Executive Protection

by Jennifer Morey

  Lucy sipped her wine, drilling him with her eyes. She was such a perceptive woman. Smart. With a funny streak.

  “You want me to agree to a relationship with you for as long as you remain interested and then we go our separate ways.”

  She stated the fact, and not in a savory way.

  “It may not be me who becomes disinterested,” he said.

  She strolled closer to the living room, looking through the window at the rain turning to snow.

  He moved to face her. “And we may not go our separate ways.”

  Facing him, she sipped, her clever eyes making him feel as if she was way ahead of him. “You have it in your head that no relationship lasts, so one of us will initiate the separation. It will just be a question of time. Months. Years. But it will come.”

  He did believe that, but only because he didn’t believe he’d find the real thing, the genuine article. True love. Plenty of people took chances on it, but very few found it. That was just reality. And he was very much a realist. He wouldn’t be a crime scene investigator if he weren’t. Having hope that everything would be all right in his line of work was dangerous. Everything was not all right if he was needed. If he was called to a scene, it meant someone had been gravely hurt or killed. Not all right. No fantasy there. Only reality.

  “No marriage. No kids,” he said. She had to understand that’s the way he intended to live before any intimacy continued.

  If that angered her, she covered it well. Putting her wineglass down on the credenza behind one side of the sectional, she went to him and slid her hands up his chest. With her body pressed to his, she tipped her head back.

  “You can have this weekend,” she murmured. “After that, you can’t have me anymore unless you can be with me unconditionally.”

  With no conditions placed upon her that she could expect no marriage and no children with him. He inwardly went cold. Unconditional meant he had to be open to marriage and children with her—if their relationship progressed to that point. He could agree and still never marry her or have kids with her, but that would be dishonest and cruel. If he couldn’t be open to giving her all she needed, then he shouldn’t be with her at all.

  Rising up onto her toes, she put her lips to his, eyes open and full of sultry shrewdness. “One weekend.”

  “Lucy...” She flipped on a sexual switch in him.

  “After that, it ends unless there are no conditions,” she insisted. “You don’t have to decide now. You can decide when we get back to the estate. No conditions. You put aside your doomsday attitude and accept what we have, as is. No projections of the future, marriage or no marriage, children or no children.”

  He loved that she’d used the word doomsday, and then not. She had him figured out and that unnerved him. Why was she giving him the weekend? To cast a spell on him? She’d already begun to do that.

  “And if the relationship progresses to something serious enough to move in together, what then?” he asked.

  “You have to be open to marrying me. Someday. I require marriage. If not with you, then someone.”

  “You’re asking me to change the way I view marriage.”

  “Yes. I am.”

  He wasn’t sure he could do that. A haunting voice inside his head echoed, Yet. She eased away from him, and he thought she’d changed her mind. But instead, she lifted her shirt off and dropped it to the floor. “This weekend and then we decide what to do from there.” She removed her bra and it fell on top of her shirt. “Agreed?”

  Thad stared at her hard nipples, perched on round, creamy flesh that begged to be touched with his mouth. “Agreed.”

  Smiling her victory, Lucy removed her jeans in a striptease, slowly inching them down over her hips, lifting one slender leg out of one side, and then the other. Her underwear came next.

  He put down his tumbler and went to her. Taking her against him, he kissed her. She lifted one leg beside his still fully clothed side. He ran his hands down her body, over her rear. Both of them kissed each other, seeking, hungry for more. She unbuttoned his thin flannel shirt and spread her hands on his chest. He shrugged out of the shirt.

  Lucy planted wet kisses all over his chest. He watched her as he unbuttoned his jeans. She crouched and took over removing his pants, his erection jutting free. Both naked now, Thad held her against him for a long, deep kiss. All that mattered was her. This. Getting inside her.

