A sharp dark something flashes in Aaron’s eyes, and I know him. I know him beyond the name change and the lies that surrounded us and him. He wants to believe them. He wants to trust. He wants to belong, but he has not felt as if he did in a very long time. Except with me. I have never been so glad that I chose to stay with him, that I chose to believe in who we weren’t, in what his name was or wasn’t.
His eyes meet Adam’s. “And I will protect those I am loyal to with my life.”
“As it should be,” Adam replies. “And we will be men who deserve that loyalty.”
“Men who will die for you,” Blake emphasizes. “And you, Ashley.”
Smith rejoins us, and Adam and Blake make room for him. He steps close to face-off with Aaron. “If you hurt her—”
“I will die for her and come back from the dead and do it again,” Aaron declares, and while he has been cold, hard, and calculating with these men, his words are guttural, rough, emotional. This man loves me. Passionately. Completely. And I will die for him, too. Something no one in this room wants to hear, but I will say it to Aaron. I will say it the minute we’re alone, which can’t be soon enough to please me, but now—now we must face what is before us.
Now, we must figure out how to defeat our enemies, and I’m ready. I want to fight. I want to win. I want this over. I want whatever version of happily ever after Aaron and I can create together.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Aaron…
A storm brews inside me, and the longer and more frequently Smith gets in my face, the fiercer it becomes. He doesn’t seem to get the point. He doesn’t seem to understand that I’m not a man who claims anything for his own except Ashley. He doesn’t seem to understand the significance of this concept. He doesn’t seem to understand that my willingness to bleed and cause bleeding in her name is not a small thing. He also doesn’t seem to understand how sadly matched he is to my skills, or he wouldn’t be standing in my fucking face yet again.
I’m about two seconds from a demonstration when Blake and Adam move him for me. “Beer,” Blake says. “Let’s sit and drink a fucking beer.”
Smith scrubs his jaw and smartly walks away. Blake grabs my attention. “He’s a good man.” He looks at Ashley. “That’s why you called him. Don’t let your man here forget that.” He looks at me again. “Good men are hard to find. Men you trust, and I trust him. You can, too.”
“He doesn’t trust me,” I say.
“But I do,” Ashley says. “He’ll get over it.”
“I think your trust in me is the problem.” I meet Blake’s stare. “He wants to fuck her; he might even think he loves her, and that’s a problem none of us need right now.”
Ashley sucks in a breath and then objects. “He doesn’t—”
“He’s right,” Blake replies, eyeing her and then me. “I’ll deal with him. Right now, I have information you want. And beer.” He holds his hands out to his sides. “What the fuck more could you want?”
Ashley as my wife, safe, fucking me, moaning for me, strolling on the damn beach with me. I want Ashley. The way she defended me only makes me want her more. I pull her close. I will never have her close enough. “Let’s sit.”
Blake nods, and he and his team walk toward the living room. Ashley catches my arm, and I turn to face her, my hands settling on her waist. “I wish you would have warned me.”
“If Smith thought you acted nervous, he’d become a bigger liability than he is right now.”
“He’s the reason Walker’s involved,” she reminds me.
“You’re the reason Walker’s involved,” I counter. “He’s the reason we almost walked away from their help.”
“You’re forgetting that he’s the reason I trusted them. Please remember that, Aaron. He’s a good man.”
“Beer is served,” Blake calls out.
I stroke her hair, her eyes etched with worry, with fear, too, damn it. I want that fear gone, and that’s exactly why I’m willing to work with Walker. “Anytime we let someone else in, it’s a risk. It opens the door to a leak, and the men who are after us will find that leak. But I opened that door with Walker and you know why?” I don’t wait for her reply. I cup her head, press my cheek to hers, and lean in close, my voice low at her ear. “Because I’m not torturing you with a life on the run one day longer than I have to. Because I fucking love you when I didn’t even think I could love.”
