by Meli Raine
“I won’t say a word,” I gasp.
“I didn’t even have to ask you to keep this private,” he says. “I know you will.”
A kind of glow surrounds me at his words. It’s more than a feeling of being special. It’s a feeling of having another soul tell you that your soul is good enough for them.
“My dad disappeared,” he says. “My bio dad, I mean,” Mark corrects himself. “My adopted dad, Jack Paulson, was a business man. Owned a series of car dealerships.” His face softens. “He loved my mom so much.”
“Did he...is he...?”
“They both died in a car accident, Carrie,” he says slowly. “No one knows what happened. The car was found in a forty foot ravine off the coast, up in Oregon, when they were on vacation. Someone contacted my commanding officer in Afghanistan before the news story broke. They didn’t want me to see it online before...”
“Oh, God!” I whisper, squeezing his hand again. “I’m so sorry.”
I keep saying that. I’m sorry. Those two words are so inadequate right now.
He gives that weird smile again, the kind that means he’s biting down on so much pain inside. “Thank you,” is all he says.
“You’re completely alone in the world.” The words come out of my mouth before I realize it. “Just like me.”
He frowns. “Not quite. I have a half brother.”
“A half brother?”
Mark nods. “We have different mothers, but the same dad.”
“He’s...you...you know him? Your brother?”
Mark finishes his coffee and stands up abruptly, going over to the kitchen counter. I hear him pouring more. He comes over with the pot and gives me a look as if to say, Do you want more?
I cover the cup with my hand and shake my head. Mark puts the coffee pot back and sits down.
“His name is Chase,” Mark says. “We’re eight years apart. When our moms were alive, they tried to make sure that we saw each other a few times.”
“Your dads—your dad—I mean, your bio dad,” I stumble through, trying to figure out how to say this just right. “He never knew?”
Mark shakes his head slowly. “No. He never knew that we knew about each other.”
“Holy shit,” I whisper under my breath.
He smiles, a genuine look of surprised amusement. “And I’m making you curse.”
“It’s a lot to take in, Mark.”
“It’s a lot to live, Carrie.”
My heart goes out to him.
“How many times did you see your little brother?”
“A few. It all stopped when Chase was fifteen. When his mom died.”
All these dead mothers. It’s starting to feel like a Disney movie.
“How did his mom die?” I clap my hands over my mouth and nearly scream. “Did your dad...did your bio dad, I mean...”
“God, no,” Mark says in a voice filled with reproach. “Galt is lots of things, but he wouldn’t murder a woman he loves.”
“Galt?”
Mark rolls his eyes. “His nickname. He read a bunch of Ayn Rand novels and goes by that name in his motorcycle club.”
I cock one eyebrow, then wince. “He’s a biker?”
Mark just nods.
I give him a skeptical look. I may be twenty-two, but I wasn’t born yesterday. “You’re telling me your bio dad was a cop who took money from the mob and now he’s in a motorcycle gang?”
“Not just in one. He’s the president. Big biker gang that’s deep into drug dealing.”
A lightbulb goes on inside my head. “And that’s how you came to meet up with him again?”
Mark just nods. I stop talking. Silence descends over us like a rain cloud. I realize my questions are easy for him. He doesn’t have to give me any information I don’t ask for. Maybe, if I stop asking questions, he’ll be forced to open up more.
We sip our coffee. The tension rises. Without my questions, all we can do is drink coffee and stare at each other. It sinks in that he is an accomplished war veteran with specialized training to be a federal agent with the drug enforcement agency. He’s deep undercover, pretending to be a university-town cop, and he’s not about to lose a staring contest with little old me.
I’m pretty outclassed here.
And yet...he cracks first.
“You’re so beautiful,” he says with a sigh that contains a thousand more words. He tilts his head as if he’s studying me. Like I’m worth the attention. Blood rushes to my cheeks and heads south as well. I feel like a tight rosebud that has spent years in the shade.
