Blue Blooded

by Shelly Bell

  A hard smack on her ass tore her from her thoughts.

  “Am I boring you?” Logan asked with a grin.

  She flattened her palms on his chest. “No. I was just thinking how much I love you.”

  He reached up and tugged the ends of her hair. “I love you too. And I’m about to show you how much.”

  She squealed as he suddenly rolled them over so he was on top of her. He pushed her thighs farther apart and drove his cock back inside her, moving annoyingly slow. “I’ve fucked my wife all afternoon. Now I want to make love to her.”

  “Missionary? Isn’t that a little vanilla?”

  His heated gaze snared hers. “There’s nothing vanilla about my rock-solid dick inside your snug wet pussy. But sometimes, I want to slow things down, look into my wife’s eyes, and breathe her in.”

  He kissed her, their lips and tongues coming together in a sensual mating. In a leisurely rhythm, their bodies joined again and again, every downward stroke of his cock bumping against her clit. Hot pleasure coursed through her pussy, driving her higher toward climax.

  Pulling back from the kiss, they stared into each other’s eyes, their breathing in sync as if passing their breaths back and forth between one another.

  His cock twitched inside her, signaling her to his impending orgasm. The muscles around his eyes trembled as if he was about to lose control, but he didn’t close his eyes or look away. She drowned in the love reflecting in his gaze.

  His hand snaked down between their bodies and to her clit, where he pinched it between his fingers. Tears rolled down her cheeks from the intensity, but she forced herself to keep her eyes open as a climax crashed into her without warning, the muscles in her pussy clenching hard on his cock. As waves of contractions racked her pussy, she watched as Logan lost himself in his own orgasm. His face contorted and his body shook before he collapsed on her with a low moan.

  A minute later, he rolled off her, shifting them so her head rested on his chest. His fingers played with her nipple, his half-hard cock thickening against her thigh. The man was insatiable, but she’d never complain. He took her lips, forcing them apart. She couldn’t get enough of him, would never tire of his touch.

  Knocking on their door broke their revelry. “Logan, we need to talk.”

  Logan groaned, catching the come dripping down her thigh with his fingers and pushing it back inside her pussy. He finger-fucked her, the sound of her wet tissues sucking those digits inside filling the room. “Not now, Sawyer. I need some alone time with my wife.”

  “You guys need to come to Tech Central,” Sawyer said through the door. “We’ve got something you have to see.”

  His fingers stilled. “Fine. Give us five minutes.” With a sigh, he pulled them out of her pussy and into her mouth. “Clean them off,” he ordered.

  Sometimes, she didn’t mind his bossiness.

  Sticky and sweaty, they took another quick shower before dressing and heading down the hall to meet the guys. Now that the sexual high was wearing off, she wondered what was so important that Sawyer felt the need to interrupt them.

  Sawyer, Oz, Rowan, and Hunter stopped their conversation the minute she and Logan stepped into the room.

  Oz grinned at them. “Congratulations on your marriage.” He sniffed and pretended to dab his eyes. “It was a lovely ceremony. The only thing missing was your best man, Oz.”

  Hunter punched Oz in the arm. “What makes you think you would have been best man? Maybe Logan would’ve asked me.”

  Sawyer grinned widely. “Judging by the sounds coming from your room, it’s too late to get the marriage annulled, so I’m guessing you’ve decided to stay married?”

  She and Logan shared a glance. He looped his arm around her and tugged her into his side. “Why fight the inevitable?” He kissed her cheek before giving his friends a scowl. “Mind telling me what was so important you felt the need to interrupt our honeymoon?”

  Rowan motioned to his computer. “I was able to trace the money given to Fink’s mother. Whoever was behind everything really tried to keep it buried. There were several layers between the origination and the final destination. It came from a PAC Fund called A Better Tomorrow and was listed under an unclassifiable consulting expenditure.”

  Her neck prickled with heat while a chill passed through her. Political action committees were primarily formed to pool campaign contributions and to donate those funds to help elect chosen political candidates.

  Rachel didn’t believe in coincidences. “So how do we figure out who authorized the payment?” she asked, her mind spinning with the implication of this new information.

  “I checked the recipients, and this PAC oddly donates money across party lines,” Rowan said. “Guess the two senators who have received the largest contributions from this PAC.”

  “Hutton and Byron,” Logan said through gritted teeth.

  Rowan nodded. “Bingo.”

  Oz dropped into his chair in front of the computer and spun it from side to side. “Senator Hutton wouldn’t have put himself at risk of contracting a deadly disease. It doesn’t make sense. And what motive would either of them have to do it?”

  “Hutton has introduced a bill to increase spending for the prevention of biological warfare,” Logan told him. “Releasing a deadly disease like Leopold would support his position that additional funds are necessary.”

  Seemed to Rachel like a drastic way to earn money. “But he’d be crazy to expose himself to the virus.” She’d met Hutton and had a hard time believing he could do such a thing. “What about Byron?”

  Logan shook his head. “Why would he do it? Wouldn’t it hurt his chances that his bill would pass?”