She sucks in a breath again and pulls back to look at me, her eyes glistening, as she mouths, “I love you, too.”
Warmth like I’ve never known outside my time with this woman expands inside me. She laces the fingers of one of her hands with mine, and that unity she’s offered me without words calms that storm inside me that I felt only minutes before to a manageable level.
We join Adam, Blake, and yes, Smith, in the living room, them on the couch with Blake at the center and Smith the farthest from us. Ashley and I share an oversized brown leather chair with her on my right and the Walker team on my left. In other words, I’m between her and them.
“You were working on a case when you met Ashley,” Blake states, setting a file on the coffee table. “That’s what I know about him.”
“Who’s the client?” Ashley asks. “And please just confirm for me that Cole isn’t in danger.”
Cole being her old boss, one of the owning partners of the firm that she worked for. “Cole is safe,” I say.
“The client in question left the firm three months ago,” Blake adds, “and I know details that I can’t share. I’ll just say that Cole and Reese, his partner, don’t align with criminals, and they recognized him as that and more.”
“Who is he?” Ashley presses.
“Desmond White,” I say. “The CEO of a defense company that sold arms to the wrong people, translated to mean our enemies. I believe there were higher-ups in our government involved.”
“As do I,” Blake replies. “I assume you got too close to those people, and you were dealt with.”
“Maybe,” I agree, “but for reasons I can’t name, that doesn’t feel right. That feels too cut and dry, too obvious.”
“I met Desmond White,” Ashley replies. “He wasn’t represented by Cole, but rather our corporate division we had just added to the firm. He seemed honorable, like a proud American.”
“They always do,” I say. “The really bad ones always seem good.”
“He took on a new head of security right before you went down,” Blake says. “I believe you know him.”
“Don’t dangle information,” I reply shortly. “Who the hell is it?”
“Mick Ross,” he says.
The name rips through me like an icy blade, carving out my spine. I know him. I know him all too fucking well, and his name explains why Ashley is being hunted. Why the woman I love is such a fucking target.
“You need to know that I know him,” Adam interjects. “I was on a CIA-managed task force with him overseas about seven years ago, but for the record, I hated that shady son-of-a-bitch. How much does he have to do with any of this or anything at all?”
“Everything,” I say. “He has everything to do with this.” I glance at Blake. “I need to know everything there is to know about him and what he’s doing now and in the past, including where to find him right now. And I don’t care what it costs me.”
“There’s no charge for our help,” Blake says as he taps the folder. “And everything you want is there, but there’s a condition. I want to know when you go after him.”
I study Blake, and in his eyes, I see me. He’s dark. He’s dangerous. He’s willing to go where he needs to go to protect and serve. He’ll cross lines, and yet, he’s a good man. “You,” I say. “Just you.”
He narrows his eyes on me and then gives a quick jut of his chin in agreement. Meanwhile, Smith’s eyes burn into me, and I turn to find his gaze locked down on my face. “What do you want to know?”
“I saw how you blinked with his name,” he says. “What is your past with him
?”
“Ask your boss,” I reply. “He knows.” My eyes meet Blake’s, understanding in their depths. I don’t want this part of my past blasted out in front of Ashley. But I also see insistence that I tell her in his stare. That she has to know because her life is on the line.
I don’t agree or disagree with him, but in the back of my mind, I know this part of me, this dirty, dark part of me is not something I can hide from Ashley. She will find out one way or the other why Mick wants me dead, why he now wants her dead.
Blake stands up, and his men follow. “We’ll help you wire the security and install cameras and then be out of your hair to let you read through the data. How about breakfast in the morning?”
I agree, and we arrange a meet-up time. The next hour is about turning this place into Fort Knox and even Ashley gets into the game, helping to test the doors and windows for sound notifications and alarms.
Finally, when the Walker team leaves and I lock the front door, I turn to find Ashley standing there. “Who is Mick to you?”
