by Peggy Jaeger
“N-no. That’s not what I’m saying.”
“It’s what you implied when you said you let the situation between us get out of hand.”
“I did. If you remember, I was the one who came to your room, not the other way around. I started this…this…thing, between us. I made the first move, not you.”
“Only because I thought you couldn’t stand to be in the same room as me.”
“What?”
“From the moment we met, you were pissed off at me and didn’t hide it. At the safe house it was worse. You were all sweetness and light to Jon but when you looked at me I felt like you wanted to squash me under your shoe like an annoying bug.”
Gemma had the grace to blush, knowing how true his words were.
“Believe me,” he said, his mouth quirking up in one corner, “if I’d known what you were thinking, what you wanted, I would have been in your bed after the first time we grappled together in the basement.”
She blinked. Several times. “You would have?”
He laughed. “Baby, I was so hard when you were on top of me, even an ice cold shower couldn’t calm me down.”
“Really?”
With one tug on her hand she was in his lap. “Yes, really.” He cupped her cheeks and leaned in to kiss her.
How had she lasted five days without this? Without his touch? Without his kiss?
Ky pulled away and stared hard at her face. “The minute you turned around on that street corner and I saw you the first time, I wanted you. That’s never happened before.”
She traced his bottom lip with her fingertip.
He sucked it into his mouth. Then he circled her wrist and pulled it out, biting gently down on the pad.
Gemma was glad she was sitting because she lost all feeling in her legs from her thighs down.
“The night you came to my room I’d been trying to work, but all I kept thinking about was that kiss in the kitchen.”
“It was all I could think about, too. That’s why I went to you. I wanted more.”
He laid his forehead against hers. “Thank God you did.”
Gemma nuzzled his jaw and set her head down on his shoulder. “I thought you didn’t want to see me any more now that everything was resolved. You didn’t call, or text. Nothing. Not one word since I got home.”
A breath pushed passed his lips, slow and deep. “I apologize for that. The truth is, aside from being tied up twenty hours a day for the past five days with every government alphabet agency imaginable, I knew if I called you I’d never be able to finish what needed to be done. All I’d want to do was come to you and forget everything else. So I kept going, sat through every tedious, long, maddening meeting and interview I had to. I slept on the couch in my office at the FBI for the past four nights.”
He pulled her head up and stared into her eyes. “The minute I was cleared of the investigation into Ritandi’s shooting I hopped on a plane. I came straight from the airport hoping you’d be here.”
When she cupped his cheek he turned his head into her palm and kissed it. “All I knew was I had to get here. To you, Gemma. And I’m not leaving for any reason, so you’re still stuck with me whether you like it or not.”
This time his kiss was urgent, wanting, needing. It was everything Gemma had remembered, and promised so much more.
When she came up for air, she wound her fingers into his hair and said, “I like it. Very much.”
“Good.”
* * *
Later, much later, she rolled to her side on the bed and curled into the crook of his arm. His fingers absently stroked her side, both their breaths still fast from their recent lovemaking, but slowly calming.
“I missed you.” She kissed his chest, dragged a lazy finger across his nipple, and giggled when it came to a peak.
“Baby, you’re gonna kill me,” he moaned, then chuckled. He pulled her closer. “I missed you, too.” A gentle kiss to her temple had her sighing.
“Oh, speaking of getting killed, take this back. I don’t need it anymore.” She pulled out of his arms, sat up, and lifted his St. Michael’s medallion from around her neck.
Ky took it and rubbed the raised impression between his fingers. “I have to thank Dini for giving me this again the next time I see her. It allowed us to track you without Tiege knowing it.”
Instead of putting it back around his own neck, he tossed it over onto her bedside table.
“Even though I knew you were able to monitor where he was taking me, I was still a little scared,” she admitted.
“Come here.” He tightened his arms around her when she melted into his embrace. He kissed her cheek.
“We were never more than a minute behind you the whole time. I still can’t believe he didn’t spot us following. You did a good job, by the way. Tiege really bought your act.”
“He kept saying how Jon had given him irrefutable proof that it was you. That I’d been tricked into believing you were a good guy. That the whole bureau had. I was so mad I wanted to hit him more than once during the car ride.”
Gemma felt his jaw tighten against her.
“I’m still pissed at myself that I never considered he was the one responsible for any of what happened. If I’d had even an inkling, maybe my men would still be alive.”
It was Gemma’s turn to tighten her hold on him. “Don’t do that. Don’t blame yourself.”
His sigh was deep and troubled. “I do, though. There’s no way around it. They were my men, my team. I’d handpicked every one of them the day we started the investigation.”
Gemma sat up again and stared down at him. The exhaustion she’d seen earlier was joined by sorrow and anger now. “They were all seasoned agents, like you, right? Had been on the job for a while?”
He nodded. “I have the most time in, Jon next, but yeah. I had no newbies. I needed guys with history and experience in the bureau. Why?”
