When both our orgasms subsided, Donovan rolled with me so that we were both on our sides, facing each other. The flickering candlelight showed the sheen of sweat on our skin and the rise and fall of our chests as we worked to catch our breath.
I put my forearm against Donovan’s. He looked tan against my fair Irish skin.
“I’ve never asked you anything about your ancestry,” I said as I hooked my arms around his neck. “With your darker skin and the angular lines of your face, you don’t look Irish, but you have an Irish last name. Mine’s an unusual Irish surname, not a Mc or an O’something or other, but Steele is still Irish.”
“Steele was brought to Ireland by the English,” he said with a teasing look.
I sniffed and gave him a haughty look. “One of my ancestors thought there were too many MacDonalds where he lived, so he adopted Steele as a last name.” I rolled my eyes. “For that I thank God. I can just see my agents asking me for fries with all of the orders—assignments—I give them.”
Donovan grinned. “Personally, I’d like a Big Mac.”
I slugged his shoulder. “Our genealogy has been traced back to the dawn of time—more or less—and we’re a hundred percent Irish.” I slipped my hands into his hair. “The question is, Mr. Donovan, what about you?”
He circled one of my nipples with his fingertip. “I can think of something we could be doing again, rather than discussing my ancestry.”
“Uh.” Focus, Steele. And not on the way he’s teasing me. “Just tell me.”
Donovan lowered his head and licked my other nipple and I gasped and arched my back without meaning to.
“You never fight fair,” I said between gasps.
He met my gaze and gave me an amused look. “So that’s what we’re doing? Fighting?” He grabbed my ass and brought me so close to him that I felt the hard line of his erection.
“That was fast,” I said as he pressed his cock against my belly. Losing my mind again was a distinct possibility. “Stop it. I want to know.”
Donovan propped his head in one palm, his elbow on the mattress as he trailed the fingers of his opposite hand in lazy circles on my chest and around my breasts.
“I’m not sure.” He brought his hand up to my forehead and drew his index finger down my nose, over my lips and chin, to the hollow of my throat. “I was adopted.”
“Kristin isn’t your biological sister?” I said.
“She’s every bit my sister, just not by birth.” His gaze was so intense, his voice almost harsh as he met my eyes. “She’s my adoptive parents’ biological child. Harry and Angie Donovan adopted me when they thought they couldn’t have children, and they christened me with their last name. Then my mother got pregnant with Kristin.”
“I know she’s your sister.” I gripped Donovan’s strong shoulders and searched his gaze as I remembered his fury, his terror, and most of all his pain when Kristen was abducted and auctioned as a sex slave. “Birth has nothing to do with that kind of bond.”
Donovan pushed my hair from my face, and it was easy to see the pain from his helpless feeling in being unable to help Kristin mentally heal faster.
I wanted to draw away the ache. He lived with enough of that every day because of what his sister had gone through. “I bet your parents were proud of you when you were a Navy SEAL.” I smiled. “And with your build and dexterity, I’d bet you were one of your high school’s star varsity running backs.”
“You got one out of two right. I was a running back on my football team.” His sudden scowl after that surprised me. “My adoptive parents were another story altogether. I was seven when they took me in from the orphanage, and the stork brought Kristin a year later.” His body tensed against mine and he looked away. “Once Kristin was born, they didn’t need me anymore.”
Then he gave a humorless laugh. “Not that I expected anything, but when Harry and Angie Donovan lost their lives in that small-plane crash, I was curious what their will would read. Just as I’d thought, they left everything to Kristin.”
He shook his head and continued. “I didn’t want a dime so I didn’t care. It was simply a way they showed the depth of their caring.”
Christ. I’d grown up with a huge loving family. We weren’t perfect, but our parents cared for every single one of us. So much for taking away Donovan’s pain.
I took his face in my palms and forced him to meet my eyes. “You have a wonderful sister you love and that’s all that matters.”
