Among the Flames (Kisses and Crimes Book 3)

by Natalie E. Wrye

  I lowered my voice.

  “His children have been his only amicable connection to the world. As wild and varied as the fuckers are, he loves them—if love is even possible for a man like Senator Robert Fletcher, a man who would sell his own soul for one more inch of power or prestige. Assuming he hadn’t sold the filthy fucking entity already…”

  Sienna turned finally, looking at me. Her voice was hushed. Her blue eyes, no longer doe-like and brown, glared without focus.

  “He has,” she confirmed. “To the FBI…”

  She walked past me, heading towards the other end of the gallery. Talking to the air.

  “I was investigating him. My mentor, the man who ushered me from the police force directly into the Bureau, was a juggernaut, a powerhouse in human form named Ace Delaney. He assigned me to the case of Donovan Bishop, an FBI fugitive and Gafanelli affiliate. Bishop was in the thick of the Gafanelli affairs, and Delaney wanted Bishop back on US soil, back under control…or back into cuffs. I wanted Bishop, too…for different reasons.”

  She peeked back at me.

  “But I’m sure you know this…”

  “I do. You wanted Bishop to lead you to the senator…”

  She nodded, turning away from me. “Those were the only Gafanelli affairs of interest to me… But when Delaney discovered what I’d been doing, I was demoted. I talked myself onto Penelope Castalano’s case, hoping their longtime friendship might lead me back to him, but Penelope left. The case went cold… and I lost the only connection I had to Donovan Bishop. And the goddamned senator.”

  “Until me.”

  “Until you.”

  She shook her head, her eyes sweeping the expanse. “My mentor, Delaney, shielded the crook. And the FBI turned a blind eye. The bad guys destroy the world, and the good guys give them access to the hammer. There are no heroes… I’ve learned my lesson: Not to believe in fairytales anymore.”

  I snorted. “So, you’ve given up the tall tales, you say. And yet it’s so easy for you to believe that I’m a monster…”

  She turned quickly to face me, and this time when she glanced back at me, her gaze held steady. I wanted to say something—any-goddamned-thing, to do what I never learned to fucking do—tell her my thoughts—but the soft sound of solid footsteps just outside the gallery entrance stopped me.

  I didn’t need to see the someone approaching to know who it was.

  His stroll was steady, purposeful. He walked the way a powerful man always does—assured and certain. And at the moment, all my certainty was flying out of the door.

  And it was too late. I was too late. So, I did the only thing I could think to do.

  I crossed the space between us in long strides. There was no time for talking. Only doing. And I did the one thing I’d been wanting to do since I laid eyes on her, since I stopped her from leveling one of Gafanellis goons.

  I grabbed Sienna by the waist, surprising her. Shock made her pink lips fall open and when they did, I slipped my tongue between them, drawing her mouth onto my own. She gave a cry of protest. In an attempt to back up, she tried to take a step out of my arms and I took the opportunity to deepen the kiss, leaning her back, placing my hand at her nape to hold her steady while I slanted my lips, swallowing her sounds of fight.

  And how strong that fight was.

  She pushed against my chest and I pulled. She beat her hand at my chest and I grabbed it, flattening it against the muscle that lie there. With her hands on me and my own wrapped around her, we looked like a couple who couldn’t wait to get each other’s clothes off. Which is exactly the impression I wanted to give…

  It was a battle, a struggle that the pussy-magnet I’d become wasn’t used to. I hadn’t felt so rejected by a woman since I was seventeen and so green with women that I shit grass.

  But then something happened...

  She responded.

  The act became more than just that. I felt it… probably before even she did. Her body, stiff and unyielding, became soft. Her mouth melded with mine, and when I held her tighter, gripping her body harder than intended, she let me, relaxing beneath my fingers.

  I took full fucking advantage.

