Unsure what he would say or do when he saw her, Ryan wrapped a towel around his hips and flipped the light off. He opened the bathroom door and discovered Jessica was already asleep, snoring softly in her bed.
A mixture of relief and disappointment swept through him. He lost track of the time as he stood beside her bed, mentally tracing the soft curve of her cheek, watching the gentle rise and fall of her shoulders as she breathed. When she turned on her side, the sheet slipped down, revealing the upper curves of her breasts.
His hand shook as he gently pulled the sheet back up to cover her. Unable to resist the impulse, he leaned down and pressed a whisper-soft kiss on her lips. He crossed to the door and double-checked the lock. The chair he’d propped under the handle was still in position.
He placed his pistol on the table next to his bed and flipped off the light, determined not to think about the incredibly desirable woman in the other bed.
* * *
THE WIND WHIPPED the rain in hard sheets against them as Jessica and Ryan struggled down the courthouse steps. Thunder cracked and lightning lit up the sky, silhouetting the dark van at the curb waiting to take them to safety.
Something about that van bothered Jessica and she tried to warn Ryan, but her words were snatched away by the wind and he didn’t hear her warning.
The explosion knocked him on top of her. She tried to scream but his heavy body pushed the air from her lungs. She twisted beneath him, struggling to knock him to the side.
“Jessica, Jessica, wake up. Everything’s okay, wake up.”
Her eyes flew open and she stared up in confusion at the man bending over her in the dark. He was lying on top of her, his fingers wrapped around her wrists.
“Jessie, it’s Ryan. Talk to me.”
“Ryan?” She blinked as her eyes adjusted to the dim light. “What are you doing?”
He let out a pent-up breath and rested his forehead against hers. She could feel the tension draining out of him as he loosened his hold on her wrists and propped himself up on his elbows. “You were having a nightmare.”
“I was?”
“You don’t remember?”
She started to say no, but then a crack of thunder sounded outside the room and she shivered beneath him as the horror of her dream came back to her. “The explosion at the courthouse.” She shivered again, swallowing convulsively.
He gently smoothed her hair out of her face, then rolled over on his side next to her, propping his elbow on the pillow. “Do you want to talk about it?”
She shook her head. “No.”
“Want to watch TV to take your mind off it?”
She shook her head again. “No. Just...just don’t leave me, okay?”
He hesitated, and for a moment she thought he would refuse. But then he leaned down and pressed a soft kiss on her lips. He laid his head on the pillow next to her, his body so close she could feel the heat from him. He picked up her hand and entwined his fingers with hers.
Her pulse sped and it seemed her entire body centered and focused on the warm feel of his hand holding hers.
The sounds of the storm gradually faded as it moved off into the distance until the only thing she could hear was the sound of Ryan’s breathing. But it wasn’t the deep, even breathing of someone who was sleeping.
“Ryan,” she whispered, “Are you awake?”
He squeezed her fingers. “You can’t sleep, either?”
“No. Too keyed up, I guess. Why can’t you sleep?”
He hesitated. “The storm reminded me of another storm, on my last mission.”
“One of your ranger missions?”
“Yeah.” She could hear his smile in his words. “A ranger mission.” He stroked her arm, his fingers absently caressing her skin, then his fingers stilled. “Pretty much everything that could go wrong went wrong.”
“What happened?”
His hand tensed on hers. She thought he was going to leave, but instead he pulled her close and kissed the top of her head. “I can’t give you any details. Our missions were classified.”
“How about a summary. Leave out the super-secret stuff.”
He drew a deep breath and wrapped his arm around her waist. “One of our informants, Aamir, betrayed us. I thought he was my friend. We’d worked together for years. He provided intel on the terrorist activities in the region, and his information was always solid, until that last mission. Four men died in an ambush and I realized we had a traitor among us.”
“Go on,” she urged, when he didn’t say anything for several minutes. She rubbed her fingers on the arm wrapped around her waist, hoping he would trust her enough to continue. This was the first time he’d really opened up to her.
“Stuart and I arranged a trap,” he finally said. “Basically, we fed Aamir bad information. Then we waited. Sure enough, there was another ambush. But this time, we were ready with an ambush of our own.”
“Your friend...did he—”
“He was mortally wounded in the crossfire. I found him, after everything was over. I tried to stop the bleeding, but there was nothing I could do. He could barely speak, but he kept whispering that he wasn’t the traitor.”
“You didn’t believe him?”
“He was the only person we told about the patrol that day. No one else would have known where we were going to be.” He stroked her arm, his fingers feathering out across her skin, making her shiver. He grew bolder, stroking down toward her hip.
“I trusted him,” he continued, as his fingers blazed a maddening trail across her skin. “For over two years. And with his dying breath he lied to me. I still can’t figure out how he arranged everything by himself. He had to have had help. Stuart and I have both examined the evidence, tried to figure out who was calling the shots. No luck so far, but I’m not giving up. I owe it to the men who died to find out who was responsible. I’ve got Stuart’s company investigating it.”
The pain in his voice shot straight to her heart. She turned in his arms and wrapped him in a tight hug.
