You Only Love Twice

by Lori Wilde

  Would the woman ever cease to amaze him? Just when he thought he had her figured out, she’d dumbfound him again.

  She ripped open the package with her teeth and with a sigh of pure glee she rolled the condom into place. Then she shifted her body forward and slid down on him, as wet as a seal.

  He hissed in his breath. Nothing had ever felt so damned good as her hotness sheathed around his penis. She dangled her breasts in his face and he took one nipple in his mouth, suckled her hard.

  “Joel,” she moaned, wriggling and writhing on top of him. “Joel.”

  Everything stopped for him as he watched her moving above him. The sight of her long dark hair tumbling loosely about her shoulders, her skin eggshell-luster like palest bone china, full grapefruit breasts stretched taut, her lips pursed, rapture glowing in her eyes. The sweet perfume of her body made him dizzy, and he felt something far beyond awe.

  “Oh, oh, oh,” she cried.

  She was about to come; he could see it in her face as her features pinched.

  And he wasn’t far behind her.

  “Marlie,” he gasped.

  They moved in unison. She in a circular motion, he a pump, bucking underneath her.

  Together, they cried out. His essence spilled out of him. Marlie fell forward, clinging to him as she broke apart. He flew with her. In pieces. As his world exploded in a rain of light and sensation and sound.

  He lay there trembling, his body slick with sweat.

  She raised her head and looked down at him, her eyes shimmering with trust.

  With trust.

  Aw, hell.

  An infusion of shame replaced his earlier joy. Now he remembered what he’d forgotten to do. He’d thought it was just the condom, but he was wrong.

  He’d forgotten to tell her who he really was and that he’d been sent to spy on her for the U.S. Navy.

  Essentially, he was her enemy. There’s no way this could last, Joel thought. No way at all.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Cosmo wasn’t having any luck decoding Admiral Delaney’s personal journal. Granted, he hadn’t had much time to spend on it. The job had been slammin’ hard today, and he was just getting around to his snail mail that the mailroom runner had dropped off several hours earlier. The last two nights with Treeni had been incredible. He’d had the most stupendous sex of his life, and he couldn’t stop thinking about her.

  He’d promised himself he’d stay up all night working on the project for Treeni. He had to be careful using the office computer system. He knew his every keystroke was being monitored. It was the ONI after all. But he also knew how to obstruct their spyware without his block being detected. Still, it was risky. You never knew who could be watching or how.

  Trying to multitask, Cosmo opened his mail with one hand, ate a tuna-fish sandwich on rye with the other, and kept his eyes occupied with the code on his computer screen. Chet Delaney might be damn good at creating his codes, but Cosmo Villereal was even better at breaking them.

  He picked up an express mail envelope from the stack and didn’t even look at the address as he set his sandwich down and peeled the envelope open.

  A baggy with tire valve stem caps and pieces of broken twigs fell out.

  It was the package Marlie had called him about. And he’d totally forgotten about it until now. Feeling like the worst friend on earth, he pushed aside Delaney’s code and turned his attention to Marlie’s evidence.

  He’d need help from the guys in the evidence lab, but Cosmo hadn’t worked at ONI long enough to build up favors owed so he could pull strings. But he knew who could. Cosmo picked up the phone and called Treeni.

  “Cos,” she purred.

  It wasn’t his imagination. She was glad to hear from him. His spirits soared again.

  “You get something?”

  “Not yet, but I’m hard at work on it,” he said. “Treeni, I need a serious favor.”

  “All you have to do is ask.”

  Was she buttering him up because she was desperate for him to unearth the information on her old man, or did she really mean it? Cosmo supposed it didn’t matter. Right now what mattered was getting help for Marlie.

  He told Treeni what he needed. She told him that she would contact the evidence lab and tell them the prints on the valve stem caps were for her. He thanked her, hung up, and carted the baggy to the evidence lab.

  “I should have something for Treeni soon,” the lab tech said.