  I rubbed a growing erection between her thighs. I kissed and bit at her bottom lip and when she groaned, I slipped it inside of my own, pulling that pink part of her inside my mouth, thinking of all the other pink pieces of her I’d like to sink myself into.

  My fingers traveled upwards to rub at her nipple. I circled the sensitive nub at her breast with one restless thumb, sucking in her gasps and as she melted inside of my arms, I pulsed the pads of my fingers at the hardened peak, relishing in her moans, reveling in the fact that I was the reason for them.

  Sienna might not have wanted to want me, but knowing that she did—against her own will, turned me on more than anything I had ever known. It made me want to make her body do all of things she wouldn’t, all of the dirty things she couldn’t. I was breaking the tie between her body and brain with my mouth and hands, pushing her to the brink, making her betray every notion about me that she had ever known.

  I started to reach between her legs when the sounds of retreat captured my ear.

  The mobster was nothing if he wasn’t discreet. Giaimo Gafanelli slipped out of the room just as quietly as he had entered. Successful in shielding Sienna’s face, I felt satisfied in my silent victory. But the noise of withdrawing footsteps only reminded me… that trouble was laying around the corner.

  We needed to get out of there… no matter how badly I wanted to fucking stay.

  The second I stopped, I knew Sienna would regain every one of her abandoned senses. Her resistance to me would be renewed, and I could curse the high fucking heavens for making me want a woman that should have been forbidden—a woman who I was “hiring” to do a job, only so that I could complete mine.

  Fucking Sienna Santiago wasn’t supposed to be part of the plan.

  But my cock had other plans. I withdrew him—and the rest of me—from Sienna’s supple frame. The sigh I gave was so heavy I slumped. I looked into her surprised wide eyes.

  “We have to go.”

  She said nothing in return.

  “But when we do, I want to show you something…”

  I turned before I could lose my will. Before I could lose my mind.

  Before I could lose myself in Sienna fucking Santiago…

  Me & Mr. Jones

  SIENNA

  The ride to wherever Giovanni was taking me seemed to take for-fucking-ever.

  Night had set in. The dark indigo sky turned midnight blue, and a soft rain fell over the District of Columbia, making the world outside the car window wet and shiny.

  The Washington Monument, a glowing edifice in the distance, gave me the middle finger as we rode by. I was surprised that the city wasn’t alive with light. Unlike New York, DC had a quietness to it, a subdued shame that filtered through the streets like the feel of a desecrated funeral.

  But right now it seemed the only entity dying in the entire district was my spirit.

  I thanked God that Grimm was there. The tension inside of the vehicle was thick, ripe with sexuality, and if it weren’t for his presence, I might have jumped out of the moving car.

  My entire body was purring louder than the engine.

  I touched my swollen lips with hesitant fingers, painfully aware of what they’d just felt. Even with music playing—a Frank Sinatra diddly with a haunting melody, I sensed the silence beneath it, the words unsaid that would remain that way, as two people… one-time friends, now sworn enemies on the opposite ends of the spectrum, struggled to stay there.

  The good guy versus the bad guy… Or maybe it was “good girl.”

  If “good” were even such a thing.

  Our self-imposed solitude was profound, our “lone wolf-ness” deeply engrained. Gio and I resisted any other way of living, and though few feet separated us, we ignored each other, pretending not to feel, to think… to want.

  Our ca
r pulled up to a corner and stalled there for several seconds. Grimm placed the car in Park, and as Giovanni exited the vehicle, it was all I could do not to break open the car door and run—run from a man who had me questioning everything, jeopardizing the job I was there to do because I was attracted to him.

  Deeply, undeniably, fucking frustratingly attracted to him.

  And not just to his physical, but everything beneath. Jeff DeSantos and Parker Daniels had drawn me in like a baited fish to a hook. And all the way I was being played, toyed with like a game. I’d thought I was the one holding all the cards; it turned out I was the Joker in a sadistic contest of who can lie better.

  It was clear I wasn’t the winner of our little game.