“I’m so sorry your friend betrayed you,” she whispered.
He looked deep into her eyes, and then he crushed her against him, claiming her lips with a raw, ravenous hunger that shocked her. She answered him kiss for kiss, touch for touch. This time when the storm raged, it raged inside Ryan. Jessica soothed his wounded soul the only way she could, by loving him.
* * *
“ARE YOU GOING to sleep the whole day away?”
“Go away.” Jessica squeezed her eyes shut and swatted at Ryan’s hand, which was shaking her shoulder.
She hated morning people. How could he be so chipper after they’d kept each other awake late into the night?
He dropped his hand and Jessica smiled with satisfaction, snuggling beneath the covers and sinking back against her soft pillow.
Ryan sighed loudly, as if he was extremely disappointed. “I guess I’ll have to eat all of this food by myself. Ham and cheese omelets, pancakes, bacon, fresh-squeezed orange juice.”
The smell of bacon wafted to Jessica and she grudgingly opened one sleepy eye. Ryan sat on the edge of her bed waving a thick slice of bacon under her nose. He waggled his eyebrows at her. She frowned and grabbed the bacon.
“Oh, my gosh,” she groaned. “This is so good.”
He grinned. “I thought you might enjoy something besides granola bars and rabbit for a change.”
She looked up at him, and was a little disappointed that he’d shaved the stubble from his face. The scruffy, unshaved look he’d sported back in the mountains made him look less perfect, more like an ordinary mortal instead of the devastatingly handsome man he was right now.
“I can’t believe you woke me up this early,” she said. “What time is it?”
“You weren’t nearly this grumpy sleeping on a pile of branches in a cold cave.”
“I’m tired.” She pulled herself into a sitting position. “I didn’t get much sleep last night.” She flushed, wishing she’d chosen differe
nt words.
A slow sexy grin slid across his face, but instead of teasing her, he tucked a blanket around her. He stood and grabbed a tray of food from his bed and set it on Jessica’s lap. The plate was piled high with food.
“A real plate? A real fork and knife? I’m overwhelmed.”
“You can thank me later.” He leered at her and she laughed out loud. She’d missed this lighter side of Ryan and was glad to see him smiling again.
She popped a forkful of eggs in her mouth, barely suppressing another moan at the flavor. “Aren’t you going to eat, too?”
“I’d rather watch you. More fun.”
“Well, don’t. You’re making me self-conscious. Eat.”
“If you insist.” He plopped down beside her and she had to grab the tray to keep it from bouncing off her lap.
He plucked a piece of bacon off her plate and shoved it into his mouth.
“Hey, get your own plate.”
“Can’t reach it. I left it on the other bed.” He looked at her with a forlorn expression on his face and dipped his gaze toward her plate.
She rolled her eyes and speared a forkful of eggs. He opened his mouth and she fed him. He closed his lips around the fork and watched her as she pulled it back. He swallowed, then licked his lips, all the time watching her.
Her next forkful was a little unsteady and he had to dip his mouth down to capture it. Again, his lips pulled at the fork as he let her slowly pull it back.
He swallowed and she sat there, frozen as she stared at him, watching his tongue dart out to lick salt from his lips. She jumped, startled when his hand closed around hers and guided her fork back to the plate. He helped her spear some more eggs, but this time he guided them to her mouth.
With exquisite care, he brushed his thumb across her lower lip. He slid the fork inside. She closed her lips around it and he pulled the fork out, his gaze heating as he watched her chew.
He put the fork on the tray and picked up a piece of bacon. When she swallowed her mouthful of egg, he slid the tip of the bacon between her lips, teasing her by pulling it back so she had to move forward to take a bite.
A bead of sweat ran down the side of his face as he watched her, even though the room was cool. When he lifted the bacon back toward her mouth, she shook her head.
“No more bacon?” he rasped.
“No.”
“Eggs?”
She shook her head. “No.”
His gaze dipped to her mouth. “Pancakes?”
“Nuh-uh.”
He set the tray on the table beside her bed without taking his eyes off her. “What do you want?”
“You. Only you.”
“I was so hoping you’d say that,” he said just before his mouth claimed hers.
* * *
JESSICA’S EYES OPENED. She gasped at the numbers on the bedside clock. It was already after eleven. Stuart was supposed to be here soon, and she definitely wasn’t dressed for company.
She rolled over just in time to see Ryan, without a stitch of clothes on, walking into the bathroom. The man had absolutely no modesty.
Then again, when a man looked like he did, there was no reason to hide. Her belly did a funny little flip as she replayed the scene of him walking across the room in her mind. It was her first glimpse of him totally naked without being in near darkness, and she was still reeling when he came out of the bathroom.
He strode toward her, his muscles rippling beneath his golden skin. When her eyes dipped lower, his body immediately reacted.
Her gaze shot to his face as he reached the bed, one of those disarmingly sexy grins curving his mouth seductively.
“I’d like nothing more than to lie in bed all day with you, Jessie, but we have things to do.”
He flipped the covers off her and she squeaked in surprise as he lifted her into his arms.
