by Warren, Rie
I RACED INTO MY house, digging out the embedded ear-wire.
“So, you and Quintessa. I never knew it went quite that deep.” Walker dogged my heels as I sprinted up the stairs.
I stopped on the landing, spinning toward him. “You still don’t have a fucking clue. This isn’t about Quintessa for me, you fuck. It’s about Jessica.”
Pent up with rage from Vicente’s demands and scared fucking shitless about Jack and Jessica, I hit the red line and drew my hand back, primed and ready and deadly as any gun.
Walker ducked from my fist, and I splintered plaster instead of his face.
“I see why Valderas hates you now.”
“That’s not it. The problem is he respects me. He wants me back. He thinks he can turn me into the man I never wanted to be,” I snarled.
Shoving Walker away from me, I made for the shower. The past rose up around me. The ghosts of those I’d killed and those who’d died because of me no longer confined to the night terrors of my sleep. The haunting infected me. A cold sweat broke out on my face. My muscles quivered. My stomach rolled like the ocean.
I stood motionless in the shower hoping the hot water pouring over me washed away some of my sins. When I could move without feeling like I’d puke up on the shower floor, I lathered every inch of my body, my face, my hair. I rinsed clean and turned off the shower with resignation. It would take more than soap and water to cleanse me. I needed Jessica.
Pounding down stairs after I dressed, I left the house. Walker lounged against the porch railing, smoking a cigarette.
“He wasn’t shitting when he said he’d kill you, you know.” He aimed the glowing tip of the cigarette at me.
“Yeah. Probably.” Stopping beside him, I dragged in a deep breath of the cold night air, and it expanded my lungs.
“You don’t care?” he asked after a deep drag.
“I care too much.” Gripping the railing, I turned my head in his direction. “Have you ever loved a woman?”
“Can’t say as I’ve had the honor,” Walker answered, regarding me curiously as if I’d suddenly become someone other than the man he’d only ever known as Ghost.
“It fills your spirit with sunshine. But I’m not talking about Quintessa—it was never her. It’s Jessica. If I can have a little more time with her, then die keeping her and Jack safe, I will.” I stared out at the midnight dome of the sky, a color reflective of Jessica’s eyes. “That’s all I want.”
“If he goes after them too?”
“That’s why you’re here.”
“Why do you trust me, Kemosabe?”
Lit by the porch lights, Walker stood tall, staunch, and strong. A face of unyielding angles and his will was just as unbending.
“Because you’ve been by my side through it all. Because you are my brother, no matter what.”
He flicked his cigarette to the floor and stomped it out with his boot. “We can call in some favors. Get some other guys down here to help.”
I’d already considered that option. “Don’t think so. I don’t want any more people getting hurt because of me. Not like last time.”
“Wasn’t your fault, Hunter.”
“Tell that to my therapist.”
“What do you plan on doing? Just so I can be prepared.”
“Go down guns blazing or give myself up? Haven’t decided.” My gut roiled. Try to kill Vicente one more fucking time? Agree to join him and leave my life forever—Jessica, Jack, and any thoughts of freedom?
To keep them from harm’s way.
“I got your six, whatever happens.” He gripped my hand in a hard clasp, giving me his word with that one gesture.
* * *
The wounds of my past were still raw, but they’d started to heal because of Jessica. I hadn’t realized it before, but she was my savior, undeserving as I was. And I would be hers one way or the other.
I let myself silently into her house and slipped stealthily upstairs.
Vicente would never lay a hand on my woman. I’d destroy him first. My thoughts ping-ponged back and forth between finding a way to live this life and handing myself in to him.
I undressed in the near dark beside Jessica’s bed. The small bedside lamp illuminated her face, relaxed and peaceful in sleep. She was so breathtakingly beautiful my breath caught in my throat. I settled under the covers and pulled her against me.
“I love you now and forever.” I kissed her neck.
She snuggled closer—soft, naked, and inviting. “Mm. Always so warm, Hunter.”
“I didn’t mean to wake you.” Shifting the long sable curls from her face, I pressed a kiss to her lips.
