by Dale Mayer
And suddenly she was lifted into the air, cradled against his chest, as he walked a few steps to the bunk. He gently lowered her on the mattress. She opened her arms. He shrugged and shook his head. “Too many clothes.”
Her heart skimmed against her chest, constricting her breath even further, as he pulled the T-shirt over his head and quickly unbuckled his jeans, kicking off his boots and socks, and stepping out of his pants along with his briefs in the same motion. He was truly gorgeous. A well-built male in his prime and completely unselfconscious about it. She gave a happy sigh. Her body rippled with heat as she noted that his heavily muscled and otherwise incredible male form in truth matched up to the dreams that she’d had of him.
She tried to swing off the bunk, but he wouldn’t let her. He sat down beside her, completely unconcerned about being naked, and pulled off her camisole. Next he slid her boy shorts underneath her butt and down, taking her panties with them. When the thin strip of hair showed up, he stopped, his breath catching in the back of his throat as a shudder wrapped itself around and down so visibly she could feel it herself.
When his hands slid under her plump breasts, he whispered, “My God, you’re so beautiful.”
She smiled, shook her head, and said, “No,” she said, “not really. I’m fit. I’m slim, but I’m average.”
His gaze heated up as he did one long, full, slow sweep of her body and said, “Sweetheart, I hate to tell you, but, for all that brainpower up there”—and he gently tapped her temple—“you have no clue just how devastating you are.”
He lay down beside her, as if afraid to touch her, and just feasted his eyes. Embarrassed, she went to cover her breasts, and he immediately reached out to stop her. He leaned over a nipple, gently laving it with his tongue before taking it into his mouth and sucking deeply.
She moaned as her belly pulsed in response. She just knew Lennox would be slow and thorough. No way this would be a fast coupling. And, sure enough, he moved to thoroughly kiss the entire breast and to slide to the valley between them and to repeat his ministrations on the second one. She was already mindless jelly by the time he worked his way up to her collarbone, and then to her shoulders and under her neck, on to her chin, but he kept avoiding giving her the passionate kisses that she was so desperate to have. She tried to tug him toward her, but he resisted.
“We have all night,” he whispered, “and I’ve waited too long to make this a rush job.”
“Well, you can make it a rush job the first time,” she protested with a tiny smile. “The second time, we could take it slow.”
“We’ll take it slow the second time as well,” he vowed.
And she groaned as his hands slid down her arms to gently stroke her fingers, her palms, and then back up the underside to glide along her rib cage as he plumped her breasts once again for feasting.
And then he slowly moved down her body.
She groaned and cried out, twisting as he gave her navel the same amount of care and intention as her breasts and then down to one hip bone, where he took tiny little nibbles.
She groaned. “I can’t hold off.”
“And why would you?” he asked, as he shifted enough to stroke the outside of her thigh to her feet where he picked up one foot and gently kissed her big toe before taking it in his mouth and suckled.
She groaned and then laughed and then groaned again as her body rippled in need, overwhelmed with awareness of every move he made. Every nerve ending was on fire. When he moved his hands up the inside of her thigh, she shifted her legs wide to give him access.
He gently stroked her curls and then slid one finger deep inside.
She gasped, her hips rising off the bed as he lowered his hand to find the tiny nub.
Without any warning, fireworks exploded in her belly, shooting outward. She cried out, shuddering in his hands.
He dropped kisses up her belly to her ribs and up under her chin before he shifted over her, holding his weight on his elbows as he lowered his head and finally kissed her full on the lips with mind-drugging passion.
She shifted her hips ever-so-slightly, sliding her heels up the back of his calves and behind his knees, to wrap tightly around his hips. “More, I want more,” she whispered. “Show me how you care.”
And, with those words, he slipped inside her body.
She arched slowly up against him, pressing her breasts up against his muscular chest, as he seated himself deep within her.
She moaned, as her body stretched, easing at his complete possession.
He lowered his head and groaned, whispering, “I love you,” he said ever-so-gently. “I think I always have.”
And he ground his hips tight against hers and then slowly withdrew, only to drive in again. Shocked by his words, overwhelmed by her emotions, she could feel yet another orgasm rippling through her by his words alone. He wrapped her tight and drove both of them toward the cliff yet again.
Her heart was so damn full. Yet she realized she hadn’t shared anything with him. She slid her arms up as he drove harder, deeper, faster. His eyes closed as he headed for his release. She reached up, snagged him by the ears, and whispered, “Look at me.”
He stared down at her, not missing a stroke. His hot gaze focused on her. She realized the love in the gaze she recognized so damn well but had always thought it was something else. But, no, every time he looked at her, it had been with the same intensity.
She smiled. Her finger stroked across his lips as she whispered, “And I, I love you too.”
He cried out as his body exploded with his climax.
And, just like that, his enjoyment sent her rolling back off the cliff yet again too. After that, she closed her eyes and dozed off. With she woke again, she was wrapped up in his arms.
He whispered, “Sleep.”
She rolled over again, tucking up close, her legs entwined with his, and slept again. When she woke for the third time, he was coming out of the bathroom to join her. She looked up at him. “What time is it?”