“Then they knew what to expect from the job? What might happen? What could go wrong?”
“Sure.” He shrugged and then folded his arm around his head, cradling it on the pillow.
“So, knowing that something could go wrong, planning for it even, they still wanted to work with you, right?”
He nodded. “What’s your point?”
Gemma considered what she wanted to say. While she did, she slid her legs over his abdomen, straddling him, her hands resting on her thighs.
Ky’s hands moved immediately to settle on her hips. He was already half aroused and she could feel him swelling more now against her.
“My point is that these men were professionals who knew what they did was dangerous and did it anyway of their own choice. You didn’t get them killed. You’re not responsible for what happened. And despite the AG being mad that Ritandi is in a box and not a cell, I think you killing him was totally and completely justified.”
She trailed her hands up over his pecs and rested them there. The steady, solid beat of his heart against her hand picked up when she wiggled and settled down against him.
For a moment he looked as if he was going to argue with her. Then, his lids went half closed and he nailed her with that hot, drowsy, sexy gaze of his that made her toes curl.
He slid his hands from her hips, lightly across her outer thighs to the inner skin sitting on top of his body. Gemma’s breath caught when he pushed his thumbs along the tops of her legs and pressed into her flesh, spreading and exposing her most intimate, private part for him.
His full lips pulled up in a wicked grin. “Gorgeous, talented, successful, and,” he swiped the pad of his thumb straight across her clitoris, circling it, “smart.”
Gemma felt the pressure from his finger shoot a bullet of pleasure straight up her spinal cord.
“Everything I’ve always wanted in a woman,” he added, slipping two fingers inside her.
Gemma threw back her head and arched her spine, giving him more than ample space to continue with this task, unheeded.
While he pumped his fingers in and out of her in a slow, thorough rhythm, she felt him grow larger and harder against her butt. Reaching back a hand, she fisted him and watched his eyes close, his mouth open on a moan when she tugged up his length and then slid down again.
Her laugh filled the room when he murmured in Greek.
“I don’t need you to translate that. The meaning is universal.”
In a heartbeat he reversed their positions. He made a nest for his hips in the cradle of her thighs, while she wound her long legs around his waist to cross at his back.
With his weight on his elbows, his shoulders pressed back, he looked down at her. His beautiful ocean colored eyes were sparkling, his long lashes glistening with moisture, as he whispered, “Gemma. Se agapo.”
She went as still as stone.
This phrase was new, different, more.
She was terrified to ask what it meant and terrified not to know. Instinct told her it was something profound. Something that would change her and…them.
“Gemma.” He swiped her bangs back from her forehead and kissed her eyes closed. She opened them when he shifted his mouth to her cheek, then ran it along her jaw.
“Not going to ask me what that meant?” He sucked at the notch behind her ear.
“I—I think, I think it probably has something to do with what we’re doing. Right?”
She felt him smile along her collarbone. “Kind of.”
“So. Okay. No need to know the full translation, then. I’m getting the gist.”
When he lifted his head and looked down at her, amusement filled his smile.
“What?” she asked.
“I never took you for a coward.”
“What?” She dropped her legs back onto the bed with a thud and tried to push him off her, forgetting what a solid, unmovable tank of a man he was.
“I’m not a coward. And you know it.”
Her inner voice mocked her as the liar she was.
“No?” He cocked his head as he continued grinning down at her. “Then why don’t you want to know what I’ve just said? Every other time I’ve lapsed into Greek you’ve always demanded I translate. Why not this time? Do you know what the words mean?”
“N-no.”
“Then why don’t you want me to tell you?”
She didn’t answer him. Couldn’t. Instead, she bit down on the inside of her cheek.
Ky’s gaze softened. He slid his knuckles across one cheek and kissed the other. “It won’t hurt if I say it in English, I promise. This translation leaves no room for doubt.” He looked into her eyes, and she swore he could see her soul. “Trust me?”
Without hesitating she answered, “With everything I am,” and knew the words could never be truer. “You know that.”
Right before he took her lips with his, he smiled and whispered, “I love you.”
Oh. My. God.
She’d been correct. That phrase, those three words, changed everything.
Everything.
“I can hear the fear flying around in your head,” he said, as his lips moved down her neck to her breasts. He wet his mouth with his tongue, and then sucked the tip of one in, his tongue laving across the hardened peak.
“Oh!” Her hands fisted in his hair.
“There’s no need to panic.” He moved to her other breast, his free hand skating down and over her flat belly to burrow in the sparse hair at the apex of her thighs. “You trust me, right?”
“Yes.”
Did she say the word or scream it? She wasn’t sure because the pressure of Ky’s tongue and hands doing wicked things to her body made logical thought impossible.
“Then don’t worry about anything.” He ran a purposeful finger down the length of her wet heat, then back up again. “Just let me love you, Gemma.”
He shifted, slipped on the condom he had ready, and in one, full, and elegant slide, was completely inside her.
