That, combined with his not wanting to wait another freaking minute longer to get some, made this a no-brainer.
Because he wasn’t lying when he’d told her that he wanted to spend the next two weeks laughing.
Right now, though, he wasn’t laughing at all. He was afraid to stop kissing her—afraid that if he didn’t keep her mouth fully occupied, she’d tell him to stop or at least to slow down, and he didn’t want to do either. So he kept on kissing her, even though he wanted to lick that tight little nipple into his mouth, even as he pushed her skirt further up her legs.
She’d shed both her shoes and her pantyhose upon arrival in her apartment. He’d noticed that she hadn’t been wearing stockings in the office, but she’d gone into the ladies’ room to put them on for the frigid walk home.
Her bare legs were long and smooth and her panties were small and loose enough—alleluia—to be pushed aside, so he went to unfasten his pants, and ran into her hands, reaching to do the very same thing.
He was so surprised that she would choose to participate rather than lie back and let this happen to her, that he forgot to keep kissing her, and in fact, pulled back and got instant eye contact.
He should have closed his eyes and kissed her again, but he froze, unable to look away.
“This is crazy,” she breathed, her fingers suddenly still, too, on the buckle of his belt.
And he knew as he gazed down into her eyes—and they were such a beautiful shade of brown, with swirls of green and yellow-that whatever next came out of his mouth was going to mean the difference between life and death.
And okay. All right. He’d been in life and death situations before, and he wasn’t going to die if he didn’t have sex with this woman in the next forty-five seconds. He was just going to feel as if he were going to.
And for one insane moment, he considered just whispering Afghanistan, but he knew that he’d ridden that horse as long and as far as possible. She wasn’t stupid, and if he made it too obvious, she wouldn’t be able to let herself be played.
And she was letting him play her. Despite his saying that she was both strong and independent, there wasn’t a woman alive who didn’t harbor a secret wish for forever after meeting a man that she liked enough to have sex with.
Which was why he needed to be careful, over these short weeks, to mention, frequently and gently, of course—that he would be leaving.
But as for what to say right now … ? He knew that if he waited too long to respond that that would end his chances, too, so he did the only thing he could do.
He agreed with her. “It is crazy,” he whispered.
It must’ve been the right answer—thank you, Jesus—because she pulled his head down and kissed him again. So he dug into his pocket for one of the condoms that he’d put there a few hours ago, as she reached again between them and unfastened his belt.
God, he wanted her to touch him. He wanted her to reach into his pants and wrap those long, elegant fingers around him. But she stopped well short of that.
She let him pull down his own zipper, instead skimming her hands up and over the muscles in his back, beneath his T-shirt, her fingers cool against the heat of his skin. That felt unbelievably good, too, as he freed himself and covered himself and pushed aside the silk of her panties.
And goddamn but he loved fucking women who hadn’t had sex in months, or probably more accurately years. She was so ready for him—she moaned at the lightest touch of his fingers. And oh, yeah, this was already going to be one for the record books. She was wet and hot and damn near pulsing with her desire for him.
Later tonight, he’d fuck her again, slowly—the way he really wanted to, just pushing the tip of his dick inside of her and then taking it back. Giving her a taste of what he had to offer, and then a little bit more and a little bit more, until she was begging, until he filled her completely, until she took him fully—which, by the time that it happened, would make both of them come in a rush.
He wanted to do it while he looked into her pretty eyes, while he smiled down at her, while she smiled, too, giving him a flash of those dimples.
He wanted her clothes off, too—although women her size usually balked at complete nakedness, especially while all of the lights were blazing, the way they currently were. It would take him a while to convince her he found her attractive, just the way she was, but two weeks was plenty of time to get that job done.
But right now, his goal was to make her come fast. To go for good, not great. To leave her wanting more, so that there would be not just a later tonight, but two weeks’ worth of laters in his golden, shining future.
