by Marie Force
Absorbing the myriad sensations, she let her head fall back against the wall.
He took advantage of the opportunity to make a trail of love bites from her throat to her ear.
She almost warned him about leaving marks but realized she didn’t need to, because he certainly would’ve thought of that. He thought of everything.
With his hands still clutching her bottom, he took her on a slow ride.
She opened her eyes and found him watching her intently. Sliding her hand around the back of his neck, she drew him in for a kiss. “Nick,” she gasped when he went deep again. “Faster.”
He picked up the pace, and Sam had to remind herself to keep breathing as he drove her to a sudden, spectacular finish. She gripped his shoulders and held on tight when he pushed hard into her once more before shuddering in release. For a long moment afterward, he leaned against her, absorbing the trembling waves that continued to ripple through her.
“Sorry for being so rough.”
“You weren’t. I loved it.” She caressed his face and traced the outline of his sexy mouth. “I love you.”
“I love you, too. I don’t know what happens to me when we’re together like this, but it’s never happened before you.”
Sam didn’t like to think about the women he’d been with before her. She didn’t know any of them, whereas her ex-husband had caused them nothing but trouble since she’d been with Nick. “Whatever it is, the same thing happens to me.”
He withdrew from her, and they finished their shower.
Sam dried her hair, brushed her teeth and got into bed a few minutes after him. As she did every night, she crawled into his arms and settled her head on his chest. She used to hate sleeping with someone else. Now she couldn’t bear to sleep without him.
“Are you going to tell me what was up with Harry earlier?”
“Why can’t you be one of those oblivious husbands who doesn’t pay attention to anything unless he’s getting laid?”
Nick laughed—hard. “Because you’ve already been married to that guy, and if I recall correctly, it didn’t work out so well.”
Sam poked him in the ribs, making him jolt. “That was a low blow.”
“Am I wrong?” he asked with a cocky grin.
“No comment.”
“So what gives with Harry?”
Resigned to being truthful with him when her inclination was to keep this—and almost everything else—to herself, like she did when she was married to passive-aggressive Peter, she said, “Harry was reminding me that the birth-control shot I had before the wedding is wearing off this week.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. Exactly.”
He combed his fingers through her long hair, which Sam found comforting.
“So...what’re you thinking?” he asked after a long silence.
“It’s all I’ve thought about for months, but I still don’t know what to do.”
“I think about it all the time too.”
“I’m not as raw as I was right after it happened.” Her throat closed a bit, despite her fervent desire to keep this conversation from getting emotional. How was she supposed to ponder a potential pregnancy when she couldn’t even talk about it without bawling her head off? “But I think about our baby every day. I think about them all, but that one...”
“I know. Believe me. I know.” He tightened his hold on her, with one hand on the back of her head to keep her snuggled into his chest. “You don’t have to decide anything until you’re ready.”
“Well, we have to decide something or practice abstinence until we do.”
“I do not know this word of which you speak.”
Sam snorted out a laugh. “No, you don’t, do you?”
“You’ve spoiled me rotten in that regard, and now I have rather significant expectations.”
Sam appreciated the humor he was bringing to what was always an intense conversation.
“If you’re not ready to figure this out, get another three-month shot,” he said. “What’s three more months when we’ve got a lifetime to look forward to?”
“You wouldn’t mind?”
“I’ve told you before, and I’ll continue to tell you—this is all about what you want. I want what you want.”
“And I want to give you the family you’ve never had.”
“I already have that, Samantha. If it was only you and me—and hopefully Scotty—I’d have more than I ever could’ve hoped for, more than I’ve ever had before.” He lifted her head from his chest and turned to face her while keeping one arm around her. “I need you to believe me when I tell you that. I don’t want you to feel any pressure from me on this.”
“I don’t. You’ve been your usual wonderful self about this situation from day one.”
“Will you do something for me?”
“Of course.”
“Will you talk to me about it and not keep it all inside like last time?”
Sam still felt guilty about getting the initial birth-control shot before she told him about it. But at that time, a few short weeks after the most devastating miscarriage of all, she hadn’t been thinking clearly, to say the least. “I promise I’ll talk to you. I’m sorry I didn’t last time.”
“That’s in the past. All that matters now is the future.”
“Until we decide what we’re doing, we should probably, you know, refrain...from any further nookie.”
“Wait...back up. What did you say?”
Sam dissolved into a fit of laughter at his horrified expression. “You heard me. If we decide to do this, I want it to be intentional and not something that happens by accident.”
He moved so he was on top of her. “So what you’re saying,” he said, peppering her neck with kisses, “is that until we decide one way or the other, there’s no more of this?” Flexing his hips, he entered her fully in one quick thrust.
“Nick!” she said, laughing. “We have to talk about this!”
“Yes, we do,” he said, kissing the protest off her lips. “And we will. But if we’re going on hiatus, I need one more dose to tide me over until we’re back to business as usual.”
Sam smoothed her hands over the firm muscles on his back, which flexed and strained as he made love to her. “Eventually we’ll become like regular married people and stop wanting to do this every day, won’t we?”