  Cosmo nodded.

  “So you’re her latest conquest.” The guy grinned.

  “I don’t know what you mean by that,” Cosmo said stiffly.

  The tech shrugged and gave him a look that said, You’ll figure it out soon enough, buddy.

  He didn’t care for the man’s innuendo and would have told him so if he didn’t need his help. Cosmo went back to his desk; propping his feet up on the top, he maximized the screen with Delaney’s code on it.

  Suddenly the pattern leaped out at him. Of course! Why hadn’t he seen it before? It was a convoluted substitution for a classic code.

  Hurriedly, Cosmo began to decode Admiral Delaney’s entries. With any luck, tonight he would have valuable information to share with both of the important women in his life.

  At two o’clock in the morning, Joel and Marlie sat up in bed eating canned peaches they’d found in the cupboard, her comic books strewn across the quilt in front of them. They’d both read the last six issues of Angelina Avenger’s adventures all the way through five times each, and they’d come up with nothing.

  “There’s nothing in any of these comic books that is even remotely related to the Navy,” Joel grumbled. He thumbed through them again. “This one’s about Atlantis, and in this one Angelina uncovers a conspiracy by a pharmaceutical company putting additives that cause cancer into their vitamins so they could sell more chemotherapy drugs.”

  Marlie nodded and wiped a drop of peach juice from her chin with the back of her hand. “I thought it was just me. I kept racking my brain trying to figure out which one of these comic book theories could be true, but honestly, they’re all pretty far-fetched. I was hoping your fresh, objective eyes would see something that I missed.”

  Not so objective, he thought, and wondered how in the world he was going to break the news to her about his identity. He should have done it before they’d ever made love, but he hadn’t, and now he couldn’t think of a way to begin.

  Don’t be a coward, Hunter, just do it.

  Not yet. She looked so happy.

  “If the clues are there, I’m not seeing it,” he said, instead of saying what was really on his mind. “What about your next comic book that’s due to hit the stands? What’s it about?”

  “Zombies.”

  Joel contemplated her. He knew she hated the word “cute” in reference to herself, but she was so darned well impossibly cute, with her knees drawn up to her chest and her hair mussed, sucking on the back of a plastic spoon. She was cute like the black-and-red ladybugs he’d collected off his mother’s rosebushes as a kid and kept in a jar with holes poked in the lid so they could breathe. That is, until Gus made fun of him for collecting “sissy” bugs. Joel had let them go, watching them fly away from him in the summer heat.

  “Zombies?”

  She shrugged, took the plastic spoon out of her mouth, and stuck it in the empty peach can on the windowsill above the bed. “After twenty-eight comic books, the ideas start running a little thin.”

  “Do you ever think about doing anything else? Something a little less paranoid and isolating?”

  “No.” She blinked behind her black-framed glasses, going all studious at his question.

  “How did you get into the comic book business in the first place?”

  “I always loved to draw. Created Angelina when I was eleven or twelve. This may sound weird, but I channeled her. She came through me, but she wasn’t part of me. Whenever I have a problem, she sort of takes over and solves everything for me.”

  �
�Interesting.”

  “Weird, you mean.”

  “No, it’s interesting how you’ve split your personality into two distinct sections. You claim the timid you, but not the bold you. Why’s that?”

  “I’m not bold. That’s Angelina.”

  Joel shook his head. She actually saw her cartoon character as separate from herself.

  “Did Angelina appear to you before or after your father died?”

  “After.”

  “Do you think you created Angelina as a wish fulfillment, as a way to avenge your father’s death? You were a kid, powerless to do anything, so you invented this fearless persona who would dare anything for justice.”

  “Possibly.”

  “Ever considered that you might outgrow her?”

  Marlie looked horrified. “No.”

  “Just a thought. What’s going to happen to Angelina when you don’t need her anymore?”

  “I’ll always need her.”

  Joel arched an eyebrow.

  “What?” Marlie demanded.