“It’s five,” he whispered. “Go back to sleep.”
And she was just too tired to argue. When she woke up the next time, she was alone. She sat up, looked around, winced from the unaccustomed soreness from her night of heavy lovemaking, slipped out of bed, and quickly put on her clothing. As she opened the door, she peered down the hallway, but she saw no signs of anyone. Grateful for that, she slipped across to her room and crawled into her bunk.
“If you think you can hide from me,” Carolina said, with a chuckle in her voice, “you’re wrong.”
“Oh, God!” Helena said. “I was hoping you were still asleep.”
“No, woke up in the night anyway,” she said, “and I knew where you were.”
“Are you mad?”
“If you were with anybody but my brother,” she said, “I might be a little miffed, but I could never be mad at you.”
“Well, I was with your brother,” she said with a happy sigh, as she curled atop the covers and rolled over to face the wall. She didn’t want to join the world. She just wanted to exist in her happy glow for a while longer.
“So why did you leave so fast?”
“Because he left,” she said. “I didn’t want to wake up and have somebody else come in.”
“Ah,” Carolina said. “Well, you might want to grab your shower now.”
“Is that an option?”
“It sure is.”
With that, Helena hopped up and headed into the bathroom, where she quickly stripped down and had a shower. She redressed in her same clothes from yesterday and brushed her hair, now freshly shampooed and towel dried as much as she could and then put it in a braid. “Well,” Helena said. “Hopefully, this is okay.” She stepped out of the bathroom.
Carolina asked, “Why wouldn’t it be?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I told him to use me as bait.” And she explained some of what had happened with Lennox and first Stefano, then later with Rob, all at her apartment. “This
Stefano guy seems to think that Lennox is the one who raped the girl in Thailand.”
“And, of course, it was Rob.”
“But, of course, Rob said that he was innocent. Somehow gave whatever proof that Stefano needed to seem to believe it was Lennox. Setting up Lennox at the same time. And I wonder if his whole thing about setting Lennox up wasn’t to get to us,” Helena said.
“Yeah, what’s this about being completely smitten with you?”
“I don’t see it,” she said. “I think he just said that to throw Lennox off the trail. Likely drove him nuts at the same time.”
“And maybe that’s true,” Carolina said, “but why?”
“All I think it is, is because he wanted me and possibly you at the same time back then,” Helena said. “But I think it became more about destroying Lennox. To have him worry about what this known rapist would do to us.”
“And, of course, the worst thought would be that he brutalizes and rapes us and has our history repeating itself, but with the added edge of a rapist known to Lennox being in control of us, the two most important women in Lennox’s life.”
“Exactly. When you think about it, Rob’s already sicced somebody very dangerous on Lennox. That Stefano guy. That’s a lot of hate.”
“Or Rob’s just lost in that crazy mind of his, and he does think you’re his girlfriend.”
“I don’t think so,” Helena said. “I think, once we get to the truth of it, it’ll be all about Stefano, the guy who’s trying to take out Lennox. Just way too much about his revenge is at work here. I don’t see this as a fatal attraction at all.”
“That’s because you don’t see yourself,” Carolina said. “You’ve always referred to me as gorgeous and beautiful, a China doll, and how stunning I was. And yet, for all the beauty and the brains that you have, you’ve never really understood just how gorgeous you are.” Carolina’s words were a reminder of what Lennox had said during the night.
Helena had to stop and wonder. “I don’t feel beautiful,” she said, “and, therefore, in my mind, I’m not beautiful.”
“I understand that,” she said, “but we can’t let our exes make us into what they wanted us to be. Which were sluts in bed and ugly slaves the rest of the time.”
“Isn’t that the truth?” Helena said sadly. “I still don’t see that I have any kind of beauty that would cause this kind of attraction.”
“Well, you keep your theory, and I’ll keep my mind open,” she said. “But I still don’t like the idea of you being bait.”
“I don’t know how it can work out any other way,” Helena said. “While we’re safe, the guys are chasing around after Stefano and Rob in the city but getting nowhere. Sure, we know about facial-recognition software, traffic cameras, blah, blah, blah, but the bad guys are always a couple steps ahead of our good guys. I’m sure by now, our guys have tracked down the history of Rob’s apartment in my building. They’ll find out he never lived there, that he deliberately placed himself in those cameras. Misdirection or a decoy or whatever the reason. The apartment probably isn’t even his. Maybe he just subleased it off some guy. Or he’s living there without anyone knowing.”
“Just to set the scene that you’re dating him?”
“Yes,” Helena said. “What bothers me more is this other guy, Stefano. How has he tracked us, and how is he so in the know as to what’s going on with us? Then again, it’s possible he had access to military intel himself. All these guys have connections,” She sighed. “That was one of the things that worried Lennox.”
“I would think so,” Carolina said. “So, how well do you know Sasha and John?”
Helena walked toward Carolina with a frown and sat on the bottom bunk. “Are you serious?”
Carolina rolled over and propped herself up on one elbow. “Well, think about it. They’ve been with us for the last couple years that we’ve been doing Red Cross trips. And they happened to be on the same flight to Munich, letting everybody know where we were.”