“God, I hope not.”
Sam floated on a cloud of amusement and desire and love, marveling at how he’d managed to get her through this difficult conversation with more laughter than tears. That was definitely a first.
He leaned his forehead against hers as his hips kept up a steady rhythm. “I’d willingly sacrifice everything I have, except for you, of course, to give you the baby you want so badly.”
“And I love you for that. If I didn’t already love you for a million other reasons, that alone would seal the deal.”
“Speaking of sealing the deal...” He hooked his arm under her leg, changing the angle. “What do you say we do this together?”
“I say give it your best shot.” Sam arched into him as the now-familiar rush of desire moved through her in a flash of heat that settled between her legs.
“You know how I love a challenge.”
And didn’t he manage, through the creative use of every tool in his arsenal, to send them tripping into climax at the exact same instant.
Sam would be tired in the morning, but as she thought of Derek Kavanaugh and his horrible loss, she held her husband a little tighter, filled with the strength his love gave her to face whatever tomorrow might bring.
Chapter Five
Long after Nick was asleep, Sam thought about Victoria, Maeve, Derek, the birth-control dilemma and a hundred other things. When her mind raced like this, sleep was all but out of the question. Moving slowly so she wouldn’t disturb Nick, she slipped out of bed and crossed the hall to her closet to find some sweats and a T-shirt.
With the help of her sisters, she was slowly but surely
replacing the clothes—including her gorgeous, one-of-a-kind wedding dress—that her ex-friend Melissa had slashed during a recent investigation. Last she’d heard, Melissa was undergoing psychological evaluations to determine whether she was mentally fit to stand trial on multiple murder charges as well as breaking and entering, vandalism and a host of other counts. Sam had her doubts about the woman’s mental fitness, but all she cared about was that Melissa was off the streets after she’d killed most of the people who’d “done her wrong” in her life.
As Sam went downstairs, she thought of that wild afternoon here in their house during which Freddie had discharged his weapon for the first time in the line of duty. He’d shot Melissa’s hand right off her arm to keep her from detonating the bomb she’d strapped to her chest. Pouring herself a glass of ice water, Sam shuddered as she remembered that day. She and Nick along with her entire squad had nearly been wiped off the planet. Thanks to Freddie’s quick thinking, they’d averted disaster and caught a killer.
“Just another day at the office,” she muttered to herself, seeking to lighten her dark thoughts. In the study, Sam fired up Nick’s computer and logged in to her MPD e-mail account to see if there were any updates from third shift on the search for Maeve. Nothing so far. “Damn it.” The longer they went without finding the child... “Stop thinking that way. Being defeatist won’t help anything.”
Taking advantage of the quiet time to dig into the details, she began with the most basic tool available—an Internet search. She searched for Victoria Taft, Victoria Taft Kavanaugh and Victoria Kavanaugh. The first references to Victoria Taft came in press releases issued more than five years ago from Calahan Rice, a K Street lobby firm that catered to the automobile industry.
Sam wrote down the name and address of the firm and read through some of the releases that bore Victoria’s name as a point of contact. The search engines also led to the announcement of Victoria and Derek’s wedding in the Post and Star. Victoria’s parents were listed as “the late Greg and Betty Taft of Defiance, Ohio.” Sam took down their names as well.
The wedding had been at Sewall Belmont House, near Capitol Hill. Sam added a note to ask Nick what he recalled from Derek and Victoria’s wedding day to her to-do list. Harry was Derek’s best man, and a woman named Felicity Rider had been the maid of honor. Sam added her to the list of people she wanted to speak with.
She went next to the site of Bryn Mawr, a small women’s college in Pennsylvania. Sam wondered why anyone would want to attend an all-female college, but she supposed it appealed to some women. Not her, of course. When she read through the information about the school, the words became scrambled as her dyslexia reminded her that she was beyond tired. Locating the link to the alumni association, Sam looked for an e-mail address and dashed off a message indicating she was investigating a homicide and looking for information about Victoria Taft along with Victoria’s year of graduation and fields of study.
When she’d read everything she could find about Victoria, which wasn’t much, she switched over to Derek. The results of his search were many pages long, full of references to his involvement in legislation sponsored first by Senator Nelson and then President Nelson. Fighting her way through the jumble of words that swam before her exhausted eyes, she discovered that as the president’s second-ranking aide, Derek served as the White House liaison to Congress.
From everything she read about him, he seemed well regarded by congressional members on both sides of the aisle and by his boss, who’d recognized him with several letters of commendation. Derek had been the White House’s critical behind-the-scenes player in brokering the landmark immigration legislation that was the hallmark of Nelson’s first term.
The Senate had been due to vote on that same bill, sponsored by Nick’s then-boss Senator John O’Connor, on the day O’Connor was murdered. That was the same day Sam reconnected with Nick after a memorable one-night stand six years earlier. They’d been together ever since. Hard to believe, she thought as fatigue tugged at her, that was only eight months ago.
