by Cindy Gerard
He folded her hand in his, brought it to his lips, and kissed her fingertips. “You don’t have to be angry anymore.”
She believed him. Because she trusted him. And instead of feeling burdened by that trust, she’d never felt so free.
They’d left Jenna and Gabe’s an hour ago and come straight to her apartment, where they’d ripped each other’s clothes off and tumbled into bed. Where he had thrilled her and consumed her and taken her places she wanted him to take her again and again.
Then they’d talked. In the mellow aftermath of spent, desperate passion, she told him about her childhood. About her mother’s addiction. About her feeling of rejection.
“I’m so sorry.” He’d held her as gently as he would have held a child. “I’m so, so sorry.”
Until Rafe, no one important to her had held her as if they felt her pain. As if they wanted to absorb the weight of it, relieve her of the burden.
“It was a long time ago,” she’d whispered, and felt as though she no longer had to carry her grief alone.
She’d seen Rafe rough, seen him clever, seen him outsmart and outwit the enemy. But she’d never seen him this gentle. She was right to trust him. Right to take a chance.
And now that she’d opened up to the possibility of loving him, she wanted to know everything about him. Starting with the dramatic tattoo on his arm.
“It has special meaning, doesn’t it?” she asked now, tracing her fingers over the crossed stakes entwined with bloodred veins.
“For my family,” he said simply. “For the loss.”
Yes. They both knew loss.
And now they both knew love.
She rose up above him, reached across to the night-stand, and turned on the light.
“I want to see your face,” she said simply, and watched his eyes go dark. “I want to see the love.” She lowered her head and kissed him. “I need to see the love,” she murmured, pressing kisses across his brow, along his temple, then traveling back to his mouth and pouring all her love and trust into a kiss that laid her bare. Told no lies. Breached all barriers. Surrendered to the need to give herself over to him completely.
“I love you,” she whispered, letting herself say it for the first time. “I love you,” she mouthed, trailing kisses across the smooth expanse of his chest, the taut, quivering muscle of his abdomen.
He hooked his hands under her arms, drew her back to his mouth, and devoured her. Pleasure and tenderness and the encompassing sense of coming home brought tears to her eyes again as he rolled her to her back and entered her. Slowly. Deeply. Without the urgency of their earlier passion, but with all the intensity of a man laying claim to and being claimed by the one woman who could make his life worth living.
“So why do they call you Choirboy?”
Rafe groaned. She wanted him to talk? Now? While the shower rained down around them and she was using her busy, busy hands to lather, rinse, and repeat her teasing, sensual caresses all over his body?
He pushed out a sound that was part laugh, part pure unadulterated joy, and in answer to her question launched into a warbling and comically dramatic, “Ah… sweet mystery of life… at last I found you…”
She giggled. B. J. Chase giggled. It was the happiest sound he’d ever heard. He was the happiest man he’d ever been, until … Ah, God … she went down on her knees in front of him. Pressed feathery kisses to his belly. Skimmed her tongue along the ridge of his erection and worked him into a frenzy.
“B.J.” He knotted his hands in her hair as she took him into her mouth and with a selflessness that humbled him, indulged him in degrees of carnal pleasure he’d never imagined existed. Her lips and tongue induced unbelievable sensations from every erogenous zone in his body.
Her mouth was magic. Her hands sheer torment, as she took her time and took him places he’d remember until the day he died.
“Sweetheart … ah … God,” he moaned as she finessed him to climax, then rode with him until he was thoroughly and magnificently spent.
He collapsed back against the shower wall. Dragged her to her feet. Held her tightly against him. Then he laughed. Exhausted. Wrung-out. Happy.
“Well,” he managed when he caught his breath. “Guess I don’t have to wonder what B.J. stands for anymore.”
She giggled again. A sound that filled his heart to bursting.
“You know you have to marry me, don’t you?”
She jerked her head back, her eyes wide. “For real?”
He brushed her soaking hair out of her eyes. “Yeah. This is as real as it gets.”
EPILOGUE
“You take my breath away,” Rafe whispered as he danced B.J. into a quiet corner of the Tompkinses’ family room.
Soft, slow music played in the background, candlelight cast romantic shadows on the walls, and the look in his eyes as he held her touched places so deep inside her that B.J. couldn’t form a response. She felt filled with the best that life had to offer.
Love was good.
Love was … life. Life as she’d never known it before. Just as she was seeing Rafe in a way she’d never seen him before.
“There is so much to celebrate,” Ann had declared, and she and Robert had gone all-out with the postponed engagement party by making it a formal affair.
That meant the BOIs had to step it up a notch. Since these guys never did anything halfway, they’d all shown up dressed to the nines. In camo and face black they were imposing. In jeans and T-shirts they were hot. But in white tie and black tux, the lot of them were beyond description.
