by Amelia Autin
And Cody lay in her arms, completely spent.
Time stretched out endlessly as she held him, and she smiled secretly to herself. She loved him, and now he was hers. He hadn’t said the words, but they weren’t important—they were just words. He’d shown her his love with his body, taking her to the mountaintop with him, but first letting her soar.
Keira’s secret smile slowly grew until she could no longer keep it from her face. Her breathing finally slowed, and she began to doze off. Her high school boyfriends had been wrong about her, she thought as sleep claimed her. She wasn’t frigid—in Cody’s arms.
* * *
Cody came to only minutes after passing out. Keira was already asleep, but her breathing was shallow, so he knew she hadn’t been asleep long. She whimpered slightly when he withdrew from her body, as if she missed him the minute he was gone. But she didn’t waken.
He slid quietly from the bed and made his way to her bathroom. He stepped into the shower for a minute, quickly washing himself. Then he dried off with her towel. He ran the water in the washbasin until it was hot, held a washcloth under the stream, then wrung it out and brought it back to the bed with him.
He gently placed the warm, damp cloth between Keira’s legs, and she caught her breath in her sleep. She made a little sound deep in her throat when he tenderly washed her, but it wasn’t a sound of pain, and he was relieved. He obviously hadn’t hurt her as he’d feared when he’d taken her virginity.
No, he corrected himself. You didn’t take it. She gave it to you.
When he was done, he took the washcloth back to the bathroom. There was a smear of pink on the cloth, and Cody stared at it for a long minute before he held it under the running water and washed the blood away along with everything else.
She couldn’t know what a priceless gift she’d given him. Not her virginity, but by calling his name both times when she climbed the peak. For a man whose heart and ego had been savaged when the only woman he’d loved called him by another man’s name in bed, it was healing to know that Keira was only thinking of him at that moment. She wanted him. Only him.
Cody padded softly back to the bedroom and slid in bed next to Keira. He watched her sleeping for a minute—her face so unlike the usual one she showed the world when she was awake. And there was a tiny smile on her lips. Whatever she was dreaming, it made her smile. And that made him feel damned good.
He suddenly needed to hold her even if it meant waking her. He propped himself up against the pillows, then drew her unresisting body into his arms, cradling her against his chest as he pulled the covers around them. Her curls tickled his chin, and he breathed in the unique scent that was Keira—plain soap and water and warm woman. He wanted to hold her this way forever, especially now that he knew she loved him. Especially now that she was his.
He admitted to himself he had wanted her ever since that first night. Hadn’t been able to erase the memory, even though he’d told himself time and again he had no business remembering anything about that episode other than the basic fact that it had happened. It hadn’t done any good. His body had a mind of its own. It had remembered...and wanted.
He chastised himself sternly for the thrill of exultation that coursed through him now. It was primitive. Archaic. Sexist. He couldn’t help it. Part of him was saying, Mine. No one else’s, ever. Mine.
He didn’t know why she’d still been a virgin at twenty-nine, but the reason paled in comparison to his primal male response to the fact. No other man had ever held her this way. No other man had known the soft, warm place between her thighs. No other man had ever heard her cry out in ecstasy. She’d given herself to him, and to no other. She was only and ever his.
Then and only then did it dawn on him he hadn’t worn protection when he’d made love to her. His brows drew together in a sudden frown, and he cursed under his breath. Not because it mattered to him, but because it most certainly would matter to her...when she came to her senses.
He didn’t think she was on the Pill or any other contraceptive. Not likely, since she’s not sexually active, he thought. At least she wasn’t until you came along. But it wouldn’t hurt to ask. Still concerned about what this could mean for both of them, he watched as she woke up by degrees: first her eyelashes fluttered, then her nose crinkled, then her eyes flew open, and she blinked at him, as if she’d dreamed him.
“What time is it?” she asked.
He raised his wrist and squinted at his watch in the dim light.
“Nine-thirty-two. Plenty of time.”
“Time for what?”
“Time to talk.”
“Oh.” She sounded disappointed, as if she was expecting a repeat performance already, and Cody smiled to himself.
He toyed with her curls for a minute, then idly let one curl coil around his finger. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
She didn’t pretend not to understand. “I didn’t want you to know,” she said in a small voice.
“Why?”
She didn’t answer at first. Then she said, “I was...embarrassed. I didn’t want you to think...” She shifted restlessly and added so softly he had to strain to hear, “My two boyfriends in high school...they called me a freak. They both said I was...frigid. Because whenever they touched me...that way, I froze. I don’t know why, but I just couldn’t bring myself to...”
She drew a sharp breath. “Then I went right from high school into the Corps. The only men I knew then were my fellow marines. I had enough trouble proving to them I was just as tough as they were. I wasn’t about to let one of my hyper-sexed macho mates take me to bed...and then brag about it.”
“Hey,” he said softly, his hand pausing as he stroked her bright curls. “Not every marine brags. I never did.”
She cuddled against him. “If I’d known you back then...maybe I could have.... But as it was, I just couldn’t risk it.”
“And then?” he asked in a deep voice.
