The Reveal

by Julie Leto

  Her coy glance nearly dropped him to his knees. Then she turned. With his hands level with her curvaceous ass, he cupped her hungrily.

  “I need help with my back,” she said.

  “I can help anything that needs attention.”

  Her shrug was nonchalant. “I’m nearly done. Just a few spots left.”

  “Don’t fool yourself, cher. It’s the important parts that are left…and we’ve just gotten started.”

  Eight

  Sean’s lusty grin was like accelerant on an already raging fire. Never in her life had Brynn hungered so desperately for a man’s touch. She wanted him with a desperation that she’d hate in herself if she’d felt it toward any other man.

  But Sean wasn’t any other man. He was everything she’d ever secretly wanted in a lover—strong, brave, clever, resourceful, sexy and giving. He was also lonely, scarred, arrogant and on the fringe—qualities she would have resisted if the situation had unfolded differently. And yet, despite his determination to push her away, she wasn’t letting go of him without a fight—or at the very least, one last good-bye.

  She slipped the wet cloth into his palm, biting her bottom lip as he dunked the rag into the pot and then squeezed a shower of steaming water down her back. She was awash in moisture as the water trickled down her body and blended with the hot cream curled within her labia.

  He smoothed the cloth around her bottom, down the back of her legs and then up, pressing the wetness of the material to the wetness of her sex. The jolt of pleasure was instantaneous.

  “Oh,” she sighed. “Yes.”

  “See? I told you that you missed this spot,” he teased.

  “I did,” she confessed, cupping her hand over his, showing him precisely how much pressure she needed. “I really did.”

  He rubbed the cloth up and down. Friction built into a needful inferno that nearly had her writhing out of her skin. He paused long enough to douse the cloth again then resumed until she was panting and begging him to bring her to the brink.

  It was shameful how easily he took her to the edge. Shameful and delicious and amazing. He abandoned the cloth and dropped to his knees, swinging her leg over his shoulder so that he could suckle her the rest of the way. Pleasure exploded the moment his mouth met her sex. He tongued her to orgasm, applying constant pressure to her clit until her climax eased from spikes to a steady, relentless thrum.

  Pleasured, but not fulfilled. His kisses left her wanting, needful. Hot.

  He dropped onto the stool, maneuvering her so that her legs were on either side of his. He guided her onto his lap, his erection thick against her belly. She wrapped her hand around him, murmuring her delight at the silky feel of his skin. He was hard, but she could get him harder. Longer. Thicker. With Sean supporting their weight and her feet flat against the stone floor, she possessed all the power.

  “You’re going to miss me,” she said.

  He gripped the edges of the seat. “Never said I wouldn’t.”

  She brushed her thumb over the tip of his cock. The head was hot and moist. She wanted to taste him, but not nearly as much as she wanted him inside.

  “I’m going to miss you, too.”

  “You’ll get over me.”

  “Will I?”

  He lifted her, expertly adjusting their position so that she glided onto him with electric ease.

  “God, I hope so,” he crooned, his hands roaming ravenously around her bottom as he made a miniscule shift that drove him even deeper inside her. “You feel so good.”

  “Do I?” she asked, rocking to a stand so that the tip of his cock was barely inside her.

  Her first orgasm had cleared her head. Sean might think leaving her would be easy, but she was going to show him how wrong he was.

  He groaned, grabbed her hips and pressed her down again, but she leveraged herself back to a half-standing position. If he wanted her, he was going to have to work for it—which he did, by taking her nipple into his mouth and working the nub with his tongue and teeth until she slammed down into him and started the rise and fall that would take him precisely where he wanted to go.

  “That’s it,” he said, digging his fingers into her flesh possessively. “Aw, yeah, cher. That’s the way. Let it go. Don’t hold back.”

  She rocked, rose and descended. He held on for dear life, kissing her hard, taunting her and promising her the world if only she’d make them come.