And the women … B.J. thought Stephanie looked gorgeous in a red silk floor-length gown. Jenna was stunning in emerald green and Crystal… B.J. had had a moment of serious envy when Crystal had appeared on Johnny’s arm wearing a knockout mini cocktail dress in a deep saturated blue satin.
The showstopper for her, however, was Rafe. His dark skin and eyes against his starch-white dress shirt and black tux … well, let’s just say there was at least one other person besides Rafe who was breathless.
“I can’t wait to get you out of that dress,” he whispered in her ear as he looped his arms low at her back and swayed against her.
“That works out just fine then, because when I bought it, it was with you undressing me in mind.”
She’d ripped a page from Brittany ’s book and splurged on a clingy, black, strapless jersey crepe. Reed, the consummate flirt, had even approved with a long, low whistle.
“If you don’t stop looking at me like I’m a piece of chocolate,” Rafe murmured, bussing his nose against hers as she looped her arms around his neck, “we’re going to have to leave the party early.”
“Not a chance.” She smiled up at him. “I haven’t nearly had my fill of you dressed like this.”
“Like a penguin?”
She grinned. “Like Bond. James Bond.”
He laughed and spun them in a circle.
“Too bad Sam had to miss the party,” B.J. said, snuggling against Rafe.
“Oh, I think he’s happy as hell right where he is.”
Sam had gotten the call from Abbie that morning. This was it. The baby was coming. The always cool and collected Sam Lang, rock solid and steady in a fight, had been so shaken up, he’d let Ann make his flight arrangements and allowed Robert to drive him to the airport to catch his flight to Vegas.
“Sam just called!” Robert announced suddenly, and the room grew quiet with expectation as Ann turned down the music and joined him, a huge smile on her face.
Tears of joy sparkled in her eyes when she addressed the expectant faces circled around her. “It’s a little boy.” She smiled up into Robert’s eyes. “And his name is Bryan.”
“Damn. She did it again,” Doc grumbled around the unlit cigar he clamped between his teeth and mourned the loss of his money as Jenna scooped up a pile of poker chips that for the most part had once been his.
With the announcement of Bryan Samuel Lang’s birth, the toasts had begun with enthusiasm
and now, late in the evening, everyone was feeling pretty mellow. And with Doc present the inevitable poker game broke out.
Colter looked every bit the rakish high roller in his western-cut black tux even though he’d undone his tie and loosened his starched white collar.
“If you can’t run with the big dogs,” Jenna teased and, laughing, returned Crystal’s high five, “maybe you’d better go home, puppy boy.”
“Do not play poker with these women,” Doc warned the room at large.
“D’you ever think you just might be a lousy poker player?” Savage—who looked pretty spiffy in his tux— suggested.
“D’you ever think about keeping your thoughts to yourself?” Doc shot back, and thumbed his black dress Stetson farther back on his head. “Ante up, ladies and gents.”
The night had digressed into laughter, trash talk, and well wishes.
Brothers, B.J. thought, watching them interact. They truly were brothers, with Nate and Ann and Robert Tompkins assuming a parental role of sorts. Add Jenna, Crystal, and Abbie to the mix and they became a family. A family she was now fortunate enough to be a part of.
She still had to stop and take a deep breath every once in a while, give herself permission to enjoy the wealth of love that Rafe had brought into her life.
“Do you get the feeling that Steph and Joe made a connection while they were lying low and hiding out?” Rafe asked B.J. as they snuggled on the sofa, feeling happy and tired.
Yeah. She’d noticed the looks the two of them exchanged. “How do you feel about that?” she asked, and immediately wished she hadn’t let the old, distrustful B.J. resurface. Rafe, however, just rolled with it.
“Happy as hell,” he said easily, and kissed her. “There’s a lot more to Joe than he lets anyone see. I’m glad Steph was able to recognize that.”
“And I’m glad you didn’t give up on me,” she whispered.
“Give up on you? Let me tell you something, Beatrice Janine.”
She clamped her hand over his mouth, hoping no one had overheard him. “Oh God. I knew I shouldn’t have told you.” But he’d been inside her at the time. She’d have told him anything, given him anything.
He laughed and pulled her hand away, kissed her palm. “Let me tell you something, Beatrice.” He humored her by whispering so only she could hear. “Giving up was not an option. I was going to let you think about things for a while, but if you hadn’t come to me, I promise you, I would have been back. And I would have worn you down.”
“It wouldn’t have taken much,” she confessed. “The truth is, you had me at ‘What part of you’re tied up and we’ve got the guns don’t you understand?’”
“Charmed you even when I was playing the bad guy, huh?”
“Yeah, well, don’t let it go to your head.”
“Not my head, no. My heart.”
Enjoy the following excerpts from the first three novels in Cindy Gerard’s Black Ops, Inc. series!
SHOW NO MERCY
Gabriel Jones’s and Jenna McMillan’s story
Buenos Aires
11:15 p.m.