  Lifting her so that she wrapped her legs around him, he walked around the sectional, Lucy still kissing him, her hands on each side of his face. There were two leaf-yellow leather ottomans centered between the section and two multicolored striped chairs. Any flat surface would do.

  He lowered her onto them, making sure her butt was on the edge. Then he braced himself by his hands on either side of her and his feet on the wood floor. She opened her legs. The sight made him groan and he couldn’t prolong the penetration. Muscles straining, he sank deep into her. She held on to his biceps as he thrust back and forth. He sucked her breasts and then rose up to look at her, at their joining. It was strenuous work maintaining this position, but the angle was gripping.

  Beneath him, Lucy arched and met his hips with hers. She was the most beautiful sight he’d ever seen. Wind spattered wet, heavy snow against the windows. Soft music played along with their breathing.

  Putting his weight on her, he pumped into her, grabbing the end of the ottoman to leverage harder thrusts. He found her G-spot that way. She rasped ecstatic moans that escalated to a shout. He kissed her to keep her quieter, feeling her body tremble in orgasm.

  With her limp and satisfied, he coaxed her up off the ottoman. She wrapped her arms around him, demanding a kiss. He gave her a deep one before turning her to face the ottoman.

  “Get down onto it,” he said gruffly.

  Finally, she understood he wanted her on her hands and knees on the two big, square ottomans. Kneeling between her legs from behind, he held her hips and probed her opening, sliding in smooth and slick. Holding her hips still, he thrust deep and slow at first, until he heard her respond, aroused again. Then he thrust in hard. Pulled back. Thrust in hard again. Faster and faster. Skin slapped skin.

  If he could get her out of his system, this would be the way. She grunted with the repeated impacts and put one hand on the sectional for balance.

  Changing his angle just a bit, he continued the driving pace. He couldn’t quiet her cries this time. She came with a sound that echoed in the room. A few more thrusts and an unending wave of pleasure engulfed him.

  * * *

  Lucy lay awake long after that bronco ride on the living-room ottoman. His hard pounding had sent her through the roof with a million rockets shooting off, but what had that been all about? Luckily, Sophie hadn’t woken. The urgency with which he’d made love to her could have been due to his current certainty that he would never be able to be with her unconditionally. Well, if there was one goal she had this weekend, it was to teach him that love didn’t end. After he left this beach house, he’d never be able to forget her.

  That was the theory, anyway.

  He lay beside her asleep. They were in his room now, farther away from Sophie’s but close enough in case she needed them. She curled against him. It was still snowing outside. They’d be stranded for at least another day. While Sophie was engrossed in all her new presents, she planned on sneaking Thad into dark nooks and crannies of the house for quick reminders of how good it was between with them.

  More and more, Lucy was convinced they had the makings of a lasting love, the kind Thad didn’t believe in. Yet.

  Pulling the covers all the way off him, she climbed onto him. He stirred, beginning to wake. This was how she wanted him, unsuspecting, waking slowly to her loving.

  When his eyes fluttered open, she leaned over and kissed him softly.

  He moaned
and his hand came up, fingers sinking into her hair. He held her to his mouth, falling into the slowness just the way she planned.

  Lucy didn’t hold back. She kissed and touched to convey the way she felt. Unvarnished, unguarded. Genuine. She truly felt there was something real going on between them. Why didn’t, or wouldn’t, he accept that? She didn’t know. But she did know that if her opening to him didn’t reach him, nothing would.

  She kissed him all over his body, slowly gliding her hands as she went. His neck, his chest, his stomach. She trailed her tongue up and down his hardness. When she finished, she stretched on top of him. His hands went to her back, her breasts mashed to his chest. Looking into his eyes, letting him see all, she kissed him purposefully.

  When he could take no more, he rolled her onto her back.

  She let him part her legs and push into her. When he stayed deep inside her without moving, she inwardly cheered. Taking her lead, he spent time kissing and touching her. Beginning with her mouth, he traveled downward, treating her to the same pleasure. Endless moments of sensation tickled her, full of meaning, more than they’d shared so far. She could feel it. He slid back and forth a few times, gentle and slow, and then slid completely out of her to kiss the lower regions of her body.