He placed his forehead against mine. “You’re right, Steele. Kristin is all that matters.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Devastating secrets
Dogs bark and men crash through the Mexican jungle behind me, the men’s shouting growing louder. Underbrush scratches my bare thighs and calves as I push and push myself to run and run and run.
I jump over fallen logs, dodge trees, shove brush out of my face. I never stop looking ahead for dangers in my path at the same time I try to escape even worse danger behind me.
My breath rushes in and out of my chest. My lungs feel scalded, like boiling water has been poured into them. How long have I been running? Almost two miles.
Goddamnit. That fucking dog. The sleeping powder in the treats I gave to the other huge beasts had done a great job in knocking them out. But I didn’t know about the third dog. How could I make such a stupid mistake? This one is almost as big as a Mexican fighting bull and just as black.
My heart is going to explode from the combination of adrenaline and from running for so long.
And fear. I’m scared. I’ll never shake the dog. Maybe the men, but not the dog.
Human scents can’t be masked. The sweat on my skin, the oil from my glands . . . gases and skin cells. Like a fingerprint. There’s no way to escape a trained dog.
I screwed up. I thought I got in undetected but I missed not only one dog, but the man handling the beast. Shit. He saw me assassinate the Mexican general.
Now his men are going to kill me. Or torture me. Probably both.
Large hands grab me from the side. Jerk me off my path. I bite back a scream as I kick at whoever has me. He grunts with pain.
“Stop. I’m saving your ass.” It’s a familiar voice. But I can’t think of who the man is. He even smells familiar.
I’m thrown into the back of a Jeep. From the momentum I slide across the bench seat. Pain rockets through my head when my skull hits the metal door on the opposite side.
I try to sit up but I’m thrown to the floor as the Jeep lurches into gear.
“Stay down!” shouts the man who grabbed me.
I know that voice.
I trust him. Whoever he is.
Why? I don’t trust anyone. I haven’t since FAS forced me to work for them. To assassinate for them.
This man doesn’t belong here. Why is he here?
The Jeep’s engine rumbles. My ears are filled with the power of its roar.
I try to get up, but the man pins me to the floor. Which is soft now. Like a bed. “Calm down, Lexi,” he says. His hands are gentle as he holds me. How does he know my name?
How can he be talking to me? He’s driving the Jeep . . .
“You’re having a nightmare.” He shakes me by my shoulders. “Wake up.”
My eyelids opened and I found myself looking into Donovan’s vivid blue eyes. His expression was hard, his jaw tense. Both of my shoulders hurt, and I realized he was gripping me and probably had been shaking me before I woke up from the nightmare.
“Donovan.” I sounded like I’d really been running through a jungle when I said his name.
“You had another nightmare.” He released one of my shoulders to caress my hair from my face. My hair had been sticking to my cheek and felt damp when he pushed it away.
“You were there.” I stared up at him and tried to shake off the strange sensations that were coursing through my body. “I was running through the Mexican jungle again. The same jungle I tried to escape in after I assassinated the Mexican
general. Before the men caught me and took me back for interrogation and beat the shit out of me. Before I escaped.”
Donovan frowned. “Your nightmares haven’t been this bad for a while.”
I felt my brow wrinkle as I frowned. “It was different this time,” I said. “ You were in my nightmare. You’ve never been in my nightmares before.”
“In what way?” His expression turned dark enough that instinct made me want to recoil even though I knew, I had not a single doubt, that I would always be safe with him. “Did I hurt you?” The words came out in a harsh, guttural sound as he spoke them.
Where would he come up with that thought? I blinked, a feeling of confusion washing over me. “Of course not.”
Donovan lowered his head. He relaxed his fingers on my one shoulder that he’d still been holding. It felt bruised and it ached. I didn’t realize he’d been gripping me so hard.
“I don’t get it.” I put my hands on his biceps and stared at his bowed head. “How could you even begin to think that I’d dream about you hurting me? What’s going on?”
