Red (Love in Color Series Book 1)

by SM West

  “Rylan, it wasn’t you who left me in that room. It’s all on Gia.”

  “Yeah, I know. I’ll be fucking talking to her about it,” there’s a rough edge to his tone. “I’m sorry for having you arrested. We needed to in front of Bobby. If only you’d met with me before Boston, I would have told you.”

  “I figured as much when no one came to question me. I had more than enough time to come to that conclusion,” I say. Choosing to get some answers of my own, I change the topic. “Bobby’s arrested but what about my father? He’ll close ranks…”

  “We arrested him tonight too.”

  “What?” I’m stunned at this revelation.

  “There’s no way we could arrest one without the other because you’re right, the other would have covered their tracks. That’s why I went to Boston. Your father was there too. I got what we needed to arrest them both. That’s where I was most of the night. Once Bobby was arrested, I went to your parents’ place.”

  My mind is swimming. Happiness should overwhelm me. Instead, I feel cheated. He kept everything from me. Exploited my connections and knowledge, and then pulled the rug out from under me.

  Some small part of me knows this isn’t true. But, I feel too exposed, threatened, to hear it. The irony is not lost on me. I was doing my own thing on the side, yet here I am about to accuse him of the very same thing.

  “How could you do this? Why didn’t you tell me what your plan was?” I yell, blinking back tears.

  I can’t seem to get my emotions under control. Pandora’s Box has been opened and I can’t seem to close it. I’m ripped apart, raw and leaving carnage in my wake.

  “Tate, I tried. If you’d only met with me, I would have told you the plan.” I’m not taking any of it in.

  “I get it. I’m JUST a fucking asset. Use me, keep me in the dark and I guess this is the part where you discard me now that you’ve got what you want.”

  I down the drink in one gulp. The hard liquor burns my throat and sinuses. It’s a needed salve for the gaping, aching wound where my chest used to be.

  “Tate,” he tenderly says, pulling me into his lap. I push hard at his chest, trying to get away, out of his grasp. His hold is firm but gentle. “Just stop for one goddamn minute,” he roars.

  I’ve tested his patience, his fury I understandable. Yet, I refuse to stop struggling. With my feet on the cushion, my intentions are to push myself up and off him. He’s on to me and tightens his hold. His other hand secures the nape of my neck, bringing my face closer to his.

  While controlling me physically, his touch is tender. His lips descend upon mine. Everything stops. All my senses narrow to our intimate, vibrating contact.

  His kiss is demanding, weakening and stripping my defenses. His caramel-vanilla taste from the bourbon engulfs me. He plays my body like a well-honed instrument, knowing when to persuade and when to rule. Invading and leading me, without thought or reason, I surrender to his touch and taste.

  As he slowly withdraws his lips, I release a whine. He doesn’t go far. His forehead rests on mine. Our heavy breaths mingle. Slowly opening my eyes, his bore into me, ridding me of all will, protests, inhibitions.

  “Please just listen to me,” he implores, his words are barely a whisper.

  Fatigue shrouds his eyes and strong brow. Of its own accord, my finger lightly traces his brow. It’s infinitesimal. He yields to my touch, softening his furrow. Being this close, his warm breath, his racing heartbeat, it calms me. My fight obliterated.

  I could fall for him. Who am I kidding? I have fallen for him. And all I want is to stay wrapped up in his embrace. From the moment I met him, I’ve been his. My red-blooded heart only beats for him. I love him. And the magnitude of my confession terrifies and troubles me because this is all we get. Peering into the eyes of the one with my heart, I nod, my gaze encouraging him to continue.

  “See your mother, tomorrow. Tell her you were just released. We don’t want her suspecting you. Where you stay after that is up to you. You need to act like Bobby’s still watching. We can’t be seen together, so same protocol.”

  “Okay.”

  He places a soft, chaste kiss on my lips, nose and forehead. This further settles me. Resting my head on his shoulder, I bury my nose and mouth into the crook of his neck. His enticing and familiar woodsy scent brings a smile to my face.

