“Huh?”
“I said you don’t have to keep looking around, like we’re being followed. We’re not being followed. Everything’s all right.” And I knew that because I was looking to be sure nobody was tailing us. “There’s nothing this person can throw at us that I haven’t seen before. I promise you that.”
“Yeah, but it’s all something I haven’t seen before. Keep that in mind.”
“I am keeping it in mind. I’m just trying to reassure you. We’ve got your back.” I glanced over at her while we were stopped at a red light. Her hands were balled into tight fists, so tight her hands were red. I covered one of them with one of my own. “Try to relax.”
“I’m trying. I swear, I’m trying.” She laughed bitterly. “You know something? And I never thought I would say this.”
“What is it?”
“I sure do wish I could talk to my parents about this.” Her words hung heavy between us. They had a sort of defeated finality about them.
“You really don’t know anything about where they are, huh?”
“Not a thing. It’s funny, you know. Just when you think you’re an adult, like you can handle anything on your own, you end up face-to-face with something that makes you want to run back to your parents and hide in their bed.”
“I know the feeling. I went through it after my parents died. There’s nothing like it to make you feel like a kid again.”
“Mine might as well be dead.” She sniffled. I wanted nothing more than to take her in my arms—instead, all I could do was squeeze her hand tighter.
“I don’t have anybody on my side,” she whispered.
“You have me. You know I’m on your side, don’t you? I’m here, right now, with you.”
“Because it’s your job.”
“Not just because it’s my job.” I would probably regret saying that, but it felt like the right thing to say. On top of that, it was the truth. I wanted to protect her not just because was a client. I had protected dozens of them over the years working for Pax. It was her. I wanted to be sure she came out of it all right, no matter what she had done in the past.
She brushed against me as she left the kitchen, and something happened. Just like that, from the slightest contact, I went from being worried about her to watching her. It had to be the memory of the way her body felt against mine. Or it might have been the smell of her shampoo, or her perfume. No matter why I wanted her, I just did. It was too much to control.
I took her by the waist and pulled her back to me until her ass was pressed against my crotch. She gasped. “What are you doing? I thought we were being professional now.”
“Don’t remind me,” I growled as I tilted her head to the side so I could latch onto her neck. She sighed, wrapping one arm around the back of my neck. Her entire body quivered with need—it might have been need for me, or need for comfort, or both. Whatever the reason, she leaned back against me and rubbed her ass against me. I groaned, then bit down on her neck before licking her soft skin. Her hand tightened on the back of my neck and she dug her nails into me.
I spun her in place and pulled her by the hips until our bodies were plastered together. We stared at each other for what felt like an eternity before I took her face in my hands. She wrapped her arms around my neck and I kissed her slowly, deeply. I wanted her—more than that, I wanted her to feel good. I wanted her to be able to forget for just a little while.
She came alive again, just the way she had when we were first together. Who was I kidding, telling myself it could only be a one-night thing? Not when she turned into a flame in my arms, burning us both up. She moaned into my mouth as our tongues tangled, probing and dueling. She slid one of her hands between us and stroked me through my jeans, almost making my knees buckle. It was so good I wanted to explode right there, but not until she had her pleasure.
I backed her into the dining room table and lowered her onto it. She wrapped her long legs around me as I leaned down to kiss her again while I unbuttoned her blouse. I licked a slow trail down her throat, then further down her chest. My tongue swept over the space between her tits, and she shivered in response. Her skin was so soft, so sweet. I devoured her like a starving man, working my tongue under her bra cups to tease the both of us before pulling them to the side to suck on her firm tits.
“Harder,” she breathed, clawing at the back of my head. I gave her what she wanted, and she grinded against the straining bulge below my waist. I pushed her tits together and buried my face between them. She moaned and sighed, and her entire body writhed under mine.
I knelt down in front of the table. Her pussy was just in front of my face, just on the other side of her panties. I pushed up her skirt until it was bunched at her waist and kissed up and down her inner thighs. Just the sound of her gasps and moans was enough to keep me going. I wanted to give her all the bliss she could handle. It was such a rush, knowing I could turn such a beautiful woman in a quivering, gasping mess just with my tongue and hands.
Then I dove headfirst into the heat between her thighs, taking a deep breath to inhale her scent. She arched her back, crying out as I licked through her panties. I couldn’t tease her for as long as I did the first time. I couldn’t wait that long to get back to her sweetness. Instead, I pulled the satin aside and slid my tongue along her slick cleft. Her hips jerked upward at my touch. She was everything—her sound, her scent, her taste. Her legs wrapped around my head. There was nothing but her in my world just then, her and the pleasure I gave her when my tongue swept along her clit.
“Yes! Eat me…” Her groans were almost too much to handle. I looked up from between her legs and saw her fondling her tits, rolling her nipples, squeezing. I was damn near exploding in my pants. There had never been a woman as hot as her, ever. I slid two fingers up into her tight sheath and pumped them out while my tongue lashed at her clit. I needed to make her come, fast, so I could bury myself inside her.