“Tonight? Are you crazy?” Jenna shook her head at Gabe. “I’m not flying anywhere. And I’m sure not going home.”
Just as soon as she got hold of her laptop, which she’d left in her hotel room, she was going to fire off the bombing story to Hank.
He’d be over the moon, once he was convinced she was fine. Well, almost fine. Exhaustion and physical stress had done a number on her. Her adrenaline reserves had let down long ago. So had her deodorant. She had no idea what was keeping Gabe on his feet.
In the past thirty-six hours they’d survived a bombing and made a round trip from Buenos Aires to Bahia Blanca with very little sleep. Her muscles had launched into full bitch mode.
Gabe looked like hell—in a raw, twelve-hour-stubble, determined-alpha-male-on-a-mission way.
Damn him.
Jaw set, eyes hooded, he stood beside her in the elevator heading up to her hotel room. The room she hadn’t seen for almost two days. A hot bath and a change of clothes would go a long way toward making her feel human again. Then she’d get to work on that story.
If Jones had his way, though, they’d grab her stuff and head for the airport in the car waiting outside with Sam at the wheel and it would be “Hasta la vista, baby.”
Well, she wasn’t Linda Hamilton and he wasn’t the “Governator.”
Besides her story, she had unfinished business with Gabriel Jones. Something about possibly falling for an enigma. A mystery man whose life expectancy, because of his chosen profession, was most likely on par with that of a daylily.
God. Wouldn’t he love being compared to a flower? A giddy laugh bubbled out. The glare he shot her said it all. Jones didn’t do giddy. As a rule, neither did she.
She needed food. Fast. To help get her head back on straight if nothing else.
The elevator stopped on the seventh floor. The doors slid open with a rattle and a whoosh.
“Okay,” she said, stepping out into the dimly lit hallway, “I know we’ve already had this conversation, but it was so much fun the first time, let’s do it again.”
“Let’s not.”
“No, really. I insist. You say, ‘I’m putting you on a plane back to the States.’ Then I say, ‘Are you crazy?’”
“This is not a joke.”
No. It wasn’t. Just like seeing him this way wasn’t funny. Knowing he gave a rat’s rear leg about the prospect of her leaving him wasn’t funny, either.
“Look,” she said, trying another tack as she caught up with him, “thanks for walking me to my door. Sam’s waiting for you in the car, and he’s gotta be bushed, too, so you can both go on your merry way.”
“For the last time, you need to back away from Maxim and get out of Argentina.”
“Okay. Let’s get something straight. In the first place, you don’t tell me what to do. In the second place, I came here to do a job and I will do it. And in the third place, it’s not like I’m being threatened here or anything. I mean, that bomb wasn’t meant for me. You’re not talking, but I think it’s pretty safe to assume that Maxim was the target.”
“Yeah, and you’re just itching to get caught in the crossfire if someone goes after him again, aren’t you? Damn it, Jenna. You’re being stupid about this.”
She stopped. Turned on him. “No, I’m being professional. I walked away from a story because of you the last time I was here. I’m not walking away from this one.”
He reeled slightly. Fatigue could have been the cause, but she knew the moment she saw his face that fatigue had nothing to do with his reaction.
In that same moment she knew something else. This battle-hardened warrior, this professional soldier wasn’t as immune to death and destruction as he’d like everyone to think. He struggled with the same images she did. He saw the same charred bodies, the same bloodied corpses.
He felt the same kind of horror. The only difference was she could afford the luxury of regret. He couldn’t, and there was nothing she could say to make him know she understood.
Key in hand, she eased around him toward the door to her room.
“Wait!” His voice was sharp as he grabbed her wrist and kept her from inserting the key in the lock. “Let me check it first.”
“Oh, for God’s sake. You know what?” She was tired. Of everything. Of him thinking he could tell her what to do, of him making it clear that he didn’t want or need anyone—specifically her—in his life. “You’ve lived too long on the ‘dark side,’” she said, putting a lot of theatrical woo-woo in the last two words. “I’m tired, I’m hungry, and all I want to do is eat, shower, write my story, and go to bed.”
She jerked her hand away from his, shoved the key in the lock and pushed the door open—and came face-to-face with three gunmen.
Before she could react, Gabe hit her from the side, tackling her to the ground as the blast of a gun echoed into the hallway.
She waited fo
r the pain, visualized her own blood, then realized that nothing hurt. Nothing but her hip where she’d landed on the floor with Gabe on top of her—again.
She struggled to get up.
“Stay down!” he ordered. “And roll! Get the hell away from the door!” he choked out through a hacking cough.
“Wha—” Oh God.
A horrible odor hit her olfactory senses then and she realized why he was choking. She gagged on a mouthful of air. Her eyes started burning. Her gut convulsed into dry heaves.