So he guided himself, and she shifted her hips to help line him up, and then there he was, poised on the brink of exactly what he wanted, knowing how good it was going to feel when he slid inside of her, and then doing … just… that. …
“Oh, God,” Jenn breathed, as she took him, all of him, and Oh, God was right, because she was so freaking tight, but she had him so damn deep he wanted to say it, too—Oh, God—but he couldn’t do more than moan, it felt so amazing.
He knew he was going to come too soon if he moved, but he moved anyway, in part to explode his theory that nothing on earth could feel better than this, because it could and it did.
Sweet Jesus, it did, and the way that she was touching him, kissing him, gasping her pleasure into his mouth as she moved with him and against him in a perfect rhythm, was exactly what he wanted and needed.
There was only this, only pleasure, only now, and everything else—all of the bullshit of the past few months, no, all of the bullshit he’d endured over the nearly three decades of his life—evaporated.
He wasn’t even thinking about Sophia—sometimes he closed his eyes and pretended he was making love to her. But it wouldn’t be like this, because she was tiny and delicate and fragile—emotionally as well as physically—and he knew that if he ever made love to her, he’d have to be cautious and careful, but not so with Jenn. She was solid and large and enthusiastically, aggressively unbreakable.
Unbreakable and unbroken, and he opened his eyes to look at her. Her face was so close to his, and her skin was smooth and clear. Peaches and cream, it was called. Her eyelashes were dark against her cheeks, and her nose was a little too small for her face, although maybe not, because along with those dimples it added enormously to her entire cute factor.
“Oh, God,” she was saying as she wrapped those killer legs around him, her hands on his ass as she tried to pull him even closer, to push him even deeper. “Oh, yes! Oh, yes …”
Her voice was rich and husky and very sexy—although right here and now there was little about her that he didn’t find overwhelmingly hot.
Even her sofa, as ancient as it was, was sexy—particularly the way they were making it creak and rock as she urged him faster, harder, deeper. Jesus, he was slamming himself into her—no fragile flower, she—like this was day four, as if she trusted him completely. And he could only imagine what kind of sex day four would really bring, and he wanted to cry, because he knew it was going to be unbelievably great.
This was, without a doubt, the beginning of the best two weeks of his life.
He’d found out, from some article online, that while in the Navy, Alyssa had won awards and acclaim for her marksmanship. He read in another piece about Troubleshooters Incorporated, the company for which she was currently second-in-command, that she still spent a lot of time at the firing range, perfecting her skill.
He liked that about her. As deadly accurate a shot as she was, she still worked to achieve perfection. He could relate.
The article also mentioned that, while working for the FBI, she was one of two snipers who’d helped in the takedown of a hijacked commercial airliner in Kazbekistan.
She’d killed—Alyssa had—more than once. But the act of taking another’s life hadn’t crippled her. It had made her stronger.
He loved that they had that in common, too.
As he worked to
learn more about her, he’d made lists of her friends, of her acquaintances, of the people she worked with. He’d spent hours combing through Troubleshooters Incorporated’s website.
It was there that he’d found his very favorite photo of her.
And any time the firm was mentioned in the news, he saved the articles and cross-referenced the people mentioned.
That was how he’d discovered the link to Maria Bonavita. It had started, months earlier, with yet another photo of Alyssa, taken while providing security for über-wealthy Savannah von Hopf, while Savannah’s Navy SEAL husband was out of the country. He’d then found an interview with Savannah, in which she mentioned her longtime friendship with her temporary bodyguard. And then, last year, he’d read the press release stating that Maria Bonavita was running for the New York State Assembly, with Savannah von Hopf leading her campaign.
He knew, right away, that this was what he’d been waiting for.
No doubt about it, the world had handed him a shining, perfect gift.
So he’d packed his bags and headed home, to New York, for the first time in many, many years.