  The conflagration of sensations burned into her with each word that tumbled from his mouth. Each utterance took them lower, to the earthy base of lovemaking, to the fucks and dicks and cunts that somehow sounded like sweet poetry when tumbling from his lips. She could think of nothing but driving his thick hardness deeper into her body so that it seared her core from the inside out and left her as nothing but cinders and ash.

  But Sean, as always, had other ideas. He slipped his arms beneath her bottom and stood, stumbled to the bed then dropped her onto the dusty coverings. Now, he was on top, pounding into her, plying his hand between them and tuning her orgasm to his. She cried out, lost in the maelstrom, until she was no more than a receptor for his voracious need.

  She stroked his chest, kissed his arms and wrapped her legs tightly around his waist, crooning and cajoling him into letting go.

  His eyes popped open wide just before he crashed. His hot seed seared her, burned and branded her as his. This was a sensation she never wanted to forget—never wanted to do without.

  She simply had to convince him of the same.

  * * *

  Sean had nothing left.

  No breath. No blood. No bone. He was a gelatinous collection of overstretched skin and muscle. But beneath him, Brynn stirred, so he shifted his mass with a grunt and wondered if his innards would re-form or if he’d become just another wasted fixture in the cottage, useless and abandoned.

  Fortunately for him, Brynn opted to bring him back to life. After rinsing herself clean by the fire, she brought over the pot and cloth, dropping them near his feet, which hung over the edge of the lumpy mattress. She took her time, practicing the same tender care she’d shown when he’d been half-conscious from his injuries and unable to appreciate her bedside manner.

  She dried him off then shoved a large log onto the fire until the fire roared again and heated the entire room. As she hung the tattered tartan by the fire beside her wet clothes, Sean forced himself to sit up.

  They’d had their fun. They’d had this moment. Dawn was a few short hours away. This fantasy he’d willfully allowed himself to indulge again would soon be over for good.

  “Brynn,” he whispered.

  His voice barely broke through the crackle and pop from the hearth.

  Brynn stood, as beautiful and breathtaking as a Renaissance statue, facing the fire. Her body was outlined by the glow as if her skin was marble. Her gaze, which he could see only in profile, was once again mesmerized by the flames. He had to fight the instinct to go to her, wrap her in his arms and bring her back to life with his warmth.

  He was an idiot. He’d had all that he deserved. In the morning, he had to move forward.

  Move on—without her.

  “We need to talk,” he continued.

  She spared him a glance over her shoulder. “Do we?”

  Two words, shot from the other side of the room, impacted against his resolve and reduced it to ash.

  Unlike him, Brynn wasn’t a fool. She had started their relationship. She knew as well as he did when and where it would end.

  He changed course. “Is the food still in the truck?”

  She spared him a tiny grin before turning back to the flames. “Mmm.”

  He’d take that as a yes.

  “I’ll just go get it then.”

  He dragged on his jeans and shirt but, before he left, draped his jacket across her naked shoulders, careful not to do more than brush his knuckles against her hair, now tumbling haphazardly around her. Even that miniscule contact flamed his skin, burning him to his core.


  On his way out the door, he caught her burying her nose in his lapel. Her cat-in-the-cream smile nearly cut out what was left of his soul.

  Vaguely, he remembered making a deal with himself, something along the lines of resisting the urge to make love with Brynn again. He pushed into the cold, wishing the frigid temperatures would cool his libido.

  Unfortunately, he needed more than brisk air to undo the magic Brynn had weaved into him. He’d been to war. He’d been to hell. He’d been to the line between sanity and insanity, and he’d managed to drag himself back into the real world with only a few visible scars.

  But loving Brynn?

  He’d never recover.

  Nine

  Sean carried the groceries in from the truck and spread out their haul on the nearest flat surface, which happened to be the mattress. As if nothing had happened between them, Brynn snatched a handful of grapes, popped one in her mouth and announced that she wanted to see the photographs of the men who’d attacked her in San Sebastían again.