And suddenly, the sun shines with great love, urging it to blossom.
My heart is in my throat. My pulse is between my legs. My nipples tingle and tighten. The buried sense of arousal feels so odd. I’ve felt it in bits and pieces since I’ve come home. Sometimes I would conjure it in my memory as I struggled to fall asleep back in Oklahoma. Dreams of Mark filled my slumber many nights.
This, though, isn’t a dream. Mark is very, very real right now. I can feel his heat.
Can he feel mine?
Chapter Four
The air changes. It has its own pulse. If electricity leaves a scent of ozone and crackling burn, then arousal and passion does, too. I can smell my own need radiating out of me, like fresh, ripe oranges in a grove. Like crushed mint in a glass of cool lemonade on a sweltering day.
Like a woman who hasn’t been loved enough.
Mark has a musk, a heady scent of his own untamed want, too. I inhale deeply, knowing the pounding of my blood through my body makes a beat that takes over my senses. I no longer notice any scent. My eyes can see but I can’t make out distinct objects. My skin can feel but it is fixed on one sensation.
The only thing I can truly sense is him. Us. We are everything.
Mark clears his throat and stands, then bends down before me. He puts his palms on my jaw, his thumbs stroking my cheekbones. All the air in the room disappears. My mind turns into spun sugar. My blood races to meet his touch.
“You are the most important person in the world, Carrie. I know you’re waiting for me to tell you my story.”
“Yes,” I say, my lips swollen and dry. I lick them. His eyes flicker down to watch, then move back to meet my gaze.
“You want the truth about your father.”
If Mark had thrown a bucket of ice water filled with pinching crabs on me, he couldn’t have shocked me more. I feel my blood recede, my senses return, and I snap back to reality like a stretched rubber band with one end dropped.
“Yes.” My heart closes itself back in its little metal box. It doesn’t click the lock, though.
“The truth is, arresting your father was a huge mistake.”
I don’t move. Don’t breath. Don’t blink.
He lets out a disgusted sigh. “We were fooled. Completely snowed. I was young and green, new to the DEA. I was stupid,” he adds, beating himself up.
“And if what you say about those emails in your backpack are true, then we finally have the proof I’ve been trying to track for the past few months.” Mark gives me a sick smile. “It really did take having you come home to figure out the truth about your dad.”
“I don’t understand.”
Mark’s smile fades. I understand why. My voice sounds about as friendly as an ice pick to the eyeball.
“We had the intercepted emails between Landau and your dad.”
“WHAT? You had them all along?” I practically scream.
Mark holds out his palms. “No, no. Sorry. No—the ones that were used as evidence against Joe. The ones Landau made sure the police always had. The emails that set your father up to take the fall.”
“Oh.” I feel deflated.
“Joe was purchasing huge amounts of chemicals used to make meth. We had proof that he was approving trucks full of what we later learned were meth shipments to a dealer out on the Arizona-California border. We knew about a network of biker gangs and small-time bar owners who distributed the drug throughout the
southwest. We thought that was our smoking gun, and I...”
Mark’s words wash over me like acid. He looks at me and frowns.
I say nothing. My hair feels weird against my neck, so I rake my fingers through it and lift it into a pony tail. My shoulders pull back and breasts thrust forward. Mark’s eyebrows go up and he looks away.
A completely different kind of sigh comes out of him now.
“What you’re saying is that Landau set my dad up and you didn’t realize it,” I blurt out. All the parts of me that have felt awkward and worried about moving back home are gone. Long gone. There is a clear sense of the world in the room now. Clarity makes me bold.
How bold? We’ll have to see.
Mark makes a dismissive sound in the back of his throat. “That’s one way to put it.” His eyes are full of hunger. They rake over my body. I feel a combination of matched lust and intense fury.
All of it aimed toward Mark.
“Didn’t anyone investigate Landau?” I ask, my words filled with outrage.
