by Nicole Snow
“Stanley or Ray?” I ask, leading them through a narrow space to the truck.
“Both,” she says. “Stanley was terrified a decade or so back. He thought he’d have to file bankruptcy. But after he partnered with a new investor, things changed. We expanded. All went well for several years. His worries were gone, except for the first ship that went missing, lost in that terrible storm. Then Stanley died...and it’s Ray who’s been stressed lately. He’s gone all the time, but he’s not at the office. He hasn’t been the same since two of our ships turned up missing last year.”
“You mentioned a new investor.” Zeroing in on it, I ask her point-blank, “Who?”
She lets out a heavy sigh. “I never knew much about it. Still don’t, I’m afraid. Stanley kept his business affairs close to his chest, just like his son.” Tears gleam in her eyes. “You have to find him. I’m afraid something terrible has happened.”
“We’ll find him,” I say. “Right now, we need to find you a safe place.”
“Me?” Fear flashes in her eyes as she looks from me to Val. “You think someone wants me, too?”
“There’s a strong possibility,” I say, opening the door to my truck.
This is where the rubber meets the road.
My eyes flick to Val, who’s gone quiet, hashing the latest agony injected into her life.
It isn’t fucking fair.
Somehow, some way, I’ll keep her and Lorelei safe, and then I’ll end this cloak and dagger fuckery once and for all.
17
A Little Heart-to-Heart (Valerie)
I’m starting to think life without Flint Calum doesn’t exist.
He’s saved me, and now he’s taking care of Mother.
He ferried her out of Honolulu, then convinced her to take a private flight to Kauai, to stay at a resort there, one he knew was safe, until we get this sorted.
That’s the word he uses, and it kinda makes me smile.
It’s a lot easier to handle something that sounds like a bad mess of laundry than a missing snake of a brother and soulless men who want us dead.
Whatever else happens, I’ll always see Flint in a special way nobody else does. I’ve had a chance to peek into his heart, and it’s so gold, it’s blinding.
It’s not just his muscles or his good looks or his whip-smart words and freaky ability to pivot instantaneously. No way.
This man is my rock, my shield, and my hero.
I’m grateful I’m hiding behind my shades on the frantic drive around the island. Even after we let Mother off at the airport and watched her flight take off, I’m tearing up every time my eyes catch the light from that black pearl still on my finger.
If a miracle happens, if we find our way out of this, I have to tell him.
If Flint leaves the door to his life cracked even a teensy little bit, I’m his, and no one else’s.
It’s night by the time we’re almost back at his house.
It’s been a whirlwind of a day and this is the first time I’m able to catch my breath.
It hits me then. We still need Ray’s fingerprints.
Crap.
“We can go to my mother’s house,” I suggest as soon as I tell him what I’m thinking. “The maid knows me and so does Webster. They’ll let me in.”
“No,” he says. “They’re watching every Gerard property like hawks, babe. That’s why we booked a resort for your ma on Kauai instead of her own place, remember? I’ll grab them off something in his office.”
I blink a couple times. “You’re going back there?”
He nods, his azure eyes a shade darker, yet full of so much energy.
“But if the houses are being watched...same goes for the office, too.”
“You’re not wrong,” he growls.
“Then—”
“Val, there’s no choice. I have to figure out if Ray’s missing by choice or because somebody made him disappear. The office is the best place to look.”
My stomach twists up at the thought of him going alone. “I’ll come with you.”
“No way. I’ll have backup. Need you to stay put right here.”
“With you or watching out for you? There’s a difference,” I say, trying not to sound too frustrated.
It’s dark, so I can’t tell if he’s thinking or not, but he knows what I’m talking about.
Having Davis or Cash hanging around isn’t the same as being with him, front and center. They may not know if someone was inside until it’s too late.
“Why’d you get out of the security business, anyway? You’re good at what you do.”
“Bryce, first and foremost.” I believe him, but I also sense some odd hesitation in his voice.
“So you can be a full-time father and he won’t be in danger?” My stomach sinks. “Like he is now.”
Ugh. Here comes the self-imposed guilt trip.
“Stop it, Val. You aren’t to blame for this shit.”
I stare out the window, not seeing much of anything.
He’s obviously right.
I stay quiet as he pulls through the gate and into the garage. Icy silence remains as we walk into the house.
I’ve managed to keep the tears back all day—mostly—but I’m not sure how I’ll keep it up as soon as the lights are on.
So I move to the staircase as he flips the switch and adjusts the brightness of the recessed lights.
“You hungry?” he asks. “It’s been a while since lunch. I can whip up a quick supper.”
Sigh. If only food were the cure to everything like this outrageous man seems to think it is.
I keep walking. “No, not right now. Maybe later.”
I need a breather in my room. No, not my room. It’s Flint’s. The entire house is his.
I’m just a guest here causing turmoil. I don’t belong tangled up in his beautiful life or anywhere. But especially not here, not now, when I’m putting everyone at risk.
Shaking my head, I chastise myself quietly.
This needs to stop.