  And as soon as I had the thought, the masterful liar himself came to my door, opened it, and escorted me out with an open palm. I took it, fighting the urge to tremble as he felt his skin. Not warm, but hot… Like a burning furnace amid the midnight air.

  I stepped out onto the open street and let Giovanni lead me to a set of doors of a condominium building I’d never seen before.

  The lobby was silent. A doorman smiled in our direction as he ushered us inside, and it wasn’t until we were in the elevators, quietly lifting through the air that I realized that my hand was still in Gio’s, his large thumb brushing the skin along my own.

  Rubbing. Kneading. Teasing.

  Finally, the elevator doors gave way to the penthouse. When Giovanni released my fingers to retrieve the key, I sighed. When he pushed open the doors to reveal the layout of the loft, my sigh tightened into a gasp.

  The flat was beyond fantasy. Plain and simple. With an understated extravagance, built of brick and stainless steel, Gio’s penthouse loft was the stuff of dreams, all clean lines and light—burnt gold tones and mahogany wood hues. Magnificent was the word to describe it. And yet it paled in comparison to the man standing inside it—all self-assured confidence, broad shoulders and bold eyes. He looked in my direction and stared.

  “I have something you need to see.”

  It was a question more than a statement. I followed him silently as he headed to the living room. There, he wrapped his fingers around a black remote control and pointed. I didn’t know what he was aiming at until a projector screen came alive, dropping from the ceiling. With a push of button, images flashed upon the screen, dancing before my eyes.

  The moving pictures seemed old—retro, like black and white. Except there was nothing retro about the scene playing in front of me, a flash from the past that dated back not even twelve months ago, when I was still the old me…

  When Giovanni was still Jeff. And when my world hadn’t completely tilted upside down by a few gunshots.

  I recognized the dress in the some of the images, the suit. The attractive man on the screen reached out to touch the woman by his side and when he did, she smiled. She looked happy. And free. And completely oblivious…

  She was me. The night of the opera house shooting.

  And as I stared at her—the version of her that I’d been, I’d wanted to run to her. To warn her against the chaos that would soon ensue. To warn her against the man who would cause it. The man standing beside her. The man she’d come to know as Jeff DeSantos. And Parker Daniels. And Giovanni DeSalt.

  Tears burned my eyes as the screen split into two and then four—four squares of motion pictures, each counting down until the moment that would change everything.

  I saw the senator. I saw Jeff. I saw the old me walking along the decorated theater’s pathways and then I saw the shot, rather than heard it. The senator went down along with his wife. A wave of panic swarmed through the video in all four shots and yet there remained a rock among them all. Unmoving. Untouchable. Unbent.

  Unbroken by the bedlam, unaffected by the madness that spread across the audience. He seemed a statue, a living iceberg caught in the middle of a tumultuous sea. But there was nothing in his hands. No weapon. No gun.

  He seemed shell-shocked, frozen to the spot. His copper-colored hair, sleek and slicked off his face, fell out of place as the masses bum-rushed the doors and barriers around him, and still he did not budge. He reached a hand into his pocket, and just as calmly as he had entered the doors, he walked out of them, smoothly and yet stoic. One of the four squares showed his seemingly silent exit from the unfinished show’s double doors. And as he trailed behind the throngs of scrambling suits and dresses, he looked back at the camera that was filming him.

  Right back at it.

  His stare was filled with regret. His muscular shoulders slouched with unspoken shame, and in that moment, though a time barrier of a year stood between us, I felt something—a feeling—sink into me from almost fifty-two weeks ago.

  A notion that made me question everything, that rocked me to my very core.

  I turned to the “now” version of the man from the images, gaping. I tried to gaze into his averted eyes. I stepped closer to him.

  “You didn’t shoot the senator.”

  He continued staring at the screen. “I didn’t shoot the senator.”

  “So… who did?”