“Nothing.” His eyes were closed, and he didn’t look up at me as he spoke. He breathed like his chest was tight and it hurt with every inhale and exhale. “I—” He was searching for something to say and I didn’t believe him when he did speak. “I just don’t want to be part of your nightmares.”
“As a matter of fact, you rescued me.” Not that I ever liked admitting I needed rescuing, but not everyone’s perfect. And Donovan had rescued me during the last op. “Something else is going on here.”
“No.” He raised his head, still not looking at me, and started to pull away from my hold to get off the bed. “There’s nothing.”
“Bullshit!” I shouted loud enough that Kerrison probably heard me all the way to her room. I barely realized I was digging my fingers into his biceps in an attempt to keep him from getting off the bed. “It’s about something in your past as a SEAL, or some branch of the government that you served in later. Whatever it is, it’s about what you’ve been refusing to tell me. Isn’t it?”
“No,” he said again, more emphatically as he met my gaze. I could see the truth, though. It didn’t matter that to anyone else he was wearing a poker face. They wouldn’t be able to see the emotion in his eyes. I could.
He was so big, so powerful, that I couldn’t hold on to him, and he pulled away and got up from the bed. The muscles in his shoulders and back shifted and his large biceps and triceps flexed as he clenched and unclenched his hands, his back still to me. He was wearing black boxers and I wanted to ask since when had he started wearing anything to bed, but at that moment I didn’t really give a damn.
I scrambled out of bed on the side I’d been lying on, opposite of where he’d gotten up. I was naked, having fallen asleep not long after talking about his last name. The scent of exotic spices from the massage oil was still in the air along with a slight whisper of perfume from the vanilla candles.
I practically marched to one of the unzipped suitcases I hadn’t unpacked and let clothes fly as I dug through it for my favorite pair of worn jogging sweats, a faded Red Sox T-shirt, and a hooded Red Sox sweat jacket.
“I’ve had it, Donovan. I told you every dirty detail about my past.” I shoved one leg then the other into the sweatpants. “I told you about people I assassinated. I told you how I didn’t even know why the Fucking Asshole Sonsofbitches forced me to kill those people. Those people I murdered could have been innocents instead of criminals. Maybe one of the FAS just didn’t like the way someone looked on a bad hair day. So he ordered me to kill the man. Or woman.”
A lacy black bra followed by a satin pink one went flying out of my suitcase before I found one of my sports bras and put it on. The cotton of my red T-shirt was so old I tore a hole in one of the armpits when I jerked it over my head and jammed my arms through the sleeves. “I told you about my fuckups. But you won’t say one goddamned word about your past.”
Donovan still faced away from me. He stood at the doorway of the master bathroom, grasping one side of the door frame, his head slightly bowed.
“You’ve never killed children,” he said before he walked into the bathroom and shut the door behind him.
For a long time I couldn’t move as I stared at the closed white bathroom door. How long did I stand there? My eyes were wide and I’d covered my mouth with my palm. Anger at him for keeping his past a secret vanished as horror washed over my skin in a chilling wave.
I couldn’t imagine Donovan following any kind of assignment that involved killing children. There was more to the story. Had to be. No, Donovan wasn’t going to get away with this. I’d leave him alone, but I wasn’t about to let him say something like that and not explain.
Donovan’s last words kept pounding at my head even as I finally looked away from the bathroom door. I jammed my feet into my jogging shoes after tugging on a thick pair of socks.
My sweat jacket should be warm enough to keep me from freezing while I went out for my run. Before I took off jogging in my Red Sox sweat jacket, I’d loosen up with a few stretching exercises in case I ran into any Yankees fans and had to kick their asses.
I zipped my jacket up, pulled my hair back in a ponytail with a red ponytail holder, and headed out the door of the bedroom.
When I entered the hallway, I heard Kerrison’s voice coming from the living room. She spoke rapidly in perfectly accented French. She had on a pair of navy blue sweatpants with a matching sweat jacket and she was in some kind of yoga pose on the floor as she spoke.