References to Derek dated back to his high school sports triumphs, his induction into multiple honor societies, four years as vice president of his class at Yale and a paper he coauthored while attending the JFK School of Government at Harvard. She found a link to his brother, Kevin Kavanaugh, a DEA agent.
“Wonderful,” Sam muttered, expecting the brother to show up any second and insert himself into her investigation.
Only when she couldn’t power through the dyslexia or keep her eyes open for another second did Sam shut down the computer and trudge upstairs. A glance at the beside clock told her it was 4:13 a.m. Suppressing a groan, she stripped off her clothes and slid back into bed with her husband.
Curling up to him, she sighed with pleasure when he pulled her closer to him in his sleep, as if he needed her near him even in slumber.
As she tried to quiet her busy mind, she reviewed what she’d learned about the Kavanaughs. Odd, wasn’t it, that the available information about Derek dated back to high school, whereas Victoria’s life seemed to begin with a job at a D.C. lobby firm. Before Sam could ponder that thought any further, she dropped off the cliff into sleep.
* * *
“Sam, babe, wake up.”
Sam could hear Nick trying to rouse her, but she was enjoying the sleep far too much for even him to convince her to give it up.
He kissed his way up her neck to her lips. “Babe, you slept through your alarm.”
Her eyes flew open and landed on his handsome face, an outstanding way to start what promised to be a shitty day. “What time is it?”
“Six.”
Sam groaned. “I’ve got to be at HQ in half an hour.”
“Then you’d better get moving.”
“Don’t want to.” Sam reached for him and let him surround her with his warmth and love. She’d give anything to be able to spend this day in bed with him.
“I know this is the last thing you want to hear,” he said, his lips laying a new path of heat on her neck, “but don’t forget tonight is Graham’s fundraiser.”
Sam moaned and pounded her fists on Nick’s back. “It’s not tonight! You said it was in a couple of weeks!”
“I said that a couple of weeks ago,” he replied, chuckling.
“I caught a murder yesterday. I can’t possibly go to a fundraiser tonight!” She thought of the champagne-colored gown that had been made for her by an up-and-coming Virginia designer who’d wanted to give it to her because of the publicity the event would garner. Apparently, on top of all her other roles, Sam was now a style icon too. Citing Senate rules about receiving gifts, Nick had insisted on paying for the dress.
“Samantha,” he said in that stern no-nonsense tone he saved for the most important moments, “you have to go. I said from the beginning you had to give me a firm commitment on this one. They billed it as both of us, and I can’t let Graham down.”
His adopted father and mentor, retired Senator Graham O’Connor was still a bigwig in the Virginia Democratic Party. He was the reason Nick was in office, and his support had been critical to Nick’s reelection campaign.
She wanted to weep and moan some more, but how could she do that when he was exactly right? He’d explained that Graham wanted to show his support for the campaign and had requested they both attend the event. Since Sam had barely lifted a finger to assist in her husband’s campaign, she’d thought at the time he asked that she could give him one night. Of course she could.
“So,” he said, continuing to work his magic on her neck, “we’re good, right?”
“Yes, we’re good.”
“And you’ll be home by six and ready to go by six-thirty?”
“Yes!”
“And you won’t keep me waiting, wondering where you are and thinking you’re standing me up when I ask so very little of my precious wife, right?”
More moaning because he did, in fact, ask very little of her. “Yes!”
“Yes, yo
u’re going to stand me up or yes, you’ll be ready on time?”
She pushed at his chest when the last thing she wanted was to push him away. “Yes, I’ll be ready on time. Now let me up, you heavy beast.”
“I’m not done yet.”
“I know what you’re doing.”
“And what is that?” he asked with a smirk.
“You’re trying to piss me off and start a fight so we can have make-up sex later, but I’m wise to you, my friend, and I’m no longer easy that way. So you can try and try, but you will not make me mad.”
“Samantha,” he said, his tone thick with condescension, “I could make you madder than a wet hen in two seconds flat if I really wanted to. Lucky for you, I’m feeling generous this morning. As long as I know I can count on you to be here on time tonight, my work here is finished.”
When he tried to kiss her mouth, she turned away from him. “I’m not kissing you after that. No way. And as scintillating as this conversation has been, I gotta go, so if you could remove yourself from my person...”
“Not until you kiss me.”
“You do realize I’m trained in all sorts of methods to get you off me, and if I chose to implement these methods—”
Flashing that half grin she loved so much, he kissed her into submission. “There,” he said as he rolled over to let her up, “now I can let you go for twelve whole hours.”
“I let you do that.”
He sat up on his side of the bed to stretch. “Duly noted, my love.”
Even though she so didn’t have time for this, she crawled up behind him and pressed her breasts to his back.
He sucked in a deep breath, as she’d known he would, and his entire body went rigid when she dragged a hand down the front of him to stroke him back to life. “What’re you doing?”
She stayed silent until he was good and hard, and then she released him. “Getting the last word,” she said, kissing his shoulder. She bolted from the bed and made for the bathroom.
“I let you do that!” he called after her.
Laughing, Sam stepped into the shower.