“Of course we did. Plus, I had the power of federal resources behind me and a great team. But we think Landau beat us to the technology system. Erased the important emails.” Mark’s eyes shift over to my backpack. He looks like a kid on Christmas morning after Santa has delivered his presents.
I startle, remembering something very, very important. “Hold on. Are you and Claudia really dating?” All my hot skin goes ice cold at the thought. “Or are you just using her to get to Landau?”
He raises his eyebrows and gives me a weird smile. Then an eye roll. “About that.” He sighs. “I don’t like it, but dating her seemed like the only way to get information about Landau. So...”
“Hard job,” I say, sarcasm dripping from my voice. “Slaving away over a hot chick—”
“It just reached the kissing stage, Carrie. Right before you moved to town.”
“I’m supposed to believe that?” I say with a snort.
His eyes bore into mine.
I guess I am.
“There’s nothing sexual going on between me and Claudia. Not...now, and not before. Yes, I kissed her. Yes, we were affectionate. It was part of dating her to get—” He stands, then walks over to me, crouching down. Mark’s head tips up.
He just made everything in the room shift.
“Claudia sleeps with so many guys her second nickname is The Mattressback, Mark.” I give him a sour face. “C’mon.”
He gives me a poker face right back. “If I tell you I didn’t sleep with her, you can believe it. And I’m telling you we didn’t do more than kiss.”
I want to trust him. I do.
“And now you’ve saved me from touching her.” His eyes land on the backpack.
For the first time, I wonder if Effie had more than one motive in giving me those papers. She hates Claudia, and she likes me, so...
“I should go through those documents in your backpack right now and take photos. Send them to my team. Get them analyzed,” Mark says.
“Right now,” I echo.
Silence blankets us again.
“Yeah,” he says, his voice going husky. “That’s what I should do.”
A plume of unrestrained passion fills my body so fast my fingertips and toes tingle. I’m a mixture of rage and hurt, of longing and arousal. I can’t separate out the pieces of me that are furious with Mark and the other pieces that want him so badly. I find myself gripping the edge of my seat, my fingers under my thighs so I don’t do anything stupid.
I’m about to throw myself at him and either strangle him or ride him.
I’m not sure which one I want more.
Chapter Five
“What do you want to do?” I whisper. I know the words are like throwing a lit match into a five-gallon bucket of lighter fluid.
“I want...” he says, making a frustrated sound, “...to do the right thing, Carrie.”
I give him a sad, shy smile. “It’s hard to know what that is.”
Our eyes lock.
“No,” he says slowly. He’s still below me, bent down and looking up into my eyes, and he stands, reaching for my hand. “No. I know exactly what’s right.”
I look at my backpack as he pulls me up. The touch of his fingers against mine feels like a burn. A sweet, wonderful heat.
“Right. You have to get those documents to the—”
He’s kissing me suddenly, all warm lips and hot tongue. The pain of torn skin around my lips is dwarfed by passion. My body reaches for his like iron to a magnet, my curves molding to his hardness, his hands on my face, in my hair, caressing my neck and pulling me closer, closer, closer.
“I’m sorry,” he murmurs as he pulls back from the kiss. “I am so, so sorry, Carrie. I screwed up everything with your father. I drove you away. I couldn’t tell you the truth. I needed to protect you.”
Lies. All the lies are gone now, aren’t they? I know everything. So many puzzle pieces that didn’t fit are clicking into place. What once seemed impossible to understand is becoming clear.
I have a choice right now. Right this instant.
I can push Mark away for all his past lies, or I can embrace him and pull him close for telling me the truth.
I can cling to the past or look forward to the future.
I can choose pain or pleasure.
Revenge or reunion.
It doesn’t take long for me to decide. Yet it feels like forever.
He stands before me, shirt tight against his chest, jeans resting on his hips like they’re waiting for a command, his eyes filled with atonement and questions. I reach up and run my fingers through his silky waves. His eyes flash with hope. They change color, turning from a light honey to a deep bourbon. The change makes butterflies release in my stomach.
