by Cynthia Eden
Hell, yes. He’d known he could count on Eric. “I can do that.”
“I figured staying close wouldn’t be a problem. Not with the way you were looking at her.”
“Fuck off.”
“Rick.”
The intensity in his friend’s voice stopped Rick right before he would’ve hung up the phone.
“Be careful. Like I said, I saw how you looked at her.”
“I’ve got this.”
“Just make sure she doesn’t get you. Because this is going to end, one way or another. She’ll be out of your life, and you’ll be out of hers.”
He knew that. They’d agreed, hadn’t they? No emotions. Just sex. Sex and protection. That was his new package—protect her from the bad guys and give her more pleasure than she could stand.
Yeah, I’ve gone freaking insane.
“This isn’t like you,” Cole continued carefully, as if he was searching for the right words. “We both know it. You never get involved. Not on any of your cases.”
Because he didn’t get close to anyone. He usually kept everyone out. It was just safer that way. Hell, when you screw up so badly that you missed the fact that your best fucking friend was a psychopath who got off on setting fires…you tended to be a little gun shy with people.
Cole knew about Rick’s past. Not many people knew. Even fewer understood. There were some secrets he hadn’t been able to share at all.
Like the fact that he’d ignored his suspicions about Daniel Morgan. Ignored his instincts. Back when he’d been a firefighter, he’d been so close to Daniel. The guy had been more like a brother than a friend. But then a few things had started to nag at Rick. He’d just brushed the nagging aside.
And people had died. All because he’d been blinded by his friendship. Blinded by trust that he’d put in the wrong person.
“Be careful,” Cole urged again.
“I’ve got this.” He ended the call. Tossed the phone onto the bed—the tangled covers. Clothes littered the floor, and the scrap of silk that had been Kat’s panties—before Rick had torn them off her—waited near his foot.
Emotions could blind a man. With Kat, he wasn’t letting emotions get in the way. This was physical, that was all. Lust. His judgment wouldn’t be clouded.
He’d do the job.
He strode toward the bathroom door. When he yanked it open, steam immediately drifted out and surrounded him. The pounding of the water filled his ears. He could see the curvy outline of her body behind the steamed-up glass of the shower door.
For a moment, he didn’t move.
Just physical. Lust. A savage hunger.
She turned toward him. Opened the shower door. Her wet hair slid over her shoulders and droplets of water trailed over her skin. “I was starting to think you weren’t joining me.”
Did he look like a dumbass? Maybe. In two steps, he was in that shower. The water poured on him, hot and hard, and his mouth took hers. The water was on her lips, her body slid against his, and he realized how easy it would be to get lost in her.
He picked her up and pushed her back against the tiled wall. He didn’t take his mouth from hers. He couldn’t stop kissing her. Her mouth was heaven, and she tasted like the sweetest sin.
Her legs wrapped around his hips as the water pounded down on them. His eager dick shoved at the entrance of her body. It would be so simple to thrust into her. To drive deep and hard. To feel the hot paradise of her body clinging tightly to him.
But…
Shit. The condoms are in the other room.
Her hips arched against him. Her mouth tore from his as she moaned his name. Her head tipped back, and his mouth went straight for the curve of her throat. His beard was probably too damn rough. He should be careful, he should—
“I want you to fuck me,” she whispered.
Yeah, that was absolutely on his to-do list. His dick was rock hard, and he wanted nothing more than to plunge deep into her. But he’d said he’d protect her. And that meant he took care of her in every way.
His lips pressed to her throat, and his hand slid between their bodies. He pushed a finger into her, and Kat hissed out a breath. “You’re so tight, princess.” He worked another finger into her. Her delicate inner muscles squeezed him. Fucking perfection.
He worked her with his fingers, sliding them in and out, and making damn sure that his thumb pushed to her clit. Over and over. He stroked. He worked her into a frenzy. He could feel the tightening of her body. The wild tremors right before—
She came. She choked out his name and her head jerked down fast as she bit his shoulder.
