by Em Petrova
He dropped another kiss between her brows. “Let’s get through this and then I think we need to talk.”
“We do.”
Those two little words could mean heaven or hell for him—but right now he had to see her through this moment. Whatever she decided, it would be best for her, right?
The other side of his brain spoke up. Like hell. I’ll fight for her.
Some guards stood outside a door, where Jackson was waiting for them.
Chaz and Fleur approached it and he said, “Open it.”
The guard reached for the handle and pushed the door open to reveal a slender man seated all alone in the big room. Chaz turned his attention to Fleur to see if she showed recognition. But her face revealed nothing.
This woman was scary. Her control of her emotions was impressive but terrifying. She’d make a damn good secret agent but damn if he’d let her risk herself ever again.
She could also conceal her feelings for him, and that scared him even more.
Antonio looked up, his gaze moving over Jackson and him and then finally landing on Fleur.
Now, he wasn’t so good—he knew her at first sight.
“Close the door,” Jackson ordered Chaz and walked up to the table. “I’m Colonel Jackson and this is one of my agents as well as Miss Sutton. We’d like to speak with you.”
Antonio half-rose from his chair as if torn about what kind of manners were expected of him. In the end, he dropped heavily into his seat again and ran a hand through his brown hair. A red flush had settled over his throat, peeking from the collar of his patterned shirt.
Chaz placed a hand on Fleur’s spine and directed her to a seat across the wide table from where the man sat. Though the guards would have disarmed him if he’d been packing heat, Chaz was still on high alert. Anybody who knew Fleur meant he knew her father, and he’d seen firsthand how the men Sutton controlled people.
“I see you recognize Fleur,” Chaz said at once.
The man nodded. “I’ve never seen her in person.”
“Were you shown pictures of her?”
“I’ve… seen one or two.”
Now he was being fucking evasive, and Chaz would not stand for that. He glanced at Jackson, who seemed content to let him run the show.
“Where did you see these photos of Fleur?”
“In the bag,” he said quietly.
“How did you get the bag? Did Frankie give it to you?” Fleur spoke up, leaning across the table.
“Yes, Frankie gave it to me when… Well, Frankie voiced his concerns about his own safety and he couldn’t trust that the bag wouldn’t fall into the wrong hands.”
“How did you know Frankie?”
The flush climbed the man’s throat and took over his face. “We were lovers.”
Fleur sat up straight, studying him. “I loved Frankie,” she whispered with tears in her voice.
Chaz’s urge to put his hands on her and comfort her battled with the need to let her discover the answers for herself.
“I loved him too,” Antonio said.
Their gazes met, and Chaz witnessed the beginning of a friendship born from mutual love of the man who was no longer in their lives.
“My father gave him the bag—why? Why not just put it into a safe deposit box or one of the safes in our home, for that matter?” Fleur threw out.
Antonio lifted a shoulder and let it fall. “I wasn’t involved with your father, only Frankie.”
“How did Frankie know Darius Sutton?” Chaz asked. Under the table, his hand found Fleur’s.
“I’m not sure how they met. I wasn’t involved in that side of Frankie’s life. We met up sometimes, we had drinks or dinner. Then I wouldn’t hear from Frankie for several days, weeks even.”
“A lover treats you like that and yet you never questioned what he was doing in those times he wasn’t with you?” Chaz asked.
“Of course I wondered. I just didn’t push. Frankie had his secrets, I knew, and I figured he’d tell me in time or he wouldn’t. That’s how our relationship worked.”
“I see.” Chaz had been there, done that too many times with his own lovers to question it further. You allowed a person in a little or a lot.
He rubbed his thumb across Fleur’s knuckles beneath the table. With her, he wanted it all—every damn thought that went through her pretty little head, every memory she could pull out to share.
“Tell us how you were given the bag,” Fleur said, gripping Chaz’s hand in return.