As I look at him and he looks back, we share a primal signal. Our breath quickens. My skin is so warm I feel a layer of sweat form. My hair brushes acutely against my neck. My thumb grazes the light stubble of a day’s growth on his chin. I notice everything and nothing.
We just are.
“Carrie?” he asks. There is so much in that single word. My own name has become a talisman for...what? I don’t know. I can’t think.
I need to act.
Standing on tiptoes, I brush my lips softly against his. He inhales sharply, pulling me close. His heart hammers against his ribs like it’s tap dancing. My own dances back, like a mating ritual.
If I ever doubted that Mark is the one for me, I was a fool.
If I ever thought I could resist him, I was an idiot.
And if I think for one, single second that I can walk away from his embrace right now, then I’ll be damned.
There is no turning back, I think as his mouth takes mine. I am leaping into the truth and have to trust him. I have to trust myself. The taste of him fills me. The power of his craving wraps around me. Mark is claiming me now as I offer myself to him, fully and freely.
I want him.
I want to be as close to him as two human beings can be. I’ve been alone for so long. Too long.
No more.
Forgiveness comes in so many different forms. As Mark brings me into his embrace and I stand on tiptoes, sinking my hands into his hair, stroking the broad muscles of his back, I feel a deep sense of relief. Relief that I can finally exhale. Relief that he wants me.
For three years I wondered. For three years I hoped. For three years I tormented myself with thoughts of ruining the one love that I couldn’t forget.
And now I let myself fall into that relief as Mark’s tongue lovingly explores mine, his hands on my back, moving to cup my ass. He tightens his grip and our abs grind into each other. Muscle against skin, bone against bone, lips against teeth and tongue and sighs and moans.
It all becomes the same thing.
Us.
His hands reach down and suddenly I’m in the air. I make a little sound in the back of my throat. Mark groans, our lips still touching. He urges me to wrap my legs around him as he
carries me into his bedroom. My ass hits the bed in the same spot where I awoke just an hour ago.
I can’t touch him enough. My hands are frantic as they slide under his t-shirt and race up his bare back, his chest dusted with golden hair, my thumbs brushing against nipples that stiffen. He sighs and kisses me more deeply.
“I’m sorry,” I gasp as he kisses my throat, his tongue teasing the soft skin with little flicks.
“Sorry for what?” he asks, pulling up. I gaze into his eyes, his hair flowing over his forehead. Mark’s lips are in a half-smile of confusion. His eyes are dark with desire.
“For not trusting you. I should have known you’d never arrest my dad unless you had to.” I stretch my hands out and caress his back with a touch like an apology. A part of me feels like I’m ruining the moment. Sensuality and talks about my dad’s arrest aren’t exactly compatible.
Mark’s eyes wrinkle with compassion. He doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t get annoyed or upset. He gives me a sad smile and says, “I wish I could go back in time and change everything. I lost you for three years.” His brow is furrowed with concern. “I’m never making that mistake again. Ever.”
My heart is a cloud, rising on a windy day.
The wind rustles something outside. I hear an animal in the distance, the sound loose and indistinct. Our breath fills the space between us. Mark’s weight is a comfort and a tease. His arms are on either side of me and he lowers himself, propping up on one elbow, freeing his other hand. I arch up to kiss him. We savor each other, our taste like wine and sunshine.
Well, actually, coffee and late-summer night air.
“If you’ll have me, Carrie,” he adds between kisses, nuzzling my neck, his words a bit muffled by my own heated skin, “I want to be together again. And this time, I won’t let you leave. Please. I don’t think—” His words choke off and disappear into his throat.
I slide my cheek against his. The scratch of stubble grounds me.
“You don’t think what?” I ask.
“I don’t think I could bear losing you again.”
“You won’t,” I whisper into his ear.
“You forgive me for lying all those years? And for being too stupid to—”
