Blamed

by Edie Harris

  “Hey!”

  “—you’re going to be doing the heavy lifting, darling. Except...” Not telegraphing his move at all, he whipped the spandex sports bra over her head, leaving her breasts to bounce free for his greedy gaze. A second later, her plain cotton panties had been destroyed, ripped at the seams in an embarrassingly swoon-worthy display of rippling male arm muscle. “There. Much better.” Callused palms curved over her breasts, seeming to weigh them as he flicked the pads of his thumbs over her aching nipples.

  She shuddered and dropped her hands to his pectorals, letting him support her weight as her spine arched, thrusting into his touch. “Oh, God.” Another shiver, this time arrowing straight down her body to throb in her clit. “Suck on them. Please, Vick. Please put your mouth on me.”

  Groaning, he placed a hand between her shoulder blades and urged her upper body toward him. “Nothing gets me hotter than hearing you beg for me.” His teeth closed gently around one nipple, then his lips, and he suckled her, the tip of his tongue flicking with aggravating precision over the sensitive bud. His lips danced over the lower curve of her breast before taking a sweet bite, and again until the same attention was given to the neglected one.

  “Good,” she gasped, one hand slipping to hold him by the hair. “Because I love begging you.” Dear God, the man’s tongue was magical. Knees tucked tight against his hips, she writhed against his erection, slick folds sliding up and down in a taunting mimic of what they both desperately wanted.

  “Baby. Jesus, baby.” He gripped her hips, slowing her movement. “Don’t make me come before I’m ready.” Fingertips digging into her flesh, he dragged her along his length, the head of his cock a tease against her needy clit. “Fuck, feel that? Getting me all wet.” His accent rumbled rougher as his language grew coarse. “I love it, baby. I love feeling how bad you need me inside you. So empty it hurts, doesn’t it?”

  She pressed her lips to his, needing to staunch the flow of his words. Taking them into her mouth until they vibrated in her bones. Her bones. Oh, those fuckers had always known the truth of it, hadn’t they? Brilliant bones, telling her to take her spy and ride him, force him to ease the hurt.

  Unsurprisingly, he seized control of the kiss, bossy bastard that he was, but he tore his lips from hers before they could lose themselves in one another again. “I need to...oh, fuck, I need to be in you, Beth.” Panting, expression agonized, he groaned. “Condoms. Ah, bloody hell, where are the fucking condoms?”

  “I have an IUD.” When his lips firmed, she punched his shoulder, irritation flaring bright to temporarily subsume her dizzying lust. “But you already knew I had one, didn’t you? You know, this habit of knowing all my personal details is turning real annoying, real fast.”

  Taking a deep breath in a vain attempt at calm, he lifted gentle hands to her face. “I might know, but I would never ask. I won’t risk your safety just because I forgot to buy rubbers.”

  He wouldn’t risk her, but there was no risk at all, not between them. “You’re mine, Vick.” She stroked her thumb over his lower lip before kissing him, her own stamp of possession. “Come inside me.”

  Straightening, she gripped him in one hand, positioned him at her entrance, and slowly—oh, Jesus fucking Christ, so goddamn slowly—took him into her body. His thickness stretched her, his length filled her. The fit of him, clasped tight by her inner walls, because this was only her second time having sex in the history of ever, set off a chain reaction of tiny orgasms, each ripple increasing in intensity as she cried his name.

  “Beth.” His back arched off the bed when she clamped around him, her hips like a vise as he thrust up into her. Two fingertips found her clit, rubbing with fervor until she came in a maddened rush. “Beth.”

  She felt the jetting of his release deep inside her, dug her fingernails into his chest as they rode out their orgasms together before collapsing on him in a boneless puddle. “You are...yeah.” Okay, so, full sentences weren’t really happening yet. Good to know.

  Shifting them onto their sides, he kneaded her bottom with one big hand, his massage as intimately possessive as his next words. “We can both agree this is mine now, can’t we, Beth.” No questioning, only well-earned male arrogance.