  Back up to her mouth, he pushed into her with more force. When he began thrusting harder, she stopped him.

  “I want it slow,” she murmured.

  A low groan rumbled from inside him, but he slowed his pace. Taking her hands in his, he gripped her and pinned her to the mattress while he moved with excruciating slowness. He watched their joining and then looked into her eyes.

  Intense pleasure built up, circling in her groin and spreading. He thrust hard once and withdrew, thrust again.

  It was too incredible to slow him down. She tried to stifle a cry, turning her head and shutting her eyes to the intense feeling.

  Thad rammed into her without mercy. “Lucy,” he groaned. “I...can’t...”

  “Do it.” All that mattered was his hardness in her. “Do it.”

  With a low growl, he rose up onto his hands and let loose, pounding her hard and deep. Lifting her legs, she opened her knees, held them with her hands to keep them wide so that she could take all he had to give. From there it was a matter of seconds and the world flew away.

  Lying flat with him collapsed on top of her, both of them recovering, she realized what had just happened.

  “Damn it,” she complained. “I wanted it slow.”

  He chuckled low and intimate into her ear. “No, you didn’t.”

  She smiled with wicked appeal. Thad hadn’t actively tried to purge her. They just couldn’t get enough of each other.

  Unconditional, Lucy reminded herself. After this weekend, he could not place any conditions on their relationship. In that, she could not compromise.

  Chapter 17

  All the way to Kate’s estate, Thad withdrew more and more. Lucy watched it like a flower closing at the end of a hot day. Servants helped them unload the Jeep. Inside, Sophie ran to her room, excited about having two dollhouses to play with. She’d be busy for hours.

  “There you are.” Kate glided into the entry with a big smile and clever, observant eyes. She hugged Thad, leaning back for a close look, and then Lucy. “Well? How’d it go?”

  “Great,” she said.

  “Sophie enjoyed it,” Thad added.

  “What about the two of you?” Kate hadn’t missed how stiff they both sounded.

  “The storm kept us in the house for a couple of days, but we managed,” Lucy said when Thad’s brow lowered as he looked at his mother.

  “Hey, you’re back,” Darcy interrupted at just the right moment. He greeted Thad and Lucy, and then to Thad said, “I need to talk to you.”

  He must have found out more about the man who’d chased him.

  “You’re free to talk in front of all of us,” Kate said.

  Darcy’s gaze passed over Lucy before he started in. He must have been surprised Thad had told her. Maybe he thought they’d grown closer.

  “Andrew Lindeman is an ordinary guy. Shocked me when I got the background information. Mechanic at a small garage. Wife and two kids. Except he hasn’t shown up for work in weeks and his wife left him recently. Apparently, he hasn’t been home and she doesn’t know where he’s been going or staying. Acting very strange.”

  Mechanic-turned-henchman. Lucy agreed, that was strange.

  “Why did he follow you and give you a warning?” Thad asked.

  “Good question, and one I can’t answer. Nothing in his background suggests he’s a criminal. Has no record. Until he left his job and wife, he was a dependable worker and husband. The wife’s pretty upset over it.”

  “When did you talk to her?” Thad asked.

  “Yesterday.”

  “You’re supposed to be watching my mother.”

  “Oh, Thad, I have countless agents swarming this place,” Kate admonished. “I told him to go.”

  “Of course you did,” Thad said cynically.

  “I wasn’t gone long. And I had to talk to some people to learn about this guy,” Darcy said.

  “And as you can see, I’m fine.” Kate opened her arms to indicate her healing form.

  “Why would an ordinary guy go after you in relation to Kate’s shooting?” Lucy asked, more to herself. “Is he a political fanatic?”

  “I found nothing in his background to indicate that,” Darcy said.