  Sean handed her the phone. He’d once thought he’d mastered the craft of compartmentalizing his professional life from his private one, but she made him look like a rank amateur.

  “If you didn’t recognize them before, what makes you think you’re going to now?”

  She slid through the photos, expanding the areas around the faces into close-ups. “You never know when a fresh perspective will change preconceived notions,” she said, her eyebrow arched knowingly before she went through the pictures one last time and then handed him back the device. “If I had a wireless connection, I could tap into a secure network and run facial recognition.”

  “Macy has signal blockers positioned around the perimeter of the property. No one gets internet out here except for her.”

  “I think I’m going to like this Macy Rush.”

  “Macy Burke,” he corrected. “She’s badass, but she took Dante’s name.”

  “Taking a man’s name doesn’t make a woman any more or less badass,” she said, but without conviction for debate. She was scrolling through the photos with one hand while mindlessly running her fingers over the scab that had formed on her thigh with the other.

  “No, but I admit it surprised me. I’d never pegged her for a traditional kind of girl.”

  “Girl?” she said, eyebrow lifted.

  Rather than engaging Brynn in an argument about gender equality that had no relation to them, he searched through his bag for the antibiotic ointment they’d brought from Spain.

  “You two are going to get along just fine. When we show up on her doorstep, maybe she’ll like you enough to help us. She definitely won’t do it for me.”

  “How could she possibly not like you?” Brynn asked, her tone only hinting at sarcasm.

  He found the tube and uncapped it. “By the time I joined the Arm, she’d already defected to T-45. Dante was fairly obsessed with winning her back. I wasn’t around when they were first together, but apparently, he’d done something really stupid and she left.”

  “And you blame her for this?” Brynn asked.

  “Nah, I’m pretty sure it was all Dante’s fault. But he risked a lot of lives to make it up to her. And,” he continued, not wanting to fill in details that weren’t his to tell, “Macy knows I wasn’t supportive of their reunion.”

  Brynn nodded. “I can see how she might hold a grudge.”

  “Of course you would.”

  She opened her mouth to protest his remark, but he grabbed her leg and dragged it across his lap, causing her to yelp instead. Though healing, the scrape was pink and puckered and no doubt painful when rubbed by clothing.

  If only he could keep her naked for a few more hours.

  “I can do that,” she murmured, shifting into a more comfortable position.

  “You could,” he replied. “But you took care of me longer than you should have. Let me do this for you. This last time.”

  He should have swallowed his final phrase. Pain skittered across her eyes, but then she shut them tightly and relaxed, bundled in his jacket, her back braced against the wall.

  “It doesn’t make sense. I don’t understand why anyone was targeting me. I don’t have enemies in San Sebastían.”

  “Apparently, you do.”

  “No,” she insisted. “I don’t. It’s against Titan protocols to operate in a town where known hostiles exist.”

  “Maybe they just weren’t known until now.”

  She smirked. “I’ve been running the European division of Titan since I graduated from college—not finishing school, by the way,” she said, snapping his brain back to a comment he’d made days ago but that she clearly still took umbrage over. “Spain, Italy, England, France, Germany and a significant part of the Netherlands have been my playing field for over a decade. Every six months, we evaluate and re-evaluate all our contacts, safe houses and escape routes. El Creador did not originally operate from San Sebastían. When he wanted to retire, we placed him there on the condition that he continue doing work for as long as he was able. He would never risk his lifestyle by selling me out.”

  “What if the local muscle was just answering an international call?” Sean suggested.

  “Meaning?”

  “The minute you came to my rescue, you put yourself in some serious crosshairs. If Dante had really hired you, he would have protected your identity with his life. But we know now that he wasn’t the mastermind. Maybe whoever really hired you didn’t appreciate you helping me escape and put a bounty on your head.”

  “That still doesn’t explain how anyone knew where we were,” she argued.