Antonio rubbed at his jaw with a knuckle. “He came to my house one day and said he had some things to keep safe and would I help him out? Since I have a big apartment, I didn’t mind him keeping his things there. In fact, I’d asked him to bring personal items in the past.”
“Where is the bag now?” Chaz asked Jackson.
Jackson waved a hand and Antonio produced the bag from his lap. A cloth sack with a rope tie that shut when pulled tight. It looked to have seen better days, the patterns on the fabric faded and dull.
She let out a gasp and reached across the table for it. “May I?”
Antonio put it into her hands. “It’s yours.”
When she drew it across the surface to her, it didn’t make any suspicious rattling noises and was flat. What she didn’t know was OFFSUS had already found what they needed—some old camera rolls and a USB with enough information to send Sutton to prison for several life sentences. But what was left was all for Fleur.
She loosened the rope cinching it shut. Then she peered inside. Finally, she reached in with a shaky hand and removed some papers.
Old papers, judging by how yellowed they were. On the top was an enveloped with foreign stamps and beneath that a paper with dogeared edges.
Fleur read the name on the envelope aloud. “Alice Moreau. Saint-Guilhem-le-Désert, France.” She swung her gaze up to Chaz’s, letting him see the spark of surprise and excitement there. “My mother was a Moreau.” She didn’t tear into the envelope like he expected but moved to the next item, which was the battered document.
Her jaw dropped, and he read over her shoulder.
“I was born in France?” She looked to Antonio, who shrugged. “Why wouldn’t Daddy have told me this? Wait—I’ve seen my birth certificate and it says I was born here in Louisiana.”
“Must be a fake,” Chaz suggested.
“Makes no sense. Why would he fake something like that?”
When she sifted through another letter and a few photographs, she shook her head. “This is all my mother’s family. Why would my father think it’s so important to keep this safe?”
“Because it’s your heritage, Fleur. And he knew someday the world he’d built would collapse and you’d need these things.” Chaz’s words rolled off his tongue, ringing with certainty.
She looked between him and the items on the table. Then she opened the top enveloped and began to read. “It’s in French, but I’ll do my best to translate. Creole has some differences…”
In a soft voice that had all three men in the room riveted to her words, she read a letter from her mother’s sister, her own aunt, expressing her heartbreak to learn her sister had died unexpectantly.
Fleur stopped and hitched in a ragged breath before continuing. When she was finished, she looked up at Chaz. “She wanted me. She wanted me to come live with her and be raised by her. She says it was my mother’s wish that I leave my father’s home.” A choked sound escaped Fleur, and Chaz slid an arm around her shoulders, drawing her against his chest, uncaring that Jackson was looking on.
“That’s why your father kept it from you,” Chaz said.
“These photos, I recognize my mother as a young woman.” She held one up to inspect the woman wearing a straw hat and lounging on a patio somewhere in France. The other photos were of her in various stages of youth.
She reached into the bag again and moved her hand around but came out with nothing more. So she took up the second letter and read it quickly to herself. A tear tri
ckled from her eye and slid down her cheek.
Chaz’s chest burned at the sight. Dammit, she wasn’t supposed to be hurt ever again. If he had his way—
“My aunt begged for my father to let me come. It also tells him off for not allowing her to step foot on the plantation when she and her husband came for me. In fact, he had them…escorted off.” She pushed out a breath and looked to Antonio.
“This is all Frankie gave you?” Chaz demanded. “You’re not concealing anything, are you?”
“Most definitely not, sir. I have no reason to do such a thing.”
Jackson didn’t seem suspicious in any way, so Chaz relaxed a bit. OFFSUS would have dug up everything on Antonio from his bank statements to his last colonoscopy results, so Chaz was confident if he was hiding something, they would know it by now.
“The house Frankie lived in was tossed, torn apart. Sutton’s men were looking for something. Do you know what that could have been?” Chaz asked the man.