“Yes…that’s it…harder…oh, God, yes! Dylan, yes!” Her hips bucked as she tightened around my fingers, while her thighs squeezed my head like a vice. I kept licking and pumping even as she screamed my name again and again. I had no idea how many times she came—or maybe it was just one long, massive orgasm that rolled over and over her until she went hoarse.
I couldn’t wait another minute. I pulled a condom from my wallet—thank God I had stocked up again—and dropped my jeans and unrolled it over my straining length before slamming into her still-quivering heat. She threw her head back and let out a hoarse cry as I took her hard, fast. I didn’t want to make love. I held her legs against my chest and she used that as leverage to meet my thrusts with her own. We rocked each other, driving each other on, staring into each other’s eyes. Pushing each other harder, faster and faster as we neared the finish.
She wrapped her legs around my hips and reached for me. I leaned down and let her wrap her arms around my shoulders. “Yes, baby… come with me…” Her breathless whispers in my ear were enough to throw me over the edge as I slammed into her with a series of short, hard thrusts. She gripped me tight and shuddered as she came all around me, shaking and pulsing and clawing. It was all too much. I couldn’t hold on any longer and I didn’t want to. I let her take me with her.
I thrusted one more time before exploding. It was sensory overload—her breath on my neck,her chest heaving up and down against my chest, the smell of her sweat, the sting from her nails raking over my skin. And the way she whispered my name over and over.
Something was happening. I had never wanted anybody the way I wanted her. I had never wanted to stay in a woman’s arms and listen to her whisper my name. It was like music.
I raised myself to look down at her, and there was so much trust in her beautiful blue eyes it was almost enough to break my heart.
Chapter Seventeen – Vienna
I asked him to sleep with me that night, since I was sure I wouldn’t be able to sleep without him. I couldn’t believe how shaken up I was at the thought of meeting
with the client the next night. If I didn’t know he killed Erich, or had him killed, it wouldn’t be such a big deal. But I did know what he was capable of. What was he planning on doing to me once he got what he wanted?
Not that he would get it, of course. I wasn’t stupid. So what guarantee did I have that he would bring the money? Or that he would even show up? Did he plan on killing me the way he killed Erich? I wouldn’t be the first dead body found in the park, I was sure. What if there were people around? Would he call the whole thing off?
Dylan was good enough to let me talk it all out, and he answered the questions he was able to answer. “Don’t even worry about being a dead body in the park,” he murmured as he stroked my hair. “That’s not even something worth thinking about, because it’s not going to happen under any circumstances.”
“You can promise me that?”
“Hell yes. You have no idea how many people will be watching and listening. I’m sure Ricardo will want you wired up. I’m sure there will be at least a few weapons trained on whoever this guy is, too. If he makes a move on you, he’s done. Believe it.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m positive. This isn’t the first time we’ve had a situation like this.” He told me about the day a client walked into a meeting with her brother, a mafia hitman. According to him, they got her out of it with no problem.
“But that was her brother. He probably hesitated, right?”
He rolled his eyes. “Just believe me, please. Do yourself a favor and believe me. You will be just fine.”
“I know I will be. I mean it. You won’t let anything happen to me.”
“I won’t. You can trust me.” He held me close, then distracted me by telling stories about other cases the agency had worked on. After an hour or so, I was distracted enough to relax.
“What about you?” he asked then.
“What about me?” I lifted my head from his chest to look up at him.
“What was your most exciting job?”
I frowned. “You really wanna hear about this?”
“Yeah, I do. Call it living vicariously.”
“I feel like you might be making fun of me a little.”
“I’m not. You don’t even have to tell me. I was just wondering—I’ve told you so much about my job. I even told you some things about when I was in Iraq. You’ve never told me about of the jobs you pulled, except for the last one.”
“And this isn’t entrapment? You’re not using this to, like, get me in trouble?”
He laughed. “I don’t think this is even the definition of the word ‘entrapment’, and besides, it’s not like I’m wearing a wire.” He sneaked a look under the sheets. “I’m not wearing anything.”
I giggled. “Okay, okay. My most exciting job. It was probably the first one I ever pulled on my own, right after I turned twenty-one.”
“What did you do before then? Work with your parents?”
“I didn’t go on jobs with them,” I explained. “But I did help with the planning. They taught me everything—how to find out the kind of security system a house used, how to locate blueprints, how to stake out without being obvious. Once we found out what we needed to know about a house or apartment, I would find out how to disable the system and how to get around once they were inside. Finally, when I turned twenty-one, they decided I was ready to pull a pretty basic job on my own. So I did. It was a pretty modest little house on Long Island—modest for the area it was in, you see. They were big art collectors and it was only the weekend house, so I went in on a weeknight and stole two paintings and a music box.”
I closed my eyes and remembered how it felt. “My heart pounded so hard the entire time, I could barely breathe or hear anything else over the sound of it beating in my ears. My hands shook like crazy, too, and I almost messed up disabling the alarm system. In the end, it was fine. I got out of there with no trouble and was on a natural high the entire way home. I mean I was flying, you know? Everything seemed brighter, sharper, more intense. What I wanted more than anything just then was a really good screw.”
