He just hoped she would see it that way, too.
One more day. After tomorrow night, he would never have to lie to her again.
He stroked a hand across her cheek, then kissed her.
“Maybe since Adam isn’t here we could go into my bedroom,” she said.
“Abi, we don’t have to.” Though he loved kissing and touching her, couldn’t wait to make love to her, what he felt for Abi was so much more than sexual. Just being with her was enough for now. “I don’t want to do anything you’re not ready for.”
She rose from the couch, pulling him up with her. “We won’t.”
He grabbed his backpack from where he’d left it beside the couch and followed her into her bedroom. She flipped the switch by the door, and the lamp next to her bed turned on. She turned to face him, backing toward the bed. “Take off your shirt.”
He dropped his pack on the floor and peeled his shirt up over his head. Abi did the same. She wore a lacy pink bra underneath. She reached back and unlatched it and tossed it on the floor with her shirt.
That night on the couch, it had been dark and he hadn’t really seen her. He breasts were small and round, her hips full. She looked exactly as a woman was supposed to look.
“You’re beautiful,” he said.
She gazed down at herself. “I was thinner before Adam.”
“You’re perfect just the way you are.”
She pulled back the covers and climbed in, scooting over to give him room. They lay side by side facing each other, as they had on the couch. Will pulled the sheet up over them.
“It doesn’t bother you that I was with so many other men?” she asked, looking worried.
“You’re with me now,” he said, touching her face.
“There’s so much we don’t know about each other.”
“We have time to learn. Abi, there is nothing you could say or do that would change the way I feel about you.”
She could tell by the look in his eyes, by the sincerity in his tone, they weren’t just sweet words to soften her up. He really meant it. Then Will kissed her, started touching her, and she stopped thinking about the past. She stopped thinking about everything but the tingly warmth where their bodies pressed together, the wet heat of his mouth as he kissed her lips, her throat, the ridge of her collarbone.
She unfastened his shorts, and he groaned as she slipped her hand inside his boxers. Like the rest of him, he was long and lean. She wrestled with the notion of sliding down under the covers and taking him into her mouth.
She was no stranger to pleasuring a man orally, but only because she knew it was what they liked, not because it was on her list of fun things to do. But the thought of doing it to Will, the thought of making him feel good, excited her.
At the same time there was something about what they were sharing, a feeling of innocence she didn’t want to lose or corrupt. She didn’t want to shatter the illusion that this was new and exciting and fresh. On so many levels it was.
In all the ways that counted.
Will needed no encouragement touching her this time. And he even managed to unfasten her shorts all by himself. He looked up at her and grinned when the button popped loose. But they were tighter than the pair she’d worn the other night, so even when he’d unzipped them he had a tough time getting his hand inside.
“Take them off,” Abi said—ordered, really. Will wasn’t used to taking orders from a woman, but he had to admit he was beginning to enjoy it. Especially when she was commanding him to get her naked.
He braced himself up on his elbow. “Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“Panties, too?
She thought about it for a second, then nodded. “Everything.”
“You’re really sure? We don’t have to rush this.”
“Yes, damn it.”
He hooked his fingers in the waist of her shorts and panties and eased them down very slowly, watching her face—the impatient, hungry look in her eyes. When he got them as far as her knees, she took over and kicked them the rest of the way down, to the foot of the bed, then wasted no time pulling his down, too.
They settled back down under the sheet, arms around each other, legs intertwined, bodies touching. He’d been naked with women before, many women—physically anyway. With Abi he felt stripped down to his soul. As they kissed and touched, explored one another, he knew that being with a woman had never felt this intimate. She found the ticklish spot on his right side, and he discovered a sensitive patch of skin on the back of her knee.
It sounded shallow as hell, but he’d never considered sex as anything but a way to reach physical gratification, to give his wives the illusion they were connecting somehow, to satisfy their emotional neediness, at least for a brief while. Fooling around with Abi was…fun. And he was under the distinct impression she wasn’t used to a man putting her needs ahead of his own. Every new place he touched or tasted elicited a gasp of surprise or a moan of pleasure. He took her to the brink over and over, backing off at the last second each time, and she did the same to him.
If this was a test of endurance, they would both come out winners.
“Will,” she said, eyes heavy with desire. “Make love to me.”
Something inside him said he should wait. They shouldn’t take this any further, not until he told her the truth. But she was rubbing up against him, kissing him, and he was having a hell of a time telling her no.
“Abi—”
“If you ask me if I’m sure, I swear I’m going to kill you,” she said through gritted teeth.
Ooookay.
She shoved him onto his back and rolled over him, straddling his thighs, and he knew he was a goner. She was going to take what she wanted and there wasn’t much he could do to stop her. And he didn’t want to. She leaned down and brushed her lips over his. “I have never been more sure of anything in my life.”
If there had been any question before, any doubt that he loved her, he knew it now. This was what he wanted for the rest of his life.
“I need my pants,” he said. She looked at him funny and he added, “Condom.”
