husband, or a message sent to Tomas’ team, or just a loose end that needed to go away.

  For the next hour, he spoke quietly with Liv and Luke, speculating about possible enemies. Rylee didn’t try to push off his lap, her soft whimpers sinking into stunned acceptance. He sat with her in her sadness, his arms tight around her, exactly where he belonged.

  If he didn’t fuck this up, he could have more moments like this. Moments when he held her while she was happy, scared, excited, or just wanted to sleep.

  He hoped she would sleep now, but he sensed too much alertness in her muscles. She was listening, always eavesdropping, as he and his friends reminisced about missions gone by and gossiped about family drama.

  Liv had deliberately confined Van, Tiago, Tate, and Lucia in the same vehicle for thirteen hours.

  “Forced proximity,” she said. “They need to work out their shit.”

  While that was true, he didn’t believe Tiago’s crimes would be forgiven anytime soon. The crime lord had poisoned Lucia to keep her sick, forced Van and Tate to have sex, and scarred up Tate’s back beyond physical and emotional repair.

  Some crimes just weren’t redeemable.

  While Rylee sat lethargically on his lap, he used the opportunity to dig out the first-aid kit and treat the laceration on her back. For once, she didn’t fight him. A testament to the despondent state of her mind.

  Three hours into the drive, she lifted her head from his shoulder and squinted at the blackness beyond the window. “Where is this safe house?”

  “Missouri.” He braced for the backlash.

  “What?” Her voice pitched with outrage, and she shoved out of his embrace. “I can’t leave Texas.”

  “Too late.”

  She scrambled toward the far door. To do what? Jump from the moving vehicle?

  He caught her throat, wrenched her forcibly back to him by the neck, and took her mouth. She fought him. Hot damn, she always fough
t. He groaned against her teeth and kissed her deeper, harder, wordlessly ordering her to return the kiss.

  With a hand cradling her ass, he pulled her roughly against him and held her nape in a firm lock.

  “Let me go.” Straddling his lap, she seethed against his mouth and shoved at his chest. “You’re kidnapping me!”

  “Shut the fuck up and kiss me.” His stomach heated, his mind spinning to untangle the knots of her venom.

  Battling her rage with more rage wouldn’t yield a lasting relationship with this complicated woman. While his cock loved her ferocity, they were more than sex. More than her hatred.

  She told herself she was done with commitment and love and all matters of the heart. But that wasn’t true.

  “You fear intimacy.” He restrained her hands against her back and held her close, chest to chest, mouth to mouth. “But you’ve been in a relationship with me for ten years.”

  “You didn’t even know I existed.”

  “That changed the moment you walked into my house and upended my world.”

  He covered her mouth with his, his tongue insistent, pushing past the stubborn line of her lips. He refrained from using aggressive, overpowering strokes and instead delivered a languorous caress, tipping her expectations into bewilderment.

  Her mouth opened on a gasp, and she gave way to his adoring licks. He suckled and worshiped, pressing in and releasing her hands to cup her head and palm her tight, round ass.

  For a moment, she melted into him, welcoming his tongue moving in her mouth, against hers. She gripped his shirt and angled her head, delving deeper and whimpering. Not sounds of hunger, but distress.

  Intimacy was her limit, and a tender kiss came way too close to that. So when her hands balled into fists on his shirt, he was ready for the blowback.

  She punched his chest and sank her teeth into his lip. More strikes. Rabid bites. He absorbed it for a few seconds, knowing she needed an outlet for the pain inside her. He also knew she’d have him covered in blood if he didn’t defuse her soon.

  “Behave.” With his hands framing her face, he slowed down the kiss and earned himself a vicious bite on the tongue.

  “Fuck you.” She went at his mouth, attacking him in a firestorm of feral heat and scorn.

  He nibbled when she bit, caressed when she scratched, and hummed when she growled. He dominated her mouth with devotion, overpowering her hostility with sensuality and sliding her temper into a languid embrace of exploration and affection.

  Until she shoved him back against the seat. He allowed it, soaking in her fury and grief, her fists pounding upon his chest, her fingernails scoring his flesh. He caressed her everywhere, softly, compassionately, his touch in extreme opposition of hers.

  She tore her mouth away, panting. Angry and confused. Then she fused their lips again.

  Her kiss was war and retribution. Punishment for everything he’d done to her. But it was also redemption, heaven, and desire. He loved the fiery taste of her, the all-consuming fervor in her breaths, and the curling of her claws in his hair, ripping, pulling, and holding him close.

  He loved that she didn’t do anything half-ass, especially when it came to him.

  “If you put this much energy into hating me,” he breathed against her mouth, “I can only imagine the amount of intensity and passion you’ll put into loving me.”

  “Never.” Her eyes glinted like steel blades. “I’ll never love you.”

  “Oh, boy,” Liv said from the front seat. “I’ve heard those words before.”

  “Me, too.” Luke sighed and shifted to glance at them over his shoulder. “Rylee Sutton, you just sealed your fate.”

  An indignant cloud darkened Rylee’s expression, and Tomas wanted to kiss it right off her face. She didn’t like hearing that her fate was sealed. She’d fought too hard for her independence and was too protective of her heart to believe her efforts had been for naught.

  Tomas, on the other hand, held tight to his newfound hope.

  She was stuck with the Freedom Fighters, whether she forgave him or not. She knew their identities, their secrets, and once they arrived in Missouri, she would know the location of Cole’s safe house.

