Zaf felt the pressure of her nails burrowing into the back of his neck, but when he started to retreat she pushed him closer. Gasping harshly as his teeth met her flesh, she said, “It doesn’t feel the same. Why doesn’t it feel the same?”
We’re not the same. But he’d be damned if he let that defeat him.
He unwrapped her hand from the cane and set the stick against the books beside them. Guided her to lean back. “Open your legs. Put…” He picked up her hand, selected the middle finger. “This one. Put it inside you.”
“Uh…”
Zaf dove for her, touching his nose to hers before covering her mouth in a kiss. “Inside you, Jo.”
Pulse hammering, he watched. When she slid her skirt up, exposing the slim thighs that had once straddled him, heat surged. When her hand disappeared beneath the fabric, he said something filthy that drew a private, sexy chuckle. “Are you wet?”
She nodded.
“Say it.”
“All right.” She flattened her lips, and her cheeks flushed an irresistible dusky color. Now who was shy? “I’m wet.”
“Show me.”
Joey withdrew her hand, held it up to him. The digit that had been inside her was glazed. As if she knew what he’d demand next, she ran her finger along his mouth. And when he parted his lips to take in the salty-sweet dampness, he gently snapped his teeth over her fingertip and coaxed it deeper before letting her pull out.
“I want more of this,” he said.
She shook her head, pushing his chest so she could have room to fix her dress. “I can’t. My body’s hot for you, but I can’t stand here half-naked—”
“Now you’re modest?”
“Maybe it’s not modesty. Maybe it’s decency.”
“Oh. So now, all of a sudden, you and I are decent people?”
“I can’t pretend that sex will make everything all better. Can you?” Without allowing him the opportunity to approach the question, she tugged him forward to reverse their positions. Now his back was to the stacks and she was leaning against him for balance as she unfastened his belt. “Do you feel the way you felt when I touched you before?”
Zaf was too riveted to comprehend what she was doing. He was staring at her determined frown and the tears collecting in her eyes. Then his pants were open and her fingers were sliding through his pubic hair to wrap around his dick. The first tug of her slim, soft-skinned hand had him bending his knees and groaning out loud.
“Quiet, Zaf,” she whispered, establishing a slow-stroke pace and rocking with him. “We’re in a library.”
“Hold on—”
“Precisely what I’m doing.” Her smile was contradicted by the visceral hurt shadowing her face. She didn’t interrupt the tempo, but kept attentively working his cock. As fluid coated the tip, she made a satisfied little noise then rubbed it onto her thumb and sucked it. “You taste the same. But something’s different. You know it’s different between us.”
Stop her. Get control of yourself.
“This works out nicely for you, Zaf. You betray me, hide for five years, thwart my attempt at something new with a guy who hasn’t single-handedly destroyed my universe and I get you off, anyway.” Joey pressed her face against his shirt to stifle a sob.
Of their own accord his hips gyrated, and he cursed himself for it. How could he still be hard, how could he want this, when she was crying and all but turned inside out? She might be capable of decency now, but he certainly wasn’t.
He didn’t break away and she kept jerking his shaft until the friction twisted between them and his tension splintered. Teeth gritted, restraint bent, he spurted into her fist. What she didn’t capture trickled onto his thighs.
Oh, hell.
“Funny thing about all this,” Joey went on, considering her semen-slickened hand and then cleaning it with a few meticulous licks. “It changes nothing. I will never forgive what you did to me.”
Zaf, still coming down from a sex high, was in a haze as she placed his hand to a spot on her lower abdomen.
“This is the entry point, where your bullet struck me before it cracked my femoral head.”
The words dropped him fast, and if he had a heart it’d be as jagged as broken glass right now. “Jo, it was an accident.”
“There are no accidents, Archangel.” Sweeping up her cane and leaning to kiss him, she left tears on his jaw. “I’m done with you.”