  “He’s an average family man one day and an extremist the next,” Kate said, voicing her thoughts much as Lucy had.

  “Your theory about an organization behind all of this must be right, Thad,” Lucy said.

  While Darcy nodded his agreement, Kate looked off to the side as she pondered that. It was bad enough one shooter had gone after her, but a group?

  “And they’ll obviously go to any length to see that they succeed,” Darcy said, and then murmured to Kate, “Sorry.”

  She held up a hand. “No, it’s the truth. We have to find a way to stop them.”

  Thad’s austere face revealed his determination to do just that.

  “I have officers looking for Lindeman,” Darcy said. “He seems to have disappeared. Found his car abandoned in a parking lot of an abandoned warehouse.”

  Another dead end.

  “Do you think he was killed? It was so easy for you to find him,” Lucy said.

  “Yeah, all I had to do was run his plates.”

  “They know you looked in to him,” Thad said.

  “My guess is the chief is the one keeping them informed, whoever ‘they’ are. I assume he never got back to you on Sophie’s kidnapping...?”

  “No.”

  “I checked Layne’s phone records on my own and isolated a number from Lindeman’s mechanic shop.”

  That helped prove Lindeman had been the one to arrange the kidnapping, but Lindeman was now missing. And if Lindeman had been killed, they’d lost a solid lead. The only lead they had unless Jaden talked.

  * * *

  Thad sat with Darcy down in the media room at his mother’s estate. His feet were up on the reclined theater chair, Darcy a mirror image beside him. They each had their own bowl of popcorn. The Carolina Hurricanes–Buffalo Sabres hockey game played, the giant screen and surround sound making it feel as though they were there live. For the first time in as long as he could remember, Thad wasn’t in the mood for sports. He couldn’t stop thinking about Lucy.

  “What’s going on with you?” Darcy asked from beside him. “The Sabres just scored and you didn’t even notice.”

  “Nothing.”

  “You’ve been moping all week.”

  Thad ate a handful of popcorn. Moping. Brooding. Bothered. Yeah. He’d rather be excited abo
ut the game, but the nagging sense that he was making a big mistake wouldn’t leave him alone.

  “Did you and Lucy hit it off in Carova?”

  Thad had to hand it to Darcy for letting this much time go by before asking that. Thad didn’t have a reply. “Hit it off” didn’t come close to what he felt.

  “You’d be yourself if you didn’t,” Darcy continued. “But now you feel something and you’re freaking out.”

  Thad sent him an unappreciative look. Like Lucy, Darcy knew him too well. Darcy, he’d expect. Lucy? How had she picked him apart so fast?

  Some people find it that way. Had they hit it off so well that they knew each other already? Were they so much alike that it came naturally? Or had she simply focused on his commitment issue?

  “Just because your parents screwed things up doesn’t mean you will,” Darcy said.

  Thad sent him another look.

  “Seriously, Thad. You’re a good friend. I don’t want to see you pass up something that’s worth more than you’re allowing. Let it go, man.”

  Thad didn’t engage. He was too torn over the whole thing with Lucy. Making love at the Carova beach house. Sophie. All of it.

  “Avery and I are getting married.”

  The shock of that announcement rippled through Thad as he turned to look at his best friend’s profile. “When?”

  “This May. It’s going to be small. Just a few of our friends and family.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’ve never been more sure about anything in my entire life.”

  Stunned, Thad believed him.

  “I’d like you to be the best man.”

  Darcy was marrying a woman he’d just met. “Yeah. Of course.”

  “Don’t you feel the same about Lucy?”

  Yes, an inner voice responded. But Thad stopped it from going any further.

  That’s when he realized he did stop his feelings for Lucy. What would happen if he didn’t? Wasn’t that what Lucy had asked him to do? It was her ultimatum. She’d refuse any intimacy with him unless he stopped laying the law down with regard to marriage.