“Please don’t take me home,” Robin said to Jules, putting his hands over the GPS screen, as they sat in the parking lot of the Vernon Diner, somewhere just east of Hartford, Connecticut, with the car’s windshield wipers continuing to sweep away the falling globs of wintry-mix-turning-definitely-to-snow. “This weather’s only going to get worse. We’re two hours from Boston, that’s four hours before you’re right back here, at which point the roads’ll be even more slippery, and you’ll still have nearly two more hours to go. And that’s driving at your usual healthy yes, officer, this is an official FBI vehicle speed, which you won’t be able to maintain without going into a ditch.”
“Robin,” Jules started.
But Robin had a litany of reasons, and he’d only just gotten started. “I can help,” he said. “With Ashton. I’m good with him, which frees up both Sam and Alyssa, and yes, I know we’ll still need a guard, but we’ll only need one guard, because Ash can stay with us in our hotel suite, so we’ll have hotel security looking out for us, too. He’ll be safe there, and I will be, too. Even if it’s just for a day or two until they decide how they’re going to handle this, if they’re maybe going to take him back home—at which point, if you haven’t caught this guy by then, I’ll go, too. I promise. In fact, I can help by seeing if Ash and I can’t go stay with Janey and Cosmo in L.A.”
Robin’s sister, Jane, was married to one of Sam’s former SEAL teammates.
“If you don’t catch this guy by then,” Robin said again. “Besides, are you really going to just drive me back to Boston and drop me off, like, Good luck sleeping tonight in our really big, really empty, really spooky old house, knowing for certain that there’s some freak out there who cut a woman’s heart out of her chest and put it in an assemblywoman’s desk drawer. Love you, too, sweetie! Buh-bye!” He switched back to his regular voice. “I’ll be safer with you than I would be at home, all alone. I always am.”
Jules just sat there silently, letting Robin argue, waiting for him to finish.
“I am, and you know it,” Robin felt compelled to emphasize, adding, “Call Alyssa, will you? She needs to know that this is now a murder investigation, so she can increase the assemblywoman’s security. Ask her if I can help with Ash. If she says no, I’ll take the LimoLiner back to Boston in the morning.”
Jules sighed and nodded. And dialed his phone.
Sam was waiting with Alyssa for the elevator that would take them up to Assemblywoman Bonavita’s apartment, when her cell phone rang.
“It’s Jules,” she informed him, and opened her phone. “Hey, where are you? Have you left Boston yet?”
Sam took out his own phone, intending to call the number that the police officer had given him, in order to keep track of Don Quixote’s whereabouts. To say that Sam was eager to speak to the old man in the morning, when he was sober, and ask him why the hell he had a picture of Alyssa clenched in his grimy hand, was an understatement.
The homeless man hadn’t awoken, not even when the ambulance came. He was being taken to St. Sebastian’s Hospital, but Sam was going to have to call and check to find out where he’d end up after that.
The beat officer who’d shown up when the homeless man had collapsed wasn’t particularly apologetic, and Sam knew he suspected that the old man was Alyssa’s father or grandfather or maybe her crazy Uncle Bob—and that they didn’t want to admit it so they didn’t get stuck paying his hospital bill.
Sam had taken the opportunity, though, before the police arrived, to search Don Quixote’s voluminous pockets. The man had no wallet or identification. He did have a diverse and interesting collection of beer-bottle tops in one pocket, and about a ton of weird trash—like he’d recently gone dumpster-diving outside of an office building—in his others. A broken ruler, an empty computer ink cartridge, a variety of paper clips, some plastic file-folder tabs in a rainbow assortment of colors, an unopened pack of Post-it notes, about twelve different pencil stubs.
He had no other pictures—not of Alyssa or anyone else—and Sam wasn’t sure how he felt about that.
But before he made his phone call, Alyssa caught his attention from where she was now standing, over on the other side of the building’s small elevator lobby.
She hadn’t said a word—in fact, she’d gone dead silent, which in itself was attention-grabbing. Usually her conversations with Jules were animated, with lots of laughter. She’d also shifted and had crossed her arms, her neck and shoulders suddenly tense, as if she were listening to Jules with every cell in her body.
