Jack’s hands stilled on her shoulders. “I remember him—Dad was always trying to indict him when he was the DA. Nothing ever stuck though. No one would testify to anything.”
“That sounds about right.” She nodded. “Joaquín was smart. Too fucking smart to get caught doing anything. His street name was ‘Teflon.’ Some say that’s how he rose to Inca status so young. Nothing stuck to him,” she said bitterly, recalling how he’d hurt Rox. How he’d laughed over her bloody and beaten body, dangling from a chain like a piece of meat.
“Did Roxanne work for him?” Jack asked after a moment. “Were they involved?”
“Both,” Sam replied. “She married him at eighteen. She was his queen, another leader on the rise, doing his bidding. That’s why Rita was so freaked out when Rox missed their call. She knew it would come to a head one day, so she begged Rox to check in with her once a week. Rita was in the Signal Corps, so she went out of her way to make sure she reached out, no matter where she was in the world.”
Jack waited as she sifted through her recollections of that night, continuing to knead her shoulders gently.
“When Rita called, I knew I had to step in to help. Carey was in Chicago by then, fresh out of the SEALs. He’d started a private security company, and when I called him to get geared up, he insisted on going with me. He had the Chicago PD connections to get enough dirt on where Joaquín might be, his neighborhood strongholds, the other street thugs suspected of being in his crew.”
“You considered going in alone?” Jack asked, sounding strangled as he squeezed her shoulders hard.
Sam winced, looking up at him. “I was just going to do recon—see what I was up against, and to see if Rita really had anything real to worry about.”
Jack breathed in deep through his nose, trying to stay calm. She slipped a hand over his. “This was years ago,” she reminded him. “We didn’t even know each other then.”
“You take incredible risks, tesoro,” he answered, his voice all gravel as he relaxed his grip.
She raised her brows. “Do you want me to continue or do you want to give me a lecture on my propensity for peril?”
“Propensity?” Jack scoffed, his silver eyes bright with consternation. “You’re like a walking death wish, tesoro.”
She raised a brow. “You sure you want to hear about the rest then?”
Jack released a pent-up sigh. “Go on.”
“Well, let’s say I’m glad Carey was with me,” she continued slowly. “He figured out Joaquín was running a stash house in an old sheet metal warehouse in Pilsen. That piece of shit had Roxy chained up in a warehouse like a rack of beef. He was coked out of his mind, beating the shit out of her. He kept accusing her of trying to take over his territory, of screwing other Incas to try to get to the top. She was damn near dead by the time we found her. Unrecognizable, he’d beat her so bad.”
“Cazzo!”40 Jack rasped. “Why didn’t you call the cops? He could have been captured, prosecuted—”
“Because guys like Joaquín don’t get to harm people I care about and live to tell about it,” Samantha interrupted, unrepentant, her dark eyes fierce with the heat of her ire. “I slaughtered that asshole and I’d do it again. No question.”
Jack was silent a long time. She suspected it was because he was at war with himself, just as much as he was at odds with her decisions. Jack lived a charmed life. He’d never been faced with life-or-death decisions. He’d never been threatened or had the people he cared about put in harm’s way—until he’d met her. But Sam knew his heart. Jack had the heart of a lion. He may be perfectly civilized in the board room, but the truth was, he’d dismantle anyone who tried to hurt anyone he loved. She saw it in him, just as much as she knew it within herself. She saw his truth before he’d even managed to wrap his mind around it.
“Was he alone with Roxanne?” Jack finally asked.
“No,” Sam shook her head. “He had his crew with him. Between Carey and me, we managed to finish them off. It helped that we had the element of surprise in our favor and the fact that most of them were high too,” she admitted.
“Why did you fake her death? Why not just get her out?”
Sam sighed. “Joaquín was linked to the Sinaloa Cartel. He was becoming one of the biggest heroin dealers in Chicago, and I knew if Roxanne was suspected in his death, she’d never be safe. So we made it look like a rival gang hit. Carey destroyed all the heroin, and I took off all of Rox’s jewelry and put it on a dead whore who must have OD’d while they were partying. Then I set the place on fire. I razed that warehouse to the ground. We paid off the ME to say it was Roxanne’s body.”