  Even if Tomas let her go, his friends would not.

  Loose ends.

  None of that mattered. She was his now. If she tried to leave, he would go with her. She just didn’t know it yet.

  Cole led the caravan on his motorcycle, shooting down the dark highway in the dead of night. Around one in the morning, four hours into the thirteen-hour drive, he pulled off at a vacant rest stop.

  “Bathroom break.” Tomas nudged Rylee beside him, reluctant to wake her after it had taken her so long to fall asleep.

  She rubbed her eyes and followed him out of the car.

  Parked behind them, the second SUV rocked wildly on its frame.

  What the hell?

  The doors flew open, exploding in a whirlwind of swinging arms and heated voices. Lucia’s roar was the loudest, her rapid-fire Spanish shuddering the air.

  With a snarl, she raced around the vehicle and attacked the smirking driver.

  Tiago.

  “Oh, shit.” Tomas gripped Rylee’s hand, prepared to toss her into the SUV if guns were drawn.

  Tiago stood like an impenetrable mountain, chin up, feet braced apart, as he absorbed the force of Lucia’s punches.

  “They need to knock that shit off.” Cole charged toward the commotion.

  Liv’s hand shot out, stopping him. “There’s no one around for miles. Let it play out.”

  Tate and Van yelled, too, quieter, calmer than the woman who unleashed unholy hell on her nemesis.

  “Deep down,” Luke said to no one in particular, “Tiago feels regret for what he did to them.”

  “No, he doesn’t.” Cole scoffed and walked off.

  “Yeah, you’re right.” Luke started toward the small building of restrooms. “Satan has no feelings.”

  Rylee tilted her head, eyes locked on the fight. “If everyone hates Tiago, why is he here?”

  “He’s here for Kate.” Liv lit a cigarette, inhaling deeply. “The longer he avoids us, the more he isolates her from her family. Isolation breeds resentment. He might be the devil, but the devil is intelligent.”

  “Happy wife, happy life,” Tomas said.

  Rylee cast him a strange look. “So he wants to be part of this family?”

  “I don’t know if want is the right word.” He tensed as the fight grew more unruly.

  Tiago’s patience was dwindling. He caught Lucia’s next punch, knocked it away, and cuffed her throat, choking her. Tate went ballistic, jumping into the fray and tackling Tiago to the ground.

  “As an outsider,” Rylee said, hugging her waist, “it looks like you’re your own enemies.”

  “You’re wrong.” Tomas turned toward her, putting his face in hers. “Forget everything you learned in school. We’re not your case studies. We don’t need your therapy.” He stabbed a finger at the brawl. “This is how we deal with things.”

  “With your fists?” She stood taller, meeting his glare head-on. “That’s going well, I see.”

  “We work out our issues with communication. Yes, we communicate with fists. And words. And sex.”

  She pressed her lips together, but her eyes argued loudly.

  “We don’t want to be fixed, Rylee.” He straightened, glanced at Liv, and returned to her. “We can’t do what we do and be normal or safe or sane. Think about it. We hunt monsters. We break laws. We torture and kill. Hell, we even fall in love with our prisoners. Or abductors, depending on the perspective.”

  Her eyes widened as they darted around, taking in his team. He could see her mind working, recalling the stories of how each of his friends found love. Liv and Josh, Van and Amber, Camila and Matias, Tiago and Kate, Luke and Vera—they all began as captor and captive, evolving from vicious enemies to lifelong mates. Every single one of them.

  The Freedom Fighters needed to be coldb
looded and crazy to do their jobs. They also needed some of that madness to fall in love, evidently.

  “Our story isn’t any different.” He caught and held her gaze.

  “We’re not in love, Tommy.”

  “I’m not opposed to the idea.”

  She set her jaw. “You’re an idiot.”

  “Call me that again, and I’ll kiss the shit out of you.”

  Her breath stuttered, and she cleared her throat. “I need to pee.”

  He glanced in the direction of the restrooms just as Luke strolled out. With a chin lift, he signaled Luke to wait. Having already swept the small building, his friend would stand by while Rylee was inside.

  “Go ahead,” he said to her.

  “I wasn’t asking.” She strode off, stubborn to a fault.

  Behind him, the drama with Tiago fizzled from smacking fists to emotional words.

  A quick sweep of the perimeter gave him a view of shadows, dark tree lines, and in the distance, an empty highway. Everyone present carried weapons, and no matter what they were doing, they were all on high-alert.

  “We’ll get through this.” Liv touched his forehead, brushing the hair from his eyes. “No matter who we’re fighting. There will always be another fight, and we’ll always stand together, righting our wrongs.”

  “And the wrongs of others.” He glanced over his shoulder, finding Van, of all people, standing between Tiago and Tate, speaking to them in calming tones. The argument was over. “Van’s come a long way.”

  “So have you.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You’ve always been more closed-off and secretive than the others. I used to worry about your happiness.” She smashed her cigarette beneath a boot and offered him a rare smile. “I’m not worried anymore.”

  Her sharp brown eyes used to give him nightmares. Now they regarded him with an affectionate sort of intensity that told him their decade-long friendship was invaluable to her.

  “I’ve always been your favorite.” He grinned.

  “Josh might have something to say about that.”

  “I can’t believe the boy scout let you out of the fortress without him.”