  “Maybe he just wanted Hutton dead,” Hunter said, perched on the edge of a desk.

  “There are easier ways to do that,” Rowan pointed out.

  Suddenly somber, Oz stopped moving his chair. “You should also know that according to Byron’s intern, Byron is also in Las Vegas.”

  Rachel perked up at that bit of news. What reason did Byron have for being here at the same time as his senatorial nemesis? Surely, that couldn’t be a coincidence. She didn’t want to believe that the man she’d met at the FBI office could be capable of such an act or that Logan and she had gone to such lengths to protect a man who had possibly been behind the whole plot to release Leopold on innocent people.

  “I’ll research the treasurer of the PAC as well as Byron to see if there’s something we’re missing, but let’s just focus on Hutton right now,” Rowan said with his usual logic. “What would we need to tie him to the Rinaldi or the agents?”

  Logan squeezed her side in reassurance as if he sensed her distress over the recent revelation. “If we could hack into his computer, we could go through his files and emails. Maybe we’d find something there.”

  “How do we do that?” she asked, burrowing in closer to his side.

  “I don’t suppose he gave you his IP address,” Oz quipped.

  She laughed. “No, surprisingly, that wasn’t on the card he gave me. Isn’t there another way?”

  Sawyer rested against the wall, his feet crossed in front of him. “If he brought his computer with him and if it were on, there are a couple of different ways we could access it.” He looked at Rachel. “You can locate the IP address and give it to us. Then we could hack him remotely, but we’d only be able to do it so long as the computer was on. The other way is to hack it through the Wi-Fi. It’s harder to trace that way, but we could download his files in a single swoop through an app on a cell phone.”

  Her heart started hammering from the surge of adrenaline racing through her. While she didn’t have the computer skills on par with the guys, she had experience working undercover. She could help them access Senator Hutton’s computer. “That’s what we’ll do,” she said excitedly. “Give me a phone with the app on it, and I’ll use it when I do the interview.”

  Logan grew rigid against her. “Guys, can you excuse us?”

  The
room went dead silent for a beat. Then shooting each other looks that spoke volumes, Sawyer and the others left the room. A sense of dread fell upon her, and she braced for the words that would slice her heart in half.

  Logan’s arm fell away from her waist and he moved to stand in front of her. “I don’t want you to do it,” he said quietly.

  She inhaled a deep breath as if drawing strength into herself. “Why not?”

  “If he is responsible for everything and you get caught, what do you think a monster like that would do to you? And if he’s not responsible and you get caught, you’ll have pissed off a powerful senator who will have you thrown behind bars. In both scenarios, you’ll end up hurt.”

  She placed her palm on his chest. “How about the scenario where I don’t get caught and nothing happens to me?”

  It pained her when, shaking his head, Logan took a step back from her. “It’s not worth the risk. We can take what we know and pass it on to the FBI.” His tone gave her the impression that his decision was final.

  She felt the hope of their marriage working slip through her fingers like sand. “Right, because they’ve been oh so helpful so far,” she said, laughing bitterly. “They want to pretend like none of this ever happened. They’ll give their official statement and that will be it. We need to find something that incriminates Hutton before we can go to the FBI.”

  He folded his arms across his chest. “We should wait until we have more intel before charging in and putting your life in danger.”

  Was this about control? Or a result of his time in the army when incomplete intelligence had cost the lives of his fellow soldiers and an innocent civilian? Regardless, his traumatic experience had obviously affected him strongly.

  “How are we going to get that intel?” she asked.

  “I don’t know.” Averting his eyes, he dipped his chin toward his chest and ran his fingers through his hair. “We’ll figure it out.”

  Frustrated, she clenched her hands. “And by then our chance to hack his computer will have passed.” Her voice came out louder than she’d intended, but he wasn’t listening to reason.

  He threw his hands in the air. “Then I’ll do it. I’ll come with you to the interview. Or I’ll stop by his room another time and do it.”

  This had nothing to do with waiting for more intel. He just didn’t want her to do it. And while part of her knew he did it out of concern for her, the other part realized her greatest fear had come true. She’d fallen in love with a man who wanted to control her.

  “You’ll do it. It’s too dangerous for me, but it’s okay for you? You’re not even thinking rationally. If you get caught, he’ll assume I’m in on it anyway.” She waved her hand at him. “This is about you wanting to control everything. But you can’t control me, and it scares you.”

  “I’m not trying to control you.” He stalked forward and grabbed her shoulders, his fingers digging into her skin. “I’m only trying to keep you safe.”

  A war raged inside her. She knew he was telling the truth, but it didn’t matter.

  The result was the same.

  She blinked back the tears. “This isn’t going to work. I told you my job is dangerous sometimes, and you promised you’d try to accept that. But the first opportunity to test that promise, you’re forbidding me from doing my job.”

  He took her face in his hands. “You haven’t been out of danger for a day yet and already you’re throwing yourself back to the wolves. I love you. My job as your husband is to protect you even if you don’t want that protection.”

