by Susan Sey
“Liz, please.” He gasped the words into her mouth. “Are you sure?”
“Yes,” she said, and levered herself upright. She reared back, her body a bright flame of pure sensation as she pushed herself higher and harder. His fingers danced over her stomach, delved lower, seeking her most intimate center, but she brushed his hand aside. Whatever she needed, she would take. She couldn’t allow him to give it to her.
She drove herself onto him until their bodies were slick with sweat and everything in her tensed and pitched, then went impossibly tight. Her heart stuttered, her body jerked, then she exploded in a shattering instant of pure pleasure. He bowed up under her on a broken cry and followed.
FOR LONG moments, Patrick’s world consisted of nothing but his own heartbeat and Liz’s ragged breathing. He came slowly back to himself, found that she’d propped her hands against his chest, her elbows locked to keep him at arm’s length, her head drooping forward like a wilted daisy.
He slid his fingers up either side of her spine, reveling in the subtle, feminine muscle under the satin of her skin. He speared his fingers deep into the damp heat of her hair, lifted it and watched through narrowed eyes as it sifted slowly back down to settle around her shoulders. She shuddered once and he curled an arm around her.
“Come here,” he murmured. She stiffened for a split second and he thought she might refuse, but then she relaxed. She melted onto him like warm wax, her lips against his throat, one hand laid directly over his heart. A rush of emotion swamped him, so powerful that he had to close his eyes against it. He wrapped his arms around her, brushed his mouth over her hair and drew the hot, sweet scent of her deep into his lungs.
Just for a minute, he told himself, letting his eyes close as he held her. He drifted, let the feelings wash over him as they came. There was love like he’d never imagined—buoyant, sweet and almost painful in its purity. But there was fear, too. Fear, regret, anger, all mixing uneasily with satisfaction and a growing desire to do it all again.
He’d have to sort it out eventually, but for now, for this one moment, he just wanted to savor the trusting weight of her body curled on top of his and the indescribable peace of being inside her.
“Patrick?” Her voice was sleepy and satisfied, and he smiled into the darkness.
“Yeah?”
“My butt’s asleep.”
He slid his hands down to the curve of her behind, ran a questing finger along the cleft to the place where they were joined. “Feel anything?”
She paused. “No, but that doesn’t mean you should stop. I could get feeling back any minute, and I don’t think I want to miss this.”
He laughed, amazed at how good it felt. He’d always known that sex between them would be explosive, but he hadn’t anticipated this easiness afterward. A shred of pain darted through him at the thought of breaking it, but he had to. Soon.
He slapped a hand lightly against her rump and said, “Up for round two, are you?”
She lifted her head, a speculative gleam in her eye. “I am if you are,” she murmured with a testing rock of her hips. A shot of pure pleasure cruised through him and she smiled silkily. “Is that a yes?”
He grabbed for her hips, lifted her bodily off him and set her onto the bed next to him. “I wish,” he said, sitting up so she couldn’t crawl back on and blow his willpower all to hell.
Her eyes wandered down his body. “Looks like more than wishing to me.”
“Yeah, well, the flesh is willing, but the conscience says no.”
“You don’t have a conscience.” She shoved lazily at the curtain of rumpled hair in her face. “I’d have noticed it when I arrested you.”
“Hey. I turned myself in, didn’t I?”
She curled onto her side like a sleek cat and watched him with those sleepy blue eyes. “It’s a technicality, but I’ll give it to you. I’m feeling generous just now.”
Her moonlight-bathed skin was more than he could resist, and he reached out to smooth a palm down the elegant line of her hip. “Yeah? How generous?”
“Want to find out?” She reached for him, but he caught her hand before she could touch him. He’d be lost if she touched him again.
“Yes,” he said, bringing her hand to his lips and kissing each knuckle. “God, yes. But I’m not going to. I have to leave.”
“What?” She sat up, shoved her hair back, and all that crackling energy dropping back into place around her. “You’re leaving? Why?”