“Holy shit,” Jack breathed, tense behind her.
“I wanted her to have a new life. A fresh chance. That would never happen if the Kings thought she’d somehow survived. And honestly, I wasn’t sure she’d make it,” Sam took in a shaky breath, recalling the mangled mess of blood and flesh she’d found that night. “Rox was so fucked up—she was—” she stopped, her voice caught in her throat. “Joaquín had broken so many bones, she looked like pulp. We took her to the hospital where JR was doing his trauma residency. Signed her in as a Jane Doe.”
“Jay Ross?” Jack recalled. “The same doctor who treated me after the fight?”
“Yeah,” Sam nodded. “He works for us now, but yes—he helped save her life that night. But even he doesn’t know who she really is. I took her out of the hospital as soon as she was well enough to transfer. I hid her in a villa I keep near São Paulo while she recovered.”
“This is why Alejandro feels like he owes you,” Jack murmured in realization. “I didn’t understand before.”
“He doesn’t owe me, Jack.” Sam shook her head. “I’ve told him that a hundred times. I did it for Rita and for Roxy.”
Jack nodded minutely before he stepped back, moving toward the windows. He stood looking out at the gardens for so long, Sam resigned herself to hearing the words she’d been waiting for him to say since they first met… I can’t do this.
“You want out,” she said flatly, preparing for the inevitable. “It’s too much, isn’t it? First Rio, then Nazar, Lightner, now this… it’s too much for any one man to handle. I get it—”
“Stop—just stop.” Jack stalked toward her, his silver eyes flashing. “You have a very bad habit of putting words into my mouth, tesoro. And trying to make decisions for me, I might add.”
Her chin came up. “I’m just cutting you off at the pass, Jack. You don’t need to come up with any good excuses to walk out.”
Jack’s silver eyes narrowed. “When are you going to admit you’re protecting what’s left of your heart, Samantha? When are you going to stop assuming I’ll leave you, for being unapologetically honest with me, when that’s exactly what I’ve asked for?”
“You will leave.” She looked away, swallowing. “Everyone does, eventually.”
Jack rounded the desk so fast and had her up and in his arms, she was surprised by it. “You’re an irrationally suspicious, short-tempered and jagged goddess of a woman, Samantha,” he told her as he glared down at her with those stunning eyes of his. “You make me feel crazy and jealous and wild half the time, but I love you.” He shook her gently, caught somewhere between frustration and desire. “I fucking love you. What will it take for you to believe me?”
They stared at each other, the coiled-tight tension so thick between them, she could have sliced it with a knife.
“Do you believe me?”
Did she? God, she wanted to. So much. But she’d lost so much faith in her life. Could she stand it if she trusted him and he fell through on her, like the rest?
“I shouldn’t.”
He pulled her closer. “But you do.”
She swallowed hard. “We shouldn’t.”
“But we will,” he promised her, his deep baritone ardent, hypnotizing.
Then he kissed her. Kissed her with all the pent up passion, heat, and need that made her feel like she was being claime
d. And for the first time in a long time, Samantha wanted him, wanted this more than she wanted to protect herself. She pressed her mouth to his, the room falling into a slow spin around them, her heartbeat pounding—or was it his?
She found herself covered by a hotly aroused, completely adamant male, his weight electrifying. Jack muttered something against her mouth, but Samantha didn’t catch it. She was too absorbed in the sinuous glide of his tongue against hers as all conversations and protests stopped, brushed away with the feeling of his fingertips tracing down the soft, fine skin covering her rib cage, making her shiver. Something huge filled the longing between them, something unafraid. Her arms curled around him, wanting him with an intensity that belied her worries or misgivings.
Jack lifted her onto the desk, pushing her knees apart to settle between the valley of her tights, his adamant kisses turning hotter, deeper and rougher, acquiring their own erotic rhythm as he licked into her mouth. Samantha shifted around him, arching, seeking the hard, satisfying pressure of him as the pleasure thickened, her thoughts dissolving into an ache only he seemed to be able to soothe.