  She rolled her eyes before burying her face in the pillow. “I think I might still need some convincing.” Where she found the ability to flirt with any sort of coherence when half her brain cells had been fried by orgasmic pleasure, she had no idea.

  “Give me ten minutes, and I’ll be ready to convince you all over again.”

  “Only ten, old man?”

  “Yes. Only ten.” His hand came down on her ass, stinging sinfully. She moaned, wriggling under his touch, and he chuckled, the masculine sound causing sensual shivers to trip across her nerve endings. “But for now, we need sustenance.”

  Her eyes drifted shut as post-sex lethargy caught up to her. “Room service. Yes.” She felt her body drifting hungrily toward sleep, but her growling stomach prompted a response, and she lifted one hand toward the room phone before it thumped uselessly to the mattress. “Cheeseburger, medium-rare, with everything on it except onion. Sweet-potato fries. Hot chocolate.” Her head grew heavy on the pillow, her voice distant to her own ears. “Truffle mac-and-cheese. A bottle of Riesling.”

  She heard his faint laughter as consciousness faded. “Anything else, love?”

  “Frosted Flakes.” And then she was asleep.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Vick was halfway through a bowl of Frosted Flakes, leaning against the headboard, when she spoke. “Do you remember when I said Belgium was my favorite of your aliases, because I believed you were telling me the truth?” The question was hesitant, wary.

  When he nodded encouragingly, Beth fixed her stare on the empty cereal bowl propped between her folded legs. One of her elegant hands worried the spoon, hands he knew for a fact had once upon a time carried calluses born of regular contact with guns and other weaponry. But when she’d curled her fingers around his cock and stroked—oh, how she’d stroked him—all Vick had felt was soft, smooth flesh. Those hands of hers stated more clearly than any words exactly how much her life had altered over the course of the past year.

  He was so happy for her, and yet also completely devastated. Because he knew, perhaps better than anyone else involved, what T-16’s hit could cost in the end.

  She glanced up, her expression still sleepy and sated from their earlier loving. “I was sixteen, as you know. Dad and Casey had started taking me out on assignments, because they thought I might have a career in the military ahead of me. They wanted to...test me out. It was mostly observing what they did and how a tactical team worked in the real world. I liked what I saw enough to consider following in Casey’s footsteps.

  “In Belgium, though, it was just Dad and me. Our target was a foreign diplomat who, well, wasn’t very diplomatic. And Dad is...have you ever met my father?”

  “I have not.” Once a public figure found more often than not waving his magic money wand over Congress’s closed-door sessions, Frank Faraday had grown reclusive in recent years. Now it was Tobias playing politics in Washington. Vick’s intelligence showed that the patriarch’s name only popped up in quarterly company newsletters and for signatory purposes, though he continued to maintain his position as CEO of Faraday Industries.

  Beth nodded. “At the time, Dad was, um, battling some inner demons. He wasn’t well, but he hadn’t told any of us yet.”

  Vick could only guess at what sort of demons Frank Faraday battled—a man who had swept his entire family into a life of making money from the spilling of blood, including innocent children’s. Beth had been innocent, once upon a time.

  “Anyway, he’d been hiding the signs, thinking he could handle whatever came his way. Typical guy behavior, not that anyone thought to ask him if something was wrong. Not even Mom knew,
and my parents don’t keep secrets from one another.” Hefting the bowl, she leaned over the side of the bed and set it on the tray that held the rest of their licked-clean dishware and cutlery.

  Vick stared at the sleek expanse of warm flesh her bending revealed, the long line of her spine and her entire left side from shoulder to hip suddenly naked as the sheet pulled away. He swallowed around the knot of lust blocking his throat and moved to place his bowl next to hers. “Except for this one, I take it?”

  “Yeah. So we’re in position on this rooftop in Brussels, not far from the café where you bought me the coffee earlier that day.” A sad smile flirted with the corners of her mouth before disappearing, and she rolled onto her back with a sigh. “It was late, the sky was dark. I was the lookout. The target eventually came out onto his hotel room balcony for a smoke, and Dad froze. Not, like, in fear or anything, but in the middle of an episode. He was trembling, his words slurred, and he said his vision had gone all blurry.”