  “Maybe we were followed. Maybe it was dumb luck or an educated guess based on your previous behaviors. Bottom line is that once we make contact with Macy, no one will find us. Not unless she wants them to.”

  Sean had finished applying the ointment, but he wiped his hand on his shirt and continued running his fingers up and down the uninjured part of her skin, unable to stop himself from touching her. She hadn’t yet put her panties back on. Little by little, his fingers inched closer and closer to her sweet center.

  And damn her, she didn’t resist.

  “If someone was anticipating my moves, I need to warn my people,” she said. “They could be in danger.”

  “Or they could be the source of information.”

  Brynn did not argue. Unlike the CIA, Titan likely didn’t have loyalty oaths or threats of treason to keep people from spilling their guts for the right price.

  “You’ve had people betray you before,” he guessed.

  Her glare was hard and cold. “Not many, but yes. It’s the price of doing business. Some of my European team resented my spending more time and resources in the North American market.”

  He forced himself to focus on her knee, running his fingers in a circle around the cap. “Let me guess. It all started with Marisela?”

  Brynn grinned. “She does make an impression, doesn’t she?”

  He shrugged. “The fact that you and she get along made an impression on me.”

  “A good one?”

  He tried to keep his touch light, but the more they explored the topic of his admiration, the more of her he wanted to touch. “What do you think?”

  She pressed the small of her back against the wall. “I think Marisela could be at risk. If they tracked me, they could have tracked her.”

  She sounded worried, but not about her colleague. Her gaze remained latched on his hand. He drew lazy figure eights on the side of her knee, undeterred by her less-than-subtle shift out of his reach.

  “She’s in the States and working an unrelated case, right?” he asked. “I doubt they’ll bother with her. And even if they did, I’d put my money on Marisela. Wouldn’t you?”

  Despite the incremental resistance he felt against his touch, Sean ran his hand down to her toes, running his fingers over the glossy toenails, painted nude but with tiny glints of sparkle that captured the light from the fire.

  �
�Titan has an international reputation,” he said. “I can’t imagine they’d poke a sleeping beast. As long as your team doesn’t know where you are, they’re not only out of danger, but they’re out of the way.”

  “You don’t know where Jayda is. That doesn’t make you less a target.”

  Sean released her leg, almost before he realized it. He hated when Brynn talked about Jayda—hated when she forced him to think about her, even though, rationally, he knew his former lover was the cornerstone of their predicament.

  But she was dead. Dead and buried. Evidence to the contrary was circumstantial at best—and Sean’s proof was solid. It wasn’t that he trusted Dante’s information—he trusted no one that implicitly—but he did trust his gut.

  Even before Dante had come to New Orleans with the news, Sean had known she was gone. Maybe he was a fool or maybe he’d hung out with too many voodoo practitioners during his misspent youth, but when her light had gone out, the balance in his world had changed.

  For the first time in years, he’d felt…safe.

  “She’s dead.”

  “You keep saying that, but in light of what’s happened, how can you still be so sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Why? Did you see her body?”

  “No,” he confessed. “I didn’t need to.”

  “Did you see an autopsy report? Review DNA evidence? Read the official CIA report on the loss of a major asset?”

  He grabbed her by the upper arms. He shook her, not out of anger but because he was shaking himself. “You need to drop this. Jayda is gone. I know this, not because of reports that can be manufactured or because I trust Dante not to lie.”

  “Then you know because you had some sort of psychic connection that broke when she stopped breathing air?”

  He released her. No matter how hard he tried, he could not make her understand something he didn’t himself.

  “Something like that,” he muttered.

  “Did you love her?”

  Sean’s chest tightened. For a split second, he felt as if he were tied to the metal chair again, this time with a vice clamping around him from his midsection to his ribs. He searched Brynn’s face for any sign of hurt, as if his loving Jayda in the past would somehow diminish what he felt toward her, but saw nothing but curiosity.