Sexiest thing in the world.
Her sex was squeezing his fingers, her whole body was trembling, and if he didn’t get inside of her—in the next sixty seconds—he’d go crazy.
He carried her out of the shower. Left the water pounding. Got her to the bed. Grabbed for the condoms and yanked one on—
“Rick?”
He drove into her. They both gasped. Her hands came up and his fingers twined with hers before he pinned her hands to the bed. He couldn’t hold back. He thrust hard and fast and he stared into her eyes. Her breath heaved faster. Her hips arched to meet him. She wasn’t just taking his thrusts, she was driving right back at him. Holding him as tightly as she could. Arching against him. Squeezing him hard with her inner muscles. Making him even wilder.
They came together. He’d never come at the same time as a lover before. He erupted in her and felt the contractions of her release at the same time. This climax was even more powerful than the first one had been. It ripped through him. Seemed to explode in every cell of his body. His mouth crashed on hers and he kissed her as they came.
His heart thundered in his ears. Reality came back—very, very slowly. He lifted his head. She stared up at him and—
Was she blinking away tears? His heart didn’t thunder. It seemed to skip a beat. “Baby?”
She smiled at him. “I think you left the water running.”
He’d—
Shit.
Muttering a curse, he withdrew from her. She gave a quick wince. Crap. “I’m sorry.”
Kat caught his hand. “You didn’t hurt me. Not even a little bit.”
He swallowed. Hurried into the bathroom and turned off the shower. He ditched the condom and—
Rick caught his reflection in the mirror. Hello, Scary-As-Hell. Kat had just taken him into her body? Offered herself to him?
He couldn’t believe that she wasn’t running for the hills. That she wasn’t—
Running?
He shot out of that bathroom, lunging fast, and his gaze immediately went for the bed as frantic fear filled him.
But Kat wasn’t running. She hadn’t slipped out while his back was turned. Of course, she hadn’t slipped out. He’d barely been gone two minutes. Maybe a minute. Why was he freaking out?
“What’s wrong?” Kat propped up on one elbow as she stared at him.
He stalked toward her. Her hair was tousled, her cheeks flushed, her lips swollen from his mouth. His hand reached out to her, and his fingers trailed over the column of her throat. “I left marks on you. I should shave.”
“Do not even think of shaving that beard. I love it in a million different ways.” She smiled at him. “And I don’t mind the marks on my neck…or my thighs.”
His dick twitched. Always eager. For her. He pressed the button on the wall to turn out the lights. Darkness filled the room.
“The marks will fade in no time. They’ll probably be gone by morning. They won’t last.” She yawned. “Can we sleep together?”
His lips curved. “I thought we just did.”
“No, that was our awesome sex. And I told you it would be that good.” She settled down in the bed. “I mean actually sleep together. Me and you, in this bed. I don’t want you pulling some of your crazy BS where you invent some rule about how you can’t actually sleep in the same bed with a client.”
That probably was a Wilde rule.
But he wouldn’t be the first agent to ignore that rule. Rick climbed into the bed with her.
Immediately, she rolled closer. “Now just put your arm around my shoulders.”
His arm lifted and, tentatively, he curled his arm around her shoulders as she burrowed closer to him.
Kat gave a light laugh. “The way you’re acting, I’d think you never actually slept with a lover before.”
He hadn’t. Had sex, yes, but stuck around for the morning after? No, his lovers had been ready to walk after the fun was done.
His hand slid over her shoulder, smoothing her hair. Rick realized that he liked having her that close. Her scent was all around him, and he liked it.
I like her.
“I’m not supposed to tell you my secrets.” Her voice had turned husky, sleepy. “Since you’re just going to sell me out to the FBI.”
“I’m not.”
