“I want to,” she argued, “because I want to. Because I’m alive, and because it’s my choice—because I finally have a choice.”
“That’s total bullshit,” he said, but he wasn’t sure she heard him, because she was kissing him on the mouth again, then distracting the hell out of him by slipping her hand down into his pants, and . . .
“Whoa,” he said, but she only kissed him more deeply.
She was . . . He was . . . Was he actually going to do this?
Yes.
And why the hell not? God knows he wanted to.
And, like the lady said, it was her choice.
Except Decker knew that it really wasn’t.
But she said it was.
And who was he to decide for her, as if she were a child, whether this truly was or wasn’t her choice?
If sex really didn’t mean that much to her, if she had the mind-set of most of the women that James Nash dated . . .
Except this wasn’t a date. And she was selling herself to Decker—there was no question about that.
He was a lowlife, he was scum, because, right at that moment, he was willing to buy.
She slid off him—all that soft warmth suddenly gone—and here it came. The dash for the door that he’d been more than half expecting. He had one hand wrapped around her wrist—an easy enough hold for her to break—but she clasped his hands and pulled him to his feet with her.
“Let’s go to my bed,” she said instead. “It’s softer than the tile floor. My knee is pretty bruised.”
She lifted her skirt, and he saw that she’d scraped the shit out of her knee, probably during her escape from Bashir’s palace.
Provided that had really happened.
Yes, let’s go to your bed, was what the low-life scum wanted to say, but there was still some Dudley Do-Right in his system—and it had control of his vocal cords.
But “I can’t—” was all he got out before she kissed him again, wrapping one leg around him even as she tugged him with her toward the blankets piled up on the floor in the other room.
Oh, this was a mistake in so many ways. Too many to count.
But she somehow had his pants unzipped and when she slid down to the floor to kneel in front of him and . . .
“Unh,” he said as she . . . And then she . . .
Okay. Okay. Apparently she wasn’t going to make a break for the door immediately.
Jesus.
Jesus.
He was vulnerable. There was no doubt about the fact that this was a position of intense vulnerability. If she wanted to, she could seriously damage him in so many different ways. But if that was her intention, she would have hurt him already.
And that was not pain he was experiencing.
She tugged him down onto the blankets with her, which gave her a better angle to . . .
Oh, yeah.
Decker knew that there was a list of reasons he shouldn’t be doing this, but the pro side of this particular page sure seemed to cancel out all the cons.
He kept his eyes open, kept track of where she had her hands, aware that although he’d taken a weapon from her back at the factory, he hadn’t searched this room.
But ho-kay. All-righty. This was not what he’d expected her to do. It was now exceedingly easy to keep track of her right hand as well as her mouth and . . .
Decker reached down and grabbed hold of her left wrist. Keeping his eyes from rolling back in his head was a more serious challenge. He must’ve made some kind of noise, because she glanced up at him, her own eyes bright.
She’d stayed alive for the past two months, possibly even longer if her story about Ghaffari and Bashir was just a sad tale she’d made up to win his sympathy, by doing this. It was a sobering thought, and yet she managed to distract him—she was that talented.
Skilled.
Practiced.
Jee-zus.
It should have been a turnoff—in theory, he would have expected it to be. But Decker had found in life that reality and theory frequently were quite different.
This was . . . surprisingly freeing.
There were no emotional strings attached. It was the first time in a long, long time that he’d had a sexual encounter that wasn’t layered with deep meaning, heavy with expectation.
This was . . . what it was.
And apparently she wanted absolutely nothing from him.
At all.
This was similar to what Nash did on an almost nightly basis. Sex with no emotional connection. Sex for the sake of sex. Because it felt good.
And good was one freaking understatement.
Decker knew that he probably should have been ashamed, and sure, if he tried hard enough, he could find part of him that was. Not only should he be back at Rivka’s by now, but he was taking advantage of a woman who was in desperate need of help. This poor, frightened, down on her luck woman who—
Holy shit, holy shit, whatever she was doing was—
Decker came in a rush that didn’t quite blind him enough to keep him from realizing that he’d just lost her right hand. He still held her left wrist, but her entire right arm was hidden . . .
He jerked back, away from her.
. . . with her hand buried beneath them, beneath the blankets . . .
Away from her teeth—fuck!—he rolled hard to his right.
. . . as if she was reaching for a knife or . . .
The sound of a gunshot at close proximity was deafening, as a bullet whizzed past his head.