He snorted. “Don’t hold back or anything.”
“Well, it’s true! I mean I was turned on in every way, from head to toe. I practically vibrated. The slightest touch and I would’ve gone crazy.”
“It’s a shame I didn’t know you then,” he murmured suggestively.
“I haven’t heard you complain yet,” I purred. Then I got serious when I went back to memories of my first job. I rested my chin on my hand, which was on his chest, and stared off into space. “Mom and Dad were so proud, I thought they might burst. I mean, it was the sort of reaction you would expect parents to have when their kid graduates law school or med school or something really great like that. I had robbed a family and gotten away with it. I mean, how completely messed up is that?”
“You think it was messed up?”
“Now I do. Now that enough time has passed and I’m so hurt that they left me and didn’t even tell me where to find them. But now that I think about it, I even thought there was something wrong with it back then. I remember wondering if other people made their parents happy by doing regular, legal things. I wondered if my parents would ever be happy when I, you know, brought the right man home or announced I was going to have a baby. I mean, would I ever have a normal relationship with them?” I snorted. “I guess I know the answer now, six years later.”
“I’m sorry. I know what it’s like to be without parents.”
“And I feel like such a jerk, complaining about them like this when yours have passed on.”
He sighed. “Yeah, but I’m not one of those people who forgets what it was really like with them. Yeah, I loved them. I still do. But I’m not the guy who sugarcoats things, you know? They were a pain in the ass sometimes. Dad was a great guy—I mean, everybody loved him, the funeral was like a circus with all the people who showed up—but he had a hell of a temper, too. He used to drink when I was a kid, though he pulled back a lot on it as I got older. Maybe because I got big enough to kick his ass if he didn’t get his shit together.” He chuckled.
“What about your mom?”
“She was the typical homemaker. Wore pearls, even. Like something out of a family sitcom. And when I told her I wanted to join the Army, she cried her eyes out. It was too dangerous, all that. But she died in a car crash, so what did she know?”
“Ouch.” I looked up at him.
“Hey. Sometimes you have to laugh over these things. She would see the irony in it.”
Would my parents see the irony in me working with the cops after taking the wrong job? I wondered…but not for long, as Dylan’s kiss wiped away thoughts of just about anything else but him.
***
It was the longest day of my life, without a doubt.
“What time is it?” I asked him as we sat side-by-side in his Jeep.
“Three minutes later than what it was the last time, which was two minutes later than the time before that.”
I scowled. “You don’t have to be sarcastic.”
“I’m not trying to be sarcastic.” He took my hand, which meant I couldn’t chew my already nonexistent nails. I’d been gnawing on my fingers just about all day. “I was only trying to lighten the mood.”
“You didn’t do a very good job of it.”
“Point taken. I apologize.”
I sighed and rested my head against the back of the seat. “You don’t need to. I know I’m super high-strung right now.”
“You can’t help it. I shouldn’t be trying to lighten things up. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.” He had been falling all over himself all day to make me feel better, and I had been biting his head off the whole time. I would have to make it up to him somehow before I got the hell out of the country and never looked back. Somehow that thought wasn’t comforting just then.
Dylan spoke into the walkie wired into the car’s sound system. “How’s our eyes out there?”
A bur
st of static, then Pax’s voice. “All set. Three in the trees, four on the ground. Everyone with a clear view of the drop point.” I loved that they called it the drop point even though I wasn’t actually handing the goods over. It was just a bag full of paste costume jewelry—just in case the client opened it to look inside, he’d see sparkly things that he wouldn’t dare take out to examine more closely in public, even if the spot was empty at that time of night.
It was eight-fifty. “You ready?” he asked, taking my hand again.
“As I’ll ever be.” Even so, I couldn’t stop trembling. “I can’t believe I’m actually doing this.”
“I know. Don’t forget, I’ll be watching. You’d better get moving. I won’t be far behind.” He leaned over to kiss me, and I told myself to remember how that kiss felt just in case things went wrong. Not that they would. I had professionals on my side, after all.
I got out of the Jeep, parked two blocks from where I was due to meet the client, and started walking down the street. It was a muggy night, and the wispy hairs on the back of my neck clung to my skin almost instantly. Not like I hadn’t already been sweating a little even in the air-conditioned car. The bag was heavy in my hand, hanging down by my side. Funny how much heavier it felt, knowing what was inside. Or what wasn’t in there, more like.
I felt like everybody was looking at me, like they knew. Paranoia was never something that had bothered me before. A burglar can’t afford to give in to paranoia. They have to be confident, no hesitation. Where was that confidence? Back at my last job, ironically.
“You’re doing fine.” Dylan’s voice was reassuring in the unbelievably small earpiece I wore. It was amazing to me how nearly invisible it was, just like the microphone disguised as a button on my sleeveless blouse. Unreal.
“Thanks,” I whispered. I wished he was right there next to me instead of a block behind me. Hearing his voice wasn’t the same as feeling his presence. I wasn’t in any danger when he was by my side. I knew he would do anything to protect me.
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