  Lightly kissing his salty skin, I force myself to stop at one or else this will become something else. As much as this is comforting, I still want Rylan Wolfe, my need and desire for him is never too far from the surface.

  His fingers soothingly wander along my arm. His limbs band tighter around my body, pulling me closer to him, his warmth cocoons me. I eagerly submit to his will, his hold. My eyes close.

  I DON’T WANT TO MOVE with Tate in my arms. It’s the only place I want her. With her head resting in the crook of my neck, the hair loss at the back of her head is evident. The bastard likely tore her hair out. He also hit her. Earlier tonight, I noticed bruising on her face and dried blood by her lip. I want to punch something. Destroy Thornton.

  My mind reels from the past six hours. Fuck, what we walked in on at the penthouse. I shudder, drawing her closer to me. If we’d been two minutes later, it would have been a whole different scene. A whole lot worse. Tate could be…fuck, I can’t go there.

  Seeing her cornered, frantically fending for her life, with that savage beast barreling down on her. It took everything within in me not to kill him. Tonight, was a clusterfuck. All I wanted to do was protect her, which I suck at. I couldn’t even keep her from being held in a holding room for close to four hours. Fucking Gia. I shake away my disgust at my failure and gaze at her.

  Tate stirs in my arms. She lifts her head, her green eyes soft and sleepy. We still have so much to talk about. She remains prone a few more seconds before she attempts to get off my lap.

  “Stay,” I whisper, kissing her forehead. Shaking her head, she slides off me and sits beside me. She’s tired. I should take her to bed.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispers.

  “For what?”

  “For all of this. For…”

  “Shhh. No apologies. But we should talk about what you had planned for Bobby.”

  Even fatigued and distressed, this woman takes my breath away. She scrunches her nose and tilts her head to the side, taking a closer look at me, carefully taking in my words.

  “What?”

  Her denial and defiance in her single word answer is not lost on me. Even when she’s down, she’s fierce. That’s what I admire most about her. Her fortitude. She’s the strongest person I know. A lesser person would have broken under Bobby Thornton. Not this formidable woman. I should be angry for the stunt she pulled. I’m not. I just want to talk this shit out so we can move on. My chest aches at seeing her like this.

  Her eyes scurry around the room, avoiding me until she has no choice but to look at me. Our eyes lock, an invisible tether anchoring her to me. I wrap my fingers around her delicate ones. She’s warm to the touch although her body’s tense. I gently tug at her hand, she tugs back. Without words, we’re offering playful comfort.

  “You know?” she asks quietly, finally willing to talk.

  “Yes. I figured it out. We intercepted your package, switched it for something non-lethal.” I knew she was planning Thornton’s murder. She’s too resilient to let us just take care of this for her. And I really can’t fault her, but I had to stop her.

  She’s pale, her eyes red and cheeks blotchy, beautiful nonetheless. I don’t know when or how this woman got under my skin. She’s burrowed so deep, I wouldn’t know where to start in removing her. That is if I wanted to. I don’t. She’s exactly where I want her to be.

  The real question is, does she want to stay there? I’m good with the unexpected, I thrive on the risk, but I don’t have a clue what Tate wants. This could all work out or it could blow up in my face. It’s entirely up to her.

  “How did you…?” She can’t seem to fini
sh one coherent thought, her mind’s likely still trying to piece it together as the words tumble out.

  “We got wind of your transaction through another FBI office. Jesse Jones is under surveillance.”

  “Who? Who’s Jesse Jones?”

  “You know him as Mr. Jones. Jesse Alexander Jones, a well-known criminal, a jack-of-all-trades. You want something stolen, you call Jones. You need someone to be taught a lesson, you call Jones. You want someone killed, you call Jones,” my tone is deliberately edgy. She was playing a dangerous game with that asshole. “Your name came up. They ran it, saw you were connected to our case and gave us a call.”

  Noel got the call. He and I are the only ones that know what happened. I don’t intend to tell anyone else. We talked. Actually, I talked, he listened. Fortunately, I didn’t have to persuade him to keep this under wraps.

  “My name came up?” she asks bewildered.