“Oh, right.” She fished his shorts from under the covers at the foot of the bed.
He pulled his wallet from the back pocket, took out a condom, then dropped his pants and wallet on the floor. He was going to tear it open when Abi took it from him and ripped the packet with her teeth.
“Can I?” she asked.
Right, like he was going to tell her no. He’d never been one to gravitate toward aggressive women, but damn, he was really beginning to enjoy this. “Go for it.”
He watched her as she rolled it on. He’d never seen anything more erotic, more beautiful, than Abi sitting there. He felt as if he’d been waiting his whole life for this.
“There hasn’t been anyone since Adam,” she said. “I’m going to take this slow.”
Will nodded and wrapped his hands around the full softness of her hips to help guide her.
Inch by inch, eyes closed in concentration, Abi lowered herself on top of Will, then gasped as he stretched skin and muscle that had been neglected since Adam’s birth. It felt like her first time, and maybe in her heart it was. The first time she’d made love anyway. All the times she’d had sex, she’d never felt like this, this complicated tangle of nerves and emotions.
She’d never felt anything at all.
When she sank as low as she could go, when they were joined completely, she stilled, letting her body get used to him. She looked down at Will to find him watching her.
Eyes locked, she lifted her body slowly up, then sank back down again, trembling as he touched even deeper inside her. Will sighed, and his grip on her hips tightened, his eyes never leaving her face. If she had expected pain, she’d been wrong. There was only pleasure. It came from somewhere deep inside her, a place she’d kept carefully guarded. Will was the key to unlock the door, and for the first time in her life she felt whole, alive. Everything that had happened b
efore tonight, everything she’d done, no longer existed.
“Kiss me,” Will said and she did. He tasted hot and sweet and he devoured her as if he was starving. She felt the world spin around her as their bodies tangled and locked, and when she opened her eyes she was on her back. He loved her slowly, sweetly, as if she were a delicate doll he was afraid he might break.
It wasn’t enough.
Not even sure what she wanted but desperate for more, she writhed beneath him, wrapped herself around him. In response, he gave her what she wanted, what she needed, driving himself inside her. Her body spasmed and arched against him. He did it once more and she cried out. They moved together, hard and fast and deep. Bands of pleasure wrapped around her, squeezed and let go, and she shattered in Will’s arms. In a haze she felt Will shudder, his body quaking with release.
She hadn’t actually said the words yet, as if holding them in would protect her somehow, shelter her from the hurt if he didn’t feel it, too. But she didn’t need protecting any longer. “I love you, Will.”
He looked down at her, brushed the hair back from her face as he so often did and smiled. “I love you, too.”
Will switched on the lamp and looked down at Abi sprawled under the sheet, sleeping peacefully. He wanted to crawl back into bed with her, but it was time for him to leave. The sun was already rising, meaning he was going to have a tough time getting out of there without anyone seeing him.
He sat on the edge of the bed and touched her face. “Abi, wake up.”
She didn’t budge. The woman slept like the dead.
He gave her shoulder a gentle shake. “Come on, Abi, wake up. I have to go.”
She groaned and muttered, “What time is it?”
“Almost seven.”
She opened one eye and peered up at him, smiling sleepily. “Hi.”
God, she was breathtaking. “Hi. I should go.”
She groaned again and curled her hand into his T-shirt. “No, don’t leave. I don’t have to work until almost eight.”
“It’s getting light out. I should go before someone sees me.”
“If you wait until after eight, all the staff will be gone and no one will see you.”
She had a point. “You don’t need time to get ready for work?”
“Ten minutes, tops. Which gives us plenty of time.” She patted the bed beside her. “Climb in.”
She didn’t have to ask him twice. He pulled his T-shirt over his head and dropped it on the floor.
Abi yawned and drew one leg out from under the covers, threw her arms out and stretched.
That’s when Will saw it.
The red heart-shaped birthmark at the top of her inner thigh.
Chapter 16
The clues had been there. She was the right age, the right height. Jesus, it even explained why she’d seemed like two different people at times. There’d been a dozen little things all screaming at him to take notice, and he’d ignored every one of them because he’d been too busy falling irresponsibly and stupidly in love with her.
Now there was no denying it. Abi was Crystal.
She gazed up at him, a puzzled look on her face. “Will?”
He looked at the mark on her thigh, then back up to her face. “It’s you.”
For a second she only stared at him, confused. Then the color drained from her face and her eyes went round with fear. For several long, oppressive seconds they only stared at one another. The air around them felt sticky and thick with tension. Then something came over her, a look in her eyes like he’d never seen before—the instinct to fight.
She pulled the sheet up around her and crept back against the headboard, looking like a tiger ready to pounce, but her voice was eerily calm. “Tell me you didn’t know. That all this time you haven’t been lying to me. Using me.”
Will tried to swallow, but his mouth was dry. “I-I didn’t know. I thought it was Maureen.”
“I won’t go back to Vince,” she said, fear leaking into her tone, but she held her chin high. “You might as well kill me now. It won’t be any worse than what he’ll do to me.”