“I spent four years in the Corps, so when I finally went to college I was four years older than most of the guys in my classes. They all seemed so young, so...callow...it just never felt right with any of them.”
“And then you joined the agency right out of college,” he filled in for her.
“Right. And you know how this job is. Odd hours, last-minute changes of plans. There aren’t a lot of guys on the dating scene who’ll put up with that for any length of time.” She rubbed her cheek against his bare chest. “And besides...” she said softly.
“Besides?”
She laughed a little self-deprecating laugh. “Besides, every guy I went out with, I knew I could take him down, one on one.” She laughed again, softly. “No woman really wants a man she can control that way.”
“Oh, ho!” Cody teased. “The truth comes out. Do I hear the old-school double standard coming out of you?”
She hid her face with her hand. “I shouldn’t have told you.”
Cody’s smile faded, and the teasing light left his eyes. He gently drew her hand away from her face and made her look at him. “I’m glad,” he said. “Not just that you told me, but that...you chose me.” He wanted to tell her how deeply he was affected, how much it meant to him that she had never given herself to any other man, just him, but he didn’t know how to put it into words without offending her somehow. Instead, he said, “I just hope I can live up to your expectations.”
“You did,” she whispered, the love and admiration in her brown eyes confirming it. “You do.” She sighed, a deep sound of contentment, and snuggled closer, as if she wanted to melt into him and stay part of him forever. She breathed words Cody didn’t catch, but when he asked her to repeat them, she hesitated. Finally, reluctantly, she replied, “I said I’m not...frigid...with you.”
“You’re not frigid at all.” The answer was so clear to him he marveled it hadn’t occurred to her before. Maybe she’d been too young and too hurt by that pejorative term when it had been thrown at her, she hadn’t seen the truth for what it was. “You
just needed to find a man you could trust, that’s all.” And in his head he heard himself telling her that first night, “Trust me.” And her immediate response, “I will.”
She trusts you, he told himself. That’s the difference. And the proof of her trust was just as sweet and precious to him as having her call his name when she climaxed. He swore in that instant she would never have cause to regret giving him her trust...or her love. He needed both more than he’d ever thought possible.
He allowed his hands to wander down to her breasts, cupping them, toying with the nipples until they tightened for him, and he smiled possessively before moving his hands down to the swell of her hips.
He loved her body. She hid her compact curves inside clothes that denied her sexuality, wanting to be taken seriously in her job. But they were there. And they were enticing to him. Never again would he see her in clothes and not remember this moment and the ones that had gone before. He would always remember the way her first orgasm had taken her by surprise. It made him feel both powerful and curiously humbled.
And until his dying day he would remember the little catch in her voice when she’d begged him not to stop. He hadn’t wanted to—a primal part of him had wanted to keep going, no matter what, to possess her body in that most basic way—but he would have tried...if she hadn’t pleaded with him not to.
She trusts you, he told himself again. And she loves you.
He stirred at the thought, swelling against her hip. He knew she could feel it, too, because her hand slipped down and touched him there. Then her fingers were stroking him, and he swelled even more. “Don’t start—” he began, but then he groaned when her fingers encircled him and squeezed. “Keira...”
“Let me,” she said. “I want to.”
He let her have her way for a minute, and another, and another. Then he caught her hand. “Not yet,” he said. “We still have to talk.”
“About what?”
“About birth control. Or rather, the birth control we didn’t use earlier.”
“Oh.”
“You wouldn’t by any chance be using anything, would you?”
“No.” She shook her head, then thought for a moment, her lips moving soundlessly as if she were mentally counting something. Then she said, “But we should be okay. I’m... It’s not...”
Cody chuckled softly, pulling her tightly against his shoulder. “You know, doctors have a word to describe women who rely on the rhythm method of birth control.”
“What’s that?”
“Mothers.”
“Oh, I...” She chuckled, too. “I see. Very funny.”
He put his other arm protectively around her. “I wasn’t planning this. I hope you believe that.”
“I know you weren’t.” Her voice was soft as a sigh.
“I don’t carry condoms with me everywhere I go. I know a lot of single guys do, just in case. But I don’t.”
She wouldn’t look at him. “I didn’t think you were that kind,” she said gruffly, toying with the hair on his chest.
“So I need you to promise that if something happens—something we didn’t plan on—you won’t keep it from me.”
She didn’t answer right away, then said in a low voice, “I promise.”
There was an ache in the back of his throat, and in his heart, and it didn’t have anything to do with extracting a promise from her not to keep him in the dark if she ended up pregnant. The ache was for the sudden, unexpected yearning to see Keira with his child in her womb. Where had that yearning come from?
And was it something she wanted, too? He didn’t know, and it didn’t seem the right time to ask. But the more he thought about it, the more he longed for it to be true. He was thirty-seven, long past the time most men fathered their first child, but until now it hadn’t been a priority. It hadn’t even occurred to him. Keira’s baby, he thought, tenderness and possessiveness warring for dominance. Our baby.