“Ky!”
“Love when you call out my name, baby,” he growled into her ear.
Gemma’s mind shut off with each thrust and dive of Ky’s body. Every nerve fiber in her body, every pulsation of blood coursing through her, was centered where they were joined together.
When he reached a hand between their bodies and pressed his thumb, hard and firm, against her, Gemma wasn’t prepared for the magnitude of the orgasm that shook through her. Lightning flashed behind her closed eyes as she repeated the words he’d given her minutes before.
When he followed her over the cliff seconds later, she was still quaking around him, milking him with the aftershocks raging through her.
Buried deep within her, Ky nuzzled her neck. “I heard you, you know.” He pulled up and grinned down at her. “It was kind of hard not to since you screamed.”
She pinched one taut, firm butt cheek between her fingers.
Laughing felt so good, Gemma couldn’t contain hers when he yelped.
“I want to hear it again,” Ky said once she stopped. “Scream it if you want. But I want to hear it, Gemma. I want to watch you say the words.”
“What?” She opened her eyes wide, batted her lashes at him, a move she’d always considered cheesy before, and asked, “That I trust you? I think I’ve told you that before, haven’t I?”
One milk chocolate colored eyebrow crawled upward.
She giggled and threw her arms around his neck. With her lips hovering just a whisper from his she said, “Oh. You mean tell you I love you, again. Okay.” She moved closer still, close enough to breathe in the air he expelled over her. “I love you, Kyros Pappa-whatever.”
The corners of his eyes crinkled.
“It’s crazy, but I love you.”
“There, now,” he said. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”
She shook her head. “But speaking of things being hard…” she lifted her hips.
Still nestled inside her, she felt him being to pulse and grow again.
“Again?” she asked on a laugh.
“Again,” he answered with kiss.
Later, when their hearts and breathing settled, he rolled off her, and, with a quick kiss to her cheek, slid from the bed and to the bathroom. Gemma heard the toilet flush, and then water running. He came back seconds later with a filled glass of water.
He leaned a hip down on the bed and handed her the glass.
“Drink this,” he told her, with a yawn. “Then we need some sleep.”
Gemma drained the glass and after he put it on the bedside table next to his medallion, he slid under the covers and settled on his side, her back molded against his front.
With his arm draped across her waist, Gemma linked her fingers with his and closed her eyes.
“I love you,” she whispered.
* * *
In the dark, Ky smiled.
Chapter Twenty
They’d been together nonstop since the moment he’d walked into her condo. After not taking any personal or vacation time in the three years of the Ritandi investigation, Ky had requested, and been granted, a month’s leave. Every second he could, he’d spent it with Gemma.
The days she needed to work with clients were the only times they’d been separated. He’d moved most of his necessary things into her place without a formal invitation or discussion about it and she’d never questioned it. They were living together in every way. When she came home, exhausted and cranky from dealing with contrary and annoying celebrity clients, Ky had a glass of wine, a meal, and a willing ear ready that immediately elevated her mood.
They made love every night in her king-sized bed then fell asleep wrapped in one another’s arms.
Many mornings she was out the door, late and laugh
ing, because he’d detained her in bed, not wanting to let her go.
He was secure enough in his thoughts to know Gemma was the woman he wanted a forever with. Getting her on board with the idea was the problem, but if working at the FBI had taught him one thing these past twelve years, he was a first-class problem solver.
* * *
“Your grandmother is adopting Kandy,” she told him, as she kicked off her shoes and went into the kitchen after arriving home from his grandmother’s ninety-fourth birthday party.
Ky nodded and took the beer she offered him from the refrigerator, while she took a bottled water for herself.
“Before we left my mother pulled me aside and told me Kandy offered her and YiaYia jobs as special culinary consultants for one of her upcoming food specials. She’s gonna do a whole hour on Greek cuisine.” He heaved a theatrical sigh. “There’ll be no living with her now. My poor father.”
“He’ll survive.”
Gemma moved to the living room and collapsed onto the sofa.
“I liked your family,” she told him when he sat with her. She lifted his arm and snuck under it, laying her head on his shoulder while he squeezed her upper arm and then kissed the top of her head.
“They liked you, too. Especially my uncle Stavros.” He groaned then took a swig of beer. “I’ve got a feeling you created a monster when you suggested he get a job as an older male model.”
“I wasn’t kidding. He’s extremely photogenic. His features practically leaped from the camera, just like—”
She stopped and busied herself with taking a long draught of water.
“Just like what?”
“I should have known you wouldn’t let that go.”
“Like what, Gemma?” He pushed against her arm.
She slipped from his under his arm, sat back on the cushions and folded her arms across her chest. “Okay, I’ll tell you, but you have to promise to have an open mind.”
He shrugged and looked at her with confusion. “Okay. Although I don’t know why it would be closed.”
“Stay here,” she commanded, rising. “It’s easier if I show you.”