“You knew when you married me that I’d likely be traveling around the world,” she was saying as I walked into the living room. “Don’t try to make me feel guilty for not being home with you.”
Kerrison was married? I raised my eyebrows. I’d had no idea. That fact should have come up on the extensive background check we did on every individual we considered hiring as a RED agent. It would be public record.
I mentally shrugged. She could have gotten married after she signed on. It wouldn’t have made a difference to RED unless her spouse or boyfriend was a convicted felon. She’d had a roommate at Vanderbilt, but no boyfriend that we’d come across.
Kerrison’s back was to me. Her free hand gestured animatedly as if she’d completely fallen into the part of being French as she spoke the language while she sat in her yoga position. “I told you. I’m in Stockholm and I’ll be back as soon as I can. I do not think this assignment will take long.”
She paused, obviously listening to her apparently French husband on the other end of the call.
I was almost to the front door when she said in a softer voice, “You know I’m not ready for children yet.”
I hesitated as I reached for the doorknob. Not because I wanted to eavesdrop. Well, maybe.
“We should wait to adopt, my darling.” Kerrison spoke such beautiful French, and her voice sounded soothing. “You will make a wonderful mother. Just give us a little time.”
Mother? She was telling her husband he’d make a wonderful mother?
“I will call you soon.” Kerrison’s tone was so low and soothing as she spoke. “I love you, Francesca.”
Oh.
Ohhhh. Kerrison was a lesbian.
I didn’t realize I was staring at her until she turned and saw me. She wore white-and-gray New Balance running shoes along with her sweatpants and sweat jacket.
She shoved her cell phone into her pocket and shook her head. “Women.” She dug into the opposite pocket, drew out a lacy ponytail holder, and used it to pull her long red hair back. “The only thing worse than having a nagging wife is the entire population of men.”
No wonder she’d said Donovan wasn’t her type. He definitely qualified as a member of the male population.
Kerrison walked toward me and I couldn’t think of a damned thing to say.
“Going jogging?” she asked when she reached me. I heard her slight southern accent and wondered how she had met and married a Frenchwoman
.
I nodded. “Want to run with me?”
“You bet.” The bones in her neck made popping sounds as she rotated her head back and forth before rolling her shoulders. “After talking with Francesca, I could use a good run.”
“I know how you feel,” I said as I thought about Donovan and the cryptic and horrifying way he’d ended our conversation.
Bastard. That hadn’t been fair of him.
“Want some advice?” she said as we headed out the door.
I glanced at her and met her light green eyes. “Maybe.”
“It’s the best anyone will ever give you,” she said.
I smiled. “Go for it.” I shut the door behind us. “Let me hear this stellar advice.”
“Never get married,” she said as we walked to the elevator. “It changes everything.”
“You don’t have to tell me that.” I pushed the down button. “No way am I getting married. Ever. My life is perfectly fine the way it is.”
“Lucky you.” She sighed as the elevator dinged at our floor and the doors opened. “The sex is lots better when you’re not married.”
Donovan was gone when Kerrison and I got back from our jog. Probably one of two things. No, one of three. He was headed off to work his end of the op; he hadn’t wanted Kerrison to know he’d stayed the night; he was avoiding me and having to go any farther with our conversation.
I chose option number three.
Jerk.
He was not going to get off so easy. All he’d done was postpone the inevitable conversation between us, and he hadn’t done it in a fair way at all.
Donovan had apparently taken the fingerprint sample back to our makeshift HQ because the plastic evidence bag containing it was gone, along with the bag with the blond hair.
Kerrison and I had discussed the op in-depth as we took a slow jog along streets decorated for the holidays, filled with holiday shoppers. One of the things we talked about was the need to get into Giger’s office on the main floor as well as the office I’d come across on the second floor.
Where had Jenika come across the coded message to begin with? My bet was the office on the second floor. I didn’t see how she could get into the other one.
Cheyenne McCray - [Lexi Steele 02] Page 15