“They went home. We went a different way.”
“But we still said we were going home, not necessarily where home was but back to the US.”
She thought about it and nodded. “I guess it’s possible,” Helena said. She looked down at Carolina and her phone in her bag. “And I never even thought about it, but what are the chances that we’re being tracked even now?”
“I don’t know why they would have gone to the apartment, if that were the case. They would have tracked us to the safe house and then here, right?”
“True,” Helena said. “I don’t know. It’s too damn confusing.”
Just then a knock came on the door.
As Helena was closer, she walked over and opened it. Lennox stepped in, wrapped her up in a hug without giving her a chance to stop him, and kissed her thoroughly. As Carolina chuckled behind them, he finally lifted his head and said to Helena, “Good morning.”
“Good morning,” Helena said when she could finally speak. “Did you have to do that?”
Gavin stood behind Lennox, grinning.
“Absolutely,” Lennox said. “This way, nobody is under any illusions about our relationship.”
“And I didn’t mean that,” she said drily. “I meant, did you have to scramble my brains so early in the morning?”
And, at that, the rest of the room broke out laughing.
He grinned at her, leaned down, gave her another gentle kiss, and said, “How about the coffee?” he said. “As I recall, you’re grumpy without enough coffee in you.”
“Is she ever,” Carolina said, hopping off the top bunk. “Come on. Let’s get food too and set up a game plan. I really don’t like the idea of you using her as bait.”
“But I do,” Helena said. “It’s the only answer that makes any sense.”
“It does make sense,” Gavin said, “but I’m not a big fan of it either.”
“And I also think,” Helena continued, “that whole relationship spiel by Rob is BS. I think it’s to throw you off your game. If he grabs me and potentially Carolina, it’s to make us suffer as the Thai girl suffered. Just to get back at you.”
At that, Lennox stopped and stared down at her.
She nodded. “Because he knows that, when you find out, you’ll hit the red zone really fast and go after him.”
“You’re right,” Lennox said in a suspiciously quiet voice. “I’m going to kill him.”
And, at that, he turned and walked away.
Lennox didn’t want to leave her to wake up alone, but he had had no choice. When he was called upstairs by Gavin, they had a lot of information coming in, and the biggest and most important was that both Stefano and Rob were still hanging around Helena’s apartment area. They were quickly managing to stay ahead of cameras but had been spotted by a couple police cruisers. That chase had led them nowhere but was enough confirmation for Lennox to know that the two bad guys were in that area.
Now, as the group was seated at the table in the ship, and ended up with coffee and then food, Lennox smiled his thanks to the men who had delivered it all and said, “We’ll be out of your hair soon.”
“Too bad,” one of the men said. “Helena and Carolina have been great to have on board.”
“Good,” he said. “I’m glad we’re not putting you guys out.”
The men just smiled and then walked away.
Lennox looked over at Helena. “More conquests?”
“Hardly,” she said with a laugh.
“We’ll see,” he said. Lennox had a rough plan in his mind, but he still needed to flesh it out. His phone buzzed. It was Keane. He handed over his phone to Gavin to read the text message.
He skimmed it and nodded.
“And what’s that mean?” Helena asked.
“It’s set up,” Lennox said. “We’re heading back to your apartment.”
“I’m coming too,” Carolina said.
He frowned at her, already shaking his head with veto power.
“No way I’m letti
ng you take her into danger if I’m not there.”
“Why? So you can be in danger too?” he said in exasperation. “You can stay here where you’re safe.”
“Ha!” Carolina said. “If she’s going, I’m going.”
“Not happening,” Lennox said, his voice inflexible, at least he hoped so. “I have to look after too many things,” he said. “My attention will be divided, and that’ll put Helena and you and me and Gavin in danger.”
She just glared at him. “What is it that you expect me to do then? Sit here and wait?”
“Well, that’d be nice if you would,” he said, his voice serious as he stared at his sister intently.
“There are times to stick up for your sister,” Carolina said.
“And there are times when you’ll be in the way,” Lennox parried.
At that, Helena grabbed Carolina’s hand and said, “It’s all right. I’ll be fine. I’m sure Lennox and Gavin have backup lined up to be there too. Right?” Her gaze went from Gavin to Lennox.
“We have city police, and another unit from Coronado will be there,” Lennox said.
“Perfect!” She looked at Carolina. “Sit here and entertain these men while I’m gone,” she joked. “It was on me last time. It’ll be you this time.”
Carolina looked at her, rolled her eyes, and said, “That’s hardly fair. I get to be the entertainment while you get to be the main course.”
Helena wrinkled her face up at that phrase. “That’s not really a nice way to look at this.”
Unfortunately, as far as Lennox was concerned, that was a little bit too real. As soon as they were done eating, he said, “We need to go.”
She immediately stood and said, “I’m ready. So, is Carolina just sitting here with our gear?”
Lennox nodded. “We thought about taking her onshore, but we just can’t take any chances of somebody snagging her too. She’s safe here.”
“Fine,” Carolina said in a dark tone. “But you owe me.”