I have a flashback to her protecting me tonight, to her fighting for me, and I’m not ready to let go of that moment. I’m not willing to see the hate in her eyes when she learns the truth about Mick. I shackle her hips and then fold her close, my fingers tangling in her hair, my mouth closing down on hers, silencing her questions. Delaying her hate.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Ashley…
I have questions, so many questions, but Aaron’s mouth is on my mouth, his tongue stroking deep, drugging me with a long lick, the taste of him tormented. He doesn’t want to tell me about Mick. He still thinks I can’t handle the truth of who he is and what he’s done. His fingers tighten in my hair, and he deepens the kiss. I don’t fight him for answers. I don’t fight him for conversation. What he doesn’t seem to understand is how much I know him, how much I understand him. How much knowing him reaches deeper than his name, his job. If I didn’t believe that, I wouldn’t be here right now.
He pushes me against the door, his big body framing mine, caging me between him and the hard surface behind me. “You don’t need to hold me captive,” I whisper against his mouth. “I’m here because I want to be here.”
“Until you’re not,” he says, his mouth already back on mine, his kiss hungry.
I grab the hem of his T-shirt and shove my hands under it, pressing my hands to his hot, hard abs and leaning into him. We’re going to talk, but he needs to take the edge off. He needs to work through this, and if that means while naked, I’m not complaining. He tears his mouth from mine, his hands pressing to the hard surface on either side of me, his breathing ragged, his eyes swimming with that torment I’d tasted.
“Aren’t you going to demand answers?”
“No. You’re going to give them to me when you’re ready because you love me and because you can trust me with anything.”
“The way you trust me?”
“I do trust you.”
“Funny. That isn’t what you said a few days ago.”
“You know the situation. You know I had a right to be on edge, to be shocked.”
“And yet, a few fucks and you trust me?”
“Fucks? Is that what this is?” Now I’m angry. I try to duck under his arm, but his leg captures mine.
“Running?”
“Moving away from the asshole standing in front of me. Would you prefer I give you a good knee before I do so?”
“I’d prefer you trusted me from the beginning.”
“I’d prefer that you told me the truth from the beginning. Quid pro quo as we say in the legal world. This for that. You get what you give. You got what you gave. And why are we having this discussion yet again? We’ve been down this path. Forward, Aaron. Not backward, which is why I’m not calling you Noah anymore. You can’t be him anymore.”
“Just that easily?”
“There is nothing easy about any of this, including the fact that you and Blake know what I don’t know, like who Mick is to you. Which I just told myself was fine. You need to get some dark energy burned, you need to fuck, but right now, I’m second guessing that way of thinking. The bottom line isn’t about me not trusting you. You don’t trust me. You don’t believe that I can handle whatever it is that you need me to handle. So why did you even bother to come for me?”
“They would have killed you.”
“Oh.” I feel like he just stabbed me in the heart. “Right. So this is about protecting me while getting a fuck in here or there. What do you want me to do? Undress? Bend over? Then we can both forget this is just about protection and deal with how we both move on when this is over.”
He scoops me to him, grasping my backside with one hand, the other flat between my shoulder blades, fingers splayed. “That’s exactly what this should be. That’s what any smart man would make it. We fuck. We hide. We run. You stay out of the details. The less you know, the better.”
“Fine. Fuck me then.”
“I am. I will. But that’s not all this is and you know it.” He doesn’t give me time to reply. His mouth closes down on mine, a demand, a possession, a perfect kiss that is imperfect in all that it represents. He wants to own me. He wants to control me. He wants me to be the woman who accepted him without question and that isn’t even who I should be, it’s not who I should have ever been.
“We’re in this together, eyes open, one hundred percent trust, or not at all. Walker can protect me. Walker will—”
“Smith. You mean fucking Smith.” He releases me and steps back, staring at me, anger and steel in his gaze. “I’m a fucking fool.” He scrubs the back of his neck and then reaches in his pocket, pulling out a phone as he steps to me again and presses it in my hand. “I’m taking a walk. Call Smith and let him tell you who Mick is to me, but know this, I don’t give a fuck how much you hate me when you find out. You are my responsibility. I will not walk away until you’re safe.” He tries to turn away.