“Because Villanueva is somewhere out there painting targets on anybody he thinks I might dislike losing.” He rose from the bed, located his pants and stepped into them. “Believe me, Liz, there’s nothing I’d rather do than spend all night with my mouth on every inch of your body, but it would be like throwing gasoline on the fire. It’s bad enough that I was here this long, that we did what we did with the windows wide open.”
Not that he could ever regret the sight of Liz wearing nothing but moonlight, he thought as he buttoned his shirt. That was something he’d never expected to see and would cherish for the rest of his life.
Her gaze flew to the open window, to the darkened woods beyond, and color crept faintly into her cheeks. She drew up her knees and banded her arms around them.
“What we did here tonight was dangerous to you,” he said. “God knows I tried to avoid it.”
She regarded him gravely. “You regret it?”
“No.” He gave her a lopsided smile in the darkness and shrugged. “God, how could I? I wanted you too much. I still do. But it was reckless and irresponsible nonetheless. I put you at risk when I agreed to work with you. I’m having a hard enough time living with that. I won’t make it worse by letting Villanueva guess that we’re lovers now, too.”
She frowned over that, but she let her knees drop back onto the bed, rested her hands on them. The moonlight worshipped her body and Patrick swallowed hard. Where the hell were his shoes? He had to get out of here. Now. He dropped to his knees and groped under the bed.
“Maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing,” she said slowly.
He froze, head under the bed. “What?”
“Letting Villanueva guess we’re lovers. It would piss him off, wouldn’t it? That he’s been living in exile while you’re fucking the woman who put him there? You think it would be enough to force his hand?”
He sat up with exquisite control, because rage was suddenly pumping through him in quick, savage bursts. “You slept with me because you thought it would move your case along faster?”
She drew back as if slapped. “No. I slept with you because I thought it might cure me.”
Patrick sat back on his heels, the rage giving way to astonishment. “Cure you of what?”
“Whatever this is that I’m feeling.” She didn’t look at him. “I told you that.”
“I know, but . . .” He gaped at her. “You really thought having sex would cure being in love?”
“Well yeah. Familiarity breeding contempt and all that.”
He shook his head, smiled at her in the dark. “Were you even there when I was kissing you these past few weeks? How could you have thought that would work?”
She hunched her shoulders. “I was kind of hoping it would be like that time in college when I worked in a pizza parlor. Free pizza, up to my elbows in mozzarella every day. Dream job, right?” She lifted a shoulder. “It never occurred to me that I could OD on pizza. To this day, I can’t look a pepperoni in the eye.”
Patrick shoved his foot into one shoe, groped under the bed for the other. “So you thought you could OD? On me?”
“Yes, and you should know something,” she said. He finally dragged out his other shoe and looked up to find her lying on her stomach across the bed, those pretty breasts pillowed on her crossed arms, her forget-me-not eyes hot and wicked on his.
“What’s that?”
“I’m not even close yet.”
Blood surged fast and hot through his veins, and his hands itched to touch. He clamped ba
ck on the need. “Villanueva—” he began.
“—Is coming after somebody,” she finished for him. “Maybe you. Maybe me. Maybe Mara.” She didn’t mention Evie, Patrick noticed. A small kindness, but he was grateful for it. “Why not bump your sister and her family down the list a little? Make him focus on us. I’m trained for this kind of thing.”
“What about me?”
“You seem to have a natural talent for it.”
Patrick sat there on his heels for a long moment, staring at her, his shoe forgotten in his hand. She laid there, her skin glowing like she’d been carved from the purest marble, that delicate face alight with the joy at the idea of presenting herself to Jorge Villanueva as bait.
It was madness. He could hardly believe she’d even proposed it, then reminded himself that she’d also thought it reasonable to fall out of love by ODing on really hot sex.