He dropped his gaze to his hands in his lap. “Frankie came to me two days before he died and told me he… loved me. And he wanted to run away. He just needed a few days to get things together and then he’d come for me. But he never came and the next thing I heard was that he’d been killed. I’ve gone over and over that conversation and I think Frankie was afraid to drag me into whatever he was involved in. He mentioned seeing something and being warned not to speak about it.”
Fleur sucked in a sharp breath and looked at Chaz. She too had seen something and been hunted as a result. OFFSUS had known for a while that Frankie might have been privy to a crime Sutton committed.
“Dead men can’t talk,” Antonio said in a shaky voice.
It seemed Sutton had a history of making errors and then killing off the witnesses. Fleur had been lucky, but judging by the desperate tone of her aunt’s letters, Fleur’s mother had wanted Fleur out of there, far away in France and raised by someone besides Darius Sutton.
But he’d kept them away from her. Chaz didn’t know how to feel about that, because she would have grown up in a healthier environment and never been in this situation. On the other hand, he never would have met her.
If Knights believed in anything, it was fate.
They questioned Antonio a bit longer, and since the man couldn’t give more answers, they released him to the guards to see out. Jackson followed him to give him last instructions, leaving Chaz and Fleur alone.
They turned to each other, and she threw herself against his chest as his arms came around her. “It’s all going to be okay from now on, Fleur. We’ll get your father in custody—we’re close. And then you’ll be safe to live your life, no matter where you choose to live it.” It hurt him to speak the words but for her sake, he had to give her the option. He couldn’t be another Darius Sutton, keeping her locked away from the path that was best for her for his own jealous reasons.
Chaz had a feeling that the reason Sutton came looking for the bag was he knew shit was about to go south and he never wanted Fleur to discover the truth.
“Chaz.” She looked into his eyes. “What if I don’t want to go? What if… Well, is this thing between us real?”
Heart thudding, he offered her a crooked smile. “What do you think?”
She issued a shuddering breath. “It sounds crazy to have feelings for you when I’ve been so messed up myself. I hardly know what I think let alone feel about anything else.”
He smoothed a lock of hair behind her ear and she leaned into his touch. “Then I’ll give you the space you need to figure things out. But I hope you don’t take too long, petite fleur.”
“Why is that?”
He leaned in until his lips were inches from hers. “Because it looks like we’ve got a honeymoon to take in France.”
Chapter Ten
By the time Chaz got Fleur back to the apartment where they’d stayed the first time, her mind was exploding with questions. About her mother’s family, Antonio and Frankie’s love affair cut short and most of all, Chaz’s bomb drop about a honeymoon in France.
Was he serious about that? He hadn’t looked to be joking at all. His eyes had sparkled with emotion when he’d spoken the words. Since she was shocked, still was, she hadn’t responded, and that had him quiet and tense on the drive to the apartment.
When he led her inside, he did a double sweep of the space for security reasons and returned to her side. “Ben had bars put on the balcony. It would take a crane to yank them off.”
“I’m sorry it had to come to that,” she said.
Chaz reached out—the first time he’d touched her since they’d left the base. When his warm, callused fingers trailed over her cheek and to the edge of her lips, a shiver ran through her.
“We’re not out of this yet, but we’re closer. Fleur, I want to have that discussion now.”
She stepped up to him. “Who needs talk when I can show you?” With that, she looped her hand around his nape and yanked him down at the same moment she went on tiptoe.
The first brush of their lips raised a simultaneous moan from them. She opened her mouth and he swept the inside with his tongue, scorching hot and seeking to drive her mad.
Only Chaz could rip away all her control and leave her begging.
He walked her backward through the apartment. They bounced off a wall and he flattened her against another, grinding his cock against her pussy as he kissed her until she was gasping.
She tore at his shirt, and he maneuvered to help her remove it. When she had all that heated muscle under her hands, she raked her fingernails lightly over his skin in demand.
“Oh hell yeah, sweetheart. Hold onto me.”