*
Joey escaped to the restroom. At the sink she frantically snatched too many paper towels from the dispenser, splashed too much tepid water and tried to cleanse away the evidence of what she’d done with Zaf. The soap smelled sterile and the towels rasped her skin, but she scoured at her breasts and then her lips, anyway.
The door opened and a woman in a UNLV hoodie and jeans shuffled in as Joey was spitting a soap-and-water mixture into the sink. “Yuck—that can’t taste good,” she commented. “Hey, are you sick or something?”
Depends. Would you consider giving an ex a handjob in Nonfiction sick?
Joey yanked out more towels to dry her face. Reflected in the mirror were tearful eyes, a rosy-tipped nose and a swollen, blotchy mouth. “I’m good.” Lies.
“Sure?”
“Absolutely.” Lies. “Thanks.”
The woman pursued a stall and Joey slipped outside.
As of right now, this minute, I’m a matchmaker-free zone.
She must be allergic to normal run-of-the-mill sort of meet cutes that led to relationships and love. To keep things in perspective, she hadn’t agreed to this date for the prospect of a long-term relationship or love. Still, it cut a little too deep to recognize that at age thirty-three, she was as god-awful at blind-dating as she’d been at age twelve.
She’d arrived at the library with her eyes wide open. She simply hadn’t entertained the thought that she would be dealing with Archangel. Zafir Ahmadi was a self-sacrificing guy capable of infinite compassion—contrary to what he wanted to believe. But Archangel, his codename, represented an expert marksman with the heart of a vigilante.
Joey loved Zaf. She hated Archangel.
Archangel was obsessed with revenge. He had overtaken the man she loved. Only, she hadn’t seen the signs until that vexed night in Arizona. The narcotics case had put her entire team on edge, so she hadn’t noticed that in the days immediately preceding, Zaf had begun to pull away from her. They’d shared meals, fucked, slept wrapped around each other—but the talking had stopped. On that bad night Zaf had turned against their unit and she’d been so jarred that she hadn’t protected herself. Someone else’s gun had threatened her life, yet it was Zaf’s 9 mm bullet that had torn through her.
The precautions, training and Kevlar hadn’t shielded her, not really. No armor had covered that vulnerable strip of lower abdomen. Nothing had even stopped her heart from breaking.
The shot had been meant for the man who’d seized her, but she had ignored Zaf’s signals because she didn’t trust him. Failed signals, miscommunication, and ultimately the sharpshooter had pinned her at close range and she lay crumpled on the ground scarcely aware of the bloody chaos around her.
That had been the last time she’d seen Zaf, until he’d decided to invade the new life she was trying to build here in Nevada.
At least Joey wasn’t paranoid. The wariness that warned she was being followed had been perfectly on the mark. Only, this wasn’t the kind of thing she was happy to be right about.
Zaf had eyes on her, but why?
Outside again, beneath a canopy of heavy clouds, Joey wasn’t entirely surprised to see him on the front entrance steps. He wasn’t the type to tuck his tail and run when a mission was on the line. Besides, he owed her a hell of an explanation.
Resting against the handrail, he looked at her with steady intensity. Had what they’d shared not quite twenty minutes ago affected him? It left her a little embarrassed and a lot aroused, reminiscent of when she’d picked open his locker at their Washington, DC, office and tucked her undies
inside. “Still here, huh? Did you come for the mind games but stay for the books?”
“I came for you and I stayed for you.”
“Yeah, you did come for me, Zaf. In a couple of ways. The more pressing issue should be how quickly you can get yourself into a pair of clean pants, yet you’re still here angling for a way to get something from me. Single-minded, much?”
Zaf straightened to his full height; he towered over her but somehow it hadn’t mattered before. “I want you to let me do my job.”
God, the man was prince of the cloak-and-dagger. “Which is what?”
“Protecting you.”
Joey halted, taking a moment to seek out the lie in his face, but she couldn’t break through. She saw a man she’d missed even as she cursed the sweltering summer day she’d met him seven years ago. All she could seem to attach herself to were the memories of lazy conversations and how he altruistically volunteered his life for the law. Lean and carelessly sexy with that serious, brooding look that magnetized people even as it pushed them away, he was the Zaf her heart recognized.