  “You’ve changed a lot over the last couple of days.”

  “That still doesn’t mean I have to give up Angelina.”

  “It’s hard letting go of a security blanket.”

  “She’s not a security blanket.” Marlie glared at him, clearly agitated.

  Time to back off. Joel raised his palms. “You’re right. Let’s get back to the conspiracy theories and government cover-ups. Let’s assume for a minute that we’ve gone down the wrong track and none of this has anything to do with your comic books.”

  “Okay.”

  “Who else might want you dead?”

  “Shrimp boat operators?”

  Joel chuckled. “I doubt the brotherhood of shrimpers put a contract out on you for your involvement in a protest rally.”

  “Maybe the assassin wasn’t a hired hit man at all, just some wacko who didn’t like my politics,” Marlie suggested.

  “Then why are they trying to frame you for Robert Herkle’s murder?”

  “Maybe they’re not trying to frame me. Maybe that’s just where the evidence is pointing and they’re simply doing their jobs.”

  “What about your mother? How does she fit into all this?”

  Marlie chewed her bottom lip. “I don’t know.”

  “Maybe it’s got something to do with your mother.”

  “But what?”

  He shook his head.

  “This is getting us nowhere.” Marlie shoved the comic books to the floor.

  “Maybe it’s related to what happened to your father fifteen years ago.”

  “There were a lot of threats against Mom and me back then. That’s why we moved to Corpus from Maryland. To escape the fallout from the Navy’s propaganda. People used to come up to my mother in the grocery store and tell her my father got what he deserved.” Marlie’s voice cracked. “They believed the lies the Navy put out about him.”

  “And you have no idea what it was that your father had uncovered? What corruption or scandal he was about to blow the whistle on?”

  “I don’t know. He wouldn’t tell Mom for her own safety, and I was a kid.”

  “Thing is, why has this resurfaced now? Who was around fifteen years ago that’s still around today?”

  Marlie’s face darkened. “That bastard Gus Hunter, for one.”

  Joel didn’t know what to say to that, so he just drew her into his arms. “We’ll keep working on it.”

  “Do you have any old contacts in the SEALs? Someone you can trust to help us?” She looked into his face. “See what they can find out?”

  This is the time to come clean, buddy. Tell her the truth. But he didn’t know how to begin.

  Instead, he said, “I could make some calls. We’ll find your mom, I promise.”

  “Thank you.” She kissed him.

  Her lips, still sweet with peach juice, were the most delicious things he’d ever tasted.

  Marlie whispered his name, again and again. His scent filled her head, became her world. His mouth was soft and warm, his tongue teasing her slowly, sensuously.

  He held her gaze as his body filled hers. He moved slowly, deliberately taking his time, torturing her with his leisurely strokes.

  “Joel,” she whimpered. “More.”

  But he refused to let her call the shots this time. Each time she tried to move with him, to spur him onward, to push him more deeply inside her, he resisted. Pulling away, a teasing smile on his face.

  “You’re wicked,” she gasped. “So wicked.”

  “Ladybug, you have no idea.”

  “You’re driving me crazy.”

  “I know. I want you crazy out of control for me the way I am for you.”

  Fine then. If he wanted to be in the driver’s seat, she would let him. She lay back and opened herself up to him fully, letting her legs splay open.

  “That’s it,” he murmured. The entire time he kept moving slowly. Exasperatingly, heart-stoppingly, scrumptiously slow.

  If she tried to do anything to speed him up, he stopped moving. It was only when she let go that he gave her what she was aching for.

  And she allowed him full control. Trusting him.

  It felt glorious to let herself go. To release her fears. To trust this man.

  She watched his face as she surrendered herself to him completely. And as her climax swelled, as it grew and rolled through her in surge after infinite superb surge, unadulterated delight and extreme gratification flashed in his eyes.

  “Take me with you,” he said. “Let’s go together.”

