Stranger in my Bed (full series)

by Kristen James

I missed him so much even while hiding from him. It’s an ache in my bones right now. He comes to me and takes my hand, and rubs his thumb over my ring before looking at it with a small smile. We spend another minute looking at each other, and it has the effect of a full body caress on me. I want him so bad I shiver.

  “Sorry, there’s no electricity.” He goes to a tiny fireplace and preps it for a fire.

  Joining him, I sit on the floor and watch as the kindling ignites and the flames spread. It crackles and smokes, and the smell gives the impression that we’re in a hunting cabin way out in the hills. My head hurts from taking in so much information today, and now it just wants to go blank.

  Eli slides next to me, his knees pulled up in front of him. The flames cast flickering orange light on us, and we watch it, entranced. Finally, the fire’s heat reaches out to comfort us. After a few quiet minutes, he wraps his arm around me and I lean into him.

  “I’m sorry about everything you went through,” he whispers. “I knew it’d be hard, but there was no way to prepare for how hard. I hated lying to you.”

  He leans his head over to rest against mine. My eyes close on their own. I want to push everything away but it’s right here in my head, waiting for me. So now I know I don’t have a life to go back to. This is my life. Eli and the others were my life before this. I think about what he just said and tell him, “It’s not your fault. I know that now.”

  “I agreed to it. I take responsibility for my part.”

  I lift my head to look at him, hurting for him. I pushed him into that, and I still don’t know why. Thoughts swirling, I try to form the words to share that with him, but he leans over to touch his lips to mine. We don’t move for several breaths. It’s just the sensation of kissing him. Then I feel his hands on my shoulders and we turn toward each other. His tongue teases along my lower lip and I respond. He tears away only long enough to say, “God, I missed you.”

  His mouth finds my neck, that little spot that ignites all the nerves running down my body.

  “I missed you,” I tell him. “I wanted you but I was so angry and frustrated.”

  Eli kisses my collarbone before getting up. “Not anymore. We’re together now.” He leaves the room but comes right back with a comforter. He fluffs it and lets it slowly fall to cover the floor before kneeling and pulling me close again, one hand on my neck and the other running down my arm.

  I reach for my shirt and feel his hand on top of mine. He doesn’t speak. Instead he kisses his way down one arm, then switches to the other, kissing his way back up. Each kiss sends a spark of desire straight through me. It’s building too high. I try for my shirt again and he takes both my hands and gives me a look to stay still. He goes back to kissing my skin all over before pulling off my shirt. I want to rip everything off right then, but fight it, letting him seduce me. His mouth runs laps all over my body as he undresses me, pulling everything off as slowly as possible.

  “I want to kiss away all your pain…all your doubts…all your fears…”

  Death by desire…

  Finally I’m naked and lying on the blanket, looking up at him.

  “You’re so beautiful.” He pulls his shirt over his head and the firelight catches on all the planes of his muscular torso. I can’t believe this man is mine, that he loved me so much that he did all of this for me. Reaching out, I skim my palms over his flat stomach and chest, down his arms, all over every inch I can reach, wanting to memorize the way he feels. Love explodes in my heart, filling my chest, and warming my entire body. It’s just us. No lies or questions between us.

  “I want you,” I whisper.

  “Oh, I know you do. I knew it back in Sandy when you didn’t want to.” He lifts himself enough to slip his jeans off and crawls over me, his body between my legs.

  “Come here, show off. Show me some love.”

  We’re too desperate for anything but each other and release. I wrap my legs around him and pull him down to me, into me. My hands clench on his shoulders, my body lifting to meet his.

  He groans and buries his face in my hair, then says by my ear, “I’ll always want you.”

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  I’m lying on Eli’s chest completely spent, listening to him breathe, but I know neither of us will be sleeping any time soon. Too much happened today. Too much came to light, and too many emotions are raging through my veins.

  His fingers trace circles on my lower back. We could go to the bed to sleep, if we wanted. I don’t want to. I like it here by the fire.

  “Eli, when I first woke up, the name Megan sounded all wrong to me. But that’s what you’re calling me now.”

  “Really?” He sounds intrigued by that. “You had to use so many different names. Maybe that’s why. You were Tina in the last operation.”

  Tina. I don’t like hearing that name at all. Something in me connects it to fear and danger.

  “The one that went so wrong? Tell me about it.”

  “You’ve got a feel for the rest of it now?”

  “Stop stalling. Is it that bad?”

  He breathes for a while, thinking. “Yes and no. It’s hard for me to talk about.” He stops again, for a long time. I’m not in a hurry anymore so I let him take his time and gather his thoughts.

  “You were in deep undercover, living with a mob boss, a monster worse than any of the people we’ve dealt with until him.”

  “But…”

  “In JP, we all work in couples, but it’s a working relationship too. Sometimes partners are working together like Nick and Sabrina. Other times one is undercover. And other times, both are under cover in different roles. That’s where we were this last time. You were on the inside with a crime family for months, with very limited communication, before you were able to get me in as a hired gun.”

  “In Maine? Or was that all made up?’