She hooked her arms around his shoulders as he lifted her. The few strides it took to reach the bed got her burning up, and when he laid her down and hovered over her for long seconds, she panted with desire.
He lowered his mouth and kissed her with a brand-new gentleness. The action brought a lump to her throat. After he broke the kiss, he looked down at her. “In case you didn’t realize, Fleur, I’m in love with you.”
The words were lost as he crushed his mouth over hers again, slanting to delve his tongue deep and draw small moans from her. He roamed his hands over her torso, up to her breasts, swooping a fingertip inside her bra cup to strum over her nipple. It hardened at his touch and she wiggled against him, needing to rip off both their clothes and get skin-to-skin like they’d been at the cabin.
His confession of love left her reeling, and she let each stroke of his hands on her body sink in along with the words. Was this real? Things like this didn’t happen.
Then again, she’d never believed all the events of the past month could happen outside of a movie plot either, yet they had.
He drew her top up and over her head and then went for her bra clasp. Dipping his head to her breasts and sucking one nipple into his mouth the instant it was free. She arched, and he moved to the other nipple, drawing on it lightly before releasing it with a soft pop.
Their gazes locked. He moved down her ribcage, leaving kisses all the way to her navel. When he drew a lap around it with his tongue, liquid heat pooled deep in her core, and her panties grew soaked.
Passion fueled her. She ran her fingers over his chest and the ridges of his abs until she reached his waistband. When she slipped her fingers inside, she found his big cock pushing over the elastic of his underwear and groaned.
“This time you’re letting me taste you,” she cooed.
He closed his eyes briefly and then opened them. A hum ran through him that wasn’t quite a shudder but as close as a man like Chaz would probably come to it.
“As the lady wishes,” he rasped out.
She pushed him onto his back and began exploring him the way he’d done her several times. Trouble was, she didn’t know whether to start at the top or bottom. Either way she was getting to the middle and that thick cock.
She took off the rest of her clothes and crawled atop him, naked. He moaned and cupped
her buttocks, kneading her and parting her cheeks in a way that had her wetter and needier than before.
As she kissed him, she lowered her wet pussy to his bare torso. The slick heat against his hard abs made her burn hotter, and she moved her hips to get closer. He grunted and teased at the folds of her pussy with his fingertips.
The minute he touched her there, though, she’d be lost in the throes of bliss and right now, she was going to keep her promise of tasting this man’s beautiful cock.
She slithered down his body, rubbing herself along his contours and kissing as she went. He tasted so good—of man and musk. When she reached his cargo pants and ran her tongue just above the waistband, he groaned.
She popped the buttons all the way to the base of his thick cock, her eyes on the prize. His underwear didn’t even contain him now, he was so swollen with need. She tugged his pants and underwear off his hips and drew them to his knees. His boots took too long to remove, the laces knotted. So he sat up to help her get them off faster, cursing every second that ticked by. When he lay back down, completely bared to her, she wet her lips.
He tracked her movements, a growl vibrating him. “You’ve got exactly two seconds to take me in your mouth and two to suck. After that, I can’t last.”
Giggling, she took him into her mouth in one second and pushed him right to the back of her throat. Those two seconds came and went, and he pushed his hips upward to get deeper into her mouth. She gripped his cock at the base, giving it some pumps in time to the pulls of her lips. Jacking him the way she’d seen him in the shower that day and adding licks around the head of his shaft.
When she was just figuring out what made his hips surge off the mattress, he grabbed her and yanked her up his body. Claiming his mouth as he reached between her legs and tormented her with flicks of his fingertip against her clit.
She rolled to the bed, helpless against his sexual assault. Somehow, he managed to get a condom on in that time. Spreading her thighs wide for him, he guided his cock to her entry. Watching her face at the moment he began to sink inside her.
The flared head stretched her, raising a gasp. The next inch had her moaning and by the time he was seated fully and bumping against her deepest point, she was crying out his name. Holding onto his shoulders for leverage, she began to buck against him. He withdrew and sank deep again.