  Ah. It seemed Frank Faraday’s demons weren’t psychological but physical. A pity, Vick mused, uncharitably, as he stretched out next to her on the mattress. His fingers linked with hers, a punch of pride and possessive satisfaction hitting him in the sternum when she gripped him tight.

  Her swallow was audible as she continued her story. “A family as old as mine, we’ve had a few generations to develop a motto. More than one, actually, but the motto I remembered that night was, A Faraday never leaves a job unfinished. I was scared.” Turning her head to the side, she searched his gaze—seeking what, he didn’t know. “I was scared because my dad appeared to be having some kind of fit, and because there was no backup team with us, and I was really just a kid, but mostly I was scared of letting down my family. So I sort of, I dunno, rolled Dad out of the way, lined up the shot, and...and killed the diplomat.” Her free hand lifted to stroke over his jaw, rasping across the stubble he hadn’t attended to in almost forty-eight hours. “Afterward, when the proverbial dust settled and we realized that Dad couldn’t do nearly as much as he typically did for the company, things changed. All of us siblings stepped up to the plate, and I’d managed to convince everyone—and don’t ask me how, because I honestly haven’t got a clue—that what I had done to the diplomat in Brussels hadn’t affected me. You know...mentally.

  “The reason I love the memory of James Horner buying silly, sixteen-year-old me a coffee so much is because those were the last hours of my life in which I felt like a silly sixteen year old. Swear to God, I didn’t know what murdering that man on his balcony would mean, not for me, not for my family, not for Faraday Industries. I didn’t know I’d spend the next ten years getting better and better at dealing out death, but that’s what happened, and it took me far too long to figure out it’s a choice I would never have made for myself. But—” she cupped his cheek, her hazel eyes imploring, “—it’s a choice I would make every damn time for the people I love.”

  “Beth.” Her name was little more than a whisper, but it held the entire world of his feelings. Every last bloody emotion he possessed, encapsulated in those four letters like a dragonfly in amber.

  “I’m willing to do anything to help my family. But until today, I wasn’t really sure they would do anything to help me.”

  Vick’s chest seized at the pain, the doubt, the sheer wonder in her quiet voice. “Oh, baby. Come here.” Needing to soothe the ache her words had instilled and ease the tension in her body, he gathered her close, pulling her to sprawl haphazardly over him on the bed.

  Immediately, her arms curled around his shoulders, and his hands found naked skin, one palm petting up and down her spine in slow passes, the other splayed over her hip, his fingertips digging gently into the upper curves of her bottom. He felt her shiver against him, though the luxurious hotel room wasn’t cold in the least, but he thought he might understand the emotional catharsis she experienced, having shared these secrets with him.

  Too soon, she lifted her head from his shoulder. Her gaze drank him in, as though he were a book she was hungry to read. “Do you have a family, Vick? Parents, siblings...children?”

  “No.” He cleared his throat, tried again. “No. Only child, parents retired to Northumberland a couple of years ago.” His mouth was a parched, barren wasteland. It was then he realized exactly how easy it had been to fall for her, his various and sundry aliases never forcing him to share anything deeply personal about himself...except for his continued obsession with her. If they were to be together—and he bloody well meant for them to be together, come hell or high water—he’d have to start filling in the blanks. “I’ve never been married, nor engaged, and I haven’t got any kids that I know of. If I did...” He took a deep breath, because she deserved to know. She waited her whole life for you. “If I did, that child would have to be at least eight years old. Maybe nine.”

  “I...oh.” She blinked rapidly. “It’s been that long for you?”

  “Technically, until this afternoon, it had only been two years. But you know that already.”

  “And I’m not pregnant,” she said in a rush, a hectic flush heating her cheeks. “Or, I mean, I wasn’t pregnant. I didn’t get pregnant. The first time. From when we...and you...oh, Jesus.” Eyes squeezed shut, she blew out an unsteady breath before spearing him with her direct gaze once more. “Should I ask you why?”