  “Yes. You leave your name when dealing with Jones. The phone was tapped. Now’s not the time. We will talk about you contacting him. Do you have any fucking clue how dangerous he is?” my tone is harsher than I intend. She rears back. Calmly breathing, I rein it in and focus. “Sorry. Yeah, when we heard your order, at first, we weren’t sure what you were doing. Then when you stalled on meeting me, and then your text to Bobby this morning about dinner, it all fell into place.”

  “You know about the text? You’ve my cell bugged?” Her questions, like a semi-automatic, rapidly fire at me.

  I can’t help but grin. Of everything said, she focuses on our surveillance of her. Her unhappiness is evident. I nod. I’m not going to defend it. We’re the FBI, of course, her phone’s bugged.

  “How long?”

  Is she trying to figure out what else we know? We know everything. “Since the beginning.”

  “Coop…you…I trusted you. Both of you.” Her words are low and defeated.

  They’re also ironic. She talks about trust and yet she’s the one who betrayed our trust. As I stare into her eyes, the moment it hits her is unmistakable. She doesn’t have a leg to stand on. If anyone broke a trust, it was her. But we’re not getting into that now. I need her open to me before we go down that road. Sometimes I think she is, then I run right into her thick and high impenetrable walls.

  “If you’d met me before Boston, I’d have told you to stay away.” I try to keep my annoyance out of my tone at that fact. A lot of this could have been avoided. Stubborn woman wouldn’t budge. Insistent on keeping me at arm’s length. “I also would have talked you out of your plan to kill Bobby. We knew Bobby had found out about Sofia Townsend. With our wiretaps of his office, we heard enough to piece it together.”

  “You know about Sofia?”

  Her alias. She planned this down to a new identity. Real clever in the name, Griffin’s last name and her grandmother’s first name. She rakes her hands through her hair, hissing she pulls them away. They’re tinged with blood.

  “Shit, let me look,” I insist.

  “Leave it, it’s fine,” her voice is short and sharp. “What if Bobby says something about me drugging him?

  “It’s unlikely.”

  “But what if?”

  “He can’t prove it,” I say. My hands frame her face. I tilt her head up, confusion still evident in her dazed eyes. “Tate, the FBI’s not going to entertain any allegations of you drugging him. If he says anything, I’ll dismiss them. But you need to keep quiet. That’s the only way this works.”

  “What? Why would you do this? I should go to jail,” she states incredulous and confused.

  “Tate, I understand why you felt you had no choice but to go that route. That’s where you were wrong. You did have a choice. Me. I’ll protect you. I’ll put Bobby and your father behind bars for the rest of their lives. You’ll be free of them.” My words are forceful. I want nothing more than to be gentle with her, but she needs to hear me. To understand. I gently place a kiss on her forehead and rise.

  “Why didn’t you just let me…he doesn’t deserve prison,” she whispers.

  I hate to admit it, she’s right. With everything I know and what I witnessed tonight, jail’s too good for those bastards. A painful, merciless death is what they deserve. There are so many variables at play. For starters, either of them could get bail. Shit, even with justice on our side, anything can happen and one or both could walk. I’ve seen it too many times to fucking count.

  “Listen to me, I couldn’t let you do that. And any plans for your father die here and now,” my tone is firm and unrelenting.

  She reacts like I slapped her. Bristling as her eyes darken and glare at me. I wasn’t sure if she had plans for her father, but her reaction proves that she does.

  “Who are you to tell me what to do? He bludgeoned Griffin to death with a baseball bat. He’s tortured and tormented me for years. He beat my brother. All of this because of me. And my father did nothing to stop it. Jail’s too good for them,” she screams.

  “I know what they’ve done,” I roar, reacting to her eruption.

  She’s raw, still spinning from tonight’s events. Her outburst is likely residual shock. This evening’s been traumatic and rough. I quickly quiet my voice. My ire won’t help things.

  “But if you…if you killed them, it would destroy you. You have no idea what killing another person, whether they had it coming or not, does to you.”

  “I’m already destroyed. I saw the man I love killed before my eyes because of ME.” Her fingers stab her chest with such vehemence I feel the ache in my chest. “I’m never going to forget that. I can’t unseen that. It haunts me every day.”

