by Roze, Robyn
He had told her about two potential threats awhile back. One had been neutralized, while the other had fallen apart on its own. Their journey ahead looked trouble free. Make no mistake, he would ensure it remained that way.
Rolling onto his back, one arm flung up and over the slanted lounger, he looked unconcerned. “Oh, you know. A little of this. A little of that.”
Intel on a certain man’s financial holdings, other personal details, and recent photos of him sat secured on Sean’s laptop. All of it replayed in his head. He tried to reconcile the surveillance snapshots of the fit septuagenarian with the full head of hair. Johnathon Martel was not the balding, wrinkled old man he had imagined.
And his enterprising wife, stretched out innocently beside him, had done nothing in Picinguaba to dispel his mistaken assumptions. He couldn’t blame her for withholding some details. After all, she had experienced his jealousy firsthand in the past, but he had evolved since those days. Because he knew who held the key to her heart these days.
However, shrewd awareness of his world and the people orbiting it had kept Sean alive over the years. Hypervigilance of the same caliber would be needed to keep them both safe, now. His radar would always be switched on. For that reason, the search for the man who provided Shayna’s clandestine flight out of Paris had nothing to do with a jealous husband’s insecurities. Tracking down Martel had been a strategic exercise in habitual vigilance.
Although unshakable trust in his wife was the keystone of his confidence. Fidelity anchored the core of Shayna’s being. She gave it. She demanded it in return. Without doubt, his steadfast trust in her would never be misplaced.
The rest of the world, however, had earned his enduring mistrust.
He grasped her hand and kissed the back of it.
Shayna shifted to her side, her free hand gliding up, fingers tracing across his bare chest. “Hmmm. Sounds mysterious. Are you planning something special for my birthday, by any chance?”
He could hardly contain his smile at the restrained request in her voice. The hopeful expectation in her furtive glance up at him. She wasn’t the only mind reader.
Arrangements had already been set for her special day a while ago. The planning had taken time and herculean patience to coordinate the people she loved most, all of whom lived scattered around the globe. Like herding cats, he thought, deciding it was easier to organize soldiers spread around the world for a complex mission than civilians for a surprise birthday celebration.
But he managed the worthwhile task, swearing them all to secrecy. Jack and his family, Scott and his plus-one, and Danielle and Harper would all be traveling to Tuscany to stay at the villa with them to celebrate the upcoming year-end holidays. The most important date among them: Shayna’s fiftieth birthday, after Christmas and before the new year. Her family, all together in one spot, would be the best Christmas and birthday gift he could ever give her.
He grinned. “Would you like that?”
Her eyes sparked with the answer. “The half-century mark is a big one.”
He shrugged. “I wouldn’t know. You’re the cradle robber, not me.” Five years was nothing. But he still enjoyed teasing her about it.
Pretending to be offended, she pinched his chest in response to the blithe comment, then straddled his hips and pinned his shoulders before he could subdue her. Leaning down, her lips a breath from his, she said in a sultry tease, “You know what they say about the hand that rocks the cradle…” The suggestive curve of her lips and provocative sway of her hips against him drove home her irrefutable point, warming his insides with a new awareness he had been experiencing in recent weeks.
Contentment.
Love. Lust. Laughter. Travel. He was living his dream. The irresistible beauty above him gazing adoringly into his eyes was indisputable proof of his good fortune. His fantasy, now a reality. She made everything possible, with no end in sight for any of it.
His palms slid up along his wife’s silky thighs until his fingers slipped under the flimsy material of her bikini bottoms. Gripping a soft, warm cheek in each hand, he pressed her tighter against him, ensuring she could feel him pulsing against her, his thirst for her unquenchable.
Then, shutting out the rest of the world, he kissed the woman who ruled his.
Also by Robyn
Keeper
Keep Her
Free Her
Chain of Title
HellKat
Unchained
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