“Kill you?” That’s when he realized she thought Vince had sent him. She thought he was part of the Sardoni crime family. “Abi, Vince did not send me here. I’m FBI.”
She inched farther away. “I don’t believe you.”
He reached for the backpack he’d left on the floor next to the bed, and Abi scrambled away from him. For all he knew, she had a weapon nearby, and he wasn’t in the mood to be shot.
Will lifted both hands in front of him. “Relax. I’m not going to hurt you. I just need to get my identification from my backpack.”
Very slowly, Abi watching him like a hawk, he bent down and unzipped the front compartment. He thought about grabbing his sidearm, but he didn’t want to scare her. He eased his identification out and tossed it on the bed beside her. She picked up the leather case and flipped it open, then studied it for several seconds before she dropped it back on the bed.
“Do you have a weapon?” he asked.
“A weapon?”
“A gun.”
“With Adam here? Of course not!”
“I just had to be sure.”
She gathered the sheet more snugly around her. “I need to get dressed.”
There was no way he was leaving her alone. He wouldn’t risk her jumping out a window and taking off on him. He grabbed her shirt from the floor and handed it to her, then turned his back.
He could hear the covers rustling, movement on the bed. Then she said, “You can turn around.”
She was still sitting on the bed, but she was dressed. “What are you doing here?”
“Looking for you. I’ve been searching for you for four years,” he said.
“Why?”
“Ryan Thomas.”
She looked confused, then awareness dawned in her eyes. “The agent Vince killed.”
“He was my friend,” Will said. “I was there when the car exploded. We were taking Gantz to testify.”
“Your face.” She held a trembling hand over her mouth. “Oh, God, that’s when it happened. Vince did this to you.”
“I should be dead, too, but I forgot my phone in the hotel room and went back to get it. It was dumb luck. I’ve been searching for you ever since.”
“And you thought it was Maureen? All this time you’ve been using me to get to her, haven’t you?”
Aw, damn. “Abi, it only started out that way, I swear. I wanted to become your friend in the hopes that it would get me in to see her. I never expected to feel this way about you.”
“And I’m supposed to believe you? Your marriages—were those pretend, too?”
“The only thing I ever lied about is what I do for a living. Everything else is the truth. The way I feel about you is real.”
“How did you find me? How did you even know where to look?”
“The call you made to Stephanie in Vegas last month. Because of her past involvement with the Sardonis, she’s still being watched. It was a long shot, but I looked into it.”
“I called her to see if he was still looking for me,” she said. “She said that things had died down, that there was a rumor I was dead. I thought I was finally safe. That it was over.”
“She was wrong.”
“I don’t understand. What do you want from me?”
“You gave us Vince. You were going to testify.”
“That was four years ago.”
“There is no statute of limitations on murder. I need you to come back to New York with me. I need you to testify.”
She shook her head. “I couldn’t then and I won’t now.”
“You’ll be protected, relocated. You know it’s the right thing to do. How can you turn your back on this?”
“My son, that’s how.”
“He’ll be protected, too.”
“You don’t understand.”
“I know you’re worried that he’ll be hurt—”
“Not
hurt. Stolen from me.”
“Stolen?”
“Will, don’t you see? Adam is Vince’s son.”
He hadn’t seen it coming. Abi could tell by the stunned look on his face that it had never crossed his mind. But she could see it sinking in now, taking hold, and she felt sick all the way down to her soul. Will hadn’t even considered that he’d been forming a relationship with the son of the man who had killed his friend and scarred him for life.
It didn’t get much worse than that. And though she understood the way he was feeling, it was completely unfair. Adam had done nothing wrong, yet he would pay for his father’s sins. It was what she’d always feared. Why she’d tried so hard to keep him protected.
It was possible Vince may have been good to Adam, but he would have marked his son with the stigma of being the child of a hired killer. Abi just couldn’t let that happen. Not then, not now.
“You told me Adam’s father was dead.”
“Are we going to start comparing lies, Will?”
He looked down and shook his head.
“Adam is the reason I disappeared. Why I never met with the agents. I would have done anything I could to send Vince to prison. Then I found out I was pregnant. I had to run. If I had stayed and testified, he would have known and the family would never have left me alone. They would have done everything in their power to take Adam from me. I figured if it was just me, maybe they wouldn’t have looked so hard—eventually they would forget about me.”
“I’m going to ask you a question and I want you to be completely honest with me. Did you take the hit money?”
She didn’t owe him an honest answer, but there was no point in holding the truth in any longer. “I did it for Adam. So he would always be taken care of. Vince owed me that. Owed his son.”
“You ran off with half a million in mob money and you thought they would forget about you?”
“What would you have done? I had medical bills to pay. I had to change my appearance.”
“Change it how?”
“I had my breast implants taken out, my nose done, a few moles removed. I guess I should have gotten rid of the birthmark while I was at it. The rest of the money is for Adam. For college. He’s going to have a better life than I did. Every advantage I never had.”
Out of Sight Page 16