“You came home to me.”
“So long as you’ll have me.” I managed the words through the tightness in my throat, knowing I lied, knowing it wasn’t true. It couldn’t be no matter how much I wanted it.
“Now and forever?”
“You heard that.” I groaned, hiding my face behind my forearm. I shouldn’t have said it out loud but the past was rushing up to me, almost outpacing me, and everything I felt for her became stronger and more powerful than ever before.
Her hand skimmed down my chest to my stomach then back again, sifting through the dark chest hair. When her palm landed on my deeply pounding heart, I lifted my arm to look at her.
“I heard that.” Her smile was as soft as her body as she laid herself over me.
“God, how I want you.” I was desperate to have her, all of her. I needed the absolution of her body to chase away the demons of death.
There was the quiet rustle of a condom wrapper and the sure slip of her fingers as she rolled it down my cock. With a slow shimmy, she seated me inside. Her hips swiveled on the long slow descent to my lap until her ass rested against my thighs, her hands on my chest. Her hair surrounded us, a cloudy curtain of silky curls, and everything disappeared except for her and me.
Jessica dragged the covers to her waist, baring her breasts to my touch and my tongue and my lips. She rode me like a woman who knew just what she wanted, who would take exactly what she needed. I was more than willing to give myself over to her in the only way I could now that my time was borrowed.
She tossed her head back and arched, moaning in a breathy voice. My cock was heavy, huge, and harder than ever, drilling up into her as I held her hips. She sped down onto me. My abs tightened. Her hips rolled. My legs straightened and my toes curled as a burning bolt of fire licked the base of my shaft. She reached back to cup and roll my balls, parting the seam between my sac, lifting and feeling me up.
I started to sweat. To swear and shake. She shimmered above me, her head thrown back, her lip caught between her teeth, her face a mask of desire. With a howl, I slammed her down onto me, burying myself inside her as the rhythm of our lovemaking overcame despair and loneliness and hopelessness.
Shuddering as I came, I held onto that one impossible moment of perfection, sealing it inside my heart. I held onto Jessica, pulling her against me as if I could hold her forever and no one would force us apart. And I watched her in orgasm—the shimmering shiver of her body, the wide-open expression in her face, the gasping cry of my name leaving her lips as the climax bore down on her.
‘Beautiful,” I whispered. “So beautiful.” I stroked her until her trembling ceased and she stilled completely on top of me.
“You know, you’ve never mentioned family, besides Jack.” Jessica’s hand on my chest triggered chills as much as her words knifed into me.
“Not much more to say.” I shrugged, carefully hiding any telltale twitch of emotion.
“So you’re like Superman, and you were just catapulted to earth, fully formed, to do good for all humankind?”
I sniggered, scooping her closer to me. “And you’re my kind of kryptonite, sweetheart.”
She brushed the hair off my brow, contemplating me. “I don’t see a cape, but I do see lots of scars, Hunter. And they’re not just on the outside.” She touched pale bullet wound on my chest and skimmed
her lips over a scattered array of gunshot leftovers on my stomach.
I drew her hand to my lips, kissing her palm. “I . . .” I struggled for words. “I don’t talk about it because it’s not anything good.”
“I’d like to know more about you, the good, the bad, the ugly.” She bent her head to my chest, and all those tumbling waves of hair filled my senses with everything clean. “Not that you’re ugly, far from it. You’re the most gorgeous man, baby. You’re the most honorable.” She kissed the tip of my nose, grousing, “And the most secretive.”
Inhaling deeply, I pushed the next words out of my throat before they got stuck there. “I don’t remember much of anything before the orphanage in Boston. The whole Sisters of Mercy thing, you know? I was just three when someone left me there, presumably my mother. Not exactly fairytale fodder or a superhero story, sweetheart.”
Jessica gasped quietly and her hand stilled its soothing motions for a moment. “Oh, Hunter. You don’t remember anything at all?”