“Come on,” she said now, rising up on her knees to lay a hand against his chest. “He’s coming after somebody. Unless you have a better idea—”
“In fact, I do.” He shoved his foot into the shoe and stood, backed carefully away from her touch. He couldn’t think straight when she was touching him. Hell, he couldn’t think straight when she was naked either, and here she was doing both. “I could just pay the guy what I owe him.”
“What?”
“I could pay him the money,” he said. “His half of the take I screwed him out of, plus a reasonable amount of interest and a bonus for having to live in Central America for six years. It actually comes to a nice little figure. I could have it transferred to a numbered Swiss account, easy as pie. All he needs to do to access it is present himself at the bank. In Zurich.”
“You think that’s all it’s going to take?” She snatched up a robe from the foot of the bed and shoved her arms into it as she stalked the length of the room, her hands raking through her hair. “For God’s sake, Patrick, the guy gave up six years of his life. Abandoned his wife and baby. His son, for crying out loud. What makes you think this is about the money?”
Patrick frowned at her. “It’s always about money with Villanueva,” he said. “He’d never love anything else. It was like his personal mantra.”
Liz snorted. “And then you sold him out for the love of your screwup sister.”
“Yeah, he probably didn’t like that.”
She turned to him, her hands balled into fists in the pockets of her robe. “This is a stupid idea, Patrick. He’s not after the money. He wants blood.”
He went to her, pulled her rigid body into his arms and brushed his lips over that pale golden hair. “Come on, Liz. This isn’t the movies, you know. In real life, criminals who can’t separate the personal from the professional don’t last very long. You run around offing everybody who screws you—”
“He killed his ex-wife,” she said.
Patrick went utterly still. “What?”
Chapter 21
“THE SON, too,” Liz said, her voice threaded with fury. “He slit their throats. Three weeks ago. I spoke to the widower. Guy was a mess still.”
“You’re sure it was Villanueva?” Patrick asked, a cold ball of dread growing in his lungs, pushing out all the oxygen.
“You know anybody else with motive and a thing for knife work?” She pulled out of his arms. “You can pay him all the money in the world and it’s not going to do a damn bit of good. He’s taking what he’s owed all right, but he doesn’t care about the money. He cares about the pain, the betrayal. He wants an eye for an eye. His pound of freaking flesh. Christ.” She turned from him again, hands in fists on her hips, her head bowed.
Patrick felt his brain click into motion, automatically processing all the angles, the details that he couldn’t consciously focus on over the riot in his heart. “Why would he kill his wife and the boy? Why not kill the new husband, take back what was his?”
“She betrayed him,” Liz said softly. “She should have waited for him, raised her son to worship his lost daddy. But she remarried within the year, let the guy claim the boy as his own. She gave away his son, don’t you see? But he made her pay. The coroner’s report said that the son’s time of death was a good two hours before the ex-wife’s.”
“He killed the boy in front of her,” Patrick said slowly.
“That would be my guess, yes.” Her voice was cool now, steady, but Patrick still heard the undercurrent of rage in it.
“And now he’s here. To collect his debt from me.”
“That’s right,” Liz said. “And since you betrayed him for a woman, smart money says he’ll come after the most important woman in your life. He’ll want to make you bleed that way first. He’ll plan to kill you eventually. That’ll be the pièce de résistance but also his little act of mercy. You won’t want to live after what he’ll make you watch.”
The words dried up in his throat and Patrick struggled against a rising tide of fear and anger. “How long have you known about this?”
“About Villanueva offing his family? Or about him looking at you with bloody revenge in his eyes?”
“Either. Both. Jesus, Liz, how long?” He grabbed her by the shoulders, spun her to face him. He hauled her up onto her toes, hideous visions of Mara and Evie at the mercy of a madman with a knife dancing through his mind. “You knew this was happening,” he said. “You knew he was stalking my family and you didn’t say anything. You put a higher premium on your fucking badge than the life of an innocent woman and child. What kind of person are you?”
“I’M A cop,” she snapped. “That’s the kind of person I am. I put surveillance on their house right after their break-in, and added personal security for them both after I found out about Villanueva’s wife and kid. Which was this morning, by the way. I didn’t leave them twisting in the wind, Patrick. I just didn’t tell you what I was doing.”