“Shit!”
. . . a handgun.
Decker rolled back to the left, pinning her arm as well as whatever weapon she had hidden under those blankets.
She cried out—he was hurting her—but too fucking bad! She’d just tried to shoot him in the head.
While she was . . . While he was . . . Shit.
Somehow that made her murder attempt unforgivable. Assuming that a murder attempt was something that could be forgiven.
She cried out again as he forced her to let go of the weapon. If she’d been a man, he would have broken her nose because he would’ve elbowed her far harder in the face while he was at it.
Of course, if she’d been a man, this never would’ve happened.
Mad as hell—at himself as well as at her—heart still pounding, Deck pushed her back so that she slid on her ass along the tile floor and hit both the pipes and the wall beneath the row of sinks with enough force to knock her off balance.
By the time she scrambled onto her hands and knees, Decker had her weapon, a neat little WWII era Walther PPK, aimed at her forehead. He also had his pants zipped.
“Don’t do it,” he said.
She looked at the door, at the Walther, at his face, then sat back on her heels. She was crying a river of tears, but this time she didn’t make a sound. She just looked at him with eyes that were completely devoid of all hope.
She just sat there and waited—for him to kill her.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER
THIRTEEN
Tess glanced up as the third-floor bedroom door opened and Jimmy Nash came into the room.
He looked wary and apologetic, and he actually cleared his throat. He didn’t even try to force a smile. He was just so damn serious, she had to turn away.
God. Help.
Tess pretended to return her attention to her laptop computer, open in front of her on the bed.
“So.” She spoke first, before he did, eyes securely on the monitor. “I once saw this movie where this character—he’s supposed to be a Hollywood actor, completely self-absorbed. But he’s drunk and he gets into this car accident, like the car flips over but nobody’s hurt, and he climbs out and says, ‘So. That happened,’ and I always thought that was just the best line, you know? So. That happened.”
She glanced up to find him watching her.
“It was never my intention to—,” he started, but she cut him off.
He crossed the room, toward her, toward the bed. “No, Tess, you—”
“Yes,” she said. “And it will help quite a bit if you would simply say ‘Apology accepted,’ and then never mention it again. And don’t you dare even think about sitting down on this bed.”
He stopped himself, straightening back up. He sighed. “Tess . . .”
“From now on, if I’m using the bed, you’re not. And vice versa,” she told him as matter-of-factly as she could. She even managed to look up at him and flash a polite smile before returning her attention to her computer. “We can work out a schedule for sleeping. Every other night I get the bed and you get the floor, and—”
“Tess—”
“ ‘Apology accepted,’ ” she repeated, eyes firmly on that screen. “That’s really all I want to hear right now, thanks so much.”
“What we did—”
“What I did,” she corrected him sharply.
“What we did,” he said again, sitting next to her on the bed despite her protests, and folding the computer closed so that she’d have to face him, “was enough to get you pregnant. It doesn’t take much, you know.”
Of all the things she’d expected Jimmy to say, that wasn’t one of them. She blinked at him for a few moments. Pregnant?
“You didn’t think about that, did you?” he asked. When he wanted to, he could make his eyes seem so warm, even tender.
Tess shook her head. Her focus had been so completely on the fact that Nash now knew she still wanted him—that he’d found out that if it were up to her subconscious self, they’d be having screaming wild monkey sex every time they had five minutes free. He now knew that her body was at serious odds with her brain when it came to her attraction for him.
He knew that what she wanted was different from what she wanted, and that when push came to shove, there was a damn good chance—if she were vulnerable enough—that she’d start pushing and shoving.
With great enthusiasm.
Oh, God.
“I’m not pregnant,” she said. “Really, James, the odds of that—”
“But it is possible,” he pointed out.
“Yeah, but come on, that’s worst-case scenario thinking,” Tess said. “It’s also possible there’ll be another earthquake tonight that’ll bring the roof down on top of us.”
“Okay,” he said. “You’re right. But . . . I just wanted you to know that I intend to take responsibility if—”
“What?” She was incredulous. “For something you didn’t even do? Don’t be ridiculous—”
“Excuse me, I was there. I know exactly what I did. And I’m just saying—”
“Well, don’t. God! Nash! Give me a fricking break.” Tess pushed herself farther back on the bed, away from him, all but kicking at him with her feet. “I’ve told you what I want you to say.”
“Apology accepted?” Jimmy stood up.
“Thank you.” God.