  Wetness stained her cheeks. This didn’t feel like a marital argument. This felt like good-bye. “Your job as my husband is to support me and my decisions. This is why I never wanted to get married. I’m never going to obey you outside of the bedroom, Logan. I’m not submissive.”

  His throat worked over a swallow as he tenderly brushed her tears with his knuckles. “You say the word submissive like it means you’re weak. You know that’s not true. There’s strength in submission.”

  She pushed him away. “The strength comes from handing over that power to another. I’m not giving it to you. You’re trying to take it from me. I won’t let you do it. You say you love me. Then let me take a risk. Let me be the same woman you fell in love with. The one who defied you in the dungeon and followed you outside at Benediction. The one who put herself in front of a dog to protect it the same way you put yourself in front of Evans’s gun to protect me. That’s who I am. I can’t change for you. I won’t.”

  His hands outstretched, Logan began to step toward her, but he stopped himself. “I can’t change who I am either. I wish I could,” he said, his voice cracking. “And I can’t be a part of your plan tonight.” His eyes held an ultimatum. “If you do this, you’re going to have to do it without me.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  WITH MAKEUP ON, her hair curled and sprayed to perfection, and a smile on her face, no one would guess that Rachel was dying on the inside. After she and Logan had broken up for good, she’d held it together long enough to go over how to work the software that would hack into the senator’s computer.

  Sawyer had tried to get her to talk about what had happened between her and Logan, but she refused to discuss it. Taking comfort in the familiar, she regressed to the woman who focused solely on her job. Tonight was about more than the interview. It was about proving to Logan that she was her own woman. Just as with her other stories, it wasn’t solely about her career. It was about exposing the truth. She’d thought after spending the week with her, Logan had accepted that, like him, she had a drive to protect people. But he hadn’t and, as a result, she was nursing her first broken heart.

  Rather than watch her take what he perceived as a risk, Logan had taken a commercial flight back to Michigan. Sawyer and the guys had installed the app on her new cell phone and shown her how to use it. The app would tap into the Wi-Fi and download the data from every computer on the network. The chances of Senator Hutton having his computer on were slim to none, but unless she could find a legitimate excuse to use it, they’d have to cross their fingers. If she didn’t get access tonight, she’d have to find another time she could try again. But she wouldn’t give up. She’d do what she had to do in order to uncover the truth, whatever that was.

  She kept her purse behind her chair, the cell phone tucked away inside. As soon as she’d arrived at the Lake Las Vegas mansion where Hutton had been staying, she’d checked the available Wi-Fi networks, clicking on the one that matched the last name of the home’s owner. Then, to bypass the required password, she’d opened the app and typed in the code that Sawyer had made her memorize before slipping the phone back into her purse. It was out of her hands at this point.

  But she didn’t plan on going easy on the senator. She had a list of questions that she needed answers to in order to assure herself he wasn’t responsible for the hell she’d gone through this past week.

  Working in conjunction with her station, the local news crew had arrived an hour earlier to set up. She’d kept herself busy, throwing herself into her job, making sure everything was ready before the senator came downstairs and joined them. Once the interview was completed, her station’s producers would edit it for the eleven o’clock news. Her boss mentioned the possibility of it getting picked up by the national network, but she didn’t want to get her hopes up. She’d already had her hopes dashed once today. She didn’t need to go through it again.

  Relaxing on the chair that had been set up for the interview, she stood when Senator Hutton entered the room. Dressed in a different suit than he’d worn in the FBI’s office, he looked just as polished, no sign of the exhaustion that Rachel felt from having gone without sleep last night.

  “Can I get you anything, Senator?” asked one of her crew. “Water?”

  Senator Hutton waved him off. “I’m fine. Ready for my interview.” He took Rachel’s hand and shook it. “It’s nice to see you again, Ms. Dawson.”

  She gave him a
smile she wasn’t feeling inside. “You too, Senator.” They settled in their seats, the senator completely at ease under the lights and cameras. “Thank you again for agreeing to this interview.”

  “You saved my life and possibly millions more. There’s very little I wouldn’t do for you. In fact, if you ever decide to leave your career, I could always use a woman like you as my press secretary.”

  Her life was spent pursuing truth and justice. In her opinion, she’d find neither in politics. “Thank you for that kind offer, but I love my job, and there’s nothing else I’d rather do.”

  Intentionally omitting a couple, she went over the topics they’d be discussing before she began the interview.

  She angled her knees toward him. “You made headlines this week for your record-breaking eighteen-hour-long filibuster of Senator Byron’s bill. Can you give the average American who knows nothing about politics the short reason you chose to do that?”

  Relaxing, he leaned on the arm of his chair. “Despite my efforts to defeat Senator Byron’s proposed legislation, the bill had made its way to the floor for a vote. I felt very strongly that decreased spending to Homeland Security would place our country in a vulnerable position. We need to spend more on protecting our borders rather than less. With a filibuster, I was able to delay the vote until the Senate returns from its break, using that time to sway the votes in my favor, so that the bill would be defeated.”

  She could understand how he’d been so successful in politics all these years. When he spoke, he captured everyone’s attention with his deep, powerful voice. “You also have a bill up for consideration, is that true?”