Jack shifted, sliding a hand between her thighs, fingers gliding past the waistline of her leggings, trapped decadently between the lace of her panties and the silk of her skin. Seeking, searching, finding. She groaned against his mouth, ardent, thrilled at the prospect of his invasion, but Jack teased her first, his fingers searching through the sleek, tender tissues, skating tantalizingly over her sex. Her breath caught, then came out in ragged gasps, her body filling with hot sparks from each caress and the demanding pressure of his exquisite exploration.
“Mi piace come mi baci,”41 he whispered, pulling back just enough to look at her, breathing hard like he was running a race. His fingers worked, stroked, maddening her, making her feel everything. “Nothing and no one has ever meant so much to me, tesoro. You’re all-consuming. I’m not going to fight this anymore. I’m done trying to make sense of it. There won’t be rules for us. We’ll break them all anyway. Just let me take care of you—”
His knuckles maddened as he slipped his fingers inside, making her breath fracture when he brushed against exactly the right spot.
“Jack—” she gasped, heart stuttering.
“You’re mine. Mine to pleasure, mine to worship and enjoy,” he insisted, kissing her roughly, wedging himself between her thighs as he slid down, holding her open to him while his mouth took possession of her, tongue delving, a sound of pure animal pleasure rumbling from his throat. He slid a hand through her hair, yanking her head back so he could taste her deeply, and she caught the look in his silver eyes—passionate, on fire… possessive.
There, manacled in his grip, Samantha would have given him anything. Yes. Yes, just ask… anything—the silky flick of his tongue went on and on even as his fingers sought her silkiness, leaving her floundering, desperate and needy as she moaned, tilting her hips up for more, more… please—just suck the sweetness from me. Take it—take me…
Jack lavished her mercilessly, his rhythm persistent until she was moving in tight circles against his hand, crying out like a wanton. She heard her own guttural sounds, felt his answering groans against the most sensitive parts of her as he licked deeper, stroked harder, his fingers curling and rubbing until the pleasure rippled through her in voluptuous kicks, unfurling sensations one after another, tidal.
“Oh, Christ—Jack…” she moaned on a soft keen, her body clenching and unclenching as he stared at her with complete absorption, her pleasure his own.
Jack stared down at her, his eyes incandescent with emotion, passion making his golden skin flush. He felt hard and hot against her, his hand cradling her head, forcing her to look at him. It was stunningly erotic, being finger fucked into bliss in her father’s old study, what was now her war-room, by this scorching hot man.
“Make love to me,” she told him, her voice a little slurred from the brain-demolishing climax.
“Not yet,” he murmured, kissing her forehead, even as he pulled her clothes back into place, smoothing back her hair.
“Why not?” she demanded, suddenly hot with frustration.
Jack held her head in his hands. She caught the scent of her salty essence of sex combined with his own scent like some kind of sublime perfume. “Because when I take you again, I’m not letting you go. Not ever. And you need to be ready for that.”
She pushed back, but he held her tighter to him, unwilling to relinquish her even as her cheeks heated with a mixture of resentment and embarrassment.
“Trust me, tesoro,” he told her, his heart in his eyes. “I’m asking you to trust me to do what’s right by you—on every level.”
She shook her head. “I can’t do that—it’s too much—”
Jack stopped her protest with another hard kiss, taking her gasp into his mouth like he could taste it. When he pulled back, their gazes locked and she saw the truth in them, searing in its intimacy.
He loved her.
He would do anything for her.
He would never leave her.
Perhaps it was a naive and dangerous thought—a post-apocalyptic orgasm sentiment, but there it was. Bright as day. And for the first time in as long as Samantha could remember, she wanted to have faith again. She wanted to believe in something bigger than herself…
Chapter 23
April—Late Night
Somewhere over the Mediterranean Sea
R O X A N N E
Rox sat at the edge of her seat on the Lennox Chase corporate jet, noise-cancelling headphones on as she listened to the rustle and static of Lightner’s phone. He must have had it in his pocket, because she could only hear bits and pieces of muffled conversations in English and French with the same unidentified male voice he’d been giving directions and orders to earlier. She felt tense and angry, dissatisfaction at having been foiled by that sonofabitch who was once again riding her last nerve. She hated living in fear—fear that her long-held secret was unraveling faster than a loose copper coil. It had been a long and awful evening. The kind of rare night where a person feels like every fucking thing that could have gone wrong had.