Still, it pisses me off. I don’t want to be the person I used to be—but how do I even start rebuilding an identity, a new life, when the old one is breathing down my neck like a hungry dragon?
I want to be someone else.
Someone who lives for others without the whole freaking world bending on its axis for her issues.
Spinning around, I leave the room, and force myself to walk down to the kitchen again.
“Change your mind?” he asks, looking up from the counter. “I was just starting a seafood stew. It’s this stuff my ma used to make, bouillabaisse.”
I smile at the way he butchers the French word. He beams back a grin that could melt every dress in a hundred-mile radius.
“I know, I know. Can’t pronounce it worth shit but trust me. It’s good stuff.”
“I believe you, but I’m still missing my appetite.” I huff out a breath, folding my arms. “This is my fault. I’m not here to cry about it, but I have to do something about it.”
He sets down the knife he’d used to chop up garlic. “You already are.”
I pace the floor in front of the kitchen island, still not sure what I can do about any of this. The frustration inside me builds like a firestorm.
“Val.” He whispers my name in that low rumble he has, toweling off his hands after rinsing them. “You’re gonna make yourself dizzy, woman, fluttering around like a lost bee. Why don’t you sit?”
He steps around the counter and grasps my shoulders tight.
It’s the first time our bare skin has touched since we shared his bed.
Argh. I’m shameless. A total...I don’t even know.
I can’t think straight when he’s touching me. Looking through me with those eyes like lashing blue flames.
But it works. I stop fretting over things I can’t control.
My mind goes back in time to his bed. My heart follows. It’s racing so fast the rest of me can’t keep up.
So I cover my face with bot
h hands, trying like hell to ignore my mess of a life, and enjoy this beast-man’s safety, his warmth, his magnificent embrace.
“Give it time,” he says softly.
Time. Right.
It only feels like forever being close enough to kiss him.
My mind flashes to us in his bed, and the image won’t leave. I reach out, running my hands up his neck, tracing his chiseled jaw.
He grabs my wrists and gingerly pulls my hands away from his face.
I keep my eyes closed.
“Open your eyes, Valerie. Look at me.”
I don’t dare, but I suck in a deep breath and listen.
Compassion and kindness fill his face. “I know this shit’s been hard on you, and I promise it’ll get better. Very soon. You’re too good to stay down in hell.”
I can’t find my voice.
Probably because I have no freaking clue what I’d say.
I shouldn’t act on desire, so I consider stepping away. But he still has this tight, bearish hold of my hands.
I shake my head.
Flint won’t let go.
He pulls me closer, then folds his arms around me. “I said I promise. Not something I ever do lightly.” The way he growls just confirms it.
My arms wrap around him, and I hold on tight, even as I’m suffering every second I’m pressed to his chest, breathing him in. He’s sandalwood and sea. This fierce, unmistakably masculine scent that’s absolutely Flint.
It’s like he’s my lifeline. My silver thread of sanity. The one thing keeping me from going insane through this ordeal.
He’s kept me alive. I’m certain of it.
And right now, he has me feeling very alive, indeed.
So I bury my face against his shirt, letting go, giving in to his bewildering cologne and musk and brash heat.
Maybe I am a different person than I used to be. My brain shifts away from dwelling on my sorrow to taking what I want.
Taking him by offering my all.
“Flint...” I lift my head and kiss his neck, his stubble, then the bottom of his chin, slowly working my way up to his lips poised in the perfect smirk.
When my lips brush his, curious and exploring, I half expect resistance. Doubts. Second guesses.
But I’m overjoyed when his lips meet mine, returning my kiss.
It lasts for an eternity, us glued together in passion and fury.
I’m flipping delirious, throbbing from head to toe. The desire glowing in his eyes gives me courage.
Without another word, I step back, just enough to slide my hand down his rock hard chest, his buck wild abs, grasping the waistband of his shorts.
“Fuck,” he grinds out.
Giving a brisk tug, I turn and walk down the hall leading to his bedroom, urging him to follow.
Once we’re there, I push up his shirt, and leave a trail of kisses across his chest.
“You sure about this?” he asks.
I smile. “Very sure. You promised me better, Mister.”
He lets out a low growl and grasps my face, kissing me again, making oh-so-good on his word.
Maybe he can’t save the world tonight.
But he can save me from spontaneously combusting thanks to my own reckless lust.
His kisses come hotter now, adding teeth, pulling a soft moan out of me as his hands roam my curves, finding new ways to hint and pinch and tease.
Holy hell!
We strip off each other’s clothes and fall to the bed, fully naked, his massive weight pinning me down. His cock finds my pussy, strokes my clit, this dry humping bliss that leaves me undone and pleading for him to take me. Condoms be damned.
He’s still kissing me everywhere, teasing me with his lips, stroking me with his tongue, driving me higher and higher into a frenzy. I can’t take much more.
I want him right now.
All of him.
“Flint!” I gasp, digging my nails into the bedspread, trying to hold back a full-blown O that’s closing in fast. “Take me. Now. Please.”
He sucks my left nipple long and hard before asking, “Take you where, honey? The fucking zoo?”