“Why the hell not?” He was nearly shouting, she realized with fascination. She’d never seen such a thing, not from Patrick O’Connor, the king of self-contained cool. “There’s no way I’d have stayed here if I’d known I was the reason they were in danger.”
“How was I to know that? How was I supposed to know you weren’t hooking up with Villanueva for a new job?” she demanded irritably.
“You think I’d do that? Throw away everything I’ve worked for these past six years?” There was genuine distress in his voice, in the tense lines of his body. At least it looked pretty genuine to Liz. But he could put on any number of emotions, she reminded herself. She’d seen him do it time and again. Still, she didn’t like the guilty shame that was starting to crowd in on her logic.
“Of course I thought it! God, who wouldn’t? Look at it from my perspective, will you?” she said. “The jewel thief I forced into reluctant retirement arrives in town supposedly to rescue his sister. Only the problem he’s rescuing her from is inconsequential at best. Plus he hasn’t spoken to her in three years. And, well, they’re both from one of America’s most notorious criminal families. But, hey, they’ve been clean a long time. There’s no reason to think one or both of them are coming out of retirement, is there? Maybe it’s nothing.
“But wait, then the fugitive ex-partner—who’s been MIA for the past six years, by the way—turns up in the very same small town the very same week and sets off a rash of minor B and E reports. Coincidence? Okay, now we’re stretching it a little bit.”
She folded her arms and glared at him. “But wait, it gets better. Because then the jewel thief—sorry the ex-jewel thief—talks his way onto the FBI payroll, onto my caseload, and instead of sharing his suspicions about his ex-partner and what’s really going on, tries like hell to divide my attention by launching an improbable but convenient seduction campaign out of the blue. So tell me, Patrick, where did my logic go wrong? Did I miss the part where you did or said something that would inspire me to trust you? The part where you shared information instead of just demanding that I tell you everything and get nothing in return?”
She twitched her shoulders i
n a bad-tempered shrug. “You gave me absolutely no reason to trust you, so I didn’t. I won’t apologize for that.”
She spit the words at him but shame was a choking mass in her throat. It was all true, of course, but that didn’t mean she was right. And it didn’t mean he was wrong.
“You really believe I’d do that?” he asked again, his voice hard, his eyes glacial. “You think I’d let a monster like Villanueva within a hundred miles of my sister for any reason, let alone a score?” He shook his head. “You’re not in love with me, Liz. You don’t even know what the word means if you think I could do that.”
She held herself perfectly still, not even daring to breathe for fear she’d splinter like glass. He was right, of course. She didn’t know how to love anybody, not in any healthy way. That part of her heart had been broken years ago. The place in her soul where she’d imagined love lay empty. It had been nothing but an illusion, a wish. She could see that now. The hole in her chest ached and spread until her limbs were dead weight, her body a block of ice.
“But this wasn’t about me at all, was it?” he went on, and she felt each word like a separate blow. “This was about you, your badge and your ambition. Well, congratulations. You played this one like a pro. Not that I’m complaining. I’ve been used before, but never so enjoyably.” He glanced pointedly at his watch. “You know, I have a few minutes after all. I could stay. We could do it again.” He reached for her. “We can leave the windows open, too. In case Villanueva missed your screaming my name the first time.”
She shook her head and backed away from him, her stomach clenching with each vicious word. Rage pumped off him in tangible waves, but she couldn’t look away from the awful beauty of his face.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I made a mistake. I’m so sorry.”
“Liz. Darling.” The drawl was back, but it only sharpened the cutting edges of his words. “I think I liked you better ruthless. At least it was honest.”
He turned from her then, walked out of the bedroom as if loathe to share even air with her. The desire rose up strong and urgent to run after him, to explain. To beg, if necessary. She’d try harder. She’d be better. She’d prove to him that she was worth a second chance.