  “I honestly don’t know…” Giovanni finally looked at me. “But I’d say it’s a person not to be fucked with. I’ve known a lot of corrupt men in my life… but this one is different from all of those bastards. A man who shoots someone as powerful and connected as Senator Robert Fletcher isn’t just reckless; they clearly have a death wish…”

  He started to walk towards a wet bar in the corner of the room.

  “We’d be wise not to underestimate this man. I think…” He narrowed his eyes. “I think the most dangerous person on earth isn’t the man who has nothing to lose… It’s the one you don’t expect—the one who has everything.”

  “I see.” My eyes followed his movements at the bar. He poured a drink for himself, drank it and then poured another. His jaw pulsed from clenching, and as I watched him, I noticed the same stare in his eyes from the screen—the look of a lost boy.

  Whoever Giovanni had been before was being squelched by the man he was trying to be—replaced by this imposter. Glimpses of the person Gio probably used to be came and went with the changing of the wind. He’d let me see those pieces with Parker and Jeff, but just as soon as I’d gotten too close, he’d pull back, retreating unto himself.

  The man Salt he’d become was a faker, a fraud. I knew it… because I was one myself.

  I thought of Javi and Ang and how I had abandoned them both.

  It was better not to love someone than to do so and lose them. I’d long acquired the reputation of the lone wolf. It was what made me the shining beacon in Ace Delaney’s FBI recruiting class. It would be the asset that brought me back to it. To the only job I’d ever been good at—the only box I’d fit in that ever made sense. It was better to wear the mask of righteousness than to expose everyone to the ugly truth….

  That deep down, I really was a failure. I’d failed to save my mother. I’d failed to take down the men who’d killed her. Starting with the crooked Senator Robert Fletcher… and every fucking Gafanelli I could get my hands on…

  It was how I recognized the costume, the get-up hiding the truth behind Gio’s handsome face. It was the mask he put on to hide the terrified man that lay beneath. I wanted to rip the disguise right out of his grasp, make him face the demons that dwelled inside.

  But to do that, I’d have to face my own… And I didn’t know if I was ready to confront them. Didn’t know if I was ready to rip a facade that might not have been able to be stitched back together again. I swore, at times, it was the only thing keeping me from coming apart, staying strong in a world that sought to break me… ever since the murder of my mother.

  An innocent woman caught in the crossfire of a Gafanelli gun.

  I learned long ago to get comfortable with pitting myself against the world. And it seemed like Giovanni was, too. He glanced at me above the rim of his now-drained glass, and I knew that once again he had gone cold, become Salt—ret
urned to the lone wolf he had fashioned himself to be. The alpha ready to devour his prey. What he didn’t realize was that he had met his match, his equal—the predator that refused to play into his hunger game.

  It was kill or be killed. I knew in that instance that one of us wouldn’t make it out alive.

  He turned from me, glancing back at the screen, and we stared at it together, each lost in our own self-centered thoughts. Gio never looked back at me.

  “You know we never actually finished the show…”

  I glared at the video on the screen. “You’re right. We didn’t.”

  “This is the part where the dancers come in,” he motioned at the stage from his projector’s camera-feed. “The women come in first, twirling across the stage. The men come in next, and when they do, that’s when things get really fucking interesting…”

  And then Gio painted a picture for me of the show. The performance that never was. He told me all of what should have happened before the stage was abandoned as if he’d seen the scene in his dreams a thousand and one times.

  As I had.

  And as he talked, I felt it—knew we were both there… in our dreams. On a night that had the potential to be so special. On a night that should have been ours… We watched the empty stage, filling it with thoughts and pictures of what could have been. Two imposters, putting on a show that no performance-goer would ever see. Two pretenders, pretending to need no one….

  Close to the Front

  SIENNA

  Twenty-four hours and five million dollars did nothing to shake the fear.

  An entire day had passed. Our plans were set.

  Steal from Robert Fletcher while we attended his annual charity ball. Hit him while his staff was the most distracted, the most caught off guard.