  His heartfelt request was enough to shove her over the lip of another orgasm. She hung on to him, plunged with him, strapped her legs around him, and drove him into her. She clung to Joel, her lifeline, her support.

  She trusted him as she’d never ever trusted another. She trusted him with her secrets. She trusted him with her life. But most of all, she trusted him within the very depths of her soul.

  He’d stamped himself into her heart. She belonged to him now and there was no turning back.

  Near dawn, Cosmo had translated all the admiral’s journal entries. He reread what was written there and his blood ran cold. All these years of listening to Marlie and her wild conspiracy theories and she’d been right.

  But what did this new knowledge mean for him and Treeni?

  As Cosmo stared at the screen, not knowing what to do next, the phone on his desk rang. Mind whirling with the startling information, he answered it.

  “Villereal, this is Willis from the evidence lab.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Got the ID back on your prints.”

  “Who do they belong to?”

  “NCIS agent by the name of Joel Hunter. Used to be a Navy SEAL.”

  “Thanks,” Cosmo said and hung up the phone. Treeni’s ex-husband and Marlie’s new neighbor were one and the same. And he’d flattened Marlie’s tires. No coincidence there.

  He looked at the screen again. Thought of Marlie and Treeni. He was torn in two opposing directions. Not sure what he should do next. Did he choose love? Or loyalty?

  Marlie was his best friend.

  But Treeni was his new lover.

  Cosmo closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and in the end did the only thing his conscience would let him do. He picked up the phone and made the call that would irrevocably alter his life forever.

  The ringing of her cell phone tugged Marlie from a deep, dreamless sleep. She tried to ignore it. She was too happy with Joel spooned up against her. She didn’t want to move, did not want to disturb her bliss.

  The phone rang again.

  Joel didn’t move. He must be exhausted, poor man. Marlie grinned to herself. She’d worn him out.

  The phone kept on.

  What if it was her mother?

  The thought spurred her. Careful not to wake Joel, she inched out from under his arm, which was thrown across her waist, and eased her feet to the floor. She slipped on a comic book and almost
fell, but managed to brace herself against the counter.

  Her purse was on the floor by the refrigerator. She snatched it up, dug out her phone, praying that if it was her mother she wouldn’t hang up before she answered. Without bothering to waste time looking at the caller ID display, she flipped the phone open and murmured, “Mom?”

  “Marlie?”

  At the sound of Cosmo’s voice disappointment shot through her, but interest quickly replaced the disappointment.

  “Cosmo, hi.”

  “Mar, I’m so glad you answered.”

  “Did you get my package?”

  “Yes.”

  “Were you able to get fingerprints off it?”

  “I was.” There was something more he wasn’t telling her; she could hear it in his voice.

  “Do you know who flattened my tires?”

  “I do.”

  “Cosmo, what’s the matter? You sound strange.”

  “I have bad news.”

  She raised a hand to her throat. Oh, no. “Yes?”

  “The prints belong to an NCIS agent.”

  “An NCIS agent is trying to kill me?”

  “No, he was assigned to spy on you.”

  Well, that explained the wiretap on her phone. “Who is this guy?”

  “He’s a former Navy SEAL.”

  The hairs on her arms lifted. She didn’t want to ask, but she had to know. “What’s his name?”

  Cosmo heaved in a deep breath. “Joel Jerome Hunter. He’s Gus Hunter’s son.”

  Marlie couldn’t have been more stunned if someone had told her she was sitting on a ticking time bomb. She swung her eyes to Joel’s sleeping form.

  Numbness and confusion, thick and significant, enveloped her. She felt at once nothing and everything. A million tiny teeth of shame, regret, and sorrow bit her, sharp and relentless. Her heart scalded, her stomach turned inside out.

  J. J. Hunter?

  So it was him. The boy she had once loved. Marlie hiccuped in a shaky breath.

  “Mar? You okay?”

  “Why did they send him to spy on me?” she asked, a strange coldness settling deep in her bones.

  But Cosmo didn’t answer because the line had gone dead.