“But this secret doesn’t matter. I’ve never actually slept in the same bed with a man before. Didn’t exactly have the opportunity with poor Jimmy, and as for Gage, we were meeting in secret, and when you’re meeting a lover in secret, it’s not like there’s a whole lot of cuddle time.”
His muscles tightened.
“It’s nicer than I expected. I like being with you, this way.”
His mouth brushed over her temple. “I like it, too.” A truth for a truth. “But, baby, got to say, I don’t like hearing about you meeting in secret with another lover. Think we covered it before, but just in case you missed it, I’m possessive and jealous as hell when it comes to you.”
Her head tilted back. “Gage didn’t care about me.”
“That makes me want to kick his ass all the more.”
“Because…you’re jealous.”
“Because the fucker hurt you.” Another truth that pushed out of him under the cover of the darkness. Hell, it looked like he was the one over sharing. Rick cleared his throat. “You should get some sleep.”
“I don’t usually sleep well. Too many sins on my soul. But I think it might be different this time.” She snuggled closer.
Holy hell, she was snuggling with him.
“Rick, have you ever trusted the wrong person?” Her voice was even softer. A little slurred.
“Yeah, baby, I have.”
“What happened…when you realized what you’d done?”
He thought of the fire. The smoke. The death. “I left him to die in a fucking inferno that he’d set.”
She stiffened. “Uh, what?” Now she didn’t sound so sleepy.
Why was he sharing this with her? But his lips parted and Rick heard himself say, “I was a firefighter, way back before Wilde. I worked with my best friend. Daniel Morgan was the kind of guy everyone loved. Charming and easy going, the guy was a hero. Or at least, that was what people thought.”
She was silent.
“I grew suspicious about him. We started having some big fires. Damn big blazes, and Daniel knew too much about them. He reacted too quickly. He’d be able to analyze the scene too fast. Hell, I know I’m not making sense, but things just seemed off to me. I had a knot in my gut that I couldn’t shake, only I didn’t say anything about it. I was suspicious, but…he was my best friend.”
Her hand pressed over his heart.
“Then one day…one fire…I found him with his fiancée. God, Julia. I can’t forget her face in those flames. Daniel was going to kill her because she’d found out that he was setting fires. Setting them just so he could be the first on scene and put them out. People died in those fires. Daniel didn’t care. He just wanted the glory. He was going to kill Julia so that he could keep right on being the hero in the world’s eyes.” He sucked in a breath and, for a moment, Rick could taste ash.
“What happened to Julia?”
“I dragged her out of the fire.” He swallowed. “There wasn’t enough time to save them both. The building was falling down around us. I got hit by a beam. Shit, I was just trying to hold onto Julia and…” And Daniel was screaming. Telling me to leave her. That I was his friend. That I should save him.
He didn’t think Julia even remembered those final cries. He’d never mentioned them to her. He hadn’t wanted her to realize that he’d had to make a choice that day. He’d chosen her.
“Julia is one of the best people I’ve ever met,” he said, voice gruff in the darkness. “I wasn’t going to let her die in that fire. We both got out. Daniel didn’t. Then we made sure the world knew the truth about him.” He swallowed the taste of ash. “Julia is the one who got me to start working with Wilde. She became an agent and she dragged me with her. We worked together as partners for a while. She’s absolutely amazing.”
“I think I’m jealous now,” Kat whispered. “She sounds great.”
She was. “She’ll always be one of my best friends, but I promise, you don’t need to be jealous of a damn thing. We are only friends. And the guy who owns her heart now—if I so much as looked sideways at Julia, he’d attack. I mean, I’d kick his ass, but he’d still attack.”
She gave a soft laugh.
“She thinks I saved her,” he added as his fingers trailed over Kat’s shoulder. “But after Daniel died, the guilt was eating me alive. I ignored my suspicions about him, I trusted the wrong person, and people died.” The guilt would never go away completely. “She made me keep living. Got my ass focused on something else. Got me to help others again.”
“Where is she now?”