  It’s not lost on me that she referred to loving Griffin in the present tense. This leaves a sour taste in my mouth and my gut churning with unease. Not at her feelings for Griffin, rather at myself for being angry at the thought. Despite knowing I need to stay calm, I can’t help but feed off of my own self-disgust and her frenzied emotions.

  “I know that.” I grab her wrists, my hands cuffing them gently. Fully aware of her inflamed, bruised skin.

  Bringing her closer, her chest heaves and, with each breath, brushes against me. Even with us on opposite sides, I want her. “They’ll be punished for what they did. They’ll never see the light of day.”

  “Leave,” she screams. I’m not backing down. Her eyes are wild and dazed. She is trembling and rigid. Adrenaline must be ever-present, pumping like blood through her body. Heightening her senses and putting her even more on the defensive that she usually is.

  Our eyes stare raptly at each other, like telepathic waves between us, me asking her to understand and her telling me to go. Neither one of us turns away as we’re pelted, wave after wave, with unspoken words.

  No matter what, this thing between us is so much bigger than what’s going on right now. She may be anxious and angry with me. But she’s also cross with herself for failing and for understanding it must be this way, despite not liking it.

  We stand like that for minutes. Neither one of us backing down. Our silence and inaction kills her ferocity and eventually, her eyes soften. Her stance is still tense, her hands balled into fists. I pull her to me. She willingly wraps her arms around me, her familiar scent settles me.

  We walk toward the dark bedroom and wordlessly, slip under the covers. Drawing her closer, her back to my front, her warm, soft curves meld into my form. Pulling the blankets around us, I curl one arm around her middle and the other under her neck. She sighs, the tension leaving her body as she sinks further into me. Within minutes, her breathing deepens and slows. She’s asleep.

  I should go, there’s a lot to do. Instead, I spend a few hours watching her sleep peacefully. Her eyelashes sometimes flutter and little moans and sighs escape her plump, red lips. I’m content to lie there, watching her, stealing every second I can with her.

  SUN STREAMS THROUGH THE WINDOW. I’m not sure of the time, although I know immediately I’m alone in bed. Ry’s gone like he said he would be.

  Today should be th
e start of my future. I should be on top of the world. Both my father and husband are behind bars, hopefully, for the rest of their lives. It’ll be a long road, but they’re locked away. For the countless hours I’ve obsessed over this and dreamed about it, you’d think I’d be doing a jig.

  Instead, a heavy gloom seeps into my pores, drowning me in dark, hollow nothingness. I refuse to even entertain the idea that this soul crushing ache in my chest has anything to do with Ry. It’s just the crash after years of running and planning.

  Noel’s waiting outside. In yesterday’s clothes and without a coat, I’m on a mission to find something to wear. Since the penthouse isn’t an option, I go for the next best thing. Julia’s. I have some of my clothes at her place.

  I’d rather skip a visit to Julia. She will drill me. But I need clothes and I can’t see my mother like this. Groaning at the prospect of the interrogation. Forget twenty questions, more like a million. Noel arches his brow. I text Julia telling her I’m on the way and sure enough, she’s fully dressed, coffee in hand waiting for me on the steps of her brownstone.

  “Bless you,” I sigh with gratitude.

  “Spill.”

  “Give a girl a sec to catch her breath.”

  “Nuh-uh, you’ve had all night to catch your breath. I spewed coffee all over my kitchen and myself when I read your text. Ruined a perfectly good Versace dress, thank you very much. Now talk.”

  I plop on her couch, tilting my head back and close my eyes. No clue where to start.

  “I’ll top line it…” Raising one finger to shush any potential protests. “I’ll come back for dinner and spill my guts.”

  I quickly skim over the details of Bobby and my father’s criminal activities, deliberately leaving out anything to do with me and the FBI. She quietly sits, which is no small feat, hanging on my every word. I wrap it up with my declaration.

  “I’m getting a divorce. I’ve called a lawyer and I’m seeing him later this afternoon.”

  “Shit, Tate, are you okay? Why didn’t you tell me? I would have helped you,” she says softly with concern.