  “You already know why.”

  After studying him for a moment, she nodded, palm flattening on his chest. Directly over his beating heart. “I do.”

  Those two little words hit him in the gut, twisting, curling. Someday, baby. Someday. But he could only make that promise in the silence of his heart, because there was the distinct chance she would never want to see him again after her brother finished his chat with T-16 tomorrow night—though he’d do his damnedest to convince her otherwise.

  The hand on her hip slid down to cup her bottom fully, and he permitted himself one solid, groping squeeze. God, she was perfection. “Shower or bath?”

  Her spine curved, pushing her backside better into his grip as her lashes fluttered to shield a drowsy gaze just waking with renewed lust. “What?”

  Heat gathered in his lower body at her expression, causing his cock to lengthen, thicken. “We need to wash off the day. I’m giving you the option—shower or bath?”

  “Together?” Pink heat stole over her cheeks. “Um, logistically, which one is easier? For sex, I mean.”

  Just like that, he was hard. He considered her long legs and strong arms, the weight of her fit body, and imagined shoving her shoulders against the shower wall, grabbing her ass in both hands, and finding home between her thighs for his painful erection. But even as his dick pulsed with wanting that very scenario, he remembered his injury, and his mind wandered to the possibilities of a bath. She could ride him again, hips whipping beneath the hot water. Or he could put her on her knees and bend her over the side, coming into her from behind and letting her tight-as-fuck pussy drive him insane. Not to mention he could have her sit on the edge, spread her legs, and finally get his tongue where it needed to be—”Bath. Definitely the bath.”

  With an impish grin, she rolled off him, leaving him swallowing a groan as he hauled his unclothed body from the mattress and preceded her into the bathroom, with its stone and tile and gleaming fixtures. He slid back the clear glass shower door to turn the hot-and-cold knobs for the tub, letting the water from the spigot run over his fingers until it reached a satisfactory temperature before closing the drain.

  The heavy, pounding sound of the tub being filled echoed off the walls as Vick turned to look at Beth where she sat on the bathroom counter completely naked yet somehow prim, with her straight spine, clasped hands and crossed ankles. “Don’t you look like a picture.”

  Her lower lip caught between her teeth as she grinned. “The naughty kind you’d keep in some private album on your cell phone, you mean?”

 
“I’d never trust my phone with a photo that precious.” He strode to her, notching his hips between her legs when she shifted to make room for him. His erection brushed over the soft skin of her inner thigh, and his stomach muscles clenched. “But something tells me you wouldn’t mind being naughty and posing for me, would you, darling?” Sweeping his hand up her body, from knee to nape, he tugged her forward, enjoying the sudden unsteadiness of her breathing.

  Her gaze dropped to his mouth, tongue darting out to wet her lips. “I’ll be naughty if you tell me to.” Her eyes met his, and she smiled, lopsided and sweet and sexy and not the least bit uncertain. “When it comes to naughtiness, I’m yours to command.”

  He shouldn’t have been surprised by it, but he was. The woman he had watched Beth become possessed so much strength and internal fortitude that it was all too easy to ignore the more subtle facets of her personality. Or, at least, the side of her personality she shared with him, her first—and goddamn only—lover. Anything she wanted in the bedroom, he’d kill for the privilege of giving to her.

  She wanted him to boss her around, make her beg for orgasm. The psychology behind it didn’t matter, but her preferences sure as hell did, and when it came right down to it, the real surprise was how neatly her desires aligned with his tendencies.

  Vick had long ago started referring to Beth as his. His assassin, his obsession, his lover, his future. All his. She had been his for so long, in his mind, that he now wondered if the possessive bent he considered his natural inclination had developed because of her. In the seven years since their first kiss, he hadn’t even considered sleeping with anyone else, and before that kiss, it had been at least a year of unintentional celibacy. James Bond he wasn’t.

  But the fact remained that he’d spent the better part of a decade building his sexual fantasies around this woman, and those fantasies had perhaps shaped his current approach to sex, more than the approach had shaped the fantasies.