“Finally living her happily ever after with her rock star.”
“What?”
A rusty laugh came from him. “Let’s just say that Julia settled down with a guy I never expected her to like. She’s happy now, and she deserves that happiness.”
“Good. I like it when people get happy endings.”
He stared at her in the darkness. “You deserve to be happy, too.”
“You shouldn’t be too sure about that.” A soft whisper.
“You’re not your father. You haven’t hurt anyone—”
“I guess we both had psychopaths in our lives, huh? The wrong people who were far too close to us.” Now she sounded sad. “You stopped your monster, though. I didn’t. Many people would say I don’t deserve anything but a prison cell.”
“Kat…” He hated the pain he could feel pulsing from her.
“I tried to go to the cops. No one knows that. I had evidence. I had a video of him that I took after everything with Gage blew up. I had a video of my dad ordering a hit. I went to the cops. I—” She stopped. “How did you do it?”
He didn’t understand. “Do what?”
She pulled away.
He didn’t like that. He’d been enjoying having her in his arms.
She sat up in bed. “You just talked to me. You were kind to me. That’s how you did it.” She drew her knees up. Wrapped her arms around them.
“Baby, I don’t understand what’s happening right now.”
“I’m telling you secrets, not even trying to stop, and all you had to do was be kind. Does that tell you how messed up I am?”
“You’re not messed up.”
“But I am.” She rose from the bed and wrapped a sheet around her body. “I’m telling you secrets that no one should know.”
He wanted her back in the bed. Back in his arms.
“I had evidence. I’m not the cold-blooded bitch everyone thinks. I had video. I was so careful. I was going to bring him down. I was going to stop him.” Her words tumbled out in rapid fire succession. “I went to the cops, and do you know what happened?”
Rick’s hand fisted around the covers.
“The cops were working for my father. They destroyed the evidence in front of me. They called him. He came to get me. On the ride home, he just said one thing to me. Only one. Do you want to know what he said? Do you want that secret, too?”
No. “Kat, you don’t have to tell me—”
“He said… ‘The next time you betray me, you’re dead. Daughter or not, you’re dead.’”
/> Fuck, fuck, fuck.
She turned away. The exterior light fell through the blinds and he saw the sheet trailing behind her like a wedding gown. Kat opened the bathroom door and stepped inside. A moment later, the door closed with a soft click.
His hand was still fisted around the covers, and his heart—the damn thing hurt.
***
She came out of the bathroom twenty minutes later. Kat kept the light off when she slipped into the motel room. Her eyes were puffy and her chest ached. She hated crying. There was no point in it. Crying always made her head ache and turned her eyes red. Some people felt better after they cried. She was not one of those people.
She was an ugly crier, too. So things just sucked all around.
She glanced in the general direction of the chair she’d seen earlier. Her eyes adjusted to the dimness of the room as she found the chair. She’d curl up in the chair and—
“You don’t have to talk to me. You don’t have to do anything but curl up in my arms and sleep.”
His voice was low and rough and ever so tempting.
“I don’t want your secrets. Don’t tell me a fucking thing. I just want you in my arms because I like the way you feel when you’re against me.”
She still had the sheet wrapped around her body. She tugged it with her as she crept across the floor.
“I’m not trying to be kind so I can learn your secrets. Hell, I don’t think I have been particularly kind to you, and I want to fix that. I think you deserve kind. I think you deserve a whole lot more than that.”
She didn’t speak. She was afraid if she started speaking, she just might cry. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt truly safe or truly happy. Fear was pretty much her constant companion. She kept her mask in place, made jokes all the time, seemed confident because the truth was that she didn’t want anyone to see how terrified and screwed up she was.
“Will you sleep in my arms?” Rick asked her. He reached out a hand toward her. “I think I’d sleep better with you near me.”
She took a step toward him. Made herself stop. “Because you think I’ll run?” Her voice was too husky.