A savage surge of desire shot through him with unexpected force, and he was shocked to realize he didn’t just want to make love to her because he needed her warmth and passion to bring him to life. And it wasn’t just because he needed her love. A primitive, elemental part of him wanted to plant his seed deep within her, marking her as his territory so no other man would even think of touching her.
Cody had never felt this possessive before about any woman, and his lips compressed into a thin line as the sharp awareness tugged at his conscience. Keira didn’t belong to him...not in that way. She was her own woman. She’d given herself to him, but that was her choice, not his. He’d always firmly believed it was a woman’s choice whether she slept with a man or not. But that didn’t stop the primal urge to claim her as his.
He clamped his jaw shut, restraining the primitive desire, and instead told her, “We’re in this together. We’ll work it out. Okay?”
“Okay.”
But it wasn’t okay with him. Not by a long shot. A savage, inner voice—the alpha wolf howling on the hillside—still insisted that Keira was his, damn it! His woman. His mate, body and soul. The future mother of his children. He wanted to put the stamp of possession on her so she’d know, so everyone would know.
She belonged to him. And he’d kill any man who tried to take her from him. It was that simple.
Chapter 14
Michael Vishenko limped to the plate glass window in the library of the Long Island compound he’d inherited from his father, and stared out into the night. Everything was finally coming together. “Six years,” he whispered to himself. He’d waited six years to avenge his father, and even though it had just begun, the taste of it was already sweet.
His first impulse had been to hunt down his father’s murderers himself all those years ago. But his uncle Alexei had talked him out of it. “You are not the man to do it,” Alexei had said with brutal honesty. “You can kill some of them, yes. Any man can be killed. But you would not be able to kill them all before you were caught, convicted and sentenced to death.”
His second impulse had been to ask his uncle to take care of it—the Bratva had men who killed in the blink of an eye. But he’d discarded that idea, too, as an admission of weakness. The indignity of the physical deformity he’d suffered since birth was bad enough. He had always refused to let that deformity define him—he would not let it define him in his uncle’s estimation.
No, this way was best. It had taken longer, far longer than he’d wanted, but this way was sure. His father’s money had smoothed the path, but his own brain had devised the means, his own determination had brought it about. Though other hands would do the actual deeds, the vengeance was his.
It had cost him a substantial sum to uncover the names involved, and even more to track them all down and keep constant surveillance on them, but it was worth it. From the federal prosecutors who’d first put his father in prison, to the men who’d murdered him, to the men who’d covered up the murder, the list was now complete. Soon they would be eliminated.
Callahan and Walker, DeSantini and Brockway, D’Arcy and McKinnon. Vishenko smiled coldly. Each one would die by fire. A deserving end—one his father would have appreciated and approved. He’d been a silent witness in the courtroom when his father had wildly shouted the words, “I’ll see you in hell!” to Ryan Callahan. But it wasn’t enough to just send Callahan to hell. The other five needed to join him in the inferno.
Then and only then would Michael Vishenko’s father be avenged. Then and only then could he take back the name on his birth certificate—Michael Pennington—the name his mother had stolen from him the same way she’d stolen him from his father. Because then and only then would he have earned the right to bear his father’s name.
* * *
Keira watched in silence as Cody dressed. More than anything she wished he didn’t have to go, wished she could fall asleep in his arms and wake up the same way. But she knew he had to go back to his apartment. He needed to change for work tomorrow, if nothing else—he couldn’t show up in the sa
me clothes he’d worn today. Not that people noticed what men wore the way they noticed what women wore, but still...
She lay there with the sheet pulled up under her arms, and as she watched him dress she realized there was something so elementally male about his actions. Men didn’t dress themselves the same way women did—at least Cody didn’t. There was an economy of motion to the way he shrugged his shirt on and tucked it into his slacks before decisively closing the zipper and buckling his belt.
He looked up and caught her watching him, and he grinned in that boyish way she’d come to love. He didn’t say anything, just continued smiling as he sat on the bed to pull on his socks. When he picked up his boots and removed something from one of them, Keira saw it was a knife sheath.
“You do wear it everywhere,” she said. “Not just on an op. I wondered.”
He stopped short. “You wondered?” he asked. “Since when?”
“Since that first night,” she confessed. She took a deep breath and admitted, “And like you, I asked Trace about you in the truck driving up to Wyoming.”
The smile on Cody’s face spread at her revelation. “I’m glad,” he said, holding her gaze before turning his attention back to his boots. He tugged them on and slid the knife sheath neatly in place before he answered her original question. “Doesn’t do me any good if I’m not wearing it when I need it,” he explained, and she knew he was remembering that first night, and the use he’d put the knife to in their escape.
“Doesn’t it bother you, though, wearing it in your boot?”
He shook his head. “I’m used to it. If I didn’t wear boots it might be difficult, but as it is...” He shrugged.
“How...?” She wasn’t quite sure what she was asking, but he seemed to know.
“I’ve been fascinated with knives ever since I was a kid,” he said. “My father gave me a shotgun for my twelfth birthday, but long before that I was teaching myself to throw knives. I know it’s an arcane skill, like archery, but there’s something satisfying about it I can’t explain, so I don’t even try.”