My heart lurches, and I catch his arm. “What are you doing? No. You’re not leaving, and I’m not calling Smith. You tell me what you did. You trust me enough to tell me yourself.”
“All right. You want trust? You want to know who I am and why Smith hates me? I killed Mick’s family. Cold blooded killed his family. It was an assignment. I was a fucking assassin for the CIA, and when I had a target, I never missed.”
My throat constricts. “What does that even mean? Killed his family?”
“I was told my target, a very dangerous man—Mick—was at a particular address in Bermuda. He has done things you can’t imagine. I put a bomb in the house. I sat and waited for Mick to show up, and he didn’t. His wife and two kids did. I tried to stop it, but it was too late. They fucking died.”
It feels as if a clamp comes down on my chest. “You didn’t mean to kill them,” I whisper.
“A woman and two children died that day. I didn’t mean to isn’t an excuse. I should have planned better. I should have executed the kill more professionally.”
“You tried. I know you tried and—”
“Stop making excuses for me that you won’t make when you have time to really think about this. When you wake up and hate me.”
“I won’t. I don’t.”
“You will when you wake up. I won’t let you die. Mick is behind all of this. I knew the minute I heard his name. He framed me, and he plans to kill you. Which means I have to kill him first. I’ll kill him, and it won’t be gentle or fast.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Aaron…
I need air. No. I need to kill Mick. I also need to know what it is that Ashley really wants, and I’m not sure she can figure that out right now with me in her face. I pull her to me and kiss the hell out of her, and it’s all I have in me to part our lips, but I do it.
A means to an end needs to come sooner than later. I set her away from me, pulling my phone from my pocket, dialing Smith. “We both know you’re right across the street,” I say when he answers. “Come back. Stay with her.”
<
br /> “Don’t do this,” Ashley says. “Damn it, Noah.”
I pull the phone from my ear. “Noah now?”
“Smartass. Aaron. Don’t do this.”
“Where are you going?” Smith demands.
“To take care of business,” I reply, refocusing on the call. “Tell Blake I’ll find him. You come here.”
“I’m at the door.”
I disconnect and look at Ashley. “He’s at the door. Let him in.”
She shakes her head. “No. I’m not letting in a man you think I want to fuck as you leave on some suicide mission”
“Sweetheart, I don’t die easily. Mick will though. Let Smith in.”
“Please don’t do this to us.” Her voice is low, rough, desperate in a way Ashley is never desperate. I did this to her. I won’t keep doing this to her. “Nothing you told me changes anything,” she adds.
“Until you get some space to feel the brunt of that blow.”
“I don’t need space. I had space while you were gone, and I can’t do that again. I need you. Please don’t go.”
Smith knocks on the door and rings the bell. Ashley’s jaw sets and she turns around, opens the door, looks at him, and says, “Leave.”
I don’t give her a chance to turn back around. I disappear. I’m gone around the corner, disappearing into the shadows of the house. Smith’s voice lifts. “Let him go,” he says. I press myself against the wall. “Let him do what he needs to do. We need to talk.”
“Don’t tell me what I need to do with Aaron, Smith. I love him. I love him so much it hurts, and if you speak a word against him, I swear I will hurt you.”
“You don’t know what he’s done.”
“I know why Mick hates him. He told me. He lied to me when it was his job to lie to me, but on this, on this very important topic, he told me about Mick’s family. So don’t tell me I don’t know him. I know him. And he needs me to know him and believe in him. The way I need him.”
Smith is silent. I’m fucking silent, but my heart is thundering in my ears. This woman loves me in a way I don’t deserve to be loved. But damn how I want to deserve her.
Dirty Rich Secrets: Part Two Page 6