“No, that was a question,” he said. “I didn’t say it.”
What? “Yes, you did. I heard you—”
He laughed. “No, no, see, I said it, but I didn’t say it—”
Oh. My. God. “Is this some kind of big hilarious joke to you? Because in case you haven’t noticed,” she told him through clenched teeth, “I’m not laughing!”
“Yeah.” He wasn’t laughing anymore either. “Right. I always think it’s funny as shit when I do something I’ve never done before—ever. Something that might completely screw up the life of someone I happen to care very much about.”
He was standing there, looking about as upset as she’d ever seen him. And if he hadn’t run away to Mexico for two months, if he’d bothered to call her to tell her he was okay—even just once, one fifteen-second phone call—she might’ve actually believed him.
Instead she snorted, trying to push away those pathetic feelings of loss that surfaced every time he said or did something even remotely sweet. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice . . . “Oh, you so just want to sleep with me again. Could you be any more transparent?”
He closed his eyes and swore softly. Sat down again, this time farther away from her. Sighed. Glanced at her, but then looked at the floor as he said, “The truth is, Tess, that I don’t want to sleep with you. I really, really don’t.”
Forget transparent. Could he be any more emphatic with that really?
“Well. Thanks for clearing that up.” Please, please, don’t let her start to cry. Dead children were one thing, and certainly worthy of tears, but harsh truths from the mouths of idiots she’d slept with were another thing entirely. “If you don’t mind, I have work I need to do . . . ?”
He swore again. Turned to look at her. She now was the one who wouldn’t meet his gaze. “Look, I’m sorry if I—”
“Yeah, I get it,” she cut him off. “You’re worried about your problematic tendency for premature ejaculation, and I’m—” Why, why, why did she say that? It was downright cruel and not even truthful. He was being honest and forthright when he’d said he didn’t want to sleep with her again, and she, in return, was being a flaming attack-bitch. “I’m such a jerk.”
Nash was staring at the floor again, the muscle jumping in the side of his jaw.
“I’m sorry. I really didn’t mean that,” she continued. And wasn’t this just perfect. Somehow she’d managed to orchestrate this humiliation-fest so that she was forced to apologize to him about that, too.
“Yeah, I know,” he said. He looked up at her. “And even if you did, it’s okay. Have at me, please, if it makes you feel any better.”
“It doesn’t.”
There was silence as they sat there, just looking at one other.
They both spoke, then, at once.
Tess said, “We can talk about this for hours and it’s not going to—” as Nash told her, “I just want you to know that—” They both stopped.
“What?” she said, wanting nothing more than for him to leave and knowing that he wasn’t going anywhere until they had this conversation. “If I’m pregnant, then what? Let’s talk about this. Let’s run the worst-case scenario. I’m pregnant. What happens then, James?”
He stared at her.
“Are you going to marry me?”
She’d asked it as a bad joke, but he answered as if she were serious. “I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe. Yeah. If that’s what you want.”
What? Tess laughed her disbelief. “Yeah, right. What I want is for us to get married and live happily ever after. Happily, except for the fact that you really, really don’t want to sleep with me. Yeah, that’s my idea of a dream relationship. God.”
He rubbed his forehead. No doubt she was giving him one hell of a headache. Well, join the club. She had a whopper of her own.
She sighed. “Look, I’m sorry—”
“Your apology isn’t necessary,” he said, adding when she opened her mouth, “but accepted.” He stood up. “Rivka and Guldana are intending to throw a wedding dinner for us. Probably Friday night.”
Oh, bloody terrific. Just what Tess wanted—a party to celebrate her relationship with Jimmy Nash. God help her . . . “Please try to talk them out of it.”
“I did,” he said. “Try, I mean. There’s no, um . . . Look, they need something to celebrate right now, and, well, sorry, but we’re it.”
Oh, joy. “Is Decker back yet?” she asked.
For the briefest of moments, Jimmy actually looked startled. “Oh, shit,” he said.
And Tess knew what he was thinking. Last night, he’d been trying to set Tess up with Decker. And this morning, he’d . . . They’d . . . “Look, it’s not like anything really happened,” she said.
He gave her a incredulous look. “Yeah, except for the part where we had s
ex.”
“We didn’t have sex!” she said scornfully, even though she knew that by most sane definitions, they had. “We accidentally bumped into each other,” she added, knowing how completely stupid she sounded. “Intimately.”
Troubleshooters 08 Flashpoint Page 20