His cock slides against me again, thick and eager, rubbing this deliciously forbidden ache through every inch of me.
I tighten my thighs around his waist, forcing him to slow.
“I want you,” I say between harsh breaths. “Want you now.”
“Yeah?” He moves to my other nipple, drags it between his teeth, threatening to make me come then and there. “You want this dick to make you come? You want it so hard you put a few more scars on my skin?”
“Right now!” I groan, biting my lip so hard I almost taste blood.
“One second,” he says, sliding off the bed.
“No!” I almost shout it, grabbing his hand. “I have an IUD. I want to feel everything, Flint. I want you to come inside me.”
I’m a throbbing mess, legs spilling over the edge of the bed as he stares at me like I just told him where he could find Aladdin’s cave of wonders.
“You want this?” he growls, making it perfectly clear what this means with a fierce drag of his cock through my folds.
So flipping close to the target. He grabs my wrists and pins them down, forcing my legs open wider with a twist of his hips, his lip curling like this mad, beautiful beast.
“You know I do,” I whimper, pushing against his length.
“Fucking aye. Listen. I haven’t had it raw for fifteen years, woman. A broken condom gave me Bryce. You got any fucking clue what you’re asking? What you’re willing me to do?” He’s almost panting, his huge chest rising and falling, totally more animal than man.
Oh. My. Flipping. Stars. And. Garters.
I can’t even think.
So I just pull my lip into my mouth and let my eyes do the begging.
“Val...sweet Valerie...you let me in, you let me feel that pussy wrapped around my cock, and I will take you so hard you get amnesia a second time. I know that’s a fucked up thing to say but it’s true. You’ll be so drunk on my strokes you won’t have room for anything else in your head.”
“Yesss.” I plant my palms on my knees, spread them apart, and settle my eyes on his erection. It throbs so hard when he wraps his fist around it. This thin, translucent sap drips out, trailing down to my skin. His pre-come burns. “I want it, I want you, right here, right now.”
A searing flush of heat races through my body. He gives me a savage grin.
Then he lowers himself into me, pushing his dick in. His shoulders roll like every muscle in his body is ready for this.
I don’t even know what happens next. There’s this blistering second where my pussy figures out he’s in me, skin on skin, and that’s when I lose it.
There’s a growl like thunder, a whimper pouring out of me, and a mess of swinging hips and swaying bodies. There’s loud curses and louder kisses and my nails raking down his back, adding a few more scars to his canvass.
There’s heat.
Oh, sweet hell, the heat!
It comes at me so hot and intense and wild I’m gone in what seems like a minute.
My legs start shaking as he pounds me into the mattress, hugging him for dear life, under him but riding his entire frame like he’s this huge, otherworldly thing sent here to sex me into oblivion.
There’s no other word for it.
Not when my eyes pinch shut and I’m tossing my head, digging my heels into his strong thighs as he goes faster, harder, wilder.
Coming!
It hits like the morning sun squeezed into a single flash of lightning.
Every muscle, every breath, every morsel of me goes electric for Flint Calum.
There’s just the ragged sound of my own breathing, the slap of his balls on my skin, the feeling of his ginormous cock lifting me up and down. One punishing stroke after the next, straight to ecstasy.
My clit hurts so good, the friction of his pubic bone grinding down with every thrust.
Is it any surpri
se I come so long and so hard? I’m almost blacking out.
It’s the slower sway of his hips that wakes me from my sex-crazed stupor. And his voice.
“Roll over for me, honey. Gonna take you harder from behind.”
Harder? Is he kidding? Is he—
Yep.
His cock almost splits me in two a second time the instant I’m on my knees, turned over, butt up and prone for him to mount me like he’s gone into full rut.
I feel like I’m riding the ocean. Rolling, rocking, drifting higher and higher, searching for that hundred-foot-high crest wave that I know is only moments away.
I couldn’t tell you what puts me over the edge again to save my life.
His hands, white-knuckle grabbing my ass, holding me down while he drives in again and again.
His fist, tangled in my hair, winding it around and around and pulling with just the right pressure while my legs convulse.
His roar. Loud and wild and free as a waterfall. He lets out this breathless grunt, driving into me after I’ve come two more times, closing in on his own release.
When it comes, of course it’s freaking glorious.
There’s just that deep dark grinding in his chest, exploding into a full masculine scream.
Then the swell of his cock, the insane heat of his thrusts and his friction on my clit, the liquid fire jetting out of him.
His seed could do bad, bad things to a woman.
And I want him to do them all to me as he floods my pussy, holds me down, almost like it’s some crazy, forgotten mating ritual meant to mark me for life.
Holyyy shit!
It’s no surprise I come, one frenzied O melding into his.
Passion so lush, so hot, I couldn’t have dreamed it.
Best of all, he’s right.
By the time he’s taken me several more times just like that, long into the evening, barely stopping for a break, it’s a miracle I can even remember my own freaking name.
I’m thoroughly addicted to this man.
And I get a second wind just when I think he might be spent, using my mouth to work his cock up, winding my tongue around these spots that make him twitch.