“What are you doing?” she gasped as she was forced to wrap her arms around his neck, her breasts rubbing against the wiry hair of his chest.
“I love it when you blush,” he teased. “Everything turns pink.”
She groaned and hid her face against his neck. He let out a deep throaty laugh and carried her into the bathroom, setting her down and planting a quick kiss on her lips. “You have five minutes of privacy. Then I’m coming in to get a shower.”
“Five minutes? I can’t shower that quickly. It takes me five minutes just to wash and condition my hair.”
He looked down at himself, drawing her attention to his growing erection. “The five minutes was for anything else you might want privacy for. I don’t expect you to shower alone.”
He pulled the door shut.
Her mouth dropped open. He planned on showering with her? In the past day she’d done more things with him than she’d done with any man in her entire life. She’d certainly never showered with a man before. She glanced at the small tub that was barely big enough for one adult to stand in and considered the physics of it.
“Four minutes,” he called out from the bedroom.
Her eyes widened. She hurried through her morning routine, ran a brush through her hair and squeezed some toothpaste onto her toothbrush. She’d just started brushing her teeth when he popped his head around the door.
“Time’s up.”
Her eyes widened as he stepped inside the bathroom. “I’m not ready yet,” she tried to say around a mouthful of toothpaste.
“Sorry, beautiful. I can’t understand what you’re saying. Your mouth is full of toothpaste.” He reached past her and turned on the shower, adjusting the temperature.
She hurriedly rinsed her mouth, just barely finishing before he picked her up and stepped into the tub.
“Ryan, stop it. There isn’t enough room in here for both of us.”
He pulled her against him, his erection prodding her belly, leaving her no doubts whatsoever of his intentions. His eyelids went to half-mast as he reached down and ran his hands down the curve of her bottom. “Sure there is. Let me show you.”
He proceeded to do just that.
Chapter Eighteen
Ryan shut his cell phone off, took out the battery and shoved them both into his pocket.
“Stuart’s still not answering?” Jessica asked.
“Something must have happened.”
“Maybe he’s on his way.”
Ryan glanced at the clock beside the bed. “He should have been here by now.” He reached down and grabbed the ever-present backpack and put it on. “We’re leaving. We’ve already stayed here too long as it is. Let’s go to another motel.”
She stepped outside. “What do we do about a car?”
“I’ve got plenty of cash. We’ll get the motel office to call a taxi so we don’t leave an electronic trail. After that, I’ll figure something out.”
* * *
THEY TOOK THE taxi north on Interstate eighty-one. They’d only driven a few miles when Ryan directed the driver to take the next exit and pull into a rental car company’s parking lot.
Jessica waited in the back of the cab. She was starting to wonder if something had happened to Ryan when a black BMW with dark tinted windows pulled up beside the taxi and Ryan stepped out. He paid the cab, and as the taxi was driving away, he held the BMW’s passenger door open for Jessica.
“Actually, I’d rather drive.” She ran her fingers lovingly across the roof of the sexy car.
“It’s a stick. You can’t drive a stick.”
Jessica sighed and got in. She was surprised he’d remembered her telling him about that.
He sped out of the parking lot, down the service road.
“How did you rent the car without leaving an electronic trail?”
His jaw tightened. “I bribed the clerk.”
She raised a brow. “Was the clerk a woman?”
“As a matter of fact, yes. Why?”
“I see. You flirted with her. Did you give her your number?”
He rolled his eyes and glanced in the side mirror before accelerating up t
he ramp back onto the interstate.
Jessica had to admit, Ryan really knew how to drive a manual transmission. He shifted smoothly and the car’s engine fairly purred as it raced forward.
When they passed a shopping mall and Ryan didn’t pull off the interstate, Jessica began to feel uneasy. “Aren’t we going to stop for a computer?”
His knuckles tightened on the steering wheel. “I’m not sure the computer’s the right way to go.”
What was that supposed to mean? Jessica knew she could hack in without being detected. Frustration simmered inside her. She was so tired—tired of running, tired of being afraid, tired of being judged.
Tired of Ryan making decisions without her.
“Is there anything else you planned that I should know about?” She tapped her hands on her jeans.
He glanced at her hand and frowned. “Not really.”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “Is that a yes or a no?”
He switched lanes to get around a slow-moving truck. “Is something wrong?”
“Did it occur to you that I might want some input into decisions affecting my future? We agreed I’d hack into the Justice Department.”
“That’s more of a backup plan.”
“I see.” She tapped her fingers again and stared out the window.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“I know better than that.”
“Really? You think you know me that well? Don’t flatter yourself. Just because we slept together doesn’t mean you know a thing about me. Because you don’t.”
His eyes flicked to her. “What’s going on?” he demanded.
“You don’t trust me. That’s why you don’t want to get the computer.”
He swore beneath his breath. “I just don’t think using the computer is a good idea.”
“Then what’s your plan?”
“I don’t have one yet, other than to lie low. I’ll try to contact Stuart later and see what’s going on with him. Maybe he had a lead and he’ll be able to give us some vital information.”
“Are you sure you can trust Stuart?”
His gaze shot to her. “Excuse me?” His tone was icy.
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