“My mom, sometimes. Just her voice, or flashes of her face. Indistinct. Couldn’t say what she looked like, to tell the truth.” To tell the truth. Something I was so rarely able to do. “I vowed the second Jack was born he’d always remember me.”
Jessica laced her fingers through mine and kept her head tucked against my neck. Her moist breath on my neck was a comfort.
“Don’t know anything about my dad. And Angelo was the name they gave me at the orphanage. Italian, that’s about all I can say for sure about my parentage.”
“Could you find out now? Are the records available?”
I shrugged with a twisted sort of smile I was glad she didn’t see. “Don’t know. I’ve let the past go. It’s not anyplace I want to revisit. I don’t need that. ”
They didn’t refer to orphanages as the school of hard knocks for nothing. Boys figured out early on which side they played for. The good or the bad. Me? I’d walked the line, as I still did.
“I used to steal shit. Got to be a pretty good petty thief and pickpocket. Gave crap to the bigger, older boys to keep them off my back. Got bigger myself. Protected the little kids, the weaker ones from the bullies. I couldn’t wait to get out of that fucking place.”
She pressed a gentle kiss to my neck, shaking her head.
“I wanted to be better. Do something bigger. Didn’t want respect so much as to be left alone, invisible.” I laughed under my breath. Invisible. Fitting. That was exactly what I had become. At least the orphanage had toughened me up, mentally and physically. Taught me emotions were for pussies. Made me excellent material for my future career.
Pulling Jessica’s hand to my lips, I kissed her palm and held it against my face. “Angelo though, sometimes even that feels like just another identity I adopted. For a long time I didn’t realize who I was or what I wanted.”
“Now you do?” she asked, stroking my face and neck.
I rolled to my side and lifted her chin. “You. Jack. A life I can live without endangering those I love and a job I can do openly and be proud of.”
Jessica looked up, doe-like eyes bright with unshed tears and her grip firm in mine. “Well, I see you now, and I’m proud of you.”
“That’s because you’re stubborn.” I placed a smiling kiss on her lips, touching her softly with the tip of my tongue.
“Damn right,” she murmured against my mouth.
When Jessica relaxed beside me, I watched her through half-lowered lids. She idly played with the muscles of my pecs and the ripples of my abs as goose bumps raced across my skin from her exploring fingertips. I wound strands of her hair between my fingers, tugging the locks when she tweaked my nipple so hard I hissed. It only made her laugh with a low gurgle.
“Turn onto your stomach for me.”
“Why?” I rolled over, peeking at her from the hill of one bicep. “Don’t have any kinky plans for my ass, do you?”
She swatted me with both hands, and I groaned into my arms. “Not yet. Although your ass is to die for. Tell me about this. Your tat.” Her fingertips trailed down the full back piece, leaving fiery tendrils licking my skin. “Nothing simple as a girl’s name for you, huh?”
My voice lowered, and I dug my head deeper into my arms. “There was a girl. She died last spring. Because of me.”
Cold air swept across my body as Jessica kneeled away from me. “Oh. You loved her.”
I flipped onto my back but kept my eyes carefully guarded. “No. I thought so, but it was . . .” I shrugged. “I realize now it was nothing but an infatuation compared to what I feel for you.”
“Which is?”
“The most rare and precious thing. You only have to look at me, smile at me, hold your hand out to me and I am so yours, Jessica. When you give yourself to me, I know there’s nothing better on earth and no one finer than you. I love you so much, but I don’t think I deserve you.”
“Oh, Hunter.” Her hand slid along my jaw, her palm rasping against the black stubble.
I kissed her palm and placed it on the bed between us.
My eyes flicked up. “I meant what I said. I don’t deserve you. You still want to know about the tattoo?”
The wraithlike figure in the eerie graveyard, the numbers I tried not to think about any longer scattered through the mist. The words Live Another Day now so fucking poignant it felt like my heart was ripping out of my chest.
“Yes,” she cautiously said.
“It’s about my past. Not something any woman should ever know about.”
I swung my legs over the bed and sat, giving her a prime view of my back. Time was running out. There was too much to lose. A life I wanted to live with her and a history no one should have to live through.