“Any results from DNA—” She cut herself off to listen, but then asked, “When?” She listened some more, nodding, her hand against her forehead as if she had one hell of a headache. “Okay. Okay. Yes. I don’t… I don’t know, Jules. Let me … Let me talk to Sam and … Yeah, I’ll call you back and Jules … ? Thanks for calling me first.”
She snapped her phone shut, and when she turned to look at Sam, he knew that Maggie Thorndyke was dead. He could see it in her eyes, in the sorrow that she let him see on her face.
“Ah, fuck,” Sam breathed, as he crossed to put his arms around her, as she allowed herself—careful of his rib—to hold onto him, too, even if just for this brief moment that they were alone. “I’m so sorry.”
“I didn’t want to be right,” she said, her voice muffled as she spoke into the folds of his jacket. But then she looked up at him, a trace of chagrin in her eyes. “I like being right, you know that I do, but not this time.”
She sighed, stepping back because fifteen seconds of comfort was fifteen seconds more than she usually gave herself when there was evil out there in the world—evil that needed to be stopped, and justice that needed to be served.
“DNA test still hasn’t come back, but the heart was human,” she told him, morphing back into the killer’s worst enemy—tough, strong, resilient, and determined to track him down. And, according to Sam’s watch, probably painfully in need of feeding Ash, or at least using the breast pump to expel her milk if Izzy’d already given their son a bottle.
She pushed the elevator button again. “I have to go break the news to Maria. I need you to call Gillman, give him a sitrep and have him bring Jennilyn back here—no. Wait. Call Jules back and find out where he and Robin were planning to stay. Let’s upgrade his suite to a bigger one. I want to move the assemblywoman there. At least until we can sweep her apartment, make sure no one’s listening in. Let’s move her first, before we say anything about Maggie Thorndyke, and let’s not discuss where we’re going while we’re upstairs.”
Sam nodded. “What about Tony?”
“Call him. Let’s get him back in. And we have to decide what to do about Ash. Robin’s still offering to babysit, at least until we can find an alternative source of child care. I’m thinking Noah and Claire … ?”
“They’re in London,” Sam reminded her that his cousin and h
is wife had finally, after many years of marriage, taken the honeymoon they hadn’t been able to afford when they’d first married.
“Mary Lou … ?”
He shook his head. Sam’s ex-wife, Mary Lou, was closing in on the end of what had been a difficult pregnancy. Her new husband, Ihbraham, had just left Sam a message, asking if he and Alyssa could take Sam’s daughter for a couple of days. Sam was going to have to call him back and tell him no.
“She’s just been put on bed rest,” he told Alyssa now.
“Is she all right?”
“Yeah, but the doctors expect her to go into labor early. She could pop any day. Why not just keep Ash here with Robin? We’ll make sure they’re both safe.”
Alyssa nodded as the elevator door opened with a ding. “Don’t take too long,” she said.
“I’ll be right up,” he told her, knowing that despite all the orders she’d just fired off—call Jules, call Gillman, call Tony—she’d given herself the hardest job of all: Get Maria to leave her apartment and, once at the hotel, break the news to her that her friend was probably dead.
Jenn came.
She came, and immediately after, even while the rush of intense pleasure was still fluttering and feathering through her, she was instantly mortified by what she’d just done.
She’d just had sexual intercourse with a man she’d met for the first time, just a few hours ago.
She’d had nothing to drink, not tonight or even for the past two weeks, so she couldn’t blame it on any alcohol.
Yes, she’d discovered a gruesome surprise in the bottom drawer of her desk today, but that was hardly a good reason to hike up her skirt and go at it like a dog in heat, with some sailor.
Some incredibly handsome sailor, and okay, not just a sailor but a Navy SEAL—although Jenn wasn’t sure if that made it better or worse.
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