But the guy who’d manipulated her into a confrontation? That screamed Archangel. It was his modus operandi.
“Goodbye, Zaf.” She skirted around him to the other side of the handrail.
“Wait, please,” he said, matching her steps but keeping the rail between them. “You can’t look me square in the eye and say you haven’t wondered if somebody’s tailing you.”
“Yes, I’ve wondered.” She’d also wondered if paranoia was making her crazy. “Now I know I was right and the doer is you.”
“It’s not me—”
“Actually,” she said, eyes narrowed as she looked around them, “the old guy with the ratty corduroy pants and the Copernicus biography. Is he on your payroll? Because I’d hate to think I handed a one-hundred-dollar bill to one of your spies.”
“No, I didn’t recruit spies.” He wasn’t even fazed that she’d accused him of it. That’d probably disturb some, but putting extra sets of eyes on subjects was a common investigative practice in their world. “You gave a hundred dollars to a beggar?”
“I don’t know if he was a beggar for certain, but figured the money would cut him some slack. So I’ll skip my next manicure. I don’t mind.”
“You’re a beautiful person, Jo, with beautiful intentions. But don’t you think cash like that might go toward heroin in his veins instead of food in his stomach?”
“I saw the good in him. Sometimes a person needs someone else to see the good in them, Zaf.” With that she was back on the move.
“Josephine, hang on for a minute, okay?”
“No, I don’t have time for this. I’m getting along fine and the sooner you disappear again, the better.”
“Do you mean that?”
“I do.” Lies, lies, lies. But they were her strength and comfort because he couldn’t be trusted with the truth. “I have friends here and a stable job at ODC. Plus, as you’re damn well aware, I’m testing out the dating scene. So I have no time for your pretenses. I don’t want you anymore.”
The last few words crackled in the muggy air. “I might believe that had I not been in that library with your hand around my cock.”
Oh, sure. Bring that up. She stabbed her cane to the step. “Hey, you don’t get to crawl out of the woodwork when I’m trying to patch up my life. And you, of all folks, don’t get to judge me. So give your so-called protection to someone who wants it.”
That shut him down, but only for a taut moment. He literally jumped the rail, his feet touching down neatly on the step below hers.
“How impressive, you do your own stunts.” Thank goodness for snark—dishing it out gave her time to push past a tide of arousal. Facing him full-on took her breath away.
Zaf leaned close, kissed her cheek for the benefit of people passing them on the stairs. To strangers they appeared to be a normal pair of lovers relishing the brightness of each other’s company on a dreary afternoon. So far from the truth. “Joey, you’re wearing a target.”
“Who put it there?” Asking the question didn’t mean she had to put stock in what he said. It wouldn’t be the first time he lied to achieve an end result.
“Gian DiGorgio.”
“Are you lying?” He wasn’t; she fully and completely trusted that on this occasion he was honest. God-given instincts, sharpened by a career as a federal agent, had made her suspicious of coincidences. It wasn’t by chance that in recent weeks Gian DiGorgio repeatedly appeared at the bodega where she’d shopped for years and had never before seen him. Happenstance wasn’t at work when she visited the post office and found the man twisting a key into the box next to hers. Though the Bureau lent her a few courtesies, she had no recourse against a citizen exercising his rights to patronize a bodega and keep a post office box.
But to doubt Zaf would pressure him to release information he likely was reluctant to share with her yet—if at all.
“I’m not lying, Jo.”
Just to stress that she wouldn’t allow herself to be handled, she said, “I want proof.”
“I’ll get it to you.”
“Good.”
“Look, I know you don’t trust me, but DiGorgio isn’t some playground bully. This isn’t casual advice between old friends. Eliminating the threat to your life is my job. Once before you pissed on my judgment, and neither of us will forget how that played out.”
Joey flinched. “This conversation’s over.”