Her hand crashed down on my shoulder and I stiffened in shock.
“And I am not just some woman, Hunter, and you need to start remembering that. I’m the woman who loves you, and I damn well deserve to know!” Jessica shouted from behind me.
I swiveled to look at her. Stunned, I sat with my mouth gaping before it tightened closed. Fuck. She loves me. I hadn’t really planned on that. Hoped. Cautiously hoped but never . . . I swallowed roughly, happy. No, more than happy. Fucking joyous, like when I’d held Jack for the first time. But . . .
“I said I understood and I gave you time and your space, but goddamn you, Hunter. You made me fall in love with you and I’m angry and frightened and just . . . fuck you!” She stood with her hands punched onto her hips. “Well?”
“I think it’s too late for us, Jessica.” And didn’t that just suck the last bit of air from my lungs. Turning my head away from her, I clenched my fists in my lap.
I pressed on, my voice hoarse. “See those numbers on the tat? That’s my kill count. The total number of people dead by my hand. That’s the kind of man you’ve fallen in love with.” I remained back to, sitting tall and straight so she could get the full affect of the scary, beautiful, haunting tattoo.
So she’d have no delusions about me.
So she’d think twice about loving me because I wasn’t worth it.
“Oh my God.” Jessica whispered.
I didn’t move, presenting her with the visual record of all the things I couldn’t say out loud.
The bed shifted as she sat down. I couldn’t bear to look at her, so I continued in as even a voice as possible. “So I’m not Mister Nice Guy. I’m not boyfriend material. I was a government mercenary. I worked for the good guys to take out the bad guys, but no one will ever know the lengths I’ve gone to or the shit I’ve seen. And when I die—likely in a very ugly manner, possibly very soon—no one will miss me, no one will mourn me, and no one will know I worked to keep America safe from threats.” I frowned, my fingers balling even tighter. The war of my emotions raced around my head—elation that she loved me, and the motherfucking futility of it all.
“I will,” she whispered.
“You will what?”
“I’ll miss you, Hunter Angelo!” She crawled across the bed and turned
me toward her. She shook me by my shoulders until I lifted my face to look at her. Tears streamed down her cheeks. “I’ll mourn you. You are the good guy. You are my guy, my man.”
“I can’t. I can’t be.” I rose from her bed. Coldness seeped into my bones as soon as I moved away from her warmth. “The guy in charge of that MC Walker and I took down last spring wants me back. Vicente. He’s who I met with tonight. It was his sister killed in the raid. So, I have a choice. Go back to him, for real this time, or die. And I won’t go back.”
“Are you fucking crazy?” Jumping up from the bed, she punched me on the shoulder. Her tears had dried up leaving only bright anger. “What about Jack? What the fuck do you think this would do to him?”
“It’s the only way.” Jaw clenched, I stood unmoving, letting her lash out at me with her words and her fists because at least it made me feel something.
“No. No no no.” Tossing her head back, Jessica glared up at me. “Think of me. Think of Jack!”
I gripped her hard by her shoulders. “I am thinking about you and Jack. Do you for one second believe I want to live a life without you? Either of you?”
“Then stand up and fight! Fight for me!”
Every muscle in my body taut, I scoffed. “Not that easy, sweetheart.”
“That’s just too damn bad.” Jessica stamped her foot in front of me in full naked glory. “I LOVE YOU, you stubborn jackass. And I care. And I want you to live. For me.”
“Jessica—”
“Don’t you dare Jessica me. Call me JB or sweetheart. You’re not getting out of this so easily. You have an entire life to live and so much to give. And Jack . . . oh, babe, he loves you so much.” She rose onto her tiptoes and shoved her face in mine. “So I don’t care what you did that messed you up so much, but I do care about you. And I know you love me so much you can’t help it.”
“You’re a stubborn little hothead.” I frowned down at her.
“I am.”
“And I’m your man.” My hands found her hips, and I pulled her the rest of the way against me, naked bodies, naked need, flush together.
“You are.”