  “I had to use a location that wouldn’t lead you back to anything connected to us. So yes, Maine was made up, but the situation with the houses was based on one of our operations. We did get that lowlife thrown in prison. We worked together as a married couple on that one.”

  “But not this last time.”

  “No, and I could hardly handle all that time away from you, knowing you were with him, knowing you were in danger. Things were messy by then. We weren’t getting the Intel we needed to do anything. I was supposed to go in and get you out. When I was finally able to ask you why you weren’t reporting in, you said you had no way to make contact anymore. He watched your every move, no matter where you were. It was like living in a fish bowl. You said you couldn’t try to get out because he’d kill you.”

  Eli falls silent again.

  Images flash in front of me. The body on the floor. The blood. The gun in my hand. That was a real memory. It happened in that mansion.

  “His name was Roberto,” I say out loud. “Roberto Maldonado. I remember him now.”

  He wasn’t tall for a man, but my height, with short, curly hair speckled with gray on the sides. His brown eyes were surprisingly light, but not friendly or warm most of the time. His cheeks were lined with deep grooves from a tight, sneering expression he often wore. He did know how to dress and expected his men to keep up a certain standard too. They often looked like they were headed out to prom instead of a night club.

  “You remember the mission?” Eli prompts.

  “I lived at his mansion for nine months, with someone always there, watching me, when I wasn’t with him. It’s coming back, all of it. Roberto hurt people for fun. Well, to control them, but he enjoyed it. He had his guys throw this man into the river because they knew he couldn’t swim.”

  We were riding across town in a limo, and he had a business associate there. Only, it was a set up. The man had done something to make Roberto mad. I didn’t understand what at the time. The chilly night fills my mind, bringing back the smell of the damp river banks below the bridge. I shiver, remembering that wasn’t the only time. That’s why I was so terrified of the river
by our house in Sandy.

  Eli rubs his hand up and down my arm, understanding that too.

  “I promised I’d get you out of here,” he says in a tight voice. “You thought it was possible you were compromised—you weren’t sure if Maldonado knew you were spying on him. So he might have been playing with you. It was making you slowly lose your mind and doubt everything.”

  “And then I created that same situation by wiping my memory.” What was I thinking? “So how did I get finally get out?”

  “I gave you a drug to slip to Maldonado to make him really sick. It took a few days before you had a chance, because you had to let me know as well. I arranged for a couple of emergencies to happen that night to make enough distractions.”

  “It still sounds risky.”

  “It was. You had collected some information that I could use. He had a guy skimming money from him, and I made sure it came to light that evening. I also had Nick and Sabrina following his men, and they popped off a few shots that day to scare them. With all that going on, you pretended to be sick as well, in a downstairs bathroom. It was six thirty five when you stepped outside for fresh air. I took out a guy and we slipped away.”

  “So it worked, but you made it sound like things got messy.” It’s a question.

  “Yeah, it’d been pretty easy up to that point. It could have gone bad if they suspected anything or someone saw what we were doing, but the plan went perfectly. I had a different vehicle waiting at a warehouse, but soon after we arrived, two SUVs followed us in. I still don’t know how he knew something was up or how to track us. They were coming from the front so I set the place on fire to give us time, maybe look like an explosion killed us, and we went for the back. Then a back draft sucked the flames back there, trapping us. A metal beam fell and nicked your head. I was trying to pull you out of the way. I—” He couldn’t go on.

  Part of the night comes back to me, but other parts are blank. I do remember that I thought Maldonado and his men would catch and kill both of us.

  “Why didn’t we kill him?” My words startle me, that I’d be so quick to want someone dead, but he deserved it if anyone did. Eli doesn’t answer. “Eli?”

  His chest expands under my head.

  “We stuck to the plan. I don’t know why Harris wouldn’t give the order to take Maldonado out. My focus was to get you out of there. I was prepared to kill anyone I had to, even if I went against orders, but it didn’t work out that way.”

  I fill in the story from there. That was the first accident he told me about. We went back to a safe house and I recovered, but I was pushing for the memory wipe even then. After that, we “retired” to Sandy and then I was in a car accident. Harris finally agreed to the memory wipe, but now I wonder why.

  “What do you know about the memory wiping process?” I ask.

  “It’s very complicated, so I can tell you how it was explained to me, but don’t trust this as scientific truth.”

  “Just try.”

  “The team of doctors put a block of some kind into your brain – not like a physical barrier, but like a thousand tiny little blocks in all the right places.”

  “We need to find a way to research all of this.” I want to understand it enough to at least guess at the risks of fixing it.

  “You won’t find this information anywhere on the net or anywhere else for that matter. It’s all new and highly protected.”

  “Why did he do it? Why did he agree to let us out?”

  Eli is quiet for a long time and I decide he doesn’t know. I even start to think about sleep when he speaks again.

  “He’s very interested in how the mind works. He’s been conducting experiments for years, and it’s only been recently that his memory wipes were successful. I think he wanted to see how it would work on you after your brain injuries.”

  More and more, I’m leaning toward my theory that Harris had his own agenda. Maybe JP Industries was just a means to an end for him, and we were his pawns.