“Take this seriously,” he pleaded. “I didn’t come to Las Vegas to dig up the past or make you cry or to blame you for my screwups.”
“Really? Seems that way to me.”
“None of it was intentional. You’re no longer an irritation to DiGorgio—you’re a threat. I’ve had him tagged for the past few months. What he wants with you is personal. From what I’ve gathered, he’s willing to handle you himself.”
Inside Joey was cold, and anxiety slammed her so hard that her spine started to ache. But she said indifferently, “Let him give it a try, then. Gian DiGorgio’s kissing seventy and he’s no he-man. I can cope.”
“There’s a difference between being strong and being stupid.”
“No one asked you to be my rescuer, Zaf.” She waited for a retort—his body language said he was burning to argue—but no words came and she shrugged. “Give me whatever intelligence you’ve collected.”
“I want to talk to you about this more.”
In other words, he wanted control. But it was she who wore a target. Her life rested in her own hands. That hadn’t changed just because he decided to swagger back into it.
“Come to the house tonight, about sevenish. I’m sure you already know exactly where it is. Bring beer. I like it light these days.” She wouldn’t be home, but let him figure that out in time.
“Okay.” He turned to jog down the steps but hesitated. “Hey, Jo.”
“What?”
He might’ve tried for a smile, but it curved into a contemplative frown. God, she’d been a fool to love him once. A delightfully buoyant little fool. Not anymore, though, and that might be the saddest thing of all. “Nothing. See you tonight.”
“Tonight,” she confirmed, sending him off with a smile she didn’t feel.
Pulling out her phone—not the junk one, which was safe to pitch into a receptacle now, but her smartphone—she found missed calls and unread texts waiting. She’d manage Charlotte’s grilling later. She owed her friend an explanation after dropping a doozy of a bomb on her in the lobby gallery earlier, but she needed an urgent favor and knew who could get it done.
“Tem, hi,” she said cheerily when the woman picked up the call. Pleasantries out of the way, she asked, “About that car. Is the offer still on the table? ’Cause I’m going to do an overnight at the training facility and I could use a change of wheels. With the veterans reporting to camp tomorrow, I should get my bearings. Let’s make that happen tonight, shall we?”
Tem agreed to make the necessary a
rrangements and, hanging up, Joey grappled for some sort of inner reassurance that using the Las Vegas Slayers gig to dodge Zaf was wise. He would worry about her until he found her again.
But she supposed if she could manage that burden for five years, then surely he could shoulder it for a single night.
Decision final, Joey slid into her Camaro and headed home to pack.
Chapter 4
So this was what it was like to be a Blue for a night.
As she was working a case and now obligated to view things through a professional lens, Joey made a dedicated effort to see the car as a mere tool that would enable her to complete an assignment with utmost efficiency.
And style. Sexy, sinful, magnificent style.
But the Ferrari that had been practically white-glove delivered in front of her property was not the transportation of mere middle-class mortals. It was black fire screaming for attention in a sedate suburban Stepford Wives neighborhood. A dark devil disturbing a congregation of luminous angels.
The sensible town car on the curb, where one of the Blues’ drivers sat stoically at the wheel, was more suitable for someone in her tax bracket and who sampled the celebrity experience whenever her high-profile friendships drew her into that realm. As she moved aside to clear a path on the front walk for the man who’d handed her the envelope containing the Ferrari’s keys and papers and was carrying out her travel bag to stow in the trunk, she wondered if she could negotiate a change.
But Tem would hear none of that. “Appreciate the car, Josephine. If it causes any physical discomfort, then let me know.”
Joey retreated to a trio of palm trees in her front yard and watched the men drive off in the other car. In all likelihood Tem had emergency-texted them to take off pronto. “The thing is this. Contrary to what Hollywood action movies depict, special agents don’t drive six-figure luxury cars.”
“Seven.”
“What?”
“It was an auction find my husband impulse-bought in Europe. He paid seven figures, got bored and it’s been under tarp for ages.”
One More Night with You Page 5