Avi Oded, on his phone, paced the back of the jet, speaking urgently in Hebrew to his contacts within Mossad. He was trying to coordinate Lightner’s capture in Istanbul even as they flew away, heading back to the U.S. on Sam’s orders. Simon Michaelson sat on the jet’s sofa with Julien Henri, both still and silent, eyes closed, though Rox doubted they were sleeping. Talon and Rush stood near the galley, talking in low tones while Anand Mahto sat by himself, looking out the window at the disappearing lights of Tel Aviv’s coast. How these men could be so calm and collected when she felt like setting something on fire, she’d never understand.
She rubbed her red and raw knuckles, bruised from punching Frederica Haug’s confession out of her with her brass rings. Rox noticed belatedly that her hands were shaking from the residual adrenaline, and so she tightened them into hard fists, resisting the urge to completely lose what little cool she had left and pound the neat wooden table in front of her.
Talon distracted her from her bad-temper when he sat down across from her on the leather chair, plopping two glasses down and a crystal decanter of what looked like expensive whisky.
“You need a sedative,” he declared, pouring them both a couple fingers.
“I need a bazooka,” she replied dryly. “I can’t believe we’re flying in the opposite direction of where that asshole is landing in less than fifteen minutes.”
Talon nudged the glass toward her. “Drink it.”
Rox complied, knocking back the whisky, feeling the silky, smoky burn singe its way down her throat as she swallowed. Talon sat back in his chair, watching her as he swallowed his own drink.
“You’re not military,” he remarked, pouring them both another measure.
She rolled her eyes. “What gave me away?”
“You’re taking this personally, for one,” Talon answered. “And you’re not accustomed
to taking orders. We’re all a bunch of assholes when we want to be, but we know how to fall into line. It’s killing you to let this lie for now.”
“Where are you going with this?” she growled. “And how can I go the other way?”
Talon leaned forward and said in a low voice. “You’re Roxanne de Soto—Alejandro’s sister.”
Motherfuck—did everyone know who she was? She only just managed to keep her face blank.
“Don’t worry,” Talon went on. “Rush and I know who you are because we were at the hospital in Germany when Alejandro came in to take over Sam’s security detail. He said you sent him. That’s the only reason Sam didn’t send him packing,” he added.
She sat back slowly, glancing around the cabin casually, wondering if anyone else had overheard. “Does anyone else know?”
Talon shook his head. “It’s your secret. Not my business why.”
As Rox sat across from Talon, considering him, it occurred to her how clearly this man saw everything. He had to in order to be as good a sharpshooter as he was. Could she trust him? She supposed she’d have to. Roxanne’s eyes trailed across the cabin to where Rush stood in the galley, chatting with the flight attendant while he scarfed down a sandwich. He caught her look and nodded to her in that casual, Southern boy way of his. Talon and Rush were Sam’s boys. If Sam trusted them, then Rox would too. That was loyalty.
She thought of the diamond she wore on the long chain around her neck. She remembered Sam giving it to her while she was still healing from all the surgeries—when she was in so much pain she wanted to die, because it would have been so much easier than surviving and healing.
She recalled Sam’s eyes, black as night as she told her, “You’re a diamond, Roxy. Nothing breaks you. Never forget that.”
That was faith.
Rox returned to the man across from her, admitting something she hadn’t to anyone in years. “If you knew who I was, why didn’t you say anything?”
Talon shrugged. “You didn’t introduce yourself that way and honestly, I was trying to figure out why Sam put you in charge of finding the only man she wants to kill herself. Let’s say I was curious.”
Fearless: Complicated Creatures Part Three Page 39