  “So if Harris isn’t on our side, I’m locked out of that information and a possible fix for my memory?” I feel itchy with frustration. After coming this far, I want to fix everything. It all feels so close now.

  “Meg, you remembered a lot today. He said it wasn’t a sure thing with you. That’s all I know, but it looks like you’re getting parts back. The important thing is we’re together now.” He moves so I sit up. The fire is dying down, and he throws two more small logs on before lying down again.

  We roll onto our sides at the same time and his arm comes around me. Maybe he doesn’t care about sleeping in the bed either.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  I had tried to so hard to remember before and got shattered images at best. Now it’s all crashing back into my head. How does that even make sense? I wish I had information on the brain operation.

  I’m so thankful for Eli’s arm around me and his body pressed to mine. He’s holding me together right now. Even with so many answers, I have even more questions.

  There is one big question that hasn’t been answered yet. Before, when I began remembering bits and pieces, I remembered thinking, I have to stop him. That must have been Roberto Maldonado, so what did I need to stop? Was he planning something?

  A very bad and dark feeling lurks down underneath all of this. I don’t want to face it, but I have to acknowledge that maybe I wasn’t able to stop Roberto from doing something horrible, and that’s what I wanted to forget.

  Another question: Who is Jack? Did Harris send him? That doesn’t feel right. Was there any way Maldonado sent Jack?

  In my half asleep state, I can see Jack’s face and hear him talking. He’s standing, hands clasped in front of him, talking to me while I sit in a soft, leather chair. We’re in a study with a bookshelf covering one wall, half full of books and other decorative items. Behind the large, oak desk, a thick, plush red curtain covers the window.

  I’m not allowed to leave.

  Jack is standing in front of the door. We make small talk, but he’ll kill me if Roberto gives the word. As he talks, I hear screams.

  The memory clicks together. I had been downstairs when Roberto’s men brought someone in. He sent me in the office instead of up to our room and had Jack watching me. Whoever they brought in was screaming, either begging for his life or dying.

  Ellison?

  For a second, I was terrified they were hurting Eli, but it wasn’t him. After a while, it grew quiet. It was a horrible, long night but then it was suddenly morning. That day, Roberto acted as if everything was normal.

  With that memory, everything else comes back, but I struggle to put it in order.

  I focus on the memories with Eli, and find one that seems to be an early one. I’m cooking him pasta: shells stuffed with cheese and Italian sausage with marinara sauce. I cooked for him a lot back then, focusing on Italian dishes like spaghetti with clam and butter sauce, lasagna, risotto, meatballs… I was teaching myself how to cook.

  We did a lot of surveillance in the beginning. That’s why I remembered following people through traffic before. I liked working with Eli and learning about our targets. Our assignments grew more complicated with each one. When we were assigned to Roberto Maldonado, we spent a month watching him and learning his habits. I thought we would pass that information on but instead we were assigned with infiltrating. I had proven myself in that area, but so far I had simply made friends with people of interest. I hadn’t gone completely under cover.

  We finally decided the best way in would be to get his attention at his favorite club because it had a back room that he frequented. Both Sage and I got hired on there, and another three weeks later I got the chance to wait on him.

  I didn’t like the club atmosphere at first but I came to enjoy the work and getting to know the different characters. Some were jerks, but some just wanted company. Every girl was after Roberto’s attention. He had a reputation for lavishing money on pretty girls. Well, about every guy with money did. I wasn’t su
re it’d work, but Roberto finally noticed me. I’d been trained to come on strong, and soon he was coming in more often to see me, and then taking me out. Then he decided to move me into his mansion.

  My stomach twists up. I can’t imagine that I knew I would be doing that kind of work when I pledged to the organization.

  ***

  “Eli? Are you awake?”

  He rolls toward me and rubs his face. Soft light flows in through the curtains. Morning. Finally. The fire burnt out during the night so the air is chilly.

  “That was Jack following us yesterday, one of Roberto’s men. He wasn’t around much, just for the really dirty work.”

  “Maldonado had us followed?” Eli sits up, his eyes distant for a second. “Jack… I met him twice. On the second occasion, he was taking out a body. That whiney cousin, Max.”

  That’s what happened to Max? That I didn’t know about. I had seen how Roberto would get rid of people who upset him, even if they were family. It was one more reason why I knew he would have killed me if the mood struck him. I’m not sure why he kept me around as long as he did.

  Eli makes his way to his feet, goes to the bathroom, and comes back.

  “How did Maldonado find us?” He runs a hand over his hair and paces the room. “It’s over a year later and suddenly, he has some guy following us. We were all over the country since then. That’s a long trail to follow us through.”

  For a second, I wonder if I’m wrong, but I know I saw him. Somehow Maldonado knew we were in Portland…

  “But Harris was the only one who knew… Did he flip on us? Did he cut us loose just to give us up to Maldonado?”

  Eli spins and stares at me hard before his shoulders sag. “To clean up after himself. We were a loose end. That means we really are on our own now.”

  That isn’t a new feeling to me, but my heart goes out to Eli. He had a place in JP and a team. He has his team still, but I threw his life into confusion. I don’t have any of the big answers right now, and that almost doesn’t matter. We have to figure out our next step.